9.12: World War II and Beyond

Read this article on how Nazi Germany influenced the art world and how concepts of decadent art promoted a state-sanctioned view of art.

Let's explore Abstract Expressionism and the New York School. Make sure you focus on the ideas that informed the artists associated with this movement.

Read this article on Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008), an American painter and graphic artist.

Read this article on Jackson Pollock (1912–1956), an American painter who became a central figure in the abstract expressionist movement.

Watch this video, which demonstrates the drip-style painting technique Pollock created and championed. He was one of America's most iconic and influential painters.

Read this article on Robert Motherwell (1915–1991), an American abstract expressionist painter, printmaker, and editor.

Watch this video interview of the Canadian abstract painter Dorothea Rockburne (1932– ), where she discusses her art, mathematics, magic, and the materials she uses. She was part of an artistic movement called Minimalism.

Watch this video on the American painter Thelma Johnson Streat (1912–1959), who painted Girl with Bird in 1950. Streat was an African-American artist, dancer, and educator who was known for her art, performance, and work to foster intercultural understanding and appreciation during the 1940s.

In these final sections of our course, we explore some famous architectural achievements before World War II. Pay attention to the historical periods and geographic contexts. This article describes the Chicago School, which was responsible for the early skyscrapers that graced the Chicago skyline.

Read this article on the Villa Savoye, which Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (1887–1965), the Swiss-French architect known as Le Corbusier, designed and built in Poissy, France, in 1929.

Read this essay on the home Fallingwater, which Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959), the famous American architect, designed in Mill Run, Pennsylvania, in 1937.

Watch this video on the architectural history of the Seagram Building, which Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969), the German-American architect, designed in New York City in 1958.

The following materials explore architecture after World War II. Pay attention to the historical periods and geographic contexts. Let's begin by watching this video on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., which Maya Lin (1959– ), an American designer and sculptor, designed in 1982.

Read this essay on the Vanna Venturi House, which Robert Venturi (1925–2018) designed for his wife in 1964 in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania.

Read this essay on the Guggenheim Bilbao, which you can visit in Bilbao, Spain. Frank Gehry (1929– ), the Canadian-American architect, designed this famous museum which opened to the public in 1997.

Finally, read this essay on the MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts in Rome, Italy. Zaha Hadid (1950– ), a British-Iraqi architect, designed this museum that opened in 2010.