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Michael Graves. Public Services Building, Portland, Oregon. 1980–82

Robert Venturi, architect: “Less is a bore.”

Full of paradox:

Flat and sculptural

Representational and abstract

Historical and modern

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Breaking Rules!

Abstract Expressionism (two branches—Action Painting and Color Field Painting):

Influenced by Surrealism

Art about emotion, myth, universal forces

Brought attention to the paint on the canvas (rather than hiding)

Brought NYC to the center of the art world

Post-Painterly Abstraction

“Stain painting”

Post Abstraction

“Combines”

Installation Art

Art as experience

Not collectable

Performance Art

Art as life

Improvisation; unpredictable

Pop Art:

Reaction to elitism of Abstract Expressionism; unemotional
Similar to Dada in love of ready-made, common objects

Sought a mass-produced look—accessible

Interested in mass media and pop culture

Minimalism:

Unemotional

Reduced to most basic parts

“What you see is what you see”—denial of meaning

Earthworks:

The earth is the canvas

Interactive

Out of the gallery—less elitist

Not collectable

Activist Art:

Art as political statement

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Dada: Reaction against World War I; focus on absurdity, element of chance
(Enlightenment values of logic and reason only lead to war); challenged status quo in art, culture, etc.

Surrealism: 1930’s; element of chance (like Dada); randomness related to dream states; juxtaposition of unrelated objects; exploration of the subconscious mind; dream images; stream of consciousness

De Stijl (The Style): 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

Regionalism: Representational; local (Midwest) imagery

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Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937

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 3 rd 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)

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

Looking for new inspiration: African Art, Cycladic Art, Folk Art, children’s art, stained glass

Fauvism: removing the naturalistic description function from color

Analytic Cubism: deconstructing space; showing more than one viewpoint at the same time; influence of Cezanne

Synthetic Cubism: building up images; use of collage; “real” vs. illusion

German Expressionism: Die Brücke: dissatisfaction with industrial modern life; looking to German past with woodblock prints

German Expressionism: Der Blaue Reiter: looking for spirituality and “universal truths;”

Abstract art vs. non-objective art, non-narrative art, non-representational art

Italian Futurism: sought to reject the past and bring Italy into the future; interest in new technology, speed, and movement

Russian Suprematism: “supremacy of feeling;” pro-Russian revolution; wanted to create a new vocabulary and language of art removed from the elitist past

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Pablo Picasso. Guitar, Sheet Music, and Wine Glass. 1912

Synthetic Cubism: in 1912 Braque and Picasso began working in collage; complicates notion of real and illusion; paper/ wallpaper/ chair caning is real and an illusion (a picture)

Pablo Picasso, Guitar, Sheet Music, and Wine Glass, 1912.

complicates notion of real and illusion; paper/ wallpaper/ chair caning is real and an illusion (a picture)

Woodgrain was painted by Picasso and cut out

“Instead of a window, the picture surface became a tray on which art was served.” (art is on top of the canvas, not behind)

What has the most depth? She modeled glass, which is the only thing drawn?

Instead of breaking down images, now building up

Introduced a variety of textures and colors  (in analytic Cubism they used monochromatic colors)

Used musical themes because music is abstract, like their art; also notes are abstract symbols

Play with space: guitar soundhole should be negative space, but it is a solid circle of paper

Le Jou—again, pun about Le Journal, jouer (to play)

La Bataille s’est Engage (the battle is joined): First Balkan war in Europe; also battlefield between Picasso and Braque working on a new medium

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Ife Portrait Heads, c. 14th-15th century, brass, 35 cm high, Ife, Africa

Ife=Ife Uncovered (5:10)

Portrait = Ife Remembered (4:33)

Not all African art is abstract

Discovered near a palace in Ife (in Nigeria); believed to have been used in royal burials/funerary ceremonies

Portrait quality

Ife believed to be the land of the gods, first holy city, center of creation

Related to the garden of Eden

Head=center of power

Lost wax casting technology

scarification

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Akua’ba, n.d., (Asante people) Ghana, wood

Used to help with conception

Demonstrates three important qualities of womanhood (wisdom (large forehead), girth (ringed neck is intended to denote rolls of fat, showing that woman is capable of bearing a healthy child), and the prime of life) that relate to her physical and mental abilities.

Akua’ba figures were important fertility aids among Akan-speakers in Ghana in the past. They depict an abstracted female form in wood and were created by male carvers.

Depicts a highly abstracted and idealized woman in the prime of life

The figure is also always female, since Akan culture is matrilineal.

Taken out of the Akan context, altered by Western tastes (which might add beads and paint), and marketed as a universal symbol of Africa, the akua’ba figure is now part of Western popular culture.

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Headdress: Female Antelope (Ci Wara), 19th–20th century Mali, Bamako region, Bamana, wood, metal bands

In performance, the paired dancers symbolize the union between men and women, essential for the continuity of the community. The formal features of the headdress also reference elements of nature necessary to sustain life. The male serves as a metaphor for the sun, while the female is associated with the earth. The long strands of raffia fibers attached to the headdress, concealing the dancer, are likened to streams of water.

Elegant play of positive and negative space.

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Headdress: Male Antelope (Ci Wara), 19th–20th century Mali, Bamako region, Bamana, wood, metal bands

Refer to the mythic culture hero Ci Wara, a divine force conceived of as half man and half antelope. Bamana oral traditions credit Ci Wara with introducing to humanity agricultural methods and an understanding of earth, animals, and plants

Worn in village-wide performances that celebrated the skills of successful farmers. These performances featured a pair of dancers wearing sculpted headdresses, one representing a male antelope and the other a female. They held sticks in their hands to paw the earth just as the mythic Ci Wara did when he first taught men to plant seeds.

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Kota (or Bakota), Gabon, Republic of the Congo: Reliquary guardian figure ‘mbulu ngulu’, from before or around 1920.

Wood covered with metal sheets of brass or copper

Formal elements? Geometric shapes, flat

Headdress

Body abstracted to diamond shape framing empty space (negative space)

Also covered a reliquary containing ancestral bones; traditional (ironically inspired breaking with tradition in western Europe)

Ancestor cult: they lay the deceased out in the forest and later buried in the earth; later, skulls of important leaders were excavated and placed in large baskets with other remembrance objects.

Baskets sealed and preserved in sacred shrine huts

Reliquary guardian figures attached to each vessel with triangular portion reaching into the vessel

Baskets brought out for important ceremonies, opened and contents presented, explained, honored

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What do these works have in common?

Ready to spring into action

Calm=ideal

Exagerrated proportions

Smarthistory: Michelangelo, David (5:40)* Michelangelo returned to Florence; now a republic again; commissioned to build statue for Florence Cathedral

18-ft. block of marble, already worked on by another sculptor and discarded

When completed, committee decided to put it in front of the government seat: symbol of the republic

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Reliquary Guardian Figure (Eyema-o-Byeri), Gabon, Fang peoples, mid 18th to mid 19th century, wood and iron

Formal elements?

The Fang people of Gabon associate large heads with infancy, an age in a state of greater harmony with ancestors

Placed on a reliquary chest as a guardian figure

Symbolizes connection with ancestors and desire for continuation (children)

timelessness

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Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrors, 2017

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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Yayoi Kusama, A Dream I Dreamed, 2014

Japanese

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Nam June Paik, electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., 1995:

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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Liberation of Aunt Jemima 1972
Betye Saar

"Aunt Jemima has been armed and empowered with a new identity. Shes' done making pancakes."

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Christo and Jeanne-Claude

The Gates, Central Park, New York, 1979–2005

Put it up in February to add more color in a time of year everything is grey
was up for two weeks

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Betye Saar. Shield of Quality. 1974

“brazenly representational”: no attempt to accommodate art establisment

Also dedicated to Aftrican-American heritage

Like Louise Nevelson but personal objects, meaningful, intimate

Objects and pictures relating to her great aunt; triptych like—portable altar

Small!

Focuses on women and important role of women

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Christo and Jeanne-Claude.  Running Fence,

Sonoma and Marin counties, California. 1972–76

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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Dan Flavin, the nominal three, 1963: “light sculptor”
Dan Flavin. the nominal three (to William of Ockham). 1963

Medium is fluorescent tubes of light; reduced to bare essentials (no paint, no canvas, etc.); where else could you go?

Art that can’t be collected; Is there anything still traditional? museum setting

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Frank Stella, Empress of India, 1965:

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 precisio

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Ellsworth Kelly, Red Blue Green, 1963:

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?

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“What you see is what you see.”

-Frank Stella

Reaction to Abstract Expressionism; sought to make unemotional art

Eliminated any sense of space

Art for art’s sake

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Portraits: also mass-produced, reduced to commercial images; offset, off-colored; influence of mass media, image above all

Scott Baxter

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Roy Lichtenstein, Drowning Girl, 1963:

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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Jasper Johns, Three Flags, 1958: (Courtney Smith, elements of design)

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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Robert Rauschenberg. Odalisk. 1955–58

Combines: works that combined painting, sculpture, collage, and found objects

Robert Rauschenberg, Odalisk, 1955-58:

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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Pop art—term coined in Britain in 1950’s; pop culture

Abstract Expressionism had become “high art;” new artists wanted something less elitist

Sought a mass-produced look; everybody can understand, available to all (but not! Irony)

Similar to Dada in love of ready-made common objects

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

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-maunderstandable to king that has to be explained; art should be spiritual, direct, viewer.

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George Segal, The Gas Station, 1963:

Response to Happenings/Performance Art

Frozen environments; white, plaster figures (plaster casts using plaster medical bandages)

Alienation of contemporary life; lethargic, very alone, drained of life

Modern objects, advanced technology, but meaningless; no spirituality or human interaction

What is the meaning of modern existence? Like Edward Hopper

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Allan Kaprow, Yard, 1961

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

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Louise Nevelson, Sky Cathedral—Moon Garden Plus One, 1957-60:

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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David Smith. Cubi series as installed at Bolton’s Landing, New York.

Left: Cubi XVIII, 1964. Center: Cubi XVII, 1963. Right: Cubi XIX, 1964

David Smith, Cubi series:

Contemporary of abstract expressionists; began as a painter, started welding steel; drawings of organic forms in space

Began using reserves of metal he had on hand, unplanned

In Cubi series, he ordered precut stainless steel and assembled; geometric, but unemotional?

Giant, monumental (size influenced by AE artists); precarious—impermanence of all things

Burnished the steel to give it a textured, painterly surface

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Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains and Sea, 1952:

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

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!”

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“On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting, similar to the Indian sand painters of the West.”

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Made NYC center of art world for the first time

As the term suggests, their work was characterized by non-objective imagery that appeared emotionally charged with personal meaning.  The artists, however, rejected these implications of the name.

They insisted their subjects were not “abstract,” but rather primal images, deeply rooted in society’s collective unconscious.  Their paintings did not express mere emotion.  They communicated universal truths about the human condition.

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Jackson Pollock, Guardians of the Secret, 1943

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Jackson Pollock, She Wolf, 1943

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Jackson Pollock, The Key, 1946

Write as many Influences as you can:

Surrealism-Miro: biomorhpic shapes

Kandinsky: non-objective, bright colors, non focal point

Matisse: colors, loose brush

Picasso: fragmented planes

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Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937 (Smarthistory: 8:53)

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 3 rd 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)

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

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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Charles Demuth, My Egypt, 1927

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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Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, California, 1936: (American History Channel, 4:09)

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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Edward Hopper, Night Hawks, 1942

Garish light and colors of Van Gogh’s Night Café, 1888

Feels isolated

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Frida=Smarthistory: Frida and Diego,

Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, 1939: 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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Diego Rivera, Flower Carrier, 1935

Echoed forms of Aztec and Mayan art
Mural Paintings

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Mexican Revolution in 1910-1921; focus on indigenous traditions while rejecting European influences

Government building campain led to mural commissions; rise in muralists such as Diego Rivera, David Siquieros, and Jose Clemente Orozco

Socialists or Communists; proclaimed murals as the true art of the people

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

Jacob Lawrence, 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
Done in Tempera

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Jacob Lawrence, Self-Portrait, 1977

Lawrence called his style “dynamic Cubism” but said he was influenced less by French art and more by the shapes and colors of Harlem

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After WWI, hundreds of thousands African-Americans moved from the south to escape racism and poverty and moved to the northern states; many to Chicago and NYC (Harlem); search for cultural identity; movement called Harlem Renaissance

Wanted to tell their story and experience from their own point of view

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Georgia O’Keeffe

Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, NM (Horse’s Skull with white Rose)

One critic: “Remarkably, she remained independent from shifting art trends and stayed true to her own vision, which was based on finding the essential, abstract forms in nature.”

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Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930 (Smarthistory: 6:20) Emily Pendleton, Channing Winget and Jade Hammond—principles of design

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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American Regionalism

Representational

Local (Midwest) imagery

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Georgia O’Keeffe, Black Iris III, 1926:

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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Gerrit Rietveld, Schroder House 1924

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De Stijl (The Style)

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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Piet Mondrian. Composition No.II/Composition I// Composition en Rouge, Bleu et Jaune (Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow). 1930

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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Henry Moore, Recumbent Figure, 1938: England (studied in Leeds)

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.[1]

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Alexander Calder, Lobster Trap and Fish Tail, 1939:

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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Organic sculpture of the 1930’s: associated with surrealists, organic shapes like Miro, but different concerns: used organic shapes to explore powerful forces of nature and the universe

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Meret Oppenheim, Object (Luncheon in Fur), 1936: (Swiss Surrealist Meret Oppenheim:

Daughter of a Jungian psychologist

Juxtaposition two desirable things; becomes disturbing

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Man Ray, The Gift, 1921:

Surrealist object

Gift for composer Erik Satie

Tacks glued onto flat side of an iron

Suggests pain, violence, uselessness?

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Henri Cartier-Bresson, Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, 1932

Sought to find the extraordinary in the ordinary; turned to photography

“decisive moment”: “using intuition you ask your artistic question and decide almost simultaneously.”

Surreal juxtaposition; shapes, water, ladder, suspension in air

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Kazimir Malevich, White on White, 1918

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Kazimir Malevich. Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying.

1915 (dated 1914)

Suprematist=Tate Museum (4:00)

Trying to show experience of flying; new relationship to the universe

Reproductions don’t show organic qualities, hand of the artist

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Period: Cubism
Artist: Marcel Duchamp
Title: Nude Descending a Staircase
Date: 1912

Influenced by Cubism, Futurism

Machinelike: idealizes progress, motion, modernity, science’s ability to improve the world

1913 Armory show: an art critic for the New York Times wrote that the work resembled "an explosion in a shingle factory," and cartoonists satirized the piece. It spawned dozens of parodies in the years that followed.

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Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931

Stream of consciousness process: one thing led to another

Time? Rational, measured

Death, deterioration

Everything is irrational—attack on the rational

Viewers’ own unconscious

In Salvador Dali's Persistence of Memory, the artist brings up each of the following ideas: a push and pull between naturalism and unreality, objective vs. subjective reality, the irrationality of memories and dreams

It is an example of Surrealism.

The medium is oil on canvas.

It was inspired by scenery from Spain, the artist's native country.
It is also very small

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Rene Magritte, The False Mirror, 1928 (from Brussels)

Not all surrealist art was nonrepresentational

Claims superiority of unconscious mind over conscious mind

Iris like eclipsed sun, behind which lies unconscious; eye absorbs only the visual world, but not the inner world of the unconscious

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German Expressionism: Die Brücke (The Bridge)

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German Expressionism: Die Brücke (The Bridge)

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German Expressionism: Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider)

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German Expressionism: Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider)

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Pablo Picasso, Violin, 1915:

Sculpture has always been: solid mass surrounded by space

things in nature—people, animals

Logical extension of Synthetic Cubism: Construction, or assemblage; redefines sculpture as he had painting: assembled instead of carved, molded, etc.

Most musical instruments

Painted (irony: cross hatching to show shadow, unnecessary on sculpture)

Visual equivalent of music: rhythm of shape, color, texture

Visual game

“Picasso is my new favorite artist. I loved how he was so good at depicting realism and yet wanted to move onto something that made him think more. It was inspirational to me, not to stick with what you’re good at, but to push yourself and see what you’re capable of.” Raquel Borup

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Pablo Picasso, Guitar, Sheet Music, and Wine Glass, 1912.

Synthetic Cubism: in 1912 Braque and Picasso began working in collage; complicates notion of real and illusion; paper/ wallpaper/ chair caning is real and an illusion (a picture)

Pablo Picasso, Guitar, Sheet Music, and Wine Glass, 1912.

complicates notion of real and illusion; paper/ wallpaper/ chair caning is real and an illusion (a picture)

Woodgrain was painted by Picasso and cut out

“Instead of a window, the picture surface became a tray on which art was served.” (art is on top of the canvas, not behind)

What has the most depth? She modeled glass, which is the only thing drawn?

Instead of breaking down images, now building up

Introduced a variety of textures and colors  (in analytic Cubism they used monochromatic colors)

Used musical themes because music is abstract, like their art; also notes are abstract symbols

Play with space: guitar soundhole should be negative space, but it is a solid circle of paper

Le Jou—again, pun about Le Journal, jouer (to play)

La Bataille s’est Engage (the battle is joined): First Balkan war in Europe; also battlefield between Picasso and Braque working on a new medium

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Kazimir Malevich. Installation photograph of the artist’s paintings in 0, 10 (Zero–Ten): The Last Futurist Exhibition. St. Petersburg, December 1915

Suprematism: refers to the “supremacy” of feeling

Influences: Russion icons (corner of room), folk art

Trying to portray feelings through a new language, new vocabulary

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René Magritte, The Treachery of Images, 1928-29 (Smarthistory: 3:40)

The Treachery of Images is 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!"[2]

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Joan Miro, Composition, 1933:

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?)

“Biomorphic forms”

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Giorgio de Chirico. Mystery and Melancholy of a Street. 1914

Strong diagonal lines, disjointed space like Cubism

Classical buildings, figurative=allegiance to classical past

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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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Käthe Kollwitz. Never Again War! 1924

(Berlin)

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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Käthe Kollwitz, Self-Portrait

Couldn’t get into art academy in Germany because she was a woman

Her work was always about suffering. Her son died in WWI and lost a grandson who died in WWII

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Marc Chagall. I and the Village. 1911

Influences: Cubism (fracturing), stained glass windows (worked in that medium), folk art

symbolism?: circles=cycles of life

Blooming bush=birth

Farmer with scythe=death

Tree of life

Having been in Paris for just one year, Chagall painted this work from memories of his native village outside Vitebsk, Belarus. The cow and the man stare directly into one another’s eyes, suggesting the mutual dependence of peasants and animals. For orthodox Jews, animals were humanity’s link to the universe; look closely and you’ll see the sun, the earth and the moon in orbit. In reference to his very personal response to Cubism, Chagall once said "Lines, angles, triangles, squares, carry me far away to enchanting horizons.”

Chagall saw Jesus on the Cross as a universally recognizable symbol of human suffering. Chagall hoped that Jews and non-Jews alike would be able to relate to this symbol. By making Jesus unmistakably Jewish, he was highlighting the fact that the Romans crucified Jesus as a Jew. In the midst of the Holocaust, Chagall wanted to make the universality of Jesus’ crucifixion specific again, he wanted the world to look at Jewish suffering.

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Marcel Duchamp. Bicycle Wheel.

1913/1951 (third version, after lost original of 1913)

Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel

Significance of “Readymades”: Art is about ideas, not just something beautiful to look at

Challenges notion that art requires technical skill and craftsmanship

Interpretations? Pedastol with bust?

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Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Beer-Belly of the Weimar Republic, 1919, collage of pasted papers, 90 x 144 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin (Smarthistory: 12:00)

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, antidada 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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Raoul Hausmann, Mechanical Head (Spirit of the Age), c. 1920: (Berlin)

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.”