Civic Virtue, Ronald Brooks Kitaj

Exhibition Label:
“Make a Mark: Art of the 1960s,” Mar-2008, Lara Kuykendall
Take an object.
Do something to it.
Do something else to it.

Take a canvas.
Put a mark on it.
Put another mark on it.
Jasper Johns.
“Sketchbook Notes,” 1965

In the 1960s artists from the United States and beyond strove to “make a mark” on the art world and the culture at large by exploring the nature of creativity. Each of the three themes in this exhibition, color + form, gesture + splatter, and layer upon layer, shows how vivid and dynamic the art of this decade was. Some artists used color and geometric shapes abstractly, often to foster unusual optical effects, whereas others employed the personal, autographic gesture of expressionism. Still other artists exploited various methods of layering to create new kinds of collage. By doing something to an object or putting marks on a surface, artists in the 1960s responded to the realms of art, politics, and popular culture. The objects and images they made defined the visual culture of their generation.