Lectures 18&19

Question 1

Answer 1

Duchamp, Fountain, 1917

• any work that was submitted for $6 would be hung- yet Duchamp’s was rejected
• commenting on contemporary process of art making and exhibition
• porcelain urinal that he turned on its side so it wasn’t functional and signed it “R. Mutt”
• what is the essence of a work of art?
• art might be primarily conceptual
• product might not be crafted by others but manufactured for artist in mass-produced world
• refers to humanity’s most degraded functions and vulnerable states and challenges assumptions made about nature of art
• chose an ordinary object of life and placed it so its useful significance disappeared under new title and point of view- reated a new thought for that object

cant live w/o plumbing but can live w/o art

art lies in selection

masculine, symmetrical, balanced like lots of art-

Question 2

Answer 2

Hannah Hoch, The Pretty Girl, 1920- collage

• found objects- illusion of 3 dimmensionality
• not flat- strange juxtaposition- reminds us they’re not on a 2 dim. field

critical of bourgeois, commercial elite

Question 3

Answer 3

Joan Miró, Birth of the World, 1925

-applies paint on surface of canvas irregularly

flings paint onto surface- chaotic mess

primary colors and black and white-ideals

no meaning or trick- statement about process of artist

abstractions into something in real world

-free from concerns of poltics- personal

Question 4

Answer 4

Frida Kahlo, Henry Ford Hospital, 1932

-attached are 6 elements by red veins, fetus she’s lost, snail (delicate creature in hard shell), pelvis, orchid, reproductive system

isolated in vast landscape

concealed women- religious painting

Question 5

Answer 5

Picasso, Demoiselles D’Avignon**, 1907

abstraction of body- space is ambiguous

faces using african masks

mixed messages- young ladies of court or prostitutes?

• display themselves to viewer
• flattened and fractured into sharp angular shapes- space they inhabit is also
• raise arms in traditional gesture of accessibility but contradict it with hard piercing gazes and firm mouths

even fruit seems dangerous (womens sexuality)

women aren’t gentle and passive creatures men would like them to be

Question 6

Answer 6

Picasso, Ma Jolie, 1911-12

• hard to figure out subject& foreground/background
• obvious brushwork

overt about process w/ which it was made

must look at form instead of color

triangular form w/ lightness at top

-music note/women

cliche of women playing instruments

forcing us to focus on 2 dimmensionality

Question 7

Answer 7

Vladimir Tatlin, Monument to the Third International (project) 1919-20

• communism
• on a slant- same as earths axis
• pure forms embedded within it

divine spinning forces, not decorative

new pure force alligned with whole earth

Question 8

Answer 8

Mondrian, Composition with Yellow, Red, and Blue, 1927

Getting away from nature

refinding reducing distilling down to basics

pure horizontal of horizon line

pure vertical of standing figure

the style- the endpoint of art

sense of stability&balance that show perfect truth

express most complex summaries of human experience in the simplest way possible

reducing complexity of world into something with visuals