Mass Culture Since 1945

The rise of a global mass culture has been a central theme since 1945.
The United States initially served as a cultural role model due to its media production and power.
Popular art forms like films, TV, pop music, and comics gained a large global audience.
Migration and the internet have created a cultural melting pot, influencing the arts with strong social engagement.
Key themes include the American dream, engagement & experiment, postmodernism, globalization, and the network.

American Dream

American culture appealed to Europeans after WWII, driven by the American role in liberation.
Products like Coca-Cola, gum, and jeans represented the dynamic and modern American way of life.
The American dream is based on individual freedom and equal opportunities.
American lifestyle is manifested in cartoons, soaps, musicals, rock-n-roll and Hollywood films.
New York grew into a global cultural center symbolizing modernity.
Musicals, influenced by London music hall and Viennese operetta, evolved into a major theatrical form.
Broadway in New York is the mecca of musical shows.
West Side Story (1957) was the first musical to portray grimmer realities such as immigrant neighborhoods and ethnic tensions.
Jazz transformed from dance music to listening music with the advent of bebop.
Abstract expressionism emerged in New York with artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.
Pollock's "drippings" technique involved a trance-like state creating abstract compositions.
Rothko's color fields aimed to evoke intense emotional reactions.
Hollywood films became a major export, but television impacted Hollywood's golden age.
Television developed a language characterized by short blocks and constant enticements to keep watching.
Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941) was a cinematic classic using innovative techniques.
Soap operas, pioneered by Irna Phillips, used continuous storylines and cliffhangers.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1962) was a popular thriller known for suspense.
The 1950s saw the rise of youth culture and rebellion against authority.
Films like Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and The Wild One (1953) portrayed rebellious youth.
James Dean and Marlon Brando introduced method acting.
Rock 'n' roll emerged by breaking barriers between black and white music with Elvis Presley.
Raymond Loewy's streamlined designs, like the Studebaker Starliner (1953), catered to the youth market.
Pop art bridged the gap between mass media and avant-garde art.
Richard Hamilton's collage Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? (1956) is considered the first pop art.
Pop art embraces mass culture images and industrial techniques.
Roy Lichtenstein's Whaam! (1963) exemplifies pop art's use of comic book styles.
Andy Warhol made art from soup cans and celebrity images, using mass production techniques.

Experiment & Engagement

The 1960s and 70s saw experimental art challenging traditional forms.
Conceptual art focused on ideas, societal views, or artistic concepts.
Absurdist theater, exemplified by Samuel Beckett's Wachten op Godot (1953), explored the meaninglessness of existence.
Antonin Artaud's 'Theater of Cruelty' emphasized light, sound, and movement over dialogue.
Jerzy Grotowski's 'poor theater' aimed for intimate confrontation between actor and audience.
Young New York artists rejected expressionism, focusing on everyday life.
John Cage used chance and ambient sounds in his compositions such as 4'33" (1952).
Merce Cunningham developed pure dance using basic movements without emotion or narrative.
Judson Dance Theater deconstructed academic dance, emphasizing ordinary movements.
Nam June Paik combined television and performance, distorting images and creating video art like TV-Buddha (1974).
Happenings, pioneered by Allan Kaprow, were improvised theatrical group meetings.
Performances, like Joseph Beuys' I like America and America likes me (1974), often centered on the artist.
Aktie Tomaat and Aktie Notenkraker were Dutch protests against elitist theater and music.
German avant-garde artists, like Karlheinz Stockhausen, pioneered serialism and electronic music.
Kraftwerk experimented with synthesizers and drum computers, creating "robotrock" like Autobahn (1975).
Pina Bausch's Tanztheater blended dance, drama, performance, and music, seen in Café Müller (1978).
The British Invasion saw British bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones dominating American charts.
Beat music mixed rock-'n-roll, rhythm-and-blues, and soul.
The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) was a concept album with diverse styles.
David Bowie played with alter egos, exemplified by Ziggy Stardust.
Minimal art reduced art to essential forms, focusing on simplicity and objectivity.
Donald Judd's stacks exemplified minimal art’s emphasis on rhythm and repetition, like in Untitled (1989).
Minimal music used repetitive rhythmic motifs; Terry Riley's In C (1964) is an early example.
Steve Reich experimented with shifting rhythms, notably in Drumming (1970-1971).
Philip Glass and Robert Wilson's opera Einstein on the Beach (1976) was a minimal opera with repetitive music and movements.
Bob Dylan revitalized folk music with socially conscious lyrics in songs like Blowin' in the Wind (1962).
The Woodstock festival in 1969 symbolized the hippie movement's ideals of love and peace.
Jimi Hendrix's performance at Woodstock was a sensation.
The film Easy Rider (1969) captured the hippie generation's desire for freedom.
Funk, pioneered by James Brown, focused on rhythm.
Disco gained popularity, exemplified by Saturday Night Fever (1977) and the Bee Gees.
Punk emerged as a reaction against mainstream pop with bands like The Ramones and The Sex Pistols.

Postmodernism

Postmodernism emerged in the late 1970s, marked by a shift in Western culture towards individualism and an excess of choices.
Postmodern art embraces irony, recycling, and mixing of high and low culture.
Jean-François Lyotard's Het postmoderne weten (1979) argued that the postmodern society is defined by information and the end of grand narratives.
Postmodern architecture rejected modernism's functional designs, embracing freer forms and historical styles.
Alessandro Mendini's Groninger Museum (1994) exemplifies postmodern architecture, mixing various styles.
Sjoerd Soeters' Inverdan in Zaanstad incorporates references to local and international architecture and popular culture.
Since pop art, the boundary between popular culture and art has been increasingly replaced.
Jeff Koons' Michael Jackson and Bubbles (1988) combines pop, art, and kitsch.
Grace Jones embodies a postmodern artwork, playing with gender and musical styles.
Postmodern advertising adopts a cynical attitude, exaggerating cliches.
Oliviero Toscani's Benneton ads used shocking, socially conscious images, with the brand logo barely visible.
Hiphop emerged in the Bronx, New York, around 1976, as a grassroots movement with music, dance, and graffiti.
Public Enemy delivered hard-hitting activist messages.
De La Soul offered a positive alternative, incorporating positive messages.
ISH's MonteverdISH (2011) combined hiphop with classical music.
Many postmodern artists realize that innovating art is barely possible.
Cindy Sherman’s Untitled film stills (1977-1980) consists of self-portraits, where she plays with stereotypes and stylistic conventions.
Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill I&II (2003 and 2004) is a hurricane of quotes from pulp films.
Christian Marclay’s The Clock (2010) is a 24-hour video composed of thousands of film fragments related to time.

Globalisation

1989, the Fall of the Berlin Wall marks a historical turning point.
Trade, migration and communication are taking place more and more on a global scale.
New art centers and festivals are flourishing in Asia, Africa and South America and artists from non-Western countries are making international careers.
Damien Hirst's work exemplifies art in a global, capitalistic world, focusing on market value and shock.
Peter Brook's Mahabharata (1985) sought universal themes through an international cast.
Magiciens de la terre (1989) challenged Western art norms by showcasing non-Western artists.
Akram Khan bridged cultural divides through dance, blending kathak and contemporary dance in Kaash (2002).
Following the relativism of postmodernism, the beginning of the new millennium saw a wave of new engagement.
Christoph Schlingensief's Bitte liebt Österreich (2000) parodied reality TV and immigration politics.
Brett Bailey's Exhibit B (2010) confronted colonial history with live tableaus, stirring controversy.
Ai Weiwei's S.A.C.R.E.D (2013) depicted his imprisonment, criticizing human rights abuses.
Dance emerged, focusing on deep basses and repetitive drumtracks.
House music originated in Chicago’s, the black homosexual scene.
Daft Punk mixed electronic sounds with pop elements, as shown on the album Homework (1997).
Klaus Obermaier's Vivisector I (2001-2002) blended dance and technology.
The Guerrilla Girls criticized the role of women in the art world through humorous posters (e.g. “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?” (1989)).
Madonna symbolized a new type of independent woman at the end of the twentieth century.
The music of M.I.A. (1975) has a distinct intercultural character.

Networks

After 2005 is known as the network era.
Aram Bartholl Map (2009) highlights the virtual and real world.
Map questions a society that is increasingly mapped through digital technology.
The internet and digital networks can be regarded as a modern variant of the panopticon.
Morehshin Allahyari's Material speculation: ISIS (2015) reconstructs historical art treasures that have been destroyed by members of the terrorist movement Islamic State.
The Material speculation: ISIS (2015) sees the 3D printer as' tool that can change our lives in the future in a biological, political and social sense'.
Baudrillard argues that we live in a hyper-reality: a reality shaped by images we have created ourselves.
The Matrix (1999-2003) sketches a jet-black picture of a future in which virtual reality has replaced the real world.
In the opera The End (2012) Miku is a superstar with more than two and a half million online fans.
In the game industry, the current state of affairs regarding virtual reality is best visible.
There’s much debate about games and entertainment’s influence on real life.
Long-running TV series outdo feature films with ingenious plots, such as Game of Thrones (from 2011).
The increasing amount of TV series (etc. Game of Thrones) is linked to paid channels.
Marina Abramović's The Artist Is Present (2010) created a new art experience, showing her endurance and impact.
Jeremy Deller's The Battle of Orgreave (2001) explored the 1984 miner's strike.
Joost Conijn built his own aircraft and flew through Africa (OK-NUL 43), documenting special encounters.
Professional artists are increasingly moving to the neighbourhood.
The Berlin theatre collective Rimini Protokoll makes documentary theatre in which the ‘ordinary citizen’ plays the leading role.
In Solo São Paulo (2007), police officers from São Paulo exchange personal stories with their colleagues from Munich.
Street art Netherlands has a policy of removing graffiti.
British street artist Banksy often combines black humor with political or social commentary