Chapter 12: Con

  • Artists like Vincent Van Gogh, Edvard Munk, Paul Cezanne, often had their art used as examples to look for in artists for mental illnesses

  • Art in the modern, American sense, has been somewhat reserved for a select few (mainly higher economic status). So an appreciation and perception of art was resented by the majority of the population, leading to an “anti-intellectual“ strain

Dada and Pop Art

  • Duchamp displayed Nude Descending a Staircase, which was a dada work, an exploration of the traditional. He experimented using photo studies of figures in motion with a cubist style

  • Pop: thought that all art should be in the realm of fine art

  • Dada questions about what society accepts as real, true, original, and valuable, while Pop, questions how and why “products are marketed“

  • Lichtenstein, used an art style similar to that of comic books, and tests the U.S. viewers’ cynicism and discomfort with modern art

Feminism

  • Georgia O’Keefe made abstract flowers, with a nonobjective flow of music

  • Judy Chicago chose her name to claim legitimacy and agency; used the work dinner party to represent the last supper and the “sacrifice of women“.

  • Some feminists of the ‘70s elevated certain body parts seen as low, dirty, and gross

Context, Race, and Agency