1. The Contemporary Contour
Instructor: Nguyen Tuan An

2. Toward a Global Culture:
1. Postwar main events:
– Moon landing in 1969.
– Age of microtechnology, new forms of
communication and the computer age.
– The Atomic Age → The fear of nuclear weapons
from the rogue nations or terrorist groups.

3. 1. Postwar intellectuals:
Satire: expressing the fear and hatred of modern
warfare.
- Joseph Heller: Catch-22 (1961)
- Thomas Pynchon: Gravity’s Rainbow (1973)
- Stanley Kubrick: Dr. Strangelove (1964)

4. 1. The role of the United States:
- The U.S.: leader of the “free world” against
communism.
- Global economy.
- New world order.

5. 1. The new movements:
- Human rights, Civil rights, Rights of women,
Democratic movements in the U.S. and other
countries.
- George Orwell: political novel 1984
- Alvin Toffler: Future Shock
- William Harrison Faulkner
- Toni Morrison

6. Existentialism:
- S∅ ren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855), a
Danish theologian and religious thinker,
emphasized the single individual (“the crowd is
untruth”) who exists in a specific set of
circumstances at a particular time in history
with a specific consciousness.

7. - Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), a French writer
and philosopher, Sartre wrote “People are
condemned to be free” and people are
responsible for creating themselves.

8. - Albert Camus (1913-1960) and Simone de
Beauvoir (1908-1986): major voices of
demanding integrity in the face of the
absurdities and horrors of war-torn Europe.
- Existentialist themes: anxiety and alienation.

9. Painting since 1945:
George Grosz (1893-1959)
Hitler the savior (1923)

10. To Oskar Panizza (1917-1918)

11. Edward Hopper (1882-1967)
Nighthawks (1942)

12. Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986)
Poppy (1927)

13. Abstract Expressionism:
Abstract Expressionism has two characteristics:
• Unrecognizable content (and thus abstract).
• Using color, lines and shapes to express
interior states of subjective aesthetic
experience.

14. Jackson Pollock (1912-1956)
Number 8 (1949)

15. Adolph Gottlieb (1903-1974)
Brink (1959)

16. The Return to Representation:
Jasper Johns (b.1930)
Flag (1954)

17. Robert Rauschenberg (b.1925)
Canyon (1959)

18. THANK YOU FOR LISTENING