Chapter 30 Modernism and Postmodernism in Europe and America, 1945-1980

Chapter 30: Modernism and Postmodernism in Europe and America, 1945-1980

 

In the decades following World War II, art reflected the upheaval in society, expressing postwar anxiety, the values of the emerging feminist and the civil rights movements, and reflecting on the new consumer society. Some artists chose a more formalist track, pursuing chromatic abstraction in painting and minimalist sculptural form. Architecture developed in two directions—modernists pursued idiosyncratic, expressive forms or more stripped-down, “International Style” designs, while postmodernists combined styles and explicitly employed historical ornaments. Beginning in the 1960s, artists pursued alternative approaches including performance and conceptualism, and by the 1970s, the new media of video, sound, and computer-generated art were widely practiced and exhibited.