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
Untitled #276
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
Untitled
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