ART 374 How to Survive the Bomb: Art, Music, and Literature in the 1950s
By 1950, the Cold War was in full swing and fear of nuclear annihilation was increasingly palpable. This course will examine how artists explicitly and implicitly addressed the political, cultural, and ethical implications of this situation. Beginning with the abstract art of the Abstract Expressionists, and working our way through the Beat poets, the musical compositions of John Cage and Morton Feldman, and jazz, the cryptic, collage-like works of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, the figuration of Larry Rivers, the performance-based Happenings of Allan Kaprow, as well as photography and film, we will consider the variety of ways that artists responded to the fear and repression of the Cold War. We will read a variety of texts ranging from artists' writings, literature, contemporary criticism, and scholarly accounts to gain a better understanding of the artistic diversity of the 1950s.