How Postwar American Artists Redefined Originality
Photo: Jonn Leffmann, Wikimedia, 2015
In the years following World War II, American artists began to dramatically shift their approach to making and consuming art. While earlier generations of modernists prioritized originality, authenticity, and the power of form, artists in the 1950s and 1960s often rejected these ideals. Instead, they turned to mass-produced images, commercial aesthetics, and reproduction as tools of artistic expression. This deliberate embrace of the ordinary and the familiar, most famously seen in the rise of Pop Art, redefined the nature of art itself. Artists like Andy Warhol and Yvonne Rainer blurred the lines between high and low culture, art and advertising, originality and reproduction. By doing this they not only challenged traditional assumptions about creativity, but also reflected the growing influence of consumer society and mass media on postwar American life.
Clement Greenberg’s 1939 essay “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” defined the terms of what aesthetics were widely accepted during this era. Greenberg defended the avant-garde’s definition of purity against what he saw as the cheap products of mass culture, what he called "kitsch." Greenberg defended artists like Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman, whose abstract work defied easy interpretation and relied on the formal qualities of paint, surface, and scale. For Greenberg, true art required the artist’s inner vision, separate from commercial appeal.
Pollock’s signature style of drip painting was the epitome of Greenberg's modernist ideal. In works such as Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) (1950), Pollock poured and splattered paint across a vast canvas laid flat on the floor. This method allowed him to physically engage with the painting from all sides, emphasizing the process over traditional composition. The result was a swirling mix of lines and splatters that seemed to express a kind of primal energy, and the process itself was almost a dance. For Greenberg and others, this radical form of abstraction was a rejection of mass culture, and an exploration of form that could not be replicated.
However, by the late 1950s and early 1960s, many younger artists found this stance more and more out of line with their own experience. The postwar art scene was saturated with images like advertisements, movie stars, consumer products, and television shows, so the idea of art as a pure aesthetic object began to seem outdated. In addition to being outdated, the idea began to seem blind to the realities of the modern world. Where Pollock wanted to find transcendence, artists like Warhol and Rainier found interest in the reproducible.
It was in this context that Pop Art came to be, turning Greenberg’s views on their head. Rather than resist mass culture, Pop artists embraced it. Andy Warhol, the most iconic figure of the movement, intentionally erased the traditional signs of artistic originality. His use of silk screen printing allowed him to reproduce the same image over and over again, as in his Marilyn Diptych (1962) or Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962). By presenting a supermarket staple or celebrity’s portrait as fine art, Warhol made paintings about everyday things that anyone could recognize, while also copying how things are made in factories. “I want to be a machine,” Warhol famously said, an idea that contradicted the ideal of an artist. His paintings challenged viewers to reconsider both art and consumerism. The Pop Art movement contributed to the breakdown of traditional cultural statuses. By bringing low art imagery into the museum, it challenged the elitism of the art world and forced critics and audiences to grapple with the experience of everyday life. In doing so, it opened the door for more inclusive and diverse artistic voices in the decades that followed. Both in terms of content and in the mediums and materials considered acceptable for serious art.
This embrace of mass culture and repetition drew criticism from more traditional art critics, most famously Michael Fried. In his 1967 essay Art and Objecthood, Fried argued that much of the emerging minimalist and Pop aesthetic led to a “theatricality” in art. He believed that artworks were becoming less about an inner experience and more about their effect on the viewer’s presence in the space. To Fried, artists like Warhol were abandoning the qualities that made visual art powerful, including its capacity for deep engagement. Fried didn’t like how Pop Art and Minimalism made art feel more like a thing in a room than a complete, self-contained experience. He worried that if art kept heading in this direction, it would stop being something that challenged us or made us feel present, it would just become part of everyday life, like wallpaper.
Another key figure who challenged traditional ideas about art and originality was choreographer and artist Yvonne Rainer. Like Warhol, Rainer worked in a time when artists were questioning the boundaries between high and low culture, as well as between different artistic disciplines. Her performances, especially Trio A (1966), refused to present dancers as expressive or heroic figures. Instead, the movement was flat and repetitive, emphasizing neutrality and everyday movements. This approach stood in direct opposition to the “presentness” that Michael Fried valued. Fried argued that true art should absorb the viewer, not acknowledge their presence. But Rainer’s work did the opposite, it highlighted the body’s limitations, the act of performance itself, and the viewer’s role in witnessing it. Like Warhol’s silkscreens, Trio A pushed against the idea of the artist as a singular genius or the artwork as a self-contained object. It suggested that art could be ordinary, collaborative, and self-aware without losing its power.
Rainer’s resistance didn’t just redefine what counted as dance, it was part of a broader postwar movement where artists were stepping away from traditional ideas of authorship and emotional depth. Like Andy Warhol using silkscreen to remove the “hand” of the artist, Rainer used plain movement, repetition, and neutrality to take focus away from the performer’s ego. In performances like The Mind Is a Muscle (1968), she combined dance, film, and everyday movement. This wasn’t dance that asked to be admired for beauty or grace. It asked to be considered, on its own terms, just as Pop Art demanded a new way of looking at soup cans or celebrities.
The impact of these artistic strategies was pivotal. By rejecting originality and embracing mass culture, artists like Warhol and Rainier forced a reevaluation of what art could be. No longer defined by the personal vision of the artist or the uniqueness of the object, art became a space to question authorship, value, and meaning in a media-saturated world. This shift laid the groundwork for later movements such as conceptual art and postmodernism, where the idea behind the artwork often took priority over its physical form.
Fried’s critique perpetuates. His insistence on art’s immediacy and depth remains a compelling argument to an increasingly spectacle-driven art world. His fear that art might become a kind of entertainment or social performance still causes debates about art today. The contrast between Fried’s formality and Warhol’s cultural commentary displays the central conflict of the postwar American art scene.
In conclusion, the postwar rejection of originality and the embrace of mass culture in American art marked a major turning point in how we define and understand art. Artists like Warhol and Rainer did not merely reflect the consumer world, but they transformed art to engage with it. Meanwhile, critics like Michael Fried provided a critical counter-argument, defending the ideals of depth, presence, and form against what they saw as the flattening effects of mass imagery and reproduction. Together, this conversation defines one of the most important cultural shifts in 20th-century art. In a world dominated by social media, digital reproduction, and curated images, their debate feels more timely than ever.
Today, we’re surrounded by media, branding, and constant performance. The questions these artists raised are still important: What makes something art? Who gets to be called an artist? What’s the role of the audience? By rejecting originality and embracing mass culture, they didn’t close off these questions. They opened them up.
