Post Modern Art notes, Spring '08

Chapter 19
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM AND THE NEW AMERICAN ART

Barnett Newman (see below) said he “felt the moral crisis of a world in shambles.” In early 1942, Social Realism and the American School were the dominant styles. But the war sparked AE a/k/a the “New York School,” the first major original direction [of] American art. Europe was dead, but AE had vitality, spontaneity and confident scale. They explored Freud and Jung.

Modes of AE: The new group was anti-nationalist and also rejected as trivial pure geometric abstraction. They were closer to Surrealists, especially Matta, Miro and Masson (organic, abstract, automatist). Matta introduces “psychic automatism.” Art critic Clement Greenberg (1954): art’s ability to connect powerfully with human experience is independent of any representational qualities it may have.

Gestural (or Action) painters explored the spontaneous and unique touch (“handwriting”) of the artist, and texture of the paint: Pollack, de Kooning, Kline.

Color Field painters focused on large, unified color shape or area: Rothko, Newman.


Experiments in Gestural Painting

Hoffmann’s structure based on architectonic principles rooted in Cubism.

Arshile Gorky (1905-48) a victim of Armenian genocide, he was seminal in early New York School.

The Liver is the Cock’s Comb, 1944 (19.3 at 412) both vast and microscopic, it veils recognizable biomorphic objects, derivative of Kandinsky and Surrealist automatism.

Willem de Kooning (1904-97) house painter turned artist, shifted between abstract and representational modes, and many abstractions alluded to figures. Mostly black and white.

Woman, I, 1950-52 (19.5 at 413) monumental evocation of gruesome sex symbol and fertility goddess. [See the ovoid The “Venus” of Willendorf and Les Demoiselles d’Avignon]

Jackson Pollock (1912-56) Wyoming native (dad surveyed the Grand Canyon) who studied with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Student’s League, known for drip painting, his early work (abstract arabesques) was influenced by his teacher. He used automatic methods of Masson and Miro. In action painting the process of painting is as important as the completed picture. Improvised like jazz musicians. He created a hybrid between easel painting and murals so viewer wouldn’t be detached from the work [ see phenomenology]. [Gestures documented in a “visual transcript” of “time elapsed” photography].


Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist) (19.10 at 416) Oil, enamel and aluminum. Masterpiece of “allover painting” non-hierarchical drips, pours and splatters all over the canvass, without formal subject or any part taking precedence over anyother, “holism.” In action painting the process of painting is as important as the completed picture. It tracks his “literal presence.”

Lee Krasner (1908-84) Pollack’s wife was in the Mural Division of the WPA in 1935 and a student of Hans Hoffman. Thought Surrealists were misogynist. Franz Kline (1910-62) painted large scale black and white abstractions. Tomlin and Toby at 420. Guston at 421. Elaine de Kooning and Hartigan at 422.


Color Field Painting

The simple expression of complex thought using flat forms which destroy illusion and reveal truth. They are not subjectless no matter how reductive; they elicit strong emotional response, especially primitive fears.

Mark Rothko (1903-70) a Russian Jew (moved here in 1913) who bore witness to pogroms. In 1940 he abandoned representation and searched for profound, universal themes, e.g., in Nietzsche and Jung. Used ancient myth as source of eternal symbols, especially reflecting his tragic vision and alienation. Asked himself, “what can art do?” Perhaps help viewers discover their own lost humanity. He reacted against the superficial. He though art needed “companionship” in order to live or die. His multiforms are colored fields. The Seagram series is at the Tate Modern.

White and Greens in Blue, 1957 (19.26 at 425) shows the somber colors he used in the late 1950’s.

Barnett Newman (1905-70) known for his critical writings, his later work was unlike other Abstract Expressionists, using radical reductiveness with a denial of painterly surface. He used a unified color field interrupted by a vertical line or “zip.”

Vir Heroicus Sublimis (Heroic Sublime Man), 1950-51 (19.29 at 427) a mural sized painting with multiple “Zips.”

Still, Reinhardt, Gottlieb, pp. 427-9.

Robert Motherwell (1915-91) Ivy League academic background, he was a spokesman for AE. He preferred Surrealism/automatism…intuitive, irrational and accidental.

Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 34 1953-54 (19.36 at 431) inspired by his profound reaction to the defeat of the Spanish Republic, he painted over 150 with this theme. The black and white represent death and life (see Guernica).


Biomorphic Sculpture and Assemblage

Isamu Noguchi (1904-88) worked with Calder and Brancusi.

The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, opened 1985, LIC, NY

Louise Bourgeois (b. 1911)

Cumul I, 1968 (19.51 at 439) globular, sexual shapes of latex, marble?

Joseph Cornell (1902-72) collage, constructions and assemblages, often a glass-fronted box with archaized ephemera. Friends with Duchamp.

Untitled (The Hotel Eden), c. 1945 (19.54 at 441) he gives ephemera a weathered, antique look.

Louise Nevelson (1899-1988) liked to control light and space within which the viewer experienced her work. She constructed wooded walls with boxes containing found objects.

An American Tribute to the British People, 1960-65 (19.56 at 442) alter-like wooden wall, and Sun Garden, No. 1, 1964 contains three towers, two tall, one short.


Capa and Miller at 443.


White, Siskind, Porter and Callahan at 443-4


Levitt and DeCarava at 445


Class 2/5/08 Know “Existentialism” for Chapter 20.

Chapter 20
POSTWAR EUROPEAN ART

Mood of despair and disillusionment. Many artists returned from American and reengaged in the figurative v. abstract dialogue.


Figurative Art in France

Picasso engaged in an extended dialogue with Velázquez, Courbet, Manet and Delacroix, unaffected by new radical developments.

Women of Algiers, after Delacroix, 1955 (20.4 at 448) a subjective interpretation of Delacroix’s 1834 The Women of Algiers (in Their apartment), pays tribute to Delacroix and Matisse (d. 1954) Orientalist style.

Alberto Giacometti (1901–66) the leading Surrealist sculptor who broke with the movement in 1934 and returned to memory-inspired figurative work, mostly of tall, extremely attenuated bronze figures. Sartre wrote: “Emptiness filters through everywhere, each creature secretes his own void,” but Giacometti rejected Existentialist readings of his work.

Man Pointing, 1947 (20.7 at 449) Life-size bronze.

Jean Dubuffet (1901-85) studied music, languages, experimental theatre, and puppetry. Self-taught like Klee, he used a book, Artistry of the Mentally Ill, for inspiration.

Dhotel Hairy with Yellow Teeth, 1947 Mixed media on canvass (20.17 at 453) comical caricature with watermelon-shaped torso.

* * *

PURE CREATION: CONCRETE ART – In 1930 Theo van Doesburg coined the term “Concrete” to mean non-objective as applied to geometric abstractions of de Stijl, followed by Mondrian’s Neo-Plasticism. P. 461

* * *

Italy and Spain

Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) Abstract Italian who signed and published various manifestos advocating abstraction and new medium, e.g., neon lights. The White Manifesto modeled on Futuristic prototypes anticipated Spatialism advocated color and form in literal space, transcending the canvass, becoming part of architecture.

Spatial Concept: The End of God, 1963 (20.38 at 464) an egg-shaped perforated canvas with holes breaking the picture plane. The holes reveal another color below. Appears like an extra terrestrial landscape.


Figures in the Landscape: British Painting and Sculpture

England witnessed a strong post-war emphasis on the figure.


Francis Bacon (1909-92) inspired by Picasso’s 1920’s Surrealist works, he was self-taught figurative painter of “disquieting subject matter,” often violent, e.g., his crucifixion obsession.

Painting, 1946 (20.47 at 470) horrific montage created by accident while trying to paint a bird. Umbrella a classic Surrealist object [see Margritte].


Henry Moore (1898-1986) abstractionist who also worked in the biomorphic mode, often at its most reductive.

Sheep Piece, 1971 (20.55 at 475) portrays soft, organic contours of interacting or mating sheep.

Chapter 21
POP ART AND EUROPE’S NEW REALISM

The pop generation harvested the shift in values to the post-war consumer society. They viewed abstract expressionism as oppressive, preferring mass-market consumer products.


Pop Art in Britain 1958, term “pop art” first used in print.

Richard Hamilton (b. 1922) a disciple of Duchamp, defined pop art in 1957 as: Popular, Transient, Expendable, Low Cost, Mass Produced, Young, Witty, Sexy, Gimmicky, Glamorous and Big Business. Used irony and humor, not satire or antagonism.

Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing, 1956 (21.1) Collage on paper.

David Hockney (b.1937) used his own life (friends, life in California) as subjects.

A Bigger Splash, 1967 (21.6 at 481) swimming pools with their cool hues were a favorite subject. He used Matissean flat pattern design, and a painterly splash.

Neo-Dada in the United States

Neo-Dada is a forerunner to Pop. Like in Britain, the late 1950’s brought a further moving away from the “heroic rhetoric” and “grand painterly gestures” of Abstract Expressionism. Rauschenberg and Johns were the most obvious heirs to Duchamp.

Robert Rauschenberg (b. 1925) important contributor to pop’s vocabulary. He worked worldwide using every type of material; an eclectic pastiche (cobbling together of traditional styles).

Bed, 1955 (21.10 at 483) “Combine painting:” oil and pencil on pillow, quilt and sheet on wood supports.

Monogram, 1959 (21.11 at 484) Combine painting with oil and collage with objects. Includes stuffed Angora goat in a tire.

Estate, 1963 (21.12 at 485) Oil and silkscreen ink on canvas. Kaleidoscope of images held together on a grid using gestural brushstrokes.

Jasper Johns (b. 1930)

Flag, 1954 (21.14 at 486) Encaustic oil and collage on fabric mounted on plywood shows ambiguity (like Magritte’s Perfidy of Images) and pop art’s concern with signs.

Target with Plaster Casts, 1955 (21.15 at 486) Encaustic and collage on canvas with wood construction and plaster casts shows disjunction from the flat target with the plaster body parts.

Painted Bronze, 1960 (21.16 at 487) immortalizes mass production, but paradoxically, the Ballantine cans are hand painted.


Happenings and Environments (488)

Integrating arts with life part was of Pop revolution with historical antecedence in WWI Dada. A Happening” is: an assemblage of events performed or perceived in more than one time and space.

Allan Kaprow (b. 1927) created Household, a Happening commissioned by Cornell U., 1964 in which students lick jam from a car.

George Segal (1924-2000) began as a painter, then casted life-size figures leaving them white. The Diner, 1964-6 Plaster, wood chrome, masonite, plastic, lamp, glass, paper.

Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929) creates from lowly common objects from foodstuffs to clothespins and assorted urban detritus. Floor Cake, 1962 Installation using paint, latex, and canvas filled with foam rubber and cardboard boxes.


The Imagery of Everyday Life (493)

Roy Lichtenstein (1924-97) Whaam!, 1963 Oil and Magna on two canvas panels. (21.38 at 497)

Any Warhol (1928-87) started as a successful commercial artist. Called his studio “The Factory.” From 1962 on, he used mechanical photo-silkscreen process and didn’t sign his work to emphasis mass production

210 Coca-Cola Bottles, 1962, Silkscreen ink on paint on canvass, (21.42 at 499) used repetition, assembly line.

Campbell’s Soup Cans, Installation view, 1962.

Marilyn Monroe, 1962 Silkscreen ink on oil, acrylic and enamel on canvas. He made this work imperfect to underscore its mechanical nature and to provoke thought about the recently deceased Monroe.


West Coast Artists (504)

Edward Kienholz (1927-94) a subversive LA artist who created elaborate tableaux, embodying mordant, even gruesome views of American life.

The State Hospital, 1966 (21.55 at 505) Mixed media tableaux, a construction of a cell with a mental patient and his self image, both with revolting realism.

Edward Ruscha (b. 1937) not easily classified. Every Building on Sunset Strip, 1966 (21.58 at 507) Book illustration, a series of deadpan photographs.

Europe’s “New Realism” (509)

Movement developed in the 50’s when the prevailing trend was geometric abstraction. Unlike Pop Art, Europeans were less interested in literal transcriptions of pop culture. [Perhaps America was more of a consumer culture v. Europe.]

Yves Klein (1928-62) a central figure in New Realism, he was an early practitioner of Conceptual (concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns), Body, Minimalist and Performance art.

Blue Monochrome, 1961 (21.60 at 508) Dry pigment in polymer on cotton over plywood. The ultramarine pigment was patented as IKB (International Klein Blue).

Niki de Saint-Phalle, (b. 1930) Black Venus, 1965-67 (21.65 at 511) Painted polyester is a rotund, animated figure and painted with bright colors.

Christo (b. 1935) wrapped found objects in cloth and known for vast environmental projects. Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California, 1972-76 (21.71 at 514) 2050 steel polls set 62’ apart; 65,000 yards of fabric, height 18’


The Snapshot Aesthetic in American Photography (517)

Diane Arbus (1923-71) probed the psyche with painfully honest photos. Untitled #6, 1970-1 (21.81 at 520) shows three retarded girls at play.

Chapter 22
SIXTIES ABSTRACTION

Some said art could be distilled into idea alone. Pop art entertained a newly affluent, status-seeking audience making it the most popular high-culture development.

Post-Painterly Color Field Abstraction

Removes gesture, paint applied to raw canvas—looks like watercolor.

Helen Frankenthaler (b. 1928) important figure in transition from AE and Color Field.

Interior Landscape, 1964 (22.4 at 526) builds around a free-abstract central image while stressing the picture edge. Paint applied in thin washes.

Morris Louis (1912-62) eliminated brush gesture.

Kaf, 1959-60 (22.6 at 527)Note billowing tonal waves creating with flat, thin pigment.


Hard-Edge Painting

Abstract, looks mechanical like cut with a knife. The whole picture becomes the unit, the special effect of figures on a field is avoided.

Ellsworth Kelly (b. 1923) was a leader of the “hard edge” faction of color field painting. Orange and Green, 1966 (22.17 at 532).

Op Art

Illusion generated from stimulation of the retina. It also inspired “all over” painting where art seems to expand beyond its limits.

Victor Vasarely (1908-97) most influential in Op art, calling his 1950’s work “kinetic plastic” and eliminating the distinction between painting and sculpture, and developing a single plastic sensibility. Art equals an idea rather than an object.

Vega Per, 1969 (22.27 at 537)

Motion and Light - Mobiles and Kinetic Art

Alexander Calder (1898-1976) The Spiral, 1958 (22.30 at 539) a moving sculpture which bore an important relationship to his “stabiles,” or non-moving works.

* * *

Robert Irwin (b. 1928) light and space artist, Untitled, 1965-67 Acrylic automobile lacquers on shaped aluminum with metal tubes.


Minimalist Sculpture and Painting


Toby Smith (1912-80) Die, 1962 (22.46 at 548)
Donald Judd (1928 – 94) sculpture and theorist saying that actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint a flat surface. Creating permanent installation at 101 Spring St. in SoHo; also in Marfa, TX installation.
Untitled, 1965 (22.47 at 549) repetition of identical units.
Sol LeWitt (b. 1928) identified with serial Minimalism with open, connecting cubes integrated to form proportionately larger units. Sculpture Series “A,” 1967 (22.52 at 551).
Carl Andre (b. 1935) started carving vertical wooden sculptures, then moved to horizontal arrangements, or “floor pieces.”
37 Pieces of Work, 1969 (22.55 at 553) constructed from six types of metal for his solo show at the Guggenheim.
Richard Serra (b. 1939) One Ton Prop (House of Cards), 1969














Chapter 23
THE SECOND WAVE OF INTERNATIONAL STYLE ARCHITECTURE

Mid-sixties saw disenchantment of functionalism and technology-driven aesthetic resulting in hybrid styles. In the 1930’s America rejected International Style in favor of its Beau-Arts tradition.

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) Later Work.

Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1957-59 (23.2 at 563)
Le Corbusier (1887-1965) Later Work.
Notra-Dame-du-Haut, Ronchamp, France, 1950-54 (23.5 at 565). Organic and decorative v. previous work.
Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969)
Seagram Building (with Philip Johnson), 1958 (23.12 at 569). Greatly influenced future skyscraper design.
Domestic Architecture
Philip Johnson, Glass House, New Canaan, CT, 1949 (23.15 at 571). Miesian uninterrupted interior space.
Richard Neutra (1892-1970), Kaufmann House, Palm Springs, CA, 1947 (23.16 at 571). Former employee of Wright.
France and Australia
Piano and Rogers, Pompidou Center, Paris, 1971-78 (23.21 at 574).
Utzon and Hall, Sydney Opera House, 1972 (23.25 at 577)
Experimental Housing
Paolo Soleri, Arcosanti; Moshe Safdie, Habitat ‘67
Charles and Ray Eames, Eames Residence, Santa Monica, 1949 (23.31 580) constructed of prefabricated materials via catalog.
Major Public Projects
Lincoln Center (new monumental classicism), Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX, TWA Building, American Pavilion, Expo ’67..
Marcel Breuer, The Whitney Museum of American Art, 1966 (23.35 at 582) illustrative of Breuer’s later Brutalism, uses dark, heavy granite and has large open spaces with little natural light.
Richard Meier, The Atheneum, New Harmony, Indiana, 1975-9 (23.38 at 584).
I.M. Pei (b. 1917) National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1978 (23.39 at 585). Geometric shapes and light.