Icons on the American landscape in the 1960s: Mapping the culture of car and road.

摘要

Icons on the American Landscape in the 1960s: Mapping the Culture of Car and Road asserts that images of automotive culture play critical roles in ground-breaking artistic developments in American art during the 1960s. In the 1960s, artists' depictions of automobiles and roads foster radical shifts among notions of "high" and "low" art forms that characterize art of the decade. Artists transform America's automotive landscape into art that highlights the complex role of the grand icons of American experience in contemporary life. Images of automotive culture from the period reveal conflicts concerning among others, notions of freedom, abundance, individual identity, and automation in American society.;Among the subjects examined in the dissertation are depictions of automotive culture in the 1950s in advertising and the Beat photography of Robert Frank; artists' images of the automotive lifestyle of Southern California in the early 1960s; the automobile in Pop Art; and treatment of automobile and road in art movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s including Photorealism, Feminism, and Environmental art. Artists discussed include Billy Al Bengston, Edward Kienholz, Edward Ruscha, Judy Chicago, James Rosenquist, Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Allan D'Arcangelo, and Richard Estes.