religious, cultural, ect.

Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm, 1950 This large painting by Jackson Pollock is one of many of his abstract expressionist pieces. It showcases crazy, sporadic clashing and splashing of white and brown paint. As one can clearly see, lines, shapes, and colors are devoid of any specific representation, but the artist uses flow and movement to combine all of these forms, which as a result, produces an expression of the soul from the artist, a representation of his thoughts and feelings on what I assume is the fall season.

Betye Saar, Imitation of Life, 1975 In this piece, Saar uses a black-face doll and a drawing of a black woman and her baby to create this meaningful work of art. The doll is placed inside an old box which holds a piece of paper affixed behind the doll, which seems to be an old document regarding slave trading and slave labor. Under the drawing of the mother and baby is a row of three flowers. Bety Saar uses found materials and old objects that clearly represent racist stereotypes and black culture to create sculptures ranging in size that hold a deep message about our country's history, reminding ourselves that we should strive for a better, more peaceful future, but never forget the past.

Silvia Levenson,
Until death do us part, 2000
Kiln-formed glass This glass structure formed in the kiln puts a pink grenade on display, on top of a white wedding cake. A hilarious spin on the common phrase "Till death do us part", only quite literally.

As The Air Moves Back From You, D. Chase Angier, 2022
This performance tackles climate change and our changing environment in current times.
This performance lasts 4 weeks. Every week, the installation changes with different amounts of rice, performers, and different sound design.The piece begins with a staggering 10,000
pounds of rice that slowly get smaller each
a week until there is only a handful of rice left.

"For me performance art is a conceptual 'territory' with fluctuating weather and borders; a place where contradiction, ambiguity, and paradox are not only tolerated, but also encouraged. The borders of our 'performance country' are open to nomads, migrants, hybrids, and outcasts." (Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Taylor Performance Reading, Chapter 1).

Tony Smith, Die, 1962
This large steel sculpture of a cube is one of Smith's greatest minimalist creations. This piece is great because it is everything that I hate. No meaning, no concept, no abstract or complex shapes or colors. Just simple cubes and metal. No thought process, no spectacle, and no visual cue of effort and time. No personal connection between the artist and their work. It is everything a minimalist piece of art should be.

Untitled (Free/Still), Rirkrit Tiravanija, 1992/1995/2007/2011 In this work, the artist sets up a space in a specific setting where free curry is prepared and handed out to guests and viewers of the art. However, there is no art in the space. Just free food and possibly some tables where guests can sit down and chat. This is because the artist intends for the guests themselves to become the art. To participate in a moment of time where conversations with total strangers can be created. To be in that moment and experience life, that is the art. Or at least some kind of pretentious reasoning behind handing out free curry. However one may view it, it truly is an exciting experience.

“In other words, relational art works seek to establish intersubjective encounters (be these literal or potential) in which meaning is elaborated collectively (RA, p. 18) rather than in the privatized space of individual consumption. The implication is that this work inverses the goals of Greenbergian modernism. Rather than a discrete, portable, autonomous work of art that transcends its context, relational art is entirely beholden to the contingencies of its environment”(Claire Bishop, Relational Aesthetics, page 54).