AP Art History - Modernism and Postmodernism in Europe and America

LE CORBUSIER, Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, France, 1950-1955.

Compared to Villa Savoye, fusion of architecture and organic sculptural forms is surprising! Pilgrimage site in Vosges Mountains, replaced building destroyed in WWII. Massive exterior wall contains pulpit facing outdoor area for open-air services on holy days. Underlying mathematical system; frame of steel and metal mesh, builders sprayed with concrete and painted white. Design from shape of praying hands with wings of a dove (peace and the holy spirit) with prow of a ship (term for central aisle in traditional basilican church is nave - Latin for "ship." Surrounded by rolling hills, Le Corbusier hoped visitors would reflect on sacred and the natural.

Figure 30-2 ALBERTO GIACOMETTI, Man Pointing, (no. 5 of 6), 1947. Bronze, 5' 10" x 3' 1" x 1' 6".

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JENNY HOLZER, Untitled (selections from Truisms, Inflammatory Essays, The Living Series, The Survival Series, Under a Rock, Laments, and Child Text), 1989. Extended helical tricolor LED electronic display signboard, 16" x 162' x 6". Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY, December 1989-February 1990

Ohio native, Holzer studied art at Ohio University and RISD. 1st woman to represent US at Venice Biennale. Created light projection shows and LED signs worldwide. Believes in communicative power of language. Invented sayings with an authoritative tone - "Protect me from shat I want," "Abuse of power comes as no surprise," and "Romantic love was invented to manipulate women." Statements were intentionally vague and at times, contradictory.

Dick Higgins, Danger Music No.2, 1962. Performance at Fluxus Internationale Festspiele Neuester Musik, Wiesbaden.

Performance Art Movements, gestures, sounds performed before an audience, audience sometimes participates. Informal, spontaneous events - exuberance of the 1960s, pushed art outside confines of institutions. (Later museums and galleries commissioned). Antidote to pretentiousness of traditional art objects, challenged art function as commodity. Documentary photographs only record. JOHN CAGE, composer and teacher at New School in NYC and Black Mountain College in NC, encouraged students to link art directly with life (unpredictable and multilayered). Brought ideas of Duchamp and Eastern philosophy to music composition. Used chance to avoid closed structure of traditional music. One composition - pianist remained motionless for 4 minutes, 33 seconds - "music" was noise from audience (coughs and whispers). ALLAN KAPROW, Cage's student, believed Pollock's actions when making a painting were more important than finished work. Happenings were often participatory - viewers wrote phrases on partitions, walked on piles of tires Other students formed Fluxus, and staged Events - single actions like turning a light on and off, watching falling snow; on stage, no costumes.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1943-1959.

Used reinforced concrete as a sculptor , Wright describes his architecture as "organic," like a spiral of a snail's shell. Skylight strip imbedded in outer wall lights interior spiral ramp. Appears to be turning in on itself; sheltered environment, secure from bustling city. A trip to Paris in 1920 sparked Peggy Guggenheim's interest in avant-garde art. She collected art, opened galleries in England, NYC, and Venetian palace. In June 1943, Frank Lloyd Wright received a letter from Hilla Rebay, the art advisor to Solomon R. Guggenheim (Peggy's Uncle), asking him to design a new building to house Guggenheim's four-year-old Museum of Non-Objective Painting. The project became a struggle pitting the architect against his clients, city officials, the art world, and public opinion. Both Guggenheim and Wright would die before the building's 1959 completion.

JOERN UTZON, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia, 1959-1972.

Utzon worked briefly with Wright on his Wisconsin residence. Organic forms on a colossal scale similar to NYC's graceful curves of Guggenheim Museum. Ogival (pointed) shapes of Gothic vaults, shells suggest buoyancy of seabird wings and billowing sails of tall ships of European settlers who emigrated to Australia in 18th and 19th centuries. Architectural metaphors important to harbor surrounding Opera House on Bennelong Point with bedrock foundations. Completing had to wait until 1972 - required technology not yet developed. Houses opera auditorium, halls and rooms for concerts, perfoming arts, motions pictures, lectures art exhibitions, and conventions.

Hans Namuth, Jackson Pollock painting in his studio in Springs, Long Island,New York, 1950. and Lee Krasner, The Seasons, 1957. Oil on canvas, 7' 9"× 17'

Action painting as performance. Pollock wrote, "On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more a part of the painting since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting. . . . When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I am doing. . . . [T]he painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. . . . The source of my painting is the unconscious." His wife, Lee Krasner was also a major Abstract Expressionist painter.

JACKSON POLLOCK, Sketchbook III, p.4r,1937-39. Graphite and colored pencil on paper

Adjacent to the Metropolitan Museum's El Greco exhibit in 2003 were 5 sketches created by Jackson Pollock while he was a student under Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League in NY. Pollock analyzes El Greco's use of expressionistic lines and shapes to convey rhythmic movement and emotion in his works. Mannerist El Greco is known for his typically religious, expressionist scenes. By employing exaggerated lines and dynamic shadows in his paintings, El Greco sought to convey deep feelings of spirituality. These studies on movement and composition (28 total based on El Greco's work) provided the basis for Pollock's later drip paintings.

The World in 1945 & 2000

After WWII, US and USSR became nuclear superpowers, regularly intervening politically, economically, militarily when interests were at stake. Regional conflicts erupted throughout the world. The struggle for African Americans' civil rights, free speech on university campuses, and disengagement form Vietnam War led to rebellion of the young, demonstrations, and a "youth culture" - rejecting not only national policies, but also society generating them. Counterculture impacted civil rights movement and women's liberation with rejection of racism and sexism.

Figure 30-3 FRANCIS BACON, Painting, 1946. Oil and pastel on linen, 6' 6" x 4' 4". Figure 30-3 FRANCIS BACON, Painting, 1946. Oil and pastel on linen, 6' 6" x 4' 4".

Born in Ireland, son of wealthy Englishman, lived in London, experienced Nazi bombing. Painting is indictment of humanity and a reflection of war's butchery. Powerful, stocky man with gaping mouth and red stained lip as a carnivore devouring raw meat on railing surrounding him. Figure may have been based on photos of European and American officials. Umbrella recalls photos of Neville Chamberlain, wartime British prime minister. Bacon - "It came to me as an accident. I was attempting to make a bird alighting on a field. . . . but suddenly the line that I had drawn suggested something totally different and out of this suggestion arose this picture." Carcass appears as crucified human form. Specific sources unclear, "an attempt to remake the violence of reality itself." - Bacon

ANDY WARHOL, Marilyn Diptych, 1962. Oil, acrylic, and silk-screen enamel on canvas, each panel 6' 8" x4' 9".

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Andy Warhol was a successful magazine and ad illustrator who became a leading artist of the Pop Art movement. He ventured into a wide variety of art forms, including performance art, filmmaking, video installations and writing, controversially blurring the lines between fine art and mainstream aesthetics. Depicted icons of mass-produced consumer culture. Soon after her tragic death in 1962, Warhol made a series of paintings paying tribute to Marilyn Monroe. Based on a publicity still from the 1953 film Niagara. Canonizes Monroe, while revealing public persona as a carefully structured illusion. Silk-screen technique allowed endless printing - assembly line in "Factory."

MARK ROTHKO, No. 14, 1961 Oil on canvas, 9' 6" x 8' 9".

Born in Russia, Rothko moved to US when he was 10. Early work was figural, but soon came to believe any references to the physical world conflicted with sublime idea of the universal, supernatural "spirit of myth" - core meaning in art. Professed a kinship with primitive and archaic art. Relies on formal elements rather than representation to elicit emotional responses in viewers. Focused on color as primary conveyor of meaning - a doorway to another reality. Rothko insisted color could express "basic human emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom . . . The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them."

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, Horn Players, 1983. Acrylic and oil paintstick on three canvas panels, 8' X 6' 3".

Born in a comfortable home in Brooklyn, father accountant from Haiti, mother a black Puerto Rican - Basquiat rebelled against middle-class values, dropped out of school at 17, and took to the streets. Lower Manhattan graffiti -SAMO (dual reference to derogatory name Sambo for African Americans and "same old s___." He met Warhol and became friends when he was 19. 1st group show in 1980 in abandoned 42nd St. building. 8 years later after meteoric rise to fame, died of heroin overdose at 27. Self-taught Neo-Expressionist, but not "primitive" - Late Picasso, Abstract Expressionism, "art brut" of Dubuffet influences. Celebrates black heroes in work - ornithology pun on Charlie "Bird" Parker's nickname. Suggests rhythms of jazz music and excitement of streets of NYC.

RICHARD ROGERS and RENZO PIANO, Georges Pompidou National Center of Art and Culture (the "Beaubourg"), Paris, France, 1977.

British Rogers and Italian Piano used motifs and techniques from ordinary industrial buildings. Pompidou Centre is in Beaubourg area of Paris and houses a vast public library, the largest museum for modern art in Europe, and IRCAM, a centre for music and acoustic research. Anatomy of building is fully exposed; requires excessive maintenance to protect from elements. Kind of updated Crystal Palace . Pipes, ducts, tubes, and corridors are color-coded according to function (red for movement of people, blue for air-conditioning, green for water, yellow for electricity). Peddlers, street performers, Parisians, and tourists fill square similar to secular activity that occurred in open spaces in front of cathedral portals.

CINDY SHERMAN, Untitled Film Still #35, 1979. Gelatin silver print, 10" x 8".

Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954) explores the construction of contemporary identity and the nature of representation. Working as her own model for more than 30 years, her guises and personas are at turns amusing and disturbing, distasteful and affecting. In 2012 MOMA held a retrospective exhibition of Cindy Sherman's photographs featuring: "Untitled Film Stills" (1977-80), the black-and-white pictures that feature the artist in stereotypical female roles inspired by 1950s and 1960s Hollywood, film noir, and European art-house films; History portraits (1989-90), in which the artist poses as aristocrats, clergymen, and milkmaids in the manner of old master paintings; Society portraits (2008) that address the experience and representation of aging in the context of contemporary obsessions with youth and status. Dominant themes throughout Sherman's career, include artifice and fiction; cinema and performance; horror and the grotesque; myth, carnival, and fairy tale; and gender and class identity.

HELEN FRANKENTHALER, The Bay, 1963. Acrylic on canvas, 6' 9" x 6' 10".

Color Field Painting A variant of Post-Painterly Abstraction, emphasized painting's basic properties. Poured diluted paint unto unprimed canvas and allowed pigments to soak in - literal flatness. Appears spontaneous, accidental. Differs from Rothko in that Frankenthaler subordinated emotional component in favor of resolving formal problems. She explains how she begins a painting, "What will happen if I work with three blues and another color, and maybe more or less of the other color than the combined blues? . . . These are colors and the question is what are they doing with themselves and with each other. Sentiment and nuance are being squeezed out."

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, Canyon, 1959. Oil, pencil, paper, fabric, metal, cardboard box, printed paper, printed reproductions, photograph, wood, paint tube, and mirror on canvas, with oil on bald eagle, string, and pillow, 6' 10" x 5' 10" x 2'.

Combines - painted images with sculptural elements; a variation of assemblages, artworks constructed from already existing objects. Adopted commercial silk-screen printing, filled canvases with appropriated news images and photos of city scenes. Theme - Rembrandt's The Rape of Ganymede, 1635. In Greek mythology, Zeus assumed form of eagle to abduct Ganymede who he depicted as terrified and crying. A rope dangling from canvas with pillow tied in center refers to young Canyon is typical of Combines. Printed paper and photographs cover parts of the canvas. Unevenly painted surface is reminiscent of de Kooning. Stuffed bald eagle flies toward the viewer. Work appears jumbled, tilted, turned, overlapped images - confusion resembles a Dada collage, but parts maintain individuality. Eye scans Rauschenberg combine as it would survey the environment walking through a city. Images and objects seem unrelated, meaning seems open and indeterminate, yet all elements are chosen with specific meanings in mind.

30-55A BRUCE NAUMAN, Self-Portrait as a Fountain, 1966-1967. Color photograph, 1' 8" X 2' and Figure 30-55 BRUCE NAUMAN, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths, 1967. Neon, glass tubing suspension frame, approx. 5' high.

Conceptual Art Avant-garde challenges to convention reached logical conclusion with elimination of the object - the idea itself is an artwork; no concrete definition of art is possible anymore. In California, Indianan Nauman, produced sculptures from neon lights, rubber, fiberglass, cardboard; also produced films, videos, books, large room installations, and photographs. Interest in language and wordplay. Used neon - association with non-artistic function, wanted to connect objects with words. From Austrian philosopher Wittgenstein who encouraged nonsensical arguments. Nauman explained, "[The statement] was kind of a test - like when you say something out loud to see if you believe it . . . [I]t was on the one hand a totally silly idea and yet, on the other hand, I believed it."

GUERRILLA GIRLS, The Advantages of Being A Woman Artist, 1988. Offset print, 17" x 22".

Cultural theorists assert language is one of the most powerful vehicles for internalizing stereotypes and conditioned roles. Most of Guerrilla Girls' artwork consists of only words in a magazine ad style - like Kruger's photo-collages.

KIKI SMITH, Untitled, 1990. Beeswax and microcrystalline wax figures on metal stands, male figure installed height 6' 5".

Daughter of Minimalist sculptor Tony Smith, Kiki (b. 1954) grew up in South Orange, NJ raised Catholic. Trained as emergency medical service technician, explored the question of who controls the body. She commented: "Most of the functions of the body are hidden . . . from society. . . . [W]e separate our bodies from our lives. But, when people are dying, they are losing control of the bodies. . . . can seem humiliating and frightening. . . . on the other hand, . . . a kind of liberation of the body. It seems like a nice metaphor - a way to think about the social - that people lose control despite the many agendas of different ideologies in society, which are trying to control the body(ies) . . .medicine, religions, law, etc. . . . Does the mind have control of the body? Does the social?"

Figure 31-33 FRANK GEHRY, Guggenheim Bilbao Museo, Bilbao, Spain, 1997.

Deconstructivist Architecture Deconstructivist architects seek to disrupt conventions and rupture viewer's expectations. Destabilization, disorder, dissonance, imbalance, asymmetry, irregularity and unconformity replace order, harmony, balance . . .

JEAN TINGUELY, Homage to New York, 1960, just prior to its self-destruction in the garden of the MOMA, NYC.

Destruction as creation in kinetic artworks. Tinguely trained as a painter in Switzerland, in 1950s made a series of metamatics, motorized devices that made paintings. Expanded scale with kinetic piece designed to "perform" then destroy itself in sculpture garden of MOMA. Wheels, gears, pulleys, machine parts (from dump near NYC), painted white for visibility at night, player piano modified into metamatic, weather balloon inflated during performance, vials of colored smoke. Premiered and self-destructed with NY's governor, Nelson Rockefeller in attendance, with other distinguished guests and 3 TV crews. After Tinguely turned on machine, smoke poured out, piano caught on fire, one of the metamatics tried, but failed to produce a painting. Tinguely summoned firefighter to estinguish with an ax. Satiric Dada spirit, more playful and endearing.

WILLEM DE KOONING, Woman I, 1950-1952. Oil on canvas, 6' 4" x 4' 10".

Dutch born De Kooning came to NY as a stowaway in 1926 (at age 22) aboard a British freighter. Gestural abstractionist style, process important, worked on Woman I for 2 years, his wife (artist) Elaine estimated he painted 200 scraped away images before this one. Inspired by females on billboards, toothy smile/grimace of woman in ad for Camel cigarettes. Suggest fertility figures and satiric inversion of traditional image of Venus, goddess of love. Critic Harold Rosenberg described work from NY School as "action painting" - "the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act . . . What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event. . . . The image would be the result of this encounter."

ROBERT SMITHSON, Spiral Jetty, Great Salt Lake, Utah, 1970.

Environmental Art Also called Earthworks. Site-specific (created for a unique location) and outside. Intersection of sculpture and architecture,1960s. Increased period of concern for the environment - National Environmental Policy Act passed in 1969. Art called attention to landscape, part of national dialogue. Out of museums into public sphere; remote locations have limited access. ROBERT SMITHSON used industrial construction equipment to manipulate earth and rock on isolated sites. Spiral Jetty is 1500 feet long. Smithson found abandoned mining equipment at site, failed to extract oil - testament to enduring power of nature, human's inability to conquer it. Designed work from 1st impression, then found molecular structure fo salt crystals coating rocks at water's edge is spiral in form. Filmed construction; due to fluctuations in water level, often underwater. Died at age 35 while surveying site for new project in Amarillo, Texas.

Figure 30-19 LOUISE NEVELSON, Tropical Garden II, 1957-1959. Wood painted black, 5' 11" x 11' x 1'.

Expressive Sculpture Russian-born Nevelson emigrated to US as a child Combined sense of architectural fragments with Dada and Surrealist found objects to express sense of life's underlying significance. Multiplicity of meaning, she sought "the in-between place . . . The dawns and the dusks" - transitional realm between one state of being and another. Assembled sculptures of found wooden objects and forms, enclosed in boxes of various sizes, joined together to form walls, then painted in a single hue - black, white, or gold. Unified color scheme unites work. Mysterious field of shapes and shadows suggests magical environments - secret hideaways from childhood. Like viewing side of an apartment building from moving elevated train or looking down on city from the air.

UDY CHICAGO, The Dinner Party, 1979. Multimedia, including ceramics and stitchery, 48' x 48' x 48'. Brooklyn Museum.

Feminist Art Western society - patriarchal family unit, arts, sciences, political, social, and economic institutions perpetuated male power and subordination of women. Concern for dynamics of power, identity (individual and group) emerged as area for discussion and action - compelling subject. Judy Chicago (Cohen), born in Chicago, sought to educate public about women's role in history, establish respect. Inspired by O'Keeffe and Nevelson, her personal painting style consciously included abstract organic vaginal images. Conceived as feminist Last Supper for 13 guests, number of women in witches' coven, refers to worship of Mother Goddess. Many worthy women, tripled - 39 Triangle ancient symbol for both women and the Goddess. Butterfly - symbol of liberation and vulva - female sexuality on plates. 400 people to create & assemble.

JOSEPH BEUYS, How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, 1965.

Fluxus and Happenings influenced German artist, Beuys. New kind of sculptural object illuminating the condition of modern humanity. As a pilot, shot down during war over Crimea, nomadic Tatars nursed back to health by swaddling body in fat and felt to warm him - later symbolized healing, regeneration. Head coated with honey, covered with gold leaf. Role of shaman with spiritual powers - sense of mystery and sacred ritual. Revolutionize human thought - viewer would become completely free and creative. I Like America and America Likes Me - in 1974, Beuys flew to NYC, swathed in felt, an ambulance transported him to a room in a Gallery with a wild coyote, 8 hours a day for next three days. Symbolic gestures - striking a triangle and tossing his gloves to the coyote. At the end of the three days, the coyote, who had become quite tolerant of Beuys, allowed a hug from the artist, who was transported back to the airport via ambulance. He never set foot on outside American soil nor saw anything of America other than the coyote and the inside of the gallery.

LOUISE BOURGEOIS, Maman, A bronze edition at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1999. Stainless steel, bronze, marble, over 30' high.

French-American artist Bourgeois received little recognition until her 70s. Bold confrontation of universal emotions. Installations, sculptures, drawings and material-works focused upon notions of fear, anxiety, jealousy and love. Explores ideas of intimacy, suppressed childhood emotions and the family unit. Strange, organic sculptures which, while resembling parts of the body, avoid definition due to their ambiguous, amorphous appearance. Despite Maman's fearsome appearance, the spider is a loving tribute to Bourgeois' mother, a tapestry maker; Bourgeois recalls her working with thread, like a spider constructing a web - a powerful, gentle protector.

Frank Gehry, atrium of Guggenheim Bilbao Museo, Bilbao, Spain, 1997.

Gehry was trained in sculpture, works up designs by constructing models then cutting them up and arranging the parts until he has a satisfying composition. Guggenheim in Bilbao appears to be a collapsing aggregate of units whose profiles change dramatically with every shift of viewer's position. Limestone and titanium-clad exterior lends a space-age character. "Metallic flower" tops museum (Gehry's term). In the center is an enormous glass-walled atrium is 165' tall, that serves as focal point for 3 levels of galleries that radiate from it. Seemingly weightless screens, vaults, and volumes of interior float and flow into one another. Deceptive randomness of design and disequilibrium epitomizes Deconstructivist principals.

JACKSON POLLOCK, Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), 1950. Oil, enamel, and aluminum paint on canvas, 7' 3" x 9' 10".

Gestural abstraction or action painting - rhythmic drips, splatters, dribbles of paint using sticks or brushes with traditional oil paints, aluminum paints, and household enamels. Spontaneous yet choreographed - emphasis on improvisation in the creative process, tapping into Jung's collective unconscious. Parallels with "psychic automatism" of Surrealism -'randomly,' applying chance and accident to mark-making. Automatic drawing/ painting is to a large extent freed of rational control - the work produced may be attributed in part to the subconscious and may reveal something of the psyche, otherwise repressed. Cover of Gardner's textbook by Joan Mitchell.

Social Art (no picture)

Harlem native Faith Ringgold, studied painting at CUNY and taught art education for 18 years in the NYC public schools. In the 1970s, began to use fabric as predominant material - reference to domestic sphere and to collaborate with mother, a fashion designer. During the late 1960s and the 1970s played an instrumental role in organizing protests against museums that neglected the work of women and people of color. Paintings from this period are political - angry, critical reappraisal of American dream glimpsed through filter of race/gender relations. Ringgold's more recent aesthetic strategy embraces the potential for social change by undermining racial and gender stereotypes through impassioned and optimistic presentations of black female heroines. Her vehicle is the story quilt—a traditional American craft associated with women's communal work that also has roots in African culture. She originally collaborated on the quilt motif with her mother, a dressmaker and fashion designer in Harlem. That Ringgold's great-great-great-grandmother was a Southern slave who made quilts for plantation owners suggests a further, perhaps deeper, connection between her art and her family history.

Abstract Expressionism (no picture)

In the 1960s, center of Western art world shifted from Paris to New York because of devastation of WWII. Express artist's state of mind, emotional impact on viewers. CLEMENT GREENBERG, American art critic (1909 - 1994) championed strict formalism - an emphasis on visual elements rather than the subject of art. He redefined parameters of modernism by advocating rejecting illusionism and exploring properties of mediums. Abstract Expressionists turned inward to create, works convey rough spontaneity and palpable energy. New York School painters wanted viewers to grasp content intuitively, in mental state free from structured thinking. Developed also 2 lines: gestural abstraction (the expressiveness of energetically applies pigment) and chromatic abstraction (color's emotional resonance).

RICHARD HAMILTON, Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?, 1956. Collage, 10" x 10".

Includes references to mass media, advertising, popular culture. Stimulated viewers' wide-ranging speculation about society's values.

LE CORBUSIER, interior of Notre-Dame-du-Haut, Ronchamp, France, 1950-1955.

Interior holds only 200. Intimate scale, stark, heavy walls, mysterious illumination (jewel tones from recessed stained glass) - sacred cave or medieval monastery. Roof appears to float freely above worshipers in pews. Nearly invisible blocks hold up roof. Mystery of roof's means of support recalls floating dome of Hagia Sophia.

PHILIP JOHNSON, JOHN BURGEE (with Simmons Architects), AT&T (now Sony) Building, New York, 1978-1984.

Johnson worked with van der Rohe on design of Seagram building and served as director of MOMA's Department of Architecture, Moved away from severe geometric formalism to a classical transformation of AT&T Building - influential in turning organic "concrete sculpture" and rigid "glass box" to elaborate shapes, motifs, and silhouettes freely adapted from historical styles. Window space reduced to 30% of structure, classically tripartite - arcaded base and arched portal; shaft-like body segmented by slender mullions (vertical elements dividing window); and a crowning pediment broken by a orbiculum (disk-like opening) - crown of typical 18th century Chippendale high chest of drawers. Arrangement refers to base, column, and entablature system of classical architecture. Ironic rebuke to rigid uniformity of modernist architecture.

BARBARA KRUGER, Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face), 1981. Photograph, red painted frame, 4' 7" x 3' 5".

Kruger examines similar issues as Sherman's exploration of the "male gaze" and the culturally constructed notion of gender in her work combining photographs and text. Commercial graphic designer and art director of Mademoiselle in late 1960s. Incorporates layout techniques magazines and billboards use to sell consumer goods. Expose deceptiveness of media messages viewers complacently absorb. Challenge cultural attitudes embedded in advertising; used T-shirts, postcards, matchbooks, and billboards to present work to wide public audience. Photo of sculpted head, words cannot be read in a single glance - staccato exercise delays understanding, intensifies meaning, similar to roadside billboards.

LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE and PHILIP JOHNSON, Seagram Building, New York, 1956-1958.

Massive, sleek, geometrically rigid buildings followed Bauhaus architect Mies van der Rohe's contention that "less is more." Minimalist designs symbolize giant corporations inhabiting them. Concrete and steel glass towers pioneered by Sullivan were the norm for commercial postwar high-rise buildings. Seagram building designed as a thin shaft, with open pedestrian plaza in front. Seems to rise from pavement on stilts, glass walls even surround recessed lobby. Recessed structural elements - appear to have glass skin. Bronze metal and amber glass - richness, elegant whole. Interior and exterior lighting designed to make building impressive day and night.

DONALD JUDD, Untitled, 1969. Brass, colored Plexiglass on steel brackets, 10 units, 6" x 2' x 2' 3" each, with 6" intervals.

Minimalist Sculpture Sculptors also interested in Clement Greenburg's formalist ideas. Painters stressed flatness, sculptors focused on 3-dimensionality. Missourian Judd studied philosophy, art history at Columbia. Visual vocabulary devoid of deception or ambiguity. Work not intended to be metaphorical or symbolic - straightforward declaration of sculpture's object hood. He uses industrial products not used before in art or new materials, recent inventions (Plexiglas for translucency making sculpture both open and closed). Judd on sculpture's advantage, "Three dimensions are real space, that gets rid of the problem of illusionism . . . One of the salient and most objectionable relics of European art." Greenberg did not agree, "Minimal Arts remains too much a feat of ideation [the mental formation of ideas], and not enough anything else. Its idea remains an idea, something deduced instead of felt and discovered. . . . There is hardly any aesthetic surprise in Minimal art. . . . - it is there in Raphael as it is in Pollock - and ideas alone cannot achieve it."

MAYA YING LIN, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington D.C., 1981-1983

Minimalist sculpture or architecture - V shaped wall of polished black granite panels, 10' at center, each wing 246' long (2/3 football field length). Wall set into landscape, visitors aware of descent. Names of 57,939 American casualties and MIAs incised on walls in order of deaths. Chosen from 1400 entries in a blind competition. Jury found her design compelling, thought simplicity would be least likely to be controversial. However, heated debate ensued when design was made public - black was seen as the color of shame, contrasted with massive white memorials. Minimalist design seemed to minimize war and efforts of fighters. Due to opposition 2 additional representational sculptures were erected. Visitors to Lin's memorial react emotionally, viewers see themselves reflected among names of polished granite. Minimalism does not dictate response; encourages personal exploration.

Figure 31-40 Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Surrounding Islands, 1980-83, Biscayne Bay, Miami, Florida, 1980-83

Most famous environmental artists - in 1961 began collaborating on large scale projects to intensify awareness of space and features of rural and urban sites. Temporarily modified landscape with cloth - mysterious world of unopened package whose content can be dimly seen in silhouette under wrap. Years of preparation, research, meetings with local authorities, and interested citizens. Surrounded Islands included 11 islands and was on view for 2 weeks. 6,500,000 sq. feet of specially fabricated polypropylene floating fabric. $3,200,000 to complete, raised by selling Christo's drawings, collages. Crowds watches as crews removed trash - maximum contrast, unfured fabric "cocoons" to form magical floating "skirts."

ANDY GOLDSWORTHY, Cracked Rock Spiral, St. Abbs, Scotland, 1985.

Most prominent heir of earthworks tradition of Smithson. Medium is nature itself - stones, tree roots, leaves, flowers, ice. Most of his work is ephemeral, victims of tides, rainstorms and changing seasons, he records them in color photos - artwork in their own right. Goldsworthy seeks to "collaborate with nature." Tribute to Spiral Jetty, pebbles split in two, scratched white around cracks using another stone, arranged in a spiral that grows wider.

Figure 31-47 TONY OURSLER, Mansheshe, 1997.Ceramic, glass, video player, videocassette, CPJ-200 video projector, sound, 11" x 7" x 8" each.

New Yorker Oursler studied art at California Institute of the Arts. Projects images onto objects - taking them out of the digital world and inserting them into the "real" world. Accompanied by sound tapes, his work engages but often challenges viewer. These talking heads were suspended from poles and looked directly at the viewers making statements about religious beliefs, sexual identity, and interpersonal relationships which could not be easily dismissed.

Postmodernism (no picture)

No simple definition is possible, erosion of boundaries between high culture and popular culture - separation Clement Greenberg and Modernists staunchly defended. Examining process by which meaning is generated and dialogue between viewers and artworks. Parallels literary critical theory - view arts and literature as culture's intellectual products, or "constructs." Unconsciously suppress or conceal real premises informing culture - values of those politically in control (racist or sexist attitudes). Critical theorists use deconstruction (developed by French intellectuals in 1960s and 1970s) - uncover facts of power, privilege, and prejudice underlying the practices and institutions of any given culture, revealing precariousness of structures and systems (language and cultural practices) along with underlying assumptions. Critical theorists do not agree on a single philosophy; share a healthy suspicion of all traditional truth claims and value standards, all hierarchical authority and institutions. Destabilizing established meanings and interpretations; encouraging subjectivity and individual differences - no common denominator.

Pop Art and the End of Modernism (no picture)

Pop Artists sought to communicate to a wider audience - a reaction to pure formalism and the insular, introspective attitude of the avant-garde which had alienated the public. The Independent Ground in London founded Pop Art, but greatest success in 1960s US because of prevalent consumer culture. Independent Group members' inspiration from Hollywood (mass media), Detroit (mass production), and New York's Madison Avenue (advertising). Pop artists revived signs, symbols, metaphors, allusions, illusions, and figural imagery. British art critic Lawrence Alloway coined the term "Pop Art" short for popular art, referring to the mass culture and familiar imagery of contemporary urban environment. Richard Hamilton, an engineering draftsman, exhibition designer, and painter - studied how advertising shapes public attitudes. Intrigued by Duchamp's ideas, Hamilton combined elements of popular art and fine art. Just What Is It? was created for the poster and catalog of a section of an exhibit titled, This is Tomorrow, which included images from Hollywood cinema, science fiction, and mass media.

James RosenquistF 111 Oil on canvas and aluminum 10' x 86' (detail)

Rosenquist began painting F-111 in 1964, in the middle of the Vietnam War. Main subject, the F-111 military plane, which was in development at the time, flies through fragmented images of consumer products and references to war. Through its expansive network of colliding visual motifs, F-111 addresses connections between the Vietnam War, income taxes, consumerism, and advertising.

NIKI DE SAINT-PHALLE, Black Venus, 1965-1967. Painted polyester, 9' 2" high

Saint-Phalle is usually classified as a Pop Art sculptor - works reminiscent of dolls and folk art. Nanas - oversized, brightly colored sculptures that are feminist commentaries on popular stereotypes of female beauty.

RICHARD SERRA, Tilted Arc, 1981. Jacob K. Javits Federal Plaza, NYC, 1981.

San Franciscan Serra worked in steel mills in CA before studying art at Yale. In 1979, commission from General Services Administration (GSA), federal agency which oversees selection and installation of artworks for government buildings, to install 120' long, 12' high curved wall of Cor-Ten steel in NYC plaza. Serra,"dislocate or alter the decorative function of the plaza . . . bring people into the sculpture's context." Public complained: interrupted traffic flow, ugly, attracted graffiti, interfered with view across plaza, prevented plaza use for performances. GSA held public hearings, decided to remove, despite approving model. Raised issues of public reception of experimental art, artist's responsibilities and right when executing public commissions, censorship, and purpose of public art. Avant-garde's function was to challenge convention, reject tradition, disrupt complacency of viewer. Serra sued federal government, "artist's work must be uncensored . . ." He lost the case and GSA changed procedures and now solicits input from cibic and neighborhood groups before commissioning public artwork.

SHEPARD FAIREY, OBAMA 13" x 19" Campaign 2008

Symbolizes historic campaign of President Obama - permanent home at the National Portrait Gallery. Los Angeles artist Shepard Fairey (RISD graduate), came to the museum through the generosity of Washington, D.C., art collectors Heather and Tony Podesta. Fairey's large-scale, mixed-media stenciled collage was the central portrait image for the Obama campaign and was previously distributed as a limited-edition print and as a free download. The collage was on view at the Portrait Gallery on Inauguration Day. Fairey's works are in the collections of the MOMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

FAITH RINGGOLD, Tar Beach (Part I from the Woman on a Bridge series)1988. Acrylic on canvas with fabric borders, quilted, 6' 3" x 5' 9".

Tar Beach, the first quilt in lighthearted series, Women on a Bridge, depicts the fantasies of its spirited heroine and narrator Cassie Louise Lightfoot, who, on a summer night in Harlem, flies over the George Washington Bridge. "Sleeping on Tar Beach was magical . . ." explains Cassie in the text on the quilt, "only eight years old and in the third grade and I can fly. That means I am free to go wherever I want to for the rest of my life." This flight symbolizes the potential for freedom and self-possession. Ringgold states, "My women, are actually flying; they are just free, totally. They take their liberation by confronting this huge masculine icon—the bridge."

Postwar Expressionism in Europe (no picture)

The horrors of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki along with the 6 million Jews that died at the hands of the Nazis resulted in pervasive sense of despair, disillusionment, skepticism. Existentialism, a philosophy asserting the absurdity of existence and impossibility of achieving certitude. The roots go back to Danish theologian, Kierkegaard - universe is paradoxical, and the greatest paradox is the transcendent union of God and humans in the person of Jesus Christ. However, according to French author Sartre, Swiss artist Giacometti's friend, people are "condemned to be free." If God does not exist, individuals struggle in isolation with anguish of making decisions in a world with no absolute values. "We are left alone, without excuse." Despair and pessimism - brutality or roughness of art reflects artist's state of mind and larger culture. Sartre saw Giacometti's sculptures as the epitome of existentialist humanity (although the artist never claimed this). Sense of isolation and fragility.

Postmodern Architecture (no picture)

The restrictiveness, impersonality, and sterility combined with the apparent lack of responsiveness to the unique character of the cities and neighborhoods of modernist architecture ushered in postmodernism. Not a unified style. Terms used to describe include pluralism, complexity, and eclecticism. Modernist program was reductive; postmodern vocabulary of 1970s and 1980s was expansive and inclusive. Jane Jacobs' the Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961 and Robert Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, 1966 argued that uniformity and anonymity of modernist architecture (particularly the corporate skyscrapers) were unsuited to human and social interaction and that diversity is the great advantage of urban life. Postmodern architecture incorporates traditional architectural references as well as references to mass culture and popular imagery.

NAM JUNE PAIK, Video still from Global Groove, 1973. Color videotape, sound, 30 minutes.

Video Relatively inexpensive portable video recorders allowed artists to explore expressive capability of new technology. Viewers of TV/video not aware of glass surface, as with Renaissance art, they concentrate on image and look into the "space" like a window. Korean Nam June Paik, inspired by John Cage, studied music performance, art history, Eastern philosophy, relocated to NYC in 1965, acquired 1st inexpensive video recorder; recorded everything out window of his cab on his return trip home. Grant permitted collaboration of Paik and Japanese engineer-inventor Shuya Abe to develop video synthesizer - stretch, shrink, change color, break up, layer, inset, merge images. "Time collage," kaleidoscopic "physical music" - music background enabled Paik to understand time better than trained visual artists. Global Groove combined female tap dancers, poet Allen Ginsberg, cello performance by Fluxus artist using man's back as instrument, Japanese Pepsi commercials, Korean drummers, Living Theater Group.

BILL VIOLA, The Crossing, 1996. Video/sound installation with 2 channels of color video projection onto screens 16' high.

Video installations focus on sensory perception - heighten viewers' awareness of senses, suggest exploration into spiritual realm. Majored in art and music at Syracuse University, after graduation seriously studied Buddhist, Christian, Sufi, and Zen mysticism. Believes in art's transformative power, spiritual view of human nature, encourages spectator introspection. Uses extreme slow motion, contrasts in scale, shifts in focus, mirrored reflections, staccato editing, multiple or layered screens for dramatic effects. 2 companion videos shown simultaneously on 2 screens (front and back or separate) a man in darkness appear, moves closer until he fills screen. On one screen, drops of water fall on head, on the other a small fire breaks out at feet. Water and fire increase in intensity until man disappears and everything fades into darkness.