Existing comment:
COOL vs. HOT
While the Vietnam War stimulated a revival of openly political and emotional painting in some quarters, many of the country's most prominent artists avoided addressing topical issues in their work. Some vigorously protested the war as private citizens but found it impossible or undesirable to do so in their art. Abstract artists, especially, considered their work ill-suited for tackling current events and valued keeping it separate from political speech.
Yet the pervasive impact of the Vietnam War prompted meaningful exceptions. Seen here alongside the hot rhetoric of figurative imagists like Peter Saul, Jim Nutt, and Paul Thek are more formally restrained or even abstract works that reference the war by leading New York figures such as Barnett Newman and Donald Judd, who normally avoided topical subject matter. In some instances, invitations to participate in protest exhibitions provided a pretext for these artists to merge their art with activism |