Art Appreciation: Art and the USA 1945 - 1989: from Jackson Pollock to the Guerilla Girls

I aim to encourage close looking at artworks, to set art into artistic and historical contexts, including the Cold War, and to create an environment where students are comfortable talking about art. For some images our discussion will be just to figure out what is going on! The course will begin with Abstract Expressionism (including Pollock, Mark Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler, Ed Reinhardt, Barnett Newman, Lee Krasner, and more), moving to Robert Rauschenberg’s very different practice and Jasper John’s Flag (1954-5). We look at 1960s pop art (Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein), and thinking about sculpture discuss Minimalism, and for site-specific art Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) among others. The course ends with artists who focused on identity and worked for societal change: Judy Chicago’s feminist The Dinner Party, Betye Saar’s The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972) and the Guerrilla Girls’ significant public interventions – they highlighted the paucity of women’s art in public.