Funk art is an art movement that was inspired by popular culture and used random mixes of materials and techniques. The name Funk art comes from the musical term funky meaning passionate, sensuous, and quirky. Funk art was mostly popular in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. Artitsts that had done funk art focused on doing their work with humor, confrontation, bawdyness and autobiographical references. They thrived to reintroduce social responsibility into contemporary art.One funk artist is Manuel Neri who was born on April 12, 1930 in Sanger, California. Manuel attended the San Francisco City College in 1950. He initially wanted to be an electri ...view middle of the document...
Neri at this time lives in a home that had once been a church in Benicia, California.Neri has created many paintings, drawings, and prints, but hes most famous for his life-size sculptures. His sculptures were so incredible because although they were so clearly figurative in nature, they were abstracted figures rather than realist representations. He usually made the sculptures out of plaster, but also sometimes used marble or bronze.Another funk artist was Robert Arneson who was born in the year 1930 Benicia, California. He attended Benicia High School, and for most of his youth was a cartoonist for a local paper. He had learnt about art in Oakland, California and had gone to collect his MFA in 1958.Beginning in the 1960s, he and other artists decided to start something new and different. They had thrown away the traditional manufacture of functional items and instead used objects to make confrontational statements. This new association was called Funk Art. Arneson is known to be the father...
