Make a Mark: Art of the 1960s

Exhibition

Exhibition Overview

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Make a Mark: Art of the 1960s
Lara Kuykendall, curator
Central Court, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas

Drawn from the Spencer’s permanent collection, Make a Mark: Art of the 1960s shows the many approaches to color, form, gesture, and layering that occupied artists in this pivotal decade. All of these artistic traits owe a debt to earlier 20th-century modernism, from Kandinsky’s vibrant abstractions to Picasso’s collages and Jackson Pollock’s dripping. Artists like Grace Hartigan and Sam Francis continued to allow the spontaneous process introduced earlier in the century to influence their colorful results. Yet, during the 1960s the modernist tendencies toward personal expression and originality were often called into question as the skepticism of postmodernism began to ferment. Op artists like Richard Anuszkiewicz and Jesús Rafael Soto carefully calculated their compositions to prompt disorientating visual and spatial experiences for the viewer, while Andy Warhol, Frank Stella and others strove for coolness and objectivity in their techniques and forms. However, even when the process of mark-making is reduced to impersonal painted stripes or abstract layering of colors to form a screen-printed portrait, the conceptual presence of the creator still registers. Whether working in Op, Pop, Minimalist or Expressionist modes, 1960s artists continued to “make marks” in their art and in culture at large that have resonated ever since.

This exhibition is organized by Spencer Museum of Art European and American Art Intern Lara Kuykendall in conjunction with the exhibition Resounding Spirit: Japanese Contemporary Art of the 1960s.

Exhibition images

Works of art

Sam Francis
1964
Dow Mitchell
1964
Jerry Norman Uelsmann
1967
Scott Hyde
1969–1971
Scott Hyde
1969–1971
Robert Berkeley Green
1967
Martha Rosler
1969–1972
Mark Tobey
1965
Edward Avedisian
1969
Claes Oldenburg, Gemini G.E.L.
1969
Frank Stella, Gemini G.E.L.
1970
Ralph Humphrey
1965
Ark
Zigmunds Priede, Robert Rauschenberg, Universal Limited Art Editions
1964
James Rosenquist
1965
Andy Warhol
1962
Ellsworth Kelly, Wadsworth Atheneum
1964
Liz
Andy Warhol
1964
Richard Joseph Anuszkiewicz
circa 1960s–1970s
Jasper Johns, Universal Limited Art Editions
1967–1968
Liu Guosong
1968
Ary Stillman
1960
Ronald Brooks Kitaj
1967
Feng Zhongrui
1966
Robert Arthur Goodnough
1965
Jim Dine
1966
Jerrold C. Ballaine
1969
Grace Hartigan
1961
Victor Vasarely
1967

Events

March 8, 2008
Workshop
10:30AM–12:30PM
Gallery 317 Central Court
May 1, 2008
Social
6:00–8:00PM
Gallery 317 Central Court