This course will explore the culture, counterculture, and art of the long decade of the 1960s. Our focus will center on youthful artists in the United States, beginning with Abstract Expressionism and ending with Performance art and what critic Lucy Lippard called the “dematerialization of the art object.” Social history, semiotic analysis, literary and film theory, and art history will inform class discussions. Themes include the Cold War and Beat culture, the rise of Minimalism and Pop Art, psychedelic experience, the prominence of advertising and the marketing of “cool,” student movements, censorship, Rock music culture, the Vietnam War, and hippie communal spirituality.
