“Art is what you can get away with,” claimed the renowned visual artist Andy Warhol, a leading figure in the pop art movement. So why not take a captivating art course offered by Coronado Recreation and Golf Services in concert with the Coronado Cultural Arts Commission: “Five Decades of Contemporary Art Trends, 1945 to 2000.” Starting on April 4, and running four weeks through April 25 at the Coronado Community Center, students will learn how art changed dramatically during the 20th century, literally pushing the limits of what art could be.
Taught by esteemed art historian Cornelia Feye, a native of Germany who earned her MA in art history and anthropology at University of Tubingen, just south of Stuttgart, Feye has experience teaching at several colleges in the U.S. She also served as the Arts Education Director at the Athenaeum Music and Art Library in La Jolla for ten years, and has experience with both the Mingei International Museum and San Diego Museum of Art.
“I arrived from Germany in New York City thirty years ago with two suitcases and a typewriter,” explains Feye. “Since then, I have tried to combine my background as an art historian … with my experience traveling around the world for seven years, and my love for writing.” Given her diverse cultural and educational background, this four-week series of classes provides a rare opportunity for those desiring to enhance their knowledge and understanding of art to learn from a multi-talented master. She’ll also explain the unique cultural and geopolitical influences that helped initiate artistic innovation and explore the works of iconic artists such as Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Banksy, and Jackson Pollock.
Exploring this seminal artistic movement sequentially, students will first learn about the post-WWII influx of nascent artists to New York, a new and emerging center for artistic innovation. It was there that Abstract Expressionism began to evolve, followed by the advent of Geometric Abstractionist innovators like Frank Stella and Ed Moses.
As the 1960s ensued, one of the most tumultuous and divisive decades in world history, Minimalism and Pop Art emerged in conjunction with an Optical Art movement that placed emphasis on visual perception and optical illusions. That same decade, but primarily on the West Coast, the Cool School and Finish Fetish artforms emerged, catapulting Los Angeles onto the art world’s map.
The 1970s brought a further fine-tuning of art expression as world-renowned talents such as Ed Kienholz and Eva Hesse developed new avenues of artistic expression, creating Installation Art, where large scale, mixed media constructions emerged, typically designed for a specific place or for a temporary period-of-time.
Fast forward to the 1980’s and ’90s, when artists created the Pattern and Decoration movement, inspired by traditional fabric and fiber craft, with many evolving into Post-Modern artists who appropriated aspects of previous art movements into their work. Culminating at the end of the century, this course provides an in-depth overview of these various artistic movements that continue to define how the visual arts are created today.
Those interested in taking this course, which will be held at the Coronado Community Center, each Thursday from April 4 to April 25 from 4:30 to 5:30 pm, can sign up through the city’s registration website: www.coronado.ca.us/civicrec. Coronado residents can attend all four classes for a $40 fee, with non-residents charged $50. To attend individual classes, there is a drop-in option available for $15. Call 619-522-7342 with questions or for more information.
