Expressionism to Pop Art

Matisse, Kandinsky, Picasso all used abstraction to invent new systems of representation.

Boccioni and the Futurists responded very differently than did Duchamp and the Dada artists to the violence of the Great War.

Utopia and the dream preoccupied artists during the depression and the rise of dictators like Hitler.

In the years of recovery after WWII, British artists explored both abstraction and figural representation as we see with Henry Moore and Anthony Caro.

After WWII, Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko and other abstract artists reinvented painting.

Wham! Warhol, Lichtenstein and Oldenburg crashed the gates of high culture asking what authentic art looks like in a society filled with tawdry commercial images.

Minimalism isn’t simple, although Judd, Smithson, Christo and others did use simple forms to convey complex issues about the nature of art.