Betye Saar Talking About Creating "The Liberation of Aunt Jemima"

Terms of the Day for November 2

• The African-American Civil Rights Movement – a collection of social movements in the United States whose goal was to end racial segregation and discrimination against black Americans and enforce constitutional voting rights to them.  The movement was most active during a period from 1955-68.
• Protest Art – a broad term that refers to creative works that concern or are produced by activists and social movements.
• AfriCOBRA – (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists) a collective of African American artists in Chicago that specifically took on the goal of creating a new revolutionary black aesthetic. 
• Minimalism - a movement in various forms of art and design where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features and often used industrial materials and processes.
• Postminimalism - a term used in various artistic fields for work which is influenced by, or attempts to develop and go beyond the aesthetic of minimalism. The term refers less to a particular movement than an artistic tendency.

Slide Images for October 31

 American Print Advertisements

1940s-1950s

 Jackson Pollock

Autumn Rhythm: Number 30

1950

 Barnett Newman

Vir Heroicus Sublimis 

1950-51

 Mark Rothko

No. 62 (Rust and Blue)

1953

 Lee Krasner

Noon

1947

Lee Krasner

Cat Image

1952

 Lee Krasner

Gothic Landscape

1961

 Helen Frankenthaler

Mountains and Sea

1952

 Joan Mitchel

Untitled

1950

 Joan Mitchel

Ladybug

1957

 Agnes Martin

Happy Holiday

1999

Bridget Riley

Winter Palace

1981

Terms of the Day for October 31

• Abstract Expressionism – the first specifically American art movement to achieve international influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, it combined the emotional intensity of German Expressionism with the abstraction of Futurism and Synthetic Cubism.
• Automatism – the Surrealist act of automatic writing or drawing done as a means of accessing symbols of the subconscious.
• Action Painting – a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical act of painting itself as an essential aspect of the finished work or concern of its artist.
• Color-Field Painting – a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s that  is characterized primarily by large fields of flat, solid color spread across or stained into the canvas creating areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture plane. In color-field painting  “color is freed from objective context and becomes the subject in itself.”