Final Flashcards
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Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, 1915.
Oil on canvas.
(Paris School/Les Maudits)
- Modigliani was born to well off parents in Italy and lived a short, bohemian life as an artist in Paris.
- Modigliani’s work was heavily influenced by the earlier work of the symbolists, often borrowing the device of a subject amalgamated with their interior spaces.
- Modigliani’s portrait paintings rarely featured more than a single sitter, and this specific painting shows Modigliani’s closet friend and fellow painter and lithuanian peasant Chaim Soutine. This work of Modigliani is especially notable for its focus on the psychological aspect of the sitter
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Henri Matisse, Piano Lesson, late summer. 1915.
Oil on canvas.
(Paris School)
- This composition shows the open living-room window of Matisse’s house at Issy-les-Moulineaux, outside Paris, with his son Pierre practicing the piano. A candle sits on the instrument, illuminating a triangle of lawn. In the bottom left corner is a representation of one of Matisse’s sculptures, Decorative Figure (1908)
- Pierre Matisse is represented as the piano student in this piece. The curvilinear balustrade is suggestive of music being played
- The painting could be viewed as an allegory painting, considering the contrast between formalized and figurative approaches to art
- Picasso and Matisse’s competitive relationship between the artists and how it spurred each of them to break down boundaries in art.
- John Elderfeld talked about how Matisse was compelled to respond to the important movement of Cubism. Cézanne was a role model and it was inevitable that he would have to respond to Picasso and Braque and their Cubist endeavors.
- Piano Lesson is a unique interpretation of Cubist style. Geometric color planes of muted grays, swaths of green and pink and dabs of slate are subtle. The space is ambiguous. This work contrasts shaply with the multi-faceted simultaneity and fractured planes of Picasso and Braque. (Aranson)
- The severe “teacher” in the opposite corner is actually a representation of the painting Woman on a High Stool (1914).
- Together they afford a contrast of sensuality and hard work and, reinforced by the metronome on the piano and the candle, suggest the passage of time. (MoMA website)
3
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Picasso, Three Musicians, 1920.
Oil on canvas.
(Paris School/Cubism)
- This monumental work (almost 7x7’) seems to be an assertion of Picasso’s confidence in cubism as a historic movement
- The figures (left to right) are thought to represent the poet Apollinaire, Picasso (often representing himself as a harlequin), and the writer poet Max Jacob.
- The guitar could relate back to Picasso’s experimental guitar constructions.
4
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Fernand Léger, Three Women, 1920.
Oil on canvas
(Paris School/Cubism)
- 6ft x 8 ft
- Léger translates a common theme in art history—the reclining nude—into a modern idiom, smooth forms created with machine-like solidity and a precision reminiscent of technology. In the tradition of classical images of female nudes, the three women recline in a chic apartment, sipping their drinks.
- The bodies of the women have been simplified into clean forms of smooth shapes, their smooth skin polished like metal. After serving in World War I, in which he was badly injured, Leger hoped that technological advances and the machine age would cure the chaos unleashed by the war. This treatment also gives the figures a Hollywood-like picture-perfect presentation.
- The painting’s geometric equilibrium, its black bands and panels of white, suggest his awareness of Mondrian, an artist then becoming popular.
5
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Paul Klee, Around the Fish,1925.
Oil and tempera on canvas
Bauhaus Expressionist
- Klee has been variously associated with Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism, and Abstraction, but his pictures are difficult to classify (Wikipedia).
- He was born Swiss but taught at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau and then at the Düsseldorf Academy.
- Paul Klee was a great colorists in the story of painting, and a strong draftsman.
- This painting is full of personal and taught iconography: the arrow suggests force and emotion; the human head possibly denotes consciousness, while other objects are better known. The painting could almost be read as a pictogram for those who could decipher Klee’s meaning.
6
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Walter Gropius and Adolph Meyer, Fagus Shoe Factory, 1925.
Alfeld-an-der-Leine, Germany.
(Bauhaus)
- Expressionist and constructivist influence went into the beginnings of the Bauhaus
- Gropius was the founder of the Weimar Bauhaus, like many others was very shell shocked after the war, however subscribed to the constructivist ideas of Utopian society and art, he thought that all elements of life could be improved through art
- The artist is simply an exalted craftsman, and so they believed that all crafts could be raised to an equal level of that of architecture and fine art.
- The Fagus shoe factory represents impressive innovation in its use of glass sheathing; it was the invention of the curtain wall.
7
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Max Ernst, Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale, 1925.
Oil on wood with wood construction.
Surrealist
Ernst, Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale, 1924. Oil on wood with wood construction. (Dada/Surrealist)
- Max Ernst served in the German Army but lived and worked primarily in Paris.
- In the early 1920s, Ernst began to work in the Dada mode of assemblage and this painting on wood construction reflects this method; Ernst claims this to be his last work in this method, and following word was aligned more with Surrealism.
- This work actually shows 4 figures, and the title inscribed on the frame refers to the figures on the lawn. The assemblage pieces hint at a connection to a world outside the frame of the picture. Ernst has mentioned two autobiographical references for this work, one is the death of his sister, and the second is a sickness during which he hallucinated a “manacing nightingale.”
8
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René Magritte, The Treachery of Images, 1930.
Oil on canvas.
Surrealist
- Magritte was very much a conceptual thinker, though not considered a core member of Surrealism, his work focuses mainly on the idea of perception. His paintings deal with “The use of objects as something other than what they seem.” Objects carrying a secondary symbolic meaning is a surrealist characteristic.
- The Treachery of Images talks to how our brains do not really differentiate representation of objects from real objects, when Magritte paints the pipe he’s not actually trying to convey the idea of the pipe. He is calling out the fact that we perceive it as a pipe even though it is just paint on canvas. That is the secondary, more important idea.
9
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Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1940.
Oil on canvas.
Cubism
- Guernica is one of the most recognizable works of the 20th century
- It was generated out of Picasso’s intense disgust for the actions of the German bombers in Guernica, Spain support of the Spanish fascists
- The subject matter is a mesh of agonized victims and symbols that convey the scene of devastation present in the after effect of the bombing raids
- The bulls head, the horse, and the illuminating lights are all symbolic elements.
- The dark natured commentary of this work is reminiscent of Goya’s Third of May and Disasters of War
10
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Marsden Hartley, Portrait of a German Officer, 1915.
Oil on canvas.
Expressionism
- This distinctively large work shows both representation and abstraction. It was likely homage to the artist’s lover, who died on the western front.
11
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Charles Sheeler, Church Street El, 1920.
Oil on canvas.
Precisionist
- Sheeler was a Philedelphia artist who worked as a photographer for income.
- He is recognized as one of the founders of American modernism and one of the master photographers of the 20th century.
- This painting is based on a still from the documentary film Manhatta, produced with Strand.
- It’s severe planes and angles and reductive geometry are reflective of the preceisionist penchant for immaculate surfaces and purified machine imagery. Much of his work was celebratory of the power of modern machines and power plants.
12
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Siqueiros: Echo of a Scream, 1935.
Enamel on wood.
Mexican Social Realism
- David Alfaro Siquerios was by far the most politically active of the three Mexican muralists.
- His radical political beliefs eventually got him expelled from Mexico. He spent many years in jail for his actions and this influenced his art greatly.
- His travels to Europe brought him in contact with the artwork of Goya. The themes and images of war in their works are very similar. Classical art, Italian Renaissance art, and Italian Futurism also influenced him greatly. Siquerios believed that “art should aim to become a fighting educative art for all.”
- Echo of a Scream was inspired by his experiences during active combat and his observations of suffering.
- By illustrating a baby, this piece emphasizes the internal suffering of the innocent victims of the Revolution. (wfu.edu)
13
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Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage, 1915.
Gelatin Silver Print
American Photography; Pictorialism
- Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery on Fifth avenue served as the rallying point for pioneers of American modernism. The gallery was a rallying point for the NY Dada movement
- Stieglitz and his exhibition impact was enormous and constitutes the core of experimental art during the first half of the century
- After finding little of interest in first class, Steiglitz decided to observe the steerage (cheapest accommodations) and was struck by the geometric forms, angles, and areas of light and shade. This also resulted in a straight photograph—a picture that looks like a picture instead of imitating fine-art prints.
- Emerging first in the milieu of Pictorial photography, Stieglitz sought to gain recognition for his medium by producing effects that paralleled those found in other fine arts such as painting. Many of his peers resorted to elaborate re-touching to create an impression of the handmade, but Stieglitz relied more on compositional effects and mastery of tone, often concentrating on natural effects such as snow and steam to create qualities similar to those of the Impressionists.
14
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Lewis W. Hine, Child in Carolina Cotton Mill, 1910.
Gelatin-silver print.
Documentary Photography
- This documentary photo was shot when the government was investigating the exploitation of children for labor, similar photographs helped to promote change in labor laws
- Hine worked as a staff photographer for the National Child Labor Committee, exposing child labor abuses.
- He often directed subjects in order to create more carefully composed images that better made his case.
15
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Edward Steichen: Gloria Swanson, 1925.
Gelatin-silver print.
American Photography: Pictorialism
- Steichen was a long-time associate of Steiglitz and had photographerd Rodin’s Balzac under moonlight in 1908, however Steichen had abandoned pictorial photography for straight photography after the World War I.
- He became the Photography Editor for Vogue and Vanity Fair, and eventually became the director of Photography at MoMa in the process of which he created an immense body of editorial and portrait work while having profound influence on American Photography.
- Steichen’s photograph has elements of turn-of-the-century pictorialism (moody and delicate, the subject seeming to peer from the darkness, as if from jungle foliage), yet it also projects modernist boldness, with its pin-sharp precision and graphic severity.
16
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Walker Evans, Floyd and Lucille Burroughs on Porch, Hale County, Alabama, 1935.
Gelatin silver print.
American Photography: Documentary
- Evans worked on the WPA projects for documenting the depression era dustbowl farm communities, migrant workers and eastern coal communities. He studied literature in Paris, but began Worked for the FFSA as part of the effort to educate the population about the horrendous toll that the Great Depression had taken on America’s farm and migrant workers, mirroring Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.
- Walker’s portraits exude the essence of “straight” photography, with everything in precise focus and
- Walkers background in literature attuned him to the stories of the lives he documented with his photographs. The 1941 Book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men done in collaboration with James Agee is both a major and powerful moving book in the history of photography.
- We can see in this work the passion Evans brought to his work in yet another simple and direct image.
- These photos can be read as metaphor, ironic or as purely compelling form. The subjects of the photograph look directly at the viewer, telling us that the trust Evans was able to earn from locals.
17
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Robert Frank, Drugstore, Detroit, from The Americans, 1960.
Gelatin-Silver print.
American Photography: Documentary
- The first foreign-born photographer to receive a Guggenheim foundation fellowship.
- Emigrated to NYC in 1937, working for Harper’s Bazzar, Look, etc. and he captured life in NYC with a “uncanny insight and poetic sparseness”
- Robert Frank was an American photographer and film maker of Swiss Birth. Born in 1924, he emigrated to NYC in 1947. He worked for various magazines such as “Harper’s Bazaar, “Look” “Life” etc. Yet he first published it in France, then in the U.S. “The American’s in the USA”
- The book changed the course of 21st century photography, documenting a people plagued by racism, ill served by their politicians, and rendered numb by a rapidly growing culture of consumption.”
- He found beauty in simplicity
18
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Hans Hofmann, The Gate, 1960.
Oil on canvas.
Abstract Expressionism
- For me this relates directly to the symbolistic works of Paul Gaugin and his followers. It compares almost directly to the style and logic behind Serusier’s “The Talisman.”
- To Hofmann, “art was the supreme activity.” He had a huge effect on modern art, in that he planted the seeds of the NYC abstract movement, encouraging them to work and practice their craft
- In Europe he was close with Delaunay, who’s color experiments influenced him, and Hans Brach and established the principles of modern art in America
- He was one of the many European artists who immigrated to NYC, helping to create the “New City of Art”
- Students came to study with Hoffman in droves
- He saw mysticism in art, giving the mystical a concreteness that would not otherwise be seen
- His later work shifted from portraits, figure studies, Landscapes, interiors and still-life to abstract works with a dazzle of color like we see in The Gate, here we see color used as a space-creating device.
- The space of a canvas became an area within which to act, not to reproduce; the process of making a picture was an event, not an object.
19
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Willem de Kooning, Gotham News, 1955.
Oil on canvas.
Abstract Expressionism
- Together Willem and Elaine de Kooning were central figures in Abstract Expressionism
- Willem was born in the Netherlands, moved to the US in 1926, and slowly transitioned to a full time artist throughout the 30’s
- He became close with Gorky and other avant-garde artists and was influential to the experimental nature of the NYC Art world in the 40s.
- Though he could work in extremely abstract modes, de Kooning always retained some element of figuration in his work.
- In the 50s, de Kooning began to work on “abstract urban landscapes,” of which Gotham News is an example.
- The busy nature of the canvas reflects the gritty and bustling atmosphere of NYC.
- This painting leaves no doubt as to the hand of the artist, as he manipulated the painting by drawing through the wet paint with charcoal; this gestural abstraction emphasized the hand of the artist, making that part of the subject matter of the work.
20
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Jackson Pollock, One: Number 31, 1950.
Oil and enamel on unprimed canvas.
Abstract Expressionism: Action Painting
- De Kooning stated that Pollock “broke the ice” with his radical drip painting that he was making as early as the 1940s; he identified as a Westerner and appreciation of his work was spurned by him being perceived as self-reliant and independent. By the 1950s he was an international symbol of the new American painting.
- Pollock called his method of creating splatter paintings “allover painting,” where networks of lines, splatters and drips create a deeply complicated pattern on the canvas.
- This kind of painting ultimately freed the abstract expressionists from the rigor of needing full intent to create their works, allowing incorporation of the idea of automation from the surrealists.
21
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Lee Krasner, Untitled, 1950.
Oil on composition board
Abstract Expressionism
- Krasner Jackson Pollock’s wife who was a talented artist in her own right
- The figures used in this painting are based on hieroglyphs inspired by Hebrew writing
- The shapes, which are not actual letterforms create a gridlike basis of the painting organization, lending to a linguistic and letterform concept to the piece
22
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Franz Kline, Mahoning, 1960.
Oil on canvas.
Abstract Expressionism
- Kline was influenced by Goya and XXX, starting out as a naturalistic landscape painter
- He was fascinated by the fantastic progress in industrial landscapes
- Had a one man show in 1950, he was interested in expanding small drawings
- this painting, done with a housepainting brush, is named after a Pittsburg suburb
- his work is sometimes compared with Asian calliagraphy
- The beginning of the stroke on paper
- “The final test of a painting… is: does the painter’s emotinos come across?” – Kline
- (instructor notes): Born in 1910, Franz Kline was interested in the trajectory of Western art history from Rembrandt to Goya. Although he started about painting figures and landscapes with a Social Realist bent, his passion for drawing is what spurred him to formulate his own abstract style of painting. The story goes that he had projected his drawings onto an opaque projector and as he looked at these enlarged segments of drawings….he discovered this kind of free form abstract style. He worked out his paintings in advance with sketches. The preliminary sketch for Mahoning and many of Kline’s paintings was made in oil paint on a page torn from a telephone book.
- Mahoning is named after a town in Pennsylvania. Kline used house-painter brushes. He painted these bold angular strokes onto an unstretched canvas tacked to his studio wall. Apparently Kline admired the industrial landscape and his affinity for trains, cranes and bridges show up in abstract form. Kline painted both the black and white areas of his paintings and sometimes the white would be painted over the black areas.
- Kline’s paintings are often compared to Asian calligraphy. Mahoning looks like Chinese characters blown up to mammoth scale.
- He had his first one person exhibition in 1950 at a gallery of paintings like this. He was recognized as the leader of a second generation of Abstract Expressionists. His work belonged to the new decade of the 1950s and had nothing to do with the Surrealism of the 40s.
- He seems to have been influenced by French Existentialism. He often spoke of a painting as a “situation,” and of the first strokes of paint on the canvas as “the beginning of the situation.” He kind of combines Pollock with Rothko. Like Pollock, he thought of the canvas as an arena, a place where an event occurred. Like Rothko he put emphasis on unfettered feeling.
23
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Elaine de Kooning, Harold Rosenberg #3, 1955.
Oil on canvas.
Abstract Expressionism
- This painting shares the loose lines and dark colors present in German Expressionism
- Rosenberg was an art critic, a writer, and a teach; he was known for his essays on “action painting” ie Pollock, etc.
- “The aesthetic became subordinate to the event and process of action painting.”
- Elaine de Kooning matched the gestural act of action painting with figure drawing
- (Instructor Notes): This portrait is typical of what Elaine de Kooning is best known for—her figurative paintings.
- Using poetic language and applying some aspects of existentialism, he argued that the aesthetic became subordinate to the event in action painting. This would in turn break down ‘every distinction between art and life’.
- His work appeared in Art News and the New Yorker and he lectured and taught extensively.
24
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Mark Rothko, No. 14, 1960
Oil on canvas.
Abstract Expressionism
- One of the major figures of abstract expressionism
- Read Nietsche and Jung
- Engaged with ancient myths and surrounding symbols, wanting to connect with ancient myth and direct human emotion
- In: The progression of a painters work is towards clarity, the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and idea: “I am interested in expressing only the basic human truths”
- What role does scale play in his paintings, and how does it affect the viewer?
- The color is both enclosing and encompassing
- Comissioned to paint for the four seasons restaurant in the new seagrams building but didn’t find the location appropriate
- He used a frieze concept for his final commission in a chapel
- Committed suicide in 1970
25
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Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 34, 1955.
Oil on canvas.
Abstract Expressionism
- This important work helps to illustrate the between the abstract expressionist pioneers to the color field painters. Highly influenced by both the Surrealists and Matisse, Motherwell embraced both automation and flat fields of color.
- Elegy to the Spanish Republic is reminiscent of Picasso’s Guernica in color, and the colors of white and black were said by Motherwell to represent life and death, respectively. The painting also contains ovid forms, which occur often in his work.
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Joseph Cornell, Untitled (The Hotel Eden), c. 1945.
Mixed-media construction.
Surrealism/Constructivism
- Inspired by duchamp’s readymades, also called “assemblages”
- Combines three-dimensional elements with two dimensional elements and were able to be hung on the while or placed sculpturally
- Cornell’s work is rooted in Surrealism. As evidenced by the work shown here, Cornell was a celebrated assemblage artist.
- His formula was a simple box, usually with a glass front and he arranged found objects such as toys, photos and maps. He had many interests including poetry, ballet, science and astronomy. H found things in penny arcades dime stores, souvenir shops, art galleries. This ephemera and the way he arranged it could be enchanting and also haunting. He was a bit reclusive.
- This work exemplifies the way that he would leave his boxes out outside to give them that weathered look. The ad for the hotel is tattered and the paint is cracked. The appearance is worn and shows the effect time has on worldly objects. The composition is rich with associations including the exotic bird.
- He resisted being labeled as a surrealist although he did exhibit with them.
27
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Francis Bacon, Painting, 1945.
Oil on canvas.
postwar/London School
- Bacon was a highly figurative and personal painter who often represented deisturbing subject matter.
- His slightly automatomic methods are suggestive of a surrealist influence, and in fact he has described this painting as being “one continuous accident mounting on top of another.”
- The image of the figure is thought to resemble a despot, and becomes a symbol of ruthless predatory power and aggression. Most of Bacon’s paintings include a single subject, in later works he focused on the scream, wanting to paint the “best human cry.”
- His paintings are reflective of both his own intense emotional suffering and the psychological climate of the time during and after world war ii.
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Yves Klein, Anthropometry, 1960
Pigment in synthetic resin on paper on canvas.
Nouveau Realisme
- The eccentric Klein, along with the critic Restany established this artistic movement, which was influenced by the American and British pop art movement.
- As much a performance piece as it is a painting, Anthropometry uses Klein’s patented “International Klein Blue” color, which was supposed to represent the physical equivalent of invisible cosmic energy.
- For the Anthropometry series, Klein directed nude models covered in the paint to make imprints of their bodies on large sheets of paper. He staged the making of these paintings as elaborate performances for an audience.
- Some argued that Klein was essentially a parodist who mocked the metaphysical inclinations of many modern painters, while making a travesty of the art market.
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Richard Hamilton, Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? 1955.
Collage on paper.
Pop Art
- Hamilton defined Pop art as: “Popular (designed for a mass audience), Transient (short-term solution), Expendable (easily forgotten), Low cost, Mass produced, Young (aimed at youth), Witty, Sexy, Gimmicky, Glamorous, Big business.”
- Pop art’s purpose was not entirely satirical or antagonistic, but reflective of modern culture; they examined the objects and images around them with intensity and penetration, making the viewer conscious of that omnipresence for the first time.
- Duchamp was highly influential on Hamilton and the entire pop movement.
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Robert Rauschenberg, Bed, 1955.
Combine painting: oil and pencil on pillow, quilt, and sheet on wood supports.
Pop Art
- example of using hybridization of mediums
- With these mixed-media works of art, Rauschenberg reinvented collage, changing it from a medium that presses commonplace materials to serve illusion into something very different: a process that undermines both illusion and the idea that a work of art has a unitary meaning. Appearing as either wall-hung works or as freestanding objects, the combines are composed as syncopated grids that draw on materials from everyday life and the history of art.
- A remarkable example of Rauschenberg’s hybridization of painting and sculpture, Bed represents one of the artist’s most significant contributions to the history of modern art. With a swift gesture, Rauschenberg transformed a traditionally horizontal object into a vertical one and, in doing so, he obstructed the Renaissance notion of a painting offering a window onto another, ideal world. Instead, Bed confounds the viewer’s expectations by confronting the audience as an object in our world.
- Bold canonical works such as Monogram which displays a paint-daubed angora goat, girded by an automobile tire and mounted on a kind of pasture seeded with urban debris take combine to a whole new level.
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Jasper Johns, Flag, 1955.
Encaustic oil and collage on fabric mounted on plywood.
Pop Art
- Jasper Johns, was born in Augusta, GA in 1930. One of leading figures in the American POP art movement and became particularly well known for taking instantly recognizable subject matter like targets, flags, maps and creating paintings with such precision using encaustic built up in rich layers that the works appeared to go way beyond and illusionistic depiction, but instead had a presence of their own as independent objects.
- He was a painter, sculptor and printmaker. Johns is considered a self-taught artist. His readings in psychology and philosophy, particularly the work of Wittgenstein; his study of Cézanne, Duchamp, Leonardo, Picasso and other artists; and his love of poetry have all found expression in his work. His attention to history and his logical rigour led him to create a progressive body of work.
- In 1954, after a dream, Johns painted a picture of the American flag. At the time he was living in New York, as a struggling young artist.
- During the three years that followed, Johns painted more flags, as well as targets, alphabets and other emblematic, impersonal images.
- During most of this period Johns lived in the same building as Robert Rauschenberg. The two were close friends, saw each other’s work daily and had a considerable influence upon one another.
- Both Johns and Rauschenberg, in different ways, reintroduced figurative subject-matter to painting, and they are credited with inspiring the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop art.
- Bed is one of Rauschenberg’s first “combines,” the artist’s term for his technique of attaching found objects, such as tires or old furniture, to a traditional canvas support. In this work, he took a well-worn pillow, sheet, and quilt, scribbled on them with pencil, and splashed them with paint in a style similar to that of Abstract Expressionist “drip” painter Jackson Pollock.
- Legend has it that these are Rauschenberg’s own pillow and blanket, which he used when he could not afford to buy a new canvas. Hung on the wall like a traditional painting, his bed, still made, becomes a sort of intimate self-portrait consistent with Rauschenberg’s assertion that “painting relates to both art and life…[and] I try to act in that gap between the two.”
- “One night I dreamed that I painted a large American flag,” Johns has said of this work, “and the next morning I got up and I went out and bought the materials to begin it.” Those materials included three canvases that he mounted on plywood, strips of newspaper, and encaustic paint—a mixture of pigment and molten wax that has formed a surface of lumps and smears. The newspaper scraps visible beneath the stripes and forty-eight stars lend this icon historical specificity. The American flag is something “the mind already knows,” Johns has said, but its execution complicates the representation and invites close inspection. A critic of the time encapsulated this painting’s ambivalence, asking, “Is this a flag or a painting?”
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Jasper Johns, Target with Plaster Casts, 1955. Encaustic and collage on canvas with wood construction and plaster casts.
- encaustic on collage, yields a rich, sensuous surface
- lids can be closed or remain open to reveal plaster body parts
- the target creates a discunction/juxtaposition which creates a question in the viewers mind to ask why human body parts are so closely associated with a weaponry target
- (instructor notes) This work exemplifies many of the concerns of Johns’s earliest paintings. The target focuses attention on the theme of viewing: a target is something to see clearly, something to aim at, a visual display. Here the simple image is executed with deceptive complexity: the target itself in encaustic on collage, a difficult technique, which yields for Johns a rich, sensuous surface. Above the target are mounted plaster casts in wooden boxes with hinged lids Which can either remain closed or be opened to reveal the plaster-cat body parts. Why are dismembered body parts displayed upon a shelf? The target beneath creates disjunction and alsmost an indifference to the body parts displayed above. The painting provokes questions of perception, which many of Johns’s early paintings seemed to raise by their very existence.
- Johns said that he chose to paint flat symbols such as flags and targets because he did not have to design them, because they were ‘things the mind already knows. That gave me room to work on other levels.’ The ambiguities and contradictions inherent in painting an abstraction with such a beautiful and painterly technique became the focus of critical comment. Although Johns had reintroduced the recognizable image to painting, he had done so in a paradoxical way.
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Roy Lichtenstein, Whaam!, 1963.
Oil and Magna on two canvas panels.
Pop Art
- Lichtenstein was the American Pop artist who delineated the premises of the movement, he reproduced banal images such as comic strips and advertisements, often expertly rendered and incorporating the Benday dots of commercial printing
- Whaam! Which is huge in scale and reflected comic strips depicting World War II battles, ended up being a kind of history painting for the Pop movement
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Andy Warhol, Turquoise Marilyn, 1960. Silkscreen ink and synthetic polymer paint on canvas.
- by reprinting images of glamorous women, Warhol drained the meaning from the image
- Our text also states that In his portraits of Monroe, Warhol allowed the layers of silkscreen colors to register imperfectly, thereby underscoring the mechanical nature of the process and encouraging observers to contemplate the fate of the then recently deceased Monroe.
- Warhol had also created works that were provocative and disturbing such as photos of car accidents and disasters.
- The whole idea of repetitive exposure breeding indifference was highlighted in these works. From Electric Chair imagery, exceedingly grim in content to death scenes—Warhol’s seeming impersonality creates an eeriness.
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Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains and Sea, 1950.
Oil and charcoal on canvas.
Color Field Painting
- National Gallery of Art
- Ms. Frankenthaler painted “Mountains and Sea” when she was only 23, a precocious newcomer to the New York art world. She had studied at Bennington College, at the Art Students League, and with Hans Hofmann, one of the founding fathers of advanced art in America. She was well acquainted with the masters of modern art, especially Jackson Pollock.
- On the afternoon of Oct. 29, back in New York, she tacked a large – roughly 7-by-10-foot – piece of untreated canvas to the floor of her studio to begin the largest painting she had ever undertaken.
- After roughing in a few charcoal marks as an initial guide, she poured highly thinned oil paint from coffee cans directly onto the canvas, as if she were drawing with color. She had no plan; she just worked, with control and discipline.
- It soon became clear that what she had done was invent a new way of making art.
- From this point on, staining became the basis of her art and pointed to new directions for others. It also restored color to its old grandeur, a departure from the dark, angst-ridden hues of Abstract Expressionists Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still. Although the color and canvas are bound together on a totally flat surface, our eye moves, in her words, “miles back and forth” through the fictive space the artist creates out of her large, open washes of color.
36
Q
A
Frank Stella, Jasper’s Dilemma, 1965.
Alkyd on canvas.
Minimalist/Modernist
- Greenberg’s Ideas of modernism, that is the emphasis on the supremacy of painting and its presentation of the surface image (flatness), were pushed to their limits by the minimalists. Oftentimes, minimalist ideas undermined Greenberg’s ideals: disagreeing with the supremacy of expressive painting and instead stressing the primacy of the object itself. And so sculpture began to play a larger role for the minimalists.
- Frank Stella seemed to walk the boundary between absolute minimalism and the modernist ideas of the abstract expressionists: he was drawn to flatter surfaces that did not embody the expression of the artist as much as the image as object.
- In 1970, Stella became the youngest artist to have a retrospective staged at MoMA.
- His painting, Jasper’s Dilemma emphasizes the creation of the composition as the subject of the painting, especially in that the while lines creted are not from paint, but from where paint is not applied. This has a seconday effect of further emphasizing the areas of color and their meaning.
37
Q
A
Donald Judd, Untitled, 1973.
Stainless steel and oil enamel on Plexiglas.
Minimalist
38
Q
A
Alexander Calder, La Grande Vitesse, 1970.
Steel sheetmetal
abstract sculpture
- Grand Rapids michigan
- the great swiftness
- After training as an engineer and traditional artist, Calder first started working in wire sculpture, and is probably best known for his mobiles, hanging sculptures that balance and freely move when affected by airflow.
- In the 60s, Calder moved on to monumental, motionless works like this, which he called “stabiles”
39
Q
A
Joseph Beuys, How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, 1965.
performance
Conceptual/Performance Art
- At the beginning of the performance Beuys locked the gallery doors from the inside, leaving the gallery-goers outside. They could observe the scene within only through the windows. With his head entirely coated in honey and gold leaf, he began to explain pictures to a dead hare. Whispering to the dead animal on his arm in an apparent dialog, he processed through the exhibit from artwork to artwork. Occasionally he would stop and return to the center of the gallery, where he stepped over a dead fir tree that lay on the floor.[2] After three hours the public was let into the room. Beuys sat upon a stool in the entrance area with the hare on his arm and his back to the onlookers.
- The integration of speech and conversation into his visual works plays a meaningful role in How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare.
- The hare in Christianity came to be connected with the Resurrection. This interpretation is also supported by the “mask” that Beuys wore during his performance: gold as a symbol for the power of the sun, wisdom, and purity, and honey as a Germanic symbol for rebirth.
- “For me the Hare is a symbol of incarnation, which the hare really enacts- something a human can only do in imagination. It burrows, building itself a home in the earth. Thus it incarnates itself in the earth: that alone is important. So it seems to me. Honey on my head of course has to do with thought. While humans do not have the ability to produce honey, they do have the ability to think, to produce ideas. Therefore the stale and morbid nature of thought is once again made living.”
45
Q
A
Joseph Albers and Color Theory:
Josef Albers, Homage to the Square: Apparition, 1960. Oil on board
Josef Albers taught at the Bauhaus and emigrated to the United States, becoming one of the most celebrated and outstanding art teachers in the United States. He taught at Black Mountain College (the progressive and innovative school in North Carolina we discussed in class) and also at Yale University. As your text states, “Throughout the 1940s, Albers developed his increasingly reductive vocabulary with remarkable assiduity, exploring issues of perception, illusionism, and the often ambiguous interaction of abstract pictorial elements.” (Arnason, 316) He developed a formula where he explored the relationships of color squares within squares and began an exhaustive series beginning in 1950 and his relentless pursuit continued until around 1975. These works were connected with the color theory he taught at Yale.
Albers painted Homage to the Square: Apparition in 1959. The striking simplicity of this work, made up of four superimposed squares of oil paint applied with a palette knife was resulted in a harmonious study of both form and color. Color was directly from the tube onto a white, primed Masonite panel. Albers challenged the viewers visual perceptions and how the viewer received the image was paramount to the series. The pictorial formula developed by Albers is all about the SQUARE. The juxtaposition of various colors within the series enabled optical effects resulting in colors that contrasted and shimmered before the eye. Viewer reception was at the core of Albers project. Albers was shifting the emphasis and control away from the artist and empowering the viewer to engineer their own reception of the work. (Guggenheim website and Arnason).
47
Q
Ashcan School:
A
First wave of American modernism active between 1905-1913. These artists documented everyday lives of people who dwelled in the city and captured the grittier and sometimes the seamier side of urban life.
This type of art contrasted sharply against the constructivism in 20th Century, instead seeming closer in theory and practice to 19th century realism ala Courbet. In the mold of 19th century realism, it was gritty and confrontational with the problems of the poor society of New York City.
- Has a kinship with the nineteenth century European Realist tradition
- It was direct and confronted society with a naturalism that contrasted sharply with the geometric abstraction, Surrealism, and classicism that was dominating European art.
- Shown at venues in NYC like Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 gallery
- Robert Henri was the leader of the loosely constituted group called “the Eight” who had been rejected by the national Academy of Arts.
- Henri was joined by four Philadelphia artists: John Sloan, Everett Shinn, William Glackens and George Luks—all illustrators who provided on the spot sketches for newspapers. Three other painters joined them—Ernest Lawson, Maurice Prendergast and Arthur B. Davies made up “The Eight.”
