Midterm Flashcards
1
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Jackson Pollock, Abstract Expressionism
- Gestural, outpouring of emotions, ‘avant garde moment’
- N.Y. School labeled the abstract expressionist or action painting
- Influence by Navajo Art
- psychic connection to the unconsciousness!
- Technique:
- non-objective & gestural mode of applying layer upon layer !
- dripped/flung paint as a “physical expression of internal psychic reality”! • no beginning, no end!
- Historical context:
post WWII american art derives from & represents new experience of the public produced by explosion of visual mass media-TV in the 60’s, newspaper, Life magazine. !
Links individuals to the world & simultaneously isolates viewers.
Identity politics, American art of the post war develops along with new media public sphere & politicized experience of identity. Civil rights 50’s, Antiwar 60’s, Voice of individual expands (color people, ethnicities such as Chicanos)!
Individualism, powerful political meaning, fostered growth of consumer society, artist seemed their individual style.
2
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William DeKooning, Abstract Exp
- Action Painting
- Figurative, not purely abstract
- Reference women, Venus of Willendorf (Paleolithic)
- gestural, large scale
3
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Mark Rothko, Abstract Expressionism
- Not gestural
- Interest where forms & color collide
- Interest in perceptual & emotional effects
- Bands of non-objective color, feel & emotion
- Sublime
- Atmospheric quality
- His monochromatic paintings, associated w/human tragedy
4
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Barnet Newman, Abstract Expressionism
- Zip form, the act of creation, a single action
- the mark/creation, related to genesis or origin of perception
- Action painting
- monochromatic field color
- line divines & join, hyper active
5
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Morris Louis, 2nd Gen. Abstract Exp
- Method: pours paint directly onto canvas so force of gravity was apparent in the resulting painting.
- artist personal gestures less important
- related to “Happenings”, practice of freewheeling events
- made environments-arenas in real space, bodies of artists, collaborators & audience became elements of the work.
- two directions: severe formalism & performative erasure of distinctions between aesthetic & social space a move towards Pop Art.
- colors blend into dense translucent masses, associated with Cold War audience, might recall mushroom clouds.
6
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Helen Frankenthaler, 2nd Gen.Abs. Expressionism
- Invented stain painting, her first
- Idea of chance, the wall material will flow
- little intervention by artist, just like Morris Louis artwork
- about materiality, it is the direction of the poured paint, drawn by gravity rather than the artist’s own propulsive force, which generates form.
- like 1st. Gen. AbsEx: material & method–process & developing: pouring thinned paint onto unsized raw canvas laid onto the studio floor, allowed fluidity of the medium to generate both the contour of the painting elements & a distinctive halo encircling them, results in uneven bleeding of medium into absorbent canvas.
- unlike 1st. Gen. AbsEx no propulsive force of gesture, form appears independently from artist hand & no psychic outpouring which contrast w/Pollock or DeKooning.
- pinwheel effect, compared to organic processes of exfoliation
7
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Ad Reinhardt, 2nd Gen. Abs. Exp
- characteristics: grid, about color & geometric form
- impersonal, anonymous nature of the artistic gesture or non-compositional
- optical & philosophical questions about difference & perception.
- removing emotion
8
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Robert Rauschenberg (Rebus), No movement
- Mediated Gestures (main point) because the painting relates to both art & life by incorporating fragments drawn from the mass media alongside their own painterly marks, their own aesthetic marks renunciate &recode the raw materials of the media public sphere
- painting expressionism
- composed of? outside sources (newspaper,etc) as symbols in a collage/painting, pieces from drawn from mass media, thick paint in gestural action
- materiality, like a collection of things laid randomly on a table.
9
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Robert Rauschenberg, No Movement
- Erased De Kooning Drawing
- a creation, not a destruction
- agonistic/polemic practice of gesturalism
- associated with blank verse poetry
- interest in nothingness in the 60’s
10
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Jasper Johns, No movement
- encaustic, painting & collage dipped tiny pieces of newsprint in wax based medium on canvas
- symbol of National identity/patriotism
- newsprint express gesturalism over mass communication.
- model of social life: nationalist symbol of the stars & mass media-newsprint.
- association of public sphere & media, a foundation for Pop art.
- no expression of feelings
11
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Claes Oldenburg, Street, No movement
- reference the street experience w/viewers
- brings street into the viewer, street for mark making
- performance & installation at Judson Church Gallery
- the boundary between the artist as a fictional character was consequently blurred.
- message, awareness of lettering, homeless/poverty in the neighborhood
- identify w/people on the street
- What were the Happenings? events that combined elements of painting, poetry, music, and theater, and staged them as live action.
12
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Claes Oldenburg, Store, No movement
- Statements being made:
- notion that everything is art
- art object is an object of consumption, a commodity
- anti-monument statement
- conceptual art is about the idea
- morphology of soft and hard, feminine & masculine
- humor, selling everyday commodities as high art
- material used: plaster over chicken wire
- idea of hand-made commodity materials
13
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Claes Oldenburg, Pop
- Idea of everyday objects
- media as public sphere, consumerism, commercial
What space does Oldenburg reference here?
a motel room, not a private bedroom
What is he blurring?
- domesticity transformed into a stylized commodity
- public sphere from street shifted to the bedroom
- public spaces were privatized and private spaces were commercialized.
14
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George Segal, Pop Art
What was so unusual about these large installations?
- that the things in the installation and not humans that make the public world.
- plaster cast w/ghostly white color
- glowing light transforms the figure into a photo-cinematic shadow, thus transforming the work’s representation of live action into an allegory of photo-mechanical mediation
- oscillation (to and from) is established between psychological and commercial elements
15
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Andy Warhol, Pop Art
- silkscreen, disaster series, car crash
- pre-made media to create his artwork
- effect on viewer: horror of fatal accident is both extended and undermined, due to the repetition & aestheticization of the image, it looses its effect.
- Method: industrial technique of silkscreen
16
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Andy Warhol, Pop
- Idea of repetition, sameness
- Esthetic of flow
- Product idea used as National Identity
- Medium: industrial technique, silkscreen, ink
- Commodity icons
- Media & advertising influence
17
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Andy Warhol, Gold Marilyn, Pop
- Warhol’s Pop Art turn commodities & celebrities into icons of consumer society.
- Association w/veneration of celebrities w/religious veneration.
- Gold Marilyn Monroe associated w/Russian icon of Virgin & Child & Renaissance altarpieces.
- Power to form unity of people through recognition & identification.
- American public sphere form through identification & recognition of products, brands, and celebrities, making them public icons.
- Marilyn stood for a memorable example of the film industry that promoted a desire that targeted the male audience.
- Warhol establishes iconicity through repetition of silkscreened photographs of everyday products and celebrities.
- as series of mass reproduced images, gives a false illusion of knowing the celebrity
18
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Tom Wesselmann, Pop
- Multiple visual languages: TV, reproduction of Lincoln famous portrait, artist own hand, creating different realities
- re-production of famous paintings, real objects, his paintings of female nudes (no face) all juxtapose in his collage
- sexist portrayal of women
- idea that things are transformed into spectacular images of themselves
- a narrative of TV drama, news, and advertisement in acting a spectacle of society
- Mix Media Sculpture
- collage of ads & billboard material
19
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James Rosenquist, Pop
- Technique: Cut out images/pieces into a collage
- Large/Monumental scale
- Fragments of american life, causes viewer to look closely, plays with figure and ground
- icons associated w/American military industry, anti-war statement
- transformation of war, which people and property are destroyed–into an appealing commercial spectacle.
- begins with Happenings, then PopArt, then here the Industrial
20
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Roy Lichtenstein, Pop
- source: comic strips
- Industrial/commercial technology but hand-made
- commercial strategy: photomechanical, Benda Dots & hand paints of comic images
- Large format paintings
21
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Robert Frank, Street Photography
- urban atmosphere: a sense of isolation/alienation
- physical closeness but emotional isolation
- anonymity
- What’s National identity, everyday scene of life in the south
- Who represents the service class?
- idea of crowd vs. community
- idea of personal encounter vs. Warhol is already mediated
22
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Romare Bearden, No movement
- medium/source: photomontage technique, popular sources
- represents: civil rights & Harlem life
- artwork is painterly
- collage made by re-photograph, then enlarged
23
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Ed Ruscha, Pop
- all about buildings/industrial images
- a sequence of buildings, uninhabited by people
- industrial, the ready made
- repetition, sameness yet different
- flat, straight on images/photos
24
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Edward Kienholz, Assemblage
- technique: puts together ready made objects, pre-existing discarded material assembled together
- topic: abortion, the illegal ape ration
- political activist
- critiques/rejects american consumption after WWII
- Depicts: body of a woman being open, disconnects death & life
- from LA area, west coast artist, overshadow by NY
- idea of post consumer waste
25
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Bruce Connor, Assemblage
- Topic: rape, prostitution, a political commentary
- medium: stocking gives a sense of distance from viewer yet connects body parts
- lower section, rough, scratched collage
- feeling of discarded, naked bodies, some fetish objects
- idea of pathetic, mistreated, discarded bodythe abandon commoditya creative history of found objects
26
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Robert Rauschenberg, No movement
- artist called these assemblage “combine,” unrelated things to create an abstract work
- endless possible meanings
- combines found objects
27
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Robert Morris, Minimalism
- Minimalism: anti-painting, about objects, industrial material & process
- Asks the viewer to: be an spectator, how viewer negotiates space & object
- different new form of art: viewer, space & material verily modified
- de-familiarizing the object
- fabricated materials
- move from artist hand-made into industrial
- mid to late 60’s at same time period of assemblage art
28
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Carl Andre, Minimalism
- Neutral abstract forms
- Ground were object is the gallery
- blankness, anonymity
- industrial ready-made materials (firebrick), geometric forms, scale between human body & monument
29
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Sol LeWitt, Minimalism
- artist interest: the way the viewer views the space & how space is divided up
- high enamel polish on steel
- idea of the grid
- related to form & process
30
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Eva Hesse, Minimalism
- anti-Minimalist: interior can be fascinating, yet sinister in its evocation of a hairy orifice, associated w/the physical/sexual, a subverting (unsettling) idea, heightens the psychological
- Minimalist: industrial material, geometry & repetition
- works w/minimalism yet against it
- physical & unique objects
- German, short life
- Industrial material w/relation to organic forms
- 30,670 holes w/cords inserted to create an organic form inside the cube
31
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George Maciunas, Fluxus
- what makes this a Flux work? objects are reframed as events & networks of circulation are incorporated w/in the artwork
- Fluxus, a way to present events or gestures like Happenings but simplified
- idea of action or gesture but very small
- idea of events, chance operations in the everyday life
- dynamic: idea, object, event
- Fluxus kit–a method of publication & distribution
- ephemeral (transient, short-lived)
- resembles a sophisticated toy box w/different miniature artworks by by different artist
32
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Nam June Paik, Fluxus
What’s Paik doing to the TV as a medium?
- magnet transformed the image into an abstract form
- transforming Tech material
Why is this Fluxus?
- bec Fluxus event was to transform information into objects
- work w/discarded TV sets
- TV as an object, the power & commonality of the object
