Lesson 6 - Lecture

In this video Professor Peck introduces the minimalist and pop artists. One that is so relevant to us, even today, is artist Andy Warhol whose avant garde abstraction paintings of Marilyn Monroe and the Campbell's soup cans are  well known throughout the United States. The video discusses a few other artists during this art era, as well as other avant garde moves from these artists. 

One avant garde move that I found very interesting was the extreme abstraction. During this time every artist was doing it because they were reacting and going against the abstractions and other art work shows in museum and galleries at the time. What the artists chose do instead was to take an abstraction and fill it with objects, recognizable objects to be exact but it was considered extremely avant garde because it was going against art during that specific era and by that I mean that you did not find any type of advertising in galleries or museums and that is exactly what some of these artists were doing.

"You don't walk into a gallery and see advertising. You don't walk into an art gallery and see an American flag. In fact that is the last place you would expect to see an American flag at this particular time. If everyone is loving being an American post WWII then a lot of the avant garde artists are not going to be into that. Unless you're extremely avant garde." The person who I feel completely fits the description of extremely avant garde is Andy Warhol, especially in his recreation of the Brillo box. He is completely stepping away from the canvas altogether and recreating art in the form of shapes and using the objects surrounding it as well. This is why I found Warhol to be the most interesting artist talked about in this video because he completely redefined avant garde art from two-dimensional to three-dimensional.

What I liked a lot in this video was the timeline given of all the different art movements. It was interesting to see how many things in the art world had changed and how often it did. I also like that we are now in a more modern topic of artists.