They were all making art that combined elements of Pop and Conceptualism with social concerns about consumerism, political power and gender.
"I think of them as a kind of fragment, a glimpse, into what our reality is," said Ms. Meckseper, 47, whose work often operates at the intersection of culture, consumerism and power.
For China, his pledge to maintain fiscal responsibility, which would preserve the dollar as a haven for foreign cash, comes with a warning: do not count on "voracious" American consumerism to power your future growth.
The juxtaposition of the works is revealing not just in terms of artistic technique but also of contrasting societal views about sexuality, power, consumerism and money.
According to Frampton (1983), critical regionalism also moving in this direction and proposed "resistant architecture" against prevailing consumerism and centralised power and control (Frampton 1986), opening up to an idea of the environment and the landscape as an instrument to resist the globalising, standardising tendencies (Shannon 2006).
Affluence, automation, consumerism, and American power would grow; social equity would simply take care of itself on a rising tide of abundance; the human race would master nature through technology rather than view it in terms of ecology.
And it's distinguishing this step (with the power of consumerism thrown into the equation) that is breaking the bank.
Dare we open to the piercing pain of greed, of corrupt governmental and legal systems, the tangled mess of politics and power, blind consumerism and image-obsessed pettiness?
Because as consumerism grows, so does the power of the consumer.
What is occurring in Italy, Mr. Ginsborg writes, is an experiment in governance that depends on new links among "modern consumerism, commercial television and political power".
