1960
Marden & Stella
edited 2/6/2025 What’s acceptable once you’ve been accepted? How far will we go to create something different, to defy other people’s expectations? In the last post, we discussed Pollock’s later work and how it disappointed his main man Clem Greenberg.…
Camp – 19 SIXTY
In the 1950s the Abstract Expressionists were known for their machismo. There was a feeling that an artist, especially an American one, had to take on the world, had to fight the good fight. When the ABEXers weren’t busy telling…
Hyperaesthetics – 19 Sixty
“So, after abstraction, the monochromatism of, say, Yves Klein and the advent of imageless painting, when nothing more can get to us, really touch us, you no longer expect some brainwave of genius, the surprise of originality, but merely the…
Media – 19 SIXTY
“Perhaps the great revolution produced by photograph was in the traditional arts. The painter could no longer depict a world that had been much photographed. He turned, instead, to reveal the inner process of creativity in expressionism and in abstract…
Notes – 19 SIXTY
As I’ve been doing my research for the 19 SIXTY series I’ve been comparing a lot of pop culture to POP art and finding some really fun connections. That period in the mid to late fifties when Johns and Rauschenberg…
Existenz – 19 SIXTY
The bestiality of World War II and the onset of the cold war was bringing a dark-but also exciting-pessimism into intellectual life. The social optimism of Marxist intellectuals, eroded by harsh realities of history, could no longer attract strong minds.…
POMO Empire – 19 SIXTY
Postmodernism continues to hold the theoretical/visual art world in its grip. There has not been any serious challenges to its intellectual, perceptual or aesthetic implications since its inception. There have been many attempts at reactionary critiques and nostalgic returns, but…
