ABSTRACT
World War II dominated the first half of the 1940s, and the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union dispirited the second half. With the start of the Korean War in 1950, it seemed as if full-scale international hostilities might resume again. Furthermore, several events horrified the imagination of many during those years: the irrational hatreds set loose in the 1930s, which resulted in the planned and persistent massacres of entire groups of people; the use of atomic warfare; the presence or imminence of international nuclear warfare; and the failure of various political systems to cope with, let alone control, the never-ending economic and political crises of modern civilization. Although Abstract Expressionism was accepted in the 1950s as the movement that propelled American art to the leading position in the international avant-garde. Happenings, a combination of Assemblage and theater, also evolved during the 1950s.
