The Rise of the Sixties

One of Thomas Crow’s most influential titles, The Rise of the Sixties, first published in 1996, provides an excellent overview of the major themes and figures in one of art history’s most radical and complicated decades. Presenting an international array of artists against the background of world events in the 1960s, Crow portrays the ways in which the American art scene—including such key figures as Leo Castelli, Eva Hesse, Jasper Johns, Robert Morris, Robert Smithson, Cy Twombly, and Andy Warhol—fit into the corresponding European and international movements of the time, among them Situationalism, Conceptualism, Feminism, Environmentalism, and Op Art.

Generously illustrated with 120 images, 80 of which are in color, the newly available book encompasses all the major players in the art world of the 1960s and examines how they influenced and inspired one another. The author’s fascinating new afterword examines the themes of the 60s in the context of recent historical, political, and cultural events.

Thomas J. Crow is director of the Getty Research Institute and professor of art history at the University of Southern California. Among his previous books are Modern Art in the Common Culture and Emulation: Making Artists for Revolutionary France, both published by Yale University Press.