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Gwendolyn Brooks' "Annie Allen" wins 1950 Pulitzer
Gwendolyn Brooks was a poet and writer from Chicago who was the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize (1950) for her poetry published in “Annie Allen.” The work in three parts is about an African-American girl, Annie, growing into womanhood through the obstacles of a segregated society. The book of poetry shows how Annie has changed from an egotistic romantic to a realistic idealist.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3RqadW5azY] -
Peanuts art revolution lasts three-quarters of a century
In Oct. 1950 Charles Schultz began a comic strip that would transcend cultures and genres for the next 70 years. The comic strip about a band of adolescents and their particular angst was meant as a simple reflection of the humor and the trials of youth, but soon transcended age and politics, religion and time to its place as the conscience of a culture. In doing do, it elevated itself to the highest rungs of fine art.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EHtX2FEVyA] -
Henry Moore's "Reclining Figure: Festival"
Recognized as one of Britain’s greatest living sculptors, Henry Moore was commissioned by The Arts Council to produce a festival sculpture based on the theme of "discovery", prompting Moore to create a reclining female form he named “Reclining Figure: Festival.” Moore produced many public commissions in the 1950s, among them several reclining figures between 1956–58, for the UNESCO Building in Paris. -
Publication of "The Catcher in the Rye"
“The Catcher in the Rye” is a story by J. D. Salinger that was published in 1951.The classic work become popular among adolescent and college readers for its themes of angst, alienation, and as a critique on superficiality in society. Since its release “Catcher in the Rye” has been translated into almost all of the world's major languages. -
LIFE magazine photo essay, "The midwife"
In December 1951, LIFE published a photo essay by W. Eugene Smith that still resonates today. The series of photographs documented the life of a South Carolina nurse and midwife named Maude Callen, who worked in the rural Deep South in the 1950s, Callen served as "doctor, dietitian, psychologist, bail-goer and friend" to thousands of poor, mostly black patients. The essay was eye opening for the vast majority of the magazine’s readers and remains today as a masterpiece of journalism. -
Steinbeck's "East of Eden"
Referred to by its author John Steinbeck as his magnum opus, the novel East of Eden tells the story of two families in the Salinas Valley where Steinbeck lived. It is the tale of wealth, poverty, love and tragedy that Steinbeck saw as epitomizing his post-war California, the land of the Biblical milk and honey. Although the novel became an immediate best seller and remains a beloved classic, critics panned it in its day. East of Eden is now considered one of Steinbeck's finest achievements. -
Willem De Kooning's "Woman with Bicycle"
Willem De Kooning was an important member of the New York group of Abstract Expressionists, an art movement that had its roots in post-war America. Because of what was called their energy and violence, De Kooning’s paintings of women in the 1950s caused a stir in the art world. The large canvases sometimes of grotesque forms in somewhat surreal colors were said to be evidence of "the new figuration" in New York painting . -
David Smith, "Agricola IX"
American sculptor David Smith pioneered the idea in America to weld steel as a medium to make art. Smith worked as an industrial welder much of his life, and he decided on the idea after seeing the industrial-type sculptures of Picasso and González. “Since I had worked in factories and made parts of automobiles and had worked on telephone lines I saw a chance to make sculpture in a tradition I was already rooted in.”
[https://www.theartstory.org/artist-smith-david-life-and-legacy.htm] -
Architecture's modernism
In the 1950s architecture took on a modernist design, employing materials such as aluminum and plastic, making an important connection between production, art and function. As an example, Jean Prouvé’s machine-inspired works shine a spotlight on the masters of this mid-century movement, in which modernism become a significant part of everyday life. -
Mark Rothko, "No 1 Royal Red and Blue"
An American painter of Russian Jewish descent Mark Rothko grew up in Portland, Oregon and earned a scholarship to Yale. He belonged to the abstract expressionists and his broad brush paintings, called "multiforms" in vibrant colors were said to express energy and ecstasy. By the mid-1950s, almost a decade after introducing his first "multiforms", Rothko started painting in dark blues and greens, said to reflect darkness in his personal life. -
Film genres expanded
With the introduction of television, film studios drew audiences back into theaters with techniques such as widescreen and 3-D film. Big-scoped films thrived internationally. Japanese productions including Akira Kurosawa's historic “Seven Samurai” were highly popular as were Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, such as "Vertigo," science fiction fantasy productions such as “The War of The Worlds," American realism such as “A Streetcar Named Desire."
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBfgNpSQm3I] -
Japan's Gutai Art movement expressed fascination with decay
In the 1950s Japan's artistic avant garde included the internationally influential Gutai group, an artistic movement that in a 1954 manifesto expresses a fascination with the beauty that arises when things become damaged or decayed. The movement with its large-scale multimedia pieces, performances, and theatrical events is a response to the reactionary artistic context of the time. -
Rock n Roll becomes a musical art movement
One of the pioneers of the new sound – and new art form –
that struck in the 1950s, called Rock and Roll, Bill Haley & His Comets’ “Rock around the Clock,” was the biggest selling single hit of the 1950s. The new sound ushered in a new American culture, and Rock n’ Roll and its many offshoots since the 1950s based primarily on folk, jazz, and pop changed the pattern and style of music.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6b_phH1Hm8] -
American Opera
American opera became established as a genre in the 1950s, primarily through the works of America’s most successful opera composer Carlisle Floyd. New performance venues bolstered the opera movement and many composers were drawn to the medium for the first time. Floyd's greatest success "Susannah" was first heard at Florida State theater in February 1955.
[https://search.alexanderstreet.com/preview/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cvideo_work%7C400139] -
Neo-Dada rebelled against expressionism
Robert Rauschenberg’s “Combines,” became well known in the 1950s as part of the Neo-Dada movement that melded mass media and found objects, and had a penchant for performance. Neo-Dada rebelled against the abstract expressionism of the time by producing mundane subjects and junk into its art and it paved the way for Pop art, Minimalism and Conceptualism of the 1960s. -
Emergence of Pop Art
The pop art movement emerged in the United States and Great Britain in the 1950s and presented a challenge to traditional fine art by including images that embodied popular and mass culture, including advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects, often called found objects. It used overlap, silk screens and jeering colors and letters that spoke of a fast growing society, life, space and consumerism. -
Calypso music popularized.
Harry Belafonte’s album "Calypso" is the first record to sell more than one million copies. One of the most successful Jamaican-American pop stars in history, Belafonte was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean music with an international audience in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) is the first million-selling LP by a single artist.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SNZHyHvuIk] -
Beat poetry hits mainstream
In 1956 Lawrence Ferlinghetti of the Silver Lights bookstore in San Francisco published Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” a book of beat poetry that became the subject of an obscenity trial. A judge ruled a year later the book was not obscene and the publicity anchored beat poetry as a predominant force in American poetry and culture.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-P2fILsLH8] -
Jackson Pollock, "Red, Black and Silver"
American painter Jackson Pollock was a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. His technique of pouring or splashing household paint onto a horizontal canvas was also called ‘action painting’, because he used the force of his body – often dancing movements –to paint. Some critics praised the fluency of his work while others while others ridiculed its randomness.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrVE-WQBcYQ] -
Rockabilly music was born
Rockabilly is among the earliest styles of rock and roll music that began in the 1950s in the American South. It blended Country Western music with rhythm and blues, leading to what is considered "classic" rock and roll. The American Rockabilly classic "Blue Suede Shoes" was written and recorded by Carl Perkins in 1955 and Elvis Presley, also known as “The King of Rock and Roll,” performed the song three times on television.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm5HKlQ6nGM] -
Boris Pasternak's, "Dr. Zhivago" wins Nobel
"Doctor Zhivago," written by Russian author Boris Pasternak was published in Italy. The novel that takes place from the beginning of communism in Russia to its post-WW II Soviet Union. Its protagonist, Yuri Zhivago, a physician and poet reflected the author's independent-minded stance under a totalitarian regime. Denied publication in Russian the manuscript was smuggled to Milan. It garnered Pasternak the Nobel Prize for Literature which enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. -
Musical theater as art
In the 1950s, Broadway musicals were a major part of American popular culture. Every season saw new stage musicals with names like “Guys and Dolls,” and “An American in Paris,” and “A Star is Born,” and “Gentleman Prefer Blondes,” and “The King and I.” The songs made popular by the musicals topped of the charts. To this day, the shows of the 1950s are still popular productions of musical theatre.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgLz2SoHT0k] -
Robert Frank's, "The Americas"
In 1955 Robert Frank set out from New York City with a Guggenheim fellowship in a black Ford coupe carrying two cameras, 700 boxes of film, a couple of road atlases and a bottle of brandy. Before returning two years later he shot 28,000 black and white photographs and traveled 10,000 miles to Los Angeles and back. His 1958 book “The Americas,” redefined photography.
[https://www.lensculture.com/articles/robert-frank-the-americans] -
Guggenheim museum completed
Although he was 83 in 1950 and insistent that his work belonged to no movement but was free of any strictures, Frank Lloyd Wright continued to play a leading role in American architecture and in 1959 the year of his death completed the absolutely original Guggenheim museum of modern art in NYC.
