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20th Century

rapid change
individualism
exploration
new inventions
challenging assumptions of the past
Center of the art world - Paris

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Next to Dali, most publicity prone; kept himself in the news, outlandish, threw spectacular parties

Was making art based on comic books at exactly the same time as Lichtenstein; turned to commercial design

Began as illustrator of women’s shoes; fascinated by manipulative role of advertising and product packaging; also by impact of mass media on public opinion

“I want to be a machine.” opposite Pollock (wanted to be one with nature)

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After WWII: Turning point in the art world: focus shifted from Paris to NY

America’s first major art movement, Abstract Expressionism; evolved from Surrealism; influence of many European artists in NY during wars

Like Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky—breaking new rules (how many?)

Story: Asked his wife Lee Krasner “Is this a painting?”

Gesture paintings: about process; Allover paintings: no focal point; culmination of trend of the emergence of the picture plane as an independent entity (since Cezanne—even Manet)

Existentialism reaction to destruction of world wars: no absolute truths

“The one thing that could be trusted and believed in was the self, and that became the sole subject of Abstract Expressionist painting”—individualism; no mistaking one artist for another (story about art teacher; students all did Pollock style);

Precedent to performance art; canvas totally gone, spontaneous, end product unknown

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

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After WWII: Turning point in the art world: focus shifted from Paris to NY

America’s first major art movement, Abstract Expressionism; evolved from Surrealism; influence of many European artists in NY during wars

Like Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky—breaking new rules (how many?)

Story: Asked his wife Lee Krasner “Is this a painting?”

Gesture paintings: about process; Allover paintings: no focal point; culmination of trend of the emergence of the picture plane as an independent entity (since Cezanne—even Manet)

Existentialism reaction to destruction of world wars: no absolute truths

“The one thing that could be trusted and believed in was the self, and that became the sole subject of Abstract Expressionist painting”—individualism; no mistaking one artist for another (story about art teacher; students all did Pollock style);

Precedent to performance art; canvas totally gone, spontaneous, end product unknown

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

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

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

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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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Began feminist art movement

Background as a minimalist (one of the boys); not included in reviews of shows

Cutting edge group of artists still very traditional in one way: domination by males

Decided to pay homage to important women throughout history, many ignored in history books

Extensive research

39 place settings, 13 at each side (symbolism?)

919 other women’s names inscribed in tiles

Hand-painted ceramic plates in period style, embroidered runner also in period style: mediums associated with women: needlework, painted china, ceramics

Sense of community and ritual (Last Supper now spiritual communion of women)

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Christo and Jeanne-Claude.  Running Fence Sonoma and Marin counties, California. 1972–76

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Christo and Jeanne-Claude.  Running Fence Sonoma and Marin counties, California. 1972–76

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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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Reliance upon geometry, mathematical measurements; emphasized conceptual rather than emotional content; favored materials and processes of mass production

Lacks artists’ hand; not personal; no sign of artist except in concept

Non-art materials: plexiglass, fluorescent tubes, galvanized steel

Wanted to make art that did not look like art—nothing but what you see; no references

Admire what you see: scale, color, texture, proportions; takes away base, glass case—props that announce an object to be a work of art

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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? - strange title)

Geometrical precision

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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
Unemotional art
Eliminated any sense of space
Art for art's sake

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Andy Warhol. Campbell’s Soup Cans. 1961–64

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Andy Warhol. Campbell’s Soup Cans. 1961–64

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Interested in

images of the mass media

techniques of mass reproduction

contemporary society and pop culture

images from everyday life (like Dutch art) but no reverence, not carefully arranged, no hidden symbolism or meaning

All 32 types of Campbell’s soups at the time; monotonous, repetitive (indifferent vs. emotionalism of abstract expressionism)

Called studio the Factory; used silkscreen process; removes artists’ hand, individualism

Workaholic, highly involved in process; but gave illusion of barely touching work

Art is a commodity; name brand product, not necessarily about technique or craftsmanship (you want to buy a Warhol)

Pervasiveness of advertising, mass production, uniformity, consumerism: a portrait of America

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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)

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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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Environments or installations

Interested in Rauschenberg, Nevelson using objects from everyday life

Allover look of Jackson Pollock (wrote that the next step after Pollock was to make environmental art)

Not permanent

Walk through it, experience

No meaning attached; left to viewer

Performance Art, Happenings

Simultaneous actions: painting, juicing oranges, speaking fragments of sentences: human participation, element of change

Like a combine in time and space

Reminds me of switching channels on tv or radio

Lots of performance art followed

George Brecht: Motor Vehicle Sunset Event: people drew cards with instructions: at a parking lot revved engines, honked horns, rolled down windows, slammed doors shut, opened and closed hoods and trunks

Finding beauty in everyday ordinariness?

How different from theater? Takes place in an art context

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

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

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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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Helen Frankenthaler. Mountains and Sea. 1952

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Helen Frankenthaler. Mountains and Sea. 1952

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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

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

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Rothko wanted viewers to stand close, where they would be immersed in a mystical void of the unknown
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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Jackson Pollock Autumn Rhythm: Number 30. 1950

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Jackson Pollock Autumn Rhythm: Number 30. 1950

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Enamel pain on canvas

The artist did not apply the paint onto the canvas using a paintbrush.

This is an example of "action painting" because of the apparent gestures and movements of the artist.

mythology and primitive art

psychoanalysis and looking inward

pushing the boundaries of what painting could be

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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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Fascist rise to power: Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, Franco in Spain, Hirohito in Japan

Spanish Civil War: Hitler provided military support for the Nationalists under leadership of fascist dictator Franco; Nazi pilots used saturation bombing to attack the undefended Basque town of Guernica, killing thousands of civilians.

Painted as a protest;  This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war (compare to Goya 3rd of May); crucifixion pose

Why black and white? Thought color would distract

Why lines of hatching? Newspaper look; immediacy of journalism; contemporary event

Bull=forces of brutality and darkness; horse=the people

Bird=dove of peace (annihilated)

Picasso refused to let Gernica be displayed in Spain while Franco was still alive

Last major history painting; end of belief that a painting can be a catalyst for change (we are too bombarded by images daily)

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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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Jacob Lawrence, Migration of the Negro series, 1940-41

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Jacob Lawrence, Migration of the Negro series, 1940-41

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tempera on hardboard

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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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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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Representational
Local (Midwest) imagery

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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

Frida=Smarthistory: Frida and Diego, 3:48

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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Precisionism??
Light and colors of Night Cafe - Van Gogh

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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”

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

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

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Reflect universal truths
Portray harmony
Abstraction to carry a metaphorical meaning

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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Born in Yorkshire, England, father was a coal miner
Influenced by pre-columbian art

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

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Alexander Calder. Lobster Trap and Fish Tail. 1939

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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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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

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Meret Oppenheim. Object (Luncheon in Fur). 1936

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Daughter of a Jungian psychologist

Juxtaposition two desirable things; becomes disturbing

WRITING TOPIC: The Surrealists felt that the unconscious mind had a primary role in art. Do you agree? What relationship do you think exists between the conscious and unconscious mind in the artistic process?

With Picasso and Dora Maar

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Surrealist object

Gift for composer Erik Satie

Tacks glued onto flat side of an iron

Suggests pain, violence, uselessness?

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Salvador Dalí. The Persistence of Memory. 1931

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Salvador Dalí. The Persistence of Memory. 1931

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Stream of consciousness process: one thing led to another

Time? Rational, measured

Death, deterioration

Everything is irrational—attack on the rational

Viewers’ own unconscious

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René Magritte, The Treachery of Images, 1928-29

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René Magritte, The Treachery of Images, 1928-29

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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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From Barcelona, went to Paris, started painting from his imagination (or hallucinations brought on by starvation, he claimed)

Wiry line, childlike drawing of Paul Klee

Biomorphic forms float on top of minimal color field (behind drawings)—oil, but thin like washes

Suggest microscopic forms, spirits, prehistoric forms; mythic images, primal state

(how many ways can we not show depth?)

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

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

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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). ca. 1920

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

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Assemblage: made of found objects assembled

Mindless, lifeless dummy; mechanical, robotic, no personal identity

“The typical German has no more capabilities than those which chance has glued onto the outside of his skull; his brain remains empty.”

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Duchamp went to NYC to escape war

“DADA” applied in retrospect; similar goals

“Readymade”; entered in 1917 independent art show

Rejected (although non-juried show); Duchamp knew committee would not consider it art

Issues: What is art? Does it have to be created? (He CHOSE it); art is about ideas

Defies conventional notions of beauty

HUMOR

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

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

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Dada poetry: random words, pulled out of a hat, nonwords (abstract)

Movement started in Zurich (center for war protests)

Made abstract collages by dropping pieces of torn rectangular paper on the floor; where they fell determined the composition (chance=nature, truth)

Sought to capture abstract universal forces (like Kandinsky)

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

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

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Strong diagonal lines, disjointed space like Cubism

Classical buildings, figurative=allegiance to classical past

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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. Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2. 1912

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Marcel Duchamp. Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2. 1912

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Singled out for ridicule

Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1912: (2-minute masterpieces: start at :27)

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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Context
Bolshevik revolution
Political/spiritual meaning
Express/help create "utopia"
Is an artist the voice and vision of a culture at a particular moment?

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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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Umberto Boccioni. Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913

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Umberto Boccioni. Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913

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Giacomo Balla, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912

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Giacomo Balla, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912

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After the Futurists visited Paris together in 1911, several of them adopted aspects of Cubism, though they altered the technique to focus more clearly on Futurist concerns like modern technology, movement, and speed

More than one moment at a time; impermanence;  influence of Cubism, photography

Optimism of modernity: machines, motion, etc.

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Inspired by Cubism
photography
new machines and technology

Wanted to convey motion, dynamic imagery, and social progress

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German Expressionism—Der Blaue Reiter

Combined influences found in The Blue Rider Almanac, including children’s art, tribal art, music

Grid of Cubism

Colors like Matisse, Kandinsky

Directness and naivete of children’s and folk art

Luminescent colors of stained glass windows

Sense of spirituality

Symbols: Jewish star of David, Islamic crescent moon, primitive hieroglyphic suns

Tree: life (same rays as suns: earth and sky connected)

Rectangular planes: trees, ,plants, fire, sky, earth?

Understated; strips everything inessential

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Wassily Kandinsky. Sketch I for “Composition VII.” 1913

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Wassily Kandinsky. Sketch I for “Composition VII.” 1913

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German Expressionism—Der Blaue Reiter (the blue rider)

“A scientific event cleared my way of one of the greatest impediments. This was the further division of the atom. The crumbling of the atom was to my soul like the crumbling of the whole world.”

Completely non-objective; wanted to express universal spiritual forces, abstract mystical powers;

Simple, direct, spiritual

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Street, Dresden. 1908

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Street, Dresden. 1908

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German Expressionism—Die Brücke

Influences: Van Gogh, Matisse, Munch

Feelings of modern society in Germany: decadent, immoral, materialistic; monstrous women

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Pablo Picasso. Guitar, Sheet Music, and Wine Glass. 1912 (Synthetic Cubism)

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Pablo Picasso. Guitar, Sheet Music, and Wine Glass. 1912 (Synthetic Cubism)

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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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Georges Braque, The Portuguese, 1911 (Analytic Cubism)

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Georges Braque, The Portuguese, 1911 (Analytic Cubism)

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Pablo Picasso. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon). 1907 (pre-Cubism)

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Pablo Picasso. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon). 1907 (pre-Cubism)

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What rules of western art from the past 400 years does Picasso break?

Forms unreadable

Perspective skewed

No shadow or doesn’t make sense

Color--not representative

Space—impossible to read

Notions of feminine beauty

Influences?

Manet—women look straight at us, confront viewer

Cezanne-planes, different points of view

Matisse-color

African and Iberian masks

Opened up artistic freedom: line, plane, color, mass, void all freed from representational roles and can take on a life of their own

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Henri Matisse. Femme au chapeau (Woman with a Hat). 1905

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Henri Matisse. Femme au chapeau (Woman with a Hat). 1905

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Constantin Brancusi. Bird in Space. 1928 (unique cast)

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Constantin Brancusi. Bird in Space. 1928 (unique cast)

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Early modern sculpture
Minimalism
Stripping things to essentials

Worked on a few things over and over again, used different materials

Also designed pedestal, height of display (low for newborn, high for bird in space)

We don’t see a bird; Spirit of flight

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The red removes depth - the only things that aren't red is his artwork/paintings

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Styles: Realism, Impressionism, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,

Aesthetic Movement

Realism vs. Naturalism

Ukiyo-e

Optical Blending

Complementary Colors

Leisure Class

Art for Art’s Sake

Communist Manifesto

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Alphonse Mucha, Dreaming (Reverie), lithograph, 1897

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Alphonse Mucha, Dreaming (Reverie), lithograph, 1897

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Like Zodiac, this lithograph was originally designed to serve as the 1898 Champenois company calendar. However, its immediate popularity led to its swift publication by the magazine La Plume as a decorative panel with the title Reverie (daydream).

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Victor Horta. Interior stairwell of the Tassel House, Brussels. 1892–93

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Victor Horta. Interior stairwell of the Tassel House, Brussels. 1892–93

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The effect is that the exterior natural world (largely excluded from the tight-knit urban fabric of Brussels) is now permanently brought inside, with the soothing hues of green, orange, and yellow providing a respite from the bustling noise of the street.

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Art Nouveau (1890-1900)
Mostly architecture and decorative arts
Characterized by abstract organic forms;
Influenced by William Morris’s Arts and Crafts Movement

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Auguste Rodin. The Burghers of Calais. 1884-89

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Auguste Rodin. The Burghers of Calais. 1884-89

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Meant to be viewed from all angles - figures are at different heights, viewers can be part of the sculpture

In 1885, Rodin was commissioned by the French city of Calais to create a sculpture that commemorated the heroism of Eustache de Saint-Pierre, a prominent citizen of Calais, during the dreadful Hundred Years’ War between England and France (begun in 1337).

They are drawn together not through physical or verbal contact, but by their slumped shoulders, bare feet, and an expression of utter anguish.

While these six men, at first glance, may look fragile, the heavy, rhythmic drapery that hangs from their shoulders falls to the ground like lead weights, anchoring them and creating a mass of strong, unyielding bodies.

In fact, the fabric appears to almost fused to the ground—conveying the conflict between the men’s desire to live and the need to save their city. Rodin included raised portions of the floor under the men’s feet which would have, ultimately, made some of the men appear higher than others, yet they are all sculpted to be around the same height, that of an adult male. The burghers were not meant to be viewed in the form of a hierarchal pyramid with Eustache de Saint-Pierre at the top, which would have been typical in a multi-figure statue, but as a group equal in status. By bringing these men down to ‘street level,’ Rodin allowed the viewer to easily look up into the men’s faces mere inches from his/her own; enhancing the personal connection between the viewer and the six men.

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Henry Ossawa Tanner. Angels Appearing before the Shepherds. ca. 1910

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Henry Ossawa Tanner. Angels Appearing before the Shepherds. ca. 1910

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Tranquility

Tanner enhances our sense of wonder by heightening the illusion of flight, the vastness of the landscape, and smallness of the shepherds within the aerial view.

Tanner completed this painting a few years after traveling to the Middle East in 1897. His first major biblical paintings, Daniel in the Lions’ Den (1896) and The Resurrection of Lazarus (1897) (below), gained critical acclaim in the Paris Salon (the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts). The art critic Rodman Wanamaker funded a trip for Tanner to visit the Middle East claiming that any serious artist who wanted to paint biblical scenes with conviction should familiarize himself with the Holy Land.

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Romantic intimacy
The patterns in the painting suggests the style of Art Nouveau and the organic forms of the Arts and Crafts movement. At the same time, the background evokes the conflict between two- and three-dimensionality intrinsic to the work of Degas and other modernists. Paintings such as The Kiss are visual manifestations of fin-de-siecle spirit because they capture a decadence conveyed by opulent and sensuous images. The use of gold leaf recalls medieval "gold-ground" paintings, illuminated manuscripts, earlier mosaics, and the spiral patterns in the clothes recall Bronze Age art and the decorative tendrils seen in Western art since before classical times. The man's head ends very close to the top of the canvas, a departure from traditional Western canons that reflects the influence of Japanese prints, as does the painting's simplified composition.

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Munch defined how we see our own age - wracked with anxiety and uncertainty.
A passage in Munch’s diary dated January 22, 1892, and  written in Nice, contains the probable inspiration for this  scene as the artist remembered it: “I was walking along the  road with two friends—the sun went down—I felt a gust of  melancholy—suddenly the sky turned a bloody red. I  stopped, leaned against the railing, tired to death—as t he  flaming skies hung like blood and sword over the blue-black  fjord and the city—My friends went on—I stood there  trembling with anxiety—and I felt a vast infinite scream  [tear] through nature.”

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Henri Rousseau, The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897

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Henri Rousseau, The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897

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His inspiration came from illustrations in children's books and the botanical gardens in Paris, as well as tableaux of taxidermy wild animals.
Rousseau and his Parisian contemporaries were fascinated by wandering gypsies, the Romany people known in France as bohémiens: men and women exiled to the fringes of society during the dramatic changes of the mid-nineteenth century

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Odilon Redon. The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity, 1878

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Odilon Redon. The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity, 1878

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from the series Edgar A. Poe
Lithography
Also, through the possibility of editioning, he found a vehicle for broadly distributing the intimate imagery of his drawings.

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Paul Gauguin. The Vision after the Sermon, 1888

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Paul Gauguin. The Vision after the Sermon, 1888

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Japanese woodblock
Colors for symbolism, not realism
tree trunk separates the audience from the event
--
It depicts a scene from the Bible in which Jacob wrestles an angel. It depicts this indirectly, through a vision that the women depicted see after a sermon in church. It was painted in Pont-Aven, Brittany, France.

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Symbolism
Emphasized world of dreams, moods, fears, and desires over everyday, contemporary world; Dissatisfaction with modernity

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I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green. The room is blood red and dark yellow with a green billiard table in the middle; there are four lemon-yellow lamps with a glow of orange and green. Everywhere there is a clash and contrast of the most alien reds and greens, in the figures of little sleeping hooligans, in the empty dreary room, in violet and blue. The blood-red and the yellow-green of the billiard table, for instance, contrast with the soft tender Louis XV green of the counter, on which there is a rose nosegay. The white clothes of the landlord, watchful in a corner of that furnace, turn lemon-yellow, or pale luminous green.

The next day (September 9), he wrote Theo: "In my picture of the Night Café I have tried to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad or commit a crime. So I have tried to express, as it were, the powers of darkness in a low public house, by soft Louis XV green and malachite, contrasting with yellow-green and harsh blue-greens, and all this in an atmosphere like a devil's furnace, of pale sulphur. And all with an appearance of Japanese gaiety, and the good nature of Tartarin."[8]

He also wrote: "It is color not locally true from the point of view of the stereoscopic realist, but color to suggest the emotion of an ardent temperament."[7]

The violent exaggeration of the colours and the thick texture of the paint made the picture "one of the ugliest pictures I have done", Van Gogh wrote at one point.[3] He also called it "the equivalent, though different, of The Potato Eaters", which it resembles somewhat in its use of lamplight and concerns for the condition of people in need.[6]

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Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. La Goulue. 1891

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Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. La Goulue. 1891

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He himself became a conspicuous fixture of the place and was commissioned to create the six-foot-tall advertisement that launched his postermaking career and made him famous overnight. He turned a spotlight on the crowded dance floor of the nightclub and its star performers, the "boneless" acrobat Valentin le Désossé and La Goulue, "the glutton," whose cancan skirts were lifted at the finale of the chahut.

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Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge, 1892

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Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge, 1892

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Cousin walking in the back
Artist next to him
Famous dancer looking at the viewer

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Georges Seurat. A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.     1884–86

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Georges Seurat. A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.     1884–86

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Pointilism
Inspired by optical effects and perception inherent in the color theories of Michel Eugène Chevreul, Ogden Rood and others, Seurat adapted this scientific research to his painting.[5] Seurat contrasted miniature dots or small brushstrokes of colors that when unified optically in the human eye were perceived as a single shade or hue. He believed that this form of painting, called Divisionism at the time (a term he preferred)[1] but now known as Pointillism, would make the colors more brilliant and powerful than standard brushstrokes.

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Paul Cézanne. Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from Bibemus Quarry. ca. 1900

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Paul Cézanne. Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from Bibemus Quarry. ca. 1900

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The Sainte-Victoire mountain near Cézanne's home in Aix-en-Provence was one of his favorite subjects and he is known to have painted it over 60 times. Cézanne was fascinated by the rugged architectural forms in the mountains of Provence and painted the same scene from many different angles. He would use bold blocks of color to achieve a new spatial effect known as ``flat-depth'' to accommodate the unusual geological forms of the mountains. Cézanne travelled widely in the Provence region and also enjoyed painting the coast at L'Estaque.