From the Modern to the Postmodern and beyond: Art of the Later 20th Century

Superrealism

A school of painting and sculpture of the 1960s and 1970s that emphasized producing artworks based on scrupulous fidelity to optical fact. The Superrealist painters were also called Photorealists because many used photographs as sources for their imagery.

Pop art

A term coined by British art critic Lawrence Alloway to refer to art, first appearing in the 1950s, that incorporated elements from consumer culture, the mass media, and popular culture, such as images from motion pictures and advertising.

Post-Painterly Abstraction

An American art movement that emerged in the 1960s and was characterized by a cool, detached rationality emphasizing tighter pictorial control. See also color field painting and hard-edge painting.

postmodernism

A reaction against modernist formalism, seen as elitist. Far more encompassing and accepting than the more rigid confines of modernist practice, postmodernism offers something for everyone by accommodating a wide range of styles, subjects, and formats, from traditional easel painting to installation and from abstraction to illusionistic scenes. Postmodern art often includes irony or reveals a self-conscious awareness on the part of the artist of the processes of art making or the workings of the art world.

Performance art

An American avant-garde art trend of the 1960s that made time an integral element of art. It produced works in which movements, gestures, and sounds of persons communicating with an audience replace physical objects. Documentary photographs are generally the only evidence remaining after these events. See also Happenings.

Photorealists

See Superrealism.

Neo-Expressionism

An art movement that emerged in the 1970s and that reflects the artists' interest in the expressive capability of art, seen earlier in German Expressionism and Abstract Expressionism.

mullion

A vertical member that divides a window or that separates one window from another.

Minimalism

(Minimal art) A predominantly sculptural American trend of the 1960s whose works consist of a severe reduction of form, oftentimes to single, homogeneous units.

matte

(also mat) In painting, pottery, and photography, a dull finish.

installation

An artwork that creates an artistic environment in a room or gallery.

Happenings

A term coined by American artist Allan Kaprow in the 1960s to describe loosely structured performances, whose creators were trying to suggest the aesthetic and dynamic qualities of everyday life; as actions, rather than objects, Happenings incorporate the fourth dimension (time).

hard-edge painting

A variant of Post- Painterly Abstraction that rigidly excluded all reference to gesture, and incorporated smooth knife-edge geometric forms to express the notion that painting should be reduced to its visual components.

gestural abstraction

Also known as action painting. A kind of abstract painting in which the gesture, or act of painting, is seen as the subject of art. Its most renowned proponent was Jackson Pollock. See also Abstract Expressionism.

Fluxus

A group of American, European, and Japanese artists of the 1960s who created Performance art. Their performances often focused on single actions, such as turning a light on and off or watching falling snow, and were more theatrical than Happenings.

formalism

Strict adherence to, or dependence on, stylized shapes and methods of composition. An emphasis on an artwork's visual elements rather than its subject.

Environmental art

An American art form that emerged in the 1960s. Often using the land itself as their material, Environmental artists construct monuments of great scale and minimal form. Permanent or impermanent, these works transform some section of the environment, calling attention both to the land itself and to the hand of the artist. Sometimes referred to as Earth art or earthworks.

deconstruction

An analytical strategy developed in the late 20th century according to which all cultural "constructs" (art, architecture, literature) are "texts." People can read these texts in a variety of ways, but they cannot arrive at fixed or uniform meanings. Any interpretation can be valid, and readings differ from time to time, place to place, and person to person. For those employing this approach, deconstruction means destabilizing established meanings and interpretations while encouraging subjectivity and individual differences.

Deconstructivist architecture

Using deconstruction as an analytical strategy, Deconstructivist architects attempt to disorient the observer by disrupting the conventional categories of architecture. The haphazard presentation of volumes, masses, planes, lighting, and so forth challenges the viewer's assumptions about form as it relates to function.

color field painting

A variant of Post- Painterly Abstraction whose artists sought to reduce painting to its physical essence by pouring diluted paint onto unprimed canvas, allowing these pigments to soak into the fabric.

Conceptual art

An American avant-garde art movement of the 1960s that asserted that the "artfulness" of art lay in the artist's idea rather than its final expression.

chromatic abstraction

A kind of Abstract Expressionism that focused on the emotional resonance of color, as exemplified by the work of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko.

benday dots

A printing technique that involves the modulation of color through the placement of individual colored dots. Named after its inventor, Benjamin Day.

Art Brut

A term coined by artist Jean Dubuffet to characterize art that is genuine, untaught, coarse, even brutish.

Abstract Expressionism

Also known as the New York School. The first major American avant-garde movement, Abstract Expressionism/emerged in New York City in the 1940s. The artists produced abstract paintings that expressed their state of mind and were intended to strike emotional chords in viewers. The movement developed along two lines: gestural abstraction and chromatic abstraction.

action painting

Also called gestural abstraction. The kind of Abstract Expressionism practiced by Jackson Pollock, in which the emphasis was on the creation process, the artist's gesture in making art. Pollock poured liquid paint in linear webs on his canvases, which were laid out on the floor, thereby physically surrounding himself in the painting during its creation.