# data[].attributes.body
Mediterranean port at Collioure, where he painted with friend Andre Derain.

Adjectives?

Bare patches of canvas

Brushstrokes freed from role of describing

Color freed from role of describing

Flat planes: doesn’t give sense of depth; flatness of picture plane; eye goes over and across but not beyond picture plane; brushstrokes advance instead of recede (like a flat tray with elements served to us)

Turns inside out Renaissance idea of painting as a window into nature (all about illusion); asserts that art is not to represent the perceptual world but to take viewer beyond perceptual reality

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No more art “capitals”

Interactive art

Installations

Art as political statement

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issues of taste, kitsch, low art vs. fine art

Art as an object to be bought and sold, art that is not “made” by the artist

Idea of fragility of life

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Anti-elitist- brought art experience to normal people; link between fine art and realworld

Taking art to the masses

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Post-Minimalist Painting, Photorealism, and Pattern & Decoration

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Post-Minimalist Painting, Photorealism, and Pattern & Decoration

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Representational art re-emerges, but often with an emphasis on formal qualities and
lack of narrative (Diebenkorn, Katz, Celmins)

Photorealism emerges as an extreme response to non-objective and Minimalist art; also
as a response to photography

Re-emergence of symbolism (Flack)

Pattern & Decoration emerges as both a response to Minimalism and its lack of embellishment and as a homage to women’s art mediums of the past

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Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991/2006

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Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991/2006

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Medium: steal

It consists of a large tiger shark preserved in a tank of formaldehyde.

Created in 1991 on commission by Charles Saatchi, it reflects on the decay of the physical body.

consists of a preserved real tiger shark, exhibited in a glass-panel display case full of 848 litres of formaldehyde

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Jeff Koons, Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988, Italian porcelain factory of Cesare Villari in Solagna, Italy

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Jeff Koons, Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988, Italian porcelain factory of Cesare Villari in Solagna, Italy

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Medium: ceramic, glaze and paint

Commodity Art”

Capitalized on artifice

Contracts out the actual labor of making objects

Explores the relationship of fine art to mass culture

Interested in issues of taste and how art functions as a commodity (like Andy Warhol)

Explores differences between fine art and “low” art—kitsch

Looks like mass-produced gift shop figurine, but life size (porcelain)

Captures and parodies the glitz of celebrity promotion

Also suggests fragility and impermanence—temporary nature of life and fame

Influences of Duchamp, Warhol, and Postmodern deconstruction

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Richard Diebenkorn, Man and Woman in Large Room, 1957

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Richard Diebenkorn, Man and Woman in Large Room, 1957

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Medium: oil on canvas

Richard Diebenkorn, Man and Woman in Large Room, 1957

California bay area artist—distance from NY scene

Quiet; the figures function as formal structure/shape but add psychological depth

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Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room—My Heart is Dancing into the Universe, 2018

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Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room—My Heart is Dancing into the Universe, 2018

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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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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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japanese

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Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, State Names, 2000

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Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, State Names, 2000

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Pepon Osorio, En la barbería no se llora (No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop), 1994

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Pepon Osorio, En la barbería no se llora (No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop), 1994

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Puerto Rico

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Detail, Ink Splash

Aluminum and copper Tate Modern

Resembles an abstract painting

“The most important thing is the transformation. The fact that these media, each identifying a brand of drink, are no longer going back to serve the same role but are elements that could generate some reflection, some thinking, or just some wonder . . . They are removed from their accustomed, functional context into a new one, and they bring along their histories and identities.” El Anatsui

El Anatsui speaks of his works as being objects of contemplation, removed from original functions of the material

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Hovor means “cloth of value;”

Suggests kente cloth of Ghana made for royalty (the artist’s father and brother made kente cloth professionally)

Combines traditional ideas with new

Transformative power

Liquor labels and bottle caps could stand for

Liquor in slave trading

Habits that bring people down

Oblations-offerings to pour into the earth (used liquor)

Traditional textiles

Collaboration

Traditional and new

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Ai Weiwei, Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds), 2010

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Ai Weiwei, Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds), 2010

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Medium: porcelain sunflower seeds

Ai Weiwei, Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds), 2010

100 million hand painted sunflower seeds (Tate Modern)

The individual seed is lost among the millions, a critique of the conformity and censorship inherent in modern China.

Khmer Rouge: “To destroy you is no loss; to keep you is no benefit.”

But each seed is hand painted, unique—suggests that each person is as well?

Sunflower seeds evokes a warm personal memory for the artist, who recalls that while he was growing up, even the poorest in China would share sunflower seeds as a treat among friends.

The use of sunflower seeds as the basis of his installation was also designed to subvert popular imagery rooted in the artist’s childhood.

Communist propaganda optimistically depicted leader Mao Zedong as the sun and the citizens of the People’s Republic of China as sunflowers, turning toward their chairman.

Ai Weiwei reasserts the sunflower seed as a symbol of camaraderie during difficult times.

Some of the 1,600 highly skilled craftspeople from Jingdezhen hired to create and paint porcelain sunflower seeds

More than 1,600 artisans worked to make the individual porcelain seeds by hand in Jingdezhen, the city known as the “Porcelain Capital,” where artists have been producing pottery for nearly 2000 years. Porcelain, first produced during the Han dynasty in about 200 B.C. and later mastered during the Tang dynasty, is made by heating white clay (kaolin) to a temperature over 1200 degrees Celsius. The fusion of the particles within the clay during firing allowed artists to create vessels with thin but strong walls. Porcelain— a symbol of imperial culture in China—was also made for export via the Silk Road and became important to the creation of the idea of China in the West.

Mr. Ai’s use of porcelain comments on the long history of this prized material while also rejecting the common negative connotations of the modern term “Made in China.” Utilizing skilled artisans known for their exquisite craftsmanship to make objects that can only be differentiated one from another upon close inspection, alludes to the important porcelain tradition in Jingdezhen, as well as to the uniformity and diffusion of modern (cheap and fast) labor that is responsible for China’s hard-won place in the world economy. Sunflower Seeds asks us to examine how our consumption of foreign-made goods affects the lives of others across the globe.

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Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991/2006

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Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991/2006

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Jeff Koons, Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988

# data[].attributes.subject
Jeff Koons, Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988

# data[].attributes.body
“Commodity Art”

Capitalized on artifice

Contracts out the actual labor of making objects

Explores the relationship of fine art to mass culture

Interested in issues of taste and how art functions as a commodity (like Andy Warhol)

Explores differences between fine art and “low” art—kitsch

Looks like mass-produced gift shop figurine, but life size (porcelain)

Captures and parodies the glitz of celebrity promotion

Also suggests fragility and impermanence—temporary nature of life and fame

Influences of Duchamp, Warhol, and Postmodern deconstruction

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Jean-Michel Basquiat, Horn Players, 1983, New York City

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Jean-Michel Basquiat, Horn Players, 1983, New York City

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Medium: acrylic and oil stick on three canvas panels mounted on wood supports

Stream-of-consciousness intensity

Alchemy=reference to alchemy of jazz

Ornithology=nod to jazz musician Charlie Parker, nicknamed “Bird”

Ear=allusion to musical instinct

Raw energy of improv jazz; also 1980’s hip-hop

Appropriates motifs, styles, and ideas from different periods

Reflects importance artists were increasingly giving to racial and ethnic identities

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Brooklyn born

Dropped out of high school at 17

African mask faces (like Guernica)

Graffiti-like words and phrases

Compelling sense of drawing color, and composition

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Elizabeth Murray. More Than You Know. 1983 

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Elizabeth Murray. More Than You Know. 1983 

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Elizabeth Murray

At first looks entirely abstract

Images collapsed; combined 10 canvases, overlapping

Transforms painting into a spinning pinwheel; nothing seems to be anchored

Psychological tension of daily life, home

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Elizabeth Murray, Art Part, 1981, New York City

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Elizabeth Murray, Art Part, 1981, New York City

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22 canvases

borrowing from past

looking at post war cartoons

deconstructed painting

representing her hand and her paintbrush

things will come together in the end

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Political and social themes

Drawing sequences in the form of friezes or scroll painting—up to 180 feet

Women from all eras and cultures

Dancers from ancient Greek vases, etc.

Printmaking, collage
almost like a map of the range of human experience from birth to aging, war, and rape, to a celebratory dance of life—but depicted through images of women

inspired by womans history

and the styles of Greek, roman, Egyptian

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Robert Longo, Untitled (Men in the Cities Series), 1981

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Robert Longo, Untitled (Men in the Cities Series), 1981

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“Apocalyptic Pop”

Themes of love, death, and violence

Black and white charcoal drawings

he would throw stuff and pull them around to manipulate how they looked

Agony or ecstasy, dying or dancing

He pulled from the past

Andy Warhol

he would take things from magazines and newspapers and draw them into his own style

took photos of his friends dancing and then would draw then with charcoal

he chooses not to show their faces

but sometimes he does, but it's not the main focus

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Schnabel described his work as “icons that present life in terms of our death.”

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Julian Schnabel

“everything about Schnabel was oversize, including his ego”

“I’m the closest thing to Picasso”

Postmodern penchant to raid the art of the past and the present; motifs often appropriated, as in the figure holding a fruit basket is taken from a painting by Caravaggio

No narrative, no point in trying to interpret

Exudes a mood rather than a story

Said his paintings are “icons that present life in terms of our death”

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Julian Schnabel, The Sea, 1981, New York City

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Julian Schnabel, The Sea, 1981, New York City

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Medium: oil, Mexican pots, plates, burnt wood, plaster, styrofoam, antlers, and bondo on wood

Brought new life into the 1980’s art scene in NY for viewers “starved by the lean visual diet of Minimalism and Conceptualism”

Grand scale, thematic, reviving religious and cultural archetypes

Incorporated three dimensions into a flat surface

He borrows from art history by his travels he took to Barcelona and Gaudi's mosaic benches. He loved the use of broken plates to make the painting surface.

he was born Jewish and had exposure to religious painting and when he moved to Texas, a bordering town in Mexico sparked his interest. He was intrigued by the Mexican culture and the religious art.

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Medium: Acrylic paints and dry pigment on patterned fabric

Layers photographic reproductions onto underlying patterns of abstract motifs (from textile designs)

Space ambiguous: deep space and no perspective at the same time

In and out of focus

Nazi Guard tower

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Response to America’s infatuation with capitalism

Adopted Benday dots after Lichtenstein

Off-register imperfections

Draws attention to the means of reproduction; lacks the seamless perfection of American Pop art

Critical commentary on the infiltration of American media imagery onto German culture.

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Gerhard Richter, Betty, 1988,  Saint Louis Art Museum

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Gerhard Richter, Betty, 1988,  Saint Louis Art Museum

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Medium: oil on canvas

Borrowing from past

looks like Vermeer

wanted his paintings to look like photographs

How his artwork showed his own culture

when he was younger his house was bombed, and after that he bounced from place to place

he didn't want the painting to have a style because of this

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Looks free form, expressive, like action painting,  but based on photographs of details of his own work

Different painterly techniques: troweling, scraping, flinging, scumbling, and brushing

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“Painting from a photograph seemed to me the most moronic and inartistic thing that anyone could do.”—Gerhard Richter

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Crossed from east Germany to west in 1961

Challenge to painting: “Painting from a photograph seemed to me the most moronic and inartistic thing that anyone could do.”

Anti-art gesture

Out-of-focus blurring, graininess, other flaws of photography emphasized

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Anselm Kiefer. Bohemia Lies by the Sea, 1996

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Anselm Kiefer. Bohemia Lies by the Sea, 1996

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Apocalyptic paintings

Appearance of scorched earth

German and Jewish history referred to symbolically

Question of how to reckon with Germany history

Landscape rolls away majestically but held to the plane by the hook of Aaron’s rod

Earth created by materials of the earth: sand, straw, ashes, etc.

Mythical themes and epic scope that evoke centuries of German history

Expressive use of paint and dramatic composition: metaphor for the constant movement and forces of nature

Incorporated real materials such as straw; nature is not just illustrated, it is physically present

Imbues with a ritualistic magic

Painting about national identity: German Romantic tradition and associations with woodcut, part of German tradition since Durer and also during German Expressionism

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Guerrilla Girls: anonymous; meant to undermine the Modernist emphasis on the individual and shift focus to the issues

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Richter used squeegees in his art; painted before Betty, so ignores the Modernist linear development from naturalism to abstraction

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Sandro Chia, The Idleness of Sisyphus, 1981

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Sandro Chia, The Idleness of Sisyphus, 1981

# data[].attributes.body
Medium: Oil on canvas, two panels

Sisyphus—story is cynical; shows contemporary businessman

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Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #35, 1979

# data[].attributes.subject
Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #35, 1979

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Black and white film stills from nonexistent films

Appropriates stereotypical female roles from films, television shows, and commercials of the 1950’s and 60’s

Details of setting, background, clothes, wigs, makeup, lighting

Displays exquisite control over the tableaus; subject seems vulnerable to something outside the frame

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Allan McCollum, 20 Plaster Surrogates, 1982-85

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Allan McCollum, 20 Plaster Surrogates, 1982-85

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Medium: Enamel on cast Hydrostone

Plaster casts of framed pictures, painted

Placeholders for the idea of works of art

Issues of class and art; wealthy collectors sponsor exhibitions, promote artists, and establish “taste”

Asks how anyone besides the wealthy can enjoy “souvenirs of that class of people who manipulate history to your exclusion.”

But ironic that these are bought and sold and put in galleries!

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Barbara Kruger. Untitled (We Won’t Play Nature to Your Culture). 1983

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Barbara Kruger. Untitled (We Won’t Play Nature to Your Culture). 1983

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Barbara Kruger:

Dichotomy: We and You/ Maker and manipulated

About one’s agenda being imposed on another by hierarchies in culture

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Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face), 1981

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Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face), 1981

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Kruger shows how machines perpetuate objectification of women and how mass media manipulates images to sell; appropriates the look of a glossy magazine layout (she worked as a graphic designer at Mademoiselle); “your gaze hits the side of my face” refers to art being made specifically for the male gaze—presented for male pleasure

Shows how our response to images is manipulated by the construction of its presenter

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Sherrie Levine, After Piet Mondrian, 1983, New York and Santa Fe

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Sherrie Levine, After Piet Mondrian, 1983, New York and Santa Fe

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Medium: Watercolor and graphite pencil on paper

Deconstructing artworks by male artists by redoing them in watercolor; deconstructs modernist myths

(for example, Foucault philosophy that the regulated geometries of modern society, from the calendar to the office building, coincided with authoritarian control

Painted on textbook reproduction: draws attention to the transformation of art into a commodity

Levine is asserting that no art is new; all art borrows from predecessors; also underline the status accorded male artists

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Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans, gelatin silver print, 1981

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Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans, gelatin silver print, 1981

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Appropriation

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Marcel Duchamp, 3 Standard Stoppages, 1913-14

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Marcel Duchamp, 3 Standard Stoppages, 1913-14

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Duchamp mocked the notion of standard, scientifically perfect measurement

made his own standard measures by dropping 3 strings, each one meter in length, onto a painted canvas. Then cut from the stretcher and laid down on glass panels, and three templates were cut from wooden rulers in the profile of the shapes made by the strings

Questions: to what extent are all social or even scientific judgments based arbitrary rule?

Some art historians have suggested that Marcel Duchamp was the first Postmodern artist

Standards of measurement, like other standards, come from hierarchies with agendas; deconstructionism says there are no fixed truths or realities, no absolutes—just Hierarchies which are forever changing

Art functions as a visual language of propaganda, manipulation, and power that determined taste and values and were controlled by authoritarian hierarchies

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James Stirling. Neue Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart. 1977–83

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James Stirling. Neue Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart. 1977–83

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James Stirling, Neue Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart:

Rejection of monotony of modernism;

Reintroduces color, references to the past:

Alternating colors of Italian Romanesque

Also round arches

Ramps and pylon-like forms of ancient Egypt

Curving window suggests a grand piano, reminding us of the building’s function as a performance hall

Also looks high-tech and industrial (“modern”) in tubular railings and steel I beams

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Coop Himmelblau. Rooftop Office, Vienna. 1983–88

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Coop Himmelblau. Rooftop Office, Vienna. 1983–88

# data[].attributes.body
Coop Himmelblau

No logic; roof seems to explode (law office—conservative image usually)

Materials conflict with 19th-century apartment building below

Rebelling against the notion that archietecture had to aspire to some kind of perfection, order, or logic

Disorder, fragmentation energy

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Frank Gehry. Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain. 1992–97

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Frank Gehry. Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain. 1992–97

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Looks like sculpture; full of curves

Port city; looks like a ship

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Frank O. Gehry, State of California Aerospace Museum, 1982-86, L.A.

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Frank O. Gehry, State of California Aerospace Museum, 1982-86, L.A.

# data[].attributes.body
Showcase for jet-age technology; structure evokes spirit of flight

Lockheed F-104 Starfighter plane: bold ornament applied to a bold building

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Charles Moore with U.I.G. and Perez Associates, Inc., Piazza d’Italia, 1975-80

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Charles Moore with U.I.G. and Perez Associates, Inc., Piazza d’Italia, 1975-80

# data[].attributes.body
Some Postmodernists looked to Las Vegas as a model; Moore loved Disneyland

Concerned with commercial “sameness” of postwar architecture, with the lost “sense of place” (all cities look alike)

Looked to the past

New Orleans, public space for a small Italian-American community

Focus on ethnic identity

Entirely decorative and symbolic construction--

Playful use of classical forms: uses every classical order; combined with neon lights and waterfall; watercourses down pilasters to suggest fluting, water spouts serve as Corinthian leaves

Also integrated with surrounding buildings (black and white lines) and needs of local community—festivals, etc.

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Zaha Hadid, Vitra Fire Station (Weil am Rhein, Germany), 1993

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Zaha Hadid, Vitra Fire Station (Weil am Rhein, Germany), 1993

# data[].attributes.body
Concrete wing has no function but suggests speed, aerodynamism

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

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

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Full of paradox:

Flat and sculptural

Representational and abstract

Historical and modern

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Philip Johnson and John Burgee, AT&T Headquarters building, 1978-83, New York

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Philip Johnson and John Burgee, AT&T Headquarters building, 1978-83, New York

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Reintroduced “history” into the vocabulary of modern high-rise architecture

Essence of Postmodernism: longing for symbolism and grandeur of the past but disembodied from the faith that inspired the original forms

Top section looks like Greek temple with columns, pediment

Broken pediment makes it look like  Chippendale style highboy chest, so it was nicknamed the “Chippendale building”; pun on skyscraper as a chest of drawers

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Questions rules               Questions rules of Modernism

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Vasily Kandinsky. Sketch I for “Composition VII.” 1913  and James Stirling. Neue Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart. 1977–83

# data[].attributes.subject
Vasily Kandinsky. Sketch I for “Composition VII.” 1913  and James Stirling. Neue Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart. 1977–83

# data[].attributes.body
So in one way, Postmodernism is just an extension of Modernism

James Stirling, Neue Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart:

Rejection of monotony of modernism;

Reintroduces color, references to the past:

Alternating colors of Italian Romanesque

Also round arches

Ramps and pylon-like forms of ancient Egypt

Curving window suggests a grand piano, reminding us of the building’s function as a performance hall

Also looks high-tech and industrial (“modern”) in tubular railings and steel I beams

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Emphasis on Individuality   Emphasis on Collaboration

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Pablo Picasso, Self-Portrait, 1907 and The Guerrilla Girls

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Pablo Picasso, Self-Portrait, 1907 and The Guerrilla Girls

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Picasso-25 years old

Quote: “The different styles I have been using in my art must not be seen as an evolution, or as steps towards an unknown ideal of painting…Different themes inevitably require different methods of expression. This does not imply either evolution or progress; it is a matter of following the idea one wants to express and the way in which one wants to express it.”

Guerrilla Girls: anonymous; meant to undermine the Modernist emphasis on the individual and shift focus to the issues

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Looks for truth                        Denies existence of truth

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Kazimir Malevich. Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying, 1915 and Marcel Duchamp, 3 Standard Stoppages, 1913-14

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Kazimir Malevich. Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying, 1915 and Marcel Duchamp, 3 Standard Stoppages, 1913-14

# data[].attributes.body
Duchamp mocked the notion of standard, scientifically perfect measurement

made his own standard measures by dropping 3 strings, each one meter in length, onto a painted canvas. Then cut from the stretcher and laid down on glass panels, and three templates were cut from wooden rulers in the profile of the shapes made by the strings

Questions: to what extent are all social or even scientific judgments based arbitrary rule?

Some art historians have suggested that Marcel Duchamp was the first Postmodern artist

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Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano. Centre National d’Art et Culture Georges Pompidou, Paris. 1971–77

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Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano. Centre National d’Art et Culture Georges Pompidou, Paris. 1971–77

# data[].attributes.body
HI-Tech Modernism:

Resembles powerful industrial machine

Building’s utilities are exposed rather than buried within the interior

Elevators, escalators, plumbing, electrical, and ventilation ducts all displayed as exterior ornament

Interior space completely opened up

Great view of Paris from escalator

Grounds have become popular hangout

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Looks for utopian perfection     Denies fixed structure or logic

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Vladimir Tatlin, Model for Monument to the Third International, 1919-20 and Vladimir Tatlin, Model for Monument to the Third International, 1919-20

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Vladimir Tatlin, Model for Monument to the Third International, 1919-20 and Vladimir Tatlin, Model for Monument to the Third International, 1919-20

# data[].attributes.body
Coop Himmelblau

No logic; roof seems to explode (law office—conservative image usually)

Materials conflict with 19th-century apartment building below

Rebelling against the notion that architecture had to aspire to some kind of perfection, order, or logic

Disorder, fragmentation energy

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Assumes an evolution of style      Pluralism of style—no neat order

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Stuart Davis, Hot Still-Scape for Six Colors - 7th Avenue Style, 1940 and Gerhard Richter, Betty, 1988 and Vase, 1984

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Stuart Davis, Hot Still-Scape for Six Colors - 7th Avenue Style, 1940 and Gerhard Richter, Betty, 1988 and Vase, 1984

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Art capitals                          Globalization

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Sidney Janis Art Gallery, NYC and Frank Gehry. Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain. 1992–97

# data[].attributes.subject
Sidney Janis Art Gallery, NYC and Frank Gehry. Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain. 1992–97

# data[].attributes.body
Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is set on a river

Bilbao was once a center for shipbuilding, and the powerful curves suggest ships and ship construction

Contrasts in organic and geometric forms

Contradicts our preconceived ideas about architecture as geometric form

Turned a deteriorating industrial distric into a vibrant cultural and commercial area

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Exclusive                              Multicultural

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The Abstract Expressionists and Takashi Murakami, Gero Tan, 2002

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The Abstract Expressionists and Takashi Murakami, Gero Tan, 2002

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Sincere	                                  Cynical

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Vasily Kandinsky, Sketch I for “Composition VII.” 1913 and Sandro Chia, The Idleness of Sisyphus, 1981

# data[].attributes.subject
Vasily Kandinsky, Sketch I for “Composition VII.” 1913 and Sandro Chia, The Idleness of Sisyphus, 1981

# data[].attributes.body
Kandinsky thought art could make the world better; spirituality through art

Sisyphus—story is cynical; shows contemporary businessman

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Authenticity                              Fabrication

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Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 1940 and Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #35, 1979 

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Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 1940 and Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #35, 1979 

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Black and white film stills from nonexistent films

Appropriates stereotypical female roles from films, television shows, and commercials of the 1950’s and 60’s

Details of setting, background, clothes, wigs, makeup, lighting

Displays exquisite control over the tableaus; subject seems vulnerable to something outside the frame

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McCollum addresses issues of class and art; wealthy collectors sponsor exhibitions, promote artists, and establish “taste,” so how can anyone besides the wealthy enjoy the “souvenirs of that class of people who manipulate history to your exclusion?”

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Barbara Hepworth, Oval Sculpture (No. 2), 1943 (cast 1958) and Allan McCollum, 20 Plaster Surrogates, 1982-85

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Barbara Hepworth, Oval Sculpture (No. 2), 1943 (cast 1958) and Allan McCollum, 20 Plaster Surrogates, 1982-85

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Plaster casts of framed pictures, painted

Placeholders for the idea of works of art

Issues of class and art; wealthy collectors sponsor exhibitions, promote artists, and establish “taste”

Asks how anyone besides the wealthy can enjoy “souvenirs of that class of people who manipulate history to your exclusion.”

But ironic that these are bought and sold and put in galleries!

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Impersonal	                           Personalized

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Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project, 1954 and Frank O. Gehry, State of California Aerospace Museum, 1982-86, Los Angeles
 

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Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project, 1954 and Frank O. Gehry, State of California Aerospace Museum, 1982-86, Los Angeles
 

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Showcase for jet-age technology; structure evokes spirit of flight

Lockheed F-104 Starfighter plane: bold ornament applied to a bold building

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Kruger shows how machines perpetuate the objectification of women and how the mass media manipulates images to sell; she also shows how our response to images is manipulated by their presentation.

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optimism                                                    skepticism

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Umberto Boccioni. Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913 (cast 1931) and Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face), 1981

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Umberto Boccioni. Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913 (cast 1931) and Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face), 1981

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Both look machine made; Futurism thought machines were going to make life better; Kruger shows how machines perpetuate objectification of women and how mass media manipulates images to sell; appropriates the look of a glossy magazine layout (she worked as a graphic designer at Mademoiselle); “your gaze hits the side of my face” refers to art being made specifically for the male gaze—presented for male pleasure

Shows how our response to images is manipulated by the construction of its presenter

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The French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault (1927-1984) theorized that the regulated geometries of modern society, from the calendar to the office building, coincided with authoritarian control.

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originality                                   appropriation

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Piet Mondrian, Composition C (No.III) with Red, Yellow and Blue, 1935 and Sherrie Levine, After Piet Mondrian, 1983

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Piet Mondrian, Composition C (No.III) with Red, Yellow and Blue, 1935 and Sherrie Levine, After Piet Mondrian, 1983

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Deconstructing artworks by male artists by redoing them in watercolor; deconstructs modernist myths

(for example, Foucault philosophy that the regulated geometries of modern society, from the calendar to the office building, coincided with authoritarian control

Painted on textbook reproduction: draws attention to the transformation of art into a commodity

Levine is asserting that no art is new; all art borrows from predecessors; also underline the status accorded male artists

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International                            Local

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Gerrit Rietveld, Schroder House and Charles Moore with U.I.G. and Perez Associates, Inc., Piazza d’Italia, 1975-80

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Gerrit Rietveld, Schroder House and Charles Moore with U.I.G. and Perez Associates, Inc., Piazza d’Italia, 1975-80

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Concerned with commercial “sameness” of postwar architecture, with the lost “sense of place” (all cities look alike)

Looked to the past

New Orleans, public space for a small Italian-American community

Focus on ethnic identity

Entirely decorative and symbolic construction--

Playful use of classical forms: uses every classical order; combined with neon lights and waterfall; watercourses down pilasters to suggest fluting, waterspouts serve as Corinthian leaves

Also integrated with surrounding buildings (black and white lines) and needs of local community—festivals, etc.

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Rejects the past                           Borrows from the past

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Pablo Picasso. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907 and Philip Johnson and John Burgee, AT&T Headquarters building, 1978-83, New York

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Pablo Picasso. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907 and Philip Johnson and John Burgee, AT&T Headquarters building, 1978-83, New York

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Reintroduced “history” into the vocabulary of modern high-rise architecture

Essence of Postmodernism: longing for symbolism and grandeur of the past but disembodied from the faith that inspired the original forms

Top section looks like Greek temple with columns, pediment

Broken pediment makes it look like  Chippendale style highboy chest, so it was nicknamed the “Chippendale building”; pun on skyscraper as a chest of drawers

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“Form follows function”             Form over function 

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Louis H. Sullivan, Schlesinger and Meyer Store, Chicago. 1899-1904 and Zaha Hadid, Vitra Fire Station (Weil am Rhein, Germany), 1993
 

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Louis H. Sullivan, Schlesinger and Meyer Store, Chicago. 1899-1904 and Zaha Hadid, Vitra Fire Station (Weil am Rhein, Germany), 1993
 

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”Form follows function”--Louis Sullivan

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“Less is more”	                     “Less is a bore”

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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. Seagram Building. 1954-58 and Michael Graves. Public Services Building, Portland, Oregon. 1980–82

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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. Seagram Building. 1954-58 and Michael Graves. Public Services Building, Portland, Oregon. 1980–82

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Full of paradox:

Flat and sculptural

Representational and abstract

Historical and modern

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“Less is a bore”

Form over function

Borrows from the past

Local style

Appropriation

Skepticism

Personalized

Meaning over form

Fabrication

Cynicism

Multicultural

Globalization

Pluralism of style

Denies one fixed order

Denies existence of truth

Collaboration

Questioning rules of Modernism

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“Less is more”

“Form follows function”

Rejection of the past

International style

Originality

Optimism

Impersonality

Form over meaning

Authenticity

Sincerity

Exclusivity

Art capitals

Assumption of a linear evolution of style

Search for utopian perfection

Search for truth

Emphasis on individuality

Questioning rules

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July 15, 1972: Demolition of Pruitt-Igoe

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Monument to rational, utopian, Bauhaus planning had failed 20 years after it had been built

Access to sky, space, and greenery (Le Corbusier’s 3 essential joys of urbanism) supposed to inspire a sense of virtue in its inhabitants

But became vandalized, crime-ridden, squalid, and dysfunctional

Critics of Modernism: the International Style was indifferent to  the small-scale, personal requirements of privacy, individuality, context, and sense of place and was patronizing in its demands that residents adjust their lives to architecture

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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson,  Seagram Building, NYC, 1954-58

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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson,  Seagram Building, NYC, 1954-58

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Modernism in Architecture tended to be reductive (compare to movements in painting: De Stijl, Minimalism)

Rejected the past

Removed decorative elements of the past

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Marcel Duchamp, 3 Standard Stoppages, 1913-14

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Marcel Duchamp, 3 Standard Stoppages, 1913-14

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Duchamp’s work implies that art functions as a visual language of propaganda, manipulation, and power that determines taste and values and is controlled by authoritarian hierarchies.

Standards of measurement, like other standards, come from hierarchies with agendas; deconstructionism says there are no fixed truths or realities, no absolutes—just Hierarchies which are forever changing

Art functions as a visual language of propaganda, manipulation, and power that determined taste and values and were controlled by authoritarian hierarchies

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Duchamp—questioning standards, rules of art

Picasso—quintessential modernist because so individual; but appropriation

Manet—appropriation

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The idea that there are no fixed truths or realities, no absolutes—just hierarchies which are forever changing

Art seen as a visual language of propaganda, manipulation, and power that determined taste and values and were controlled by authoritarian hierarchies

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In 1949 the term was used to describe a dissatisfaction with modern architecture. Postmodernism in architecture is marked by the re-emergence of surface ornament, reference to surrounding buildings in urban architecture, historical reference in decorative forms, and non-orthogonal angles.

After that, Postmodernism was applied to a whole host of movements, many in art, music, and literature, that reacted against tendencies in the imperialist phase of capitalism called “Modernism,” and are typically marked by revival of historical elements and techniques.

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What Postmodernism ISN’T:
-A single style
-Easily definable
-A term just for art
-A unified group of artists/philosophers

Similar to Modernism in that it isn’t:

A style

Easily definable

A term just for art

A unified group of artists/philosophers

Art that emerges after the Modernist movement that dominated the first half of the century,
and in many ways opposite to the ideals of Modernism; characterized by:

Post-structuralism (the denial of fixed rules in forms or structures)

A return to ornament and embellishment

A reintroduction of historical references (beginning in architecture)

An interest in sense of place and local interests (vs. international style)

Appropriation as a deconstruction of the modernist myth of genius and of authoritarian
control

Irony and skepticism

Emphasis on multiculturalism

Pluralism of styles vs. a logical order

Emphasis on collaboration vs. individual genius

A denial of fixed truths

Extension of Modernism, since it continues to question rules of the past

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Robert Venturi, Chestnut Hill House, 1962

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Robert Venturi, Chestnut Hill House, 1962

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Medium: Enamel on steel

One of the most sensational work of the 70’s

occupied the entirety of Paula Cooper's SoHo gallery space.

987 one foot-square painted steel plates stretching over an expanse of more than 150 feet

has an overall monumentality, but its small-scale panels invite intimate interaction.

She said she wanted to include everything

read from left to right; seven thematic sections; Introduction, Mountain, Line, House, Tree, Shape, and Ocean. Rhapsody adds joyful color and a narrative subject matter to the grid formation of Minimalist art of the 1960s.

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Joyce Kozloff, Mural for Harvard Square Subway Station, 1984, Harvard Square Subway Station

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Joyce Kozloff, Mural for Harvard Square Subway Station, 1984, Harvard Square Subway Station

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eighty-three-foot-long rainbow tile mural created by pioneering Pattern and Decoration artist Joyce Kozloff for Cambridge, Massachusetts’s Harvard Square station in 1985, is at risk of disappearing, Hyperallergic reports

depicting New England scenes and made of interwoven handpainted tiles that together recall a quilt, was Kozloff’s first public art installation

in the forty years since its arrival above the curving ramps connecting the subway station to the bus station, it has fallen into extreme disrepair

artist told Hyperallergic that inadequacies in the wall’s infrastructure have caused the tiles to crack, noting that she herself removed and repaired one section of the work as early as 1986.

Photos additionally showed holes in the ceiling above the work.

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Eva Hesse, Untitled (Rope Piece), 1969-70

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Eva Hesse, Untitled (Rope Piece), 1969-70

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Compare to Minimalist sculpture: more expressive, more free-flowing

Rope dipped in latex hung at 13 points; she directed that there could be variations as it took on a life of its own

How do you interpret meaning?

Context important:

Context of male-centered art world in Minimalist phase; rigid and geometric

Biographical context: When Hesse was creating this work, she had recently been diagnosed with a brain tumor, from which she died later that year at age 34; elements of her works were often seen as relating to parts of the human body (intestines, veins, etc.)

Latex feels like human skin and deteriorates, just as the human body does

Hesse described this work as representing the chaos of life and death

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How did some artists counter the machine-like precision of Minimalism?

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How did some artists counter the machine-like precision of Minimalism?

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1. Include subject matter

2. Include emotion and meaning

3. Include details and decorations

One way to counter Minimalism is to include subject matter; another is to include a lot of detailed decorations

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“I like to make an image that is so simple you can’t avoid it, and so complicated you can’t figure it out.” --Alex Katz

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Medium: oil on linen

6’ x12’

Katz made an early choice of figuration and stuck with it throughout the heyday of abstraction

But took influences from abstraction, such as broad fields of flat, clean color, simplified drawing, epic scale

Modern billboard look; takes cues from photography, advertising, movies

Tension between specific and abstract

Close up but inaccessible

2024: “At 96, Alex Katz is one of the oldest and most famous American artists alive… Less well known is his role as an arts patron whose under-the-radar philanthropic giving in the form of artworks by other artists is possible unrivaled.” To date, the Alex Katz Foundation has donated more than 700 works to institutions and millions of dollars to various arts organizations. Unlike many artist foundations, which dole out grants and prizes, Katz’s takes a novel approach. It tends to buy the works of midcareer or young, up-and-coming artists from their galleries and then donates them to museums.”

“I like to buy from artists who’re having a hard time in their 20’s, because I remember what that meant to my confidence as an artist.”

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Stuttgart

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“[Hanson] closes the gap between art and life with a rude, decisive bang.”

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Duane Hanson, Tourists, 1970, National Galleries of Scotland

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Duane Hanson, Tourists, 1970, National Galleries of Scotland

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Medium: polyester resin, fiberglass, oil paint, and mixed media

Took photorealism to sculpture

Closes the gap between art and life with a rude, decisive bang

Direct casting from live models  (like George Segal) in fiberglass-reinforced polyester resin

Adds to the textured reality of pores, wrinkles, and bulges, the coloration of skin, veins, bruises, etc.

Also adds clothing and accessories

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Vija Celmins, Untitled, (Big Sea No. 2), 1969, Los Angeles, California

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Vija Celmins, Untitled, (Big Sea No. 2), 1969, Los Angeles, California

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Medium: Graphite and acrylic on paper

Allover composition

Surface becomes nearly identical with the picture plane itself—undermines sense of distance

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Audrey Flack, Wheel of Fortune, 1977-78, Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York

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Audrey Flack, Wheel of Fortune, 1977-78, Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York

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Medium: oil over acrylic on canvas

Photorealism: clarity of detail, reflected light

Also used airbrush

But reminiscent of Dutch 17th-century Vanitas paintings

Skulls, candles, fruit, hourglass, and other reminders of the inevitibility of death

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Richard Estes, Bus Reflections, 1972, New York City

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Richard Estes, Bus Reflections, 1972, New York City

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Emphasizes reflective glass, glossy look of photo—combines two or three photos

Uniformly sharp focus reinforces sense of flatness

So much visual information, clarity, and precision—never would be available studying the subject live

Agree?

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Chuck Close, Linda, 1975-76, New York City

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Chuck Close, Linda, 1975-76, New York City

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Medium: acrylic and pencil on canvas

Photorealism

Used photos and made grid; shows minute facts; seems impersonal but only did close friends and family members

Airbrush—to eliminate brushstroke, sense of medium

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Fairfield Porter, Under the Elms, 1971-72, Winnetka, Illinois, U.S

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Fairfield Porter, Under the Elms, 1971-72, Winnetka, Illinois, U.S

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Medium: oil on canvas

Explored light and what it did to color; portraits, intimate landscapes

His painterly vision, which encompassed a fascination with nature and the ability to reveal extraordinariness in ordinary life, was heavily indebted to the French painters Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard

“The important thing for critics to remember is the ‘subject matter’ in abstract painting and the abstraction in representational work.” Fairfield Porter

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Alice Neel, Dana Gordon, 1972, New York City

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Alice Neel, Dana Gordon, 1972, New York City

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Medium: oil on canvas

Came into late but considerable fame as a portraitist of such searching, psychologically penetrating power that she seemed to be ‘stealing” the souls of her sitters.

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Not literally symbolic, but the subject matter suggests meaning

Andrew Wyeth, Christina’s World, 1948

Owned by MoMA, rarely loaned; one of most popular paintings there:

Why?

Wyeth’s neighbor in Maine, crippled by polio

“limited physically but by no means spiritually”

“magical realism:” everyday scenes imbued with poetic mystery

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How did some artists counter the machine-like precision and perceived emptiness of Minimalism?

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How did some artists counter the machine-like precision and perceived emptiness of Minimalism?

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1. Included subject matter

2. Included emotion and meaning

3. Included details and decorations

One way to counter Minimalism is to include subject matter; another is to include a lot of detailed decorations