Age of anxiety

Episode number 8 of Series “American visions”.
The subject of Hughes’ final program is American art of the late twentieth century. The United States entered the 1960’s as a rich and powerful nation, confident in its virtuous destiny, but by the end of the decade the dreams were shattered. The terrible conflict of Vietnam divided the country as it had not been divided since the Civil War a century earlier. America’s “Age of Anxiety” had begun. Hughes looks at the “tableaux” of Ed and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, works that range across the whole canon of American public imagery. He tells the story of the klutzy images of blood-stained Ku Klux Klansmen in the paintings of Philip Guston. He also meets many of the artists; Eric Fischl, Bruce Nauman and Louise Bourgeois, whose work reflects the uncertain society of the late sixties and early seventies. Hughes argues that it was Ronald Reagan’s economic policies that created the art-market boom of the 1980’s, with inflated prices and inflated egos. He confronts one of the darlings of the decade, former bond dealer Jeff Koons, in the hope of finding something meaningful in a large sculpture of a crucified kitten in a sock. For Hughes, the eighties were “a low, dishonest time for much American art.” Written and presented by Robert Hughes.