AP Art History: Global Contemporary Art (Works 224–250)

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards for AP Art History Content Area 10: Global Contemporary Art (Works 224 to 250), featuring key terms, artist names, core concepts, and artwork identification.

The Gates

A 1979 mixed-media installation in Central Park, New York City, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, consisting of 7,503 gates standing 16 feet high along 23 miles of walkways draped with saffron-colored fabric to create an immediate, shared aesthetic experience.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial

A 1982 monument in Washington, D.C., designed by Maya Lin, consisting of two thin, highly reflective black granite walls sunken into the earth in a V or wing shape inscribed with the names of fallen service members in chronological order of their death.

Horn Players

A 1983 acrylic and oil paintstick triptych by Jean-Michel Basquiat celebrating legendary jazz musicians Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, utilizing street-art techniques, anatomical and musical word repetitions, and visual nods to Picasso's 'Three Musicians.'

Sumukwha (Oriental Ink Movement)

A South Korean art movement founded by Song Su-nam in the late 1980s that revitalized traditional ink wash and literati painting techniques to assert Korean cultural identity through modern abstract forms.

Summer Trees

A 1983 ink on paper painting by Song Su-nam featuring vertical streams of varying ink washes, wet-on-wet feathering, and dry brushing, evoking traditional literati scholar-poet values and a gathering of upright friends.

Androgyne III

A 1982 sculpture by Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz constructed from molded burlap, resin, wood, nails, and string, featuring a hollowed, genderless torso seated on wooden stretcher logs to evoke the dehumanization and trauma of war.

A Book from the Sky

A 1987 installation by Xu Bing composed of ceiling scrolls and printed volumes featuring 4,000 illegible, invented characters created via traditional Chinese woodblock printing, frustrating viewers to question the meaning and authority of written language.

Pink Panther

A 1988 glazed porcelain sculpture by Jeff Koons from the Banality Series depicting movie star Jayne Mansfield clutching the cartoon Pink Panther, blurring the boundaries between mass-culture kitsch and high art.

Untitled (#228)

A 1990 large-scale color photograph by Cindy Sherman depicting herself costumed as the biblical heroine Judith holding the severed head of Holofernes, deconstructing historical male gaze tropes and traditional Renaissance paintings of female seductresses.

Dancing at the Louvre

A 1991 story-quilt by Faith Ringgold from 'The French Collection,' combining acrylic on fabric, tie-dye, and handwritten text narrating the fictional Willa Simone's journey to claim an active place for African American women within European art history.

Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People)

A 1992 mixed-media triptych by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith featuring collaged newsprint, expressive red brushstrokes, a central canoe silhouette, and suspended Native-themed sports memorabilia to confront colonial exploitation and cultural commodification.

Earth's Creation

A 1994 four-panel painting by Australian Aboriginal artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye utilizing synthetic polymer paint on canvas, applying vibrant layers of dots and gestural brushwork to celebrate ancestral Dreamlines and the lush 'Green Time' of the desert.

Rebellious Silence

A 1994 ink-on-photograph self-portrait by Shirin Neshat from the 'Women of Allah' series depicting a chador-wearing woman whose face is inscribed with Farsi poetry and divided symmetrically by the barrel of a rifle.

No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop (En la Barberia no se Llora)

A 1994 large-scale Nuyorican Baroque installation by Pepon Osorio recreating a community barbershop filled with masculine paraphernalia, video monitors of crying men, and ornate kitsch to interrogate machismo and Latino male identity.

Corned Beef 2000 (Pisupo Lua Afe)

A 1994 life-size bull sculpture by Michel Tuffery fashioned from flattened, recycled corned beef tins, highlighting the deleterious ecological, cultural, and health consequences of imported processed foods across the Pacific Islands.

Electronic Superhighway

A 1995 mixed-media installation by Nam June Paik incorporating 336 video monitors, steel scaffolding, and neon contour lines tracing the United States map to visualize information overload and the omnipresent impact of broadcast media.

The Crossing

A 1996 double-sided video and sound installation by Bill Viola projecting synchronized slow-motion sequences of a human figure gradually engulfed by roaring fire on one side and submerged beneath cascading water on the other.

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

A 1997 Deconstructivist art museum in Spain designed by Frank Gehry, notable for its undulating titanium panels, limestone volumes, expansive glass atrium, and sculpted organic profiles resembling fish and ship motifs.

Pure Land

A 1998 color photograph on glass by Mariko Mori portraying the artist as the Buddhist goddess Kichijoten floating above a lotus flower on the Dead Sea, flanked by futuristic, pastel-colored alien musicians.

Lying with the Wolf

A 2001 ink and pencil drawing on crinkled paper by Kiki Smith that presents a recumbent nude female figure serenely embracing a wolf, subverting traditional predator-prey folkloric tropes into an egalitarian bond of mutual nurturance.

Darkytown Rebellion

A 2001 room-sized installation by Kara Walker employing cut-paper silhouettes adhering to gallery walls bathed in multicolored projector light, exposing historical racial stereotypes, violence, and the visceral legacy of slavery.

The Swing (after Fragonard)

A 2001 mixed-media sculptural installation by Yinka Shonibare featuring a headless female mannequin on a swing dressed in Dutch wax African-print textiles, critiquing European imperial wealth, leisure, and colonial appropriation.

Old Man's Cloth

A 2003 hanging metal textile sculpture by El Anatsui made of flattened liquor bottle caps and copper wire, evoking Ghanaian Kente cloth and ocean waves to trace the historic transatlantic slave and commodity trade routes.

Stadia II

A 2004 multi-layered ink and acrylic canvas by Julie Mehretu mapping abstract stadium architectures overlaid with calligraphic marks, national flags, and geometric vector vectors to capture the collective fervor of stadiums and modern global arenas.

Preying Mantra

A 2006 mixed-media collage on Mylar by Wangechi Mutu depicting an armored, hybrid female figure reclining on patterned cloth against a sprawling tree branch, engaging the myth of Eve, female empowerment, and colonial depictions of African women.

Shibboleth

A 2007 installation by Doris Salcedo in the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall featuring a subterranean floor fissure extending 548 feet, acting as negative space to confront borders, racial intolerance, and the exclusion experienced by immigrants.

MAXXI National Museum of XXI Arts

A 2009 architectural complex in Rome designed by Zaha Hadid constructed from curved concrete walls, glass, and steel overhangs, conceptualized as a fluid campus of overlapping pathways rather than a static object-container.

Sunflower Seeds (Kui Hua Zi)

A 2010–2011 installation at the Tate Modern by Ai Weiwei consisting of 100 million individually hand-crafted and hand-painted porcelain sunflower seeds weighing 150 tons, symbolizing Chinese mass production, communal famine rations, and state conformity.