ART & ARCHITECTURE: ARCHITECTURE Architecture in the sixties was undergoing a refinement of Modernism and a move to an even more

streamlined contemporary look. Tall buildings or skyscrapers created a distinctly American structural type. Architects such as Philip Johnson, and John Burgee, of Johnson & Burgee (Kline Biological Tower), are some of the architects who designed office buildings which helped create a different look for the skylines of large cities. Architects used light and space, for example the Cleo Rogers Memorial Library by I.M. Pei , to create buildings which were adapted for the activities which took place in them. The influence of space and futuristic design was apparent in some public buildings like the NASA complex at Houston, Texas . Eero Saarinen created the Memorial Arch in St. Louis, Missouri in 1965. Walter Gropius designed the Pan Am Building (now called the Met Life Building) in 1963 with Pietro Belluschi and Emery Rothe & Sons. Louis I. Kahn in his Kimbell Art Museum of Ft. Worth and other buildings brought a feeling of austerity to American architecture. Robert Venturi wrote Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture in 1966 and called for a change in the reductive simplicity of Modernism, beginning a protest in the late 60's. Perhaps one of the most well known and influential architects whose career began to rise in the sixties is I. M. Pei . Peter Eisenman and Frank O. Gehry are architects who have become world famous for their distinctive designs and who began making names for themselves during this time. Designers like Herman Miller left their mark on furnishings. Sleek contemporary styles like those by Verner Panton have translated well into future decades of furniture. ART As in the fifties, art in America of the sixties was influenced by the desire to move into the modern age or future which the space age seemed to forecast. Major works by Alexander Calder (mobiles and sculpture) or Helen Frankenthaler (non-representational art) showed a desire to escape from details to interpret. Artists wanted to inspire the viewer to leap into the unknown and experience art in their own way. A new artist who appeared was Andy Warhol, a leading name in pop art. Other forms evolving during this time were assemblage art, op art (or optical art) (ex. Vasarely ), or kinetic abstraction (ex. Marcel Duchamp ), environmental art (ex. Robert Smithson ), and pop art , (ex. David Hockney ). http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade60.html art movements of the 1960s: 1. Pop Art 2. Minimalism 3. 1960s art overseas 4. Fluxus The 1960s were a period of tremendous political, social, and artistic activity in the United States. In 1964, the year following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the tumult of racial unrest arose in many American cities, the first bombs fell on North Vietnam, the Civil Rights Act took effect, and the Beatles invaded America with their first concert at Carnegie Hall Many artistic impulses began to gain momentum in the mid-1960s: an explosion of consumerism reverberated in the paintings of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and in the sculptures of Claes Oldenburg and George Segal, whose works embraced elements of popular culture.

http://artsconnected.org/collection/118487/art-in-the-1960s#%2820%29

The bravura gestures of 1950s Abstract Expressionism gave way to Minimalist artists such as Ellsworth Kelly, Donald Judd, and Carl Andre, who were exploring distilled forms, colors, and geometries in their work. Groups of artists, such as those associated with the Fluxus movement, sought the intersection of visual art, performance, music, film, and graphic design, and artists interested in a more democratic approach to art and its dissemination began producing a profusion of prints, multiples, artists books, and films.

1. POP ARTIntroduction
In the 1960s young artists in the United States and England made popular culture their subject matter by appropriating images and objects such as common household items, advertisements from consumer products, celebrity icons, fast food, cartoons, and mass-media imagery from television, magazines, and newspapers. These artists also often used forms of mechanical reproduction that downplayed the idea of originality or the individual mark of the artist. The Pop Art style sought to test the boundaries between art and life.

POP ARTConsumerism
Consumerism suggests that happiness can be achieved through the purchase of goods and services. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy introduced the Consumer Bill of Rights, which stated that the public has a right to be safe, to be informed, to choose, and to be heard. American consumerism exploded in the 1950s and continued into the 1960s with purchases of cars, houses, televisions, furniture, and modern appliances. Movies, records, and television spurred sales of products through advertising and product placement. During the 1960s, fast food chains spread nationwide, opening near strip malls in the new commercial districts of the suburbs

One of the ways Pop Art challenged traditional art was by equating the mass-produced imagery of advertising with fine art. Attracted by the simple, graphic directness of consumer packaging and advertising, Pop artists such as Andy Warhol, took product labels and logos out of a commercial context and displayed them as art. He made sculptures identical to Campbell's soup cans or Brillo boxes. Aiming to employ images of popular as opposed to elitist culture, Pop Art embraced the kitsch associated with consumerism and mocked brand loyalty and its implicit promise of happiness. Left: Campell's Soup Can (Chicken with Rice Soup) "When you think about it, department stores are kind of like museums."Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol is arguably the most important figure of American Pop Art. He is widely known

http://artsconnected.org/collection/118487/art-in-the-1960s#%2820%29

for cool, detached works that borrow images from television, advertising, and other mass media. He often found source material in the packaging of commercial goods. With his sculptures of boxes, Warhol took a popular consumer item and elevated it to the level of high art by producing large-scale trompe l'oeil (deceives the eye) versions of the original. Warhol silkscreened the Brillo logo and other product logos onto previously manufactured, painted wood boxes, and stacked the objects to mimic a supermarket product display.

Shoestring Potatoes Spilling from a Bag by Claes Oldenburg

So many young artists . . . seem to have hit on food as the ideal subject matter "Art or Not, its Food for Thought", Calvin Tomkins, Life magazine, 1964 Claes Oldenburg was interested in making art that broke away from traditional forms such as painting. The sculpture Shoestring Potatoes Spilling from a Bag was inspired by an advertisement in a 1965 issue of Life magazine. Oldenburg transforms the object by greatly enlarging its scale and using unexpected materials, such as cloth. Caught spilling from the bag in a frozen free fall, the fries become a satirical emblem of the basest level of American culture: greasy fast food to go.

Untitled (Soda Fountain Glass) by Paul Thek

http://artsconnected.org/collection/118487/art-in-the-1960s#%2820%29

Paul Thek used a real soda glass and holder to make this sculpture. He filled it with blue wax, hair, and meat-like chunks. A spoon and straw are embedded in the wax. Use the zoom tool for a closer look.

http://artsconnected.org/collection/118487/art-in-the-1960s#%2820%29