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.

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.


Artist: Joe Tilson
Date: 1964
Medium: Paintings
Size: unframed 73.5 x 76.75 x 3 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1966.12

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.

Artist: Andy Warhol ; Factory Additions, New York
Date: 1967
Medium: Prints, Print
Size: 36 x 36 in. (91.44 x 91.44 cm) (image, sheet)41 3/16 x 41 3/16 x 2 in. (104.62 x 104.62 x 5.08 cm) (outer frame)
Institution: Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Accession #: P.90.28.8

"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 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.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Why would Warhol use brand-name items? What are some brands that you see frequently today? Do you think these would make good subjects for works of art?

Do you notice any differences between these boxes and ones you might find in a grocery store? What are they?

“So many young artists . . . seem to have hit on food as the ideal subject matter”

—"Art or Not, it’s 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.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

How does Oldenburg’s soft-sculpture technique differ from that used to make traditional sculpture? What are some more traditional materials used to make sculpture?

What do you think Claes Oldenburg was expressing about consumerism in this artwork?

Artist: Claes Oldenburg
Date: 1966
Medium: Sculpture, Sculptures
Size: variable 108 x 46 x 42 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1966.46

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.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

How can you tell that Paul Thek’s Soda Fountain Glass is a work of art and not simply a soda fountain glass?

Why do you think artists of the 1960s like Oldenburg and Thek were interested in making artwork about food?

Artist: Paul Thek
Date: 1965-1966
Medium: Sculpture, Sculptures
Size: overall 9.25 x 4 x 3.25 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 2003.70.1-.3

The 1960s witnessed a steady increase in consumption of factory-produced durable goods rather than the handmade products of an earlier age. Developments in industry and technology ushered in this age of mass consumption and gave American society newfound freedom to concentrate on military issues, equal rights, and social welfare, as well as on developing luxuries for its middle and upper classes.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

What do you notice about how Lucas Samaras changed these chairs from mass produced furniture?

What do they remind you of?

Artist: Lucas Samaras
Date: 1965
Medium: Sculpture, Sculptures
Size: pin chair 35.375 x 19.25 x 35.75 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1966.2.1-.2

The subject of this work, Jacqueline (Jackie) Kennedy, was the wife of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States; he was in office from 1961 until his assassination in Dallas, Texas, in November 1963. Andy Warhol created Sixteen Jackies in response to the assassination, an event whose mass media coverage reached an unparalleled number of people. The four images of Jacqueline Kennedy, each repeated four times, were enlargements of news photographs that appeared widely and continually in the media after the assassination. Sixteen Jackies combines a number of themes important in Warhol’s work, such as his fascination with American icons and celebrities, his interest in the mass media and the dissemination of imagery, and his preoccupation with death.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Why do you think Warhol shows each image of Jackie Kennedy four times? Would the work have a different meaning if there were only one of each?

At the time that Warhol created Sixteen Jackies, these photographs were instantly recognizable to most Americans. If you wanted to create a work like Sixteen Jackies for the early 21st century, what images of a public tragedy would you use? How would you modify the pictures in your work?

Artist: Andy Warhol
Date: 1964
Medium: Paintings
Size: unframed 80.375 x 64.375 x inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1968.2

Pop artists were on a quest to reimagine the traditionally accepted subjects for fine art, and often experimented with how familiar objects might be transformed to be perceived as art. Through appropriation or representational means, they co-opted a wide array of objects: a flashlight, the U.S. flag, packaged goods, household gadgets and utensils, and food items.

Artist: Daniel Spoerri
Date: 1964
Medium: Sculpture, Sculptures
Size: overall 21.25 x 25.1875 x 11 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 2001.126

Minimalism was an art movement in the 1960s that dominated much of the art practice in the United States, especially in New York. In contrast to Pop artists, Minimalists sought to create pure, geometric, abstract art in which the physical properties of space, scale, and materials were explored as ends in themselves rather than as metaphors for human experience.

Many Minimalist artists used industrial materials such as aluminum, plywood, sheet metal and Plexiglas. This challenged the notion of what constituted “fine art” and shared the Pop artists’ interest in using non-art materials. The spirit of experimentation and pushing the boundaries of art-making was characteristic of the general countercultural sentiment of the 1960s.

“Abstract art has its own integrity, not someone else’s ‘integrations’ with something else. Any combining, mixing, adding, diluting, exploiting, vulgarizing, popularizing abstract art deprives art of its essence and depraves the artist’s artistic consciousness. Art is free, but it is not a free-for-all.”—Donald Judd, 1965

Artist: Donald Judd
Date: 1969/1982
Medium: Sculpture, Sculptures
Size: each of 10 boxes 6 x 27 x 24 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1981.26.1-.10

Minimal artists were interested in simple geometric shapes. They chose reductive forms, which could be mistaken neither for representations of the external world nor for the narrative of a story. This distillation of form allowed the focus of the art to remain on the physical essence of the material and its surrounding space rather than the craft of the artist, human emotion, or the illustration of a subjective reality.

Artist: Tony Smith
Date: 1965/1968
Medium: Sculpture, Sculptures
Size: 138 x 90 x 138 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1968.34

Minimal sculptors sought to reject traditional sculpture by eliminating the pedestal or base on which it sat and placing the artwork directly on the floor or wall. With no barrier between the audience and the artwork, viewers were forced to reconsider their relationship to the art object. No longer an illusionistic representation of something else, Minimal sculpture shared common space as simply another object in the world. Audiences could now interact with a piece on their own level, approaching, retreating, walking around it and sometimes even standing on it.

Artist: Carl Andre
Date: 1968
Medium: Sculpture, Sculptures
Size: overall 0.5 x 204 x 38 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1969.12.1-.7

Components of a Minimal sculpture were often serial, as if churned out on a factory conveyor belt, underscoring the absence of the artist’s individual “mark” and challenging the notion of artistic originality. Repetition of forms also created a visual rhythm reminiscent of a production line.

Artist: Donald Judd
Date: 1971
Medium: Sculpture, Sculptures
Size: each of 6 boxes 48 x 48 x 48 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1971.10.1-.6

One of the foremost practitioners of Minimal Art, Donald Judd is best known for his sleek, boxlike constructions made of industrial materials such as aluminum, plywood, sheet metal, and Plexiglas. Through these works, he sought to create a depersonalized art in which the exploration of space, scale, and materials served as an end, rather than as a metaphor for human experience. Emphatically concerned with pure forms, Judd’s works become statements about proportion and rhythm as well as three-dimensional space.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

This work has no title. What would you name it? Why do you think Judd did not give it a title?

How do you think the artist made this sculpture? Does it look man-made or machine-made? Why?

Artist: Donald Judd
Date: 1965
Medium: Sculpture, Sculptures
Size: overall 14.6875 x 76.5625 x 25.625 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1966.44

“Electric light is just another instrument. I have no desire to contrive fantasies mediumistically or sociologically over it or beyond it.”—Dan Flavin, 1966

By employing generic mass-produced light fixtures in his works, Dan Flavin denies his art any transcendental significance while simultaneously denying those same light fixtures their simple utilitarian function by calling them art. In Flavin's case, light—rather than form—activates the space.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

How do Dan Flavin and other Minimal artists break the “rules” of traditional art-making? How might this be considered part of the counterculture attitude of the 1960s?

Why do you think Dan Flavin chose light fixtures to make his artwork? How does the element of light affect the piece? How is the artwork different if the light is turned “off”?

Artist: Dan Flavin
Date: 1963
Medium: Sculpture, Sculptures
Size: 8 x 96 x 4 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1986.103

Minimal art shied away from the subjectivity of storytelling and emotion, concentrating on more objective properties of form, color, and surface. To this end, Minimal artists often used bold, solid colors and created smooth, even surfaces, concealing evidence of the artist’s production and underscoring the physical qualities of the object itself. This cool, impartial attitude stood in distinct rebellion to the Abstract Expressionist painters before them, who reveled in gestural brushwork as an extension of their personal experience and emotion.

Artist: Ellsworth Kelly
Date: 1964
Medium: Paintings
Size: unframed 90 x 66 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1966.9

“The form of my painting is the content. My work is made of single or multiple panels: rectangle, curved, or square. I am less interested in marks on the panels than the ‘presence’ of the panels themselves. In Red Yellow Blue III the square panels present color. It was made to exist forever in the present; it is an idea and can be repeated anytime in the future.”—Ellsworth Kelly, 1969

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

What does Ellsworth Kelly’s quote tell you about the intention behind his paintings? What might be another way of explaining his goals?

Why do you think the artist chose primary colors? Do you associate these colors with a particular feeling?

Artist: Ellsworth Kelly
Date: 1966
Medium: Paintings
Size: each unframed 70.5 x 70.125 x 1.375 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1998.13.1-.3

Many artists working in the 1960s questioned the rules and assumptions of traditional art forms. In particular, artists often sought to test the limits of what could be considered a painting. “Op” artists (short for Optical) were interested in capturing a sense of movement within a stationary two-dimensional plane, such as the surface of a painting. Op artists created optical illusions, often using only black and white paint to impart the impression of pattern, hidden images, flashing, and movement.

“ . . . that which is constant or static is an inseparable part of that which changes or moves--in painting they have to be experienced simultaneously."—Bridget Riley

Attempting to elucidate ideas about movement in stationary objects, Bridget Riley began creating striking black-and-white paintings in the 1960s. In Suspension, she uses strategies of contradiction and ambiguity to create her analogy of the rhythms and paradoxes of human psychology. Through multiplication of line carefully calibrated in terms of scale, dimension, angle, and frequency, the artist attempts to suggest a parallel with the structure of human emotion—its "repetition, contrast, calculated reversal, and counterpoint."

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

How does the artist use color, line, and repetition to create the impression of movement on a two-dimensional surface?

How would you describe the movement seen in Suspension?

Why  would artists in the 1960s want to challenge the rules of painting? How do you think Suspension differs from a traditional painting? How is it similar?

Artist: Bridget Riley
Date: 1964
Medium: Paintings
Size: unframed 45.75 x 45.875 x 2.25 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1981.50

Otto Muehl's work presents an aesthetic of destruction, broken barriers, and taboos. His philosophy could be summed up in this quote: "I find cleanness extremely suspicious; it only camouflages dirt and impotence." Muehl started his paintings by spreading them on the floor, then set them on fire and proceeded to attack and destroy the picture surface by slitting the canvas, demolishing the frames, and integrating various objects—such as paper, rags, stockings, nails, and cigarettes—into the paint.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Would you consider Otto Muehl’s artwork a painting? Why or why not?

How do you think this artwork rebels against a strict society and repressive political regime?

Artist: Otto Muehl
Date: 1963
Medium: Paintings
Size: overall 30.375 x 28.5 x 4 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1999.32

Michelangelo Pistoletto is a leading figure of the Arte Povera movement. Though his works appear to be made from mirrors, Pistoletto uses highly polished stainless-steel panels, to which he applies painted tissue-paper cutouts (with paint facing down) in a way that suggests photographic reproduction. He uses imagery from popular culture in a way similar to American artist Andy Warhol, yet Pistoletto's works also embody an element of performance by placing the viewer within the picture.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

If you were standing in front of this artwork in a gallery, what would you see?

The Italian “Arte Povera” means “poor art.” How does this piece use materials and methods that might be considered poor or humble? What materials could be considered “rich”?

Artist: Michelangelo Pistoletto
Date: 1962-1964
Medium: Paintings
Size: overall 78.75 x 78.75 x 0.875 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1999.33

Taking its name from the Latin word for "flow," the international Fluxus movement advocated purging the world of bourgeois, commercial, and professional art. The interdisciplinary movement included books, boxes, manifestos, posters, photographs, films, and performance relics: art that crossed boundaries between painting, sculpture, poetry, music, and performed events. In 1989, the Walker Art Center acquired a remarkable collection of more than 500 objects and documents related to Fluxus. 

"Fluxus is not: a movement, a moment in history, an organization. Fluxus is: an idea, a kind of work, a tendency, a way of life, a changing set of people who do Fluxworks."—Dick Higgins

Artist: various
Institution: Walker Art Center

Throughout the 1960s, Fluxus artists created innumerable games, jokes, and gags, from large-scale, multi-player scenarios to more individualized setups. Fluxus artists used humor to undermine the seriousness of fine art, embracing irreverence, chance, and ordinary actions. Games appealed to Fluxus artists because they were funny, invited engagement, and belonged to the popular and common world instead of the rarified realm of fine art. Games also had rules, which aptly served as metaphors for the unspoken “rules” of the art world: making, valuation, buying, selling, and canonization.

Flux Year Box 2, a signature Fluxus production, is a boxed anthology of works by 17 artists that was edited and assembled by Fluxus "chairman" George Maciunas. The second in a planned annual series, this piece was conceived as a "game box" that would hold small objects, flip books, cards, and films, including a handheld viewer for looking at the 8mm film loops. Fluxus artists valued a do-it-yourself aesthetic, using whatever materials were on hand and choosing simplicity over complexity. Like all Fluxus editions, the contents of each box vary depending on what Maciunas had available at the time.

Artist: Eric Andersen, George Brecht, John Cale, John Cavanaugh, Willem de Ridder, Albert Fine, Ken Friedman, Fred Lieberman, George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Ben Patterson, James Riddle, Paul Sharits, Bob Sheff, Stanley Vanderbeek, Ben Vautier, Robert Watts
Date: 1967
Medium: Mixed Media, Multiples, Other
Size: box 3.375 x 8 x 8.375 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1999.50.1-.63

Ay-O moved to New York City in 1958, becoming the first Japanese artist to join Fluxus. The artist created interactive games and sensory experiences such as “Finger Box Set (No. 26),” which consists of 15 natural wood “finger boxes” each containing something different, in a black vinyl briefcase with original keys. Each box has "26" carved into the bottom. The viewer is intended to insert fingers into holes and contemplate the sensation.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

What do you think the object of this game is? What are the rules?

What kind of art game would you make? 

Artist: Ay-O
Date: 1964
Medium: Mixed Media, Multiples, Other
Size: overall 12 x 17.75 x 3.75 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1991.3.1-.16

In this piece, which is the size of an actual TV dinner, Fluxus artist Robert Watts combines sculpture and photography. Frozen TV dinners were introduced to American consumers by a company called Swanson in 1954, when people were still excited about the relatively new medium of television. This type of meal quickly became a popular staple for American families. TV Dinner refers to something that almost everyone was familiar with, yet the artist added a touch of humor through his playful use of cast-plastic peas and photographs.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Is a TV dinner a surprising subject for an artwork? What would be more traditional subject matter?

Notice that the artist used both color and black and white. Why do you think he used color where he did? Do you think Watts looked at a real TV dinner for inspiration?

Artist: Robert Watts
Date: 1965
Medium: Sculpture, Sculptures
Size: overall installed 1.375 x 20 x 11 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1993.128.1-.5

Male artists dominated many of the art movements of the 1960s; Fluxus was one of the few groups with an unusually high number of female artists, including Yoko Ono, Carolee Schneeman, and Charlotte Moorman. The civil rights movement pressured Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which aimed to protect the rights of women and minorities and defend against discrimination. The National Organization for Women (NOW) was formed in 1966 and soon had over 400 local chapters promoting reproductive health, federally funded child care, and equal pay for women.

Artist: Yoko Ono
Date: 1971
Medium: Mixed media, Media Arts, Multimedia
Size: overall installed 12.5 x 0.1875 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1989.295

At age 27, Yayoi Kusama left her native Japan for New York and quickly established a reputation for herself in predominantly male avant-garde art circles. Her work contains elements of the Pop Art, Fluxus, Minimalist, and Abstract Expressionist art movements that were all going on simultaneously in New York. Her art is distinct, however, in the intensively laborious and compulsive practice it demonstrates. Oven-Pan is part of a body of works begun in 1962 that Kusama calls "aggregation sculptures," "accumulation sculptures," or "compulsion furniture." She often starts with an object associated with women's work—in this case, a metal oven pan—and covers it with stuffed protrusions.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Why would the artist choose objects associated with “women’s work” for her sculptures? What does this say about the role of  female artists?

Kusama calls her works “accumulation sculptures.” How is Oven Pan an accumulation sculpture? What is she accumulating?
 
Artist: Yayoi Kusama
Date: 1963
Medium: Sculpture, Sculptures
Size: overall 9.75 x 18.5 x 24 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1996.165

Fluxus engaged a variety of media for creating works of art, including music and performance. The movement was greatly influenced by music, particularly the concepts of chance and indeterminacy used by the experimental composer John Cage. New technological developments abounded in the 1960s; the invention of portable video recorders meant that performances could be documented, replayed, and shared as never before.

Artist: George Maciunas
Date: 1970
Medium: Other, Newspapers
Size: .1 open 21.75 x 34.3125 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1989.163.1-.2

Yoko Ono was a key figure in the Fluxus movement. Cut Piece served as a performance, a social event, and a commentary on the role of women in contemporary society. A videotape of a 1964 performance of Cut Piece shows the artist sitting passively on a stage while audience members approach one by one and cut off a piece of her clothing, until she is left in her underwear. Each enactment of the performance is unique, depending on the size and speed of the audience. The artwork espouses a collaborative approach in that the audience becomes a participant, yet Cut Piece also questions the role of the public in art-making.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

What does this artwork say about the role of women in our society? Why would the artist allow audience members to cut her clothing? 

This is a videotape documenting a performance. Is the video the work of art, or is the real work of art the original performance?

Artist: Yoko Ono
Date: 1965
Medium: Media Arts, Videotapes/Videodiscs, Audio-Video
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 2002.210.1-.2