Art of the Sixties

Fülszöveg

Art of the Sixties
Hugh Adams
66 illustrations, 26 in colour
ij H9
The 1960s witnessed an explosion of artistic expression. Everything seemed possible in the name of art, and countless critics, and even the artists themselves, sought to explain and justify it all. New York and London were the main centres, but the ideas first propagated in these capitals rapidly swept across a world now fully versed in the power of the mass media. It was a violent decade, in which brutal picttires of the victims of Vietnam were flashed across the screen almost simultaneously with pop advertisements for anything from hair conditioner to pet food.
With Pop, Op and Minimalist Art the trends seemed popular. Critics were afraid to be caught on the wrong foot and every new art form was debated and discussed with the utmost seriousness. It was left to Tom Wolfe to prick some of the bubbles - to show that behind the media darlings, the superficial gloss, was an art as esoteric as ever.
There was... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Art of the Sixties
Hugh Adams
66 illustrations, 26 in colour
ij H9
The 1960s witnessed an explosion of artistic expression. Everything seemed possible in the name of art, and countless critics, and even the artists themselves, sought to explain and justify it all. New York and London were the main centres, but the ideas first propagated in these capitals rapidly swept across a world now fully versed in the power of the mass media. It was a violent decade, in which brutal picttires of the victims of Vietnam were flashed across the screen almost simultaneously with pop advertisements for anything from hair conditioner to pet food.
With Pop, Op and Minimalist Art the trends seemed popular. Critics were afraid to be caught on the wrong foot and every new art form was debated and discussed with the utmost seriousness. It was left to Tom Wolfe to prick some of the bubbles - to show that behind the media darlings, the superficial gloss, was an art as esoteric as ever.
There was much good art in the sixties. It was an exciting, lively decade, when many artists - Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Hamilton, Claes Oldenburg and Peter Blake among them - broke new ground and created lasting images. They had style and zest and they made the sixties memorable. The best of their work is fully represented here, as are those other images from the years of the Beatles and Kennedy's assassination that now typify the strident sixties.
Hugh Adams, a regular contributor to art journals, teaches the history of art at Southampton.
Jacket illustration: detail from Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol Vissza