”I declared that these works, like nature, were ordered according to the laws of chance”; liberated from rational thought processes—distancing self from creative process.

Sought to capture abstract universal forces (like Kandinsky)

2 of Warhol’s themes: death and the cult of celebrity; The fading of her image on the right reminds us of her mortality

Repetition reminds us of her ubiquitous presence in the media

Warhol once noted that through repeated exposure to an image, we become de-sensitized to it. In that case, by repeating Monroe’s mask-like face, he not only drains away her life, but also ours as well, by deadening our emotional response to her death. Then again, by making her face so strange and unfamiliar, he might also be trying to re-sensitize us to her image, so that we remember she isn’t just a symbol, but a person whom we might pity.

Industrial materials—iron, glass, steel: metal spiral frame enclosing 3 glass units (cylinder, cube, and cone); glass units were to house conferences and meetings and were to revolve, making a complete revolution once a year, once a month, and once a day, respectively

Symbolized new machine age—industrial materials and kinetic nature

In favour of art as a practice for social purposes

Embraced Russian Revolution—propaganda center for Communist Third International: symbolic of aspirations of communism

Socialist Realism became official style and put an end to works of art that were spiritually and aesthetically motivated

industrial, angular style of work

Stream of consciousness process: one thing led to another

Time? Rational, measured

Death, deterioration

Everything is irrational—attack on the rational

Viewers’ own unconscious

-Trying to step away from the oversaturated form of art that was being promoted in schools

-Wanted art to be exciting to work on (and to consume)

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-He burned all of his previous artwork

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-Sort of an oath to himself that he wouldn’t ever make “boring art” again

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-“It’s art because it’s on canvas and in a gallery”

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-Irony (think of Ceci n’est pas une pipe)

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-Causes people to consider their own art (am I making boring art?)

Moved lips for 3 hours instructing dead hare about pictures surrounding him; meaninglessness of conventional picture-making that has to be explained; art should be spiritual, direct, understandable to viewer.

Interested in ideas of wonder and miracles.

Everyone should create art – in the sense that life is art.

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)

Airbrush—to eliminate brushstroke, sense of medium

Looked to history of art of women in the past—quilting, sewing, embroidery, weaving—which have been dismissed throughout history  as ”craft” instead of “art” and monumentalized ‘

(12’ across, 6 feet tall)

1000s of chalk drawings done quickly in panels from which an advertising poster had been removed (like a blackboard)

Distinctive vocabulary of cartoon figures

Started Pop Shop to sell t-shirts and pins—brought art to the masses

Politically active—donated art for AIDS organizations

Dissatisfactionwith modernity

Non-objective/non-representational art

Strong diagonal lines, disjointed space like Cubism

Railroad tracks in left corner: new juxtaposed with old architecture

The scene may be described matter-of-factly: an Italian city square with shadows lengthening in a late autumn afternoon; an arcade of shops closed for the day; railway tracks in the lower left corner; the shadow of a heroic nineteenth-century statue; a little girl hurrying home.

Visions of loneliness and nostalgia, fear of the unknown, premonitions of the future, depiction of reality beyond physical realm

Empty city square with monument: elements from artist’s studio and mannequin head; symbols of past architecture;

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

Optimism of modernity: machines, motion, etc.

”a great synthesis of labor, light, and movement” (Boccioni)

Dallin Durtschi, Fall 2018

Complete renunciation of the physical world

White=”real concept of infinity”

Counter-relief: as far away from traditional sculpture as he could make: untraditional materials (wood, rope, found objects, iron, and copper) and untraditional space: not on base or wall, but extended into viewer’s space

Utopian art

Search for universal truths

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

Assemblage: made of found objects assembled (like 3-D collage): attached real objects to a wooden mannequin head: metal collapsing cup, tape measure, labels, and a pocketbook

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.”

Manipulated images by hand; cut with kitchen knife (no machinery); humanized the mechanical; antiwar

Satirical panorama of Weimar society

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 

Also interest in the new roles of women in postwar Germany, which had granted them the vote in 1918, two years before the US

Schwitters’ art was more than just the collage object itself. It was a whole process, philosophy, and lifestyle, which he called merz—a nonsense word that became his kind of personal brand.

Group of young men following Death, who beats out the march to battle on a drum; 

Faces of fear, regret, hope

An arc fills space above figures, suggesting a rainbow or halo: the harbinger of their fate as martyrs for a pointless cause

Left: torture chamber; right: frustration, indecision

Central panel: king, mother, and child in boat, guided by veiled boatman; allusion to holy family, but not tied to specific symbols

“The king and Queen have freed themselves of the tortures of life—they have overcome them. The Queen carries the greatest treasure—Freedom—as her child in her lap. Freedom is the one thing that matters—it is the departure, the new start”

When the Nazis came into power in 1933, they stripped Beckmann of his teaching position in Frankfurt, and nearly 600 of his works were confiscated from museums throughout Germany

On opening day of the 1937 Degenerate Art Show in Munich, which showed several of his works, the artist and his wife fled to Amsterdam. He never returned to Germany. In 1947, after years of hiding from the Nazis, he accepted a teaching position at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri and became a highly influential teacher; remained in the US for the rest of his life

Violent statements of disgust with postwar Germany and humankind generally; political and social satire

"In a strange street by night, a hellish procession of dehumanized figures mills, their faces reflecting alcohol, syphilis, plague ... I painted this protest against a humanity that had gone insane."[1]

The painting seeks to emulate medieval depictions of hellscapes, mainly through dramatic colourisation—in particular through its use of red light—as well as through the depiction of multitudes of layered distorted bodies and limbs

The figure of Death rides above it all; Tall claustrophobic buildings are lined above the procession. They seem to heave and bend backwards and forwards, as if about to topple over and collapse onto those below.[2]Among these buildings is a lone small church, surrounded by bars, nightclubs and offices. Giving a literal voice to the "Dance of Death" depicted by the artist, a sign over one club reads "DANCE TONIGHT".[1]

Most Cubist-inspired work

Brutal battle field scenes as well as depictions of wounded and destitute veterans

Game of cards—war injuries have left them all as amputees, holding cards with toes or mangled hands

Faces damaged; the men have to cope with poorly fitting facial and scalp prostheses

Does not allow us to view with a single, easy response

Angry, fatalistic, wrenching

Bright, lurid colors

“His paintings initially seduce with their candy store hues before slapping the viewer with their shocking realism” (p. 258)

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

Began in Weimar, moved to Dessau, and finally Berlin

Herbert Bayer

Marcel Beuer:

Josef Albers

Paul Klee

Vasily Kandinsky

Oskar Schlemmer

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Bauhaus School

Translation for bauhaus = workhouse

Architecture is meant to embody the principles of cimplicity and design

Emigrated to US and became one of most important art teachers in the US, at Black Mountain College in North Carolina and then Yale

Explored issues of perception, illusionism, and interaction of abstract pictorial elements

Homage to Square: formula derived in 1950 where he explored the relationships of color squares confined within squares; predetermined asymmetry

Taught color theory at Yale

By restricting himself to this format, he sought to demonstrate the subtle perceptual ambiguities that occur when colors are juxtaposed

Triadic Ballet: dancers encased in colored, geometric shapes made from wood, metal, and cardboard; transformed performers into abstracted, kinetic sculptures

Clarity of form, geometric precision of machine

Only woman in charge of a Bauhaus workshop;

Though initially women were to be given equal status at the Bauhaus, Gropius grew alarmed at the number of women applicants and restricted them primarily to weaving

He helped to develop the new field of graphic design

He wanted to erase the distinction between fine art and commercial art

Simple, functional, reproduceable designs; also beautiful and affordable

Believed that abstract forms had great expressive power and spirituality

Saw creative act as a magical experience (fellow faculty member Anni Albers said everything he touched was magic)

Wanted to combine outer experience of the world with inner vision, which was expressed in the very process of creation

Anni Albers told the story of the celebrations at the Bauhaus for Klee’s fiftieth birthday in 1929 (as recounted in Nicholas Fox Weber’s In The Bauhaus Group: Six Masters of Modernism). Hiring a Junkers aeroplane, manufactured locally in Dessau, she and other students parachuted an angel-shaped package of gifts onto the roof of Klee’s house. Much as inspiration seemed to fall from the sky, so did praise;

Interested in light, space, and motion

Stressed scientific investigation in the classroom

Constructivist ideals: alliance of art and technology

Used grid patterns with glass fragments; invented a painstaking technique of sand-blasting and painting thin layers of glass which he then baked in a kiln

Exploration of the subconscious mind
 Dream images
 Randomness related to dream states
 Juxtaposition of unrelated objects 
 Stream of consciousness
 Chance, irrationality

The collective unconscious

Reactions to war

Both naturalistic and non-objective forms

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

Extension of Dada movement; wanted to explore subconscious thought and and bypass restrictions placed on people by social convention

Began as literary movement; automatic poetry; 1924, Surrealism was announced to the public through the publication of André Breton’s first “Manifesto of Surrealism” 

Automatic drawing—draw in a trance-like state

Exquisite Corpse (game of folded paper);  juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated objects suggests a cryptic meaning and otherworldliness

Decalcomania= placing paper on a wet painted surface, then pulling it away to achieve textural effects

Biomorphic forms = modeling of artistic elements on naturally occurring patterns or shapes reminiscent of nature and living organisms. Taken to the extreme, it attempts to force naturally occurring shapes onto functional devices.

Automatism=automatic process allowing chance to help determine composition

Surrealist object: Many surrealist artists (especially in the 30s) began arranging objects in combinations that challenged reason and summoned subconscious and poetic associations - the most easily obtained were found objects/items purchased cheaply at flea markets

Embodies atrocities of 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)

Pablo Picasso, “Guernica”.  Oil on canvas. 1937.

This painting of Pablo Picasso has a very strong and emotive purpose. The storyline is very powerful and he knew how to narrate it in a perfect way. What I admire the most about this painting is that Picasso portrayed in a marvelous way the drama and effusion of the moment where the people of Guernica were attacked by a bomb in the Spanish civil war. The colors are very cold and hopeless which portray a sense of despair, sadness and drama. The subjects in the painting are disfigured and portray a feeling of pain and destruction. The painting is a symbol of the terrible suffering that the war violates human beings. I believe that Picasso wanted to show how art has always been and will be a form of social expression, a way to "speak without words" and sensitize the viewer. We should look at art not in the simple forms or colors, but to look beyond and try to perceive what the author wants to tell us. 

"No, painting is not made to decorate rooms. An instrument of offensive and defensive war against the enemy; art does not die but is an eternal value, which survives after the chaos." Pablo Picasso

Reflection or model? Surface reality and inner reality; Altar ego; depths of soul

Cubist fractures, curvilinear rhythms, brilliant color patterns

avoids the frequent Surrealist stereotyping of women as objects of male desire. Instead, she drew on her life and friendships to represent women's self-perceptions, the bonds between women of all ages

Also had relationship with Max Ernst and he left his wife; Ernst was arrested several times in German-occupied France and eventually fled to the United States with the help of Peggy Guggenheim, abandoning his relationship with Carrington. Destroyed by her separation from Ernst, Carrington left France and traveled to Madrid, narrowly escaping the Nazis. In Spain she suffered a psychotic breakdown and was hospitalized in a mental hospital in Madrid. When she began suffering from repeated delusions and anxiety attacks, her parents intervened in her medical care. Carrington was institutionalized and treated with shock therapy. The artist was traumatized by this ordeal, and she eventually sought refuge in Lisbon's Mexican embassy.

Wrote about hyena and white horses in short stories; both have magical powers; one character has power to change herself into white horse

Galloping white horse becomes a kind of liberated surrogate self 

Influenced by exhibition called Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism at the MoMA in 1936

Meticulous naturalism combined with fantasy—hallucinatory quality

Also questions what is true: “It’s necessary to paint the lie so great that it becomes the truth.”

Metamorphosis common theme

Went to Paris as an art student at age 19; made large body of work (painting, sculpture, drawing) but known primarily for this work

Story: at lunch with Picasso and Oppenheim; she had designed a fur-covered bracelet; Picasso commented that anything could be covered with fur; Oppenheim said, “even this cup and saucer” and went home and made this

Juxtaposition two desirable things; becomes disturbing (emblem of domesticity and social niceties metamorphosed into something repellent and fascinating at the same time

We read  space, but we know that the painting on the easel is flat, and then we remember that the whole painting itself is also flat

What is real? Play on illusion implies that the painting is less real than the landscape, when in fact both are painted fictions

Claims superiority of unconscious mind over conscious mind

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

Also worked in Paris but quarreled with other Surrealists and returned to Brussels

Because he was removed from art center, he was less known than other Surrealists but revered later by Pop artists because of his deadpan realism and irony

Fascination with relation between language and painted image

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]

Moved to US in 1940 like many other Surrealists; made designs for jewelry, theater, famous for outrageous behavior, moustache (from Velazquez)

Moved back to Spain in 1948; painted Christian religious art after 1950

Influenced by writings of Freud

Theory of painting he called “paranoiac-critical”: the creation of a visionary reality from elements of visions, dreams, memories, with psychological distortions

Liked precise naturalism and commonplace objects to make his dream world more tangible

Tiny—8x13 inches

Lions heads collage: ”desires were always represented by the terrorizing images of lions’ heads.”

Illusionism of Renaissance perspective

Attempted to picture the desires and fears contained in the unconscious (which Freud said was both pointless and impossible)

Self-taught; said two De Chirico paintings in the window of the dealer Paul Guillaume and decided to become a painter

Certain characteristics common for rest of career: infinite-perspective depth: graded color, sharp horizon line

Ambiguous organic shapes in a barren dreamscape

Classical myth of the Minotaur: Because Pasiphaë displeased sea god Poseidon, she was made to feel passion for a beautiful white bull; following her union with the bull she gave birth to the monstrous Minotaur

Masson said he wanted to represent the violent union of woman and beast in such a way that it is impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends

Works express his emotions and relate to brutality of human beings and all living things

Sand painting: applied glue to canvas, then threw sand over the surface and brushed away excess

Automatic process—allows chance to help determine his composition

Emigrated from Paris to NY

Ideas of flight and transformation

Migration of birds and butterflies, flow of stars and galaxies

Images dispersed evenly across canvas (all-over effect like Jackson Pollock)

Close to the biomorphic sculptures of Arp

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?)

Animating the inanimate was a favorite Surrealist theme; even inanimate objects have eager vitality

Mapped out compositions with a grid

Automatic process—swung paint over canvas from a hole in a tin can--like Jackson Pollock in 1950’s

Two girls are frightened by a tiny bird (one is collapsed, one holds a knife)

Real and illusion: knob and gate and part of house are 3-D; man on roof—trying to get out of dream?

Beyond the colors, it is also important to consider our perspective as viewers into the painting. By situating our point-of-view from behind the angels, we look down at the distant figures of the shepherds below. 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.

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

Inspired by Fire truck

Karl Von Freyburg’s initials, “Kv.F,” are included in the lower left of the painting (left). The red number four on a dark blue field (below) refers to von Freyburg’s military regiment, and the yellow “24” refers to his age at the time of his death.

The silver star connecting to a serpentine line near the yellow 24 is a boot spur, referring to von Freyburg’s position as a cavalry officer (above). Finally, the stylized cross with white trim (see image at top of page) is a German Iron Cross—a medal awarded to soldiers who demonstrated exceptional valor.

Hartley’s painting is also more than a portrait of an individual: it expresses the rising German nationalism that he witnessed while living in Berlin. The diagonal blue and white checkerboard pattern (left) is a reference to the flag of Bavaria, and so too are the pair of blue and white stripes on the right side of the image. The red, white, and black stripes on the bottom third of the canvas represent a Kriegsschiffgösch or German naval war flag, turned upside-down. This flag typically had a black cross in the middle of it, but Hartley omitted  this element so as to bring compositional importance to the medal in the upper part of the painting. Beneath the German flag are the standards of two of Germany’s enemies: the red and white St. George’s Cross of England, and the black, yellow, and red tricolor of Belgium.

Art Deco building completed just 3 years before; view from her window

The painting can also be read as a double portrait of Steiglitz and O'Keeffe; Stieglitz is represented by the Scientific American Building, as indicated by his name in red, and O'Keeffe by the Radiator Building.

Like synthetic Cubism

 

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

Started making mobiles in the early 1930’s; painted sheet metal, balanced so that movement in air makes them glide and turn in space; incorporates element of chance

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

Like many aspiring artists of his generation, Calder then spent time in Paris where he was inspired by Joan Miró's work and absorbed the playfulness of Dada. Indeed, it was the French artist Marcel Duchamp who christened Calder's hanging sculptures "mobiles."

Window into Midwest world where Wood grew up and lived

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)

Influenced by both diego rivera and michelangelo – muralists

Captures destitution, emotional distress of migrant workers

Immediate impact: government sent food to CA and opened relief camps for migrant workers; power of images

NY; alienation associated with life in the big city in modern America

Emptiness; frozen; apartment dwellers inside individual spaces

Harsh lighting; like a stage setting

Here is a nice analysis of the formal qualities of this painting by Claire Fink:

I love Edward Hopper's painting, Early Sunday Morning. I am going to talk about the elements and principles of design in this piece that make it effective. The element of shape is used well in this painting. The whole painting is a bunch of basic shapes that make up a scene. The element of size is also used well. There is a good variation in size with the sizes of the windows on the upper and lower floors. There is a nice texture in the painting. His brushstrokes are visible in some areas while they are not in others. The texture of the sky is much different from the texture of the drapings in front of the windows. The element of color is used with a variation of colors. The colors are warmer in the top half of the painting, where the light is stronger, and it's cooler in the bottom half where there is less light. The value also changes with the lighting. The shadows are portrayed well with the dramatic lighting. I love the long shadows coming from the top window and the fire hydrant.

 The principle of balance is used with the symmetry of the building. The windows and doors make it symmetrical. The principle of repetition is apparent with the windows while there is also variation with the colors and shapes in the windows. There is a nice contrast between light and dark making the painting interesting. I think what gives the piece harmony is the repetition of shapes and colors. Some objects in the piece are more detailed or have more light, like the post or the middle curtains, which makes them dominant over other objects or shapes. These elements and principles of design make this painting both easy and interesting to look at.

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 

Painted herself frequently – in part because she was often bedridden

City Life

Midwest imagery

Murals—art for the people

Influence of art in Europe: Realism, Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal (Farm Security Administration)

Native dress and subjects

Symbolic portrait = use abstract images or found objects (instead of realistic images) to make a portrait.
Mobile = French artist Marcel Duchamp who christened Calder's hanging sculptures "mobiles."

•Importance of feeling

•Influence of Surrealism, Native American sand painting, ancient myths and art, ancient language and writing

•Heroic scale

•First international style originating from US; puts NYC on the map as art center

Action Painting 

  Gesture Painting

  All-over painting

Color Field Painting 

  “Zips”

By mid-1940’s painted biomorphic, Surrealist-inspired hybrid creatures floating  with loose, undefined edges within larger expanses of color

By 1949  had refined and simplified shapes to the point where they consisted of color rectangles floating on a color ground

Thin washes of oil paint with tonal variation and blurred edges

Luminous color effects; shifting, ambiguous space

Meant to absorb and engulf the spectator

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!”

Ovoids in suspension: “emblems for universal tragedy”

Crusty areas of color in a constant state of fluid movement

Suggest awesome landscapes that combine drama and vastness of the west—mesas, canyons, and rivers

Wild, open landscapes of the american west

“a mature, mural-size painting where the multiple Zips differ in hue and value” (p. 422)

Newman wanted to maintain a human scale for his life-affirming, humanist art

Zips have been read as signs for the upright human being

Straight, girder-like strokes across full breadth of 8 ½’ canvas

Used house-painter brushes on unstretched canvases tacked to his studio wall

Rugged but controlled brushstrokes into powerful, architectural structures

Affinity with industrial objects—trains, cranes, bridges

Insistence on the equivalence of the whites (not just background)

Also painted the white areas, sometimes on top of the black

Met Jackson Pollock in group art show; married in 1945

Concerned with spontaneous gesture and large-scale allover compositions but with grid structure

Looks like writing; viewer anticipates decoding the marks but they remain a mystery

“simultaneously repellent and arresting evocation of woman as sex symbol and fertility goddess” (p. 409)

He said his images had to do with “the female painted through all the ages, all those idols” (could have meant a Greek goddess, a Renaissance nude, a Surrealist femme fatale, or curvaceous American movie star with her big ferocious grin)

Influence of Cubism, Surrealism, colors of Kandinsky (admired)

Chilean surrealist painter Roberto Matta. He advised Gorky to thin his paints with turpentine, which allowed the colors to run, smudge, and drip, acquiring a translucent quality.

Resembles vast landscape and microscopically detailed internal anatomy

Veiled but recognizable shapes 

Biomorphic imagery owed to Kandinsky and Miro, whose works he knew well

Also Surrealist automatism

By means of his unique approach to color and form, Arshile Gorky aimed to communicate both his painful childhood experience of the Armenian Genocide and the close affinity he felt with nature, especially the landscape. In 1920, Gorky fled to the United States, where he remained for the rest of his life. He settled in New York City, where avant-garde artists from both the United States and Europe converged during the 1940s, and his work directly reflects this cultural and historical milieu. In addition, Gorky and many of his contemporaries were fascinated by other cultures—past and present—especially their myths, legends, and spiritual beliefs. In 1941, Gorky married his second wife Agnes Magruder (American, 1921–2013), whose parents owned a farm in Virginia. This pastoral setting inspired the creation of “The Liver Is the Cock’s Comb,” which reflects both the artist’s physical surroundings as well as his memories of the gardens of his homeland. The complexities and contradictions Gorky felt were present in his own life are built into the layers of this painting. Its title can be interpreted in a variety of ways. In the ancient world, the liver symbolized the soul and passion of the artist. “Cock” can refer to a rooster and is also slang for “penis.” However, “cock’s comb” (or “coxcomb”) is simultaneously a term for a flowering plant, a jester’s cap, and a fool. In ancient Greek mythology, a rooster was sacrificed to the well-endowed Priapus, the god of nature and fertility. Although there are clear allusions to female and male genitalia in the work, overall Gorky’s forms are indefinable.

Taught in Munich and then US: UC Berkeley, then at NY Art Students League

Then at his own Hans Hofmann school of Fine Arts in NY and Massachusetts

One of premier art educators and theoreticians in the US; concentrated on concepts of pictorial structure

Thick, rectangular slabs of paint aligned with picture’s edge

Rectangles of color affirm flatness of the picture; also appear to advance and recede spatially

“push and pull” effect (Hofmann)

Looks like an aerial view of some buildings/vehicles

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

Splatters, not brushstrokes

Two figures standing like sentinels on either side

Prostrate figure in center

Pollock’s interpretation of Surrealist practice of automatism, automatic mark making intended to tap into subconscious mind

Two figures standing like sentinels on either side

Prostrate figure in center

Pollock’s interpretation of Surrealist practice of automatism, automatic mark making intended to tap into subconscious mind

Watchdog (wolf?) beneath

Covered canvas with calligraphic, cryptic marks like hieroglyphics

Influenced by ritual Navajo sand painting, African sculpture, prehistoric art, Egyptian painting

Carl Jung’s theories of the collective unconscious as a repository for ancient myths and universal archetypes

Robert Rauschenberg

Took off where Duchamp left off: painted canvases completely white; in response, avant-garde composer John Cage wrote a piano piece called 4’33”, first performed in Woodstock, NY in 1952: pianist opened keyboard, did nothing else for 4 minutes and 33 seconds; audience listened to sounds of the real world; then the keyboard case was shut, signaling the end of the piece

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

Chose everyday, familiar forms—withdraws from artist’s inventive role

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

Neutral image of a target combined with much more emotion-laden body parts; implied violence

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

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

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

What is the meaning of modern existence? Like Edward Hopper

Sister Corita is one exception: studied art in LA before becoming a nun in 1936

Ran the art program at Immaculate Heart College, becoming expert in the production of screenprints

Saw 1962 exhibition of Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans in LA, where she took her students to see current trends in art

Bold colors, graphic simplicity, commonplace subjects of Pop art began to appear in her work

But adapted the style to serve her social and religious aims

Vatican Council 1962-1965 started an effort to make Catholicism more relevant and accessible to ordinary people

She designed screenprints that could be easily reproduced and distributed

Looks like Wonder Bread but delivers a message about the wonder of faith in a world shattered by war and plagued by injustice.

”Camus helps build strong bodies 12 ways”

Flat-pattern design like Matisse or Mondrian, but painterly splash

Wealthy lifestyle in southern California (where he has long maintained residence)

Consumer culture

Realist tradition going back to Chardin, Dutch still lifes

Carefully arranged, lusciously brushed and colored

Thick impasto—creates the type of substance it depicts

Thiebaud insisted that these works reflected his nostalgia and affection, not an indictment of American culture

Made in many versions

Polychrome aluminum

10 feet high and 86 feet long; surrounds the spectator
Started as a billboard painter, working on the scaffolding high over New York’s Times Square

Experience of painting on an enormous scale critical to his work

Mix of heroic and mundane; 

Also jarring: named after an American fighter-bomber; little girl beneath a bullet-shaped hairdryer: anti-war statement

Commentary on how we worship celebrity figures

He said he ate Campbell’s soup for lunch every day for 20 years—repetitive, also like on the grocery shelf

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

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

Began as a commercial artist: 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)

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 – and poking fun at the stereotypes

Artist’s hand/presence not visible; machine-like (opposite AE artists)

Nothing more mundane than cheap, mass-produced comic books

But acrylic and oil paint on canvas! And a diptych! Brings into the realm of fine art, but looks like cheap comic print, with benday dots - But is it a comic? 
- Removed from narrative

Led to transforming hard, rigid objects into soft, collapsing versions

Said he made symbols of his time

What rules is he breaking? -

-Reaction to elitism and deep emotion of Abstract Expressionism
-Similar to Dada in love of ready-made, common objects
-Interested in materialism of consumer culture
-sought a mass-produced look
-Abstract Expressionism had become “high art;” new artists wanted something less elitist

-Everybody can understand, available to all (but not! Irony)

2.Less emphasis on evidence of the artist’s gesture/paint texture

3.More sharply defined compositions

4.Open design—elements go beyond bounds of the artwork

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)

Central motifs float within a rectangle surrounded by irregular light and dark frames. These frames create the feeling that the center of the painting is opening up in a limited but defined depth

Clement Greenberg took Morris Louis to Frankenthaler’s studio in 1953; he was so affected by Mountains and Sea that he and fellow artist Kenneth Noland began to stain canvases themselves

Louis applied extremely runny paint to an unstretched canvas allowing it to flow over the inclines surface; eliminated the brush even more than Frankenthaler

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

Often minimalist artists envisioned large-scale structures that had to await patrons for the final realization of their projects

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

“A work needs only to be interesting.”
 Donald Judd

Both memory and movement are required for the appreciation of the work.

What does the word cigarette imply? Small, cast-off, trash?

But this is large, solid, permanent, not easily cast-off or discarded

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?

Unlike many painters of his generation, he often based paintings on observations in the world; interplay of shadows, outlines of buildings, etc.

Canvas now has a life of its own—not rectangular; sculptural (blurs distiction between painting and sculptures)

No push-pull of space

“What you see is what you see.” No hidden meanings, symbols, references: stripped down vocabulary=Minimal Art

(so why title?)

Geometrical precision

Minimalism: 

Why Jasper’s dilemma? - Jasper Johns used paint thickly and painterly

-Clement Greenburg and his definitions of Modern Art, Post-Painterly Abstraction, Minimalism

-Hard-Edge Abstraction 

-Mass production methods in sculpture (Donald Judd)

Accumulators conduct electricity; Clay balls cannot, but the earth (clay) is the source of all the power

Beuys felt that art could heal; (postwar)

Wanted to return to the mystical and power of nature

Also wanted to send a message of community over individuality

Art that can’t be collected

Improvisation/Art as experience

Art with a political point

Semiotics: The study of signs

Plato’s Theory of Forms: The true form of something exists only in the idea of that thing; all representations are degraded versions

3 representations of “chairness” evoke Plato’s Theory of Forms, which holds that the true form of something exists only in the idea of that thing; all representations of the idea are degraded versions

Also semiotics=the study of signs

Kosuth didn’t make the chair, take the photograph, or write the definition; he selected and assembled them together. 

But is this art? And which representation of the chair is most “accurate”? These open-ended questions are exactly what Kosuth wanted us to think about when he said that “art is making meaning.” 

By assembling these three alternative representations, Kosuth turns a simple wooden chair into an object of debate and even consternation, a platform for exploring new meanings.

Prevalence of tv in America, rapidly changing

Most Americans experience the world through tv screens; tv=real life

- “Nowhere to go, but into yourself.”

Sculpture was provoked by a group of neighborhood teenagers, who were playing basketball when they should have been attending school and who told the artist that the road to success lay in sports, not education

Response: designed 40-foot-high basketball hoops decorated with wind chimes (suggest native American spirit catchers meant to filter out bad dreams) and bottle caps (associated with wasted lives and alcoholism but arranged in geometric patterns suggesting African textiles and beadwork)

About setting realistic higher goals, such as getting an education, as opposed to unrealistic objectives, such as becoming a professional basketball player—unreachable

Installed in Brooklyn—has “cool” accessible level

Emerging from a historical context fraught with racism and sexism, Saar’s pivotal piece works in tandem with the civil rights and feminist movements. The cotton balls at the feet of the Jemima figure, the broom, and the image of the woman with the white child each speak to specific roles into which African American women were historically allocated. Saar takes these painful memories and alters them, arming the stereotypically docile mammy figure with a gun and hand grenade and giving agency to the traumatized icons of the past.

Aunt Jemima has been armed and empowered with a new identity. She’s done making pancakes.

The Guerrilla Girls wear gorilla masks for public appearances and use the names of famous deceased artists as pseudonyms

Group Started in 1985: “conscience of the art world”

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

Moved hundred of thousands of cubic yards of earth and slightly reshaped the bowl of this extinct volcano

Enhanced its ability to create optical effects, transforming it into a vast “viewing space”

Just as time erodes civilizations and all things, the jetty will eventually disappear

Subject is entropy and change (salt encrusted, etc.)

Canvas is earth and sky

2 enormous cuts into the surface of Mormon Mesa in Nevada to a depth of 50 feet; displaced 240,000 tons of earth

In 1969 the art dealer Virginia Dwan funded the purchase of the 60-acre site for Double Negative and in turn the artist transferred the property deeds to Dwan. In 1971 Heizer prevented the Dwan Gallery from selling the work. Dwan then donated Double Negative to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MoCA) in 1984, with Heizer’s blessing

Heizer reportedly worried that documentation in a museum gallery misrepresents sculpture that can be known only through physical experience

He called the site “that kind of unraped, peaceful religious space artists have always tried to put in their work.”.[5]

1984 public forum for removal

1989 taken down

Two groups: make cases for removal and for keeping it; class is jury

Stone rises as more and more Americans die

Polished surface of granite acts like a mirror casting reflections of the living onto the names of the dead

Like an enormous tombstone

Art as physical experience

Entropy—Art that changes with time

Site-specific sculpture

Taking art out of the gallery

Art that can’t be collected

Sculpture as monument (Vietnam Veterans Memorial)

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

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

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

·      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

Uniformly sharp focus reinforces sense of flatness

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

Agree?

Would have needed Multiple reference photos in order to show the front to back clarity. To get this clarity in a single photo would have been impossible because of the long exposure necessary. (Objects would have moved/been blurry)

Also used airbrush

But reminiscent of Dutch 17th-century Vanitas paintings

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

Allover composition (like pollock)

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

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

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.

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

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!

Dichotomy: We and You/ Maker and manipulated

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

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

(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

Flat and sculptural

Representational and abstract

Historical and modern

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

·      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

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

Themes of love, death, and violence

Black and white charcoal drawings

Agony or ecstasy, dying or dancing

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

“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”

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

In and out of focus

Nazi Guard tower

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.

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

Based on Paul Celan's poem, "Death Fugue," published 1947

“your golden hair Margareta
 your ashen hair Shulamite”

mythological or biblical references (Shulamite refers to the heroine in the Song of Solomon)

historical subject or location (a Nazi Memorial Hall in Berlin).

suggestive of an oven (immediately bringing to mind the hyperactivity of the crematoria at the Nazi death camps)

transformed architecture meant to honor Nazi heroes into a memorial for their victims.

·      A return to seeking influence from the past

·      A return to expressing contemporary issues

·      For many Germans, a time of confronting and coming to terms with the Nazi past (Kiefer, Richter)

·      For many, a reaction to corporate, capitalist culture (Polke, Longo)

·      Pluralism of styles vs. a logical order (Richter)

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

·      Taking art to the masses

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

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

·      Idea of fragility of life

Aluminum mosaics; hard metal visually transformed into something soft

Reminder of the liquor European traders brought to Africa as barter; reference to trade, commodity

“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

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.

More than 1,600 artisans worked to make the individual porcelain seeds by hand in Jingdzhen, 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.E. 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 Jingdzhen, 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.

·      Interactive art

·      Installations

·      Art as political statement

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