J. Meyer ARTH 492 CONTEMPORARY ART
ESSAY STUDY QUESTIONS FOR TEST #2
Please Note: Only two of the three questions listed below will appear as choices on the upcoming exam. You will be asked to choose only one from those two.
1. Anthropology, archeology, and the natural sciences have been important influences on the artwork of a number of artists since the late 1960s. Discuss such influences on and directions in the work of Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer, Nancy Holt, Richard Long, and Mario Merz.. What various stylistic directions/designations and techniques/materials are appropriate to describe each artist's work? In your essay make reference to “entropy,” Arte Povera, and the mathematical progression of Fibonacci relative to some of the artists designated above. What unique artistic contributions and what ideas have they expressed through their creative efforts? Name and discuss specific works and indicate chronology where you can.
2. A Hardcore formalist conception of Modernism coalesced in the 1960s into Minimalism, with its emphasis on the "objecthood" of the work of art as content, often physically formulated as a rectangle or box-like unit. By the late '60s, however, Minimalism was evolving and disintegrating into art forms and approaches that disavowed the gestalt values and self-referential structures of simple, geometric units. Discuss the contributions of Robert Morris, Eva Hess, Robert Smithson, Sol Lewitt, and Richard Serra to the disintegration of Minimalism. Mention stylistic designations appropriate to their work, along with influences and aspects of content. Also make reference to events, specific works of art, and chronology where you can.
3. Following the crest of such Formalist approaches to art in the 1960s as Post-Painterly Abstraction and Minimalism, the variety of art forms evolving in reaction to hardcore formalism by the late sixties and through the seventies often emphasize psychological, political and narrative ideas thought largely irrelevant to true Modernism by critics such as Greenberg. These approaches included installation and performance art and well as the making of provocative objects. Discuss the ideas, content, and methodology of the art produced by Christo, Hermann Nitsch, Joseph Beuys, Carolee Schneemann, Miriam Schapiro, and Judy Chicago as part of the Post-Minimalist expansion of art. Be specific about the individual contributions of each of these artists, mentioning specific works, chronology and aspects of content where you can.
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