Art of the 1970s and 80s: Postminimalism to Postmodernism & Beyond

Catalog description

The 1970s and 80s saw a number of significant shifts in the art world and new approaches to art making. Some of the most radical outcomes of art movements of the 1960s only emerged in the 1970s and 1980s with so-called "institutional critique", whereas a strong resistance to exactly this genealogy made itself felt in a wave of neo-expressionist painting (Arte Cifra, Neue Wilde, figuration libre, Transavantguardia, New Image Painting). This was countered by the "picture generation" whose image production was based on photography and related to discussions of "postmodernism" and of "appropriation". Female artists gained in stature to a previously unprecedented degree (especially in video and photography) and made gender-issues and relations of power a major theme in art. It became clear at the same time that the phase of the dominance of American art after World War II was over. This lead to a more widespread and diverse circulation of ideas. The course is based on a comparative approach, highlighting commonalities as well as differences between various artistic endeavors.