Teaching Packet

Art since 1950

Grade Level

Subject

This teaching packet discusses artistic movements of the late 20th century, including abstract expressionism, pop art, minimalism, conceptualism, process art, neo-expressionism, and postmodernism, with attention to their critical reception and theoretical bases. The packet considers works by 27 painters and sculptors including Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Mark Rothko, David Smith, Martin Puryear, Anselm Kiefer, Susan Rothenberg, and Roy Lichtenstein (see full list below).
 

The Art since 1950 loan packet includes:

  • a 95-page booklet, with artists' biographies, a glossary, timeline, and teaching activities
  • six color study prints
  • an image CD.

Artists included: Louise Bourgeois, Chuck Close, Sam Gilliam, Philip Guston, Eva Hesse, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Andy Kiefer, Willem de Kooning, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Long, Elizabeth Murray, Barnett Newman, Claes Oldenburg, Sigmar Polke, Jackson Pollock, Martin Puryear, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, Susan Rothenberg, Mark Rothko, David Smith, Tony Smith, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol
 

This teaching packet is available free of charge for a nine-month loan period, permitting extended use in classroom or library settings.

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Art since 1950
(PDF 2.4MB, 95 pages)

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A pale-skinned young woman with copper-orange hair, wearing a turquoise-blue robe, stands in a pastel-infused landscape in this stylized, vertical painting. The woman fills most of the left half of the composition. She faces our right in profile with her head bowed as she looks down at the silver and brown box she holds in her right hand, closer to us. Her body angles away from us so we see her back. Her hair is held back under a gold-colored headand, and her blue robe falls over a white skirt. Beyond her, rocky mountains in ice blue and pale lilac purple span the horizon, which comes about three-quarters of the way up the painting, beneath a pale, rose-pink sky. An area of mottled parchment-white to our right of the person could be a field. Along the bottom edge of the canvas, rounded and organic shapes in scarlet red, turquoise, lapis blue, golden and lemon yellow, and pumpkin orange could be abstracted earth or flowers at the woman’s feet.

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