Existing comment:
CRITICAL PICTURES
By the late 1960s, Americans were deeply divided about the legitimacy and purpose of the U.S. intervention in Vietnam. Amid the climate of passionate public debate, some artists embraced figuration and narrative, modes of expression considered out of fashion among American modern painters since the 1930s. At a time when cool abstraction dominated, these artists ran hot. They created bluntly provocative and dissenting pictures, often drawing on sources such as comic books, bathroom graffiti, and caricature in their effort to make painting equal to the emotional exigencies of the time.
Women, people of color, and artists living far from the art capital of New York City were often the most outspoken and transgressive in their antiwar art, operating as they already did beyond the attention of the critical establishment. Most of the works seen nearby -- notably those by Judith Bernstein, Faith Ringgold, and Nancy Spero -- appeared only in a few protest exhibitions during the period and were rarely discussed for many years after. |