Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The art world became big business, with a Van Gogh fetching $54 million. Corpora-
tions paid big bucks for large, colorful, semi-abstract canvases. Marketing became an art
form. Gender and sexual orientation were popular themes. Many women picked up paint-
brushes, creating bright-colored abstract forms hinting at vulva and penis shapes. Visual
art fused with popular music, bringing us installations in dance clubs and fast-edit music
videos. The crude style of graffiti art demanded to be included in corporate society.
The communist-built Berlin Wall was torn down, ending four decades of a global Cold
War between capitalism and communism. The new battleground was the “Culture Wars,”
the struggle to include all races, genders, and lifestyles within an increasingly corporate-
dominated, global society.
Artists looked to Third World countries for inspiration and championed society's out-
siders against government censorship and economic exclusion. A new medium, the Inter-
net, arose, allowing instantaneous multimedia communication around the world through
electronic signals carried by satellites and telephone lines.
A new millennium dawned, with Europe and America at a peak of prosperity unmatched
in human history....
