Art History Final Exam: 20th Century (4): Postmodernism

Vanna Venturi House

A postmodern parody of a conventional american house. Built by Robert Venturi, who called for the end of the International style. Wanted new architecture to be creative and have meaning, and sometimes humor. POSTMODERN

Tree of Life

Ana Mendieta Personifies nature as procreative force and synonym for the feminine. Photographed herself in an early bronze-age goddess pose, merging materiality with the natural environment.

The Liberation of Aunt Jemima

Betye Saar. Challenges the "mammy" stereotype of African Americans.

The National Aquatics Center

Built for the 2008 Olympics. Covers 8 acres, consists of a steel frame, supporting plastic, pillow-shaped modules. POSTMODERN

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Cindy Sherman. Photographs herself in the guise of the myriad roles and situations of women, using props and prosteses. Satirizes the stereotype of the pure, meek princess

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living

Damien Hirst. The viewer literally confronts death, as well as the vain attempt to preserve the physical essence of animals. A contemporary "memento mori" reminder of death POSTMODERN

Between Earth and Heaven

El Anatsui. Intersection of traditional and contemporary African themes. Consists of thousands of aluminum seals and screw caps from wine/liquor bottles to create "fabric". Resembles byzantine mosaics and African hand-woven kente

Walt Disney Concert Hall

Frank Gehry. Curvilinear masses are contrary to traditional post and lintel architectural construction. Building project a sense of disorder, fragmentation, and fragility. Designed and fabricated using computer technology. POSTMODERN

Michael Jackson and Bubbles

Humorous/ ironic piece by Jeff Koons. Refers to the pretentiousness of the celebrity cult. Life-sized version of an aristocratic Rococo porcelain figurine POSTMODERN

The Dinner Party

Judy Chicago. Installation under a team of anonymous women, who contributed traditional female arts of needlework and pottery. Consists of individual place settings, each devoted to a famous woman in history, and each reflective of her era and contribution. Controversial because of the vaginal shapes of the plates and designs.

Work on Progress

Kara Walker Using silhouettes, a medium popular in the 18th century, Walker examines the relationships between the black Americans as masters and slaves. By picturing an AA housemaid sweeping out a female in broken chains, she questions the still evolving and undefined perception of black women in American society.

After Memling's Portrait of Maarten Nieuwenhove

Kehinde Wiley. By substituting young urban black men in Renaissance portraits, Wiley draws attention to their lack of presence in the historical record

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Kiki Smith. Explores the vulnerability of the body and brevity of life in the wake of the AIDS epidemic. POSTMODERN

The City-Library

Lori Nix. Presents a post-apocalyptic view of vanishing American traditions

Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Maya Lin Submerged below ground level like a wound on earth. Elicits powerful emotions. Shiny granite surface reflects the faces of the living on the inscribed names of the deceased. Controversial in its difference from traditional, representational monuments.

Salaam Bombay!

Mira Nair Exposes the sordid conditions of life for India's illiterate street children

Megatron

Nam June Paik Wall of video monitors barrages viewers with images achieved by fast-paced editing and timing of movement

Black Venus and Empress

Niki de Saint Phalle Challenges traditional European stereotypes of female beauty represented in Classical and Renaissance images of Venus, the goddess of love. Instead refers to the primal force of female nature found in the earliest Paleolithic goddess figurines

Keitai Girl

Noriko Yamaguchi The artist becomes her cell phone. Costume part of a performance involving lasers, upbeat music, and a popular Japanese form of line-dancing known as Para-Para

Swiss Re Building

Norman Foster piece, an example of green architecture. Londons first environmentally sustainable skyscraper. POSTMODERN

Alien

Ridley Scott Challenges stereotypes of women in authority

Les Demoiselles d'Alabama

Robert Colescott. By casting black women as participants in a satire of Picasso's painting, calls attention to AA exclusion in Western culture. POSTMODERN

Self-Portrait

Robert Mapplethorpe. Photographer whose homoerotic subject matter engendered bitter social controversy

The Second Sex

Simon de Beauvoir's book, which questioned the existence of a preordained femininity, which condemns women to social and intellectual subordination to men. Claimed that women themselves reinforce this secondary role by complacently accepting such a fate. Inspired the feminist movement.

Piazza d'Italia

This building was completed by Charles Moore and UIG and Perez Associates. Was built for the Italian community of New Orleans. A map of Italy is inlaid in the paving stones. All the pillars, arches, capitals, fountains etc. derive from ancient Roman architecture. Materials of neon and steel evoke a whimsical modern American art deco diner. POSTMODERN

AT&T Building (now the Sony Building)

This is a piece by Philip Johnson and John Burgee is shaped like an enormous American Chippendale highboy (colonial piece of furniture) The base recalls the renaissance architect Brunelleschi's Pazzi chapel. POSTMODERN

Jewish Museum

This piece by Daniel Libeskind is comprised of jagged, shifting planes. The zigzag plan evokes a broken star of David, and a giant open wound. Aggressively dynamic plan consciously raises public awareness of the important issues of the Holocaust. POSTMODERN

Portland Public Service Building

This piece by Robert Graves combines the Renaissance architectural concepts of Palladio with ancient Egyptian geometric forms and Art Deco materials. POSTMODERN

Jazz music

Unique musical idiom derived from African traditions and European classical idioms, largely improvisatory (composed spontaneously)

Portrait

Yasumasa Morimura Computer manipulated color photography. By impersonating the prostitute of Manet's Olympia, refers to the post-war Japanese fashion of copying Western culture. Turns the black cat into the symbol of commerce, thus satirizing the concept of art as commodity.

Guangzhou Opera House

Zaha Hadid. Sense of energized fluidity. Intuitive, organic fantasy spaces, not based in theory, but in the architect's imaginative conception. POSTMODERN

Raise the Red Lantern

Zhang Yimou Zhang Yimou Adresses the situation of chinese women, who remain courageous in the face of oppressive feudal and patriarchal traditions Banned in Communist china