The Degenerate Art Movement

Pop art got its name from Lawrence Alloway, who was a British art critic in 1950’s. The name “Pop Art” reflected on the “familiar imagery of the contemporary urban environment” (kleiner, 981). This art form was popular for its bold and simple looks plus its bright and vibrant colors. An example of this type of art is the oil painting done by Andy Warhol, “Marilyn Diptych” (Warhol, Marilyn Diptych) in 1962. The Pop art movement became known in the mid-1950 and continued as main type of art form until the late 1960’s. The Pop art movement, was a movement where medium played a huge part in the society, with it reflecting on advertisements, comic strips and even celebrities, like Marilyn. This movement also has a large

Art: the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power (Stevenson & Lindberg, 2010). Art takes many forms, such as paintings, drawings, sculptures, and collages, and within each form exists different genres or classifications. The early history of art, or art created within the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries, can fall into five major periods: Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Romanticism, and Realism.

Activists make their messages and movements known through art in order to express messages, validate identities, and to make struggles known, calling themselves ARTivists to show that there is an often undervalued intersection between the two. But before the coining of the term, activists have been creating art to advance themselves and their communities. ARTivists within the Chicano community have especially been creating art in order to validate and record their own experiences. ARTivism is crucial in today’s society and culture as it intersects art and politics in order to emphasize injustices that are deeply rooted within these structures. By decolonizing and deconstructing exploitive structures, ARTivists liberate the oppressed while creating a more socially conscious future by allowing the oppressed to create their own voice and tell their own stories.

Over 70 later and the Holocaust still cannot leave Helga, the Holocaust will always be a part of her. Shown above is present day Helga with one of her recent paintings. The painting is not colorful nor filled with hope. The dark shading shows a different story, a nightmare that cannot be escaped. The pain of the Holocaust still haunts Helga to this day. Growing up in Terezin, Helga experienced dehumanization and Nazi propaganda. With her crayons, water paint, and paper at hand; Helga was able to turn the Nazis attempt of dehumanization into creative art. Creative therapy through art expressed Helga’s anger, confusion, and fear. Holding on to these feelings reassured Helga that she was still indeed a human with emotions. In this paper I showed

Andy Warhol being not simply a Pop artist, but an American artist who was known as the master of Pop Art, and about two of Warhol’s most famous paintings; Coca-Cola and Campbell’s Soup Cans. Andy Warhol was an artist and filmmaker, an initiator for the Pop Art movement in the 1960s. Warhol used mass production techniques to elevate art into the supposed unoriginality of the commercial culture of the United States. Warhol’s early drawings frequently recalls the Anglo-Saxon tradition of nonsense humor, a characteristically childlike exuberance, and the fact that Warhol was successfully earning a living in the advertising industry at the time was sufficient for many to dismiss his entire artistic output during this period as “commercial art”. Fifty years ago, Pop art captured the spirit of Warhol’s young art, but that basic structure has been (to most people) a revealing profitless movement for years. Pop art was a 1960s movement that focused on everyday objects, comic books and mediated images — now seems quaint and playful, but not Warhol. In the first part of Andy Warhol’s career he was an iconoclast, in the second, the artist as businessman. In 1960 Warhol’s graphic works underwent a fundamental change in terms of subject matter, accompanied at about the same time by a change in technique. Warhol’s graphic work covers areas not normally associated with the art of the twentieth century, and which might even be considered unique. In Andy Warhol’s paintings and prints of

Subject to change is our modern world. To place a public artwork with a certain social commentary may not be politically correct in a decade. If someone were to build a wall in New York, to discuss the ridiculousness of Trump’s big idea, then would that still stand after his presidency? How is one to really judge whether or not a community would agree with a public work being placed? Whether something as dramatic as the work above is placed or not, the people who populate a sector are supposedly going to relate to the work somehow. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have gotten approved.

An art movement inspired by nature, it’s vital force and never changing life cycle of birth, life, decay and death. The Art Nouveau became fashionable from about 1890 to the first world war. This aesthetic new art movement was concerned as new, hence it was named as “new art” – the Art Nouveau. It was also highly influenced by the Japonism, given a major boost in France, Paris and eventually spread across world. [1]

In the art world of the 1970’s, Mary Kelly responded directly to the issues raised in Mulvey’s article often making works that attempt to reclaim feminine identity. Most of Kelly’s films are works of research and documentation that concern ideas of women’s roles and women’s work. In the early 1970s Kelly was involved in the making of the film Night Cleaners (1970-1975). The film explored contemporary issues of feminist activism in following a group of working-class female service labourers and feminist activists attempting to draw attention to their issues to build a union. The film utilises documentary style, simple mimesis and minimal editing to build a more direct connection between the subjects and the audience. Using the stories of real female cleaners and showcasing the most abject of the labours, such a toilet cleaning, Night Cleaners presented a ‘warts and all’ perspective on women’s work. While working as crew on the film, Kelly’s role as a feminist activist meant Kelly was also diegetically involved in the film. Kelly saw the ‘radical potential’ in the film medium and she utilised her work on Night Cleaners as a way to develop her artistic productivity in the realm of moving image. Expanding her feminist ideologies beyond specific concerns of women’s manual labour, Kelly’s later moving image work, Antepartum (1973), focused on the labour of motherhood. Antepartum is an ninety-second long looped moving image work depicting Kelly’s own pregnant belly from a

The Pop art movement began in Britain in the mid 1950s and in America in the late 1950s. It was after the Abstract Expressionist movement and what these are artist were now doing was reintroducing the identifiable image. What these artist did do to differentiate themselves was to shift the subject matter of their work. While the subject matter for a work to be considered "high art" was typically a theme of mythology or classic history, Pop artists instead focused on everyday objects changing the way that we see them. The goal was to blur the boundaries between "high" art and "low" culture. These artists were embracing abundance in the media and manufacturing that occurred after WWII. Many artists even began their careers in commercial art, such as Andy Warhol who was an illustrator and graphic designer.

Degenerate art, at one point in history shocked and bewildered its viewers in Germany during the 1930’s. The Nazi’s claimed that these works of art were considered dangerous and therefore, sought to destroy the pieces of art. Nazi Germany, during the 1930’s and 1940’s was ruled by an iconic figure named Adolph Hitler. Hitler, referred to himself as Hitler the Furrier and promised to the people of Germany, that there would be a formulation and the rise of a master race in which degenerate beings would be rid of. Hitler believed that a master race was to be comprised of individuals of German decent, blonde haired, blue eyed and tall in height. Those who did not correlate with his belief, were considered degenerates.

According to Rauschenberg/Warhol" (2016), “Rauschenberg and Warhol were contemporaries, born three years apart, but Bob preceded Andy by a decade in the fine arts realm Andy made his living as a commercial artist during the ‘50s and, of course, Warhol predeceased Rauschenberg by 20 years. Still, neither quite escaped the other’s protean shadow. Both arrived in New York from the coarse world of outland America, one in which, as Virgil Thomson, who grew up in Kansas City, wrote, A young man can find violence if he wants it anywhere down the street."

During the 70s groundbreaking movements were created and creativity filled the air. Unfortunately, this didn’t stop women from receiving the short end of the stick. Although there were plenty of female artists at this time, they were treated as second class citizens, unequal to men. Some art shows would only allow so many female artists display their works at one time. As a result, all the female artist took their crafts to vent their frustration and hardships. At first the public’s reaction was unfavorable they considered this topic too personal. Minimal artist emphasized the importance of having an objective point of view. However, this didn’t faze the artists. Their response was to start an academic program only for women

In general I like Avant-grade art. I like Avant-grade art for several reasons. I believe you need to research new ways to make better art. Being avant-garde include examining new artistic techniques, or exploring with new methods, in order to accomplish better art. Another reason I like Avant- grade art is because it is captured in all places making no differentiation between high and low structure of art and culture.

1) Oliverio Girondo’s poetry is representative of a “new style” of art encompassed in José Ortega y Gasset’s The Dehumanization of Art. Aesthetics no longer conform to the traditional classical style but instead, champions a futurist type meant to bypass the limitations of rationale in a trivial and playful nature likened to sport. Girondo clearly breaks from the platonic ideals of beauty and delves into the aesthetics of the grotesque by using antipoetic language, which sublimes the abject. This is made obvious early in Scarecrow & other anomalies as he writes that he “couldn’t care less if women have breasts like fresh magnolias or withered figs, skin smooth as a peach or rough as sand paper. […] breath of an aphrodisiac or the breath of an insecticide.”(Girondo 7). Girondo often uses ludic and vulgar language and has a clear objective of relegating humans to beasts or objects, for example, he describes “May a spider’s foot sprout from each of your pores, […] may all the inhabitants of the city mistake you for a urinal. […] May your family amuse itself deforming your bone structure, so that mirrors, looking at you, commit suicide out of sheer repugnance” (Girondo 75). Girondo’s scarecrow calligram illustrates the “new style” of art masterfully as he creates an extended metaphor to ridicule bourgeois ideals, literarily from head to toe intended to scare bourgeois aesthetics, instead of accustomed crows. Girondo ultimately describes that “a book should be put together like a

Pop Art is an art movement that emerged in the 1950’s characterized by imagery from pop culture mostly on advertisements and news often using the sense of irony. This movement was more of a cultural revolution using vibrant colors and bold graphics to represent a statement and provide an instant meaning. It has a relation with the abstract expressionism, however it is clearer and has a comic book vibe. Pop art is not trying to confuse you and make you analyze its meaning, on the contrary, it wants the audience to have a clear message of the daily social, political and cultural changes occurring and how they impact society.