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Best Books of the Decade: 1960's (1128 books)

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1,128 books based on 1589 votes: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey,...

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The civil rights movement was an organized effort by Black Americans to end racial discrimination and gain equal rights under the law. It began in the late 1940s and ended in the late 1960s. Although tumultuous at times, the movement was mostly nonviolent and resulted in laws to protect every American's constitutional rights, regardless of color, race, sex or national origin.

July 26, 1948: President Harry Truman issues Executive Order 9981 to end segregation in the Armed Services.

May 17, 1954: Brown v. Board of Education, a consolidation of five cases into one, is decided by the Supreme Court, effectively ending racial segregation in public schools. Many schools, however, remained segregated.

August 28, 1955: Emmett Till, a 14-year-old from Chicago is brutally murdered in Mississippi for allegedly flirting with a white woman. His murderers are acquitted, and the case bring international attention to the civil rights movement after Jet magazine publishes a photo of Till's beaten body at his open-casket funeral.

December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Her defiant stance prompts a year-long Montgomery bus boycott.

January 10-11, 1957: Sixty Black pastors and civil rights leaders from several southern states-including Martin Luther King, Jr.-meet in Atlanta, Georgia to coordinate nonviolent protests against racial discrimination and segregation.

September 4, 1957: Nine Black students known as the " Little Rock Nine" are blocked from integrating into Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. President Dwight D. Eisenhower eventually sends federal troops to escort the students, however, they continue to be harassed.

September 9, 1957: Eisenhower signs the Civil Rights Act of 1957 into law to help protect voter rights. The law allows federal prosecution of those who suppress another's right to vote.

February 1, 1960: Four African American college students in Greensboro, North Carolina refuse to leave a Woolworth's "whites only" lunch counter without being served. The Greensboro Four-Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil-were inspired by the nonviolent protest of Gandhi. The Greensboro Sit-In, as it came to be called, sparks similar "sit-ins" throughout the city and in other states.

November 14, 1960: Six-year-oldRuby Bridges is escorted by four armed federal marshals as she becomes the first student to integrate William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans. Her actions inspired Norman Rockwell's painting The Problem We All Live With (1964).

1961: Throughout 1961, Black and white activists, known as freedom riders, took bus trips through the American South to protest segregated bus terminals and attempted to use "whites-only" restrooms and lunch counters. The Freedom Rides were marked by horrific violence from white protestors, they drew international attention to their cause.

June 11, 1963: Governor George C. Wallace stands in a doorway at the University of Alabama to block two Black students from registering. The standoff continues until President John F. Kennedy sends the National Guard to the campus.

August 28, 1963: Approximately 250,000 people take part in The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Martin Luther King gives his "I Have A Dream" speech as the closing address in front of the Lincoln Memorial, stating, "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.'"

September 15, 1963: A bomb at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama kills four young girls and injures several other people prior to Sunday services. The bombing fuels angry protests.

July 2, 1964: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, preventing employment discrimination due to race, color, sex, religion or national origin. Title VII of the Act establishes the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to help prevent workplace discrimination.

February 21, 1965: Black religious leader Malcolm X is assassinated during a rally by members of the Nation of Islam.

March 7, 1965: Bloody Sunday. In the Selma to Montgomery March, around 600 civil rights marchers walk to Selma, Alabama to Montgomery-the state's capital-in protest of Black voter suppression. Local police block and brutally attack them. After successfully fighting in court for their right to march, Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders lead two more marches and finally reach Montgomery on March 25.

August 6, 1965: President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to prevent the use of literacy tests as a voting requirement. It also allowed federal examiners to review voter qualifications and federal observers to monitor polling places.

April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated on the balcony of his hotel room in Memphis, Tennessee. James Earl Ray is convicted of the murder in 1969.

April 11, 1968: President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, also known as the Fair Housing Act, providing equal housing opportunity regardless of race, religion or national origin.

Sources

Executive Order 9981. Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum.
Civil Rights Act of 1957. Civil Rights Digital Library.
Governor George C. Wallace's School House Door Speech. Alabama Department of Archives and History.
Greensboro, NC, Students Sit-In for US Civil Rights, 1960. Swarthmore College Global Nonviolent Action Database.
Historical Highlights. The 24th Amendment. History, Art & Archives United States House of Representatives.
History-Brown v. Board of Education Re-enactment. United States Courts.
History of Federal Voting Rights Laws. The United States Department of Justice.
"I Have a Dream," Address Delivered at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute Stanford.
Oldest and Boldest. NAACP.
SCLC History. Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Selma to Montgomery March: National Historic Trail and All-American Road. National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. National Archives.

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Civil Rights Movement Timeline - Timeline & Events | HISTORY

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The civil rights movement was an organized effort by black Americans to end racial discrimination and gain equal rights under the law. It began in the late 1940s and ended in the late 1960s.

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chicago dj fourth estate audio presents the top songs of the 1960s

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Top 100 Songs of the 1960s - Chicago DJ Fourth Estate Audio

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Top 100 Songs of the 1960s - Chicago DJ Fourth Estate Audio

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Vietnam Background: Uneasy French Rule

* 1887: France imposes a colonial system over Vietnam, calling it French Indochina. The system includes Tonkin, Annam, Cochin China and Cambodia. Laos is added in 1893.

* February 1930: Ho Chi Minh founds the Indochinese Communist Party at a meeting in Hong Kong.

* June 1940: Nazi Germany takes control of France.

* September 1940: Japanese troops invade French Indochina and occupy Vietnam with little French resistance.

* May 1941: Ho Chi Minh and communist colleagues establish the League for the Independence of Vietnam. Known as the Viet Minh, the movement aims to resist French and Japanese occupation of Vietnam.

* March 1945: Japanese troops occupying Indochina carry out a coup against French authorities and announce an end to the colonial era, declaring Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia independent.

* August 1945: Japan is defeated by the Allies in World War II, leaving a power vacuum in Indochina. France begins to reassert its authority over Vietnam.

* September 1945: Ho Chi Minh declares an independent North Vietnam and models his declaration on the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 in an (unsuccessful) effort to win the support of the United States.

* July 1946: Ho Chi Minh rejects a French proposal granting Vietnam limited self-government and the Viet Minh begins a guerrilla war against the French.

When Was the Vietnam War?

* March 1947: In an address to Congress, President Harry Truman states that the foreign policy of the United States is to assist any country whose stability is threatened by communism. The policy becomes known as the Truman Doctrine.

* June 1949: The French install former emperor Bao Dai as head of state in Vietnam.

* August 1949: The Soviet Union explodes its first atom bomb in a remote area of Kazakhstan, marking a tense turning point in the Cold War with the United States.

* October 1949: Following a civil war, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong declares the creation of the People's Republic of China.

* January 1950: The People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union formally recognize the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam and both begin to supply economic and military aid to communist resistance fighters within the country.

* February 1950: Assisted by the Soviet Union and the newly Communist China, the Viet Minh step up their offensive against French outposts in Vietnam.

* June 1950: The United States, identifying the Viet Minh as a Communist threat, steps up military assistance to France for their operations against the Viet Minh.

* March-May 1954: French troops are humiliated in defeat by Viet Minh forces at Dien Bien Phu. The defeat solidifies the end of French rule in Indochina.

The Geneva Accords

* July 1954: The Geneva Accords establish North and South Vietnam with the 17th parallel as the dividing line. The agreement also stipulates that elections are to be held within two years to unify Vietnam under a single democratic government. These elections never happen.

* 1955: Catholic nationalist Ngo Dinh Diem emerges as the leader of South Vietnam, with U.S. backing, while Ho Chi Minh leads the communist state to the north.

* July 1959: The first U.S. soldiers are killed in South Vietnam when guerrillas raid their living quarters near Saigon.

* September 1960: Ho Chi Minh, facing failing health, is replaced by Le Duan as head of North Vietnam's ruling communist party.

* December 1960: The National Liberation Front (NLF) is formed with North Vietnamese backing as the political wing of the antigovernment insurgency in South Vietnam. The United States views the NLF as an arm of North Vietnam and starts calling the military wing of the NLF the Viet Cong-short for Vietnam Cong-san, or Vietnamese communists.

* May 1961: President John F. Kennedy sends helicopters and 400 Green Berets to South Vietnam and authorizes secret operations against the Viet Cong.

* January 1962: In Operation Ranch Hand, U.S. aircraft start spraying Agent Orange and other herbicides over rural areas of South Vietnam to kill vegetation that would offer cover and food for guerrilla forces.

* February 1962: Ngo Dinh Diem survives a bombing of the presidential palace in South Vietnam as Diem's extreme favoritism toward South Vietnam's Catholic minority alienates him from most of the South Vietnamese population, including Vietnamese Buddhists.

* January 1963: At Ap Bac, a village in the Mekong Delta southwest of Saigon, South Vietnamese troops are defeated by a much smaller unit of Viet Cong fighters. The South Vietnamese are overcome despite their four-to-one advantage and the technical and planning assistance of U.S. advisers.

* May 1963: In a major incident of what becomes known as the "Buddhist Crisis," the government of Ngo Dinh Diem opens fire on a crowd of Buddhist protestors in the central Vietnam city of Hue. Eight people, including children, are killed.

* June 1963: A 73-year-old monk immolates himself while sitting at a major city intersection in protest, leading other Buddhists to follow suit in coming weeks. The United States' already declining confidence in Diem's leadership continues to slide.

* November 1963: The United States backs a South Vietnam military coup against the unpopular Diem, which ends in the brutal killing of Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu. Between 1963 and 1965, 12 different governments take the lead in South Vietnam as military coups replace one government after another.

America Enters the Vietnam War

* August 1964: USS Maddox on an espionage mission is attacked by North Vietnamese patrol torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. A second attack on the Maddox and another U.S. ship in the Gulf is alleged, but likely never occurred, according to National Security Agency documents declassified in 2005. The incidents lead President Johnson to call for air strikes on North Vietnamese patrol boat bases. Two U.S. aircraft are shot down and one U.S. pilot, Everett Alvarez Jr., becomes the first U.S. airman to be taken prisoner by North Vietnam.

* August 1964: The attacks in the Gulf of Tonkin spur Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorizes the president to "take all necessary measures, including the use of armed force" against any aggressor in the conflict.

* November 1964: The Soviet Politburo increases its support to North Vietnam, sending aircraft, artillery, ammunition, small arms, radar, air defense systems, food and medical supplies. Meanwhile, China sends several engineering troops to North Vietnam to assist in building critical defense infrastructure.

* February 1965: President Johnson orders the bombing of targets in North Vietnam in Operation Flaming Dart in retaliation for a Viet Cong raid at the U.S. base in the city of Pleiku and at a nearby helicopter base at Camp Holloway.

* March 1965: President Johnson launches a three-year campaign of sustained bombing of targets in North Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Operation Rolling Thunder. The same month, U.S. Marines land on beaches near Da Nang, South Vietnam as the first American combat troops to enter Vietnam.

* June 1965: General Nguen Van Thieu of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam Governmental Military (ARVN), becomes president of South Vietnam.

More Troops, More Deaths, More Protests

* July 1965: President Johnson calls for 50,000 more ground troops to be sent to Vietnam, increasing the draft to 35,000 each month.

* August 1965: In Operation Starlite, some 5,500 U.S. Marines strike against the First Viet Cong Regiment in the first major ground offensive by U.S. forces in Vietnam. The six-day operation diffuses the Viet Cong regiment, although it would quickly rebuild.

* November 1965: Nearly 300 Americans are killed and hundreds more injured in the first large-scale battle of the war, the Battle of la Drang Valley. At the battle, in South Vietnam's Central Highlands, U.S. ground troops are dropped onto and withdrawn from the battlefield by helicopter, in what would become a common strategy. Both sides declare victory.

* 1966: U.S. troop numbers in Vietnam rise to 400,000.

* June 1966: American aircraft attack targets in Hanoi and Haiphong in raids that are among the first such attacks on cities in North Vietnam.

* 1967: U.S. troop numbers stationed in Vietnam increase to 500,000.

* February 1967: U.S. aircraft bomb Haiphong Harbor and North Vietnamese airfields.

* April 1967: Huge Vietnam War protests occur in Washington, D.C., New York City and San Francisco.

* September 1967: Nguyen Van Thieu wins the presidential election of South Vietnam under a newly enacted constitution.

* November 1967: In the Battle of Dak To, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces resist an offensive by communist forces in the Central Highlands. The United States forces suffer some 1,800 casualties.

* January-April 1968: A U.S. Marine garrison at Khe Sanh in South Vietnam is bombarded with massive artillery by communist forces from the People's Army of North Vietnam (PAVN). For 77 days, the marines and South Vietnamese forces fend off the siege.

North Vietnam Shocks America

* January 1968: The Tet Offensive begins, encompassing a combined assault of Viet Minh and North Vietnamese armies. Attacks are carried out in more than 100 cities and outposts across South Vietnam, including Hue and Saigon, and the U.S. Embassy is invaded. The effective, bloody attacks shock U.S. officials and mark a turning point in the war and the beginning of a gradual U.S. withdrawal from the region.

* February 11-17, 1968: This week records the highest number of U.S. soldier deaths during the war, with 543 American deaths.

* February-March 1968: Battles at Hue and Saigon end with American and ARVN victory as Viet Cong guerillas are cleared from the cities.

* March 16, 1968: At the U.S. massacre at Mai Lai, more than 500 civilians are murdered by U.S. forces. The massacre happens amid a campaign of U.S. search-and-destroy operations that are intended to find enemy territories, destroy them and then retreat.

* March 1968: President Johnson halts bombing in Vietnam north of the 20th parallel. Facing backlash about the war, Johnson announces he will not run for reelection.

* November 1968: Republican Richard M. Nixon wins the U.S. presidential elections on the campaign promises to restore "law and order" and to end the draft.

* May 1969: At Ap Bia Mountain, about a mile from the border with Laos, U.S. paratroopers attack entrenched North Vietnamese fighters in an attempt to cut off North Vietnamese infiltration from Laos. U.S. troops eventually capture the site (temporarily), which would be nicknamed Hamburger Hill by journalists due to the brutal carnage of the 10-day battle.

* September 1969: Ho Chi Minh dies of a heart attack in Hanoi.

* December 1969: The U.S. government institutes the first draft lottery since World War II, prompting ever more young American men-later disparaged as "draft dodgers"-to flee to Canada.

Gradual Withdrawal from Vietnam

* 1969-1972: The Nixon administration gradually reduces the number of U.S. forces in South Vietnam, placing more burden on the ground forces of South Vietnam's ARVN as part of a strategy known as Vietnamization. U.S. troops in Vietnam are reduced from a peak of 549,000 in 1969 to 69,000 in 1972.

* February 1970: U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger begins secret peace negotiations with Hanoi politburo member Le Duc Tho in Paris.

* March 1969-May 1970: In a series of secret bombings known as "Operation Menu," U.S. B-52 bombers target suspected communist base camps and supply zones in Cambodia. The bombings are kept under wraps by Nixon and his administration since Cambodia is officially neutral in the war, although The New York Times would reveal the operation on May 9, 1969.

* April-June 1970: U.S. and South Vietnamese forces attack communist bases across the Cambodian border in the Cambodian Incursion.

* May 4, 1970: In a bloody incident known as the Kent State Shooting, National Guardsmen fire on anti-war demonstrators at Ohio's Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine.

* June 1970: Congress repeals the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to reassert control over the president's ability to use force in the war.

Vietnamization Falters, America Exits

* January-March 1971: In Operation Lam Son 719, ARVN troops, with U.S. support, invade Laos in an attempt to cut off the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They are forced to retreat and suffer heavy losses.

* June 1971: The New York Times publishes a series of articles detailing leaked Defense Department documents about the war, known as the Pentagon Papers. The report reveals the U.S. government had repeatedly and secretly increased U.S. involvement in the war.

* March-October 1972: The People's Army of Vietnam launches the large-scale, three-pronged Easter Offensive against the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and U.S. forces. While North Vietnam gains control of more territory in South Vietnam, the offensive isn't the decisive blow its military leaders had hoped for.

* December 1972: President Nixon orders the launch of the most intense air offense of the war in Operation Linebacker. The attacks, concentrated between Hanoi and Haiphong, drop roughly 20,000 tons of bombs over densely populated regions.

* January 22, 1973: Former President Johnson dies in Texas at age 64.

* January 27, 1973: The Selective Service announces the end to the draft and institutes an all-volunteer military.

* January 27, 1973: President Nixon signs the Paris Peace Accords, ending direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The North Vietnamese accept a cease fire. But as U.S. troops depart Vietnam, North Vietnamese military officials continue plotting to overtake South Vietnam.

* February-April 1973: North Vietnam returns 591 American prisoners of war (including future U.S. Senator and presidential candidate, John McCain) in what is known as Operation Homecoming.

How Many Were Killed in the Vietnam War?

* January 1975: President Ford rules out any further U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

* April 1975: In the Fall of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam is seized by communist forces and the government of South Vietnam surrenders. U.S. Marine and Air Force helicopters transport more than 1,000 American civilians and nearly 7,000 South Vietnamese refugees out of Saigon in an 18-hour mass evacuation effort.

* July 1975: North and South Vietnam are formally unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam under hardline communist rule.

* The War Dead: By the end of the war, some 58,220 Americans lose their lives. Vietnam would later release estimates that 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters were killed, up to 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died and more than 2 million civilians were killed on both sides of the war.

Sources

The Vietnam War: The Definitive Illustrated History, created in association with the Smithsonian Institution, published by DK | Penguin Random House, 2017.
The Vietnam War: An Intimate History, by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, based on the film series by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, published by Penguin Random House, 2017.
Vietnam Profile - Timeline, BBC News, June 12, 2017.
Operation Starlite: The First Battle of the Vietnam War, Military.com.
South Vietnam: The Buddhist Crisis, Time.
Buddhists - The 1963 Crisis, GlobalSecurity.org.
Vietnam, Diem, the Buddhist Crisis, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
The Fall of Saigon, United States History.
What Were the Major Battles of the Vietnam War? The Vietnam War.
Statistical information about casualties of the Vietnam War, U.S. National Archives.
"Feuds and Bad Planning in Saigon Exit Recalled," The New York Times, May 5, 1975.
"Nixon Again Deplores Leak on Bombing Cambodia," The New York Times, March 11, 1976.
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Volume III, Vietnam, January-August 1963, The U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian.
"The Truman Doctrine Fades," The New York Times, May 4, 1975.

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A guide to the complex political and military issues involved in a war that would ultimately claim millions of lives.

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Andy Warhol created three Marilyn Monroe screen print portfolios in 1967, a few years after the actress passed away in 1962. The portfolio of 10 screen prints was one of the first prints Warhol printed and distributed through Factory Additions, New York. The name of this company references to Warhol's studio known as "The Factory".

Marilyn and Andy - Marilyn Diptych, 1962

For Warhol, Marilyn was already a familiar subject. He initially began depicting the actress in the Marilyn Diptych, 1962, shortly after her death. The Marilyn Diptych is a silkscreen painting which contains fifty images of the actress, all taken from the 1953 film Niagara. Warhol explained:

"In August 62 I started doing silkscreens. I wanted something stronger that gave more of an assembly line effect. With silkscreening you pick a photograph, blow it up, transfer it in glue onto silk, and then roll ink across it so the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue. That way you get the same image, slightly different each time. It was all so simple quick and chancy. I was thrilled with it. When Marilyn Monroe happened to die that month, I got the idea to make screens of her beautiful face the first Marilyns."

Half of the Marilyn diptych was heavily pigmented while the other half was colored in black and white. Overall, the work was a commentary on the relation between Monroe's life and death. The format of the Marilyn Diptych, 1962, mirrors the form of a Christian work of art depicting the Virgin Mary on one side and the crucified Jesus on the other. The comparison with the religious work references the idolization of Marilyn Monroe.
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The Marilyn Monroe Screen Print Portfolio

Warhol's Marilyn Monroe, 1967 portfolio is seen as an extension of the initial silkscreen painting. Each image from the portfolio is sized 36 x 36", considerably large and a closer crop of Monroe's face. Each print is vibrantly colored to reflect her vivacious personality. In many of the prints, her iconic lips are boldly colored a deep red. Many of the prints also emphasize her platinum blonde hair by adding variants of yellow. In one of the prints, the actress is colored in silver and black, a stark departure from its vivid counterparts. This brings to mind the effect of watching the actress on the cinema screen in black and white. The dark colors are also a somber reminder of the actress's passing. The colors ultimately bring to life Marilyn Monroe's iconic status and celebrity glamor. By creating repetitive imagery, Warhol evokes her ubiquitous celebrity status.

Citations

1. https://www.artetrama.com/en/blog/andy-warhol-marilyn-series

2. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/warhol-marilyn-diptych-t03093

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Analysis: Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe Series (1962, 1967)

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Andy Warhol created three Marilyn Monroe screen print portfolios in 1967, a few years after the actress passed away in 1962. The portfolio of 10 screen prints was one of the first prints Warhol printed and distributed through Factory Additions, New York. The name of this company references to Warhol's studio known as "The Factory".

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The Official 60's Site-Drive-In Theater Memories

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There was a kind of magic about the drive-in theatre .I still can smell the delicious aroma of the popcorn and hotdogs coming from the snack bar.Those 60s drive-in theatre memories, how can you forget?

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Venus of the Rags juxtaposes an over-life sized classical statue of the Roman goddess of love, beauty and fertility, with a large pile of brightly coloured, discarded clothes that are heaped on the floor. The Venus statue is positioned with its back to the viewer. The figure's face and body press lightly against the pile of fabrics that rises up before it, so that the front of the statue is hidden.

Pistoletto has made several versions of Venus of the Rags. In the first (Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella, reproduced in Christov-Bakargiev, p.157), shown in 1967, he used a concrete or cement Venus, which he had purchased from a garden centre and covered with a layer of mica to create a glittering surface. He made three further versions in the same year using plaster casts of this original Venus statue. These works are housed in the De Bennardi Collection, Naples, a private collection in Germany, and the Giuliana and Tommaso Setari Collection, Milan (on long term loan to the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Turin). In 1970, Pistoletto produced two versions using a larger plaster Venus measuring 160cm in height (Toyota Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan; Hirschhorn Museum, Washington). In 1972 he made a version with a gold-covered Venus entitled Venere degli stracci dorata ( Golden Venus of the Rags) (Lia Rumma Collection, Naples). is a unique version produced in 1974, for which the Venus was made by stone masons in Tuscany using a special Greek marble containing mica. In 1980, a version of Venus of the Rags was enacted in a performance held in San Francisco, with a live model replacing the statue.

Pistoletto's use of a sculpture of Venus in these works, as an iconic motif of the canon of Western art, invokes Italy's cultural past in an ironic way. By combining the classically-inspired statue with piled-up rags the artist announces a series of oppositions: hard/soft, formed/unformed, monochrome/coloured, fixed/movable, precious/disregarded, historical/contemporary, unique/common and the cultural/the everyday. In their 'poorness' the rags demonstrate a willingness to deploy any and all aspects of life in art. This was a characteristic of Arte Povera, a movement that emerged in Italy in the period 1967-72, of which Pistoletto was a central figure. The artist commented in 1967: 'As far as I am concerned ... all forms, materials, ideas, and means are available and to be used' (quoted in Flood and Morris, p.306). Cheap, adaptable and colourful, rags or discarded clothes appear in a number of Pistoletto's works of the same period, including Monumentino ( Little Monument) and Orchestra di stracci ( Orchestra of Rags), both 1968 (reproduced in Io sono l'altro: Michelangelo Pistoletto, exhibition catalogue, Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin 2000, pp.112-3). The scraps of fabric deployed in the first Venus of the Rags were those that Pistoletto had used to clean the reflective surfaces in a series of works called the mirror paintings that he began to produce in the early 1960s, as in Uomo in piedi ( Standing Man) 1962, 1982 (). In T12200, the rags are replaced by second-hand clothes.

Just as Venus of the Rags comments on cycles of consumption, it, too, has had its own history of change through the making of the new versions of the work, which could involve modifications to the piles of rags. In 1997, Pistoletto explained:

In the various existing versions of the Venus, or their re-installation, you can use the same original rags or you can change them, but they must maintain their multi-coloured and ruffled character. One of the plaster Venuses of 1967 was broken. My project was to put the pieces together, leaving the signs of breakage evident, like the tears in the rags.

(Quoted in Christov-Bakargiev, p.157.)

The use of the sculpture links Venus of the Rags to earlier traditions, particularly the practice of deploying classical motifs by Italian artists associated with the Metafisica and Novecento movements of the early part of the twentieth century. This is the case in Giorgio de Chirico's painting The Uncertainty of the Poet 1913 (), which includes a depiction of fragment of statuary - a torso of Aphrodite. In Pistoletto's Venus of the Rags the statue functions as a given, and its status as a replicated object makes it comparable to the readymades of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968). The formlessness of the pile of torn fabrics may be said to anticipate and echo aspects of the idea of 'antiform' introduced by the artist Robert Morris (born 1931) in Artforum in April 1968. However, the sustained engagement with art of the past that characterises Arte Povera, and that T12200 exemplifies, makes this movement and this work distinct from the aims of antiform and other contemporary forms of art such as conceptualism and post-minimalism (Christov-Bakargiev, p.27).

Further reading:
Anna Imponente (ed.), Michelangelo Pistoletto, exhibition catalogue, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome 1990.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (ed.), Arte Povera, London 1999.
Richard Flood and Frances Morris (eds.), Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962-1972, exhibition catalogue, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis 2001, pp.305-16.

Alice Sanger
December 2009

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'Venus of the Rags', Michelangelo Pistoletto, 1967, 1974 | Tate

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Venus of the Rags juxtaposes an over-life sized classical statue of the Roman goddess of love, beauty and fertility, with a large pile of brightly coloured, discarded clothes that are heaped on the floor. The Venus statue is positioned with its back to the viewer.

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Crying Girl is the name of two different works by Roy Lichtenstein: a 1963 offset lithograph on lightweight, off-white wove paper and a 1964 porcelain enamel on steel.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, many American painters began to adapt the imagery and motifs of comic strips. Lichtenstein in 1958 made drawings of comic strip characters. Andy Warhol produced his earliest paintings in this style in 1960. Lichtenstein, unaware of Warhol's work, produced Look Mickey and Popeye in 1961. In the early 1960s, Lichtenstein produced several "fantasy drama" paintings of women in love affairs with domineering men causing women to be miserable. These works served as prelude to 1964 paintings of innocent "girls next door" in a variety of tenuous emotional states. Picasso's depictions of weeping women may have influenced Lichtenstein to produce portrayals of vulnerable teary-eyed women. Another possible influence on his emphasis on depicting distressed women in the early to mid-1960s was that his first marriage was dissolving at the time. Lichtenstein's first marriage to Isabel Wilson, which resulted in two sons, lasted from 1949 to 1965.

Although single-panel comic representations depict a moment in time, this is an example of one in which the moment is "pregnant" with drama related to other times. This work also marks a phase in Lichtenstein's career, when many of his works were named with present-participial names such as Sleeping Girl, Crying Girl and Blonde Waiting, which accentuates the works' "relation to process and action."

The lithograph on lightweight, off-white wove paper measures 16 by 24 inches (40.6 cm × 61.0 cm). Chuck Close claims to have purchased this from Leo Castelli on a visit to New York in 1963 for $10 ($85 in 2020 dollars). Close recalled the purchase "I remember I bought [a] Roy Lichtenstein...for [ten] dollars from Leo Castelli at Lichtenstein's first [sic] show. I brought it back to Yale and I was attacked unmercifully." Lichtenstein's first solo show at The Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City, which sold out before opening, ran from February 10 through March 3, 1962. His second solo exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery ran from September 28 - October 24, 1963.

The porcelain enamel on steel measures 46 by 46 inches (116.8 cm × 116.8 cm). It was adapted from a 1963 comic strip panel: Secret Hearts, no. 88 (June 1963), DC Comics. It has been held at the Milwaukee Art Museum, since 1965, and is considered to be one of Roy Lichtenstein's earliest attempts at producing enamel-on-steel works from the same type of comic-strip imagery he had begun producing as conventional hand-painted canvases.

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Crying Girl is the name of two different works by Roy Lichtenstein: a 1963 offset lithograph on lightweight, off-white wove paper and a 1964 porcelain enamel on steel. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, many American painters began to adapt the imagery and motifs of comic strips.

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Fashion trends in the 1960s swung wildly from one end of the spectrum to the other.
The early 1960s were marked by box dresses and 1950s fashions. In the mid-1960s, fashion began to take cues from London and the waistline reappeared. But the late sixties had a mind of their own!
There were so many trends that emerged strongly in 60's which has an influence on us even today!

Early 1960s (1960-62)

High fashion

American fashions in the early years of the decade reflected the elegance of the First Lady, Jaqueline kennedy. In addition to tailored skirts, women wore stilletto heelshoes and suits with short boxy jackets, and oversized buttons. Simple, geometric dresses, known as shifts, were also in style. For evening wear, full-skirted evening gowns were worn; these often had a low decolletage and close-fitting waists. For casual wear, capri trouserswere the fashion for women and girls.

The rise of trousers for women

The early 1960s gave birth to drapeline jeans and capri pants. Traditionally, trousers had been viewed by western society as masculine, but by the early 1960s, it had become acceptable for women to wear them everyday.

Mid-1960s (1963-66)

Space Age fashions

It was heavily influenced by the Space Race of the Cold War , in addition to popular films and television series Science fiction, paper bags , such as Star Trek , Dan Dare or Lost In Space.
The synthetic fabrics of the 1960s allowed space age fashion designers to design garments with bold shapes and a plastic texture.
The French designer André Courrèges was particularly influential in the development of space age fashion. The "space look" he introduced in the spring of 1964 included trouser suits, goggles, box-shaped dresses with high skirts, and go-go boots. Go-go boots eventually became a staple of go-go girl fashion in the sixties.Other influential space age designers include Pierre Cardin and Paco Rabanne.

A timeless fashion piece : Miniskirt

Mary Quant is credited with introducing the miniskirt in 1964, miniskirt changed fashion forever.Mary Quant and André Courrèges both contributed to the invention of miniskirt during the 1960s. Mary Quant, A British designer, was one of the pioneers of the miniskirt during 1960.Miniskirts became popular in London and Paris and the term " Chelsea Look" was coined.

Mod and British Invasion influences

The Mods (short for Modernists) adopted new fads that would be imitated by many young people.
Women had short, clean haircuts and often dressed in similar styles to the male Mods.The look of the Mods was classy.
Shirts were slim, with a necessary button down collar accompanied by slim fitted pants. Levi's were the only type of jeans worn by Modernists. Mod girls wore very very short miniskirts, tall, brightly colored go-go boots, monochromatic geometric print patterns such as houndstooth, and tight fitted, sleeveless tunics. Flared trousers and bell bottoms appeared in 1964 as an alternative to capri pants, and led the way to the hippie period introduced in the 1960s.
Starting in 1967, youth culture began to change musically and Mod culture shifted to a more laid back hippie or Bohemian style. Hosiery manufacturers of the time like Mary Quant (who founded Pamela Mann Legwear) combined the "Flower Power" style of dress and the Pop Art school of design to create fashion tights that would appeal to a female audience that enjoyed psycedelia.

Late 1960s (1967-69)

The hippie subculture

Ponchos, moccasins, love beads, peace signs, medallion necklaces, chain belts, polka dot-printed fabrics, and long, puffed "bubble" sleeves were popular fashions in the late 1960s. Both men and women wore frayed bell-bottomed jeans, tie-dyed shirts, work shirts, Jesus sandals, and headbands. Women would often go barefoot and some went braless.Women's shirts often had transparent sleeves. Psychedelic prints, hemp and the look of "Woodstock" emerged during this era.

Looks of the sixties -

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Fashion trends in the 1960s swung wildly from one end of the spectrum to the other.The early 1960s were marked by box dresses and 1950s fashions. In the mid-1960s, fashion began to take cues from London and the waistline reappeared.

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Definition of Suzy Homemaker in the Idioms Dictionary. Suzy Homemaker phrase. What does Suzy Homemaker expression mean? Definitions by the largest Idiom Dictionary.

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10 most wanted Christmas toys of the 1960s

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All we wanted were small kitchen appliances and lifelike dolls.

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Made by the American artist Andy Warhol, Electric Chair 1964 consists of a medium-size canvas that has been screenprinted with silver acrylic paint. In the centre of the canvas is depicted an unoccupied electric chair set in an empty room, and the chair bears a high-backed frame, as well as leather straps at its foot and longer straps and buckles at its sides. A cable running out from underneath the seat lies curled in front of the chair. Behind it, a small wooden table is shown against the back wall, and a barely visible sign that reads 'Silence' is positioned in the top right corner of the composition. The empty floor space in front of the chair is seemingly illuminated, being saturated with silver paint that fades to suggest dark and patchy shadows towards the edges of the canvas. The surface of the work is fairly uneven - the silver paint, which appears to have been applied over an under layer of bright green paint, has been absorbed into the canvas during the printing process, and the work has been lined with a second canvas. The lining adhesive has impregnated parts of the fabric of the canvas, creating a rippling effect. The work is signed and dated on the verso.

Electric Chair was made in 1964 in Warhol's studio in New York. In the early 1960s, Warhol began hand-printing images onto canvas and translating this technique to paper. Images were printed in monochrome colours and, according to the gallerist Frayda Feldman and the art publisher Jörg Schellmann, these were screened in a way 'that retained the graininess and immediacy of the mass media images on which they were based' (Feldman and Schellmann, 2003, p.45), creating imperfections and variations in each work such that they retained a handmade quality. This same process was used to create Electric Chair: here, the chair depicted is based on a press photograph from 13 January 1953 of the death chamber at Sing Sing Prison in New York, where American citizens Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed that year for passing information about the atomic bomb to Russia during the Second World War. In 1980 Warhol described his new process of printing as a significant change in his practice: 'you pick a photograph, blow it up, transfer it in glue onto silk, and then roll ink across so that the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue. That way you get the same image, slightly different each time. It was all so simple - quick and chancy. I was thrilled with it.' (Warhol and Hackett 2007, p.28.)

Electric Chair is part of Warhol's substantial Death and Disaster series that the artist started in 1962, early examples of which depicted car crashes and suicides as illustrated in newspaper images (see, for instance, Race Riot 1963and Ambulance Disaster 1963). With this series Warhol began to explore the effect of reproducing such images repeatedly across a canvas, testing his hypothesis that, as he suggested in 1963, 'when you see a gruesome picture over and over again, it doesn't really have an effect' (quoted in G.R. Swenson, '"What is Pop Art?" Interviews with Eight Painters', Art News, November 1963, p.61). Warhol's fascination with death indicated his interest in its continual presence in our everyday lives, but also our apparent distance from its impact. Notably, in contrast to the repetition of earlier Death and Disaster images that depicted the tragedies of its human subjects, Electric Chair is devoid of all human presence. As the art historian Neil Printz has observed, Electric Chair 'is remarkable for its visual sobriety and emotional understatement', and the emptiness and stillness of the room 'represents death as absence and silence'. (Printz in Menil Collection 1989,p.17.)

As a painter, Warhol created images based on products and advertising in popular culture, fusing commonplace, mass-manufactured images with mechanical reproduction, a style that came to be known as pop art. For early critics of Warhol's work such as Thomas Hess, his repetition of deathly images only served to undermine the critical 'integrity' of art (Hess in Menil Collection 1989,p.17). However, later criticism suggests that Warhol's Death and Disaster series drew attention to the gratuitous repetition of images in the media and brought viewers back into contact with the events themselves (see G.R. Swenson in Menil Collection 1989, p.17).

In subsequent iterations of the electric chairimage, Warhol experimented with colour and composition. In 1971 he produced a series of ten electric chair screenprints on paper. Here, the images are more tightly focused on the chair itself, such that it occupies a larger proportion of the pictorial space, and each has been printed in a bold colour such as yellow, pink, blue and orange (see Tate -).

Further reading
Andy Warhol: Death and Disasters,exhibition catalogue, Menil Collection, Houston 1989, pp.16-17.
Frayda Feldman and Jörg Schellmann, Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1987,4th edn, New York 2003.
Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett, POPism: The Warhol Sixties,London and New York 2007, pp.21, 28.

Harriet Curtis
June 2015

Supported by Christie's.
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.

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'Electric Chair', Andy Warhol, 1964 | Tate

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Artwork page for 'Electric Chair', Andy Warhol, 1964 Warhol began using the image of the electric chair in 1963, the same year as the two final executions in New York State. Over the next decade, he repeatedly returned to the subject, reflecting the political controversy surrounding the death penalty in America in the 1960s.

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'No painter, dead or alive, has ever made us more aware of our eyes than Bridget Riley.' Robert Melville, 1971

To see examples of Bridget Riley's art visit the Bridget Riley gallery.

Early Life - 1931 - 46

Bridget Riley was born in Norwood, South London in 1931. Her father, John Fisher Riley, originally from Yorkshire, was a printer, as was his father before him. In 1938, her father relocated the printing business to Lincolnshire and the family moved with it.

The family were not to spend long in Lincolnshire. In 1939, when war broke out her father was drafted into the armed services. Bridget, along with her sister, mother and aunt went to live in Cornwall away from the dangers of the blitz.

In Cornwall, Riley had great freedom as a child and spent a lot of her time playing on the cliffs and beaches near Padstow where she lived. She spent hours watching the changing light, colour and cloud formations and stored away what she saw in memory. She has later said that these early memories have had a big impact on her visual awareness throughout her life.

School and University - 1946-55

Drawing and painting became the centre of Bridget Riley's life from an early age and, after her school years at Cheltenham Ladies College (1946-49) she studied at Goldsmiths College, London (1949-52) and later at the Royal College of Art (1952-55).

Her studies were centred round life drawing and she worked mostly in black and white. The image to the right is a very early Bridget Riley, "Nude", which was drawn in conte and pastels around 1951-1952 either whilst still at Goldsmiths or at the start of her time at the Royal College.

Riley's time at the Royal College was confusing and difficult and she found the teaching and direction unrewarding. She was reaching the point where she wanted to establish her own style and express herself in her own way but found herself unable to do so in an institutional framework.

Difficult Years - The Mid- 1950s

Beginning the Recovery - 1957-58

In 1956 Bridget Riley saw an exhibition in London that had a significant impact and helped shape her creative thinking and sense of direction - an exhibition of American Abstract Expressionist painters at the Tate Gallery, the first exhibition of its kind in the country.

Riley moved into teaching and from 1957-1958 she taught art to girls aged 8-18 at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Harrow, introducing them to the sequences of shape, line and groups of colour, hoping to release their truly creative impulses and to discourage blind copying of the real world.

Bridget started to paint again during this period in a more exploratory style - the main influences being Matisse and Bonnard and she started to visit exhibitions again and renew contact with the art world.

Maurice de Sausmarez - 1958-60

Bridget Riley in Italy - 1960

In the summer of 1960 Bridget Riley travelled, painted and visited galleries in Italy with de Sausmarez and was enchanted by the black and white Romanesque buildings of Pisa and the churches of Ravenna. She also refers to seeing and admiring the work of the Italian Futurist painters Boccioni and Balla.

She was encouraged by her teacher, Maurice de Sausmarez (d 1970), to study the art of Georges-Pierre Seurat. Bridget Riley's "Pink Landscape" (shown to the right) completed in 1960 clearly shows the influence Seurat had on her.

On her return, she took a part-time teaching post Hornsey College of Art (1960-61), under the direction of de Sausmarez. The following year Riley moved to Croydon School of Art (1961-64). She also continued to work part time at J. Walter Thompson (a position she also left in 1964).

The Rise to Success - 1960-65

The Responsive Eye - 1965

Bridget Riley's paintings came to International notice when she exhibited along with Victor Vasarely and others in the Museum of Modern Art in New York at an exhibition called "The Responsive Eye" in 1965. It was one of Riley's paintings that was featured on the cover to the exhibition catalogue.

"The Responsive Eye" was a huge hit with the public but proved to be less popular with the critics, who dismissed the works as trompe l'oeil (literally 'tricks of the eye'). A short film - 'The Responsive Eye' - documenting the opening night of the exhibition was made by Brian de Palma.

Despite the critics, Riley held another wildly popular exhibition at this time in the US, at the Richard Feigen Gallery in New York. Tickets sold out on the first day that they went on sale - a remarkable achievement for an artist who was still in her early thirties.

"Op Art" - 1965

It was around this time that the term 'Op Art' entered the public consciousness. Op Art captured the imagination of the public and became part of the swinging sixties. The fashion, design and advertising industries fell in love with its graphic, sign-like patterns and decorative value. Op Art was cool, and Bridget Riley became Great Britain's number one art celebrity.

The basis of the Op Art movement was a form of geometric abstraction, which was in a way impersonal and not obviously related to the real world. "I couldn't get near what I wanted through seeing, recognizing and recreating, so I stood the problem on its head. I started studying squares, rectangles, triangles and the sensations they give rise to... It is untrue that my work depends on any literary impulse or has any illustrative intention. The marks on the canvas are sole and essential agents in a series of relationships which form the structure of the painting." (Bridget Riley)

The Emergence of Colour - 1967

"The music of colour, that's what I want" (Bridget Riley)

Riley's introduction of colour to her work was something she was cautious of. The black and white paintings depended on the disruption of stable elements. No such stable basis could be found for colour as the perception of colour is relative - each colour affects and is affected by the colours next to it. Over time, she began to accept this inherent instability and made it the basis of her work.

From 1967 onwards Riley increasingly began to use colour. She also started to use more stabilised forms - often simple vertical straight or wavy lines. It was the positioning of the colour itself that produced the feel of movement she wanted to convey. The colour groupings affected the spaces between them to produce fleeting glimpses of other colours and hence the illusion of movement.

Colour in Action - The 1970s

The Egyptian Connection - 1981

In 1981 she visited Egypt and was enchanted by the colours used by ancient Egyptian art. 'The colours are purer and more brilliant than any I had used before,' she wrote.

In the 'life-giving arrangement of colours' the Egyptians had used for over 3000 years Riley had found a group of colours which worked perfectly as a colour scheme. They retained their individual brilliance and still generated new colours and light effects in the spaces between the colour groups. With these colours she felt she had found the intensity of colour and the shimmer of light she had always searched for.

Prior to this point the use of colour in Riley's work was ordered and its progression could be followed across the canvas. The 'Egyptian' paintings mark the beginnings of free colour organisation, something that she uses to the current day.

Bridget Riley - Work outside of the Studio - 1982-83

The Lozenge Paintings - The Mid- 1980s and 1990s

The mid- 1980s saw Bridget Riley's work move progressively away from a build up of sensation giving rise to a perceptual response, and instead towards an art of pure visual sensation, treating form and colour as 'ultimate identities', as things in themselves. Units of colour were arranged according to principles of relation and chromatic interaction, but increasingly were connected to the implication of rhythm, space and depth.

Riley began to incorporate diagonal 'lozenge' elements rising from left to right which cut across the verticals, shattering the picture plane. Planes of colour alternately advance and recede, giving rise to contrasts in colour, tone, density and direction.

Of this period Riley said: "I try to take sensation as the guiding line and build, with the relationships it demands, a plastic fabric which has no other raison d'etre except to accommodate the sensation its solicits."

Late period - 2000 to date

Bridget Riley in the Studio - How she works

Bridget Riley's major paintings are very large and may take six to nine months to develop, almost to evolve. She begins by making small colour studies in gouache. Riley hand mixes all of the paints as the exact hue and intensity is vital and must be kept constant.

Successful studies lead to a full size paper and gouache cartoon which prefigures the final work. These are then enlarged, ruled up, under-painted with acrylic and over-painted in oils. Everything is painted by hand - no rulers, masking tape or mechanical means are used when actually applying the paints. Riley has worked with assistants since the 1960s because of the large scale and the need for great precision.

Bridget Riley CBE is a trustee of the National Gallery in London.

Bridget Riley on Rhythm and Repetition

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'No painter, dead or alive, has ever made us more aware of our eyes than Bridget Riley.' Robert Melville, 1971 To see examples of Bridget Riley's art visit the Bridget Riley gallery. Early Life - 1931 - 46 Bridget Riley was born in Norwood, South London in 1931.

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Stephen Hawking - Important Scientists - The Physics of the Universe

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The Physics of the Universe - Important Scientists - Stephen Hawking