# data[].attributes.body
Children are not developing fully due to screen time on all electronics.

# data[].attributes.body
The modern prison system doesn't reform people and does more harm to people than help

# data[].attributes.body
Alcohol is not a right, it is a privilege that should be taken and used responsibly

# data[].attributes.body
Athletes should not be allowed to use any performance enhancing substances because of its harmful effects.

# data[].attributes.body
Transgender women shouldn't be allowed to participate in women’s sports.

# data[].attributes.body
AI poses a large threat to all of our jobs.

# data[].attributes.body
Safe haven laws are essential.

# data[].attributes.body
Ai should be used in school to be used only as a resource and not as a way to not do any work

# data[].attributes.body
Phones are bad for your brain and your mental health so they should be banned

# data[].attributes.body
Topic: Self defense laws

The current self defence laws in place fail the American people when hit with a deathly situation.

# data[].attributes.body
Parents should do their own research about what they inject into their kids, instead of blindly believing everything doctors say.

# data[].attributes.body
The United States needs more onshore computer chip manufacturing

# data[].attributes.body
The American Identity not only influenced on art in culture, but has in turn been influenced and changed by art in culture as well.

# data[].attributes.body
Wind turbines negatively impact the environment and should be greatly limited in the amount they are used.

# data[].attributes.body
Physician Assisted suicide should not be allowed because it is immoral.

# data[].attributes.body
The NFL needs to address injuries of the players and make a change on rules in games so that players will stay safe.

# data[].attributes.body
Immigrants are taking over jobs in the U.S.

# data[].attributes.body
College athletes should not be making money from NIL deals in College sports.

# data[].attributes.body
Transgender women should not be allowed to participate in women's sports.

# data[].attributes.body
Tattoos have been in the world since biblical times, but they are not biblical unless there is a strong and meaningful reason behind why someone gets them.

# data[].attributes.body
Preteens should not be introduce to social media at their early stages of figuring things out.

# data[].attributes.body
Not all online piracy is bad

# data[].attributes.body
modern food and diets lead to more obesity than genetics.

# data[].attributes.body
NIL deals hurt college sports and its competition.

# data[].attributes.body
Alcohol has a direct affect on mental health.

# data[].attributes.body
The death penalty is wrong and life without parole should be the alternative for criminals on death row

# data[].attributes.body
Weightlifting is the best option for working out.

# data[].attributes.body
Food portion sizes are bigger in America than in other countries, which is contributing to the obesity epidemic in the U.S.

# data[].attributes.body
While I think aircraft manufacterures are doing enough to prevent C02 emissions currently I still think it is a big issue and that there is still improvements that need to be made as aerospace technology advances.

# data[].attributes.body
Vaping can cause permanent damage to your lungs and even relationships.

# data[].attributes.body
Handgun purchase age should be lowered to 18.

# data[].attributes.body
College tuition should not go up for out of state students

# data[].attributes.body
The minimum wage shouldn't be made higher as a means of helping the economy.

# data[].attributes.body
Best airline

# data[].attributes.body
Illegal immigrants should get a worse punishment if they immigrate illegally.

# data[].attributes.body
While some argue that the required capital investment is too high, the United States needs to expand onshore chip manufacturing to mitigate its dangerously high reliance on offshore production.

# data[].attributes.body
The best airline can be determined by cost efficiency.

# data[].attributes.body
While some believe that being able to drink alcohol is a right once they are of age, it is a privelege, and must be taken responsibly.

# data[].attributes.body
While some argue that transgender women should be treated equally compared to biological women when it comes to sports, it creates an unfair advantage to those who were born male.

# data[].attributes.body
High amounts of screen time on all electronics negatively effect kids because it leads to adhd and undervelopemt in the brain.

# data[].attributes.body
It could be said that performance enhancing drugs help the athlete's physique and health, but this view overlooks the significant mental and physical risks to the athlete, while also having the concern of unfairness and loosing integrity to the sport.

# data[].attributes.body
While some argue that forcing vaccines is necessary to protect other children, it takes away from the core value of America, freedom.

# data[].attributes.body
Who are the different groups that you would be addressing with your argument paper?

What do they believe?

What do you believe you can convince them to believe?

What background information might help to have, to appeal to my audience?

Where do you share common ground with your aduience?

What do you want your audience to know or do by the end of your paper?

# data[].attributes.body
Due to its negative impact on soil, wind turbines should be greatly limited in their use.

# data[].attributes.body
while some argue prisons are for punishment I believe they are for rehabilitation and reintegration to society

# data[].attributes.body
having a college degree can be your best way of having a successful future

# data[].attributes.body
college tuition should be lowered to make college more accessible and affordable for more students

# data[].attributes.body
While some believe that cellphones can be good and help society, other say that cellphones are only distractions to learning and cause you mental and physical health to decline.

# data[].attributes.body
While the NFL has implemented more complex concussion protocols, stricter rules on tackling, and improvements in protective equipment, concerns rise among the long-term health effects of repeated head injuries, especially in football.

# data[].attributes.body
Due to abortion being murder, it should be banned in the U.S.

# data[].attributes.body
while some argue that commercials and ads are good to an athlete because of money and NIL, It is actually bad excuse of the mental side of it and how it brings a player down.

# data[].attributes.body
A.I should be aloud in schools as a tool for research and learning, but should be monitored and used for the right reasons.

# data[].attributes.body
While some think Illegal immigrants should just get deported, I believe they should get a harsher punishment to prevent them from Immigrating again.

I think you are going to have trouble with this argument because if they are deported we no longer have a say in their outcomes...plus, is punishment the best way to handle the problem?

# data[].attributes.body
Ads are bad for athletes

# data[].attributes.body
While some may contend that the addition of AI automation to the workforce results in more efficient work, I would argue that AI is a treat for the human workforce jobs.

# data[].attributes.body
Prarieland dairy offers a service that is is not provided anywhere else locally therefore the state should renew their permit

# data[].attributes.body
while some believe that you need a college degree to be successful, others say you can be just as successful without one

# data[].attributes.body
The Current self defense laws in place in American, and the American judicial system fail the American people by not allowing much room when prompted to defend themselves.

# data[].attributes.body
While some people would say that college athletes should be paid while in athletics, the NCAA needs to change it so that they have to make it pro in order to be paid.

# data[].attributes.body
while many people around the dairy argue that the dairy plant should be shut down due to the smell they most recognize that the service is not provided anywhere and the level of animal waste cannot be processed anywhere else

# data[].attributes.body
While some believe that a parent would discard their child before they would safely abandon them, statistics of babies that have been protected are worth the option of safe havens.

# data[].attributes.body
Who?

Players

Coaches

Fans

What do they believe?

Players should be able to cmoe back from injury whenever they want so that their team has a better chance of winning

What do you believe you can convince them?

It is physically and mentally not safe for players try and comeback early fom injury.

What background info...?

That there have been players this year who have sustained many concussions already and have done little to none about it.

Where do you share common...?

I believe that the players should have the desire to play for their team

What do you want you audience to know?

It is definitely not safe to get a concussion or any injury and try to comeback weeks early to play because there is a high likleyhood to get reinjured.

# data[].attributes.body
who?

1. athletes

2. families of athletes

3. coaches

4. organizations

What they believe?

1. athletes should be able to do commercials and ads and get paid for them

Convince

1. I want to convince them that commercials and ads are bad for an athletes mental health

background info

1. people having to take breaks from social media because of the hateful comments and side effects

common ground

1. I share common ground in that I think having the money form other organizations can be a good thing but the hate is where it turn bad

what do I want them to know

1. I want them to know the mental effects of advertising and NIL

# data[].attributes.body
Parents, kids, students, phone companies, scientists

Some believe phones are good for you and they are important use and other think that they bad for you and your brain

School work and how you brain reacts to when your phone is in reach

Show a science study of kids taking tests when their phones are in the room and when they aren't

Phones are bad

They are bad for your brain and will only cause harm

# data[].attributes.body
Probably everybody but mostly women

Depends on the person

Abortion should be banned

Where they stand

With those who are against abortion

Abortion should be banned in the U.S.

# data[].attributes.body
local parents and lawmakers

they have different views some with worry for misuse and some with gratefulness of option for struggling parents

I believe that they are essential to practically stopping abortion because it creates space for options

research on previous laws, and personal stories of people and children who have survived with safe haven boxes, or buildings

believe that life is valuable and precious

that there is a reason for safe haven and they should never be taken away

# data[].attributes.body
1. audience

2. families

3. NCAA

4. college athletes getting paid

5. coaches

6. organizations

7. why are these athletes getting paid like reasons

8. how much money is getting used for NIL yearly

Convince

1. my goal is to convince my audience that NIL is bad because college athletes should not be paid

background info

1. curtain amounts of money go towards athletes yearly while playing college sports

2. is the money a waste

what do I want them to know?

1. i want them to know that NIL is wasting money

# data[].attributes.body
1. businessmen, college professors, college students

2. they would believe that u need to go to college to be successful

3. I believe I could convince them that if you want to secure a successful future go to college but you don't always need a degree to become successful

4. people that have become successful without a degree

5. I share common ground with my audience because I think that you can be plenty successful without ever going to college but I do agree that going to college is a way to secure a future

6. I want them to know that whether they choose to go to college or not they can be successful with or without a degree

# data[].attributes.body
Appealing to ex-convicts and their families and prison workers.

they believe modern prisons lead to reoffense

I can convince them our modern system doesn't work or help people

background info that would help is reoffense rates

I share common ground that prisions don't work as they are

I want them to rethink what can be done t with correctional facilitys

# data[].attributes.body
I would appeal to students and teachers and possibly parents of students.

Students would probably agree ai should be allowed teachers would disagree.

I think I can convince them to believe that people can use AI, and utilize it for good while not using it to do all the work.

Good information to have would be opinions from the different groups.

I share common ground with the audience because I believe that ai is a good resource but it shouldn't be used to write essays or do homework, it should just be used as a form of research and finding things easier.

I want my audience to know that AI is good and can be used effectively without it becoming a form of cheating.

# data[].attributes.body
Who:

1) Lawmakers

2) Criminals

3) Gun owners

What do they believe:

1) They agree with the laws in place

2) They want there to be full punishment for those who exercise self-defense

3) They want to be able to exercise their rights and protect their safety against threats.

What do I think I can convince them:

By loosening self-defense laws, crime would deplete along with the mortalities.

Background Information:

Personal stories and examples of how the system has failed those in distress.

Common ground:

I do think that there needs to be some restrictions and there needs to be some sort of witness to the instance.

What I want my audience to know:

I want my audience to know the failure of the American lawmaking system and the current state of self-defense, I want them to feel inspired to change the prejudice and create conclusions and solutions.

# data[].attributes.body
Farmers

Animal Activists

Climate Activists

Elected officials

U.S. Department of Energy

People who live in "flyover states"

Besides farmers and animal activists, these groups believe that Wind turbines are a great eco-friendly way to generate energy.

I believe that I can convince these people that wind turbines have a lot of negative impacts on the environment rather than good.

Background information on what materials are used in making wind turbines and on what scientifically proven impacts wind turbines have on the soil and the environment.

I share common ground in that I also use energy and I seek for better ways to create it, but I do not support wind turbines.

I want my audience to understand that wind turbines are bad for the environment and I want farmers to stop selling portions of their land to set up wind farms.

# data[].attributes.body
I am addressing parents, doctors, and vaccine manufacturers in my argument paper. Some parents believe vaccines are the only option to protect children, while others believe that vaccines can cause harm and should not be fully trusted. Doctors and Vaccine manufacturers believe that vaccines will protect children from death. I think that I can convince these people groups that it ultimately should be up to the parents, what they decide to inject into their kids because they should weigh the pros and cons of vaccines without the force of the world.

People's personal stories about how vaccines changed their lives, good and bad. I do believe that vaccines have helped prevent death, but also there are lots of unnecessary vaccines. I want my audience to know that it is ultimately up to the parents what they decide to do because we live in a country that prioritizes freedom.

# data[].attributes.body
Piracy that does not hurt the revenue or credit of the original creator is not wrong

# data[].attributes.body
Although NIL deals are seen as something that hurts the college football game, NIL is beneficial as it allows athletes to be paid for the hours of commitment they spend to training and competing

# data[].attributes.body
Weightlifting is the most optimal thing to do in the gym, in terms of physical and mental health.

# data[].attributes.body
Transgender women should not be allowed to participate in any women's sports because it greatly injured biological women, violates women's rights, and affects the participation in sports.

# data[].attributes.body
Going to public school is better than homeschooling because it better prepares kids learning and studying abilities for college. Some people say that homeschooling isn't bad and kids are still learning but are they learning things needed for there next step in life?

# data[].attributes.body
While some people argue that vaping isn't harmful, there is a large amount of research and proof on how vaping is even worse for you than regular smoking. Vaping can also damage the relationships that you have because of the addiction that it causes.

# data[].attributes.body
While some argue that alcohol can be used as a stress reliever, the effect only lasts a short amount of time and has a negative impact on mental health in the long run.

# data[].attributes.body
Manufacturing companies should limit the amount and types of fats added to foods because it is the main reason for the obesity epidemic in the U.S.

# data[].attributes.body
I would be addressing College athletes and students, football fans and even buisnesses. They believe that athletes should be paid because of everything they do for colleges.

I believe I can convince them to pay student athletes.

Background info/ common ground could be showing how much revenue athletes raise for colleges.

I want them to believe that athletes should be paid for the effort they put in and be paid for everything they do for schools

# data[].attributes.body
While some argue that the death penalty is the way of justice, it should be outlawed because it is inhumane, and life without parole is just as much of a punishment.

# data[].attributes.body
Who:

1. Younger kids

2. low income people/families

what do they believe:

1. Piracy of games/media that does not detriment the creator should be allowed

Convincing:

1. Piracy of games that do not generate revenue should be allowed because some people do not have the time or money to access them.

Background:

1. Companies like Nintendo sue people for pirating games they do not sell anymore

Common Ground:

1. pirating media that is being sold/generating revenue for the creators is wrong

What they should know:

1. the problems with the current system of punishing piracy

# data[].attributes.body
who/different people groups:

~ democrats (specifically women), transgender women, LGBTQ+ community, celebrities = disagree think it's ok to have transgender women in sports

~ female athletes; parents of female athletes, Christians = agree; think that transgender women should not be allowed to participate in women's sports

my opinion:

~ I believe I can convince them that transgender women shouldn't be allowed because they are biologically different and can cause harm

background info:

~ history of title 99

~ personal experiences from female athletes that have been affected by transgender women involved in their sports

common ground:

~ everyone should have a chance to participate in sports

audience to know:

~ history behind transgender women; their effects on women's sports; biology of men and women and how transgender women still have qualities of men after they switch

# data[].attributes.body
-Who?

School Boards

At home parents/parents not a home

Coupes with a kid getting to the age of schooling

Teachers

Government

-What they Believe

Some believe homeschooling is better while others say going to public/private schools are better

-Convince

I want to convince them that going to a public/private school is better than homeschooling because it better prepares the kids for college and life

-common ground

Education is good

Value: caring about children

any kind of school is needed to develop

-Background info

This has been an argument for a while and at the moment public/private schools is winning

-What I want them to know

Knowing that getting the best preparation for college and life is the best way to be successful in life

# data[].attributes.body
who?

students, parents, alcohol manufacturers, drinkers, people who have become sober, psychologists

beliefs?

alcohol is a big money maker, it is a stress reliever, it changes your brain chemistry, it should be illegal

what can I convince?

alcohol's affects in the brain can be seen when scanning brains, it directly messes with neurotransmitters, it is addictive

background info?

research on brain, studies by psychologists, stories from past addicts and the affect on their life

common ground?

health is important; brains should be protected because they control the body

what I want the audience to know?

I want them to become more aware of the affects of alcohol because I feel like it is taken lightly

# data[].attributes.body
Who

1. Families and friends of criminal

2. Family and friends of the injured

3. Judges

4. Christians

They believe that murder is wrong, life has value, and justice should be served

I can convince them that justice can be served without murder being the only option

Some background info i can have is… what crime was committed, mental state, biblical evidence

The common ground is that life has value and murder is wrong

I want them to know the statistics behind the death penalty and prove to them that it is inhumane

# data[].attributes.body
Many argue that social media helps preteens with socializing, but yet preteens are already known for struggling with social issues and mental health; therefore, social media should limit by before the age 16.

# data[].attributes.body
1. Who are the different groups that you would be addressing with your argument paper?

Gym bros

U.S Citizens

Doctors

Manufacturing companies

2. What do they believe?

Gym bros: They are bad and will kill your gains

U.S citizens: It doesn't really matter too much, should be a concern but not a big one

Doctors: They would agree that fats aren't good for you

Manufacturing companies: It's not bad, they want to make more money.

3. What do you believe you can convince them to believe?

How the more saturated/trans fats being added to foods has had a major impact on the obesity rate in the U.S

4. Background info?

There are statistics showing the obesity rate rising and statistics showing how much more saturated fat is being added to foods.

5. Common ground.

The obesity rate in the U.S is increasing

6. Know and do.

I want the audience to understand better how much bad fats are in some foods, so they understand what to eat before harming their health. They can fix the issue by limiting the amount of fats that are allowed into foods which would help overeating of bad fats.

# data[].attributes.body
who?

1. Athletes

2. Cardio-junkies

3. Calisthenic people

4. Doctors

What they believe?

1. Cardio and calisthenic people would disagree and see their way of working out as better

2. Athletes and doctors would somewhat disagree because they believe that it can be used with more athletic lifts

Convince

1. I want to convince them that weightlifting is the most optimal thing they can do for their physical and mental health.

Background info

# data[].attributes.body
While many say the best airline could be determined by cost efficiency there are many different aspects to consider within that; therefore, it should be balanced with scheduling.

# data[].attributes.body
Different Groups: (depends if they agree/disagree)

Athletes- some think it will help improve performance in their sport others know its harmful.

Parents+Coaches- think it could help athlete perform better or they know that it is a health risk and not fair

Doctors- some might think it helps athletes recover from injuries, some think its a health risk

HS/College teams and ADs

- I can explain the mental/physical risks on the athlete, and that it is unfair.

- Background info- I can list actual health risks, importance of fairness, examples of athletes who used them and had consequences, use statistics, and mention rules that have been made by sports organizations against PEDs.

Common Ground:

Everyone could agree that the competition should be fair and there are real risks.

I would want my audience to know: Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs):

makes sports unfair

puts athletes health at risk

could be a bad influence on other athletes in the future.

# data[].attributes.body
Groups addressed…

Parents (partially agree)

Children (disagree)

Teachers (Partially agree)

Doctors (agree)

Electronic companies (disagree)

Online Apps (disagree)

What do they believe?

Parents teachers and doctors all kind of fall in the same category to different extents. They primarily believe that increased screen time for kids is definitely effecting kids negatively. Some may believe that ANY screen time is bad while other believe lots is bad.

Children, electronic companies and online apps completely disagree with this for many reasons. The apps and product companies disagree because people using their product keeps them in business and benefits them. They don’t really care about a child’s wellbeing. Children disagree because it is entertainment for them.

I want to convince all parties that excess screen time is bad. Without completely cutting out ALL screen time because it does have some benefits.

Background information on studies and polls taken from kids that have had lots of time on devices and kids who haven’t had as much time on devices to prove the overall negative effects of LOTS of screen time. Common ground is shown by everyone wants the best for their kids, so getting to show people how they can be healthiest. I want my audience to be aware of how they are putting their kid/can be putting future kids at risk because they allow their kid to stare at a screen instead of building a relationship and having fun with real world things.

# data[].attributes.body
government, tech companies

could be good but there are some concerns about cost and effect on other countries

it is a worthwhile investment that will help the United States

statistics on the effects and other benefits

we both value economic stability

support the United states in onshore computer chip manufacturing

# data[].attributes.body
Who?

1. Athletes (Opposing and Supporting team)

2. Coaches

3. Doctors

4. Fans

5. Families

What do they believe?

1. Support transgender women in women’s sports

2. Don’t support transgender women in women’s sports

What do you believe you can convince them to believe?

1. Transgender women shouldn't be in women’s sports

Background info

1. Many NCAA volleyball teams have forfeited playing against teams with transgender women as it creates an unfair advantage for that team. Biological men have different physical traits.

Where do you share common?

1. All the players want to play their sport and be supported on matter what they believe

What do you want your audience to know?

1. That transgender women don’t belong in women’s sports because it creates unfair advantages and causes unnecessary drama

# data[].attributes.body
Texting while driving

Social media and mental health

Social media and free speech

Cellular Telephones

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Summary of American Art

The United States' rich artistic history stretches from the earliest indigenous cultures to the more recent globalization of contemporary art. Centuries before the first European colonizers, Native American peoples had crafted ritual and utilitarian objects that reflected the natural environment and their beliefs. After the arrival of Europeans, artists looked to European tendencies in portraiture and landscape painting to craft representations of the new land, but it was not until the middle of the 19 th century with the Hudson River School that American artists were considered to have launched a cohesive movement. Through the early 20th century, artists still took cues from European avant-garde groups but increasingly focused on the denizens of American urban centers and the more rural Midwest. After World War II, the artists that comprised the Abstract Expressionist movement found international fame and notoriety, and for the first time, American artistic influence moved abroad, and later Minimalism and Pop Art greatly impacted the art world. Subsequently, with various global art centers and international connections, it is now more difficult to point to a specific American art trend, although one can still chart the influence of American artists in the global art sphere.

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

While not originally recognized by the European colonizers, the artistic creations of the indigenous Native American tribes were varied and long held. Abounding in various media and styles, Native American art encompassed the decorative, utilitarian, and ritualistic. Incorporating European styles and materials in the 19th century, Native American artists transformed traditional subjects and processes to tell their stories and continue to do so today.

As the United States' territory grew through the 19th century due to the annexation of land, both painting and photography propelled manifest destiny's ideas of American exceptionalism and romantic notions of national identity. Large landscape paintings depicting the American West captured the sublimity of the natural landscape, and photography in particular was instrumental in some cases in the creation of National Parks.

For many art historians, the designation "American Art" usually ended at World War II. After the international recognition of Abstract Expressionism, the art world became increasingly globalized and diffuse, with styles and trends practiced in all corners of the world, but recent scholarship has focused on the transnational dialogues that are occurring now and tracing those back to create a richer understanding of the art of the United States.

The Important Artists and Works of American Art

Cliff Dwellers

Artist: George Bellows

Bellows' Cliff Dwellers, with its depiction of the gritty vitality of slum life, exemplifies the Ashcan School. In a neighborhood of tenement buildings, its denizens crowd into the streets, engaged in a variety of activities; some women and children sit on the steps, a mother admonishes her child at center, while working men and a street vendor throng in the background. Only a touch of horizon and sky remains between the vertical rows of apartments and the network of clotheslines that diagonally cross the street from building to building. As the people gather outside to avoid the heat in the stifling apartments, the brushwork, vibrant and vigorous, creates a sense of physicality. Apartment dwellers can be glimpsed in the upper levels of the buildings, as they seem to be caught up in private conversations or lean out of their apartment windows. The work reflects the impact of immigration in the era, as recent arrivals were densely crowded into slum neighborhoods. Yet as art critic Michael Kimmelman writes, "the joylessness of the subject is undercut by the soft light that streams into the scene and by the characters on the stoops and in the streets whom Bellows endows with more charm than misery."

Part of the second generation of the Ashcan School, Bellows used the group's then favored strategies in this work, employing a geometric compositional scheme as well as the "chords," or triads of complementary colors expounded by Hardesty G. Maratta's color theory. Yet, his fluid brushwork and vibrant color made his work distinctive, as he conveyed the robust swagger and energy of working class life.

Oil on canvas - Los Angeles County Museum of Art

American Gothic

Artist: Grant Wood

Exemplifying American Regionalism, this iconic image depicts a dour couple in a frontal pose, reminiscent of folk art portraits, in front of their American Gothic Revival-style farmhouse. The man, aloof but confrontational, grips an upright pitchfork, while gazing directly at the viewer, while the woman's slight turn toward him conveys a hint of deference, as she stares into the distance with downturned brows and lips. The vertical lines of the pitchfork rising to the lightning rod on the roof and echoed in the fabric of the man's shirt and the house's paneling emphasize the stasis and rigidity of the figures. Influenced by Hans Memling, a 15 th-century German artist, Wood employed a grid-like structure, echoing patterns, and precise detail to create the instantly recognizable portrait.

Yet for all of its apparent clarity and accessibility, the work has aroused much debate, over the identity and relationship of the couple and the artist's intention. Wood based the portraits on his dentist and his younger sister, but many viewers took the two for husband and wife. As art critic Dennis Kardon noted, "One is struck by the incredibly subtle details, cues, and complex formal structure that undermine any simple reading." When the work was first shown at the Art Institute of Chicago's 1930 annual exhibition, some debated whether the portrayal was ironic or meant to be, as Woods insisted, a celebration of the Iowa he loved. The work was also widely featured in national newspapers as embodying a new American art that portrayed hard-working American farmers. Subsequently, the image has been parodied in countless magazines, advertisements, videos, films, and TV series, making it among the most recognizable of American artworks.

Oil on Beaver Board - The Art Institute of Chicago

The Migration of the Negro, Panel 3

Artist: Jacob Lawrence

This painting depicts one of the sixty panels in the artist's Great Migration series, a signature work of the Harlem Renaissance. Depicted as elemental forms in flat planes of color, a group of African Americans, carrying their possessions, form a pyramidal shape that conveys their collective purpose and unified strength. Pressing horizontally forward, they also rise up, outlined against a barren hill, as a curving line of crows both echoes their flight and evokes a sense of danger escaped. Each of the works in the series had a caption, and this one reads "From every Southern town migrants left by the hundreds to travel north."

Influenced by Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco, Lawrence saw these small works, each 12 by 18 inches, as a single work, in effect, a mural but innovatively divided into parts. He worked on all sixty panels simultaneously. The panels also resemble film storyboards, and as art historian Elsa Smithgall noted, "He thought very carefully about the progression from one image to another," using "syncopated refrains that remind us of the backdrop of jazz." Calling his synthesis of broad color planes and flat linear design, "dynamic cubism," Lawrence was also, and primarily, influenced by his own childhood and the colors and shapes of Harlem. He studied with painter Charles Alston and, later, sculptor Augusta Savage, and as art historian Leslie King-Hammond noted, was the "first major artist of the 20th-century who was technically trained and artistically educated within the art community in Harlem."

Fortune magazine featured Lawrence's series after its exhibition, and the Museum of Modern Art and The Phillips Collection purchased the work and divided the 60 panels between them. Lawrence's work later influenced Kerry James Marshall, Faith Ringgold, Robert Colescott, Hank Willis Thomas, and Alexis Gideon

Tempera on gesso on composition board - The Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Gold Marilyn Monroe

Artist: Andy Warhol

This signature work of Pop Art depicts an image of Marilyn Monroe, centered within a gold background, that suggests a Byzantine religious icon. The black and white publicity photo that the artist used was taken from the hit film Niagara (1953) where Monroe, having developed her signature make-up look, played the femme fatale who met a tragic end. The film noir was famous for its nearly nude scenes of the actress and its 30-second long filming of her walking away down the street, in slow motion with her hips swaying. Here, a garish color palette has transformed the photo, though its underlying black and white creates a sense of emerging darkness. By portraying her as an icon, Warhol subtly critiques the modern cult of celebrity, as well as suggesting that it was this depersonalization that drove the tragedy. While the surface is gold and shiny, the space she inhabits is empty. At the same time, only her disembodied head is depicted, suggesting a lack of agency and empowerment, leaving her to be the object of a gaze.

In August 1962, the superstar Marilyn Monroe died from an overdose of sleeping pills, and the world became obsessed with her life, her film career, her celebrity as a "sex goddess," and the tragedy that both occurred throughout her life and led to her death. Warhol made a series of works from this image, reproducing it again and again, just as it was reproduced in magazines and newspapers, evoking the superstar as a brand, another item on the shelf of consumer culture. Warhol's Diptych (1962), another work in his Marilyn series, was named by a survey of 500 artists and critics as the third "most influential piece of modern art," in 2004.

Silkscreen - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Spiral Jetty

Artist: Robert Smithson

This famous Earth Work is a counter clockwise, 1500-foot long spiral that extends into the Great Salt Lake in Utah, replicating the growth patterns of crystals and seashells. Smithson chose the northeastern section of the lake because the environment had been negatively impacted when the Southern Pacific Railroad cut off the influx of fresh water into the lake in 1959, resulting in an explosion of Dunaliella salina, saltwater tolerant red algae. He found the resulting red and violet hues evoked a dystopian landscape and felt that the piece would draw attention to how human action could both ruin and transform the environment.

Shaped out of mud, crystalized salt, and black basalt, the shape has taken on the crystallization and coloration of changing conditions, but for many years remained completely submerged underwater. Spiral Jetty embodies the artist's emphasis on the concept of entropy, or the devolution of systems over time. At the same time, the shape evokes a primal symbol, often replicated on ancient cave walls and stones within many cultural contexts. As art critic Jonathan Jones noted, "When Smithson built Spiral Jetty, he reinvented the stone age. Its mysterious marking of the landscape deliberately resembles the prehistoric architecture of neolithic Britain...has forebears in the Americas, from the Nazca lines of Peru to...Serpent Mound... This neo-primitivism lives on in art, from James Turrell's continuing bid to turn Roden Crater in Arizona into an astral observatory (or temple) to Olafur Eliasson's current efforts to place 12 huge lumps of Arctic ice in the heart of Paris."

Mud, precipitated salt crystals, rocks, water coil - Rozel Point, Great Salt Lake, Utah

Napoleon Leading the Army Over the Alps

Artist: Kehinde Wiley

This large equestrian portrait depicts a contemporary African-American man riding a rearing white steed, in an appropriation and re-visioning of Jacques-Louis David's famous Bonaparte Crossing the Grand Saint-Bernard Pass, 20 May 1800.

The young man wears camouflage army fatigues, a white bandanna, and red sweatbands, as a gold cloak swirls and flows around his shoulders, echoing the gesture of his tattooed arm pointing upward and onward. On the rocky path, stones are inscribed, as in David's image, with the names of military leaders, including "BONAPARTE," "HANNIBAL," AND "KAROLUS MAGNUS," though Wiley has added "WILLIAMS," lending equal importance to the name of his model.

The long history of American portraiture had developed out of the European tradition where it communicated the subject's wealth, social standing, and cultural significance. By depicting an anonymous young black man in what Wiley has called a "hyper-heroic" depiction - using a monumental canvas and reducing the scale of the horse to emphasize the figure of the rider - the work reflects his belief that "art is about communicating power, and it's been that way for hundreds of years...What I choose to do is take people who happen to look like me, black and brown, people all over the world increasingly, and allowing them to occupy that field of power." At the same time, his work critiques the marginalization and disenfranchisement of black males in contemporary America. A pioneering example of Identity Politics, the work expresses the artist's statement, "My painting is about the world that we live in. Black men live in the world. My choice is to include them. This is my way of saying yes to us."

Oil on canvas - Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York

American Art (Early-1900)

Native American Art

Before Europeans colonized North America, rich, complex art traditions flourished among many indigenous tribes who had developed a highly stylized vocabulary that employed complex geometric patterns and used near abstracted forms that both evoked the natural world and symbolized ancestral and mythological stories. The objects were often utilitarian and, at the same time, imbued with ritual significance. However, the newly arrived colonists in the Eastern United States primarily viewed those traditions as curiosities or arts and crafts, while aspiring to British fine art traditions and cultural values. Native American artists adapted the new materials and techniques brought by the colonists, including floral embroidery, beads, and silver smithing.

At the same time, some indigenous artists developed a European style to depict native subjects. David Cusick, a Tuscarora artist, published his Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations in 1828, and, along with his brother Dennis, a watercolorist, established the Iroquois Realist School. The first Native American art movement included over 25 Iroquois artists, who employed drawing, painting, and printmaking to realistically depict their tribe's beliefs, history, fashion, and lifestyle. Edmonia Lewis, of Mississauga Ojibwe and African-American descent, became internationally known for her Neoclassical sculpture, like The Death of Cleopatra (1876), exhibited at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. In the early 1900s, Native American art began to receive national and international attention. The Kiowa Six, Spencer Asah, James Auchiah, Jack Hokeah, Stephen Mopope, Lois Smoky, and Monroe Tsatoke, were celebrated for their Ledger drawings that employed strong outlined, flat areas of bold color. The group exhibited at the 1928 First International Art Exposition in Prague and the Venice Biennale in 1932.

Folk Art

Much American folk art is utilitarian in nature, as sculptures were primarily figureheads for ships, weathervanes, and carved gravestones, but framed embroideries and velvet paintings were also made for wall decorations. Early American folk painters were called limners, from a term limning, meaning, "to outline in clear, sharp detail." Often self-taught, limners travelled from town to town and made a living by offering to paint anything, from signs for local merchants to farm implements and carriages. As the colonies reflected the British cultural values that viewed portraiture as a sign of social standing, fine art portraitists like the French born Henrietta Johnston, who emigrated to Charleston, South Carolina around 1705, gravitated to the cities, while limners made it possible for ordinary people in small towns to have their portraits painted. Boldly colored and outlined without modeling or shading, folk art portrayals were often intimate, depicting the sitter with a few objects that were of personal significance. Beginning his career as limner, Edward Hicks became famous for his The Peaceable Kingdom (1829-31), a work that expressed his Quaker values in a dynamic folk style. Folk art also drew upon African American traditions; in the 1880s Harriet Powers, a former slave, began exhibiting her quilts, depicting powerful narratives in bold color and geometric forms and patterns.

American Architecture

After the Revolutionary War, when the young nation was building its identity, early American architecture drew from British and Neoclassical architecture. Based on the work and theory of the Venetian Renaissance architect, Andrea Palladio, Neoclassicism was the dominant architectural style in 18 th- century Europe. Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, was also an innovative architect, and his design for Monticello (1772-1809), his home in Virginia, exemplified the Neoclassical style, employing a Palladian portico with four colored columns. During his Presidency, his ideas also informed Benjamin Henry Latrobe's designs of the U.S. Capitol building, launching what became known as the Federal style, favored for official buildings.

Developing around 1830 within the context of Neoclassicism, Beaux-Arts architecture rejected Neoclassicism's formality to incorporate elements from Renaissance, Baroque, and Late Gothic architecture. In the United States, the Beaux-Arts style, led by Richard Morris Hunt, became known as the "American Renaissance," or "American Classicism." Hunt actively promoted the popular style, which was employed in designs for private mansions and public buildings, including the Biltmore House (1889-95) built for the tycoon George Vanderbilt. In the 20 th century, American Beaux-Arts architects returned to less ornamental and classical designs, exemplified by Henry Bacon and Daniel Chester French's Lincoln Monument (1914-22).

Beginning in 1890 and influenced by the British Arts and Crafts movement and Japonism, the highly influential Art Nouveau movement featured organic, flowing, floral motifs. Art Nouveau architects viewed the building, its interior spaces, and details, as a unified whole. Louis Comfort Tiffany, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright were influenced by Art Nouveau. Sullivan's Wainwright Building (1891) used a frieze with a decorative motif of celery-leaf foliage, decorative spandrels, and an elaborate entrance door. Such architectural motifs became popular for skyscrapers and high rises, as seen in New York's Decker Building (1892). Later, in the 20 th century, Art Deco was adapted to Public Works projects and iconic buildings such as William Van Alen's Chrysler Building (1930).

Beginning in 1914, the International Style emphasized the use of steel, glass, and concrete. Emerging during the aftermath of World War I and viewed as reflecting the modern age, it was often used for postwar housing. Austrian architects Richard Neutra and R.M. Schindler introduced the style when they moved to America in the 1910 and worked with Frank Lloyd Wright. Though both men created notable International Style buildings, as seen by Neutra's Lovell Health House (1929), the aesthetic did not truly flourish in the United States until after World War II, when economic expansion led to a boom in skyscraper construction. Leading architects, including Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, came to the United States in the post-war period and taught a new generation of American architects, while designing notable buildings. Mies for instance, built the Seagram Building (1954-58) in New York and the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago (completed in 1956). The International Style, with its glass curtains and industrial construction, was also used for fast-food restaurants and gas stations as America undertook construction of new interstates, connecting the country from coast to coast.

Beginning in 1950, Brutalism, also called New Brutalism, was a style of massive architecture that primarily employed unfinished, precast concrete. The style became popular for university campus buildings, performance art venues, libraries, government buildings, and corporate offices throughout the United States. Paul Rudolph was a leading proponent of the style as seen in his Yale Art and Architecture Building (1958). Due to American enthusiasm for the style, European architects adopted the style in their major commissions; Le Corbusier with Oscar Niemeyer, Wallace Harrison, and Max Abramovitz designed the United Nations Headquarters (1948-52), and Marcel Breuer worked with a number of American architectural teams to design Boston City Hall (1963-68). Breuer and Hamilton Smith's Breuer Building (1966), home to the Whitney Museum of American Art and later an expanded Metropolitan Museum, was also a trendsetting Brutalist design.

Hudson River School (1826-70)

The Hudson River School, led by Thomas Cole, who was born in Britain but emigrated to the United States when he was seventeen, was the first recognized American art movement. Centered in upper New York state, which was then wilderness, the artists associated with the movement emphasized the sublime and unique beauty of the American landscape. Influenced by Romanticism's concept of the sublime and Naturalism's emphasis on precise observed detail, Cole's landscapes like Kaaterskill Upper Fall, Catskill Mountains (1825) and Dunlap Lake with Dead Trees (Catskill) (1825) depicted American scenes to evoke the limitless possibilities of the new nation.

Following Cole's death in 1848, Asher B. Durand, influenced by the French Barbizon School, led the turn toward a more naturalistic painting. The artists Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, John Frederick Kensett, George Inness, and Thomas Moran formed the second generation. Their works became enormously popular, as the exhibition of just one panoramic painting could draw thousands of visitors. In the 1860s, as Manifest Destiny with its call to go West became a dominant national force, Bierstadt and Moran turned their attention to panoramas of the dramatic western landscape, and, along with William Keith and Thomas Hill, were sometimes called the Rocky Mountain School. Their works also inspired and informed the movement to preserve America's natural wonders, including the Yellowstone and Grand Tetons Parks. Alternatively, the intimate scale and feeling of George Inness's works like The Delaware Valley (c.1863), and John Frederick Kensett's depictions of light reflecting on bodies of water played a pioneering role in developing what later came to be called Luminism.

Luminism (1850-75)

The term Luminism was developed by art historians in the 1950s to identify a style that flourished from 1850-1870 among a number of American landscape painters. They drew upon a number of influences, including the landscape painting of the Dutch Golden Age, photography, and the genre landscapes of George Harvey, William Sidney Mount, and George Caleb Bingham. John Frederick Kensett, who led the movement, emphasized the landscape itself, with very little, if any, human presence; he focused on the play of light and atmosphere upon a body of water, as seen in his View of the Shrewsbury River, New Jersey (1859). Rather than exploring new vistas and rugged landscapes, each of the Luminists was associated with a particular locale, as the artist returned to the same scenes, painting the changing light and atmosphere from day to day or season to season. The Luminists, who included Kinsett, Fitz Henry Lane, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Sanford Robinson Gifford, and Martin Johnson Heade, preferred small-scale intimate works that emphasized the individual's communion with nature, reflecting Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau's philosophy of Transcendentalism, which held that spiritual truth was revealed in the contemplation of nature.

Tonalism (1870-1915)

Tonalism emerged in the early 1870s in James McNeill Whistler's series of Nocturnes that emphasized tonal harmonies, often in muted greens, blues, and dark colors, to depict landscapes at twilight. Of works like his famous and controversial Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (c.1875), Whistler said, "A nocturne is an arrangement of line, form and color first," but he also felt tonal harmonies were the visual equivalent of musical compositions. Born in America, Whistler lived most of his life in Britain where he played a pioneering role in a number of movements, including Japonism, the Aesthetic Movement, and the Anglo-Japanese aesthetic. Tonalists George Inness and Albert Pinkham Ryder were also influenced by the Barbizon School. Using gold and brown tones to depict a landscape at sunrise or sunset, Inness emphasized spiritual expression in works like Sunrise (1887), while Ryder often introduced a mythological narrative element into his mysterious landscapes that were precursors of Symbolism. In 1899 Henry Ward Ranger founded the Old Lyme Colony in Connecticut, seeing it as an "American Barbizon." A second generation of Tonalists, including Allen Butler Talcott, Henry Cook White, Bruce Crane, William Henry Howe, Louis Paul Dessar, and Jules Turcas, joined the artistic colony. In 1903 Childe Hassam joined the colony and briefly took up the style before abandoning it in favor of American Impressionism.

American Impressionism (1880-1920)

American Impressionism was primarily inspired and influenced by the French Impressionists, including Claude Monet, Pierre-August Renoir, and Alfred Sisley among others, who first exhibited together in Paris in 1874. French Impressionism influenced both the expatriates John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler, though neither fully embraced the movement. Mary Cassatt became America's first well-known Impressionist. Moving to Paris in 1866, she became close friends with Edgar Degas and associated and exhibited with many of the leading Impressionists. Her works, full of vibrant color, expressive brushstrokes, often portrayed intimate gatherings in relaxed bourgeois environments, as well as many depictions of a mother and child, and were enormously popular in the United States. In 1883, the first U.S. exhibition of the French Impressionists Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and Manet influenced the artists William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, and Edmund C. Trabell. A number of thriving artist colonies devoted to American Impressionism developed throughout the country.

American Art (1900-1950)

Ashcan School (1900-15)

The Ashcan School was a group of artists including John Sloan, George Luks, Everett Shinn, and William James Glackens, all students of Robert Henri, then located in Philadelphia. Drawing upon earlier masters, including Diego Velázquez, Francisco de Goya, and the later Realists like Édouard Manet, the group employed classical methods to create realistic and gritty scenes of modern, working-class life, or what Henri called "art for life's sake." After the group relocated to New York City, a second generation of artists followed, including George Bellows, whose Disappointments of the Ash Can (1915) gave the movement its name. In 1908, Edwin Lawson, Arthur B. Davies, and Maurice Prendergast joined the core group, known as The Eight, as they formed their own exhibition in opposition to the then dominant system of juried exhibitions by the National Academy of Design. Using gestural brushwork and a dark color palette, the artists' unidealized subjects aligned them with an innovative modern sensibility, which influenced the later Social Realism movement and the artists Edward Hopper and Ben Shahn. Sloan and Henri also taught and influenced many of the artists of the Fourteenth Street School.

Photography: Pictorialism, Straight Photography, and Beyond (1902-Present)

Modern Photography, emerging out of scientific explorations of botany, archaeology, and movement, incorporated a host of artistic styles. Pictorialism was an international photographic movement that used darkroom manipulations, composite images, posed and staged scenes, and blurred and soft focus to emphasize individual expression. Beginning in Britain in the 1840s, by the mid-1880s Pictorialism had become a flourishing movement. In 1902 in New York, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen advocated for the importance of photography and launched the journal Camera Work in 1903 and The Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession in 1905.

Straight Photography, emphasizing the technology of the camera itself, rejected Pictorialism in favor of sharply focused images that were rich in detail. In 1907, Stieglitz in his photographs like The Steerage began to explore the "straight" image without prior posing of the subject or subsequent use of darkroom manipulations. He influenced a number of leading photographers and ardently promoted the works of Paul Strand in a 1917 issue of Camera Work. Many of these works employed close-up shots with tight cropping to emphasize near abstract patterns and form, as seen in Strand's Porch Shadows (1916). Straight Photography became a dominant trend that continues to the present day.

The emphasis upon abstract pattern and form influenced the development of Abstract Photography, which began in 1916 with Alvin Langdon Coburn's Vortographs (1916). Stieglitz called him the "youngest star" of the Photo-Secession group, and Coburn began exploring abstract images as early as 1912. Both Paul Strand and Stieglitz were to explore near abstraction as well.

In 1931, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Ansel Adams, and Willard Van Dyke formed Group f/64 in San Francisco. The movement emphasized what Van Dyke described as "pure photography...defined as possessing no qualities of technic, composition or idea, derivative of any other art-form" and made its public debut in a 1932 exhibition at the M.H. de Young Museum. Though many of the photographers had begun their careers as Pictorialists, they now firmly rejected that movement's emphasis on fuzzy "artistic" effects, composed scenes, and darkroom manipulations. Their subject matter was often ordinary and frequently taken from nature, as Cunningham became known for her series of Magnolia blossoms, Weston for his images of a single green pepper, Adams for his images of Yosemite Park. Group f/64, and in particular Weston and Adams, also revitalized Abstract Photography, which re-emerged in the 1940s in the works of Minor White and Aaron Siskind.

Synchromism (1912-24)

Synchromism emphasized abstract paintings that primarily employed the color scale to create a visual "symphony," or musical effect. Morgan Russell and Stanton Macdonald-Wright, both young Americans living in Paris, founded America's first avant-garde movement in 1912. They adopted the color theories of Ernest Percyval-Tudor, a Canadian living in Paris, who believed that twelve colors of the spectrum corresponded to the twelve steps of the musical scale, and Russell coined the name for the movement by combining "symphony" with "chrome." Russell's Synchromy in Green (1913) launched the movement at the 1913 Salon des Indépendants in Paris, where it influenced Lee Simonson, a modernist theater set designer, and John Edward Thompson who later became known as the "dean of Colorado art" for introducing modern art to the area.

Harlem Renaissance (1920 - early 1940s)

The term Harlem Renaissance defines a period when music, literature, theater, painting and sculpture flourished within the rich and vibrant culture of New York's Harlem neighborhood. The movement, known for diverse styles, celebrated the "New Negro," a concept advanced by writer Alain Locke that emphasized a new African American sense of dignity, founded in equal rights and connected to the rich cultural traditions of Africa and Egypt. Following the Great Migration that began around 1910 when many African Americans left the southern states for the greater opportunity and freedom of the north, vibrant communities developed in Harlem as well as Chicago and Philadelphia. sculpture Ethiopia (1921) was an early pioneering influence, and international success of the earlier African American artists Mary Edmonia Lewis and Henry Ossawa Tanner became a defining model. Working in a variety of styles, artists including Aaron Douglas, Augusta Savage, Archibald J. Motley Jr. and the photographer James Van Der Zee became leading figures of the new movement. Their work and teaching subsequently informed a subsequent generation that included Jacob Lawrence, Beauford Delaney, and William H. Johnson.

Fourteenth Street School (1920-40)

In the 1950s, the term Fourteenth Street School was developed to define the works of Kenneth Hayes Miller, Isabel Bishop, and Reginald Marsh made in the 1920s and 1930s. Their subjects were taken from the New York neighborhood around Union Square and Fourteenth Street. The area, known as the "poor man's 5th Avenue," was a rising mercantile center, featuring retail department stores, whose sales, featuring the latest fashion at inexpensive prices, drew thousands of middle-class shoppers. Miller, a leader of the movement, began painting portrayals of the women shoppers in the 1920s. Teaching at the Art Center League, he influenced Bishop and March, as well as Raphael Soyer and Edward Laning, who also became later members of the group. Influenced by the Renaissance and Baroque masters, the group's figurative treatments often lent a kind of classical dignity to the portrayals of matronly shoppers, office girls, and career girls, who were seen as the embodiment of the "New Woman" and progressive prosperity. Due to realistic treatment of modern life, the movement is often included under Social Realism, though it shared little of that movement's attack upon the status quo or interest in political content.

American Regionalism (1928-43)

American Regionalism was not a deliberately formed movement but a style and approach that developed organically in the works of Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry, and Grant Wood. The three emphasized realistic depictions of rural life and ordinary situations, and each of them was associated with a particular region: Curry with Kansas, Benton with Missouri, and Wood with Iowa. They drew upon a number of divergent influences: Wood was influenced by the Northern Renaissance artist Hans Memling, Benton had been part of the Synchromist movement, and Curry utilized his prior experience in illustration, but their work consistently rejected modern European art and abstraction, in favor of a figurative approach to subjects that reflected what they saw as a uniquely American spirit. Wood's American Gothic (1930), when awarded a bronze medal at an Art Institute of Chicago competition, publicly launched the movement, as the work received national attention in newspapers and magazines. By the end of the 1930s, as Fascism threatened Europe, the movement's identification with a nationalist art came under critical fire, though other artists, including the well-known illustrator Norman Rockwell and the artist Andrew Wyeth continued to portray realistic scenes of ordinary American life, often connected to particular regions.

Social Realism (1929 - late 1950s)

Social Realism developed organically among artists who emphasized realistic depictions of the lower and working class, often within an urban environment, in order to radically transform society. Focusing on the plight of workers, the artists associated with the movement were influenced by the murals of José Clemente Orozco, the rise of labor rights organizations, and the call to worker's rights from leftist organizations like the John Reed Society. The movement initially drew upon the optimism following the Mexican and Russian revolutions and was further shaped by the global depression that began in 1929 as well as the rise of Fascism in the 1930s. Rejecting European avant-garde movements for their isolation from social issues, artists like William Gropper, Hugo Gellert, Max Weber, and Moses and Raphael Soyer viewed art as a weapon to fight the capitalist exploitation of the working class. The artists Ben Shahn, Philip Evergood, and Antonio Berni were also important members of the movement, as were Aaron Douglas and Jacob Lawrence, both also part of the Harlem Renaissance. In the 1930s, WPA-sponsored documentary photographers, including Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, were loosely associated with the movement as they depicted the rural poor and the devastating impact of the Great Depression, as well as the Dust Bowl that ravaged the agricultural Midwest.

American Art (1950-Onward)

Abstract Expressionism, Color Field Painting, Post-Painterly and Hard-Edge Abstraction (1943-65)

Abstract Expressionism began in the early 1940s, centered in New York and led by Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Adolph Gottlieb. As the leading Surrealists fled Europe during World War II for New York, the Abstract Expressionists were influenced by Surrealism's emphasis on automatism, an art that tapped into the unconscious. While the artists had begun their careers painting representational images, they moved toward increasing abstraction. Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century Gallery exhibited and supported the emerging movement, and she commissioned Pollock's monumental and innovative Mural (1943). The critic Clement Greenberg played a leading role in advocating for the movement, emphasizing purely visual and abstract effects of the paintings. American's first international art movement, Abstract Expressionism also effectively established New York as the center of the modern art world and led to a number of other developments, including Color Field Painting, Action Painting, Post-painterly abstraction, and hard-edge painting.

Color Field Painting, which began in the late 1940s, led by Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, emphasized color as a powerfully expressive object. Still's canvases deployed bold colors in jagged forms; Rothko turned toward diaphanous rectangles of color, and Newman created "zip" paintings, where vertical strips of color intersected large horizontal fields of color. Greenberg championed Color Field Painting, with its emphasis on flatness and non-illusionistic space, as the way forward for advanced painting.

In 1952, influential art critic Harold Rosenberg in his essay "The American Action Painters" focused on the act of the artist in deciding to paint, thus coining the term Action Painting in favor of Abstract Expressionism. Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock were associated with the term, as Rosenberg saw their works as emphasizing the event and process of painting itself. The spontaneous movements of the artist, random drips and splashes, and energetic gestures, resulted in a work that conveyed the action of the work's making.

In 1964, Greenberg curated the exhibition Post-Painterly Abstraction for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The show included work by 31 artists, including Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler, as well as the West Coast artists Sam Francis and John Ferren. Ellsworth Kelly, Howard Mehring, Jules Olitski, and Kenneth Noland were also included. Greenberg wrote that these artists "have a tendency...to stress contrasts of pure hue rather than contrasts of light and dark...In their reaction against the 'handwriting' and the 'gestures' of Painterly Abstraction, these artists also favor a relatively anonymous execution." The Washington Color School, led by Noland and included Gene Davis, Morris Louis, and Thomas Downing among others, emphasized abstract art where color was emphasized to create form.

Drawing from the Color Field Painters, hard-edge painting was a term that defined a trend toward economical forms, impersonal execution, and clean lines. In the 1950s, Californian art critic Jules Langsner described the trend that used "forms [that] are finite, flat, rimmed by a hard, clean edge...They are autonomous shapes, sufficient unto themselves as shapes." In the 1960s the trend was also associated with Al Held, Ellsworth Kelly, Morris Louis, Frank Stella, Miriam Schapiro, and Kenneth Noland.

Around 1950 in the Bay Area of San Francisco, David Park, Richard Diebenkorn, and Elmer Bischoff rejected pure abstraction in favor of figurative subjects. The Bay Area Painters also included Manuel Neri, Nathan Oliveira, and Joan Brown. Many of the artists had begun their careers as Abstract Expressionists and retained elements of that movement in their landscapes and portraits, while at the same time celebrating local culture and landscape.

Also, by the mid-1950s a number of Second Generation of Abstract Expressionists, including Jack Beal, Jane Freilicher, and Nell Blaine, rejected the movement and turned toward figurative art. Including Fairfield Porter, Alex Katz, and Lois Dodd, the loose association of New York artists spearheaded a new emphasis on realism that became known as Contemporary Realism.

Neo-Dada (1952-70)

Beginning in 1952, Neo-Dada developed, as Jasper Johns, Allan Kaprow, and Robert Rauschenberg, began to employ " readymades," mass media, and performances. The artists rejected the existentialist heroics connected with Abstract Expressionism in favor of mundane subjects and blurred the traditional boundaries between media. Influenced by Marcel Duchamp and Dada, the movement had its start at Black Mountain College in North Carolina in 1952 and included Rauschenberg, the choreographer Merce Cunningham, and the composer John Cage. Cage's Theatre Piece No. 1 (1952) exemplified the group's emphasis on audience interaction, multiple media, and the role of chance.

Allan Kaprow created "environments," using sculptural collages to create installation pieces and later, after taking Cage's class, added aural components. He developed the term "happenings" to describe the quasi-theatrical events where, influenced by Futurism's concept of the event as overwhelming all boundaries and Dada's emphasis on the role of chance, the boundary between event and audience was broken.

Many Fluxus artists, including George Brecht, Robert Whitman, and Robert Watts, were interested in Neo-Dada and happenings. Fluxus, described as an "anti-art" movement, had utopian goals of wanting to change one's relation to art and to underscore the artfulness of everyday objects and actions. Leading members of the group Dick Higgins, Jackson Mac Low, and Al Hans met in Cage's 1959 class at the New School. Fluxus artists often used humor to undercut and dismiss high art. George Maciunas, the founder of Fluxus, described Fluxus as "a fusion of Spike Jones, gags, games, Vaudeville, Cage, and Duchamp." Fluxus was an international movement that also included Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, and Joseph Beuys. Paik pioneered the development of Video Art, when he presented his video footage of the Pope's visit to New York as a serious artwork in 1965.

Pop Art and Photorealism (mid 1950s-1970s)

Pop Art was an international movement that had begun in Britain in 1952, led by the Independent Group, including Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi, and the architects Alison and Peter Smithson, but the American version became the trendsetting and dominant form. Led by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, and James Rosenquist, the artists used images taken from mass media and popular culture to challenge the distinction between "high" and "low" art and to critique and celebrate consumer culture. Warhol, Rosenquist, and Ed Ruscha were influenced by their early work as graphic designers and illustrators.

Photorealism, also called Hyperrealism, painted photographic images projected onto a large canvas, often with an airbrush, to resemble a finished photograph. Richard Estes, Chuck Close, Robert Bechtle, Ralph Goings, and Audrey Flack drew upon different influences, including Pop Art and Minimalism, and employed a variety of techniques, as they worked independently of one another. They often depicted objects from consumer culture, as in Ralph Goings' McDonalds Pickup (1970) or Richard Estes's Supreme Hardware Store (1970).

Minimalism and Post-Minimalism (1960 - Present)

In New York in the early 1960s, Minimalist artists such as Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, and Robert Morris created works from industrial materials while employing a cool and anonymous approach. Influenced by Russian Constructivism, Minimalists emphasized the materiality of the medium as perceived by the viewer and preferred industrial materials and fabrication. Rejecting Greenberg's formalist conception of painting, they emphasized an approach that, using a minimum of shape, color, and other elements, was also called "Systemic Painting," or "Reductive Art." Frank Stella, Tony Smith, Richard Serra, Ronald Bladen, and Dan Flavin were associated with the movement that quickly became dominant in America and internationally, while informing other developments, including Post-Minimalism and the Light and Space movement.

Post-Minimalism included a number of trends, including Process Art, Performance and Body Art, Site-Specific Art, and some aspects of Conceptual Art. Art critic Lucy Lippard curated Eccentric Abstraction in 1968, an exhibition that included work by Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, and Bruce Nauman, whose pieces were made of soft or pliable materials. Some artists associated with Post-Minimalism extended the Minimalist interest in anonymous and abstract objects into other areas, while others reacted against Minimalism's cool anonymous approach in favor of emotional expression. Lynda Benglis, Eva Hesse, and Louise Bourgeois used resins and latex, while Nancy Graves used materials to simulate animal hides, and the resulting works created an organic expressive effect. Sol LeWitt, Richard Serra, and Vito Acconci were also included among the Post-Minimalists.

Based in California and influenced by Minimalism, Robert Irwin began creating large installations using light sources in 1969 and pioneered what became known as the Light and Space movement. Larry Bell, James Turrell, John McCracken and Helen Pashgian were all associated with the movement that used industrial materials, including neon and argon lights, cast acrylic, and polyester resins to create perceptual experiences. Drawing upon new scientific research and technologies, they created works that emphasized the interaction of light and space.

Earth Art and Environmental Art (1960s - Present)

Also called Land Art or Earthworks, Earth Art was an outgrowth of Minimalism, as the earth itself became both the material object and the site specific to art, and artists used the site's available natural materials, such as mud, earth, and stone, to design large-scale projects that were keyed to the site's significance. Often including some element of performance, Earth Art shared certain trends with Post-Minimalism, including Performance Art, process art, and Installation Art. The 1969 Earth Art exhibition at Cornell University, which including the works of Robert Smithson, Walter de Maria, Michael Heizer, Robert Morris, Dennis Oppenheim, and Hans Haacke, launched the movement. The artists, like Smithson, were often inspired by ancient sites, including Stonehenge or the Native American Serpent Mound, and saw their works as subject to changing conditions and entropy, the devolution of a system over time. Nancy Holt, Richard Long, Agnes Denes, and Andy Goldsworthy were also leading Earth Work artists.

The movement influenced the development of Environmental Art, also known as ecological art. Emphasizing a non-invasive approach, Environmental artists saw themselves as collaborating with the environment and exploring human interaction with natural environments. Betty Beaumont, Andy Goldsworthy, Agnes Denes, Meg Webster, Olafur Eliasson, herman de vries, Nils Udo, and Chris Jordan are the leading artists of the movement. They employed a variety of approaches; Beaumont transformed power plant waste into an underwater reef in her Ocean Landmark (1978-80), while Goldsworthy, over a period of four years, working, as he said, "in collaboration with nature," arranged pieces of limestone from fields where he worked as a gardener to create his Pinfold Cones (1981-85).

Postmodernism (1960s - Present)

In the 1960s, a heady atmosphere of experimentation reigned, leading to the development of Conceptual Art, Feminist Art, Body Art, and Performance Art. Though these art movements were international, American artists played a significant role in their development, and their subsequent expansion into a number of trends.

Influenced by Minimalism's reductive simplicity, Conceptual art emphasized that the concept of a work was more important than its form or even completion. Sol LeWitt's "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art" (1967) became the de facto manifesto of the movement; he wrote that the artwork "no matter what form it may finally have it must begin with an idea." Walter de Maria, Ed Ruscha, Marina Abramović, Dan Graham, and the German artist Joseph Beuys were just a few of the leading artists who became part of the movement. In the atmosphere of experimentation, new trends developed, including Institutional Critique, led by an international array of artists, including Hans Haacke, Michael Asher, Daniel Buren, and Marcel Broodthaers, and The Pictures Generation, including Sherrie Levine, Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, Barbara Kruger, and Richard Prince. A number of Conceptual artists created installation pieces, as Installation Art became a primary trend, employed in a number of movements. Additionally conceptual practices informed Neo-Geo, or Neo-Geometric Conceptualism, a term that defined the works of Peter Halley, Ashley Bickerton, Jeff Koons, and Meyer Vaisman following their 1986 exhibition in New York. Using appropriative strategies, the group used geometric form to ironically distance itself from abstract painting, while also using previous works as readymades that could be appropriated.

Out of the Civil Rights movement, the emerging Gay Pride movement, and anti-war fervor, Feminist Art developed in the late 1960s. Women's art organizations like the Art Worker's Coalition and Women Artists in Revolution were formed to address gender inequity and other feminist issues within the art community. Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro founded the California Institute of the Art's Feminist Art Project and Womanhouse, a project where women artists could collaborate and create major installations. Mary Beth Edelson, Lynda Benglis, Martha Rosler, Carolee Schneemann, Suzanne Lacy, Leslie Labowitz, Bia Lowe, Barbara Kruger, and the Guerilla Girls were leading feminist artists, as the movement explored diverse approaches, and the artists involved became associated with several movements simultaneously. Judy Chicago became famous for her Dinner Party (1974-79), an iconic example of both Feminist Art and Installation Art, while Carolee Schneemann's performances were pioneering in the Feminist, Body Art, and Performance movements. Feminist Art actively supported and inspired the development of Queer Art, focused on queer identity and connected to the Gay Pride movement and the AIDS crisis, and ushered in an era of Identity Art and Identity Politics that focused on the experience of marginalized groups and the inequities they faced.

In the 1960s, Performance art emphasized live events where the artist, sometimes with collaborators or performers, erased all boundaries between the artist and the artwork. The international movement drew upon a number of early avant-garde trends, including Dada, Futurism, and Surrealism, but was more recently sourced in the 1950s works of John Cage, Fluxus artists, and Allan Kaprow's happenings. Staging what were sometimes called "actions," performance artists often confronted the audience. The movement was closely linked to the development of Body Art, as American artists, including Chris Burden, Carolee Schneemann, and Hannah Wilke, employed their own body as the medium.

Useful Resources on American Art

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The artistic history of the US stretches from indigenous art and Hudson River School into Contemporary art. Enjoy our guide through the many American movements.

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https://gould.usc.edu/why/students/orgs/ilj/assets/docs/32-1-Reznik.pdf

https://icof.infobase.com/articles/QXJ0aWNsZVRleHQ6MTYzOTg=

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CORE CRIMINAL LAW SUBJECTS: Defenses: Self-Defense

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CORE CRIMINAL LAW SUBJECTS: Defenses:
Self-Defense

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Abortion - Top Arguments For and Against - ProCo n.org

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Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project

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1. Americans’ views on whether, and in what circumstances, abortion should be legal

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As the long-running debate over abortion reaches another key moment at the Supreme Court and in state legislatures across the country, a