ARH202 Test 4

Question 1

Answer 1

• HENRI MATISSE, Woman with the Hat, 1905
• displayed in the autumn salon
  
  • speaks to expanding art market
  • consisted of a group of painters whose paintings were so radically simplified and used such shocking colors that one of the most shocked critics referred to them as beasts
• liberation from color to paint what the world looks like
• bold simplification and jarring use of color outside of its usual role is what characterized these painters as les foveas
• used the term to underscore their goals
• weren’t a self identified organized group
• this style evaporated rather quickly
• early excursion in the 20th century to express the capabilities of color

Question 2

Answer 2

• PABLO PICASSO, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907
• work of art that revolutionized the modernist movement
• one of the qualities that is used to define this work and discuss this work is so called “primitivism”
  
  • in this case primitivism refers to Africanism and African masks
• image of prostitutes
• in a sense although visually this work seems disconnected he is aligning himself with old avant-garde work in regards to subject matter
• this is a real brothel in Barcelona
• his early thought was to include two sailors who were the customers
• detail of the red velvet curtain is a reference to that tradition of theatricality that paintings of royalty always included
• table top still life included
• manner in which these women are painted
  
  • took portions of the body that he rendered in flat shapes that he rearranged to make up the body
  • pictorial visual incoherence
  • African masks keep artist from having to paint the world as it looks
  • tension between the illusion of 3D and 2D both with the forms and the colors that he uses
• gone is the model of a traditional piece that is orderly composed and has a traditional subject matter
• primitivism refers to the art in Africa
  
  • underlying assumption to something being primitive is that someone in the west would never paint something in this way
  • France was a colonial power
  • Picasso was a product of the time period he was raised in
    
    • he had underlying beliefs in primitivism

Question 3

Answer 3

• PABLO PICASSO, Still Life with Chair-Caning, 1912
• artists are revealing how they are working through problems
• cubists are further investigating this problem of the real
  
  • so they begin constructing images where parts of it are painted and parts of it are collage
    
    • literally bringing in parts of the real world
• framed with an actual rope
• painted over a cloth
• people had a hard time seeing the art in this

Question 4

Answer 4

• PABLO PICASSO, Guernica, 1937
• Picasso himself asserted his engagement with the contemporary world around him
• he said that art is not just something to hang up in your apartments
• time when Spain had fallen into a civil war
  
  • popular front party had been elected to power in 1930 and was overthrown by the right wing (Franco)
  • Franco had elicited the support of Mussolini and Hitler to overthrow his enemies
    
    • orchestrated a bombing in the middle of the day
    • extreme expression of brutality
• overthrown Spanish government was hiding in France
  
  • asked Picasso to commission this for the world’s fair
• enormous piece
  
  • reminder of grand manner history paintings
  • manner of painting on this large of a scale is like nothing we have ever seen
• monochromatic
  
  • emphasizes form and the illusion of form
  • here black and white emphasizes the barbarism of the moment it was depicting

Question 5

Answer 5

• UMBERTO BOCCIONI, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913 (cast 1931)
• Bronze
• example of experimentation with sculpture
• sculpture that appealed to these notions of flux and motion and speed
• most successful early experiment with how you take a solid form and make it seem anything but static
• captured that idea of dynamism and flux
• created the illusion of movement with the arrangement of his shapes

Question 6

Answer 6

• MARCEL DUCHAMP, Fountain, (second version), 1950 (original version produced 1917)
• part of a urinal tipped on it’s side that was signed and dated
• detached from its functioning counterpart
• submitted this to a radical exhibition
  
  • rejected it when they said they wouldn’t reject any art because they argued it wasn’t art
  • Duchamp asked why not?
    
    • what does it mean to create a work of art?
• where does the value lie in a piece like this

Question 7

Answer 7

• RENÉ MAGRITTE, The Treachery (or Perfidy) of Images, 1928–1929
• addresses the idea that this is a pipe but it’s not— its actually a picture of a pipe

Question 8

Answer 8

• ALEXANDER CALDER, Lobster Trap and Fish Tail, 1939
• was an engineer
• brings kinetics and motion to art
  
  • began a sort of cult following
• playfulness to his work
• His pieces were always moving

Question 9

Answer 9

• JACKSON POLLOCK, Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), 1950
• American artist
• pushed the idea of the materiality of the surface itself
  
  • what the canvas can and cannot express
• worked with a group of artists who were collectively known as the abstract expressionists
  
  • occurred in NYC
  • during the middle of WWII and immediately following the end of the war artists who could get out of Europe did so
    
    • seeking place of safety to work
    • critical mass of artists and critics alike in NYC
    • NY remains the most important center for modern art
• increasingly prominent role of critics
• pluralism in art defines 21st century art is compounded to the presence of critics
• Clement Greenberg was a critic who was a prolific writer and was deeply engaged with contributing his notions of what artists were working on in the time period
• argued for strict formalism
• said what artists have to emphasize is the elements of the work of art
• thought the whole idea of subject matter and the window to the world was bankrupt
• interested in the idea of artistic purity
  
  • artists accept the limitations of their medium
    
    • use the limitation and push it to the extreme
• problematic relationship with art to the real world
• modernism was a particular kind of response to the world artists were living in
• questioning the nature of art itself
• no suggestion of illusion or three dimensionality
• sense of spontaneity and dynamism that seems to define this work
• part of the action painters/ gestural abstraction painters
• dramatically challenging what it means to be a work of art

Question 10

Answer 10

• TONY SMITH, Die, 1962
• importance of this square
• sculpture with very clear sense of space
• moving against the grain of the history of art
• industrial materials that erase the hand of the artist
  
  • same material oxidizes
• even in this industrial world it changes and adapts to the environment it’s in
  
  • even with no roots or any organic particles
  • natural processes actually impact the sculpture itself
• Smith made this as a commission for an advertisement
• questioned the space of art
  
  • is art something that can be consumed

Question 11

Answer 11

• ROBERT SMITHSON, Spiral Jetty, Great Salt Lake, Utah, 1970
• art that is so monumental that it isn’t architecture but is so monumental that it can’t quite be called sculpture
• it was easier to talk about this piece as what it isn’t
• it’s an earthwork
  
  • Smithson’s term
  • not all land art is an earthwork
• hired people to build this for him
• brought land and dirt and rocks to make this jetty
  
  • jetties keep the beaches from eroding
    
    • protects harbor/cove so that you can go out and collect clams
• Smithson’s jetty doesn’t function as a jetty
  
  • it’s supposed to be one straight line
  • nonfunctional jetty because it’s a spiral
• no control over it past creation
  
  • nature takes over
• droughts reveal more of it
• sometimes it’s completely covered by water
• documented process of making it
• made a film about this piece
• argued that the sculpture wasn’t actually the art work nor were the photographs, but the film
  
  • film doesn’t really have materiality other than the film strip it’s just a projection
• moves back and forth between natural processes, industrial processes,

Question 12

Answer 12

• ANDY WARHOL, Green Coca-Cola Bottles, 1962
• pop artists were all about the real world
  they wanted art that people get
  they took objects from consumer culture
  using the most non-art objects and iconography as possible
  moving away from this idea of the artist actually making something
  cresting the relationship of art to the real world
  drawn to the coke bottle because its a representation of how even the richest consumer is getting the same coke as the poorest consumer
  repetition and redundancy represent the saturation of this product in society

Question 13

Answer 13

• DUANE HANSON, Supermarket Shopper, 1970
• extreme realism
  if you want the real world you got it right here
  depict stereotypical average Americans striking chords with the public specifically because of their familiarity
  he liked depicting the lower familiar lower and middle class Americans

their resignation and loneliness of their existence captures the true reality of life for these people
wanted to achieve a tough realism which speaks of the fascinating idiosyncrasies of our time

where’s the art in a piece like this one
it’s like the artist completely dropped away and all we have is the real world

Question 14

Answer 14

• JUDY CHICAGO, The Dinner Party, 1979
• represents what is the first generation of feminist art
  interested in inserting women into the conversation
  bringing woman’s stuff and accomplishments into this monumental scale suggests that what women do matters
  shattering the domestic sphere
  reinterpretation of the Last Supper from the point of view of women, who throughout history had prepared the meals and set the table

honored guests

represented through plates expresses their confinement thus reflecting both women’s achievements and oppression
goal was to forge a new kind of art expressing woman’s experience