Introduction

Welcome

Context and Consequences

Critical Perspectives

An extraordinary year from any vantage point, 1970 saw America still in the throes of an unpopular and fiercely protested war and at the end of a decade marked by sociopolitical and cultural turmoil. In addition to the war protests, many other movements, including feminism, environmental activism, the continuing civil rights struggle, the rising popularity of eastern religions, and widespread sexual experimentation were reverberating throughout America, mainly in or near urban centers, while in small towns, life went on as residents watched the fun on television.

The art world was hardly unaffected by what was going on around it. Open rebellion seemed to be the mood in many quarters. Some artists had stopped making art altogether as they became more and more enthralled by art theory. Other artists were not really making any kind of work that could be shown in a gallery, instead presenting ephemeral installations and performances that were often documented by photography. A few artists turned to newly available digital and video technologies as a way of breaking away from traditional media, while many others chose to make artworks that could be reproduced as cheaply as possible, so that art would no longer be a commodity for the privileged few. Certainly, when we think of the seminal moments of late sixties/early seventies art, we will be thinking of Nam June Paik and his topless muse Charlotte Moorman, of Christo wrapping buildings and bridges in Paris and New York, of Laurie Anderson playing her violin.

In the meantime, at a considerably lower profile, a majority of artists continued to make “traditional” forms of art--sculpture, paintings, prints, photography--but the most interesting of these were marked by technical innovation and very few artists escaped entirely from the jarring momentum of late Modernism, particularly the endgame cultural politics of Minimalism.

In painting, the allure of Abstract-Expressionism was still felt, as artists continued to explore color and shape, enjoying the manipulation of media for its own sake, as in the works of Larry Poons, Friedel Dzubas, and Cleve Gray.

In sculpture and mixed media, the Happenings and installations of the sixties had made anything fair game for inclusion in artwork, while Pop Art had opened up a world of media culture for appropriation and depiction, as seen in the seventies works of Robert Rauschenberg and Tom Wesselmann. Other artists, like Charles Simonds, successfully moved their street installations into the gallery.

Printmaking was at its height at this time, and not just the mass-produced screenprints of Warhol and the other Pop artists; artists like Jasper Johns and Nancy Graves celebrated printmaking for its own sake, working with boutique ateliers.

It is probably in the world of photography where the biggest changes the seventies would bring were felt. While masters of fine art photography were able to show their work, finally, at galleries devoted exclusively to photography, a new generation of artist-photographers began to develop, where photography was used not just for its own sake but as another conceptual tool. The groundbreaking work of such disparate artists as John Pfahl, Nan Goldin, and Cindy Sherman demonstrates the potential of photography in the world of contemporary art, a potential it was to fulfill beyond all expectations in the decades to come.