Decade: 1970 – 1980

Including –History, Fashion, Art,

Literature, Cinema, Music, Architecture,

Social & Economic Condition, Trends etc.

Subject: Elements of Design

Faculty: Ms. Susmita Das Pal

National Institute of Fashion Technology – Mumbai

Submitted by:

Ashish Singh (M/FMS/08/08)

Bhavik Gandhi (M/FMS/08/10)

Kanika Jain (M/FMS/08/12)

Namrata Momaya (M/FMS/08/15)

Poorna Doshi (M/FMS/08/19)

Shabri Wable (M/FMS/08/29)

1970s Art- Installation Art

Installation art uses sculptural materials and other media to modify the way a particular

space is experienced. Installation art is not necessarily confined to gallery spaces and can

be any material intervention in everyday public or private spaces.

Installation art incorporates almost any media to create an experience in a particular

environment. Materials used in contemporary installation art range from everyday and

natural materials to new media such as video, sound, performance, immersive virtual

reality and the internet. Some installations are site-specific in that they are designed to

only exist in the space for which they were created.

History

This genre of contemporary art came

toprominence in the 1970s. Many trace the roots of

this form of art to earlier artists such as Marcel

Duchamp and his use of the readymade or to Kurt

Schwitters' Merz art objects, rather than more

traditional craft based sculpture. The intention of the

artist is paramount in much later installation art

whose roots lie in the conceptual art of the 1960s.

This again is a departure from traditional sculpture

which places its focus on form. Early non-Western

installation art includes events staged by the Gutai

group in Japan starting in 1954, which influenced

American installation pioneers like Allan Kaprow.

Marcel Duchamp. 'Fountain, 1917

Installation as nomenclature for a specific form of art came into use fairly recently; its

first use as documented by the OED was in 1969. It was coined in this context in

reference to a form of art that had arguably existed since prehistory but was not regarded

as a discrete category until the mid-twentieth century. Allan Kaprow used the term

“Environment” in 1958 (Kaprow 6) to describe his transformed indoor spaces; this later

joined such terms as “project art” and “temporary art.”

Essentially, installation/environmental art takes into account the viewer‟s entire sensory

experience, rather than floating framed points of focus on a “neutral” wall or displaying

isolated objects (literally) on a pedestal. This leaves space and time as its only

dimensional constants. This implies dissolution of the line between art and life; Kaprow

noted that “if we bypass „art‟ and take nature itself as a model or point of departure, we

may be able to devise a different kind of art… out of the sensory stuff of ordinary life”

(Kaprow 12).

The conscious act of artistically addressing all the senses with regard to the viewer‟s

experience in totality made a resounding debut in 1849 when Richard Wagner conceived

of a Gesamtkunstwerk, or an operatic work for the stage that drew inspiration from

ancient Greek theater in its inclusion of all the major art forms: painting, writing, music,

etc. (Britannica) In devising operatic works to commandeer the audience‟s senses,

Wagner left nothing unobserved: architecture, ambience, and even the audience itself

were considered and manipulated in order to achieve a state of total artistic immersion. In

the book "Themes in Contemporary Art”, it is suggested that “installations in the 1980s

and 1990s were increasingly characterized by networks of operations involving the

interaction among complex architectural settings, environmental sites and extensive use

of everyday objects in ordinary contexts. With the advent of video in 1965, a concurrent

strand of installation evolved through the use of new and ever-changing technologies, and

what had been simple video installations expanded to include complex interactive,

multimedia and virtual reality environments”.(Themes, 199)

In “Art and Objecthood,” Michael Fried derisively labels art that acknowledges the

viewer as “theatrical” (Fried 45). There is a strong parallel between installation and

theater: both play to a viewer who is expected to be at once immersed in the

sensory/narrative experience that surrounds him and maintain a degree of self-identity as

a viewer. The traditional theatergoer does not forget that he has come in from outside to

sit and take in a created experience; a trademark of installation art has been the curious

and eager viewer, still aware that he is in an exhibition setting and tentatively exploring

the novel universe of the installation. A number of institutions focusing on Installation art

were created from the 1980s onwards, suggesting the need for Installation to be seen as a

separate discipline. These included the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh and the Museum of

Installation, London, among others.

The artist and critic Ilya Kabakov mentions this essential phenomenon in the introduction

to his lectures “On the “Total” Installation:” “[One] is simultaneously both a „victim‟ and

a viewer, who on the one hand surveys and evaluates the installation, and on the other,

follows those associations, recollections which arise in him[;] he is overcome by the

intense atmosphere of the total illusion” (Kabakov 256). Here installation art bestows an

unprecedented importance on the observer‟s inclusion in that which he observes. The

expectations and social habits that the viewer takes with him into the space of the

installation will remain with him as he enters, to be either applied or negated once he has

taken in the new environment. What is common to nearly all installation art is a

consideration of the experience in toto and the problems it may present, namely the

constant conflict between disinterested criticism and sympathetic involvement.

Television and video offer immersive experiences, but their unrelenting control over the

rhythm of passing time and the arrangement of images precludes an intimately personal

viewing experience (Kabakov 257). Ultimately, the only things a viewer can be assured

of when experiencing the work are his own thoughts and preconceptions and the basic

rules of space and time. All else may be molded by the artist‟s hands.

The central importance of the subjective point of view when experiencing installation art,

points toward a disregard for traditional Platonic image theory. In effect, the entire

installation adopts the character of the simulacrum or flawed statue: it neglects any ideal

form in favor of optimizing its direct appearance to the observer. Installation art operates

fully within the realm of sensory perception, in a sense “installing” the viewer into an

artificial system with an appeal to his subjective perception as its ultimate goal.

Interactive installation is a branch off the installation arts category. Usually, an

interactive installation will often involve the audience acting on it or the piece responding

to the user‟s activity. There are several kinds of interactive installations produced, these

include web-based installations, gallery based installations, digital based installations,

electronic based installations, etc. Interactive installations are mostly seen from the

1990s, when artists are more interested in the participation of the audiences where the

meaning of the installation is generated.

With the improvement of technology over the years, artists are more able to explore

outside of the boundaries that were never able to be explored by artists in the past. The

media used are more experimental and bold; they are also usually cross media and may

involve sensors, which plays on the reaction to the audiences‟ movement when looking at

the installations. By using virtual Reality as a medium, immersive virtual reality art is

probably the most deeply interactive form of art. At the turn of a new century, there is a

trend of interactive installations using video, film, sound and sculpture

1970s Art- Neo-expressionism

Neo-expressionism was a style of modern painting that emerged in the late 1970s and

dominated the art market until the mid-1980s. Related to American Lyrical Abstraction it

developed in Europe as a reaction against the conceptual and minimalistic art of the

1970s. Neo-expressionists returned to portraying recognizable objects, such as the human

body (although sometimes in a virtually abstract manner), in a rough and violently

emotional way using vivid colours and banal colour harmonies. Overtly inspired by the

so-called German Expressionist painters--Emil Nolde, Max Beckmann, George Grosz--

and other emotive artist such as James Ensor and Edvard Munch. Neo-expressionists

were sometimes called Neue Wilde ('The new wild ones'; 'New Fauves' would better meet

the meaning of the term)

1970s- Fabric Art 1970s- Graphic Art

1970s- Advertisements

1970s- Magazines

1970s- Photography

World in 1970s

In the western world, social progressive values that began in the 1960s, such as

increasing political awareness and political and economic liberty of women, continued to

grow. The hippie culture, which started in the 1960s, continued in the early 1970s and

faded towards the middle part of the decade, which involved opposition to the Vietnam

War, opposition to nuclear weapons, the advocacy of world peace, and hostility to the

authority of government. The environmentalist movement began to increase dramatically

in this period. Western countries experienced an economic recession due to oil crisis

caused by oil embargoes by Arab countries in the Middle East, while Japan's economy

boomed. The crisis saw the first instance of stagflation which began a political and

economic trend of the replacement of Keynesian economic theory with neoliberal

economic theory, with the first neoliberal government being created in the United

Kingdom with election of the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher in 1979.

In Asia, affairs regarding the People's Republic of China changed significantly following

the recognition of the PRC by the United Nations, the death of Mao Zedong and the

beginning of market liberalization by Mao's successors. The economy of Japan witnessed

a large boom in this period. The United States withdrew its military forces from their

previous involvement in Vietnam which had grown enormously unpopular. In 1979, the

Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan which led to an ongoing war for ten years. The 1970s

saw an initial increase in violence in the Middle East as Egypt and Syria declared war on

Israel, but in the late 1970s, the situation in the Middle East was fundamentally altered

when Egypt signed a peace agreement with Israel which was followed by Egyptian

President Anwar Sadat being assassinated. Political tensions in Iran exploded with the

Iranian Revolution which overthrew the Iranian monarchy and established an Islamic

theocracy in Iran.

The economies of many third world countries continued to make steady progress in the

early 1970s, because of the green revolution. They might have thrived and become stable

in the way that Europe recovered after the war through the Marshall Plan; however, their

economic growth was slowed by the oil crisis.

Worldwide Trends

The first ethos of the 1970s emerged from a transition of the global social structure. It

reflected the transition from the decline of colonial imperialism since the end of World

War II to globalization and the rise of a new middle class in the developing world.

Globally, the 1970s had several features that were similar and definitive across economic

levels and regions. Some defining points of the 1970s were the Arab-Israeli war of 1973

and the subsequent oil shock of 1973, the economic strain caused by the rapid increase in

the price of oil and its influence on the Bretton Woods system of international economic

stabilisation, and the effect of the contraceptive pill on social dynamics.

Developing nations that were rich in oil experienced economic growth; others, not so

endowed, saw the economic strain of oil price hikes lead to economic decline,

particularly in Africa where a number of moderately democratic states became dictatorial

regimes. Many Middle Eastern democracies crumbled into chaotic regimes with pseudo-

democratic governments. Several Asian countries also saw the rise of dictators, including

South Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia.

As well, people were influenced by the rapid pace of societal change and the aspiration

for a more egalitarian society in cultures that were long colonised and have an even

longer history of hierarchical social structure.

The first face lifts were attempted in the 1970s.

The green revolution of the late 1960s brought about self sufficiency in food in many

developing economies. At the same time an increasing number of people began to seek

urban prosperity over agrarian life. This consequently saw the duality of transition of

diverse interaction across social communities amid increasing information blockade

across social class.

Other common global ethos of the seventies world include: increasingly flexible and

varied gender roles for women in industrialised societies. More women could enter the

work force. However, the gender role of men remained as that of a bread-winner. The

period also saw the socioeconomic effect of an ever-increasing number of women

entering the non-agrarian economic workforce. The Iranian revolution also affected

global attitudes to and among those of the Muslim faith toward the end of the 1970s.

The global experience of the cultural transition of the 1970s and an experience of a global

zeitgeist revealed the interdependence of economies since World War II, in a world

increasingly polarised between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Novelist Tom Wolfe coined the term Me decade in New York magazine in August 1976

referring to the 1970s. The term describes a general new attitude of Americans towards

self-awareness and, in clear contrast with the 1960s, away from history, community, and

human reciprocity awareness.

Economy

The 1970s were perhaps the worst decade of Western and American economic

performance since the Great Depression. Although there was no severe economic

depression as witnessed in the 1930s, economic growth rates were considerably lower

than previous decades. As a result, the 1970s adversely distinguished itself from the

prosperous postwar period between 1945 and 1973. Then, the world economy was

buoyed by the Marshall Plan and the robust American economy. However, the high

standing enjoyed by the American economy gradually became discomposed by years of

loose domestic spending (particularly the Great Society campaign) and funding for the

Vietnam war. The oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 added to the existing ailments and

conjured high inflation throughout much of the world for the rest of the decade. Soaring

oil prices compelled most American businesses to raise their prices as well, with

inflationary results.

The average annual inflation rate from 1900 to 1970 was approximately 2.5 percent.

From 1970, however, the average rate hit about 6 percent, topping out at 13.3 percent by

1979. This period is also known for "stagflation", a phenomenon in which inflation and

unemployment steadily increased, therefore leading to double-digit interest rates that rose

to unprecedented levels (above 12% per year). The prime rate hit 21.5 in December 1980,

the highest in history. By the time of 1980, when U.S. President Jimmy Carter was

running for re-election against Ronald Reagan, the misery index (the sum of the

unemployment rate and the inflation rate) had reached an all-time high of 21.98 percent.

In Eastern Europe, Soviet-style command economies began showing signs of stagnation,

in which successes were persistently dogged by setbacks. The oil shock increased East

European, particularly Soviet, exports, but a growing inability to increase agricultural

output caused growing concern to the governments of the COMECON block, and a

growing dependence on food imported from Western nations.

Oil crisis

Economically, the seventies were marked by the energy crisis which peaked in 1973 and

1979 (see 1973 oil crisis and 1979 oil crisis). After the first oil shock in 1973, gasoline

was rationed in many countries. Europe particularly depended on the Middle East for oil;

the U.S. was also affected even though it had its own oil reserves. Many European

countries introduced car-free days and weekends. In the U.S., customers with a license

plate ending in an odd number were only allowed to buy gasoline on odd-numbered days,

while even-numbered plate-holders could only purchase gasoline on even-numbered

days. The experience that oil reserves were not endless and technological development

was not sustainable without harming the environment ended the age of modernism. As a

result, ecological awareness rose substantially

Social movements

Environmentalism

The 1970s started a mainstream affirmation of the environmental issues early activists

from the 1960s, such as Rachel Carson and Murray Bookchin had warned of. The moon

landing that had occurred at the end of the previous decade transmitted back concrete

images of the Earth as an integrated, life-supporting system and shaped a public

willingness to preserve nature. On April 22, 1970, the United States celebrated its first

Earth Day in which over two thousand colleges and universities and roughly ten thousand

primary and secondary schools participated.

Feminism

Feminism in the United States got its start in the 1970s,many women started to become

hoes and not know what they were doing but began to take flight starting in the late 1970,

with the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United

States Constitution (which legalized female suffrage).

With the anthology Sisterhood is Powerful and other works, such as Sexual Politics,

being published at the start of the decade, feminism started to reach a larger audience

than ever before.

Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Betty Ford, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, Robin

Morgan, Kate Millet, Elizabeth Holtzman, and many other women-and men-led the

movement for women's equality.

Most efforts of the movement, especially aims at social equality and repeal of the

remaining oppressive, sexist laws, were successful. Doors of opportunity were more

numerous and much further open than before as women gained unheard of success in

business, politics, education, science, the law, and even the home. However there were

significant failures, most notably the failure to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to the

U.S. Constitution with only three more states needed to ratify it (efforts to ratify ERA in

the unratified states continues to this day and twenty-two states have adopted state

ERAs). Also, the wage gap failed to close, but it did become smaller (there is also action

still taken to ensure pay equality to this day).

The feminist era ended in the early 1980s with the new conservative leadership in

Washington, D.C., but American women created a brief, but powerful, third-wave in the

early 1990s which addressed sexual harrasment (inspired by the Anita Hill-Clarence

Thomas Senate Judiciary Committee hearings of 1991) and violence against women. The

results of the movement included a new awareness of such issues amongst women, and

unprecedented numbers of women elected to public office, particularly the United States

Senate.

Civil rights

While still around in the '70s, the African American Civil Rights Movement had achieved

its main goals, lost much passion with the deaths of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther

King, Jr. and Senator Bobby Kennedy, and backed into the shadows, largely to make way

for the feminist revolution which it itself had overshadowed for most of the 1960s. The

seventies were seen as the "woman's turn", though many feminists incorporated civil

rights ideals into their movement. A courageous feminist who had inherited the

leadership position of the civil rights movement from her husband, Coretta Scott King, as

leader of the black movement, called for an end to all discrimination, helping and

encouraging the Woman's Liberation movement, and other movements as well.

Science and technology

The 1970s witnessed an explosion in the understanding of solid-state physics, driven by

the development of the integrated circuit, and the laser. The CERN super-collider was

constructed, and Stephen Hawking developed his theories of black holes and the

boundary-condition of the universe at this period. The biological sciences greatly

advanced, with molecular biology, bacteriology, virology, and genetics achieving their

modern forms in this decade. Biodiversity became a cause of major concern as habitat

destruction, and Stephen Jay Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium revolutionized

evolutionary thought. Space exploration reached its zenith in the 1970s with the

ambitious Voyager program aimed at outer planets in the solar system, though Apollo

lunar flights terminated in 1972. The Soviet Union developed vital involving long-term

human life in free-fall on the Salyut and later Mir space stations.

The birth of modern computing was in the 1970s, which saw the development of the

world's first general microprocessor, the C programming language, rudimentary personal

computers, pocket calculators, the first supercomputer, and consumer video games. The

1970s were also the start of fiber optics, which transformed the communications industry.

In automotive technology, United States and especially Europe turned toward more

lightweight, fuel efficient vehicles. Automotive historians have also described the period

as 'the era of poor quality control', though the integration of the computer and robot,

particularly in Japan, allowed unprecedented improvements in mass production. In

consumer goods, microwave ovens and Cassette tapes surged in popularity, and the first

consumer videocassette recorders became available. Genetic engineering became a

commercially viable technology.

Culture

Role of women in society

Isabel Martínez de Perón(left) becomes the

first woman President of Argentina in

1974 and the first woman non-monarch

head of state in the Western hemisphere.

Margaret Thatcher(right) shortly after

becoming the United Kingdom's first woman

Prime Minister in 1979. Thatcher's political

and economic agenda began the first government committed to

neoliberalism.

The role of women in society was profoundly altered with growing feminism across the

world and with the presence and rise of a significant number of women as heads of state

outside of monarchies and heads of government in a number of countries across the world

during the 1970s, many being the first women to hold such positions. Non-monarch

women heads of state and heads of government in this period included Isabel Martínez de

Perón as the first woman President in Argentina and the first woman non-monarch head

of state in the Western hemisphere in 1974 until being deposed in 1976, Elisabeth

Domitien becomes the first woman Prime Minister of the Central African Republic,

Indira Gandhi continuing as Prime Minister of India until 1977 (and taking office again in

1980), Prime Minister Golda Meir of Israel and acting Chairman Soong Ching-ling of the

People's Republic of China continuing their leadership from the sixties, Lidia Gueiler

Tejada becoming the interim President of Bolivia beginning from 1979 to 1980, Maria de

Lourdes Pintasilgo becoming the first woman Prime Minister of Portugal in 1979, and

Margaret Thatcher becoming the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in

1979. Both Indira Gandhi and Margaret

Thatcher would remain important political

figures in the following decade in the 1980s.

Music

The early 1970s saw the rise of popular soft

rock music, with such legendary recording

artists as The Carpenters, Elton John, James

Taylor, John Denver, The Eagles, America,

Chicago, The Doobie Brothers, Bread and

Steely Dan as well as the further rise of such

popular, influential rhythm and blues (R&B) artists as multi-instrumentalist Stevie

Wonder and the popular quintet The Jackson 5.

Led Zeppelin performing in the early 1970s

The mid-1970s besides the ever present Grateful Dead , also saw the rise of disco music,

which dominated popular music during the last half of the decade. In response to this,

rock music became increasingly hard edged with artists such as Led Zeppelin and Black

Sabbath. Minimalism also emerged, lead by composers such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich

and Michael Nyman. This was a break from the intellectual serial music of the tradition

of Schoenberg which lasted from the early 1900s to 1960s.

Experimental classical music influenced both art rock and progressive rock as well as the

punk rock and New Wave genres. Hard rock and Heavy metal also emerged among

British bands Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, Led Zeppelin and Judas Priest.

Australian band AC/DC also found its hard rock origins in the early 1970s. In Europe,

there was a surge of popularity in the early decade for glam rock. The mid-seventies saw

the rise of punk music from its protopunk/garage band roots in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Major acts include the Ramones, Blondie, Patti Smith, the Sex Pistols, and The Clash.

The highest-selling album was Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon (1973). It remained

on the Billboard Top 200 Albums Chart for 741 weeks. The rise of Disco music occurred

in the late 1970s; however, the first half of the 1970s saw many jazz musicians from the

Miles Davis school achieve cross-over success through jazz-rock fusion. In Germany,

Manfred Eicher started the ECM label, which quickly made a name for 'chamber jazz'.

Towards the end of the decade, Jamaican reggae music, already popular in the Caribbean

and Africa since the early 1970s, became very popular in the U.S. and in Europe, mostly

because of reggae superstar and legend Bob Marley. The late '70s also saw the beginning

of hip hop music with the song "Rapper's Delight" by Sugarhill Gang. Country music

remained very popular in the U.S. In 1977 it became more mainstream after Kenny

Rogers became a solo singer and scored many hits on both the country and pop charts

Cinema

In 1970s European cinema, the failure of the Prague Spring brought about nostalgic

motion pictures such as István Szabó's Szerelmesfilm (1970). German New Wave and

Rainer Fassbinder's existential movies characterized film-making in Germany. The

movies of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman reached a new level of expression in

motion pictures like Cries and Whispers (1973).

Asian cinema of the 1970s catered to the rising middle class fantasies and struggles. In

the Bollywood cinema of India, this was epitomised by the movies of Bollywood

superhero Amitabh Bachchan. Another Asian touchstone beginning in the early '70s was

traditional Hong Kong martial arts film which sparked a greater interest in Chinese

martial arts to the West. Martial arts film reached the peak of its popularity largely in part

due to its greatest icon, Bruce Lee.

Hollywood emerged from its early 1970s slump with young film-makers. Top-grossing

Jaws (1975) ushered in the blockbuster era of film-making, though it was eclipsed two

years later by the science-fiction epic Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977).

The Rocky Horror Picture Show bombed terribly (1974) only to reappear as a midnight

show (1977).

Television

In the United Kingdom, color channels were now available; three stations had begun

broadcasting in color between 1977 and 1979. UK dramas included Play for Today and

Pennies From Heaven. The science fiction show Doctor Who reached its peak. Many

popular British situation comedies (sit-coms) were gentle, innocent, unchallenging

comedies of middle-class life; typical examples were Terry and June, Sykes, and The

Good Life. A more diverse view of society was offered by series like Porridge and Rising

Damp. In police dramas there was a move towards increasing realism; popular shows

included Dixon of Dock Green, Softly, Softly, and The Sweeney.

In the United States, long-standing trends were declining. The Red Skelton Show and The

Ed Sullivan Show, long-revered American institutions, were canceled. The "family

sitcom" saw its last breath at the start of the new decade with The Brady Bunch and The

Partridge Family. Television was transformed by what became termed as "social

consciousness" programming such as All in the Family, which broke down television

barriers. With the women's movement reflected in new shows about single women in

'traditionally male' careers, such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Police Woman and

others. The television western, which had been very popular in the 1960s, died out during

the 1970s, with Bonanza, The Virginian, and Gunsmoke ending their runs. By the mid- to

late 1970s, "jiggle television"--programs centered around sexual gratification and bawdy

humor and situations such as Charlie's Angels and Three's Company--became popular.

Soap operas expanded their audience beyond housewives with the rise of All My Children

and As the World Turns. Game shows such as Match Game, The Hollywood Squares and

Family Feud were also popular daytime television. Match Game was wildly popular

during its run from 1973 to 1982, and the height of its popularity occurred between 1973

and 1977 before being taken over by Family Feud in 1978. Television's current longest-

running game show, The Price is Right began its run hosted by Bob Barker in 1972.

Another influential genre was the television newscast, which built on its initial

widespread success in the 1960s. Finally, the variety show received its last hurrah during

this decade, with shows such as The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour and Donny & Marie.

Literature

Fiction in the early '70s brought a return to old-fashioned storytelling, especially with

Erich Segal's Love Story. The seventies also saw the decline of previously well-respected

writers, such as Saul Bellow and Peter De Vries, who both released poorly received

novels at the start of the decade. Racism remained a key literary subject. John Updike

emerged as a major literary figure. Reflections of the 1960s experience also found roots

in the literature of the decade through the works of Joyce Carol Oates and Morris Wright.

With the rising cost of hard-cover books and the increasing readership of "genre fiction,"

the paperback became a popular medium. Criminal non-fiction also became a popular

topic. Irreverence and satire, typified in Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, were

common literary elements. The horror genre also emerged, and by the late seventies

Stephen King had become one of the most popular genre novelists.

In non-fiction, several books related to Nixon and the Watergate scandal topped the best-

selling lists. 1977 brought many high-profile biographical works of literary figures, such

as those of Virginia Woolf, Agatha Christie, and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Architecture

Architecture in the 1970s began as a the continuation of styles created by such architects

as Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Early in the decade, several

architects competed to build the tallest building in the world. Of these buildings, the most

notable are the John Hancock Center and Sears Tower in Chicago, both designed by

Bruce Graham and Fazlur Khan and the World Trade Center towers that were in New

York by American architect Minoru Yamasaki. The decade also brought experimentation

in geometric design, pop-art, postmodernism and early deconstructivism.

In 1974, Louis Kahn's last and arguably most famous building, the National Assembly

Building of Dhaka, Bangladesh was completed.

The Sears Tower became the world's tallest building when completed in 1973.

The building's use of open spaces and ground breaking geometry brought rare attention to

the small southeast Asian country. Hugh Stubbins' Citicorp

Center revolutionized the incorporation of solar panels in

office buildings. The seventies brought further

experimentation in glass and steel construction and geometric

design. Chinese architect I. M. Pei's John Hancock Tower in

Boston, Massachusetts is an example, although like many

buildings of the time, the experimentation was flawed and

glass panes fell from the façade. In 1976, the completed CN

Tower in Toronto became the world's tallest free-standing

structure on land, an honor it held until 2007. The fact that no

taller tower had been built between the construction of the CN

Tower and the Burj Dubai shows how innovative the

architecture and engineering of the structure truly was.

But modern architecture was increasingly criticized, both from

the point of view of postmodern architects such as Philip

Johnson, Charles Moore and Michael Graves who advocated a

return to pre-modern styles of architecture and the

incorporation of pop elements as a means of communicating

with a broader public. Other architects, such as Peter Eisenman of the New York Five

advocated the pursuit of form for the sake of form and drew on semiotics theory for

support.

"High Tech" architecture moved forward as Buckminster Fuller continued his

experiments in geodesic domes while the George Pompidou Center, designed by Renzo

Piano and Richard Rogers, which opened in 1977, was a prominent example. As the

decade drew to a close, Frank Gehry broke out in new direction with his own house in

Santa Monica, a highly complex structure, half excavated out of an existing bungalow

and half cheaply built construction using materials such as chicken wire fencing.

Social Science

Social science intersected with hard science in the works in natural language processing

by Terry Winograd (1973) and the establishment of the first cognitive sciences

department in the world at MIT in 1979. The fields of generative linguistics and cognitive

psychology went through a renewed vigour with symbolic modeling of semantic

knowledge while the final devastation of the long standing tradition of behaviorism came

about through the severe criticism of B.F. Skinner's work in 1971 by the cognitive

scientist Noam Chomsky.

Sports

In the 1970s, the renegade sports leagues of the American Basketball Association

(founded in 1967), the North American Soccer League (also founded in 1967), the World

Hockey Association (lasting from 1972 through 1979), and the World Series Cricket

(lasting from 1977 to 1979) challenged older, established organizations. The "Battle of

the Sexes" tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, who proclaimed the

women's game to be inferior, was a turning point in sports during the decade; after King's

victory, the match was heralded as a major victory for women in athletics.

The 1972 Summer Olympics were marred by terrorism and Cold War-related

international controversy. Among the competition's highlights was the performance of

swimmer Mark Spitz, who set seven World Records to win a record of seven gold medals

in one Olympics. The 1976 Summer Olympics were highlighted by the legendary

performance of Romanian female gymnast Nadia Comaneci and the strong U.S. boxing

team.