Post-Modernism
The Age of Anxiety
World War II and its Aftermath
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The Holocaust
Post War America
The Absurd
Existentialism: Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus
Theater of the Absurd:
Samuel Beckett, Peter Weiss
The Existential Hero:
Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man
Joseph Heller’s Catch-22
The Post-war Era
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New York: European artists fleeing Europe
congregated in N.Y.
The New York School
Abstract Expressionism:
Jackson Pollock
Mark Rothko
Helen Frankenthaler
Pop Art, Minimalism, Avant-garde
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Pop art: irreverence to tradition: beer cans, flags
Andy Warhol: Coca-Cola, Campbell’s Soup
Robert Rauschenberg’s “combine paintings”
“Minimalism” in sculpture
Donald Judd
Performance Art: Theatrical presentations with mixed
visual arts and media
Joseph Beuys
Martha Graham’s modern art school
Sculpture
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Henry Moore: massive human forms.
Influenced by Aztec and Mayan sculptures
The Recumbent Figure
Alexander Calder’s mobiles
David Smith: constructed metal sculpture
Louise Nevelson: used discarded objects and
materials: assemblage
Modern Architecture
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Mies van der Rohe’s International Style: Chicago
Seagram Building
Le Corbusier: Chandigarh in Punjab
Ronchamp Chapel
Notre-Dame-du Haut
Frank Lloyd Wright
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Jörn Utzon
Opera House, Sydney, Australia
Music/Avant-garde
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Pierre Boulez: total serialism
Electronic music: synthesizers, electronic
instruments and computers
Milton Babbitt: synthesizer
Karlheinz Stockhausen
John Cage: aleatory music
Music/Pop
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Leonard Bernstein
Candide
West Side Story
Rock-and-roll
Elvis
The Beatles
Rhythm and Blues/Soul
The civil rights movement
Post-Modernism
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Skepticism toward any representation of reality
that claimed to be universal or objective
Focus on the “construction of reality” through
language and symbol
Emphasis on the local and particular rather than
the universal
In the arts, a tendency toward parody, pastiche,
and an eclectic mixture of styles
Post-Modern Architecture
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Robert Venturi: “for messy vitality over obvious
unity.”
Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers
The Pompidou Center in Paris
Charles Moore
Piazza d’Italia in New Orleans
Michael Graves
Portland Services Building, Oregon
Minimalism in Music
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Philip Glass: opera
Einstein on the Beach
John Adams: opera
Nixon in China
The Death of Klinghoffer
Visual Arts
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Superrealism
Chuck Close: photographic image in paint
Duane Hanson: sculpted life-sized humans
Earth Art
Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty
Christo, Jeanne-Claude
Anselm Kiefer’s Die Meistersinger
Judy Pfaff: installation art
New Fiction
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Meta-fiction: stories about stories, fiction about
fiction
John Barth
The Sot-Weed Factor
Thomas Pynchon
Gravity’s Rainbow
Jorge Luis Borges
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis, Tertius
Magic Realism in Fiction
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Gabriel García Márquez
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Carlos Fuentes
Julio Cortázar
Mario Vargas Llosa
Liberated Voices
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Revision of the canon
Africa:
Novelist Chinua Achebe (Nigerian)
Things Fall Apart
Liberated Voices USA
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Artist Romare Bearden: photomontage
Dancer-choreographer Alvin Ailey: jazz and soul music
Cry
Poet Gwendolyn Brooks
Playwright August Wilson: Fences
Artist Judy Chicago: The Dinner Party
Novelist Toni Morrison: Beloved
Poet Denise Levertov: Mind
Architect Maya Lin: Vietnam War Memorial
AIDS
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The NAMES project
John Corigliano “AIDS Symphony”
Tony Kushner: Angels in America
A New Century
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9/11 The Twin Towers
Arata Ozaki: Team Disney Building
Renzo Piano: Osaka Airport, Japan
Frank Gehry: Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain
“Hip-hop”, rap
Nam June Paik, video art
Painter Ma Liuming Baby 5
Architect Daniel Libeskind: Ground Zero