Expanded Art Practices, Institutional Critique and the Postmodern Turn across Europe and the US
Through practices centered on process, dematerialization, performance, feminism, media experimentation, and institutional critique, artists in Europe and the US transformed art into a space where social power, the body, technology, and the museum itself became objects of inquiry and resistance.
This lesson examines artistic production in Europe and the United States in a period initially defined by civil rights movements and countercultural activism, and later by the rise of neoliberal policies and the crisis of modernist ideologies. It addresses movements and collectives such as Fluxus, Conceptual Art, and Land Art, whose practices emphasized process, dematerialization, and the integration of ideas with social and ecological environments. Performance art is considered through artists like Joan Jonas, Vito Acconci, Marina Abramović, and Tehching Hsieh, among others. Second-wave feminist art is discussed, as well as the phenomenon of Institutional Critique, revealing diverse perspectives and strategies through which artists challenged the authority, power, and economics of the art system and the patriarchal-capitalist order. The lesson also examines the emergence of Video Art through Nam June Paik, Bruce Nauman, and Bill Viola, and the rise of postmodernism through International Transavanguardia and artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose work synthesized appropriation, historical reference, and global cultural critique.
