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Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S.

Video art. Monitors behind each state with different imagery. Prevalence of tv in America, rapidly changing. Most Americans experience the world through tv screens; tv=real life

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The Dinner Party

Began feminist art movement. Background as a minimalist (one of the boys); not included in reviews of shows. Cutting edge group of artists still very traditional in one way: domination by males. Decided to pay homage to important women throughout history, many ignored in history books. Extensive research. 39 place settings, 13 at each side (symbolism?) 919 other women’s names inscribed in tiles

Hand-painted ceramic plates in period style, embroidered runner also in period style: mediums associated with women: needlework, painted china, ceramics. Sense of community and ritual (Last Supper now spiritual communion of women)

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The Liberation of Aunt Jemima

Betye Saar’s found object assemblage, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972), re-appropriates derogatory imagery as a means of protest and symbol of empowerment for black women. Emerging from a historical context fraught with racism and sexism, Saar’s pivotal piece works in tandem with the civil rights and feminist movements. The cotton balls at the feet of the Jemima figure, the broom, and the image of the woman with the white child each speak to specific roles into which African American women were historically allocated. Saar takes these painful memories and alters them, arming the stereotypically docile mammy figure with a gun and hand grenade and giving agency to the traumatized icons of the past. Aunt Jemima has been armed and empowered with a new identity. She’s done making pancakes.

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Running Fence

How can art compete with mass media? The masses don’t go to art museums, so he decided to bring art to the people

Not lasting museum pieces: felt that the creative process was more important than the finished work: the recording of the work by the media (let the media work for you—like Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol); working with farmers to get their permission to use their land getting local people to help with the construction; beauty of finished project: Jars us into seeing the environment in a new way; natural element of wind. Local people skeptical at first, but many were proud of it at the end; hard-hat workers moved by the experience; also by his total belief in what he was doing; charismatic, converted people to his art (story about one rancher who had fought it slept next the the fence one night with his son and had a transformative experience. Not elitist—brought art experience to normal people; link between fine art and real world. Cost 3 million dollars; Christo funded himself through drawings, but hundreds of thousands saw it vs. painting sold to private collector and never seen

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Spiral Jetty

The earth is the canvas; environmental scale. Just as time erodes civilizations and all things, the jetty will eventually disappear. Subject is entropy and change (salt encrusted, etc.)

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Untitled

Questions traditional categories of painting and sculpture. Reliance upon geometry, mathematical measurements; emphasized conceptual rather than emotional content; favored materials and processes of mass production. Lacks artists’ hand; not personal; no sign of artist except in concept. Non-art materials: plexiglass, fluorescent tubes, galvanized steel. Wanted to make art that did not look like art—nothing but what you see; no references. Admire what you see: scale, color, texture, proportions; takes away base, glass case—props that announce an object to be a work of art

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Infinity Mirrors

Eternal unlimited universe, love for humanity, and longing for peace in the world—these concepts become increasingly serious through the development of my philosophy of life and art.

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Empress of India

Entirely flat, pinstripes=lines of canvas showing through

Canvas now has a life of its own—not rectangular; sculptural (blurs distiction between painting and sculptures) No push-pull of space. “What you see is what you see.” No hidden meanings, symbols, references: stripped down; vocabulary=Minimal Art; so why title? Geometrical precision

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Red Blue Green

More than 11 feet wide; Reduced painting to a barebones simplicity: Hard-Edge Abstraction; machine precision. Geometric shapes in solid primary and secondary colors; no figure and ground; all on same plane. Only about color and movement; no reference to artist; no reference to subject or meaning; strips everything else away. Left side fixed, right side has movement? Figure/ground relationships change? Acrylic; Influenced by contours of typeface

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Campbell’s Soup Cans

Images from everyday life (like Dutch art) but no reverence, not carefully arranged, no hidden symbolism or meaning. All 32 types of Campbell’s soups at the time; monotonous, repetitive (indifferent vs. emotionalism of abstract expressionism) Called studio the Factory; used silkscreen process; removes artists’ hand, individualism. Workaholic, highly involved in process; but gave illusion of barely touching work. Art is a commodity; name brand product, not necessarily about technique or craftsmanship (you want to buy a Warhol) Pervasiveness of advertising, mass production, uniformity, consumerism: a portrait of America

“One of my favorite pieces will always be Andy Warhol’s Soup Can images. I’ve seen one in person and it looks so effortless, but in a room surrounded by strange and foreign works that tend to isolate and intimidate, his soup cans are so familiar and comfortable. . .” -Madison Hixson

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Drowning Girl

Imagery of mass media; took “low art” forms (commercial art) and made it into “high art”; Revealed manipulative impact of mass media. Make art that doesn’t look like art (idea from Environments, Happenings) Looked to comic books, newspapers; liked the bold outlines, lack of depth/dimension; Known for seeing beauty in low art. Blurs distinctions between fine art and mass culture. Used benday dots; when seen up close, they become flat abstract patterns. Reveals cultural stereotypes of men and women at the time. Artist’s hand/presence not visible; machine-like (opposite AE artists)

“I love this piece because to me he is questioning the misconception and stereotype that fine art is better than commercial art.” -Renae Hunter

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How to Explain Paintings to a Dead Hare

Performance art/conceptual art; Autobiographical: fighter pilot in Hitler’s Luftwaffe in WW2; told story that his plane was shot down in a snowstorm over Crimea and that nomads saved him from freezing by covering him in animal fat and felt (materials here reflecting humanity and spirituality: felt on shoe, fat on chair; steel attached to right foot to show hard reason; face covered in honey (life force) and cold—magical, shaman-like. Moved lips for 3 hours instructing dead hare about pictures surrounding him; meaninglessness of conventional picture-making that has to be explained; art should be spiritual, direct, understandable to viewer.

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Yard

Environments or installations. Interested in Rauschenberg, Nevelson using objects from everyday life. Allover look of Jackson Pollock (wrote that the next step after Pollock was to make environmental art) Not permanent; Walk through it, experience. No meaning attached; left to viewer. Performance Art, Happenings. Simultaneous actions: painting, juicing oranges, speaking fragments of sentences: human participation, element of change. Like a combine in time and space. Reminds me of switching channels on tv or radio

Lots of performance art followed. George Brecht: Motor Vehicle Sunset Event: people drew cards with instructions: at a parking lot revved engines, honked horns, rolled down windows, slammed doors shut, opened and closed hoods and trunks. Finding beauty in everyday ordinariness? How different from theater? Takes place in an art context

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Three Flags

Friends with Rauschenberg; began as a window decorator

Chose everyday, familiar forms. Takes readymades and paints over them. Paintings about painting: non-illusionistic, no specific meaning or emotion (can you remove emotion from flag?) Wax-based encaustic; painterly. 3 canvases stacked: 3-D from canvases, not from illusionistic painting; an image is a sign or symbol of something else, not the thing itself (this is a painting of a flag, not a flag—Magritte: This is not a Pipe) Predecessor to Pop Art

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Odalisk

New generation of artists rejected Abstract Expressionism

Rauschenberg: “It was all about suffering and self-expression and the State of Things. I just wasn’t interested in that, and I certainly did not have any interest in trying to improve the world through painting.” Took off where Duchamp left off: painted canvases completely white; in response, avant-garde composer John Cage wrote a piano piece called 4’33”, first performed in Woodstock, NY in 1952: pianist opened keyboard, did nothing else for 4 minutes and 33 seconds; audience listened to sounds of the real world; then the keyboard case was shut, signaling the end of the piece

“I don’t want a picture to look like something it isn’t. I want it to look like something it is. And I think a pictures is more like the real world when it’s made out of the real world.” Combines: works that combined painting, sculpture, collage, found objects. Odalisk: lamp (electric light inside); magazines, newspapers, thrift shops, garbage—mass production, throwaway. Title: pun on odalisque and obelisk; sexual allusions but no explanation; this is life

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Sky Cathedral—Moon Garden Plus One

Black boxes filled with found objects; fragments of furniture and architecture; also became larger, wall-sized. Fragments of civilization, of one’s life, of the cosmos. Nevelson wanted her black works to be illuminated by a blue light, suggesting twilight, when things begin to look different and to change into something else—moment of transformation

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No. 61

Flip side of Abstract Expressionism: Color-Field Painting. Mystical quality: Large meditative planes of color to express universal forces; sublime (vast, large canvases) Main color-field painters: Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Clifford Still; all started out by making Surrealist paintings based on mythical themes. Rothko: flat planes of color; no storytelling, no symbols; mystical, oneness with cosmic forces. Thin layers of paint; glowing,  “spiritual light”; ragged edges, cloudlike, organic; suggest infinity, spiritual aura. Said he had religious experiences while painting: “I am not interested in relationships of color or form or anything else . . . I am interested only in expressing the basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on—and the fact that lots of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I communicate with those basic human emotions. The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.  And if you... Are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point!”

Jordan Pope:

“When thinking about this question, I went almost immediately to Rothko. After the discussion in class, learning of Rothko’s desire for us to feel the art, to stand in its presence, it really affected me. Thinking of them as more landscapes than purely abstract, to me they become doorways, portals, to a world all his own, yet open for us. They are not sharp lines but fuzzy, with no actual detail in them, just like say a window of frosted glass or something. This then gives us the ability to step through into these worlds of emotion that Rothko has created. Take, for example, No. 61 (Rust and Blue). To me, it is quite a sad painting. It is a world of death and sorry, being 1953 after the chaos of WW2, I see a land of blood, dark clouds hang overhead and a deep blue sky of nature lamenting the destruction that has happened. Or take No. 14, which I believe is the one we looked at in class. It has a warm sky, as if of a rising sun, a land of blue, of a deep ocean, hailing to the voyagers of old seeking new horizons. For me, when I understand an artist, then I can appreciate them. One of the reasons why I love to learn new techniques and media is so that I can more fully understand artists, how they work, and how they feel. When, learning of Rothko and how he tried to make his pieces with emotion and the understanding of what he wants us to do to understand his pieces, it becomes beautiful in learning from his art.”

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Autumn Rhythm

After WWII: Turning point in the art world: focus shifted from Paris to NY. America’s first major art movement, Abstract Expressionism; evolved from Surrealism; influence of many European artists in NY during wars like Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky—breaking new rules (how many?) Story: Asked his wife Lee Krasner “Is this a painting?” Gesture paintings: about process; Allover paintings: no focal point; culmination of trend of the emergence of the picture plane as an independent entity (since Cezanne—even Manet) Existentialism reaction to destruction of world wars: no absolute truths; “The one thing that could be trusted and believed in was the self, and that became the sole subject of Abstract Expressionist painting”—individualism; no mistaking one artist for another (story about art teacher; students all did Pollock style); Precedent to performance art; canvas totally gone, spontaneous, end product unknown.

"It is impossible to make a forgery of Jackson Pollock's work," Time magazine critic Robert Hughes claimed in 1982. "It is what his imitators could never do, and why there are no successful Pollock forgeries: they always end up looking like...spaghetti, whereas Pollock--in his best work--had an almost preternatural control over the total effect of those skeins and receding depths of paint. In them, the light is always right. Nor are they absolutely spontaneous; he would often retouch the drip with a brush."
- Cody, Wyoming

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Nam June Paik. Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S. 1995

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Judy Chicago. The Dinner Party. 1979

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Betye Saar, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, 1972

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Yayoi Kusama, A Dream I Dreamed, 2014

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Robert Smithson. Spiral Jetty, Great Salt Lake, Utah. 1970

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Donald Judd, Untitled. 1969

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Frank Stella. Empress of India. 1965

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Roy Lichtenstein. Drowning Girl. 1963

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Joseph Beuys, How to Explain Paintings to a Dead Hare, Nov. 26, 1965

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Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrors, 2017

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Allan Kaprow, Yard, 1961

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Jasper Johns. Three Flags. 1958

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Robert Rauschenberg. Odalisk. 1955–58

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Louise Nevelson. Sky Cathedral—Moon Garden Plus One. 1957–60

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Mark Rothko No. 61 (Rust and Blue), 1953 (Color Field Painting)

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Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm: Number 30. 1950 (Action Painting)

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Mountains and Sea

Developed Stain painting: put canvas on the floor like Pollock, made quick charcoal sketches, poured thin oil paint on it, tilted it to allow paint to run (didn’t use brush) Paint bled into unprimed canvas; translucent like watercolor; not tactile like impasto; couldn’t see artist’s hand: post-painterly abstraction (evolved from abstract expressionism)

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My Egypt

Influences of Cubism reaches US. Grain elevators. Hard-edged, geometric, Cubist; Precisionism (not only because of precise line, but also because of precision of machines and industry; unlike Cubism, not distorted. Title: Americas pyramids; mighty

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Migrant Mother

Grant from FSA (Farm Security Administration) under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Captures destitution, emotional distress of migrant workers. Immediate impact: government sent food to CA and opened relief camps for migrant workers; power of images

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Guernica

Fascist rise to power: Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, Franco in Spain, Hirohito in Japan. Spanish Civil War: Hitler provided military support for the Nationalists under leadership of fascist dictator Franco; Nazi pilots used saturation bombing to attack the undefended Basque town of Guernica, killing thousands of civilians. Painted as a protest;  This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war (compare to Goya 3rd of May); crucifixion pose. Why black and white? Thought color would distract. Why lines of hatching? Newspaper look; immediacy of journalism; contemporary event. Bull=forces of brutality and darkness; horse=the people. Bird=dove of peace (annihilated) Picasso refused to let Gernica be displayed in Spain while Franco was still alive. Last major history painting; end of belief that a painting can be a catalyst for change (we are too bombarded by images daily)

"This painting of Pablo Picasso has a very strong and emotive purpose. The storyline is very powerful and he knew how to narrate it in a perfect way. What I admire the most about this painting is that Picasso portrayed in a marvelous way the drama and effusion of the moment where the people of Guernica were attacked by a bomb in the Spanish civil war. The colors are very cold and hopeless which portray a sense of despair, sadness and drama. The subjects in the painting are disfigured and portray a feeling of pain and destruction. The painting is a symbol of the terrible suffering that the war violates human beings. I believe that Picasso wanted to show how art has always been and will be a form of social expression, a way to "speak without words" and sensitize the viewer. We should look at art not in the simple forms or colors, but to look beyond and try to perceive what the author wants to tell us, "No, painting is not made to decorate rooms. An instrument of offensive and defensive war against the enemy; art does not die but is an eternal value, which survives after the chaos." Pablo Picasso"

-Natalie Ramirez

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The Two Fridas

Began painting while recovering from a bus accident at age 18; interested in native folk art and dress; introspective and about emotional and physical pain. Left: European Frida; pale, Victorian dress (father was Hungarian Jew); right is Mexican Frida, darker and in peasant costume (mother Indian and Creole). European Frida cuts the blood connection to the indigenous self

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Flower Carrier

This echoed forms of Aztec and Mayan art. It shows the reality of the culture and its emphasis on hard work. It's also reflective of our modern time, especially with the topic of immigration and how many come here for work and a chance for a better life. They will often find themselves working in tough conditions to provide for themselves and their family.

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In the North the Negro Had Better Educational Facilities

From the series The Migration of the Negro; tempera on hardboard. Series of 60 paintings documenting mass migration (6 million) of African Americans from the south to the north. Factors included racism and Jim Crow laws, but also jobs to fill in the industrialized north. About movement and change

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American Gothic

Shown at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1930 (still there), brought Wood to national attention. Window into Midwest world where Wood grew up and lived. What can you tell about these people? Fictitious father and spinster daughter, God-fearing descendants of settlers. Religious: numerous crosses: windows, porch, overalls (repeats pitchfork pattern), church steeple, Gothic window. Neat and clean: crisp drawing, verticals and horizontals. Industrious: pitchfork, plants on porch. Frugal: old-fashioned clothes, nothing modern (time of Depression)

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Hot Still-Scape for Six Colors

Essence of the modern experience through abstraction influenced by Armory Show: flying in an airplane, looking down from a towering skyscraper, riding in a speeding car, advertising, jazz, pulse and energy. Like synthetic Cubism

Marley Staker: Stuart Davis’ painting “Hot Still-Scape for Six Colors—Seventh Avenue Style” embodies several of the principles of design including balance, depth, and repetition and variation. The composition is asymmetrical but the shapes and colors make it very balanced. The overlapping and juxtaposition in this composition gives a sense of depth. It almost appears as thought there are multiple layers that are being revealed. Lastly, Davis uses repetition and variation to bring this piece to life. He uses many patterns each with their own repeating shapes. He also uses many different shapes, some similar to others but none are the same. His awareness and use of these principles make his work effective and interesting to look at.

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Yellow Calla

First showed her work at Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery (“At last, a woman on paper”) Close-ups of flowers; image so magnified it becomes abstract (influenced by close-up photography of Paul Strand) Critics felt it had sexual references. O’Keeffe denied that they were about sexuality;  “if you see other things in the flower, it is because of the universality present in nature” Quote: “I’ll paint it big, and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it. . . I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.”

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De Stijl

Dutch movement

Sought to create utopian environment through geometric abstraction

Sought universal order that would make nationalism obsolete

Also called International Style and Neo-Plasticism

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Composition No. II

Mondrian with other artists in Amsterdam founded a movement called De Stijl:; spiritual mission; Friend and philosopher Schoenmaekers wrote that there was an underlying mathematical structure to the universe that constituted true reality; Mondrian based art on this theory; called it Neo Plasticism. Asymmetrical but harmonious; no foreground or background; all on same plane (asserts the presence of the picture plane—going back to Manet, Cezanne, etc.) Tries to convey complexity and simplicity of universe; everything fits together. Mondrian felt that art can be a catalyst for change; new language (like Malevich) Cubist influence; also stained glass

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Recumbent Figure

Influenced by Brancusi, Arp, Miro, Picasso. Also non-western art, including Pre-Columbian art. Reminiscent of a Classical reclining river-goddess; but based more directly on Pre-Columbian figures. Interested in portraying elemental and universal. We see woman but know it is also stone; millions of years old; one with the stone. Earth goddess or fertility figure; also a landscape; mother earth. Interplay between solid and void; suggests womb or tide pools. Many interpreters liken the undulating form of his reclining figures to the landscape and hills of his birthplace, Yorkshire. His ability in later life to fulfill large-scale commissions made him exceptionally wealthy. Yet he lived frugally and most of the money he earned went towards endowing the Henry Moore Foundation, which continues to support education and promotion of the arts.

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Lobster Trap and Fish Tail

American, settled in Paris, befriended Miro and Mondrian

Started making mobiles in the early 1930’s; painted sheet metal, balanced so that movement in air makes them glide and turn in space. Organic shapes like Miro and Arp; suggest natural forms. Sculpture? Flat; like drawing in air; but moves in space. Simple colors: primary, secondary, black and white. Childlike, joyous. Flat space and depth combined

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Object (Luncheon in Fur)

Daughter of a Jungian psychologist. Juxtaposition two desirable things; becomes disturbing

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The Gift

Surrealist object; Gift for composer Erik Satie. Tacks glued onto flat side of an iron. Suggests pain, violence, uselessness?

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The Persistence of Memory

Stream of consciousness process: one thing led to another. Time? Rational, measured. Death, deterioration. Everything is irrational—attack on the rational. Viewers’ own unconscious

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The Treachery of Images

A painting by the Belgian René Magritte, painted when Magritte was 30 years old. The picture shows a pipe. Below it, Magritte painted, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe.", French for "This is not a pipe." "The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture "This is a pipe", I'd have been lying!"

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Composition

From Barcelona, went to Paris, started painting from his imagination (or hallucinations brought on by starvation, he claimed) Wiry line, childlike drawing of Paul Klee. Biomorphic forms float on top of minimal color field (behind drawings)—oil, but thin like washes. Suggest microscopic forms, spirits, prehistoric forms; mythic images, primal state; (how many ways can we not show depth?)

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Dada

Reaction against World War I

Focused on absurdity, element of chance

(Enlightenment values of logic and reason only lead to war)

Challenged status quo in art, culture, etc.

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Surrealism

Exploration of the unconscious mind

Dream images

Juxtaposition of unrelated objects

Randomness related to dream states

Stream of consciousness

In common with Dada: element of chance, randomness (not politically charged); also nonsense

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Never Again War!

Made drawings and prints because they could be mass-produced, wider audiences; Didn’t like elitist nature of art, academies (couldn’t get in because she was a woman) Sympathized with working class and victims of war; husband was a doctor who treated the poor; became the subjects of her art. Reminds me of Liberty Leading the People (new cause)

“Be it her time or ours, we can use art to express ourselves and opinions in protest to what is being done if it is something we strongly disagree with, usually political in nature. I think people like her need to use their talents to create images for a movement.” -Gerald Robinson

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Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Beer-Belly of the Weimar Republic

Photomontage. Images of contemporary life made by photographers for popular press; camera is another machine associated with technological advances that led to war. Manipulated images by hand; cut with kitchen knife (no machinery); humanized the mechanical; antiwar. Antiwar Kathe Kollwitz at center, anti-dada at sides. Didn’t use collage to make something beautiful or refined; looked crude and anti-art; message of protest about modern society and regime of Weimar Republic

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Mechanical Head

Assemblage: made of found objects assembled. Mindless, lifeless dummy; mechanical, robotic, no personal identity. “The typical German has no more capabilities than those which chance has glued onto the outside of his skull; his brain remains empty.”

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Fountain

Duchamp went to NYC to escape war. “DADA” applied in retrospect; similar goals. “Readymade”; entered in 1917 independent art show. Rejected (although non-juried show); Duchamp knew committee would not consider it art. Issues: What is art? Does it have to be created? (He CHOSE it); art is about ideas. Defies conventional notions of beauty; HUMOR

“The first time I saw a piece of artwork from the Dada period, I thought it was ugly and trashy. However, after I began to learn about the artists form the period and what they were trying to do, I began to appreciate it more. I ‘get it’ now, I love seeing Dada pieces and understanding the humor as well as the rebellion they are trying to convey.” -Casey Sanders

“I was inspired by Dada very in this section of the 20th century because I knew the style already from my theatre class. In both artistic realms, Dada came as a reaction to World War I. Before the war, mass destruction caused by entire nations using manmade weapons was fictitious. The Dadaists drew from the sense of chaos, illogic, and fear to create. Both styles responded to the same event and both serve the same purpose through different mediums: to question and redefine reality. They subtly made statements about what we accept as reality by their art. Dadaists accomplished this by redefining what art really is, which questioned the “system” of art, as well as reality as a whole. In theatre, “sound poems,” which consist of calling a string of non-verbal sounds poetry. Sound poems strip poetry of the characteristic that had previously defined it: words. By taking away the one defining characteristic, Dadaists changed poetry to mean a string of anything, whether it be sounds, objects, syllables, or words. The audience decides how they all connect, and in doing so decides what their version of reality is. Similarly, Dada artist Marcel Duchamp redefined reality by calling a urinal a “fountain” (Fountain, 1917). Like theatre Dadaists, he makes us question what reality is. He submitted the “Assisted Readymade” sculpture to the society’s exhibition under a false name, knowing the society would reject it. When it was rejected, he and his friends made a big scene about it. This shows that he purposely perverts the hallowed form of classical arts, fountains, and forces us to respond. Why would he pervert such a beautiful and pure art form? What makes a fountain a fountain? Why ISN’T a urinal considered a fountain? In forcing his audience to react to his perverse art, he also forces them to consider the warped world we share and live in.” -Angela Cava

“There are many instances in art when new movements occur because of social trends at the time. I believe art is very socially driven. A good example of this idea is Duchamp's Fountain. I'm not at all particularly fond of the piece it's self, but I'm intrigued by the ideas behind it. Duchamp was using his art as a reaction against war and against the industrial revolution. He made a bold statement by taking something that had been massed produced, turning it another angle, and then signing it as a artist would. Is this real art? I raises so many new questions to the viewers mind that had never been thought of before. This is why I like this work.” -Bethany Brown

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Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance

Dada poetry: random words, pulled out of a hat, non words (abstract) Movement started in Zurich (center for war protests) Made abstract collages by dropping pieces of torn rectangular paper on the floor; where they fell determined the composition (chance=nature, truth) Sought to capture abstract universal forces (like Kandinsky)

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Charles Demuth, My Egypt, 1927

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Dorothea Lange. Migrant Mother, California. 1936

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Edward Hopper, Night Hawks, 1942

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Pablo Picasso. Guernica. 1937

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Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, 1939

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Diego Rivera, Flower Carrier, 1935

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“In the North the Negro Had Better Educational Facilities,” from the Migration of the Negro
series, 1940-41

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Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930

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Stuart Davis, Hot Still-Scape for Six Colors - 7th Avenue Style. 1940.

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Georgia O’Keeffe, Deer’s Skull with Pedernal, 1936

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Georgia O’Keeffe, Yellow Calla, 1926

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Piet Mondrian. Composition (Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow). 1930

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Henry Moore. Recumbent Figure. 1938

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Alexander Calder. Lobster Trap and Fish Tail. 1939

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Meret Oppenheim. Object (Luncheon in Fur). 1936

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Man Ray. The Gift. 1921 (1958 replica)

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René Magritte, The Treachery of Images, 1928-29

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Joan Miró. Composition. 1933

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Käthe Kollwitz. Never Again War! 1924

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Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Beer Belly of the Weimar Republic, 1919

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Raoul Hausmann. Mechanical Head (Spirit of the Age). ca. 1920

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Hans Arp, Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance, 1916-17

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Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying

Trying to show experience of flying; new relationship to the universe. Reproductions don’t show organic qualities, hand of the artist.

"Kyiv-born artist Kazimir Malevich challenged everything in the world around him with his painting Black Square. In 1913, He wrote that “trying desperately to free art from the dead weight of the real world, [he] took refuge in the form of the square.” Malevich didn’t want to depict the world around him; he wanted to transcend it. He was surrounded by a Russian state in turmoil and a world at war. The painting was not only challenging in that it was nothing more than a simple black square, but in how Malevich displayed it in the place Orthodox Christians reserved for an icon. He wanted people to question their perception of reality. Black Square not only created a revolution in avant-garde art, but contributed to a cultural and political revolution within his own country. This piece of art inspires me because it shows us the real power art has to change and improve the world around us. The next time someone frowns upon this seemingly simple black square, tell them it was this black square that changed history."

-Dallin Durtschi, Fall 2018