Lesson 9 Flashcards
Pop Art 1950’s
-appeared in Britain (alert WW2 - > consumer boom)
-interest of artists in the images of mass media / advertising / comics / consumer products
->mass-production of everything
->development of television / printing advertising
-influenced by American artist (Jasper Johns / Robert Rauschenberg)
->aim to broaden that into more popular / less academic art => “This is Tomorrow” exhibition
-interest in the urban / consumer / modern experience
Contrast to Abstract Expressionism (dripping paint, slashing brushstrokes)
Pop Art applied paint to imitate -> ironic approach (industrial printing techniques)
later painting -> using industrial techniques
American Pop Art
-emerged suddenly in the errata y1960’s
->characterised by stark / emblematic presentation (contrast to analytical tendencies of British pop art)
-more rigorous
->insisted on a direct relationship between its use of the imagery of mass production and its adoption of modern technological procedures
(British pop celebrated / satirised consumer culture )
American pop artist tend to habe more ambiguous attitude toward their subject-matter
Richard Hamilton “Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?” 1956
he aimed at broadening fast into more popular / less academic art
-organized the “this Is Tomorrow” exhibition
-this was the landmark
Andy Warhol 1928-1987
-worked as a commercial artist / illustrator
1960/1963 - establish himself as a painter
-> series of pictures bas on crude advertisements / images form comic strips
-exclusion of all convertible signs of personality - rejection of invention (plant vulgarity) => brutal / shocking
->to offend the sensible audience accustomed to thinking art as an intimate medium fro conveying emotions
->images had a printed appearance - using stencils / rubber stamps / silk-screens
1962 - exclusively made by scree-printing photographic images (on background painted in single colours / flat interlocking areas
->executed with the help of assistants in a studio called “the Factory” -> removed his hands form the canvas
-repeated the same mechanically produced images until it appeared to be drain of all meaning
Andy Warhol “Marilyn” 1967
roy Lichtenstein 1923-1997
-based on motifs / procedures of comic strips and advertisements
-central figure of American pop Art
before personal variants of cubism / Constructivism
1961 - only used the subject-matter / style
->highly simplified colour schemes
-> mimicked commercial printing techniques
->tonal variation s with patterns of coloured circles - imitated the half-tone screen of Ben Day dots uns in newspaper printing - surrounded with black outlines
-apparently anonymous style (applied his style to paintings based on familiar words by other artists)
-enlarging his source material -> emphasised the banality / his motifs as equivalent to the impersonal / mechanised style of drawing (led to criticism of modern industry America)
-periodically produced groups of sculptures / furniture -> product three-dimensional but flat-looking representations of familiar objects
Roy Lichtenstein “Drowning Girl” 1963
Clases Oldenburg 1929
-best know for his floppy sculptures / larger-than-life public works of consumer good / musical instruments / everyday objects
-materialist culture as subject-matter
-large-scale soft sculptures
-> grossly enlarging the scale of familiar object and reversing their characterises of hard and soft
-created art of parody / humour
-sometimes the same subject was executed in Hard / Soft / ghost versions
Ghost - was both soft and colourless -> emphasising its formal qualities
Clases Oldenburg “Floor Cake” 1962
James Rosenquist 1933
-debt to Surrealism - reliance on irrational juxtapositions
-reference to mass-produced goods / Magazines / Films (mass-media)
-dispassionate / seemingly anonymous technique
-subject-matter (sex/ consumerism were not direct like Warhol / Lichtenstein)
-rather than seeking to duplicate his source material he preferred to impose himself on it through procedure of disruption / dislocation
-interest in mastery of texture/ colour/ lines / shapes -> dazzle audiences / influence younger generations of artists
James Rosenquit “President Elect” 1960-61 / 1964
Nouveau Réalisme
1960 - Fernamt art critic Pierre Restany
-brought together artworks created through the appropriation of ordinary materials / objects
-artist performed archaeological excavations of everyday life - lacerated posters / wrapped objects / accumulations of found objects / assemblages of junk materials / urban detritus
(like Dadaists / Surrealists)
Nouveau Réalism is often considered a counterpart to Neo-Dada / Pop art
->return to “reality”
->avoid what they saw as threes of figurative art
-> exterior object to give an account of the reality of their time
=> extensive use of collage / assemblage / using real object incorporated directly into the work
Arman 1928-2005
-preoccupied with the consequent of mass production
->Accumulation - reflected the identical character of modern objects
=>piled up identical salvaged objects modifying the meaning by repetition / giving the construction an ironic title
Poubelles - considered the waste when object are discarded
Cooleres “rages” = irrational rage at objects that threatened to dominate everyday life
-pioneering the European return to Marcal Duchamp’s idea of Readymade
-> fascinated - his believe that contemporary sculpture had to conform the commodity
-sculpture could no longer be crafted by hand -> had to respond to the characteristics of mass-produced consumer goods
-persistent use of trash
-> strangeness inherent in the idea of identical / mass produced objects - by gathering the same object he distracts us form their function purpose and present them instead as endless repeated forms
Arman “infinity of Typewriters” 1962
Yves Klein 1928-1962
-used of single colour
-> rich shades of ultramarin that he made his own “International Klein blue”
-monochrome blue paintings - read as satire on abstract art
-the pictures carry no motif But he insisted there was northern there at all only “the void”
-form some crisis he is a descendent of Marcel Duchamp (prankster)
-later used performance
-klein was intrigued by Eastern religion / Rosicrucianism / judo
-facinated my musical ideas / notions of the infinite / indefinable / absolute
-the single use of rich blue might be seen as an attempt to free the viewer form all imposed ideas - let the mind soar
-lines are form prison grating -> only colour offers the path to freedom
He never opposed the creation art object - abandon the object as a vehicle for art
Yves Klein “Anthropométrie de l’époque bleu” 1960
we didn’t interact with the painting
The woman was the brush which he gave verbal directions to
The woman placed herself where we told her to and pressed herself against the canvas
He had no a direct inflict and she was the medium of the colour = she became the colour
Kinetic Art (1955 - mid 1960’s)
depend on movement for its effects -> lively avant-garde trend
-artists who were fascinated by the relationships with the viewer and new visual experiences
-new kinds of art
-> idea that the beauty of an object could be the product of optical illusions / mechanical movement
Split into:
->interest in employing actual movement
->interest in optical effects / illusion of moment (more close associated with Op art movement)
ended because Op art proved almost too successful in capturing public’s imagination
Jean Tinguely 1925-1991
-handing sculptures
-used motor to propel them into motion (Méta-Malevich)
-interest in self-propelled motion
->1950’s series of automatic drawing machines = Meta-Matics
-used chalk / marker to create abstract worlds of art
-combined junk sculpture with kinetics - witty / Humorous / Ironic (Dadaist legacy of anti-art)
-Pioneer in art that engenders social engagement
-sculptures often rely on the spectator to push a button / Pull a lever / somehow cause them to start moving
->1970’s seriers fo fountain projects
Jean Tinguely “Meta-matric Number 10” 1959
Gianni Colombo 1937-1993
-most important Italien artist - experiencing kinetic and a member of the Art Programmatic movement
-founded the T Group (linked to the movement of Nouvelle Tendence”
-different field of physics: electrical / magnet devices / industrial Neo light / laster
->aesthetic potential of technological rationalism
-1960’s - experimental films / kinetic object / environments
Gianni Colombo “Fluid Structure” 1960
Op Art (1964)
(optical art)
-paintings / sculptures that exploits the illusion / optical effects of perceptual processes
-two-dimensional structures with strong psychophysiological effects
two sides of solicitations:
perceptual ambiguity (coloured surfaces -US)
coercive suggestion of movement ( lines / patters in black and with - Europe)
-ephemeral art trend - some permanent effect on the perceptual qualities of the spectator
Victor Vasarely 1908-1997
1947 concentrate on constructive-geometric abstraction
-pioneered Op art with compositions based on continual aggressive interaction between different kind o patterns / invented a plastic alphabet of standardised colour / shapes etc. -> endless reproduction
Victor Vasarely “vega” 1957-1959
Brideget Riley 1931
-experimented with pointillism -> colour field painting => optical effects of “bleeps” between shapes in relationship of figure to ground
-simple shapes (squares, triangles, circles) and distorted them in every concievable way
1961-1965 - Works in black and white (aggressive / violent - working off some psychological pressures)
after 1964 works became more serene
->reintroduced colour in modulations of grey tinged with red and blue (juxtaposition of lines with pure colour - colours - variety)
1970’s colour indication - white
Not psychological experiments BUT visual presentation about the world / human experiences
Minimalism (early 1960’s)
(ABS / Boring / Literal / No-Art )
- refers specifically to a kind of reductive abstract art
criticism = literal presentation / lack of expressive content / characterising this new aesthetic
-term remains closely linked to sculpture of the period
-disturbing = lack of any apparent meaning (Pop art emerged simultaneously)
->presented ordinary subject matter in a literal way that lacked expressive features / metaphorical content - use of commercial processes smacked of mass production
-reject traditional expectations of skill / originality in art
“What you see is what you see”
Donald Judd 1928-1994
-art built upon the idea of the object as it exists in the environment
-whose goal was to rid art of the Abstract Expressionists
-pieces that were free form emotion
-created works compressing of single / repeated geodetic forms produced from industrialised / machine-made materials that eschewed the artist’s touch
-geometric / modular creation
-questions the nature of art - sculptures as an object of contemplation (literal / insistent presence = process of beholding)
-works stand directly on the floor
-works often presented in serialised manner
-Multiple was another way to reinforce their materiality
Donald Judd “Untitled (Stack)” 1967
machine-made identical rechtables in the same colour
pleaced over each other - exact same separation -> thought the light hitting the surface and the shadow created it seams like the have differs nuance
but all of the have the same colour of green
Carl Andre 1935
-produced a number of sculptures - most innovative -> central role in define the nature of Minimalist Art
-distance sculpture form process of carving / modelling / construction - make worlds that simply involved sorting / placing
-sculpture could consist of ordinary / factory-finished raw material, arrange tint straightforward configuration / set directly on the ground
-positions of raw materials (brick / blocks )
-> no fixatives to hold them in place
-exploration of the properties of nature:
the characteristics of every unit of material he selects and the arrangement / position of the sculpture in it’s environment / forms the substance of his art
Robert Morris 1931
-central figures of Minimalism
-simpel geometric shapes -stripped of metaphorical associations -> focused on the artwork’s interaction with the viewer
-stickily diverse range that extended well beyond the Minimalist ethos
-> explored new notions of change / temporarily / ephemerality
-key exemplar of Minimalist sculpture:
->enormous repeated geometric forms (cubes)
->surface texture / expressie content
-forced viewer to condor the arrangement / scale o the form - how perception shifted as one moved around them
-1960’s - indeterminacy / temporality Sitno the artistic process (process of Anti-From)
-cutting / dropping / stacking everyday materials
->emphasised ephemeral nature of the artwork - change every time it was instead in a new space
Robert Morris “Felt§ 1947
indeterminacy / temporality Sitno the artistic process (process of Anti-From)
-cutting / dropping / stacking everyday materials
->emphasised ephemeral nature of the artwork - change every time it was instead in a new space
Dan Flavin 1933-1996
->signature fluorescent light tubes
-used readymade objects (Duchamp) - exploits the possibilities of the most banal / ugly martial : harsh fluorescent light
-breakthrough Icons series
-installations / sculptural pieces made exclusively of fluorescent light fixtures / tubes that came in a limited range of colour / size
-> focused on the light itself and the way in chic it transformed (Sculptured) the exhibition space
Dan Flavin “Diagonal of May” 1963
Dan Flavin “Untitled to Jan/ Ron Greenberg “ 1972-1973
