Themes, Movements, and Icons

There was a lot going on in the sixties in the cultural and political world — new genres in art, music, literature, politics. A treasure trove of ideas. Below are some sixties trends/genres, any of which could lend itself to the subject for your project.

The hope is that something catches your eye. For suggestions about how to do art projects, which are related to the artists illustrated, check out articles on Methods and under artists names.

Art Movements of the 1960's

POP Art

Jim Dine, 4 Hearts

Repetition, Commercialization, Mass Production — those were the over-arching themes of POP artists. For a general overview of POP art, Wikipedia is always a good place to start. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_art. The sort of potted description of Pop art on the internet is as follows:

Pop Art emerged in the mid 1950s in England, but realized its fullest potential in New York in the '60s where it shared, with Minimalism, the attentions of the art world. In Pop Art, the epic was replaced with the everyday and the mass-produced awarded the same significance as the unique; the gulf between ``high art and ``low art was eroding away. The media and advertising were favorite subjects for Pop Art's often witty celebrations of consumer society. Perhaps the greatest Pop artist, whose innovations have affected so much subsequent art, was the American artist, Andy Warhol (1928-87).

The term ``Pop Art was first used by the English critic Lawrence Alloway in a 1958 issue of Architectural Digest to describe those paintings that celebrate post-war consumerism, defy the psychology of Abstract Expressionism, and worship the god of materialism. The most famous of the Pop artists, the cult figure Andy Warhol, recreated quasi-photographic paintings of people or everyday objects.

From Warhol, we usually think of Pop art in terms of Campbell's soup cans, Marilyn Monroe in screen prints, and Warhol's self-portraits... But there were lots of other pop artists, indeed, some of them even....women.

For children's art projects on pop art on our Pop Goes the Gala Wikia:

BIG FOOD! Claes Oldenburg Projects

Frank (Stella) Goes to Flin Flon

Warhol Portraits For Every Age

• Corita Kent

  

  Hope by Corita Kent

• James Rosenquist

• Takahashi Murakami