1. Science and technology get human beings to the moon (July 20, 1969)

Dramatic scientific and technological exploits occurred in the 1900's. These developments inspired bold responses in the arts. Space exploration, culminating in the first moon landing by the American astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., is one of the great achievements of humankind. The quantum theory proposed by the German physicist Max Planck (1900) and the special theory of relativity proposed by the German-born scientist Albert Einstein (1905) may have suggested the simultaneous vision of Cubism.

German rocket science of the 1930's and 1940's, Sputnik I in 1957, or the orbiting of satellites (1958 on) led artists to react with technology-inspired Futurism, Suprematicism, even Rube Goldberg's mad machines and Alexander Calder's mobiles. Jean Tinguely satirized the power of technology with his self-destructing machines (Homage to New York, 1960), as did Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg ( with satirical designs for monuments such as a skyscraper-high windshield wiper for Chicago).

Achievements in space depended on the technology of computers (developed in 1946), transistors (1947), and microchips (1971). Artists used this same technology in video art (1982) and computer graphics and computer art (1988), and for "appropriation" and performance art (1990's).

 

Marilyn Stokstad is the Judith Harris Murphy Distinguished Professor of Art History at the University of Kansas. For her Top 10 list, Stokstad selects broad cultural movements of global significance seen in the light of the American experience. She generally notes a few specific events that triggered or characterized the larger issue or movement. She also expresses the impact on art either by a general movement or by a specific work of art.

1.

Science and technology get human beings to the moon (July 20, 1969)
2. Medical research produces "miracle" drugs (middle to late 1900's)
3. The breakup of the old social order (early 1900's)
4.

Private versus state patronage of the arts (throughout the 1900's)
5. The consumer society embraces the machine-made object (throughout the 1900's)
6. Advances in communication and transportation create the "global village" (throughout the 1900's)
7. The advance of civil rights and gender issues (middle to late 1900's)
8. The rise of ethnic nationalism (middle to late 1900's)
9. Totalitarian states attempt to control artists (throughout the 1900's)
10. Dropping the atomic bomb during World War II (1945)