JASPER JOHNS (1930 –) When Jasper Johns left his native South Carolina for the mean streets of New York, he claimed to have arrived at his Pearl Street Studio knowing nothing about art history. In fact, he later destroyed some of his early work when he realized...
ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG (1925-2008) Robert Rauschenberg had served in the Navy, as a nurse, during the Second World War, and, like many men of his generation, went to college on the G.I Bill. After studying in Paris and New York, he found himself at the famous Black...
NEO-DADA—1950-1960 Neo or new Dada was named after Marcel Duchamp who, in the fifties, began to emerge from the underground to the surface of cutting edged art in New York. Neo-Dada did not come neatly “after” the leading movement, Abstract Expressionism,...
FROM MODERNISM TO POST-MODERNISM POST-WAR ART IN AMERICA After the Second World War, the art world was characterized by “triumphalism” in New York and a feeling of having won, not just a military war but also a cultural war. The French and their School of Paris had...
POST-WAR ART IN LOS ANGELES AND SAN FRANCISCO At first glance, California would seem to be an exceedingly unpromising place for major art to emerge in the second half of the Twentieth Century. A new state with a throwaway culture without a history, California had...
BEAT CULTURE 1950s Most cultural movements are large-scale shifts in thinking due to a collective action on the part of many people. Beat Culture is unusual in that the concept of what it meant to be a Beat was based upon the writings and activities of a very few...
