ART 330

Perspective

The decade that followed 1960 was nothing, if not tumultuous. Death was everywhere…from the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, to the rice paddies of Vietnam; we lost a president, an Attorney General, and two important civil rights leaders to assassins’ bullets; police gunned down students at Kent State University. Protestors held sit-ins, love-ins, walk-outs, and rallies in an attempt to change our country’s laws on behalf of African-Americans and women and to force an end to the bloodbath in the Vietnam jungles.

It’s in the 60s that the Beatles are born, the Berlin Wall goes up, Che Guevera was executed, and three astronauts died in a space mission two years before Neil Armstrong would take man’s first steps on the moon. The Woodstock Music Festival saw 500,000 young people converge on a 600-acre dairy farm for what would become an iconic moment in music history and a demonstration of the counterculture’s “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll” lifestyle. Advertisements were everywhere encouraging consumerism, promising wealth, beauty, and prestige as the result of a purchase. And, as might be expected, art captured all of it…on the canvases of painters, in the music that went on to define a generation, in the films that recorded history, in earthworks and temporary site-specific projects, on the dance floor and in the theater.

Chapter 39 in The Humanities: Culture, Continuity, and Change by Sayre, H. M.

By the end of the 1960s, a spirit of rebellion against the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War was palpable. From college campuses, to community centers, to art museums, citizens showed the same commitment to civic protest that turned the tide for the Civil Rights Movement in their efforts to end the war. News reports of rallies, sit-ins, concerts, student strikes, anti-war marches, teach-ins, and other creative efforts toward peace ran on the evening broadcast alongside of the film clips and photographs of the war coverageMany people saw the Vietnam War as evidence of a more prolific and poisonous disease caused by the conspicuous consumption of Americans, the growth and influence of mass media, and the expansion of the military-industrial complex. Artists responded in several ways. Claes Oldenburg, commissioned by Yale University’s graduate students from the School of Architecture to produce an anti-war monument, delivered his “Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks” (figure 39.6 in your textbook). It was placed in front of a WWI monument dedicated to the Yale students who became soldiers. Although it was taken down the same year, it was subsequently re-structured and reinstalled in 1974. itself.. The Birth of Conceptual Art

Other artists responded by recognizing the contribution of “establishment players” in the art world and taking action. In October, 1969, artists succeeded in shutting down three major museums. Others, however, refused to close their doors, so artists fought back more creatively: by making art that wasn’t containable in a museum, wasn’t collectible, buyable, or permanent.

Perhaps one of the new categories of art born out of this effort is site-specific sculpture. Michael Heizer, frustrated by the increasing emphasis on art as a commodity and something in which to invest great sums of money, sought solace in the Nevada desert. There, he created works that could not be purchased and that required an investment, not of money, but of time on the part of the viewer. Perhaps his most famous work is Double Negative: two enormous cuts on either side of a canyon wall that require the viewer to walk into the 50-foot deep chasms to experience their inspirational scale.

 

Another major “earthworks” artist is Robert Smithson. Smithson traveled to the Nevada desert with Heizer in 1968. In his work, Smithson sought to depict the ongoing tension in nature between constructive and destructive forces…forces that build and shape form as well as those that destroy it.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude

Committed to site-specific art and that which is concerned with a common view of aesthetics, art that is precious because it is temporary, and that which demonstrates the joy and beauty of specific locations, Christo and Jeanne Claude collaborate on projects of enormous scope and intrigue.

Born on the same day at the same time, Christo and Jeanne Claude first met in Paris in 1958. They moved to New York City in 1964, and have been enchanting the world with their “wrapping projects” which define or surround places or objects in huge swaths of fabric. Running Fence, 1972-1976, consisted of a 24 ½ mile-long, 18-ft. high fence of nylon fabric that crossed both Sonoma and Marin counties in northern California and extended into the Pacific Ocean.

 

How do you think of or define “art” today—as something to buy or sell, something to see in a gallery, museum, or corporate office? Or does art exist beyond the auction house, the sandstone bricks of a century-old building? What role does nature play in art?

Go to the Links tab under More Tools to visit the following information:

 

· The Birth of Conceptual Art. View a Nevada newspaper article about Double Negative.

· Spiral Jetty. Smithson’s Spiral Jetty is on page 1293 of your text; visit the Getty Museum and watch a slide show through the link.

· Christo and Jeanne-Claude Gates. Read a New York Times article about a more recent project of Christo and Jeanne Claude’s, The Gates, and more images of their site-specific projects.

· Land Art. View a short video about Land Art.