Segment 2 Study Guide Gallery 8

Describe the work of Pollock.

"One" -represents gestural abstraction through Pollock's "drip," or pouring technique. -With the energetic and radical method that Pollock contributed to Abstract Expressionism and enabled the material to convey movement, the viewer follows the drips throughout the painting without finding an end, actually experiencing movement. -Moving around an expanse of canvas laid on the floor, Pollock would fling and pour ropes of paint across the surface. -"One" is among the largest of his works (the canvas is nearly 9 feet high and over 17 feet long). -The canvas pulses with energy: strings and skeins of enamel, some matte, some glossy, weave and run, an intricate web of tans, blues, and grays lashed through with black and white. -The Surrealists' embrace of accident as a way to bypass the conscious mind was the catalyst for Pollock to experiment with the effects of gravity and chance with paint. -"One" doesn't have a focal point nor any obvious repetition or pattern, but still retains a sense of order. -Pollock was able to convey movement while it is happening with the concept of impermanence.

Describe the art of Mondrian. What is an element that stands out?

"Rhythm of Black Lines" -Note the many variations on the theme of the black bands on a white field with blocks of the three primary colors. -These "pure" forms express an underlying cosmic order through their dynamic balance (a utopian view). -Through absolute abstraction Mondrian seeks timeless, universal truths. Gerrit Thomas Rietveld's (1888-1965) Schroder House in Urecht, Holland. -The combinations of shapes, colors, railings, free-floating walls and rectangular windows of this building seem to give us a three-dimension version of a Mondrian painting.

Describe Wood's "American Gothic".

-"American Gothic" caused a stir in 1930 when it was exhibited for the first time at The Art Institute of Chicago and awarded a prize of $300. -Newspapers across the country carried the story, and the painting of a farm couple posed before a white house brought the artist instant fame. -The Iowa native, then in his late 30s, was enchanted by a cottage he had seen in the small southern Iowa town of Eldon. -Its Gothic Revival style, indicated by the upper lancet window designed to resemble a medieval pointed arch, inspired the painting's title. -He asked his dentist and his sister Nan to pose as a farmer and his unmarried daughter. -The highly detailed style and rigid frontal arrangement of the figures were inspired by Northern Renaissance art, which the artist studied during three trips to Europe. After returning to Iowa, he became increasingly appreciative of the traditions of the Midwest, which he also celebrated in works such as this. -This work is a primary example of Regionalism due to the true depiction of rural American subjects rendered in a representational style. -The painting can be read as a glorification of the moral virtue of rural America or even as an ambiguous mixture of praise and satire.

Describe the work of Alexander Calder.

-Alexander Calder (1898-1976) was renowned for his nonobjective organic forms. -Calder was a pioneering figure in the development of kinetic art, creating sculptures in which balanced components move, some driven by motor and others impelled by the action of air currents. -Either suspended or freestanding, mobiles consisted of flat pieces of painted metal connected by wire veins and stems. The organic shapes are reminiscent of his friend, Surrealist painter, Joan Miro. Calder cut, bent, punctured, and twisted his materials entirely by hand, the manual emphasis contributing to the sculptures' evocation of natural form. -Shape, size, color, space, and movement were combined to mimic the harmonious but unpredictable activity of nature. -Calder wrote: "Disparity in form, color, size, weight, motion, is what makes a composition. . . . It is the apparent accident to regularity which the artist actually controls by which he makes or mars a work."

Describe Andy Warhol's art.

-Andy Warhol emerged as the most famous personality of the Pop Art movement. Known for his persona as much as his art, Andy Warhol was obsessed with celebrity more than art production. -Warhol's art depicted popular culture and celebrity and merged popular and high culture in Pop Art fashion with celebration and sarcasm. "Marilyn," -Depicts the movie star Marilyn Monroe that was purposefully rendered to seem mechanically reproduced. -The artist also registers the legendary actress in terribly bright colors, all flatly applied. -Warhol represents Monroe this way to draw the viewer's attention to the public facade of the actress. -Warhol answers the question, "Where is Norma Jean Baker?, lost behind the mask of her public image."

Describe the Art Deco movement. What influenced its architecture?

-Art Deco is a style of design popular during the 1920s and 30s but the term was coined in the 1960's. -Derived from the 1925 Paris Exposition of Decorative Arts, where the style reached its apex, Art Deco is characterized by long, thin forms, curving surfaces and geometric patterning to describe the sleekness of the machine age. -The style influenced all aspects of art and architecture and the decorative, graphic, and industrial arts ranging from skyscrapers to ocean liners to toasters.

Describe the work of Lichtenstein.

-As Pop Art progressed the images became more concrete. -Roy Lichtenstein derived his subject matter from the ultimate source of popular culture: the comic book. -Lichtenstein's paintings reflect modern printing techniques typography such as benday dots. "Holland, Amsterdam, As I Opened Fire" -Depicts a comic strip frame as a commentary on violence. -The content is relatable through the simplicity of a child-like image.

What was the Bauhaus movement?

-Bauhaus was an influential school of art and architecture in Germany from 1919 to 1933. -The Bauhaus revolutionized art training by combining the teaching of the pure arts with the study of crafts. -Philosophically, the school was built on the idea that design did not merely reflect society but it could improve it. -The Bauhaus was founded at Weimar in 1919 and headed by Walter Gropius, with a faculty that included Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Josef Albers, and Gunta Stolzl. -Concepts focused on the industrial problems of mechanical mass production. -Economy of method, a severe geometry of form, and design that considered materials employed characterized the movement.

Describe the work of Christo and Jeanne- Claude.

-Christo Vladimirov Javacheff and Jeanne-Claude de Guillebon were husband and wife team known better as Christo and Jeanne Claude -The pair is known for large-scale temporary outdoor installations "Surrounded Islands" (1983). -In this work, Christo and Jeanne Claude surrounded eleven man-made islands in Biscayne Bay, Miami, Florida (created decades before in a massive dredging project) with pink polypropylene fabric, floating 200 feet around each island. -The preparation (legal permits, etc.) and fundraising (3.2 million dollars worth!) for this temporary work, took over two years to complete, but only two weeks were needed to install the work (the installation team also collected massive amounts of garbage which had accumulated on the islands over the years). -The team independently raises funds to complete their projects; they do not accept government funding or funds from groups that institute regulations or constrictions on their work. -The color of the fabric was appropriate for the Miami area and Christo and Jeanne-Claude wanted to represent how the people of South Florida live "between land and water" with this work.

Describe Deconstructivism. What artists belong to this movement?

-Deconstructivism attempts to view architecture in bits and pieces. In these works, the basic elements of architecture are dismantled. -Deconstructivist buildings appear to lack visual logic, as they often appear to be made up of unrelated, disharmonious abstract forms. -Many works of postmodern architecture are also considered deconstructionist. -Stirling and Gehry belong to this movement

Describe the work of Diego Rivera.

-Diego Rivera's (husband of Frida Kahlo) was a child prodigy who originated from a Cubist style when he lived in Paris and was influenced by Picasso. -Rivera believed Mexico was in need of national and artistic revolution. -Rivera's murals are complex, decorative and animated scenes that depicted the social and political current events of that time. "History of Mexico" -This portion of the sweeping series of murals in the National Palace in Mexico City highlights the devastation and suffering brought by the Europeans in the sixteenth century. -Rivera's style is reflects a Renaissance influence in the fresco's simple, yet monumental shapes and bold color.

Know the work of Hanson.

-Duane Hanson is known for his life-sized figural sculptures that he created from plaster molds of live models (the molds were later filled with a polyester resin, painted and painstakingly dressed). -As Hanson himself stated, "I'm mostly interested in the human form as subject matter and means of expression for my sculpture. What can generate more interest, fascination, beauty, ugliness, joy, shock or contempt than a human being. Most of my time involves concentrating on the sculpting aspect. Casting, repairing, assembling, painting, correcting it until it pleases me. That takes some doing as I'm rarely satisfied." -Hanson's early works were politically charged but his artist's signature pieces are familiar types of modern Americans, such as construction workers, tourists and shoppers. -Hanson portrays a popular image that is recognizable, unappealing, and intriguing. -Hanson is praised for his honest depiction of humanity, his satirical genius, and attacked for his stereotypic dullness.

Describe Feminist Art.

-Feminist art, prominent in the United States, Britain, and Germany dates from the late 1960s. -Feminist artists are interested in what makes them different from males, and what makes art by women different from art by men -Feminists also point out that throughout most of recorded history males have imposed patriarchal (father-centered) social systems (in which they have dominated females). -Feminist art notes that significant in our patriarchal heritage is the preponderance of art made by males, and for male audiences, sometimes transgressing against females. -Men have maintained a studio system that has excluded women from training as artists, and a gallery system that has kept them from exhibiting and selling their work, albeit somewhat less recently than before.

Describe the work of Frank Loyd Wright.

-Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) represented this rejection with his radical innovation to structure and aesthetics to integrate man-made construction seamlessly with nature. -At a time when poured reinforced concrete and steel cantilevers were generally confined to commercial structures, Wright did pioneer work in integrating machine methods and materials into a true, natural architectural expression. -He was the first architect in the United States to produce open planning in houses, breaking from the tradition of closed space, to achieve an organic fluidity of interior space by unifying rooms and eliminating walls which conventionally separated rooms. The Kaufmann House (nicknamed Fallingwater) -perched on a rocky hillside over a small waterfall -Wright integrated the work into the natural setting and contrasted the shaped concrete, painted metal, natural stone and strip windows to harmoniously balance the interior and exterior space.

What is Environmental Art?

-In Environmental Art, (Earth Works or Site-Specific) artists' media are the elements of nature. -The work is usually vast in scale and intended to be subjected to all natural changes, such as temperature variations, light and darkness, wind, and erosion.

Describe Le Corbusier's Notre Dame du Haut.

-In Ronchamp, France. -The artist's work, inspired by praying hands, the wings of a dove and the bow of a ship (the Latin word for ship is "nave") replaced an earlier structure on the Medieval pilgrimage site that was destroyed in World War II. -The organic, sculptural quality of Le Corbusier's church also creates a mystical atmosphere. -Note how the curvilinear shapes along with the thick, plain walls and deeply recessed stained glass windows give the structure the qualities of a hermit's cave or isolated medieval monastery.

Know the work of Lin.

-Maya Ying Lin's (b. 1959) Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C evokes emotion despite being a Minimalist sculpture. -The stark V-shaped monument of polished granite panels, begins at ground-level, rises to 10 feet at the center of the V and declines once again to ground level for quite a dramatic effect. -The force of the work is also intensified by the 57,939 names of those lost in the war, listed in the order of their deaths (or the day they were listed as missing in action), which are engraved on the panels. -The material is reflective so viewers can see themselves and not disassociate from the concept of the memorial. -This opposes Minimalist philosophy by having an intention beyond the form and function of the sculpture.

What is Minimalism?

-Minimalism is the idea of reducing a work of art to the minimum number of colors, values, shapes, lines and textures. -Representation is unimportant and there is no effort to symbolize another object or experience. -Minimalist sculpture broke with illusionistic conventions by using three dimensional representation to connect the object, the viewer, and the environment. -Typically Minimalist the work is not metaphorical or allegorical; it is the "pure" and objective nature of sculpture.

What is Neo-Expressionism?

-Neo-Expressionism, a reaction against the stark and sterile character of Minimalism and other purely abstract movements, began in the 1970s was dominant in the 1980s, and continued into the 1990s. -Neo-Expressionism stressed aggressive, personal, and often brutally distorted figural imagery, slashing brushstrokes, strong color contrasts, and an emphasis on conveying spontaneous feeling rather than formal concepts.

What is Pop Art?

-Pop Art was a movement which originated in Great Britain in the late 1950s as a reaction against the seriousness and elitism of Abstract Expressionism. -The movement made it to the United States in the 1960s, where it was expressed and celebrated. -Both British and American Pop artists explored the common imagery instilled in contemporary consumer culture. -Artists found inspiration in such items as billboards, comic strips, magazine advertisements, supermarket products and depictions of celebrities and merged popular culture with high art.

What is Post- Modernist Architecture?

-Postmodernism is a term used to describe art (visual, literary, etc.) that followed after, and deviated from the twentieth-century movements that constituted modernism. -The postmodernist view is cool and ironic and tends to concentrate on surfaces rather than depths to eliminate the separation of high and low culture. -The Postmodern architectural movement has been a reaction to and a rejection of the impersonal and formal elements of modernism. -Postmodern architecture is characterized by complexity and decorative elements with a personal touch. -Symbolism returns and an interest in surface colors and texture are popular.

What was regionalism?

-Regionalism, an American phenomenon, refers to the work of a group of rural artists, mostly from the Midwest, who came to prominence in the 1930's. -A dreamy scene of a aerial view of a landscape with the clouds allowing enough light to shine and highlight parts of the ground. -Not being part of a coordinated movement, Regionalists often had an idiosyncratic style or point of view that reflected the United States as a heavily agricultural nation and separated itself from the industrialized cities such as New York and Chicago. -They shared a humble, anti-modernist style and a fondness for depicting everyday life. -The Regionalists' rural conservatism put them at odds with the urban and leftist Social Realists of the same era. -Both periods succumb to Abstract Expressionism.

Describe Giacometti's work.

-Sculptor Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) settled in Paris in 1922, becoming associated first with the Cubists and then the Surrealists. -Giacometti abandoned surrealist images in the 1930s to create highly original and roughly worked sculptures of severely attenuated, emaciated human figures, usually in bronze, such as "Standing Woman." -These haunting, anguished images have also been described as the perfect expressions of existentialist pessimism, alienation, isolation and fragility.

What was Social Realism?

-Social Realism depicted the social and racial injustice and economic struggles that were a result of the turmoil and devastation wrought by World War I, the Russian Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the Depression and World War II. -Artists were characterized by their political and/or social message with satire, which reflected the movement's reaction to the idealist Romanticism period. -Concentrating on the ugliness of contemporary life, artists recorded what they saw and created public outrage because of the harsh realities that were represented.

What is Superrealism?

-Superrealism was an international art movement in the late 1960s and 1970s that stressed the intent of pushing the traditional use of paint with the precise representation of subject matter. -Also known as Photorealism, artists often used photographs or painted with the aid of slides or an opaque projector.

What is Suprematism?

-Suprematism was a revolutionary, non-objective art movement founded in 1913 by Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935) in Moscow. -For the artist, the supreme reality was "pure feeling" and he sought "to liberate art from the ballast of the representational world." -Suprematist compositions were geometrical shapes flatly painted on the plain canvas surface.

What is Constructivism?

-The aim of this group was to construct abstract sculpture suitable for the machine age -Artists dominantly used plastic and steel.

Describe the work of Hopper.

-The artist's works are characterized by a generalized feeling of loneliness, isolation or alienation Although trained as an illustrator, Edward Hopper spent five years studying painting under Robert Henri, a member of the Ashcan School of painters who focused on the gritty realities of the city. The Ashcan School influenced Hopper's style, but he separated himself through his tendency to depict urban isolation instead of urban living. "Nighthawks" -was inspired by "a restaurant on New York's Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet." -The painting reveals three customers lost in their own private thoughts. -The anonymous and uncommunicative night owls seem as remote from the viewer as they are from one another. -Hopper often denied that he purposely infused any of his paintings with symbols of isolation and emptiness; he acknowledged of "Nighthawks" that, "unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city." -A night scene of people sitting in a dinner, a man in white is working behind the bar, a man with a suit and hat sits alone at the bar and a couple sit together but appear disengaged. -From his vantage point, Hopper eliminated any reference to the diner's entrance. -The viewer, drawn to the light shining from the interior, is shut out from the scene by a seamless wedge of glass, a characteristic of Art Deco design. -The moody contrast of light against dark and the air of menace inside has been linked to film noir, a movement in American cinema that featured stories of urban crime and moral corruption.

Describe Abstract Expressionism.

-The first major movement to show this severe formalism (a strict emphasis on a work of art's visual elements rather than on a particular subject) was Abstract Expressionism. -In Abstract Expressionism, the artists express themselves purely through form and color, where form is usually non-representational or non-objective. -The movement itself can be divided into two major directions: gestural abstraction and chromatic abstraction. -In gestural abstraction, expressiveness lies in the artist's rough, spontaneous and energetic application of pigment, such as we see in the works of Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), Arshile Gorky (1904-1940), and Willem de Kooning (1904-1997). -Chromatic abstraction, on the other hand, is quieter and explores the expressive qualities of pure color, as in the works of Barnett Newman (1905-1970) and Mark Rothko (1903-1970). -The movement was also the first American artistic movement of international importance, and signaled the shift of the center of the art world from Paris to New York. -Accordingly, Abstract Expressionism is often referred to as the New York School.

Describe Picasso's Guernica.

-The leaders of the Spanish Republican government in exile in Paris during the Spanish Civil War asked Picasso to paint a work for the Spanish Pavilion in the Paris International Exhibition. -The artist depicted the horrific destruction of the Basque capital of Guernica, which was nearly obliterated by Nazi bombers in support of the Spanish rebel General Francisco Franco in 1937. -The attack was particularly brutal because it was during the busiest hour of the busiest day of the week (market day). Over seven-thousand men, women and children were killed or wounded during the brief, but vicious attack. -In Picasso's depiction, there are no German planes or bombs, only the sheer horror of the massacre. -The Cubist-like fragmentation, distortion and a colorless palette intensified the stark brutality of the atrocity. -A chaotic scene of organic shapes of heads in distress, a lightbulb that shines light on the horse screaming in pain. -At the bottom is a fallen warrior with a broken sword representing the defenselessness of slaughtered Basque. -Over him a gored horse convulses in the throes of a gruesome death. -In the center left a mother screams in agony over her murdered child, while behind her stands an emotionless bull, which, according to Picasso, symbolizes brutality and darkness. -On the right of the composition are a woman dying in a burning building (far right), a severely wounded woman attempting to escape the chaos (bottom right) and a woman with a lamp (upper right) that represents the illumination of the tragedy.

Describe the Chrysler Building.

-The symbolic architectural work of the Art Deco movement In New York City, designed by architect William van Alen (1882-1954). -One of the first to use stainless steel over a large surface to expose the building surface, it represented the tendency to flaunt the concept of industrialization. -At the time of its construction, the Chrysler Building was involved in a race to be the tallest building in the world. The Bank of Manhattan Building, under construction at the same time, topped out at 927 feet, two feet above the Chrysler's announced height. -It appeared that the Bank of Manhattan had won, but van Alen had a plan: the Chrysler Building's spire, a series of sunbursts punctuated by triangular windows, had been secretly assembled in the building's fire shaft. It was then hoisted into place in one 27-ton piece, raising the Chrysler Building's height to 1,046 feet, 119 feet taller than the Bank of Manhattan and even taller than the Eiffel Tower.

What is Surrealism?

-The term Surrealism comes from the French word "surreal," meaning "'transcending the real." -Surrealism is a style where fantastic visual imagery from the subconscious mind is used with no intention of making the artwork logically understandable. -The movement was dedicated to the expression of imagination as revealed in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason and free of convention.

What is Art Brut?

-raw art -use of a thick impasto of materials such as plaster, glue, asphalt, pebbles, sand and glass to encrust and thicken the surface texture of his paintings. -Inspired by graffiti and art made by the mentally ill -a protest was against specious notions of beauty "inherited from the Greeks and cultivated by magazine covers." In an attempt to rehabilitate values and materials dismissed by Western aesthetics, unbridled energy, spontaneity, and truth to self-and with them, a spirit of insubordination and impertinence was shown

Describe Benton's "The Lord is My Shepard".

-represents Regionalism as a man and a woman are depicted finishing a frugal meal together. -There are only two plates on the table, an empty coffee cup, and a sugar bowl full of spoons. -The couple may be poor, but have great dignity. Their powerful, gnarled hands represent a lifetime of hard work. -The painter knew these sitters. In real life, they were deaf-mutes who lived near him on Martha's Vineyard. Benton transformed them into symbols of the old-fashioned rural values that he championed in Regionalist fashion. -The quote hanging on the wall behind the man's head is part of a quote from the Bible, "The Lord is my shepherd" (Psalm 23:1), from which the title of the work is taken. -The man and his wife stand for faith, hard work, temperance, and endurance-the qualities Benton believed were the cornerstones of the American way of life.

What was Existentialism?

A philosophy that stresses the absurdity of human existence in an indifferent to hostile world

Know the artworks of the following Surrealists: Dali, Margritte, Kahlo, Chagall, and Miro.

Dali: -Spainard "The Persistence of Memory." -Hard objects become inexplicably limp in this bleak and infinite dreamscape, while metal attracts ants like rotting flesh. -Melting clocks on a twig and a distorted face with a body of water and a mountain in the background. -Mastering what he called "the usual paralyzing tricks of eye-fooling," Dali painted with what he called "the most imperialist fury of precision," but only, he said, "to systematize confusion and thus to help discredit completely the world of reality." -A common feature in Dali's work is the representation of decay. -The monstrous, fleshy creature draped across the painting's center is an approximation of Dali's own face in profile; its long eyelashes seem disturbingly insect-like or even sexual, as does what may or may not be a tongue oozing from its nose like a fat snail. Margritte: -Belgian -Was best known for developing a style in which a misleading sort of realism is combined with mocking irony. "Man in a Bowler Hat" -Magritte demonstrates his tendency to juxtapose images to show both a sense of calm and confusion. -The contrast between normal and absurdity is portrayed through recognizable elements in a non-sensible way. Kahlo: -Mexican -Often associated with the Surrealist as her works are replete with startling symbolic imagery and suggestive of a disturbing psychology. -The founder of Surrealism, Andre Breton, wanted her to be associated with the movement and she did show in their exhibitions, but Kahlo insisted that she was a Mexican Realist painter who portrayed the reality of her own life, "They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality." "Self Portrait as Tehuana (Diego On My Mind)" -The artist's self-portrait that illustrated her emotional connection to her husband, Diego Rivera. -This was a common theme in her work which reflected her tumultuous relationship with her husband. Chagall: -Drew upon the artist's childhood memories in rural Russia, as well as upon his awareness of avant-garde French painting (chiefly the Fauvist use of color) "Rain." -Chagall's scene is based upon a naive, childlike intuition that he was able to sustain and fortify through an absorption of the sophisticated Cubist style, seen in how he breaks up the composition into planes -Painted reminiscences, filled with folk legend and evoking dream visions, have qualities that were to be exploited in the 1920s by the Surrealists. Miro: -Spaniard -Refuted his association with the Surrealism movement but was also claimed by the group as one of their own. -The artist's style has been characterized as psychic automatism, or a free form expression of the subconscious. -His works also show a use of striking, pure color and often whimsical juxtapositions of delicate lines with abstract or organic shapes. -During the mid to late 1920s Joan Miro developed a private system of imagery in which the motifs have symbolic meanings that change according to their context. "Harlequin" -The generalized ground, rich in texture from the uneven thinning of paint and the use of shadowy black, provides a warm and earthy support for the expressive black lines, the areas of red and yellow, and the staccato rhythm of dots. -Line and color articulate a language.

What is De Stijl?

In 1917, a group of artists in Holland came together as an organized movement and at the same time published a magazine, "De Stijl" ("The Style"), from which they took their name. This group advocated a purification of art through abstraction and simplicity: forms were reduced to the rectangle and other geometric shapes, while hues were limited to the primary colors of red, blue and yellow, and the primary values of black, white and gray.

Describe the work of Schapiro.

Miriam Schapiro, one of the founders of the Feminist art movement, is known for what she coined as "femmages." -These canvas-backed, sewn collages, made from highly patterned fabrics, ribbons and such, were to raise what was traditionally seen as "low" (and particularly feminine) art, to the level of high art. -Schapiro makes strong references to female artists of the past, seen in "Conservatory." A composition of acrylic paint and fabric on canvas that depict the interests of Frida Kahlo.

Describe the work of Rothko.

Rothko's "No. 6 Violet, Green and Red" represents the chromatic abstraction period. The artist is exploring the expressive potential of stacked rectangular fields of luminous colors. Rothko used abstraction to express universal human emotions, striving to create an art of awe-inspiring intensity for a secular world. Rothko's pure color led critics to praise him as a sensualist and a colorist, which pained him because he believed that his champions had lost sight of his serious intentions. For him the canvases enacted a violent battle of opposites-vertical versus horizontal, hot color versus cold-invoking the existential conflicts of modernity. Rothko's series, The Black Paintings, begun in the year before the artist's suicide, confirmed his belief that his work encompassed tragedy.