Essay Sample on 1960s US: Revolution, War, and Social Change

Introduction

Two decades after World War II in the US were intense but prosperous in unique ways. The 1960s were marked with exceptional social, economic, and cultural growth. A variety of things including the Vietnam War, the Civil rights Movements, the roll, and rock music constituted the lives of American citizens during this period. Regardless of the numerous positive transformations, there were other awful happenings. Assassinations of political leaders, a rise in drug abuse, and escalation of crime and violations were examples of such bad things. Despite the anxious times, the influence of popular culture grew increasingly to become a key focus in arts and society in general. It was during this time that famous places such as the Las Vegas Strip and Disneyland emerged. These places became the most desirable and a dream destination to spend time. Furthermore, the music and film industries became mass entertainment for most Americans. Billboards and other forms of advertisement offered artists new ways of representing reality to suit the consumer culture. Consequently, the boundary between art and popular culture products gradually blurred.

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It was in the 1960s that two divergent, but somehow similar art movements emerged. They were the pop art and minimalism. These two were the main art movements of that time. These movements rejected the obvious expectations about the originality of ideas and the aesthetics of art (Craven 215). Minimalists embraced the use of monochrome colors, lights and untainted geometrical forms. They focused on avoiding emotional content and overt symbolism and in return paid greater attention to the materiality of their works. They introduced viewers to a phase of art in which one could experience gravity, weight, height and even feel a material presence in lighting. Pop art relied on low sources such as comics and ads to create its theme. Like minimalists, pop artists erased emotional content from the works of original creators. Another common thing about these movements is that they both used industrial materials and relied on modular fabrication in their works to create and represent an innovative art. The outcome of these movements was the virtual blurring of the distinction between fine art and the ordinary life aspects, therefore forcing people to rethink the purpose of art and its place in global life. From this perspective, the thoughts of artists became reverend more than the artist's ability to use traditional art tools such as the pencil or brush. It was during this time that artists began to experiment and explore new forms including performance, installation, and photography.

Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol played a big role in unifying consumer products and high culture in art. Lichtenstein and Warhol were among the first generation of pop artists to achieve widespread recognition and as commercial illustrators. Lichtenstein was not the artist to integrate popular imagery in artistic works, but the first one to focus on cartoon imagery. In a book titled "Art Today," the author, Edward Lucie-Smith states that Lichtenstein began his works by selecting the most recognizable and famous cartoon characters such as Popeye of 1961. However, Lichtenstein later switched his strategy and began to focus on generic human figures in comics and cartoons of his time (Lucie-Smith 65). It is worth noting that he did not just copy comics or cartoons, but instead, he employed a somehow complex procedure of cropping images to create compositions that were entirely new. The Drowning girl of 1963 is an example of his creations based on this technique because the source image had the boyfriend on a boat and the girl beneath it. Furthermore, Lichtenstein also incorporated texts from the comics into his creations, thus making language a fundamental visual element of his works.

The works of Warhol were mostly comic and decorative, an aspect that brought him a close comparison to Lichtenstein. Both Warhol and Lichtenstein challenged the issue of handmade over machine-made when they worked in mechanical reproduction models (Rose 43). Warhol did most of his works using the same technique. Such works include the Orange Car Crash Fourteen Times of 1963 and Brillo Boxes of 1969 (Rose 44). While Lichtenstein chose heroes from comics and cartoons of that time, Warhol used famous figures in works such as Marilyn of 1967 and 1975's Mick Jagger.

Judd, Stella, and Flavin are among the most known artists of the minimalism art movement. Although they share several aspects, each one of these three artists also have unique individual signature features. Stella's painting, Die Fahne Hoch of 1959 in his Black Paintings series is one of his monumental works. In this particular piece of art, Stella embodies personal views of art through the use of rectangular forms, monochrome colors, little distinction between painting and sculpture, and making of visually unappealing works. Judd, on the other hand, was both an artist and a noble minimalism theoretician who never used the same material or color. He did not place objects in a conventional manner but in a three-dimensional presentation. Joselit (p.137) states that Flavin's works were a bit different from those of other minimalists in a way that they did not comprise the material. Flavin worked with colored tubes and fluorescent light to create a new and the most notable form of art with no materiality.

Conclusion

In conclusion, pop art and minimalism movements share considerable similarities, but they are also different in certain ways. In both movements, artists shifted from the conventional ways of representing art like the emphasis on originality and the use of emotions. The significance of these art movements emerging at the same time and place lies in the similarities between them. These similarities imply that these movements possibly shaped each other.

Works Cited

Craven, Wayne. American Art: History and Culture. Boston: McGraw Hill Higher Education, 2003.

Joselit, David. American Art Since 1945. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 2003.

Lucie-Smith, Edward. Art Today. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1995.

Rose, Barbara. American Painting: The Twentieth Century. New York: Rizoli International Publications, Inc., 1986.