5. The consumer society embraces the machine-made object (throughout the 1900's)

Mass production, beginning with Henry Ford's invention of the assembly line (1913), made available low cost, and often low quality, goods to a consumer society. The individual handmade object became a thing of the past except as an elite work of fine art. Architects and designers began to focus on the art of the machine or machine age art. Le Corbusier found inspiration in steamships and created the International Style in architecture.Art deco designers in 1925 brought modern, streamlined forms to furnishings and interior design.

Advertising art, architectural journals, and photos and features in popular magazines dominated popular culture and replaced social patrons as taste makers. Marcel Duchamp and the Dadaists elevated "ready-mades" (objects such as urinals and wine racks) to elite status in museums. Later, "found objects" (castoffs and rubbish) became works of art in the hands of American sculptors Joseph Cornell or Louise Nevelson.

Commercial art inspired 1960's Pop Art and, ultimately, the antiart movements of the 1970's and 1980's. Mass production of objects inspired artists to turn to photocopiers (1946), television, and computers to create artworks. The art press made possible rapid communication exchange and appropriation of images. The German critic Walter Benjamin looked ahead to this new age in his essay "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1937).

 

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)