Visual Art of the decade

By the end of the 1960s, the artistic avant-garde had embraced the austerity that was implicit in many of the decade's developments. Going into the 1970s, Photorealism banished gesture and brushstrokes. Joseph Kosuth, the Savonarola of Conceptualism, brought a moral fervour to his dismissal of conventional art practice. Minimalists such as Donald Judd produced increasingly monumental, blank geometric forms. The Tate Gallery's purchase of Carl Andre's bricks engendered tabloid frenzy. Joseph Beuys pioneered the notion of artist as contemporary shaman. Hans Haacke made ingeniously polemical installations. And sculpture explored new horizons in works that, buoyed by growing ecological awareness, moved out into the landscape. The most celebrated piece of land art is probably Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, constructed by bulldozers on Salt Lake, Utah in 1970.