Notes · History of ArtUK · A-Levels

Pop life: British and American contemporary art and architecture (1960-2015)

One of the six historical periods of Paper 2, British and American art and architecture from 1960 to 2015 was shaped by mass media, consumer culture and the image, and by a succession of radical redefinitions of what art can be. This topic covers Pop Art in its British and American forms; the tendencies that followed - Minimalism, Conceptual art, Land art, and Performance and Body art; the reaction against modernism in Post-Modern architecture; and the contemporary art world of the Young British Artists, the gallery, the biennale and the market - all taught through named works, makers and their analysis.

5 sections~25 min reading time2 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 3 · Advanced 1

T·121212 / 12

Exam profile

AO1 · Demonstrate knowledge of Pop, Post-Modern and contemporary works, makers and their contextAO2 · Analyse and interpret contemporary art and architecture - mass media, appropriation and the object - developing a critical response

Operators:analysecontextualisecompareinterpretevaluateidentify

basic level

AS-Level requires knowledge of the period through a more limited range of named works.

higher level

The full A-Level requires the period studied in depth across art and architecture, with named works and secure contextual analysis.

Depth

Text

Contents · 5 sections

Pop life: British and American contemporary art and architecture (1960-2015)

Overview: Pop and the postmodern turn#

FoundationPearson Edexcel 9HT0 Paper 2 (Pop life: contemporary art and architecture)DfE GCE History of Art subject content

Contemporary art and architecture, 1960-2015

Fig. 1British and American contemporary art and architecture, from Pop Art and the postmodern turn through Land art and Post-Modern architecture to the Young British Artists and Tate Modern.

The period from 1960 to 2015 covers the transformation of British and American art and architecture in the age of mass media, consumer culture and, increasingly, the global art market. It opens with Pop Art's embrace of popular and commercial imagery around 1960, runs through a remarkable succession of movements that redefined what art could be - Minimalism, Conceptual art, Land art, Performance and Body art - and the reaction against modernism in Post-Modern architecture, and closes with the contemporary art world of the Young British Artists and the international market. It is the period of our own recent past, and it is characterised above all by radical diversity and the repeated redefinition of art itself.

The great context is the rise of mass media and consumer society. By 1960, Britain and especially America were affluent consumer societies saturated with advertising, television, film, packaging, comics, celebrity and the mass-produced image, and art responded by taking this new visual environment as its subject and material. Where modernism had largely kept its distance from commercial culture (or despised it), Pop Art and much that followed embraced it - drawing imagery from advertising and the mass media, blurring the old boundary between high art and popular culture, and reflecting on a world in which experience is increasingly mediated by images and commodities.

Intellectually, the period is bound up with the turn from modernism to postmodernism. Modernism had believed in progress, purity, originality, the autonomous masterpiece and the grand narrative of art's advance; postmodernism, gathering force from the 1960s-70s, was sceptical of all this, favouring instead pluralism, irony, quotation and appropriation, the mixing of high and low, and the questioning of originality and the very category of art. This shift underlies much of the period - Post-Modern architecture's return of ornament and historical quotation, Conceptual art's questioning of the art object, the widespread strategy of appropriating existing images - and 'postmodern' is a useful, if broad, label for its temper.

A defining feature of the period is the repeated questioning of what art is and what an artwork can be. Following the precedent of Duchamp's readymade, artists across these decades pushed the boundaries relentlessly: art could be an ordinary manufactured object, a pile of bricks, a written instruction or idea, a work made in the remote landscape, an action performed with the artist's own body, or a shark in a tank of formaldehyde. The object dematerialised or expanded in every direction, and the question 'but is it art?' became almost the signature of the period - a sign of how thoroughly the traditional categories of painting and sculpture had been opened up.

For the period as a whole, the key is to grasp its diversity while holding on to a few organising threads: the centrality of mass media and consumer culture and the image; the postmodern turn against modernist purity and progress toward pluralism, irony and appropriation; and the continual redefinition of the artwork. The sections that follow examine Pop Art, the post-1960 tendencies (Minimalism, Conceptual, Land, Performance and Body art), Post-Modern architecture, and the contemporary art world - always with an eye to how each reflects the age of the image and questions the nature of art.

Worked example

Recognising the postmodern turn

Explain how a work or building of the period shows the turn from modernism to postmodernism.

The modernist position
Modernism valued purity, originality, the autonomous masterpiece and progress - abstract painting answerable only to itself, architecture stripped of ornament and history.
The postmodern response
Postmodernism is sceptical of all this, favouring pluralism, irony, the mixing of high and low, historical quotation and the appropriation of existing images.
An example
Pop Art appropriates commercial imagery and blurs high and low; Post-Modern architecture brings back ornament and historical quotation - both reject modernist purity.
Conclude
The work shows the postmodern turn by embracing what modernism excluded - popular imagery, ornament, quotation, irony - and questioning progress and originality.

Result: The postmodern turn is demonstrated as the rejection of modernist purity and progress for pluralism, irony and appropriation - the intellectual key to the period.

Typical mistakes

Treating the period as one 'contemporary' blur rather than a diverse succession of movements unified by the image and the questioning of art.
Missing the modernism-to-postmodernism turn (from purity and progress to pluralism, irony and appropriation) that underlies the period.

Active revision

Explain what 'postmodern' means as against 'modern', and name three ways artists in this period redefined what an artwork can be.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in History of Art (9HT0) specification (Pearson Edexcel)

Pop Art: British and American#

StandardPearson Edexcel 9HT0 Paper 2 (Pop: British and American)DfE GCE History of Art subject content

British versus American Pop

Fig. 2British and American Pop share imagery from mass media and consumer culture but differ in stance: British Pop is analytic and ironic (collage); American Pop is bold, deadpan and mechanically reproduced.

Pop Art, which emerged in Britain in the mid-1950s and flourished in America in the 1960s, took the imagery of popular and commercial culture - advertising, packaging, comics, film stars, consumer goods - as its subject and material, deliberately blurring the boundary between high art and mass culture. It broke sharply with the seriousness and abstraction of the immediately preceding art (Abstract Expressionism), turning outward to the everyday visual world of affluent consumer society with a mixture of celebration, irony and cool detachment. Pop is the movement that most directly reflects the age of mass media and the commodity, and it takes distinct forms on the two sides of the Atlantic.

British Pop came first, developing among the artists and critics of the Independent Group in London in the mid-1950s, who were fascinated by American mass culture and consumer imagery viewed, at first, from across the Atlantic and from postwar austerity. Richard Hamilton (1922-2011) produced what is often called the first Pop work, the small collage 'Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?' (1956), assembled from advertising images of the modern consumer home - a bodybuilder, a pin-up, a television, a tinned ham, a vacuum cleaner - at once celebrating and satirising the new consumer paradise. British Pop tends to this analytic, ironic, often collaged reflection on consumer culture, examining the imagery with a certain critical distance.

American Pop, flourishing in New York in the early 1960s, was bolder, larger and more deadpan, confronting the viewer directly with the commercial image, often reproduced with mechanical impersonality. Andy Warhol (1928-1987) took the most banal commercial subjects - the Campbell's Soup can, the Coca-Cola bottle, the dollar bill - and the faces of celebrity - Marilyn Monroe, Elvis - and reproduced them in series using the commercial technique of silkscreen printing, embracing mechanical repetition, the removal of the artist's hand and the equivalence of art and commodity. Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) enlarged single frames from romance and war comics, meticulously imitating the printed Ben-Day dots of cheap reproduction, as in 'Whaam!' (1963). American Pop confronts consumer and media culture with a cool, impersonal, monumental directness.

Pop Art's relation to the mass-media image is complex and central to analysing it, and simple readings should be avoided. Pop neither straightforwardly celebrates nor straightforwardly condemns consumer culture; it holds up its images with a deadpan neutrality that can read as celebration, as irony, or as both at once, leaving the viewer uncertain. Warhol's silkscreened Marilyns and soup cans are at once glamorous and empty, seductive and mechanical, and this deliberate ambiguity - the refusal to tell us what to feel about the commercial image - is part of Pop's point and power. Analysing a Pop work means attending to this cool, ambiguous stance toward the imagery it appropriates.

For analysis, a Pop work should be read for its source imagery, its technique and its stance, and British and American Pop compared. Identify the popular or commercial source (advertising, comics, packaging, celebrity); the technique and how it relates to commercial reproduction (collage, silkscreen, the imitation of Ben-Day dots, mechanical repetition); and the work's stance toward its imagery (celebratory, ironic, deadpan, ambiguous). Comparing British Pop's analytic, ironic collage with American Pop's bold, deadpan, mechanically reproduced directness is a clear and productive contrast, and both show art turning to embrace the age of mass media and the commodity.

Worked example

Analysing an American Pop work

Analyse how Warhol's soup cans or celebrity portraits reflect and question consumer culture.

The source
Warhol takes the most banal commercial subjects (the Campbell's Soup can, the dollar bill) or the faces of mass celebrity (Marilyn), drawn directly from advertising and the media.
The technique
He reproduces them in series using commercial silkscreen printing, embracing mechanical repetition and removing the artist's individual hand - art made like a commodity.
The stance
The deadpan neutrality and endless repetition make the images at once glamorous and empty, seductive and mechanical, refusing to tell us whether to admire or to lament them.
The meaning
The work reflects a society in which experience, identity and even art have become mass-produced commodities and images - Pop's cool, ambiguous mirror of consumer culture.

Result: Warhol's work is analysed through its commercial source, mechanical technique and deadpan ambiguity - Pop's reflection on the age of the commodity and the image.

Typical mistakes

Reading Pop as simply celebrating or simply condemning consumer culture, missing its deliberate deadpan ambiguity.
Blurring British and American Pop, or missing how technique (collage, silkscreen, Ben-Day dots) relates to commercial reproduction.

Active revision

Compare a British Pop work (such as Hamilton's collage) with an American one (a Warhol or Lichtenstein), analysing their source imagery, technique and stance toward consumer culture.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for history of art (Department for Education)

Minimalism, Conceptual and Land art#

StandardPearson Edexcel 9HT0 Paper 2 (Post-1960 tendencies)DfE GCE History of Art subject content

Tendencies after Pop

Fig. 3The radical tendencies after Pop, each redefining the artwork: Minimalism (bare object), Conceptual art (the idea), Land art (the landscape), and Performance and Body art (the body and the live event).

Alongside and after Pop, the 1960s and 1970s produced a series of radical tendencies that pushed the redefinition of art far beyond the picture and the statue, dematerialising or relocating the artwork in ways that continue to shape art today. The most important are Minimalism (the reduction of the object to bare, impersonal form), Conceptual art (the primacy of the idea over the physical object), Land art (the artwork made in and from the landscape) and Performance and Body art (the artist's own body and actions as the medium). Each is a distinct answer to the question of what art can be, and together they open art out in every direction from the traditional object.

Minimalism, emerging in America in the mid-1960s, reduced art to simple, geometric, impersonal objects - plain boxes, grids, arrangements of identical industrial units - stripped of composition, illusion, expression and the artist's hand. Artists such as Donald Judd and Carl Andre presented bare, repetitive, industrially fabricated forms (Andre's 'Equivalent VIII', 1966, is simply a rectangular arrangement of firebricks on the floor) that refuse any meaning beyond their literal physical presence, insisting that the work is simply what it is - a real object in real space, to be experienced directly. Minimalism took modernist reduction to its extreme end, producing an art of radical, literal simplicity.

Conceptual art, developing from the mid-1960s, took the opposite, dematerialising route, holding that the idea or concept behind a work is the art, and the physical object secondary or even unnecessary. In Sol LeWitt's formulation, the idea becomes the machine that makes the art; a work might consist of a written instruction, a certificate, a photograph, a text or a proposition, with the material form incidental. Joseph Kosuth's 'One and Three Chairs' (1965) presents a real chair, a photograph of it and a printed dictionary definition of 'chair' together, making the work a meditation on representation and meaning itself. Conceptual art carried the questioning of the art object, begun by Duchamp's readymade, to its logical extreme: art as pure idea.

Land art (or Earth art), emerging around 1970, moved the artwork out of the gallery and into the landscape, using the earth itself as both site and material and often working on an enormous scale. Robert Smithson's 'Spiral Jetty' (1970), a vast coil of rock and earth built out into the Great Salt Lake in Utah, is the classic example - a work that cannot be bought and hung, that changes with the water level and the seasons, and that raises questions of scale, time, decay and the human mark on nature. Performance and Body art, meanwhile, made the artist's own body and live actions the medium, dispensing with the durable object altogether: artists such as Marina Abramovic used their bodies, endurance and presence, often before an audience, so that the artwork became an event in time rather than a thing.

For analysis, these tendencies should be read for how each redefines the artwork and where it locates art's meaning, and they should be compared. Ask what has become of the traditional art object: reduced to bare literal form (Minimalism), replaced by the idea (Conceptual art), relocated to the landscape (Land art) or replaced by the body and the live event (Performance and Body art). Each dematerialises or displaces the object in its own direction, and all descend from the questioning of art begun by the readymade. Recognising these post-1960 tendencies and what each does to the very category of the artwork is central to understanding the radical diversity of the period.

Worked example

Analysing the redefinition of the object

Contrast how Minimalism and Conceptual art treat the art object.

Minimalism's object
Minimalism reduces art to a bare, impersonal, industrially made object - a plain box or a grid of bricks - insisting the work is simply a literal physical thing in real space, with no meaning beyond its presence.
Conceptual art's idea
Conceptual art holds that the idea is the work and the physical form secondary or unnecessary - a written instruction, a proposition or a documentary photograph may be the art.
The opposition
The two are opposites: Minimalism makes the physical object utterly literal and central; Conceptual art dematerialises the object in favour of the idea.
The shared root
Yet both descend from Duchamp's readymade and its questioning of what art is - one answering with pure object, the other with pure idea.

Result: Minimalism and Conceptual art are contrasted as opposite treatments of the object - literal thing versus pure idea - both redefining the artwork after Duchamp.

Typical mistakes

Confusing the tendencies - especially Minimalism (bare physical object) with Conceptual art (the idea as the work), which are opposites in their treatment of the object.
Describing the works as mere provocations without analysing how each redefines what an artwork is and where its meaning lies.

Active revision

For Minimalism, Conceptual art and Land art, name a work and state in a sentence what it does to the traditional art object and where it locates the artwork's meaning.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in History of Art (9HT0) specification (Pearson Edexcel)

Post-Modern architecture#

StandardPearson Edexcel 9HT0 Paper 2 (Post-Modern architecture)DfE GCE History of Art subject content

Modernist versus Post-Modern architecture

Fig. 4Post-Modern architecture reverses modernist principles: against modernism's 'less is more', function and purity, it sets 'less is a bore', complexity, historical quotation, ornament and wit.

Post-Modern architecture, emerging from the 1960s and flourishing in the 1970s-80s, was a self-conscious reaction against the modernist architecture that had dominated the mid-twentieth century, and it is one of the clearest expressions of the wider postmodern turn. Where modernism (the International Style) had insisted on function, purity, abstraction and the rejection of ornament and history, Post-Modern architecture reacted against what it saw as modernism's coldness, monotony and denial of meaning, and brought back the things modernism had banished: ornament, colour, historical reference, wit, symbolism and responsiveness to place. It is best understood precisely as the negation of modernist principles.

The theoretical case against modernism was made influentially by the American architect Robert Venturi. His book 'Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture' (1966) argued for a richer, more inclusive, more complex architecture against modernist purity and simplicity, and he pointedly answered Mies van der Rohe's modernist motto 'less is more' with his own 'less is a bore'. In 'Learning from Las Vegas' (1972, with Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour) he went further, arguing that architects should learn from the vernacular commercial strip - its signs, symbols and popular communication - rather than despise it. Venturi's writings gave Post-Modernism its programme: complexity and contradiction, ornament and communication, high and popular culture mixed, in place of modernist reduction.

The critic Charles Jencks named and championed the movement, notably in 'The Language of Post-Modern Architecture' (1977), and identified its characteristic devices. Post-Modern buildings characteristically use historical quotation (columns, pediments, arches and other elements from past styles, often used freely, ironically or out of context); ornament and colour; symbolism and wit; and a concern with communication and context, so that a building might refer playfully to its surroundings or to architectural history. This is architecture that once again wants to speak, to be legible, decorative and allusive, rather than to be a pure, silent, functional volume - a deliberate reversal of the modernist programme.

Well-known examples make the reaction concrete. Michael Graves's Portland Building (1982) is a large public office block enlivened with colour, applied ornament and stylised classical motifs, quite unlike a modernist glass box. Philip Johnson's AT&T Building in New York (completed 1984) famously crowned a skyscraper with a giant broken pediment resembling the top of a Chippendale cabinet - a witty historical quotation on a corporate tower that became an emblem of Post-Modernism, and a pointed joke at modernist purity (Johnson himself had earlier been a leading modernist). Such buildings put ornament, history and wit back into architecture, exactly what modernism had forbidden.

For analysis, a Post-Modern building should be read against its modernist predecessor, identifying how it reverses modernist principles. Look for the return of ornament, colour, historical quotation, symbolism and wit; the mixing of high architecture and popular or commercial forms; and the concern to communicate and to respond to context, all in contrast to modernist function, purity and abstraction. Contrasting a Post-Modern building (Graves's Portland Building, Johnson's AT&T tower) with a modernist one (a glass box, Villa Savoye) is the clearest way to demonstrate the reaction, and it neatly exemplifies the whole period's postmodern turn from purity toward pluralism, quotation and irony.

Worked example

Analysing a Post-Modern reaction

Analyse how Philip Johnson's AT&T Building (1984) reacts against modernist architecture.

The modernist norm
The modernist skyscraper was a pure, undecorated glass-and-steel box, flat-topped, functional and stripped of ornament and historical reference.
The Post-Modern move
Johnson crowned his tower with a giant broken pediment resembling the top of a Chippendale cabinet - an ornamental historical quotation on a corporate skyscraper.
Wit and communication
The playful, allusive top makes the building speak and amuse rather than stay silent and pure, mixing high architectural history with a familiar furniture form.
The reaction
By putting ornament, historical quotation and wit back onto a modern tower, the building pointedly reverses modernist purity - Post-Modernism made emblematic.

Result: The AT&T Building is analysed as the return of ornament, quotation and wit against modernist purity - the postmodern reaction in architecture made concrete.

Typical mistakes

Confusing modernist and Post-Modern architecture, or missing that Post-Modernism is defined by its deliberate reversal of modernist principles.
Describing the decoration without analysing the historical quotation, wit and communication that carry the postmodern reaction.

Active revision

Contrast a Post-Modern building (such as Johnson's AT&T Building) with a modernist one, analysing how the Post-Modern work brings back ornament, history and wit against modernist purity.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for history of art (Department for Education)

Body art, identity and the contemporary art world#

AdvancedPearson Edexcel 9HT0 Paper 2 (the contemporary art world)DfE GCE History of Art subject content

The contemporary art system

Fig. 5The contemporary art world as a system: the artist's work reaches the public through dealers, collectors and exhibitions, then museums, biennales and prizes - which together produce reputation and value.

The final decades of the period saw the artwork opened further to the body and to questions of identity, and the emergence of a globalised contemporary art world with its own powerful institutions and market. Building on the Performance and Body art of the 1960s-70s, artists increasingly used the body, live action and the artist's own presence to explore identity - of gender, sexuality, race and the self - making art a means of examining who we are and how identity is constructed and represented. This concern with identity, and with the body as its site, is a defining thread of contemporary art and connects the period to the wider theme of identities in art.

In Britain, the most prominent development was the emergence of the Young British Artists (the YBAs) from the late 1980s. A loose group of graduates, many from Goldsmiths in London, they announced themselves with the artist-organised exhibition 'Freeze' (1988), staged by Damien Hirst, and became famous - and notorious - for provocative, media-savvy work using unconventional materials and shock. Hirst's animals preserved in tanks of formaldehyde, such as the shark titled 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' (1991), and Tracey Emin's confessional 'My Bed' (1998) exemplify their appetite for spectacle, autobiography and provocation, and their fluency with publicity. The YBAs made British contemporary art internationally prominent and controversial.

The YBAs also illustrate vividly how the contemporary art world works, because their rise was inseparable from its institutions. The collector Charles Saatchi bought and promoted their work, and his 'Sensation' exhibition of his collection at the Royal Academy in 1997 brought the YBAs to a huge public amid press controversy; commercial galleries, the media, the Turner Prize (the high-profile annual award, from 1984) and, from 2000, the vast new Tate Modern all played their part in making reputations and value. The contemporary artwork exists within, and its meaning and worth are largely determined by, this system of dealers, collectors, galleries, museums, prizes, critics and media attention.

It is worth understanding the contemporary art world as a system, because it is part of what the period is about. An artist's work reaches the public and acquires value through a chain of powerful mediators: the dealer and commercial gallery who represent and sell the work; the collector (such as Saatchi) whose purchases and promotion make reputations; the exhibition, the biennale (such as Venice) and the art fair (such as Frieze) that display it internationally; the museum (such as Tate Modern) that confers canonical status; and the critics, prizes and media that confer prestige and publicity. Reputation and market value are produced by this system as much as by the work itself - a fact that the period's art, from Warhol onward, has often knowingly reflected.

For analysis, and to close the period, contemporary work should be read both for its own concerns - the body, identity, appropriation, spectacle, the questioning of art - and for its place within the contemporary art system. Ask what the work does (how it uses the body or explores identity, how it provokes or appropriates, how it continues the century's questioning of what art can be) and how it exists within the world of galleries, collectors, museums, biennales, prizes and the market that gives it its audience and value. Holding the work and the system together is the properly critical way to understand contemporary art, and it draws the whole period - from Pop's images of the commodity to the YBAs within the market - to a coherent close.

Worked example

Reading a work within the art system

Explain how the rise of the Young British Artists shows the workings of the contemporary art world.

The artist's move
The YBAs announced themselves with the artist-organised exhibition 'Freeze' (1988), staged by Damien Hirst, making provocative, media-savvy work in unconventional materials.
The collector and exhibition
The collector Charles Saatchi bought and promoted their work, and his 'Sensation' exhibition at the Royal Academy (1997) brought them to a huge public amid press controversy.
The institutions
Commercial galleries, the media, the Turner Prize and, from 2000, Tate Modern conferred prestige, publicity and canonical status, turning notoriety into reputation and value.
The system at work
The YBAs' rise shows that a contemporary reputation is produced by a whole system - artist, collector, exhibition, museum, prize and media - as much as by the works themselves.

Result: The YBAs are read within the contemporary art system - from Freeze to Saatchi to Sensation to Tate - showing how reputation and value are produced, closing the period.

Typical mistakes

Analysing contemporary works only as provocations, ignoring their engagement with the body, identity and the questioning of art.
Ignoring the contemporary art system (galleries, collectors, museums, prizes, market) that produces the meaning and value of the work.

Active revision

Take a YBA or other contemporary work and analyse both what it does (body, identity, appropriation, provocation) and how it exists within the contemporary art world of galleries, collectors, museums and the market.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in History of Art (9HT0) specification (Pearson Edexcel)

References & sources

Sources

Pearson Edexcel

Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in History of Art (9HT0) specification

Department for Education

GCE AS and A level subject content for history of art

Pop life: British and American contemporary art and architecture (1960-2015)

5 sections~25 min reading time2 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 3 · Advanced 1

Pop life: British and American contemporary art and architecture (1960-2015)

Key points

Recognising the postmodern turn

Key points

Analysing an American Pop work

Key points

Analysing the redefinition of the object

Key points

Analysing a Post-Modern reaction

Key points

Reading a work within the art system

Sources

Pop life: British and American contemporary art and architecture (1960-2015)

Key points

Recognising the postmodern turn

Key points

Analysing an American Pop work

Key points

Analysing the redefinition of the object

Key points

Analysing a Post-Modern reaction

Key points

Reading a work within the art system

Sources