20th Century Art - terms

Minimalism

"what you see is what you see"; an art movement in sculpture and painting that began in the 1950s and emphasized extreme simplification of form and color; not concerned with emotion, universal symbols, or life of the artist; usually theoretical and dependent on context; questioned art's relationship with its environment

Post-Minimalism

(Process Art) The term refers less to a particular movement than an artistic tendency. Postminimalist artworks are usually everyday objects, use simple materials, and sometimes take on a "pure", formalist aesthetic. The work of Eva Hesse is also postminimalist: it uses "grids" and "seriality", themes often found in minimalism, but is also usually hand-made, introducing a human element into her art, in contrast to the machine or custom-made works of minimalism. Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Jean-Paul Sartre

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The Independent Group

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WPA/FAP/FSA

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feminism

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site-specific works

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The Armory Show

1913; first large-scale modernist exhibition in U.S.; New; extremely influential; highly controversial; introduced European and American modern artists to the American public; Manet, Monet, Picasso, Duchamp, Cezanne, Kandinsky, Matisse, etc.

encaustic

A painting technique in which pigment is mixed with wax and applied to the surface while hot.

Pictorialism

A photographic style and philosophy that sought to make the aesthetic photograph more like the unique handmade quality of painting, to be regarded as a persuasive expression of personal temperament and choice., movement of the late 19th century shows photography's shift toward gaining artistic acceptance; photos imitated paintings

Color Field Painting

A technique in abstract painting by the New York School that was developed in the 1950s. It focuses on the lyrical effects of large areas of color, often poured or stained onto the canvas. Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, painted in this manner.

291 Gallery

Alfred Stieglitz was the owner/director, 291 was the current address of gallery which promoted modern and avant-garde art, attempted to change the way America viewed photography

Ashcan School

Also known as The Eight led by Robert Henri, a group of American Naturalist painters formed in 1907, most of whom had formerly been newspaper illustrators, they believed in portraying scenes from everyday life in starkly realistic detail. They rejected the popular impressionist style and were inspired by Manet's paintings of modern life. Their 1908 display was the first art show in the U.S. (Armory Show?)

conceptual art

An American avant-garde art movement of the 1960s that asserted that the "artfulness" of art lay in the artist's idea rather than its final expression.

performance art

An American avant-garde art trend of the 1960s that made time an integral element of art. It produced works in which movements, gestures, and sounds of persons communicating with an audience replace physical objects. Documentary photographs are generally the only evidence remaining after these events. See also Happenings.

Andy Warhol

An American commercial illustrator and artist famous for his Campbell's soup painting. He was the founder of the American pop-art movement; took his subject matter form commercial art, such as Campbell soup cans, and photographs of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe. His commercial work was expressive and gestural, while his fine art was very rigid and mechanical

Combines

Art works created by Robert Rauschenberg that were a combination of assemblage, painting, and sculpture. Used found "real" objects.

Harlem Renaissance

As a result of hundreds of thousands of Black people moving to the North to escape racism and find economic opportunity, it was a period in the 1920s when African-American achievements in art and music and literature flourished. Murals by Aaron Douglas were funded through the WPA. Langston Hughes - poet and James Van Der Zee - photographer

Marcel Duchamp

French painter who became a prominent exponent of DaDa created shocking pieces with his readymades -found objects

sound poetry

Hugo Ball's nonsensical syllables that were recited in Zurich at the Cabaret Voltaire. It renounced the language of journalism and mocked traditional poetry and the rationality of adulthood

Regionalism

In America, works that celebrate American history and culture; deal with democracy and fight for freedom, inspired by Northern Renaissance Art, idealized and nostalgic

André Breton

Known as the principal founder of Surrealism, he wrote the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924 in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism". He served in a neurological hospital in WWI where he used Freudian analysis on shell-shocked solders. Wanted to explore humanity's most base, irrational, and forbidden desires, etc. by freeing the conscious mind from reason. Under Breton's direction, Surrealism became a European movement that influenced all domains of art, and called into question the origin of human understanding and human perceptions of things and events.

Merz

Nonsense word invented by the German Dada artist Kurt Schwitters to describe his collage and assemblage works based on scavenged scrap materials. He founded this one man Dada group,Hanover,1919.

Postmodernism

Post-World War II intellectual movement and cultural attitude focusing on cultural pluralism and release from the confines and ideology of Western high culture.

Dada

Questioning art itself, Dada was the first artistic movement to address the horror of WWI by mocking the senselessness of rational thought and foundations of modern society. Even the name is nonsense and has no real meaning. rejected conventional understanding of art as something precious, replacing it with irrational art about ideas and actions. Transnational movement with hubs in Zurich, New York (readymades), Paris (beginning of surrealism/emphasis on Sigmund Freud), and Berlin (photomontage to criticize mass media). Hugo Ball's "Karawane" sound poem of nonsensical syllables.

automatism

Technique to reveal unconscious mind; like "doodling," letting one's hand wander without thought

The Factory

Term Andy Warhol used to refer to his studio. Many people helped him mass produce reproductions of commercial images and mundane objects.

paranoiac-critical method

Used by Salvador Dalí. He would try to put himself in the midset of someone who was mentally ill before creating a work

zips

What Abstract Expressionist artist Barnett Newman called each of the vertical lines in his work. Many of his later works featured a zip.

Surrealism

a 20th century movement of artists and writers (developing out of Dadaism) who used fantastic images and incongruous juxtapositions in order to represent unconscious thoughts and dreams. The mostly created through automatism or unconscious movements.

Assemblage

an artwork composed of objects, parts of objective materials originally intended for purposes other than art

Sigmund Freud

austrian physician whose work focused on the unconscious causes of behavior and personality formation; founded psychoanalysis

Earthworks

earth artists used land as their canas. The made art outddors, frequently manipulating raw materials foud at the site to create site specific works. some are temporary, some permanent, some remote, others accessable.

Action Painting

emphasis on the creation process, the artist's gesture in making art.

British Pop Art

independent, interdisciplinary group of people that were very involved and interested in societal issues. characterized as "hot" in that they were highly political and critical of society.

process art

is an artistic movement as well as a creative sentiment and world view where the end product of art and craft, the objet d'art, is not the principal focus. The 'process' in process art refers to the process of the formation of art: the gathering, sorting, collating, associating, and patterning. Process art is concerned with the actual doing; art as a rite, ritual, and performance. Process art often entails an inherent motivation, rationale, and intentionality. Therefore, art is viewed as a creative journey or process, rather than as a deliverable or end product.

Existentialism

maintained that the individual is solely responsible for giving his or her own life meaning and for living that life passionately and sincerely, in spite of many existential obstacles and distractions including despair, angst, absurdity, alienation, and boredom.

silkscreen print

method used by Andy Warhol in his work such as the Marilyn Diptych

Carl Jung

neo-freudian who believed that humans share a collective unconscious

Hans Namuth

photographer that documented Pollock's artistic methods and the concept of Process Art

FSA photography

the Farm Security Administration (FSA) was a part of Roosevelt's New Deal program to bring America out of the Great Depression. To build support for federal assistance in rural America and combat American rural poverty, the FSA hired photographers to document the effect of the Depression across the country. It portrayed the challenges of rural poverty.

Neo-Dada

the return to the real. Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper John's assemblage works are examples. The meaning of their work is fluid and unfixed - it contains recognizable faces and objects, but the purpose of their inclusion is unclear.

Ben-Day dot

used by Roy Lichtenstein in his melodrama Pop Art works to mimic the look of newspaper printing

industrial fabrication

used by minimalist artists (ex. Donald Judd) to reject the emotion and gesture invested in the handcrafted object.

Roy Stryker

was part of the farm security administration. heading the Information Division of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) during the Great Depression and launching the documentary photography movement of the FSA.