Duchamp, Greenberg, Sontag Flashcards
Duchamp background
French
1887-1968
-associated with the NY movement
What is Duchamp most famous for
“the Urinal”- 1917
A slap in the face for “art for arts sake”- refutes significant form. There needs to be something conceptual to art. Must provoke ideas.
How does Duchamp (and his idea of retinal vs. non-retinal) fit in with the significant form idea?
Duchamp appreciates art that makes you think as opposed to art that “pleases the eye” (retinal)
Non-retinal makes you think
Anti-Kantian
Against retinal
Significant form- It is hard to enjoy the formal qualities of a urinal…he rather injects art into ordinary objects
What’s a readymade?
Ordinary manufactured objects that the artist selected and modified
For example: The Fountain was a ready made urinal
Clement Greenberg- Background
Born 1909-1994
- associated with the NY movement
- Polik most important painter of his generation
- Oracle of what was important in contemporary art
- trying to make a distinction of what was good in culture and what is crap
What are the two poles or culture? (greenberg)
Avantgaurd and Kitsch (fake and cheap)
What is the Avantgaurd?
Moving the fine arts forward, more urbanized, smaller audience, cutting edge, pushing the boundaries of the fine arts and coming off the mainstream
-hope of culture
Where, why and when? (Avantgaurd)
- A part of Western bourgeois society
- The first bold development of scientific revolution in Europe
- The fifth and sixth decades of the nineteenth century
- Because new perspectives became apart of advanced intellectual conscious
What’s Avantgaurds relationship to main stream culture?
It’s more cutting edge, above the mainstream.
What is kitsch?
Also coming off of the mainstream…in a bad way
Cheesy, overproduced because it is hiding its lack of seriousness used in entertainment purposes, spurious
It is a replacement of the fine arts
What are the conditions that give rise to kitsch?
- Industrial Revolution, (the beginning of mass production)
- universal literacy
- little space in the economy (10 hr day law): they discovered the new capacity of boredom
Middle Class has more wealth/ higher wages and time so there is a push to acquire cultural symbols of the bourgeoisie
What is kitsch’s to mainstream culture?
Function of class mobility: represents a new working person with little security and they are discovering a new capacity for boredom It is a fake form of the culture but it takes things from formal culture but is dumbed down for mass consumption
What kitsch is in your life – how and why do you use it?
My mom has a lot of kitsch paintings in her house that she got from some random furniture store. It is used to make it appear as if we are fancy and well-versed in art. (o-o)/
Ikea wall art
Norman Rockwell
What kind of art do you think Greenberg likes?
He likes avant-garde
Modernist, simple form and color
What painters is Greenberg highly associated with in history?
Picasso, Braque, Mondrian, Miro, Kandinsky, Bransusi
When was AV/g & K written?
1939
Who is Susan Sontag – apprx.,dates, nationality?
Grew up with an alcoholic father and had a shitty stepfather, bad marriage, worked with Annie Lebowtiz and enjoyed reading Nietzsche, she is American
1933 - 2004
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What did Sucan Sontag write? roughly date of the essay?
“Notes on Camp” Published in 1966
How does Sontag define camp?
“To pose”
-Camp: love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration
-It is good because it is awful
-Caters more to the experience
-exaggerated
-nostalgic
-Sees everything in quotation marks
-Camp is a mode of enjoyment, appreciation and not judgment
-Kind of love for human nature, it is human
Nourishes itself on the love that goes into personal styles
What is the relationship of camp to kitsch? Your own examples are important here.
Camp is something that is so bad it is good. There is a feeling of nostalgia around it. Rex gave examples of lawn ornaments. It is clear that they are unappealing and the people who like it know it is bad as well.
Kitch - when something is FAKE and you genuinely like it
Camp - when you like something KNOWING it’s fake
Example: Lawn ornaments
