Politicized Art Or Artistic Politics

Taking the Vietnam War and the further anti-war movement in 1960s and 70s in U.S.A. as the historical background, this paper listed the anti-war artworks in different stages of the Vietnam War and then introduced the more aggressive anti-war artworks by the end of 60s, namely Yayoi Kusama’s naked happenings and Yoko Ono’s anti-war performance during the period of most tense situation and most severe anti-war situation.Next, this thesis introduced the brief biography of these two artists and the development trace of their arts. Besides, it showed the transformation process of their artistic styles and how they began the creation of anti-war art with the more aggressive styles. The early artistic style of Yayoi Kusama was "Infinite Net", dot paintings and soft phallic sculptures. In the late 60s, being affected by the hippie, she turned to the creation of naked happenings. In early stages, Yoko Ono was devoted to the works of prescriptive "Piece" and "event" series to seek the abstraction, elitism and niche of avant-garde art and then affect the creation style of Fluxus. In the late 60s, Ono met John Lennon in London and they jointly created the performance artworks with the theme of peace movement.According to the comparison of anti-war artworks between two artists, it could be indicated that the difference existed in the commonality and vice versa. Based on the research methods of visual culture, it discussed the relationship between the social politics and artistic style, analyzed the anti-war art from the angle of gender, explored the creation thoughts of sexual liberation and then further studied their anti-war artworks and performed the comparative analysis. In the conclusion, according to the previous views, it concluded the ultimate proposition of "political art or artistic politics".