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. |