FINAL title only

Five Stances for Domestic Defense 2013 Cole

(same artist but i can't find picture) -creates art out of iron -material of servitude -uses servitude item as defense to ward off danger posed by Western society -references slavery but creates monumental image -appropriating material of servitude and (domesticity and branding)----iron recalls a history of domesticity and submissiveness for black people in the USA because of slavery and because of past-slavery they were submissive -burns of iron into fabric recall branding, and damaging role of these submissive lifestyles -a call to arms (defense) ---protect yourself against the damages and the burns imposed on black people. -domestic defense: protecting yourself from pains inflicted upon you. these people have to defend themselves

Les Femmes du Maroc - The Grande Odalisque 2005 Essaydi Morocco/London

(same artist but i can't find picture) -reworks Classical orientalist paintings to claim agency -speaks with friends and hears their story, then creates image with actor that tells different story -everything painted in picture (calligraphy), difficult to decipher but interactive rather than one-sided viewing -other is speaking back to Colonial gaze -appropriating an Oriental/erotic painting that objectified otherness and gave it back to the people who it objectified -the Ingres was always seen as ridiculous because she's supposed to be oriental but she is white. this woman is actually a real woman from that part of the world

Lawyer 1920-1928 Onabolu Nigeria

(same artist but i can't find picture) Onabolu's Nude---aware of Picasso's Demoiselles, attempted to insert himself into the art world (passions/institutions producing and consuming art in Europe), travelled to Europe to study art, pushed colonial authorities to establish a school in Nigeria -an attempt to learn craft, had same capacity as West to produce -he was into proving that Nigerian artists can match up to Western standards of art -only important white people got these kinds of portraits, so he does one of an important black person -he tries to elevate black culture to the same level as Western culture -totally failed because at this time the Western world was into abstraction and what not :/

Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas 1963 Ruscha Los Angeles

-10 feet wide -captures gas station based on photograph he took -dirty smelly unglamorous gas station becomes sanitized and glamorized -low viewpoint (we look up at it as if it's projected onto a movie screen) -no visible brush stroke (smooth/precise erasure of gesture) -vanishing point --> diagonal in the distance -looks like an advertisement -Ruscha created his own image, proclaimed his heterosexuality n Art Forum, other name Eddie Russia both Warhol and Ruscha used pop culture images, promoted a public image, used language of advertisement Warhol used film imagery (Hollywood perspective) Ruscha (outside Hollywood) showed how pizazz could change things -West Coast version of Pop art in an environment famously saturated with fanciful commercial imagery and the glamorous artifice of the movie industry -challenged hierarchies of fine art by portraying the products and bastions of American commerce with a specific concentration on signage in advertising.

The Great City of Tenochtitlan 1945 Rivera Mexico City, Mexico

-FDR's New Deal works projects inspired by Mexico -didactic, uses image of indigenous past as usable for future -elite in background (tiny) -shows people bartering in the market; everyday Aztecs -in the national palace of mexico city -mural (towards Mexican art) -jam packs pigures -people centered -true figures/landscape -huge! -created identity -rejected salon paintings; painting for the people, not individuals, in public spaces -monumental art important, trying to break from Spanish -didactic scenes to show history, lo nuestro -didactic image; celebrates indigenous past -during the period when Mexico was trying to take back its history -idealization of common folk -let's be great like them! -huge mural

Composition with Yellow, Red, and Blue 1927 Mondrian

-a solution to the problem of abstraction is to solve it -tests resilience/capaciousness of this language in contradiction to surrealism -extension of purist mentality fount in O'Keefe's clean City Night -Mondrian encountered Cubism on a trip to Paris in 1912, where he began to abstract animals, trees, and landscapes, searching for their "essential" form. After his return to the Netherlands, he met Theo van Doesburg who in 1917 started a magazine named De Stijl (the style) -Van Doesburg argued that beauty took two distinct forms: sensual or subjective beauty, and a higher, rational, and universal beauty. He challenged De Stijl artists to aspire to universal beauty. Mondrian sought to accomplish this by eliminating everything sensual or subjective from his paintings -he also followed MHJ Schoenmaekers' ideas about Theosophy, as expressed in his 1915 book New Image of the World: ---Schoenmakers argued that an inner visual construction of nature consisted of a balance between opposing forces, such as heat and cold, male and female, order and disorder, and that artists might represent this inner construction in abstract paintings by using only horizontal and vertical lines and primary colors -Mondrian's later paintings are visual embodiments of both Schoenmaekers' theory and De Stijl's artistic ideas -Composition with yellow, red, and blue, for example: -----Mondrian uses three primary colors (red, yellow, and blue), three neutrals (white, gray, and black), and a grid of horizontal and vertical lines in his search for the essence of higher beauty and the balance of forces -Mondrian's opposing lines and colors balance a harmony of opposites that he called a dynamic equilibrium, and which he achieved by carefully plotting an arrangement of colors, shapes, and visual weights grouped asymmetrically around the edges of a canvas, with the center acting as a black white fulcrum. -Mondrian hoped that De Stijl would have applications in the real world by creating an entirely new visual environment for living, designed according to the rules of a "universal beauty" that, when perfectly balanced, would bring equilibrium and purity to the world. Mondrian said that he hoped to be the world's last artist, because, while art brought humanity to everyday life, when "universal beauty" unified all aspects of life, there would no longer be a need for art-----cleaning up after WWI -after WWI there is no more subjective beauty---nothing except the universal to base your art off of

Robie House 1906-1909 Wright Chicago

-another strain of modern architecture -broken up/stretched out -form follows function (student of Sullivan's) - he asks, "what is the essence o this architecture?" ------suburban home; shelter/centrality -enlarges chimney (hearth/center), roof (shelter) -on prairie (America) ---> horizontality -extremely important connection to nature -----abstract spatialization of prairie -spent five years with Louis Sullivan's firm (form follows function) -Prairie style: low horizontal houses with flat roofs and heavy overhangs that echoed the flat plains of the prairie in the Midwest (connection to nature) -central chimney, above a fireplace that radiated heat throughout the house in the bitter Chicago winter, forms the center of the sprawling design -low, flat overhanging roofs, dramatically cantilevered on both sides of the chimney, shade against the summer sun, and open porches provide places to sleep outside in cool summer nights. -low bands of windows, many with stained glass, surround the house, creating a colored screen between the interior and the outside world, while also inviting those inside to look through the windows into the garden beyond -main story is one long space divided into living and dining areas by a free-standing fireplace -no dividing walls (Wright had seen architecture from Japan at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and was deeply influenced by the aesthetics and sense of space an screen like windows) -He hid heating and lighting fixtures when possible -designed and arranged the furniture for his interiors Wright had an uneasy relationship with European Modernist architecture; he was uninterested in the machine aesthetics of Le Corbusier. Although he routinely used new building material such as ferroconcrete, plate glass, and steel, he sought to maintain a natural sensibility, connecting his buildings to their sites by using brick and local wood or stone. (Think of Falling Water)----very site specific the opposite of Le Corbusier's universal architecture

Vanna Venturi House 1961-1964 Venturi Chestnut Hill, PA

-building modern, thin facade, uses mass produce parts (windows) -but has recognizable symbolism ----rectangle with pitched roof, chimney in middle, arch over door, windows on sides (like how a child draws a house) -interested in complexity, both modern and traditional, square/strip windows, heavy gabled roof, but its split -beyond simplification (post-modern) -appropriation of symbols, both modern and traditional -1970s, architects began to move away from sleek glass and steel boxes of International Style and reintroduce quotations from past styles into their designs -Architectural historians trace the origins of this new Postmodern style to the work of Jane Jacobs and Robert Venturi, who rejected the abstract purity of the International Style by incorporating elements drawn from vernacular (popular, common, ordinary) sources into his designs -Venturi said "Less is a bore" instead of "Less is more" -Accused modernist architects of ignoring human needs in their quest for uniformity, purity, and abstraction, and challenged Postmodernism to address the complex, contradictory, and heterogeneous mixture of "high" and "low" architecture that comprised the modern city. Venturi encouraged new architecture to embrace eclecticism and he introduced references to past architectural styles into his own designs and began to apply decoration to his buildings -his treatise: Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966) written as he designed a home for his mother (Vanna Venturi) that put many of his new ideas into practice -shape of the facade returns to the traditional Western house shape that modernists had rejected because of its cliched historical associations -Venturi's vocabulary of triangles and squares is arranged in a playful asymmetry that skews the staid harmonies of Modernist design, while the curved moldings are a purely decorative flourish—heretical in the strict tenets of the International Style -But the most disruptive element of the facade is the deep cleavage over the door, which opens to reveal a mysterious upper wall and chimney top -The interior is also complex and contradictory. The irregular floor plan, including an odd stairway leading up to the second floor, is further complicated by irregular ceiling levels that are partially covered by a barrel vault.

Untitled (Mirror Cube) 1965-1971 Morris New York

-connotes reductive, rejected by the artists -called attention to the body in space -paired down geometric forms characteristics: -seriality/series (identical units) -non-hierarchical (equal units) -no pedestal (would isolate work; directly on floor/wall, part of viewer's space) -scale: large -industrial materials -removal of artist's hand (artists ordered the work; didn't make them) -use of pre-fabricated materials/removal of hand like Duchamp's fountain -removed suggestion of self-expression -----this is a built box -viewer is important; we are important to give meaning, peaks bodily awareness while engaging w/ objects -rhetoric: while objects are paired down, there is effusive writing associated with the movement Morris' Notes of Sculpture---display effects art cubes reflect environment (mirror) and become a part of it -we see site within the object (mirror), bodily experience in space itself -complex and shifting interactions as we walk -sought to dematerialize art object -rejects traditional means of art -no pedestals -your experience creates meaning -aware of art and your body (space) -non-hierarchical -large -seriality of repetition -industrial materials, invisible artist -artists are writing a lot about work In the same decade when Pop artists critiqued the visual world of popular culture, other artists questioned the role, purpose, and relevance of the art object in contemporary culture. Their restlessness parallels the social upheaval that marked the era of the mid-1960s and early 1970s. During this period, the youth of Europe and America questioned the authority and rights of the state with civil rights movements, massive rallies against the draft, and the Vietnam War, environmentalist and feminist movements, and the Paris revolts of 1968. Women artists made their presence felt in large numbers, and increasingly artists made art that meant to be viewed outside the gallery system. The decade ended with a move toward noncom modifiable and "dematerialized" art. -Minimalism, which dominated the NYC scene in the late 60s, sought the dematerialization of the art object. A group of young sculptors proposed what was variously called ABC Art, Primary Structures, or Minimalism. They produced slab or boxlike structures, frequently fabricated for them from industrial materials such as Plexiglas, fluorescent lighting, steel, and mirrors, totally rejecting the gesture and emotion invested in the handcrafted object as well as the traditional materials of sculpture. Judd and Morris described their theories eloquently in the journal Artforum by asking viewers to comprehend their art objects as united wholes without a focal point, allowing the energy of the work and the viewers' interest to be dissipated throughout the object in a kind of entropy. -By the early 1970s, Robert Morris chose to explore the banal and uninteresting by making simple, unitary objects. Groups four wooden cubes created from industrial mirror glass. They literally reflect and develop any attempt to discover interest in the boxes themselves, which hold no meaning within their form. Their is no point of focus; instead the boxes reflect the world around them. The artfulness of this piece lies almost entirely in the artistic concept behind it---interrogating the purposes and goals of the artist. The artists' manifestos worked hand-in-hand with actual objects to communicate the ideas of Minimalism. Viewers had to work hard to learn how to read, understand and appreciate the art itself. One critic said that like Pop art, Minimalism worked hard for attention but couldn't hold that attention for long, therefore it became boring very quickly.

Dancing Girls 1947 Enwonwu Nigeria

-didn't care about demonstrating equality (like Onabolu, his teacher) -rather, cared about Negritude, a protest against assimilation, a celebration of blackness -stylized African girls informed by rhythm, awareness of body (rather thank mind, like in the West and as seen in Onabolu's Lawyer) -style not particularly traditional -he's not trying to copy anything, but rather trying to create an authentic, individual style -modern in Africa: had to define themselves in relation to colonial power ----colonial experience: exclusion and assimilation (caught in between) -modern based on European art, nothing else -modern in Africa after break with colonial tradition -negritude: celebration of blackness, actively demonstrating difference

Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery Through Reconstruction 1934 Douglas New York

-historical mural of relevant issue---like Picasso's Guernica -at NYC public library in Harlem -depicts trajectories of Africans from Africa--> USA cities -rhythm, music, dance in primitivistic fashion in Africa -silhouettes to show a people's story -portrayal of history, and not just the good stuff (both Klan and happiness) -silhouettes signify African-American art -Harlem Renaissance---trying to create unique African identity in America -objective persona of history painting-->subjective creation of black aesthetic -moved from Topeka, KS to NYC in 1925. Developed a collage silhouette style that owes much to African art and had a lasting impact on later African-American artists -painted for NYC library in Harlem, sponsored by the Depression era Public Works of Art Project -to the right, slaves are celebrating the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation from which radiate concentric circles of light. -At the center, an orator gestures dramatically, pointing to the United States Capitol in the background, as if to urge all African Americans, some of whom are still picking cotton in the foreground, to exercise their right to vote -To the left, Union soldiers leave the South after Reconstruction, while KKK members, hooded and on horseback, charge in, reminding viewers that the fight for civil rights has only just begun. -Harlem Renaissance: ---1930s hundreds of thousands of African Americans migrated from the rural, mostly agricultural South to the urban industrial North to escape racial oppression and find greater social and economic opportunities. -Great Migration prompted the formation of the nationwide New Negro movement and the Harlem Renaissance in NYC, which called for greater social and political activism among African-Americans.

New York 1913 Weber

-immediate reaction to Duchamp's Nude... -some sense of progression: borrows abstraction from Duchamp -tension between stasis and movement, almost cinematic marching of skyscraper (city seen to by constantly moving spectacle and phenomenon) -serpent-like figure is the newly embedded NYC subway system -new hustle and bustle of the city...new hustle in bustle in painting. form and content agree in that -explosion of modernity/skyscrapers and what not! NYC becomes center of art instead of Paris -vibrancy and sense of innovation---brand new overhead subway system, Brooklyn bridge. All about technology and industry. Weber's painting New York generated a flurry of media attention when it was first exhibited in London shortly after it had been painted in 1913. It brought international attention to Weber for the first time as one of American's foremost modern artists and was his breakthrough into a compelling and forcefully personal mode of modernist painting integrating the elements of Cubism and Futurism with American subjects and themes. For Weber, New York represented the city of ambition, the quintessential, ever changing modern arena. Billowing clouds of smoke and swirling patterns of wind in Weber's painting express the city's dynamism pulsating with power and energy made possible by innovative technology

Fountain 1917 Duchamp

-meant to negate everything up until now -movement/development in the early 20th century to build on tradition -this was an attempt to place in an exhibition a readymade urinal, titled "Fountain" -Duchamp came to America in 1915 after Nude Descending...was the riot of the armory show and Europe deemed unsuitable for avant-garde -he's in a place to make anti-art like this -Duchamp splits difference between two worlds---industrial manufacture (urinal) as art, acknowledges destruction of art (WWI) at play -rejected at the show that would accept anything, called the art world out on their close-mindedness -Fountain is a reaction against elitism of the art world -individual objects as sculpture -you can make anything look fancy -crude, not typical high art -subversion of meaning -making a functional object dysfunctional -signature "R. Mutt 1917) not Duchamp, doesn't have name of elite artist -he submitted this to a show that "would hang anything" ----->he's testing limits, critiquing excessive use of studio systems/art market...general sass/attitude Society of Independent Artists (in NYC, including Duchamp's urinal) ------->source of progress/innovation/optimism in USA, destruction in Europe -different from impressionism/post-impressionism, this was a response to art -change in medium, more international, these artists were writing manifestos/theories, were more communicative, things are more conceptual now -artists looking for alternative ways of art making ----->different groups, often politically driven...huge changes in the art world (forebears of post-modernism in a way)

Two Fridas 1939 Kahlo

-mestizaje (mixed heritage) -creates a self-portrait reflecting on mixed heritage -a nationalist, she prioritized indigenous heritage but doesn't disassociate herself from European intellectualism -made in dialogue with European surrealism -similar to european portraiture -personal -surrealist -highlights indigenous past -impossible -painter literally beside herself, split into urban and rural, virginal and earthy, and European and mestizo identities---a shared circulatory system links the two parts -format appropriates the composition and directness of 19th century marriage portraits by provincial painters, just then being discovered by artists and collectors -As in many of Kahlo's works, clothing is a crucial marker of identity, but the artist was no anthropological purist: she mixed and matched costumes from her collection as part of a theatrical performance in which she played many roles, but never presumed actual indigenous identity (most of her costumes resulted from mestizaje). -Although she was not the first or only urban Mexican woman to wear ancient jade beads or folk dresses, Kahlo was more flamboyant than most, perhaps to conceal her middle-class urban origins, and the fact that she was half German -Once rather

Villa Savoye 1928-1931 Le Corbusier France

-one response to the end of the war was a strategy of purism -in wake of trauma, tendency to cleanse form, purity of arrangement,not dirty (like analytic cubism) -objects as pure form---what made a painting beautiful -country house, abstract, simple, no ornamentation -interested in systematizing architecture, cleaning it up 1. building should be raised on point supports 2. flat roof 3. open plan 4. free facade 5. strip windows -not rooted in a particular culture -separated from the ground, could be anywhere -more like a platform for viewing/enjoying nature than a natural building 1920s: modern material, frame structure, open space (internal and external), lightness/transparency, abstraction (simplification/non-representational), desire to break from past -this is avant garde architecture, marginal -Most important French Modernist architect -established several important precepts followed for next 50 years -private home outside Paris became an icon of the International Style -reflects Purist ideals in its geometric design and avoidance of ornamentation -also one of the best expressions of Le Corbusier's domino construction system, first elaborated in 1914 in which slabs of ferroconcrete (concrete reinforced with steel bars) rest on six free-standing steel posts, placed at the positions of the six dots on a domino playing piece. in 1926 published "The Five Points of a New Architecture" -raising houses above the ground on pilotis (free-standing posts) -using flat roofs as terraces -using movable partition walls slotted between supports on interior and curtain walls (nonfood bearing walls on the exterior to allow greater design flexibility -ribbon windows (run the length of the wall) -"A machine for living in" meaning that it was designed as rationally and functionally as an automobile. After WWI, like his fellow Modern Architects, Le Corbusier also developed designs for mass-produced standardized housing to help rebuild Europe's destroyed infrastructure.

Improvisation 1928 (Second Version) 1912 Kandinsky

-organic, modeled after nature in armory show While working Throughout his work prior to World War I, Kandinsky became increasingly interested in abstraction and the spiritual in art. Improvisation 28 displays an apocalyptic scene, featuring cataclysmic events on the right, and the blue rider moving up the mountain toward spiritual salvation on the left. -Kandinsky part of Blue Rider group (expressionism) -brings up Greeks to say that Classical form is irrelevant -concerns of today are different, abstract forms ---> emotions -each period creates an art of its own that can't be repeated -past incapable of expressing spirit of today, disapproved of traditional motifs, will to express something modern -emotion, not form, gets point across, "renouncing external forms"---> spiritual/emotional are primary, like for the primitivists -renounces recognizable forms, towards abstraction, Kandinsky hopes to achieve a spiritual force through this -inspired by Schoenberg's atonal, arhythmic music--->also unrecognizable -primordial sense of emotion, sense of unsophistication

Hernan Cortes and Malinche 1926 Orozco Mexico City, Mexico

-pessimistic, reminder that process of becoming a people hasn't been easy -paints story of Mexico in chaotic fragments, and this is one of them -Malinche was Cortes' interpreter, helps overthrow Mexico's empire -shows destructive forces of Adam and Eve gave birth to Mexico -Orzoco also grappled with the theme of mestizaje and the Conquest in his rendition of Cortes and Malinche who dominate a sloping ceiling of the main staircase in a school -their nudity not only reinforced the parallel to Adam and Eve, but also allowed the artist to highlight differences in skin tone, pointedly clear in their overlapping forms -gendered construction of race -naked figure below them is surely a dead indigenous person -Orozco viewed the Conquest as an inevitable if brutal advance towards cultural assimilation; he never idealized Mexico's indigenous populations, past or present -Compared to Rivera's, Orozco's compositions include fewer figures, a narrower range of colors, and are rendered with broad energetic strokes. Though there is some visual evidence he was familiar with German Expressionism, Orozco's style was mainly the result of his desire to heighten drama rather than provide detailed information. it might also be party due to the difficulty of creating murals with just one hand -Ambiguous messages of many of his panels reflect his brief adoption of anarchist ideas during the Revolution, but even more so his lifelong distrust of ideology.

Nature Symbolized No. 2 1911 Dove

-pre-armory show, pre-Duchamp attitude in American painting -so America was already in an abstract place, but much more focused on nature than motion -Nature Symbolized No. 2 is one a series of small works by the artist that reveal his beliefs about the spiritual power of nature. Dove's abstract paintings reflect his experience of nature through his array of natural leaf-like forms. -one of the most significant early American modernists was Arthur Dove---studied work of Fauves in Europe and he even exhibited at the Autumn Salon. He returned home and began painting abstract nature studies about the same time as Kandinsky, although each was unaware of the other -Dove's Nature Symbolized no. 2 is one of a remarkable series of small works that reveals his beliefs about the spiritual power of nature. But while Kandinsky's art focuses on an inner vision of nature, Dove's abstract paintings reflect his deeply felt experience of the landscape itself, saying that he had "no [artistic] background except perhaps the woods, running streams, hunting, fishing, camping, the sky." Dove supported himself by farming in rural CT, but he exhibited his art in NYC and was well received by and well connected to the NYC art community.

Birth of Liquid Desires 1932 Dalí

-precission-ism is too easy a remedy to the chaos of the war -surrealism devoted to surfacing the subconscious, wanting to unleash chaos of it, response to Freudian version of subconscious where everything is neat, bourgeois, and categorical -this painting is a narrative exposure of a dream state -other surrealist: Oppenheim's Fur Lined Tea Cup ---nth degree incomprehensibility/irrationality; the machine that is meant to facilitate everyday is turned upside down surrealism: beyond realism in manifesto: psychic automatism to express thoughts, lack of reason, retreat from reality, desire w/out being filtered through social/academic conventions -subconscious as source of creativity/authenticity -saw society as oppressive, sought to free selves -influenced by Freud and African Art (what's natural) -something familiar, yet still disconnected from reality (cheese-like form, defiance of gravity) -strong use of color, bold colors and shapes -color makes biomorphic forms more prominent -collapse in belief of progress (w/ WWI, maybe we're collapsing, therefore break in rationality) -paintings of Dali include more recognizable forms and figures than lots most surrealism/automatism, but they also reveal the visual wonders of a subconscious mind running wild. -He trained at the Fine Arts Academy in Madrid and mastered the traditional methods of illusionistic representation and traveled to Paris in 1928 where he met the surrealists. Dalis contribution to surrealist theory was the paranoid-critical method, in which he cultivated the paranoid's ability to misread, mangle, and misconstrue ordinary appearances, thus liberating himself from the shackles of conventional rational thought. he painted what he imagined -Dali's paintings focus on violence, sexuality, and putrefacition -in birth of liquid desires, we see a large yellow biomorphic form ---(an organic shape resembling a living organism)--looking like a monster's face, a painter's palette, or a woman's body--that serves as the backdrop for four figures -A woman in white embraces a hermaphroditic figure who stands with one foot in a bowl that is being filled with liquid by a third figure, partially hidden, while a fourth figure enters a cavernous hole to the left. A thick black cloud above the scene poses a question: "Consign: to waste the total slate?" Dali claims that he simply painted what his paranoid-critical mind had conjured up in his nightmares. Dallas images are thus, as Breton advocated, the true process of thought, free from the exercise of reason and from any aesthetic or moral purpose. They defy rational interpretation although they trigger fear, anxiety, and even regression in our empathetic minds.

Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California 1936 Lange

-realists struggling with avant garde -hyper-intensely real but learning from abstraction/psychologically minded art -inter-locking system of limbs, bodies, heads -children turned around while mother is present -modern sense of relational politics, ultimate nth degree degradation present/seemingly real approximations of world shot through w/ facets of uncanny, re-thinking any kind of terrain of safety embedded in aesthetics to build support for Federal assistance in Rural America, the Resettlement Agency (RA) and Farm Security Administration (FSA) hired photographers to document the effects of the Depression across the country -shows Florence Owens Thomas, a 32 year old mother of 7 children, a representative of poverty suffered by thousands of migrant workers in California. -Lange carefully constructed her photograph to tug at the heartstrings. -She zooms in very close to the subject focusing on the mother's worn expression and apparent resolve. -The composition may remind viewers of the images of the Virgin Mary holding Child Jesus, or perhaps sorrowful scenes in which Mary contemplates his loss -Lange chose to eliminate from this photograph the makeshift tent in which the family is camped, the dirty dishes on a battered trunk, trash strewn across the campsite, and most significant, Thompson's teenage daughter -Lange decided to focus here on the purity and moral worth of her subject, for whom she sought Federal aid---she could not allude to the fact that Thompson had been a teenage mother, or even that she was a Cherokee. -Migrant Mother became the poster child of the Depression, and her powerfully sad distant gaze still resonates with audiences today The Federal Art Project paid a generous average salary of about 20 a week to painters and sculptures to devote themselves to art. NYC painters, in particular, developed a group identity meeting in Greenwich Village to discuss art. The FAP thus provided the financial grounds on which NYC artists built a sense of community, a community that would produce Abstract Expressionism, and that allowed NYC to supersede Paris as the center of the world of Modern Art

Struggle Between Life and Death 1962 Emokpae Nigeria

-rebellion against political language -adopted minimalism and abstraction -symmetry -human hands -has a purpose beyond deconstruction (unlike Mondrian) postcolonialism -basic shapes and stark colors of minimalism -but not minimalist because the colors aren't pure, the lines aren't exact -going along with Western movements and re-interpreting them in a Western context -very universal---not expressing black-ness and what not -overlap between races---inclusion/exclusion thing is dumb we have a complicated history!!!!!

Darkytown Rebellion 2001 Walker

-she goes ito US history/deep south and confronts viewer with scenes of slavery -cut out figures on white background -scenes from children's book, but blatantly violent -cyclorama, providing sense of immediacy/totality -lack of identity (commodified persons) Walker makes some of the most challenging and provocative art made in USA today, hitting raw nerves, shocking and horrifying viewers. She cuts large-scale silhouettes of figures out of black construction paper, waxing them to the walls of galleries, and illuminating them with projected light. In Darkytown Rebellion, she shows a slave revolt and massacre by covering the walls of the gallery with her black-silhouetted figures to tell an unfolding tale of horror. The room swirls with beautifully colored white, black, pink, green, blue, and yellow projected lights and shadows that dance on the walls. As we walk around the space looking at the figures, we step in front of the projector, casting our own shadows on the walls, placing us uncomfortably close to or actually within the narrative itself. Walker's stories are drawn variously from slave narratives, minstrel shows, advertising memorabilia, and even from Harlequin romance novels, blending fiction and fact to evoke a history of oppression and terrible violence. She does not balk at portraying unpleasant or painfully bodily functions, such as defecating, vomiting, and childbirth. Walker's characters are black and white stereotypes, even caricatures. She contrasts the tight, cramped features of her white people with the stereotypical black features of her African Americans. She ever refers to some of her characters as "****** wenches" or "pickaninnies." Walker plays on white fears of miscegenation and insecurities about racial purity. She pushes so far over the border of the acceptable that visiting one of her installations can be an uncomfortable and disturbing experience. Her figures disturb us intensely because of what they make us do. As silhouettes, they are all black, which means that we cannot identify their race by skin color. In order to read the narrative, however, we need to differentiate the characters by looking for other visual markers of race, making us draw upon an entire history of ugly stereotypes in the process. We are forced to examine the figures for thin or big lips flat or frizzy hair, elegant or raggedy clothes. In this way Walker catches us in racist acts, making clear that she is speaking to us personally, not to some theoretical racist, and that racism is neither theoretical nor a thing of the past. As Walker has said, "it's interesting that as soon as you start telling the story of racism you start reliving it." Walker shows us that identity is not nearly as clear-cut in the early 21st century as we would like to think. We are all complicated beings, constantly negotiating and renegotiating our place in the world, changing and reinventing ourselves. Kara Walker's art is not pleasant, but it changes us by altering our perception of the world. It reminds us that the works of visual artists-past and present and future--has the power to reveal things about the time and place in which they were created, but also about the world we now inhabit, in ways that are beyond the reach of any other form of communication.

Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps 2005 Wiley

-shows hyper-realism---light seems ridiculous with backdrop -by using grand style, Wiley attempts to insert himself into Western canon -flips it on its head: makes it seem pompous and over the top

Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 1912 Duchamp

-this was during a revolutionary time for art -more changed between Large Bathers and Ma Jolie than between School of Athens and Large Bathers -activates canvas/figure of Picasso's Ma Jolie (which was a still life) -further subverts the traditional painting of forms and norms---this subversion had been going on before -in the USA, there was this game of catch-up with Europe in the art world -it came to a head with the Armory Show in NYC in 1913 -most sensational, widest, deepest spread of international modern art the USA had ever seen (~1500 works; huge!!) -Nude...was the most subversive, ridiculed, caricatured, sensationalized, learned-from at the show -before the show it was even rejected by cubists as too futurist -immediately taken by Max Weber -from wikipedia: The work, an oil painting on canvas with dimensions of 147 cm × 89.2 cm (57.9 in × 35.1 in) in portrait, seemingly depicts a figure demonstrating an abstract movement in its ochres and browns. The discernible "body parts" of the figure are composed of nested, conical and cylindrical abstract elements, assembled together in such a way as to suggest rhythm and convey the movement of the figure merging into itself. Dark outlines limit the contours of the body while serving as motion lines that emphasize the dynamics of the moving figure, while the accented arcs of the dotted lines seem to suggest a thrusting pelvic motion. The movement seems to be rotated counterclockwise from the upper left to the lower right corner, where the gradient of the apparently frozen sequence corresponding to the bottom right to top left dark, respectively, becomes more transparent, the fading of which is apparently intended to simulate the "older" section. At the edges of the picture, the steps are indicated in darker colors. The center of the image is an amalgam of light and dark, that becomes more piqued approaching the edges. The overall warm, monochrome bright palette ranges from yellow ochre to dark, almost black tones. The colors are translucent. At the bottom left Duchamp placed the title "NU DESCENDANT UN ESCALIER" in block letters, which may or may not be related to the work. The question of whether the figure represents a human body remains unanswered; the figure provides no clues to its age, individuality, character, or sex. Duchamp subsequently submitted the painting to the 1913 Armory Show in New York City where Americans, accustomed to naturalistic art, were scandalized. The painting, exhibited in the 'Cubist room', was submitted with the title Nu descendant un escalier,[17] was listed in the catalogue (no. 241) with the French title.[18] A postcard printed for the occasion showed the painting for the first time with the English translation Nude Descending a Staircase.[19] Julian Street, an art critic for the New York Times wrote that the work resembled "an explosion in a shingle factory," and cartoonists satirized the piece. It spawned dozens of parodies in the years that followed.[20] A work entitled Food Descending a Staircase was exhibited at a show parodying the most outrageous works at the Armory, running concurrently with the show at The Lighthouse School for the Blind. In American Art News, there were prizes offered to anyone who could find the nude.[21] After attending the Armory Show and seeing Marcel Duchamp's nude, President Theodore Roosevelt wrote (using his own, also valid translation): "Take the picture which for some reason is called 'A Naked Man Going Down Stairs'. There is in my bathroom a really good Navajo rug which, on any proper interpretation of the Cubist theory, is a far more satisfactory and decorative picture. Now, if, for some inscrutable reason, it suited somebody to call this rug a picture of, say, 'A Well-Dressed Man Going Up a Ladder', the name would fit the facts just about as well as in the case of the Cubist picture of the 'Naked Man Going Down Stairs'. From the standpoint of terminology each name would have whatever merit inheres in a rather cheap straining after effect; and from the standpoint of decorative value, of sincerity, and of artistic merit, the Navajo rug is infinitely ahead of the picture."[22][23]

MIT Chapel 1956 Saarinen Cambridge, MA

-traditional load-bearing brick building -alludes simultaneously to a long lineage of circular tons, temples,and chapels, to the curves of the baroque, and to the undulating walls of Baker House (dorm) -search here was for a way to produce a powerful psychological effect through the theatrical introduction of natural light into a darkened interior---as it had been for Bernini in his church interiors. This was about phenomenology, not technology -from past----bricks, steeple, arches (but new uses!!) -stained glass in entrance mimicked brick ---> references light in Gothic church -cylinder/circular---sense of inclusiveness (for all religions) -space that can be transformed ----still meant to come across as a sacred space ----light from above ----natural light w/out windows ----closed sacred space with natural light (openness) ----not-intimidating (isn't very hierarchical) -------not scary like Gothic church -connection to his glass dome----they look very different. In the 1950s, Saarinen isn't thinking about site, use context, ----spirituality has roots in tradition therefore it includes references

Liberation of Aunt Jemima 1972 Saar

-trophy---like hung in grand room in room of hunters, lynching, memory, trauma, roots=identity -subordination, trauma, identity, African American experience, consumerism -baby (white) and domestic clothing---cotton at bottom (subordination) -has a broom and a shotgun----and a black fist!!!blackpower!!anger isn't enough, but rather action, too (trample on cotton, hold a gun, etc.)

Dusasa I 2007 El Anatsui Nigeria

Ghana --> Nigeria member of Nigeri Nsukka school (tried to establish nat'l visual language) -worked in Nsukka mindset, Ghanian uli style adinkra -- symbols from Ghana to communicate w/ proverbs -later became interested in discarded materials (found objects) -stitched tin cans together to create changing forms intersted in malleability of form -metal tapestries (fluidity and malleability) of form and identity -huge installation in different contexts -changing cultural identity -beauty and size of works -reference to khente cloth in making tapestries, flattens and stitches bottle caps with wire -massive -flows, different angles --> different understandings, purely subjective experience -recycled bottle caps ----something discarded---> beauty -specific globalization (of Western brand names) -objects of consumerism -liquor bottles (destruction/corruption of society) -subversions of 4-cornered canvas, cave paintings are natural!! -consciously breaks 2-d flat surface -interested in malleability of forms and identity -references kente cloth; uses heavy material to convey a sense of elegance and lightness -cultural identity changes in different contexts -nothing is so simple---there's no black and white----impermanence and change

Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) 1950 Pollock New York

WWII had destroyed Europe -profound sense of alienation after WWII -non-referential -brush-strokes/gesture of artist is evident (action painting/record of artist) -huge oil on canvas, entire field of vision engulfed -one of his canonical "drip" paintings--used cheap, industrial paint (easier to fling) -physically involved painting -no top or bottom, an allover composition -mimicked automatism (drawing w/out conscious attempt) -Pollock is incredibly conscious, though, but appears automatic -brush stroke became really important as popular form of expression, ----no one could paint happy, normal figures anymore after WWII all about composition (paint) not about figure of human, but represents action of artists -deeply deliberate (mimics automatism but is highly balanced and well thought out) -concentration on rhythm/form -brush stroke primary form of expression -lacks figures, rejected finished look of art pre WWII -knew Jung's theory that visual images had the ability to tap into the primordial consciousness of viewers -Pollock pushed beyond Surrealist strategy of automatic painting by placing unstretched raw canvas on the floor, throwing/dripping/dribbling paint onto it to create abstract networks of overlapping lines as it fell---action painting The canvas was an arena in which to act rather than a space in which to reproduce, redesign, analyze, or express an object actual or imagined. -he saw paint as labyrinths that led viewers along complex paths and into an organic calligraphic web of natural and biomorphic forms. Pollock's compositions lack hierarchical arrangement, contain multiple moving focal points, and deny any perspectival space. Yet, as the paint travels around the canvas, it never escapes the edges. There is a top and a bottom. Like a coiled spring, the self-contained painting bursts with anxious energy, ready to explode at any moment. -Drew on Jung's theory of collective unconscious. -His paintings communicate on a grand, Modern, primal level. He was creating for "the age of the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio."

Recumbent Figure 1938 Moore

other types of sensitivities to identity explorations in the face of political situations include Recumbent Figure -Moore part of Unit One---this group promoted the use of hand-crafted, surrealist-influenced biomorphic forms in sculpture -abstraction of female figure -influenced by primitivism -cavity in center brings to light the difference between solid and void---relates to surrealism (hole in center of body) -punctures sculptural abstractions obviously based on human form -trained at Leeds School of Art -African, Oceanic, and Pre-Columbian sculpture he saw at the British Museum had a more powerful impact on him than his academic training -He felt that artists beyond the Western tradition showed a greater respect for the inherent qualities of materials such as stone or wood than their Western counterparts -reclining female nude, massive simplified body refers to the chacmool---reclining human form in Toltec and Maya art. -Moore's sculpture also reveal his special sensitivity to inherent qualities of his stone, which he sought out in remote quarries, always insisting that each of his works be labeled with the specific kind of stone he had used. -While certain aspects of the human body are clearly described in this sculpture (head, breasts, supporting elbow, raised knee), others seem to flow together into an undulating mass suggestive of a hilly landscape. -cavity at the center inverts our expectations about the solid and the void -"A hole can itself have as much shape-meaning as a solid mass."

Marilyn Diptych 1962 Warhol New York

pop art: -captures pop culture, engages mass media -in the 50s/60s, individuals had disposable income --> consumerism, disposable imagery and capitalist advertisements -10 feet wide -used images of Marilyn right after her death -depicts her repeated, like a film strip -depicts vertically, we know Marilyn through film (therefore it's a film strip) -image taken from Niagara (1953) film -diptych reminiscent of religious imagery ----->alludes to fervor/cult status of stardom -made on silk-screen (mass-production technique) ---->gives work flat, commercial feel -removes hand of artist (opposite of Pollock/deKooning) -shows constructed, public persona of Marilyn Monroe that is copied and repeated in various formats -Warhol also changed his name and constructed his own image (silver wig, famous parties, plastic surgery) -worship (an icon, like an altarpiece) shows her film identity -mass produced celebrity -artificial colors on left and intense palate-->insincerity of image -America obsessed with Hollywood and Warhol obsessed with himself -mass production (silkscreening), erasure of human hand learned in Warhol's time in advertising -religious undertone: implies that Marilyn was a martyred saint or goddess in the pantheon of departed movie stars -flat and undifferentiated moonrise on the colored left side contrast with those in black in white on the right, which fade progressively as they are printed and reprinted without reinking the screen until all that remains of the original portrait is the ghostly image of a disappearing person -one of the first artists to exploit the realization that while the mass media---television in particular---seem to bring us closer to the world, they actually allow us to observe the world only as detached voyeurs, not real participants. we become desensitized to death and disaster by the constant repetition of images on television, which we are able literally, to switch off at any time. Warhol's art, especially in Marilyn Diptych, is like television---the presentation is superficial and bland, uses seemingly mindless repetition, and inures us to the full impact of the tragic moment of death. Warhol once said: "I am a deeply superficial person." Bu the seeming superficiality of his art is deeply intellectual.

Mr. and Mrs. Andrews without Heads 1998 Shonibare Nigeria/England

poster-child of post-colonial art -born in England-->Nigeria-->England -confused of his having to make black art and not his art -many genres of art -in England, faced nostalgia for Victorian age -appropriation by Classical british of African cloth (that isn't really African at all but rather a complex global commodity) -wealth based on imperial expansion -sense of anonymity (usually its workers who are anonymous; here it's the owners) reversed -double standards of Western morality ---French Revolution made claims to freedom universally, but there was still imperialism/colonialism -celebration of reason that informed morality/reason is reversed here (head chopped off) -historical reference---undercurrent of violence and irrationality removed from discourse -rights for all---if you have a head -Gainsborough (original)---human/nature power relationship---they control the land, it's their source of power -Grand Manner of portraiture to portray neoclassical ideas without context of history painting -instead of direct-link between land and patrons, clothing (fabric) comes from complicated global trade network -does to these figures what was done to slaves (takes away identity) British-Nigerian artist based in London, uses his art to examine how identity is constructed and perceived through the twists and turns of colonial history, as well as through class, race, and self-perception. What appears to be 19th century costumes---brightly colored clothing made of a Dutch wax fabric, usually associate with West African nations. The complexities of the history of the fabric, and the way that Shonibare uses it, give us some idea of the multiple and eliding meanings in this sculpture. This brilliantly colored and patterned fabric, worn by millions of Africans today, originally came from Indonesia, imported and copied by Dutch colonists in Africa, and manufactured in bulk in cotton mills in England, then exported to West Africa, where it was copied, modified, transformed, and now possessed. Ironically, Shonibare buys the fabric for his sculptures at London's Brixton market.His work uncovers the tangled web of forces that construct identity and challenges our perception about race, post colonialism, property, ownership, violence, and class.

Tilted Arc 1981-1989 Serra New York

postmodernism as a means of revisiting/revising the modern -declaring modernism dead -no specific style or form of expression -dissatisfaction with narrow confines of modernism (white male artists) "Art is not democratic" -120 ft long, 12 ft tall, curvy wall, 2.5 inch thick steel -no pedestal/meaning -changed space of federal plaza -removed and therefore destroyed -site-specific -initially rejected by public raises questions: who has a say in it? who controls its fate? -In 1981 he won a commission from the General Service Administration to create a sculpture for the banal plaza in front of the Javitz Federal Building in NYC. The GSA approved plans for the proposed work, but once installed, the sculpture bisected the plaza, completely changing it as a public space and making it impossible to hold concerts or performances. Even casual use by those who worked in the building was made difficult. Over time it rusted and was soon covered in graffiti and pigeon droppings. Public outrage became so intense that it was removed to a Brooklyn parking lot, an action that incited furor among artists and critics. Serra argued that moving the site-specific piece had destroyed it. He filed a lawsuit claiming censorship but he lost. Tilted Arc raised several important questions about the rights and responsibilities of artists, as well as the obligations of those who commission public works of art. Clearly Serra's sculpture had intentionally changed (for some spoiled) Javitz Plaza. In court, the artist did not attempt to defend his work on aesthetic grounds, but to claim the right to create the piece as planned and approved. This well-publicized legal case precipitated changes in the commissioning of public sculpture. Today neighborhood groups and local officials meet with artists well in advance of public commissions. Important questions, however, remain unresolved. Does the institution of such public safeguards lead to better public sculpture? Or do they merely guarantee that it will be bland, inoffensive, and decorative??

Vietnam Veterans Memorial 1982 Lin Washington DC

postmodernism as a means of revisiting/revising the modern -declaring modernism dead -no specific style or form of expression -dissatisfaction with narrow confines of modernism (white male artists) -geometric, like minimalism -controversial, like Tilted Arc -cut into ground in V shape -highly polished granite -abstract, different for war memorial -engages with dead, non victory --- apolitical -compromise: 3 soldiers statue Awarded commission to design the memorial as an architectural student. Lin envisioned a simple and dramatic memorial cut into the ground in a V-shape. Two highly polished black granite slabs reach out from deep in the earth at the center. Each of these arms is 247 feet long, and they make an 130degree angle where the slabs are 10ft tall. The names of 58,272 American soldiers killed or missing from Vietnam are listed chronologically climaxing at 1968 (most casualties)--tallest part of sculpture Since the polished granite reflects the face of visitors, the read the names of the dead and missing with their own faces superimposed over them. The memorial, commissioned by Vietnam Veterans for Vietnam Veterans, serves both to commemorate the dead and missing and to provide a place where survivors can confront their own loss. This sculpture is one of the best-known works of public art in the US and has transformed the way the nation mourns its war dead. Yet when it was first commissioned, the memorial was the subject of intense debate----it was described as a black gash in the mall, its color contrasting with the pervasive white marble of the surrounding memorials. Lin was accused of creating a monument of shame Opposition was so intense that two commemorative sculptures were commissioined.

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

postmodernism as a means of revisiting/revising the modern -declaring modernism dead -no specific style or form of expression -dissatisfaction with narrow confines of modernism (white male artists) -politics of gender -appropriates images from magazines, text floats above photograph and bounces off sculpture -our gaze assaults her face -makes very real the words of cultural critics (second wave feminism) modern letters with classical statues, politics surrounding gender, political (YOU are the bearer of the gaze), questions your assumptions...inclusion/exclusion -makes a strong point about how women are observed. -Kruger began her career as a designer for Mademoiselle magazine before using photography to make art -Her signature style is a combination of black-and-white photographic images with the red three-color printing used in cheap advertising. Kruger appropriates the visual character of advertising---its layout style, and its characteristic use of slogans---to suggest and subvert the advertising image. Here, she personalizes the relationship between viewer and viewed---the person who looks (spectator) and the person who is looked at (subject)---by addressing viewers directly with the personal pronoun "you." The spectator is active, while subject is passive. Usually the person who looks holds the power of the "gaze" implicitly subjugating the person being looked at. But if the person being looked at returns, rejects, or deflects the gaze, the traditional power relationship is upset. That is what happens in Kruger's image, where the observer (you) is blocked by the subject, who declares that "your gaze" is deflecting by "the side of my face." Kruger's art is subversive and interventionist; she has distributed it on posters, on T-shirts, even on pencils and pens. -this statue is idealized, non-human------like models!

Untitled 1990 Smith

postmodernism as a means of revisiting/revising the modern -declaring modernism dead -no specific style or form of expression -dissatisfaction with narrow confines of modernism (white male artists) 1980s - political conservatism of Reagan, indifference to AIDS, gay men scapegoated -Reagan recognized AIDS in 1987 when 27k had died...way too late -wax bodies, humans life sized -beeswax, looks like flesh -scarred, suggests physical trauma -lifeless, on supports Smith's sister had died of AIDS...smith was aware of the indifference -"AIDS has a lot to do with the body as a social weapon" -CULTURE WARS------early 1990s some marginalized younger artists achieved fame by producing narrative images deliberately intended to disrupt, provoke, and offend viewers. Confrontation of conservatism with openly gay sexuality. The Culture Wars were fueled by a significant increase in Activist art during the 1990s. AIDS decimated the younger art scene in NYC's East Village and triggered a global health crisis by mid decade. Increasingly, anger over the agony of those dying from and losing friends and lovers to AIDS combined with government inaction spilled over into art. Thus the 1990s opened with angry art about the body, AIDS, and identity, as well as with continued clamoring for acknowledgement of the discrimination faced by people of different races, ethnicities, classes, and sexual orientations. The Culture Wars were, in many ways, about artists searching for a place in the world while so many were fading from it. Physicality of the human body reasserted itself as a site for the discourse on AIDS. Smith explores the body, bodily functions, and the loss of physical control that the dying experience in works such as this one. This disturbing sculpture shows two life-size naked figures, female and male, made from flesh-colored painted beeswax and hanging passively, but not quite lifelessly, side by side about a foot above the ground. Milk drips from the woman's breasts and semen drips down the man's leg as if both have lost control of bodily functions that were once a source of vitality and pleasure. There is a profound sense of loss, but also of release. Smith has written that since our society abhors the reality of bodily functions, we strive to conceal and control them, making our loss of control as death nears humiliating and frightening. This sculpture asks us to consider bodily control----both our own sense of control and the control that others exert on our body as we die----and suggests tat relinquishing it may be as liberating as it is devastating.

Stata Center 2004 Gehry Cambridge, MA

promotes innovation---sense of whimsy -gravity doesn't really function because things are leaning out----shows MIT is a bright, colorful, inventive place -actively directs your space in strange ways that can inspire you -pops of yellow and red only show its liveliness -makes them seem special because it's clearly a Gehry building---hey look who we have!! -striking design and intersecting angles represent intersection of disciplines---innovation!! -has on the inside: you can see construction material---you can see process!!!