Continuing our discussion from the previous class, we finished looking at Andy Warhol’s pop art. His work ranged in subject theme, stretching from one extreme of car crashes to the other of dance steps. He used images from everyday life, like photos from tabloids or popular products, to comment on consumer culture and the effects of fame. His famous series on the Campbell Soup cans featured remarkably similar cans, just changing the soup flavor, emphasizing mass production and the standardization of society. Minimal art, like that of Donald Judd and Richard Sera, represented art that made the artist’s intervention as absent as possible.
Looking at the postmodern art era, attitudes towards artistic periods changed. There was less of a goal to advance from the art that came before and creating radical ideas; instead artists began to work in groups again, paint, and focused on expressing art in the way they wanted to. Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party created a table set with a places for powerful women left out of history books, playing on the saying “to be invited to the table.” A representation that wouldn’t be considered high art, and that was created by a team of over 400 female artists, used their work to raise societal awareness. Deconstruction art was also popular as it gave art the ability to be interpreted and change meanings with time, with no fixed intent from the artists. Basquiat began as a graffiti artist before switching to paintings, but kept the speed of street art in his works. Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial shocked the nation with nonrepresentational and noncelebration. The sculpture cuts through the grass like a gruesome gash, accurately representing her feelings towards the war. Finally, various artists in postmodernism used art as a form of protest and to share political or societal messages. A new openness to the definition of art paved the way for a variety of pieces.