Editing Modernism (section)

== After 1945 ==
{{See also|Late modernism|Abstract Expressionism}}
[[File:Museum Reina Sofía Madrid Spain Espana this is a front photo close up at the Queen Sofia Museum in 2011 month of June.jpg|thumb|upright|The [[Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía]] (MNCARS) is Spain's national museum of 20th-century art, located in [[Madrid]]. The photo shows the old building with the addition of one of the contemporary glass towers to the exterior by [[Ian Ritchie Architects]] with a closeup of the modern art tower.]]
While ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature'' states that modernism ended by c. 1939<ref name="British Literature' 2006">J. H. Dettmar, "Modernism", in ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature'', ed. David Scott Kastan. Oxford University Press, 2006.</ref> with regard to British and American literature, "When (if) modernism petered out and postmodernism began has been contested almost as hotly as when the transition from Victorianism to modernism occurred."<ref>"Modernism", in ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'', ed. Dinah Birch. Oxford University Press Inc. Oxford Reference Online.</ref> Clement Greenberg sees modernism ending in the 1930s, with the exception of the visual and performing arts,<ref name=Greenberg/> but with regard to music, [[Paul Griffiths (writer)|Paul Griffiths]] notes that, while modernism "seemed to be a spent force" by the late 1920s, after World War II, "a new generation of composers—[[Pierre Boulez|Boulez]], [[Jean Barraqué|Barraqué]], [[Milton Babbitt|Babbitt]], [[Luigi Nono|Nono]], [[Karlheinz Stockhausen|Stockhausen]], [[Iannis Xenakis|Xenakis]]" revived modernism".<ref>Paul Griffiths, "Modernism", ''The Oxford Companion to Music'', ed. Alison Latham. Oxford University Press, 2002.</ref> In fact, many literary modernists lived into the 1950s and 1960s, though generally they were no longer producing major works. The term "[[late modernism]]" is also sometimes applied to modernist works published after 1930.<ref>Cheryl Hindrichs, "Late Modernism, 1928–1945: Criticism and Theory", ''Literature Compass'', Volume 8, Issue 11, pp. 840–855, November 2011</ref><ref>J. H. Dettmar, "Modernism", ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature'', ed. David Scott Kastan. Oxford University Press, 2006.</ref> Among the modernists (or late modernists) still publishing after 1945 were [[Wallace Stevens]], [[Gottfried Benn]], [[T. S. Eliot]], [[Anna Akhmatova]], [[William Faulkner]], [[Dorothy Richardson]], [[John Cowper Powys]], and [[Ezra Pound]]. [[Basil Bunting]], born in 1901, published his most important modernist poem, ''[[Briggflatts]]'' in 1965. In addition, [[Hermann Broch]]'s ''[[The Death of Virgil]]'' was published in 1945 and [[Thomas Mann]]'s ''[[Doctor Faustus (novel)|Doctor Faustus]]'' in 1947. [[Samuel Beckett]], who died in 1989, has been described as a "later modernist".<ref>Morris Dickstein, "An Outsider to His Own Life", Books, ''The New York Times'', 3 August 1997.</ref> Beckett is a writer with roots in the Expressionist tradition of modernism, who produced works from the 1930s until the 1980s, including ''[[Molloy (novel)|Molloy]]'' (1951), ''[[Waiting for Godot]]'' (1953), ''[[Happy Days (play)|Happy Days]]'' (1961), and ''[[Rockaby]]'' (1981). The terms "[[minimalist]]" and "[[post-modernist]]" have also been applied to his later works.<ref>''The Cambridge Companion to Irish Literature'', ed. John Wilson Foster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.</ref> The poets [[Charles Olson]] (1910–1970) and [[J. H. Prynne]] (born 1936) are among the writers in the second half of the 20th century who have been described as late modernists.<ref>''Late Modernist Poetics: From Pound to Prynne'' by Anthony Mellors; see also Prynne's publisher, Bloodaxe Books.</ref>

More recently, the term "late modernism" has been redefined by at least one critic and used to refer to works written after 1945, rather than 1930. With this usage goes the idea that the ideology of modernism was significantly re-shaped by the events of World War II, especially [[the Holocaust]] and the dropping of the atom bomb.<ref>Anthony Mellors, ''Late Modernist Poetics: From Pound to Prynne''</ref>

The post-war period left the capitals of Europe in upheaval, with an urgency to economically and physically rebuild and to politically regroup. In Paris (the former center of European culture and the former capital of the art world), the climate for art was a disaster. Important collectors, dealers, and modernist artists, writers, and poets fled Europe for New York and America. The [[surrealists]] and modern artists from every cultural center of Europe had fled the onslaught of the Nazis for safe haven in the United States. Many of those who did not flee perished. A few artists, notably [[Pablo Picasso]], [[Henri Matisse]], and [[Pierre Bonnard]], remained in France and survived.

The 1940s in New York City heralded the triumph of American Abstract Expressionism, a modernist movement that combined lessons learned from Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Surrealism, [[Joan Miró]], Cubism, [[Fauvism]], and early modernism via great teachers in America like [[Hans Hofmann]] and [[John D. Graham]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Jones |first=Muffet |title=Abstract Expressionism |url=https://boisestate.pressbooks.pub/arthistory/chapter/abstract-expressionism/ |language=en}}</ref> American artists benefited from the presence of [[Piet Mondrian]], [[Fernand Léger]], [[Max Ernst]] and the [[André Breton]] group, [[Pierre Matisse]]'s gallery, and [[Peggy Guggenheim]]'s gallery ''[[The Art of This Century]]'', as well as other factors.

Paris, moreover, recaptured much of its luster in the 1950s and 1960s as the center of a machine art florescence, with both of the leading machine art sculptors [[Jean Tinguely]] and [[Nicolas Schöffer]] having moved there to launch their careers—and which florescence, in light of the technocentric character of modern life, may well have a particularly long-lasting influence.<ref>{{Cite journal |first=Juliette |last=Bessette |date=23 January 2018 |title=The Machine as Art (in the 20th Century): An Introduction |journal=Arts |volume=7 |page=4 |doi=10.3390/arts7010004 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

=== Theatre of the Absurd ===
[[File:En attendant Godot, Festival d'Avignon, 1978.jpeg|left|thumb|Samuel Beckett's ''[[En attendant Godot]]'', (''Waiting for Godot'') Festival d'Avignon, 1978]]
The term "[[Theatre of the Absurd]]" is applied to plays, written primarily by Europeans, that express the belief that human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down. Logical construction and argument gives way to irrational and illogical speech and to its ultimate conclusion, silence.<ref>''The Hutchinson Encyclopedia'', Millennium Edition, Helicon 1999</ref> While there are significant precursors, including [[Alfred Jarry]] (1873–1907), the Theatre of the Absurd is generally seen as beginning in the 1950s with the plays of [[Samuel Beckett]].

Critic [[Martin Esslin]] coined the term in his 1960 essay "Theatre of the Absurd". He related these plays based on a broad theme of the absurd, similar to the way [[Albert Camus]] uses the term in his 1942 essay, ''[[The Myth of Sisyphus]]''.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/Absurd.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090823075755/http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/Absurd.htm |title=The Theatre of the Absurd: The West and the East |website=[[University of Glasgow]], School of Modern Languages and Cultures |archive-date=23 August 2009}}</ref> The Absurd in these plays takes the form of man's reaction to a world apparently without meaning, and/or man as a puppet controlled or menaced by invisible outside forces. Though the term is applied to a wide range of plays, some characteristics coincide in many of the plays: broad comedy, often similar to [[vaudeville]], mixed with horrific or tragic images; characters caught in hopeless situations forced to do repetitive or meaningless actions; dialogue full of clichés, wordplay, and nonsense; plots that are cyclical or absurdly expansive; either a parody or dismissal of realism and the concept of the "[[well-made play]]".

Playwrights commonly associated with the Theatre of the Absurd include [[Samuel Beckett]] (1906–1989), [[Eugène Ionesco]] (1909–1994), [[Jean Genet]] (1910–1986), [[Harold Pinter]] (1930–2008), [[Tom Stoppard]] (born 1937), [[Alexander Vvedensky (poet)|Alexander Vvedensky]] (1904–1941), [[Daniil Kharms]] (1905–1942), [[Friedrich Dürrenmatt]] (1921–1990), [[Alejandro Jodorowsky]] (born 1929), [[Fernando Arrabal]] (born 1932), [[Václav Havel]] (1936–2011) and [[Edward Albee]] (1928–2016).

=== Pollock and abstract influences ===
During the late 1940s, [[Jackson Pollock]]'s radical approach to painting revolutionized the potential for all [[contemporary art]] that followed him.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Abstract Expressionist New York |url=https://ago.ca/exhibitions/abstract-expressionist-new-york |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=Art Gallery of Ontario |language=en}}</ref> To some extent, Pollock realized that the journey toward making a work of art was as important as the work of art itself.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Jackson Pollock Painting |url=https://collections.mfa.org/objects/174729 |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=collections.mfa.org |language=en}}</ref> Like [[Pablo Picasso]]'s innovative reinventions of painting and sculpture in the early 20th century via Cubism and constructed sculpture, Pollock redefined the way art is made.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Jackson Pollock |url=https://whitney.org/artists/1039 |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=whitney.org |language=en}}</ref> His move away from easel painting and conventionality was a liberating signal to the artists of his era and to all who came after. Artists realized that Jackson Pollock's process—placing unstretched raw [[canvas]] on the floor where it could be attacked from all four sides using artistic and industrial materials; dripping and throwing linear skeins of paint; drawing, staining, and brushing; using imagery and non-imagery—essentially blasted art-making beyond any prior boundary.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Jackson Pollock: Methods and Materials |url=https://hirshhorn.si.edu/explore/jackson-pollock-methods-materials/ |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden |language=en}}</ref> Abstract Expressionism generally expanded and developed the definitions and possibilities available to artists for the creation of new works of art.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Jones |first=Muffet |title=Abstract Expressionism |url=https://boisestate.pressbooks.pub/arthistory/chapter/abstract-expressionism/#:~:text=Abstract%20Expressionism%20expanded%20and%20developed,were%20New%20York%20and%20California. |language=en}}</ref>

The other Abstract Expressionists followed Pollock's breakthrough with new breakthroughs of their own. In a sense the innovations of Jackson Pollock, [[Willem de Kooning]], [[Franz Kline]], [[Mark Rothko]], [[Philip Guston]], [[Hans Hofmann]], [[Clyfford Still]], [[Barnett Newman]], [[Ad Reinhardt]], [[Robert Motherwell]], [[Peter Voulkos]] and others opened the floodgates to the diversity and scope of all the art that followed them. Re-readings into abstract art by art historians such as [[Linda Nochlin]],<ref>Nochlin, Linda, Ch.1 in: ''Women Artists at the Millennium'' (edited by C. Armstrong and C. de Zegher) MIT Press, 2006.</ref> [[Griselda Pollock]]<ref>Pollock, Griselda, ''Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum: Time, Space and the Archive''. Routledge, 2007.</ref> and [[Catherine de Zegher]]<ref>De Zegher, Catherine, and Teicher, Hendel (eds.), ''3 X Abstraction''. New Haven: [[Yale University Press]]. 2005.</ref> critically show, however, that pioneering women artists who produced major innovations in modern art had been ignored by official accounts of its history.

=== International figures from British art ===
[[Henry Moore]] (1898–1986) emerged after World War II as Britain's leading sculptor.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Henry Moore's story |url=https://henry-moore.org/discover-and-research/discover-henry-moore/henry-moores-story/ |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=Henry Moore Foundation |language=en-GB}}</ref> He was best known for his semi-[[abstract art|abstract]] monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. His forms are usually abstractions of the human figure, typically depicting mother-and-child or reclining figures, usually suggestive of the female body, apart from a phase in the 1950s when he sculpted family groups. These sculptures are generally pierced or contain hollow spaces.
[[File:Moore_Große_liegende_Frauenfigur_1957_Zürich.jpg|thumb|right|[[Henry Moore]], ''[[UNESCO Reclining Figure 1957–58#Working model|Reclining Figure]]'' (1957). In front of the [[Kunsthaus Zürich]], Switzerland.]]

In the 1950s, Moore began to receive increasingly significant commissions, including a reclining figure for the [[UNESCO]] building in Paris in 1958.<ref>"[http://www.unesco.org/artcollection/DetailAction.do?&idOeuvre=1547&nouvelleLangue=en Moore, Henry] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190616062744/http://www.unesco.org/artcollection/DetailAction.do?&idOeuvre=1547&nouvelleLangue=en |date=16 June 2019 }}". [[UNESCO]]. Retrieved on 16 August 2008.</ref> With many more public works of art, the scale of Moore's sculptures grew significantly. The last three decades of Moore's life continued in a similar vein, with several major retrospectives taking place around the world, notably a prominent exhibition in the summer of 1972 in the grounds of the [[Belvedere (fort)|Forte di Belvedere]] overlooking [[Florence]]. By the end of the 1970s, there were some 40 exhibitions a year featuring his work. On the campus of the [[University of Chicago]] in December 1967, 25 years to the minute after the team of physicists led by [[Enrico Fermi]] achieved the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, Moore's ''[[Nuclear Energy (sculpture)|Nuclear Energy]]'' was unveiled.<ref>{{cite book |article=Nuclear Energy sculpture |orig-date=2 December 1967 |title=Illinois; Guide & Gazetteer |author=Illinois Sesquicentennial Commission |publisher=[[University of Virginia]]; Rand-McNally |year=1969 |page=199}}</ref><ref>Jane Beckett and Fiona Russell. ''Henry Moore: Space, Sculpture, Politics''. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2003. p. 221.</ref> Also in Chicago, Moore commemorated science with a large bronze sundial, locally named ''[[Man Enters the Cosmos]]'' (1980), which was commissioned to recognize the [[space exploration]] program.<ref>[[:File:20070701 Man Enters The Cosmos Explanatory Plaques.JPG|Inscribed on the plaque at the base of the sculpture]].</ref>

The "London School" of figurative painters, including [[Francis Bacon (artist)|Francis Bacon]] (1909–1992), [[Lucian Freud]] (1922–2011), [[Frank Auerbach]] (born 1931), [[Leon Kossoff]] (born 1926), and [[Michael Andrews (artist)|Michael Andrews]] (1928–1995), have received widespread international recognition.<ref>Walker, 219–225</ref>

Francis Bacon was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his bold, graphic and emotionally raw imagery.<ref>Martin Harrison, ''In Camera: Francis Bacon: Photography, Film and the Practice of Painting'', London: Thames and Hudson, 2006, 7</ref> His painterly but abstracted figures typically appear isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages set against flat, nondescript backgrounds. Bacon began painting during his early 20s but worked only sporadically until his mid-30s. His breakthrough came with the 1944 [[triptych]] ''[[Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion]]'' which sealed his reputation as a uniquely bleak chronicler of the human condition.<ref>{{cite news| url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/francis_bacon/index.html?inline=nyt-per| title=Francis Bacon| author=Ken Johnson| work=The New York Times| date=3 December 2015| access-date=26 November 2013| archive-date=17 October 2015| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151017072356/http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/francis_bacon/index.html?inline=nyt-per| url-status=live}}</ref> His output can be crudely described as consisting of sequences or variations on a single motif; beginning with the 1940s male heads isolated in rooms, the early 1950s screaming popes, and mid to late 1950s animals and lone figures suspended in geometric structures. These were followed by his early 1960s modern variations of the crucifixion in the triptych format. From the mid-1960s to early 1970s, Bacon mainly produced strikingly compassionate portraits of friends. Following the suicide of his lover George Dyer in 1971, his art became more personal, inward-looking, and preoccupied with themes and motifs of death. During his lifetime, Bacon was equally reviled and acclaimed.<ref>''[[New York Times]]'', "Obituary", 29 April 1992.</ref>

[[Lucian Freud]] was a German-born British painter, known chiefly for his thickly [[impasto]]ed portrait and figure paintings, who was widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time.<ref name=Grimes>William Grimes. [https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/arts/lucian-freud-adept-portraiture-artist-dies-at-88.html "Lucian Freud, Figurative Painter Who Redefined Portraiture, Is Dead at 88"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170330012226/http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/arts/lucian-freud-adept-portraiture-artist-dies-at-88.html |date=30 March 2017 }}. ''[[The New York Times]]''. 21 July 2011</ref><ref>Rimanelli, David (January 2012), [https://web.archive.org/web/20140610054047/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-2553396771.html "Damien Hirst"], ''Artforum'': "With the recent death of Lucían Freud, some might argue that Hirst is now the greatest living British artist." Retrieved 28 October 2012.</ref><ref>Also see Kennedy, Maev (21 December 2001), [https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/dec/21/arts.monarchy1 "Palace unveils Freud's gift to Queen"], ''The Guardian'', who calls Freud "the artist regarded as the greatest living British painter". Retrieved 28 October 2012.</ref><ref>Darwent, Charles (28 November 1999), [https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/the-1990s-in-review-visual-arts--who-wants-to-be-a-yba-they-do-1129125.html "The 1990s in Review: Visual Arts"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150925010655/http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/the-1990s-in-review-visual-arts--who-wants-to-be-a-yba-they-do-1129125.html |date=25 September 2015 }}, ''The Independent'', says "Freud becomes the greatest living British artist after his Whitechapel show [of 1993]". Retrieved 28 October 2012.</ref> His works are noted for their psychological penetration, and for their often discomforting examination of the relationship between artist and model.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/arts/design/14freu.html |title=Lucian Freud Stripped Bare |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=14 December 2007 |access-date=22 July 2011 |archive-date=17 April 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090417044203/http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/arts/design/14freu.html |url-status=live }}</ref> According to William Grimes of ''[[The New York Times]]'', "Lucien Freud and his contemporaries transformed figure painting in the 20th century. In paintings like ''Girl with a White Dog'' (1951–1952),<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/freud-girl-with-a-white-dog-n06039|title='Girl with a White Dog', Lucian Freud – Tate|work=Tate|access-date=26 November 2013|archive-date=2 December 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131202233331/http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/freud-girl-with-a-white-dog-n06039|url-status=live}}</ref> Freud put the pictorial language of traditional European painting in the service of an anti-romantic, confrontational style of portraiture that stripped bare the sitter's social facade. Ordinary people—many of them his friends—stared wide-eyed from the canvas, vulnerable to the artist's ruthless inspection."<ref name=Grimes/>

=== After Abstract Expressionism ===
{{Main|Post-painterly abstraction|Color field|Lyrical abstraction|Arte Povera|Process art}}
In [[abstract art|abstract painting]] during the 1950s and 1960s, several new directions like [[hard-edge painting]] and other forms of [[geometric abstraction]] began to appear in artist studios and in radical avant-garde circles as a reaction against the subjectivism of Abstract Expressionism. [[Clement Greenberg]] became the voice of [[post-painterly abstraction]] when he curated an influential exhibition of new painting that toured important art museums throughout the United States in 1964. [[Color field]] painting, hard-edge painting, and [[lyrical abstraction]]<ref>{{cite journal |last=Aldrich |first=Larry |title=Young Lyrical Painters |journal=Art in America |volume=57 |number=6 |date=November–December 1969 |pages=104–113}}</ref> emerged as radical new directions.

By the late 1960s however, [[postminimalism]], [[process art]] and [[Arte Povera]]<ref name="Shakers, New York 2007">Sarah Douglas, ''Movers and Shakers, New York'', "Leaving C&M", ''[[Art+Auction]]'', March 2007, V.XXXNo7.</ref> also emerged as revolutionary concepts and movements that encompassed both painting and sculpture, via lyrical abstraction and the post-minimalist movement, and in early [[conceptual art]].<ref name="Shakers, New York 2007"/> Process art, as inspired by Pollock enabled artists to experiment with and make use of a diverse encyclopaedia of style, content, material, placement, sense of time, aplastic, and real space. [[Nancy Graves]], [[Ronald Davis]], [[Howard Hodgkin]], [[Larry Poons]], [[Jannis Kounellis]], [[Brice Marden]], [[Colin McCahon]], [[Bruce Nauman]], [[Richard Tuttle]], [[Alan Saret]], [[Walter Darby Bannard]], [[Lynda Benglis]], [[Dan Christensen]], [[Larry Zox]], [[Ronnie Landfield]], [[Eva Hesse]], [[Keith Sonnier]], [[Richard Serra]], [[Pat Lipsky]], [[Sam Gilliam]], [[Mario Merz]] and [[Peter Reginato]] were some of the younger artists who emerged during the era of late modernism that spawned the heyday of the art of the late 1960s.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Martin |first1=Ann Ray |first2=Howard |last2=Junker |title=The New Art: It's Way, Way Out |work=[[Newsweek]] |date=29 July 1968 |pages=3, 55–63}}</ref>

=== Pop art ===
[[File:Barcelona (3392396182).jpg|thumb|upright|[[Roy Lichtenstein]]'s sculpture ''[[El Cap de Barcelona]]'' recreates the appearance of [[Ben Day dots]].]]
{{Main|Pop art}}
In 1962, the [[Sidney Janis]] Gallery mounted ''The New Realists'', the first major [[pop art]] group exhibition in an uptown art gallery in New York City.<ref name="Janis 39–40">{{Citation |last=Janis |first=Sidney |title="On the Theme of the Exhibition" |date=1998-12-31 |work=Pop Art |pages=39–40 |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/9780520920477-017 |access-date=2024-10-08 |publisher=University of California Press |doi=10.1525/9780520920477-017 |isbn=978-0-520-92047-7}}</ref> Janis mounted the exhibition in a 57th Street storefront near his gallery. The show had a great impact on the [[New York School (art)|New York School]] as well as the greater worldwide art scene.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Sidney Janis - The Metropolitan Museum of Art |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/research-centers/leonard-a-lauder-research-center/research-resources/modern-art-index-project/janis |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=www.metmuseum.org |language=en}}</ref> Earlier in England in 1958 the term "Pop Art" was used by [[Lawrence Alloway]] to describe paintings associated with the [[consumerism]] of the post World War II era.<ref name="Alloway 167–174">{{Citation |last=Alloway |first=Lawrence |title="Popular Culture and Pop Art" |date=1998-12-31 |work=Pop Art |pages=167–174 |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/9780520920477-042 |access-date=2024-10-08 |publisher=University of California Press |doi=10.1525/9780520920477-042 |isbn=978-0-520-92047-7}}</ref> This movement rejected Abstract Expressionism and its focus on the [[hermeneutic]] and psychological interior in favor of art that depicted material consumer culture, advertising, and the iconography of the mass production age.<ref name="University of California Press">{{Citation |title=Six. POP Goes the Art World: Departure from New York |date=2019-12-31 |work=Peter Selz |pages=97–117 |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/9780520949867-007 |access-date=2024-10-08 |publisher=University of California Press|doi=10.1525/9780520949867-007 |isbn=978-0-520-94986-7 }}</ref> The early works of [[David Hockney]] and the works of [[Richard Hamilton (artist)|Richard Hamilton]] and [[Eduardo Paolozzi]] (who created the ground-breaking ''[[I was a Rich Man's Plaything]]'', 1947<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |title=Pop Art |url=https://www.sothebys.com/en/art-movements-pop-art |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240513104215/https://www.sothebys.com/en/art-movements-pop-art |archive-date=13 May 2024 |access-date=2024-05-13 |website=Sothebys.com |language=en}}</ref>) are considered seminal examples in the movement.<ref name="Alloway 167–174"/> Meanwhile, in the downtown scene in New York's [[East Village, Manhattan|East Village]] 10th Street galleries, artists were formulating an American version of pop art. [[Claes Oldenburg]] had his storefront, and the [[Green Gallery]] on 57th Street began to show the works of [[Tom Wesselmann]] and [[James Rosenquist]]. Later [[Leo Castelli]] exhibited the works of other American artists, including those of [[Andy Warhol]] and [[Roy Lichtenstein]] for most of their careers.<ref name="Janis 39–40"/> There is a connection between the radical works of [[Marcel Duchamp]] and [[Man Ray]], the rebellious [[Dada]]ists with a sense of humor, and pop artists like [[Claes Oldenburg]], [[Andy Warhol]], and [[Roy Lichtenstein]], whose paintings reproduce the look of [[Ben-Day dots]], a technique used in commercial reproduction.<ref name="University of California Press"/>

=== Minimalism ===
[[File:IKB 191.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Yves Klein]], ''IKB 191'', 1962]]
{{Main|Minimalism|Minimal music||Postminimalism|20th-century Western painting}}

[[Minimalism]] describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and [[Minimal music|music]], wherein artists intend to expose the essence or identity of a subject through eliminating all nonessential forms, features, or concepts.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Tate |title=Minimalism |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/m/minimalism |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=Tate |language=en-GB}}</ref> Minimalism is any design or style wherein the simplest and fewest elements are used to create the maximum effect.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Frank |first=Stevie |date=May 4, 2021 |title=Minimalism in Architecture |url=https://stevie-frank.medium.com/minimalism-in-architecture-7cb9e1282010 |access-date=January 6, 2025 |website=Medium}}</ref>

As a specific movement in the arts, it is identified with developments in post–World War II Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with this movement include [[Donald Judd]], [[John McCracken (artist)|John McCracken]], [[Agnes Martin]], [[Dan Flavin]], [[Robert Morris (artist)|Robert Morris]], [[Ronald Bladen]], [[Anne Truitt]], and [[Frank Stella]].<ref>Christopher Want, "Minimalism" in ''Grove Art Online''. Oxford University Press, 2009.</ref> It derives from the reductive aspects of modernism and is often interpreted as a reaction against Abstract Expressionism and a bridge to [[Postminimalism|Post minimal]] art practices. By the early 1960s, minimalism emerged as an abstract movement in art (with roots in the [[geometric abstraction]] of [[Kazimir Malevich]],<ref>{{cite encyclopedia| url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/384056/minimalism| title=Minimalism| encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica| date=2 June 2023| access-date=23 June 2022| archive-date=4 May 2015| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150504190043/http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/384056/Minimalism| url-status=live}}</ref> the [[Bauhaus]] and [[Piet Mondrian]]) that rejected the idea of relational and subjective painting, the complexity of Abstract Expressionist surfaces, and the emotional zeitgeist and polemics present in the arena of [[action painting]]. Minimalism argued that extreme simplicity could capture all of the sublime representation needed in art. Minimalism is variously construed either as a precursor to postmodernism, or as a postmodern movement itself. In the latter perspective, early Minimalism yielded advanced modernist works, but the movement partially abandoned this direction when some artists like [[Robert Morris (artist)|Robert Morris]] changed direction in favor of the [[anti-form movement]].

[[Hal Foster (art critic)|Hal Foster]], in his essay ''The Crux of Minimalism'',<ref name="Hal Foster 1996, pp44-53">Hal Foster, ''The Return of the Real: The Avant-garde at the End of the Century'', MIT Press, 1996, pp. 44–53. {{ISBN|0-262-56107-7}}</ref> examines the extent to which Donald Judd and Robert Morris both acknowledge and exceed Greenbergian modernism in their published definitions of minimalism.<ref name="Hal Foster 1996, pp44-53"/> He argues that minimalism is not a "dead end" of modernism, but a "paradigm shift toward postmodern practices that continue to be elaborated today."<ref name="Hal Foster 1996, pp44-53"/>

====Minimal music====
The terms have expanded to encompass a movement in music that features such repetition and iteration as those of the compositions of [[La Monte Young]], [[Terry Riley]], [[Steve Reich]], [[Philip Glass]], and [[John Adams (composer)|John Adams]]. Minimalist compositions are sometimes known as [[systems music]]. The term 'minimal music' is generally used to describe a style of music that developed in America in the late 1960s and 1970s; and that was initially connected with the composers.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.melafoundation.org/theatre.pdf |title=Notes on The Theatre of Eternal Music and ''The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys'' |last=Young |first=La Monte |author-link=La Monte Young |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140331015833/http://www.melafoundation.org/theatre.pdf |archive-date=31 March 2014 |date=2000 |publisher=Mela Foundation}}</ref> The minimalism movement originally involved some composers, and other lesser known pioneers included [[Pauline Oliveros]], [[Phill Niblock]], and [[Richard Maxfield]]. In Europe, the music of [[Louis Andriessen]], [[Karel Goeyvaerts]], [[Michael Nyman]], [[Howard Skempton]], [[Eliane Radigue]], [[Gavin Bryars]], [[Steve Martland]], [[Henryk Górecki]], [[Arvo Pärt]] and [[John Tavener]].

==== Postminimalism ====
[[File:Spiral-jetty-from-rozel-point.png|thumb|left|Smithson's ''[[Spiral Jetty]]'' from atop Rozel Point, Utah, US, in mid-April 2005. Created in 1970, it still exists although it has often been submerged by the fluctuating lake level. It consists of some 65,00 [[ton]]s of [[basalt]], earth and salt.]]
In the late 1960s, [[Robert Pincus-Witten]]<ref name="Shakers, New York 2007"/> coined the term "[[postminimalism]]" to describe minimalist-derived art which had content and contextual overtones that minimalism rejected. The term was applied by Pincus-Witten to the work of [[Eva Hesse]], [[Keith Sonnier]], [[Richard Serra]] and new work by former minimalists [[Robert Smithson]], [[Robert Morris (artist)|Robert Morris]], [[Sol LeWitt]], [[Barry Le Va]], and others. Other minimalists, including [[Donald Judd]], [[Dan Flavin]], [[Carl Andre]], [[Agnes Martin]], [[John McCracken (artist)|John McCracken]] and others, continued to produce late modernist paintings and sculpture for the remainder of their careers.

Since then, many artists have embraced minimal or post-minimal styles, and the label "postmodern" has been attached to them.

====Collage, assemblage, installations====
{{Main|Collage|Assemblage (art)|Installation art}}
Related to Abstract Expressionism was the emergence of combining manufactured items with artist materials, moving away from previous conventions of painting and sculpture. The work of [[Robert Rauschenberg]] exemplifies this trend. His "combines" of the 1950s were forerunners of [[pop art]] and [[installation art]], and used assemblages of large physical objects, including stuffed animals, birds and commercial photographs. Rauschenberg, [[Jasper Johns]], [[Larry Rivers]], [[John Chamberlain (sculptor)|John Chamberlain]], [[Claes Oldenburg]], [[George Segal (artist)|George Segal]], [[Jim Dine]], and [[Edward Kienholz]] were among important pioneers of both abstraction and pop art. Creating new conventions of art-making, they made acceptable in serious contemporary art circles the radical inclusion in their works of unlikely materials. Another pioneer of collage was [[Joseph Cornell]], whose more intimately scaled works were seen as radical because of both his personal iconography and his use of [[found object]]s.

==== Neo-Dada ====
{{Main|Neo-Dada}}

In 1917, [[Marcel Duchamp]] submitted a [[urinal]] as a sculpture for the inaugural exhibition of the [[Society of Independent Artists]], which was to be staged at the [[Grand Central Palace]] in New York.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573/text-summary| title='Fountain', Marcel Duchamp: Summary – – Tate| work=Tate| access-date=4 June 2015| archive-date=28 August 2015| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150828144308/http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573/text-summary| url-status=live}}</ref> He professed his intent that people look at the urinal as if it were a work of art because he said it was a work of art. This urinal, named ''[[Fountain (Duchamp)|Fountain]]'' was signed with the pseudonym "R. Mutt". It is also an example of what Duchamp would later call "[[Readymades of Marcel Duchamp|readymades]]". This and Duchamp's other works are generally labelled as Dada. Duchamp can be seen as a precursor to conceptual art, other famous examples being [[John Cage]]'s ''[[4′33″]]'', which is four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence, and Rauschenberg's ''[[Erased de Kooning Drawing]]''. Many conceptual works take the position that art is the result of the viewer viewing an object or act as art, not of the intrinsic qualities of the work itself. In choosing "an ordinary article of life" and creating "a new thought for that object", Duchamp invited onlookers to view ''Fountain'' as a sculpture.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/blindman/2/05.htm| title=Blindman No. 2| access-date=4 June 2015| archive-date=1 June 2015| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150601102245/http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/blindman/2/05.htm| url-status=live}}</ref>

Marcel Duchamp famously gave up "art" in favor of [[chess]]. Avant-garde composer [[David Tudor]] created a piece, ''Reunion'' (1968), written jointly with Lowell Cross, that features a chess game in which each move triggers a lighting effect or projection. Duchamp and Cage played the game at the work's premier.<ref>{{Cite book |first1=Craig |last1=Owens |title=Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture |location=London and Berkeley [[University of California Press]] |date=1992 |pages=74–75}}</ref>

[[Steven Best]] and [[Douglas Kellner]] identify Rauschenberg and [[Jasper Johns]] as part of the transitional phase, influenced by Duchamp, between modernism and postmodernism. Both used images of ordinary objects, or the objects themselves, in their work, while retaining the abstraction and painterly gestures of high modernism.<ref>{{Cite book |first1=Steven |last1=Best |first2=Douglas |last2=Kellner |title=The Postmodern Turn |publisher=[[Guilford Press]] |date=1997 |page=174 |isbn=1-57230-221-6}}</ref>

==== Performance and happenings ====
{{Main|Performance art|Happening|Fluxus}}
During the late 1950s and 1960s artists with a wide range of interests began to push the boundaries of contemporary art. [[Yves Klein]] in France, [[Carolee Schneemann]], [[Yayoi Kusama]], [[Charlotte Moorman]] and [[Yoko Ono]] in New York City, and [[Joseph Beuys]], [[Wolf Vostell]] and [[Nam June Paik]] in Germany were pioneers of performance-based works of art. Groups like [[The Living Theatre]] with [[Julian Beck]] and [[Judith Malina]] collaborated with sculptors and painters to create environments, radically changing the relationship between audience and performer, especially in their piece ''Paradise Now''. The [[Judson Dance Theater]], located at the [[Judson Memorial Church]], New York; and the Judson dancers, notably [[Yvonne Rainer]], [[Trisha Brown]], [[Elaine Summers]], Sally Gross, Simonne Forti, [[Deborah Hay]], [[Lucinda Childs]], [[Steve Paxton]] and others; collaborated with artists [[Robert Morris (artist)|Robert Morris]], [[Robert Whitman]], [[John Cage]], [[Robert Rauschenberg]], and engineers like [[Billy Klüver]]. [[Park Place Gallery]] was a center for musical performances by electronic composers [[Steve Reich]], [[Philip Glass]], and other notable performance artists, including [[Joan Jonas]].

These performances were intended as works of a new art form combining sculpture, dance, and music or sound, often with audience participation. They were characterized by the reductive philosophies of Minimalism and the spontaneous improvisation and expressivity of Abstract Expressionism. Images of Schneemann's performances of pieces meant to create shock within the audience are occasionally used to illustrate these kinds of art, and she is often photographed while performing her piece ''Interior Scroll''. However, according to modernist philosophy surrounding performance art, it is cross-purposes to publish images of her performing this piece, for performance artists reject publication entirely: the performance itself is the medium. Thus, other media cannot illustrate performance art; performance is momentary, evanescent, and personal, not for capturing; representations of performance art in other media, whether by image, video, narrative or, otherwise, select certain points of view in space or time or otherwise involve the inherent limitations of each medium. The artists deny that recordings illustrate the medium of performance as art.

During the same period, various avant-garde artists created [[Happening]]s, mysterious and often spontaneous and unscripted gatherings of artists and their friends and relatives in various specified locations, often incorporating exercises in absurdity, physicality, costuming, spontaneous nudity, and various random or seemingly disconnected acts. Notable creators of happenings included [[Allan Kaprow]]—who first used the term in 1958,<ref name="Allan Kaprow|Chronology">{{cite web |url=http://members.chello.nl/j.seegers1/flux_files/kaprow_chronology.html |title=Fluxus & Happening&nbsp;– Allan Kaprow&nbsp;– Chronology |access-date=4 May 2010 |archive-date=8 June 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100608100416/http://members.chello.nl/j.seegers1/flux_files/kaprow_chronology.html |url-status=dead}}</ref> [[Claes Oldenburg]], [[Jim Dine]], [[Red Grooms]], and [[Robert Whitman]].<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/arts/design/13fink.html |work=[[The New York Times]] |title=Happenings Are Happening Again |first=Jori |last=Finkel |date=13 April 2008 |access-date=23 April 2010 |archive-date=9 May 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130509112603/http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/arts/design/13fink.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

==== Intermedia, multi-media ====
{{main|Intermedia}}

Another trend in art which has been associated with the term postmodern is the use of a number of different media together. [[Intermedia]] is a term coined by [[Dick Higgins]] and meant to convey new art forms along the lines of [[Fluxus]], [[concrete poetry]], [[found objects]], performance art, and [[computer art]]. Higgins was the publisher of the [[Something Else Press]], a concrete poet married to artist [[Alison Knowles]] and an admirer of [[Marcel Duchamp]]. [[Ihab Hassan]] includes "Intermedia, the fusion of forms, the confusion of realms," in his list of the characteristics of [[postmodern art]].<ref>{{cite book |first=Ihab |last=Hassan |editor-first=Lawrence E. |editor-last=Cahoone |title=From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology |publisher=[[Blackwell Publishing]] |date=2003 |page=13 |isbn=0-631-23213-3}}</ref> One of the most common forms of "multi-media art" is the use of video-tape and CRT monitors, termed [[video art]]. While the theory of combining multiple arts into one art is quite old, and has been revived periodically, the postmodern manifestation is often in combination with performance art, where the dramatic subtext is removed, and what is left is the specific statements of the artist in question or the conceptual statement of their action.

==== Fluxus ====
{{Main|Fluxus}}

Fluxus was named and loosely organized in 1962 by [[George Maciunas]] (1931–1978), a Lithuanian-born American artist. Fluxus traces its beginnings to [[John Cage]]'s 1957 to 1959 Experimental Composition classes at [[The New School for Social Research]] in New York City. Many of his students were artists working in other media with little or no background in music. Cage's students included Fluxus founding members [[Jackson Mac Low]], [[Al Hansen]], [[George Brecht]] and [[Dick Higgins]].

Fluxus encouraged a do-it-yourself aesthetic and valued simplicity over complexity. Like [[Dada]] before it, Fluxus included a strong current of anti-commercialism and an [[anti-art]] sensibility, disparaging the conventional market-driven art world in favor of an artist-centered creative practice. Fluxus artists preferred to work with whatever materials were at hand, and either created their own work or collaborated in the creation process with their colleagues.

[[Andreas Huyssen]] criticizes attempts to claim Fluxus for postmodernism as "either the master-code of postmodernism or the ultimately unrepresentable art movement—as it were, postmodernism's sublime."<ref name="Huyssen">Andreas Huyssen, ''Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia'', Routledge, 1995. p. 192. {{ISBN|0-415-90934-1}}</ref> Instead he sees Fluxus as a major [[Neo-Dada]]ist phenomenon within the avant-garde tradition. It did not represent a major advance in the development of artistic strategies, though it did express a rebellion against "the administered culture of the 1950s, in which a moderate, domesticated modernism served as ideological prop to the [[Cold War]]."<ref name="Huyssen" />

=== Avant-garde popular music ===
{{Main|Avant-garde music}}
Modernism had an uneasy relationship with popular forms of music (both in form and aesthetic) while rejecting popular culture.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Modernism and Popular Music – Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism|url=https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/modernism-and-popular-music|access-date=2021-09-09|website=www.rem.routledge.com|language=en|archive-date=3 September 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210903134150/https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/modernism-and-popular-music|url-status=live}}</ref> Despite this, Stravinsky used jazz idioms on his pieces like "Ragtime" from his 1918 theatrical work ''[[Histoire du Soldat]]'' and 1945's ''[[Ebony Concerto (Stravinsky)|Ebony Concerto]]''.<ref>{{Cite news|title=Why Jazz Musicians Love 'The Rite Of Spring'|url=https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2013/05/26/186486269/why-jazz-musicians-love-the-rite-of-spring|access-date=2021-09-09|newspaper=NPR|date=26 May 2013|language=en|last1=Jarenwattananon|first1=Patrick|archive-date=3 September 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210903134148/https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2013/05/26/186486269/why-jazz-musicians-love-the-rite-of-spring|url-status=live}}</ref>

In the 1960s, as popular music began to gain cultural importance and question its status as commercial entertainment, musicians began to look to the [[post-war]] avant-garde for inspiration.<ref name="bloomsbury"/> In 1959, music producer [[Joe Meek]] recorded ''[[I Hear a New World]]'' (1960), which ''[[Tiny Mix Tapes]]''{{'}} Jonathan Patrick calls a "seminal moment in both [[electronic music]] and [[avant-pop]] history [...] a collection of dreamy pop vignettes, adorned with [[dub music|dubby]] echoes and tape-warped sonic tendrils" which would be largely ignored at the time.<ref name="tmtpat2013">{{cite web|last1=Patrick|first1=Jonathan|title=Joe Meek's pop masterpiece I Hear a New World gets the chance to haunt a whole new generation of audiophile geeks|url=http://www.tinymixtapes.com/news/joe-meeks-pop-masterpiece-i-hear-a-new-world-gets-the-chance-to-haunt-a-whole-new-generation-of|website=[[Tiny Mix Tapes]]|date=March 8, 2013|access-date=3 September 2021|archive-date=2 December 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161202035754/http://www.tinymixtapes.com/news/joe-meeks-pop-masterpiece-i-hear-a-new-world-gets-the-chance-to-haunt-a-whole-new-generation-of|url-status=live}}</ref> Other early Avant-pop productions included [[the Beatles]]'s 1966 song "[[Tomorrow Never Knows]]", which incorporated techniques from [[musique concrète]], avant-garde composition, [[Indian music]], and [[Electroacoustics (acoustical engineering)|electro-acoustic]] sound manipulation into a 3-minute pop format, and [[the Velvet Underground]]'s integration of [[La Monte Young]]'s [[minimalist music|minimalist]] and [[drone music]] ideas, [[beat poetry]], and 1960s pop art.<ref name="bloomsbury">{{cite book |last1=Albiez |first1=Sean |editor1-last=Horn |editor1-first=David |title=Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World Vol. XI: Genres: Europe |date=2017 |publisher=[[Bloomsbury Academic]] |isbn=9781501326103 |pages=36–38 |chapter=Avant-pop |doi=10.5040/9781501326110-0111}}</ref>

=== Late period ===
{{Main|Late modernism}}
[[File:Thedeluge.jpg|thumb|[[Ronnie Landfield]], ''The Deluge'', 1999, acrylic on canvas, {{convert|9|by|10|ft|cm|abbr=on|order=flip}}]]
The continuation of Abstract Expressionism, [[color field painting]], [[lyrical abstraction]], [[geometric abstraction]], [[minimalism]], [[abstract illusionism]], [[process art]], [[pop art]], [[postminimalism]], and other late 20th-century modernist movements in both painting and sculpture continued through the first decade of the 21st century and constitute radical new directions in those mediums.<ref>Ratcliff, Carter. "The New Informalists", ''Art News'', v. 68, n. 8, December 1969, p. 72.</ref><ref>[[Barbara Rose]]. ''American Painting. Part Two: The Twentieth Century''. Published by Skira–Rizzoli, New York, 1969</ref><ref>[[Walter Darby Bannard]]. "Notes on American Painting of the Sixties." ''Artforum'', January 1970, vol. 8, no. 5, pp. 40–45.</ref>

At the turn of the 21st century, well-established artists such as [[Sir Anthony Caro]], [[Lucian Freud]], [[Cy Twombly]], [[Robert Rauschenberg]], [[Jasper Johns]], [[Agnes Martin]], [[Al Held]], [[Ellsworth Kelly]], [[Helen Frankenthaler]], [[Frank Stella]], [[Kenneth Noland]], [[Jules Olitski]], [[Claes Oldenburg]], [[Jim Dine]], [[James Rosenquist]], [[Alex Katz]], [[Philip Pearlstein]], and younger artists including [[Brice Marden]], [[Chuck Close]], [[Sam Gilliam]], [[Isaac Witkin]], [[Sean Scully]], [[Mahirwan Mamtani]], [[Joseph Nechvatal]], [[Elizabeth Murray (artist)|Elizabeth Murray]], [[Larry Poons]], [[Richard Serra]], [[Walter Darby Bannard]], [[Larry Zox]], [[Ronnie Landfield]], [[Ronald Davis]], [[Dan Christensen]], [[Pat Lipsky]], [[Joel Shapiro]], [[Tom Otterness]], [[Joan Snyder]], [[Ross Bleckner]], [[Archie Rand]], [[Susan Crile]], and others continued to produce vital and influential paintings and sculpture.

==== Modern architecture ====
Many skyscrapers in Hong Kong and [[Frankfurt]] have been inspired by [[Le Corbusier]] and modernist architecture, and his style is still used as influence for buildings worldwide.<ref>{{Cite book |title=ITV Visual History of the Twentieth Century |publisher=[[Carlton Books]] |year=1999 |isbn=1-85868-688-1 |editor-last=Burrows |editor-first=Terry |location=London |page=318 |editor-last2=Larter |editor-first2=Sarah |editor-last3=Anderson |editor-first3=Janice}}</ref>