Lecture notes/summary from 11/3/10, Painting from 1950-1990

In this lecture Bill covered the big painters and movements in the last half of the 20th century. We started with abstract expressionism and Jackson Pollock, who was the first "rockstar artist". Pollock described abstract expressionism well, when asked if he was working from nature or trying to it, he replied "I am nature". Some other abstract expressionists were Franz Kline whose work seemed minimalist and De Kooning, whose work was somewhat representational. We also went over Joan Mitchell, who was a second generation abstract expressionist. After the main abstract expressionists we moved on to people like Cy Twombly and Bryce Martin who were kind of doing their own thing and stirred up the art community. Twombly treated the canvas as a wall to be drawn on, and Martin I believed just used a stick to paint somewhat simple, squirrley, colorful gradient lines. We then covered color field and Mark Rothko and moved onto Pop art with Richard Hamilton and Andy Warhol.