Expressive
Dyketactics, 1974, (n.b. this slide represents your familiarity with the film as a whole), Barbara Hammer
-4 min short film, "hippie wonder", frolicking women naked in countryside -Broke new ground for exploring lesbian identity, desire, aesthetic of such -Mixing physicality of female body with a film medium -Openly gay filmmaker
Spring Sale at Bendel's, 1921, Florine Stettheimer
-The painting's style here draws on 1920s fashion illustrations in magazines such as Vanity Fair, with lithe figures and long curvaceous lines providing a sense of elegant airiness. -Spring Sale at Bendel's is a dramatized narrative and caricature of the New York upper-class. The painting illustrates a humorous scene taking place during a sale at Bendel's, a woman's luxury department store that was located at 712 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. -On the one hand, a painting such as Spring Sale showcases a "fantastically Rococo" pictorial arrangement, referring to the eighteenth-century French artistic style that prioritized lightness, ornamentation, and display of luxury. On the other hand, the scene casts a critical eye on the frenzied transactions rather than keeping with the Rococo, aristocratic fantasy.
Series I White & Blue Flower Shapes, 1926, Georgia O'Keeffe
-This is where abstraction grows -Abstraction of color, shape, uneasy in its distinction -Flowers have feminine association, softness, fluidity, sexuality bc she makes them genitalia looking -Her works are both abstraction and figuration
Triple Elvis, 1963, Andy Warhol
Warhol loved the cinema The stuff he takes of elvis are also from movie stills - when elvis was acting in western movies He made the elvis' on one large roll of canvas, not cut up. Wanted them strung along the gallery wall as one continuous strip/roll of images...gallery chose to cut them up anyway into separate canvas' Not just any elvis chosen...chose a super masculine, western cinema, fictional version of him
Greenwich Village Cafeteria, 1934, Paul Cadmus
"There was on Seventh Avenue and Christopher Street a large cafeteria named Stewart's . . . full of beatniks, delinquents, minor gangsters of its day," Paul Cadmus said of the setting for this painting. -He conveys the resident action in a tangleof colorfully clad limbs, twisting torsos, and exaggerated facial expressions. -One figure—a suit-clad gentleman in the background at right—seems calmly removed from the tumult. Turning suggestively toward the viewer as he enters the men's restroom, he offers a reference to the gay life of the bohemian Village. -Richard Meyer says that Cadmus challenged sexuality and censorship in American culture by painting it very expressively through these satirical paintings. -He openly shows "censored" behavior out in the open in these public spaces.
God, 1917, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
-Also apart of Dada movement -Inspired by Duchamp's readymade art -A 10.5 inch high cast iron plumping trap placed upside down -God is a readymade sculpture from 1917 that epitomizes the spirit and avant-garde strategies of New York Dada. -It was created by the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, who elevated everyday and industrial objects to art and questioned the use-value and aesthetic-value of art. -God consists of a cast iron drain trap set on its end, mounted on a miter box, and shows a Dadaist irreverence toward the authority of a higher power. -The sculpture also suggests a twisted phallus, which may be the Baroness' critique of a male-dominated, phallocentric society. -God gives an ironic nod to Marcel Duchamp's declaration that "The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges," along with Duchamp's Fountain.
Les Fétiches, 1938, Loïs Mailou Jones
-An African mask is depicted with beveled oval eyes and carved eyebrows. -The mask's design creates flowing contours down to the chin, suggesting a strong human presence. -The triangular nose is formed by contrasting light and dark tones that flow upward into the forehead, creating a vertical movement. -Green and red feathery plumes echo the vertical movement of the nose. -Other masks are also depicted, including a striped wooden mask, a dark mask with white banded slit-like eyes, a curving biomorphic mask, and a horned mask in the lower right. -A red African fetish statue stands erect at the center right. -The masks are copied from different African tribes -Jones was influenced by the Harlem Renaissance movement. -By rejecting the binary worldviews of both Parisian avant-garde and Harlem Renaissance and instead combining and negotiating a position in-between both places, Loïs Mailou Jones emancipated herself as an artist. She positions herself in the middle - as a junction of different art currants. -The title "fetishes" references fetishizing of African culture, which masks are a symbol of -Fragmented pieces reference African Diaspora causing fragmenting effects on black society = the fragmented nature of black identity which Jones felt bc she was raised wealthy in Boston/lacked connection to African culture. -Abstraction is another route for black artists to explore culture + drawing on tradition for comfort in a prejudiced world.
In Memory of My Feelings - Frank O'Hara, 1961, Jasper Johns
-Another abstract exp. piece of Johns being an artist in action. -showing his increasing somber feelings on the canvas via grey blue tones, thick brush strokes, opacity, dense brush work, simple grey corner. -adding utensils to represent emblem of domesticity in the modernizing life. -title based on frank Ohara poem -context: once a level of success was reached with an artist, what was once tender (their sexuality) becomes an element of gossip and they are tainted by homophobia -this piece reflects such somber tones - abstract expressionism allowed queer artists to express themselves in a new way without being outright.
Rrose Sélavy, c. 1923, Man Ray with Marcel Duchamp
-Apart of Dada movement -Rrose was Duchamp's alter ego he showed throughout his works, used elements of playfulness, irony, erotic/sensual undertones, feminine allure, gender bending in portraiture -Duchamp was a master of subversion -- teasing ideas about identity + self representation via portraits of himself
James Baldwin, c. 1945-50, Beauford Delaney
-Baldwin + Delaney were good friends w/ similar backgrounds as black queer artists -Baldwin wrote about his friendship w Delaney, saying, his bold use of color + abstraction used to express emotion and feeling -His work reflects a deep understanding of the complexities and contradictions of the human experience and his commitment to explore them -Ongoing struggles of representation and recognition by minorities and how art can play in role in alleviating it -This piece has similar build up of chunky textures of the oil on canvas -Makes James Baldwin look kinda sickly, upper and lower body is disproportionate to each other, illusion of space is off, the chair and the background outlines are not totally clear.
The Boxer, c. 1942, Richmond Barthé
-Barthé was a prominent sculptor who primarily created Black figures in the mid-twentieth century. -The sculpture Boxer was created from memory and depicts an anonymous subject. -Boxer actually commemorates the physique and skill of Eligio Sardiñas Montalvo, a successful Cuban prizefighter nicknamed "Kid Chocolate." -Barthé recalled that Montalvo "moved like a ballet dancer" and depicted him twisting and turning simultaneously in two directions while standing on his toes. -The sculpture's elongated proportions and thinned limbs enhance the athlete's implied agility. -Barthé alludes to his own identity as a gay man in the sensuous Boxer, using the male nude in motion as a form of self-expression during a time when being gay was not openly accepted.
Shigeko Kubota, Vagina Painting, 1965, Perpetual Fluxfest, Cinematheque, New York, July 4, 1965, Shigeko Kubota
-Canvas is the area, took the happenings idea from Alan Kaprow to create a performance expression -A painting via a paintbrush attached to her underwear -Complexity of whether artists should be viewed via their gender/anatomy, which clearly played a role in making this piece, but should it play a role when looking at other art. Should her anatomical influence be a bad thing based on past misogyny in society
Electric Dress, 1956, Tanaka Atsuko
-Costume of 200 painted blinking lightbulbs, dangling electrical cords -wearable art, combination of technology but also tradition -the kimono is a Japanese cultural wardrobe - this one resembles the marriage kimono -she is putting herself on display, but her true self (her body) is hidden and impenetrable -relfects the anxieties of being a woman of the time -- the female body was increasingly commodified, changing social norms around gender, sexuality, etc. creating general anxiety.
Lady with Wide Brimmed Straw Hat, 1934, James Van Der Zee
-During the 1920s and 1930s, Van Der Zee took hundreds of photographs documenting Harlem's growing middle class. People in Harlem trusted Van Der Zee to document their important life events, including weddings, funerals, celebrities, sports stars, and social gatherings. -Van Der Zee became Harlem's most successful photographer. -He took pictures of many famous people, including poet Countee Cullen, dancer Bill ("Bojangles") Robinson, Charles M. "Daddy" Grace, Joe Louis, Florence Mills, and black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey. -By the early 1930s, Van Der Zee's income from photography declined due to economic circumstances and the growing popularity of personal cameras. -Van Der Zee adapted by taking passport photos, restoring old photographs, and doing other miscellaneous photography jobs, which he continued for over two decades. -"politics of respectability": performance of bourgeoise white elements in black photography
Fountain, 1917 (photo by Alfred Stieglitz), Marcel Duchamp
-Glazed ceramic with black paint -The way the work pushes the boundaries of what art could be defined to makes it part of the Dada era -Duchamp pioneered the Dadaist movement with his Readymades -this piece was rejected from an art show that was not supposed to reject any of the pieces, based on the grounds that it was immoral/vulgar or was plagiarized; his point in calling it a "fountain" was taking something that was meant for one thing but giving it a whole other meaning, creating a new thought for the object. -Duchamp says everyday objects can be dignified as a work of art by the artist's act of choice...questioning what qualifies as genuine art. -Playing with conventional notions of art -- must it be pompous, or can it be personal, satirical, witty?
Beau of the Ball, 1926, James Van Der Zee
-He added things by hand to glamorize his subjects which reveals his eye for composition, contrasting sparkle and ornamentation with dark complexions, he wanted subjects to be posed in their best light. -This photo includes regal victorian and Edwardian era visual traditions -Plays on the traditional "balls" of the time, where females are presented to the world for male consumption, where women dressed up for entertainment and attention -He shows the gay culture of the time/harlem renaissance, where things had a sensation element. -Their ball scene/party scenes had men dressed up for entertainment--they became underground/not praised in society like real belles of the ball.
Target with Plaster Casts, 1955, Jasper Johns
-Johns' painted target is a test of what is expected of art, and he used a deadpan irony in creating it. -By painting a target, its original use as a real target is negated, and it becomes an image instead of a sign. -The rings of the target are presented as a unified design in "Target with Plaster Casts," and there is no part of it that is visually superior to the rest. -Despite its target format, the painting is in the tradition of visual "all-overness," a continuous matrix of marks from Seurat to Pollock. -The plaster casts of body parts in boxes above the painting are transformed in the opposite way, becoming like fossils or signs that stand for classes of things. In "Target with Plaster Casts," two systems of seeing are in perfect mutual opposition, with the sign becoming a painting and sculpture becoming a sign. -Didn't pair well with society's expectations of art, but Johns wanted people to have to use their own minds -Butt article says Johns used repetition as a reflection of the queer experience where fragmentation and repetition was a part of life, and also how Johns uses concealment but also disclosure via codes/symbols, just like with his own queer identity.
Self Portrait, 1940, Loïs Mailou Jones
-Jones's work features artwork within her own art. -The sculpted figures in the background hearken to her roots in African art. -She was influenced by Parisian avant-guarde and NYC Harlem Renaissance that explored modernism, realism, racial elements, African culture, etc. -She makes herself known in the piece, trying to depict the place experience in general, but also as a black female artist in this space.
Studio Party (Soirée), c. 1917-1919, Florine Stettheimer
-Oil on canvas -Contains pictures within pictures and points toward a dissolution of spatial illusion. -This interior scene depicts several notable individuals who were integral to Stettheimer's social circle - here gathered in her studio for one of her salon evenings. -Modernist compositional technique blended with abstracted figuration, rendering a space that is both "real" and whimsically airy -Bright colors, bold forms, and whimsical imagery reflect her interest in modernist aesthetics and avant-garde movements such as Dada and Surrealism. -Her style is gossamer light (opaque), theatrical, highly artifice, and complex. -The iconography is redefined and personal in its references, familial, feminine, floral, -It is both Campy but also subversively Rococo, even though it is not light and fluid -- it is whimsical but also realistic/not entire fantastical. -ineligible social interactions, we cannot tell their emotions/reactions/expressions -- which is a reflection of the modernizing society. -Stettheimer and O'keefe were the only female artists included in large exhibitions in their era, of the 1920s. -Roles of institutions at this time -- Stettheimer's work was meant to encourage people to witness new age feminist works, not to be in a huge concert hall.
Sailors and Floosies, 1938, Paul Cadmus
-Sailors and Floosies, the third painting in a trilogy on the theme of on-leave sailors that Paul Cadmus completed between 1933 and 1938, exemplifies the artist's predilection for social satire. -His use of tempera, a classical painting medium, and interest in articulating the musculature and anatomy of the human form recalled Italian Renaissance masters, but his subject matter was truly contemporary, even risqué, in its mockery of modern American life. -Here, the artist exaggerates the tight fit of the sailors' uniforms and the dresses clinging to the women's bodies to heighten the scene's sexual energy. -The sailor in the foreground with one arm raised over his head, is modeled on the well-known Renaissance posture of the sleeping faun. -His idealized classical beauty is juxtaposed with the vulgar, harpy-like "floosie" who hovers over him. Such acerbic scenes of carousing sailors (and the light in which they cast the Navy) generated intense debate in their time. -The painting was first exhibited at the 1940 San Francisco World's Fair, and promptly incited a national controversy that resulted in its removal from the walls—although it was reinstalled in the exhibition two days later.
Yellow Calla, 1926, Georgia O'Keeffe
-She loved large scale analytical flower paintings and magnifying it -Alluding to genitalia was interpreted as erotic and thus controversial at the time
Lift Every Voice and Sing ("The Harp"), c. 1939, Augusta Savage
-The Harp was constructed by black female artist and activist Augusta Savage (1892-1962) for the New York World's Fair in 1939. This self-made sculptor originally called this piece Lift Every Voice and Sing, a homage to the inspirational national Black anthem of the same title by James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938). -The physical consolidation of the twelve African American that make up this structure, contribute to a surrounding atmosphere of community and togetherness. To the eye of officials of the World's Fair, the folds on the robes adorned on the performers, resembled strings on a harp and renamed Savage's work as so. The exaggerated heights of the singers can be emblematic of metaphorical heights that can be reached following liberation. The work of art was destroyed soon after it was open to the public due to the lack of financial support Savage received to bronze the sixteen-foot tall structure. Following the destruction of The Harp, smaller versions of the piece were constructed and bronzed.
The Fleet's In!, 1934, Paul Cadmus
-The chorus of poorly behaved naval officers in Paul Cadmus's 1934 painting The Fleet's In! launched a political brawl that extended far beyond the frame. -The work features a wild scene of debauchery: sailors who are either passed out from drinking, or smoking cigarettes and heckling well-heeled women. -Unsurprisingly, the U.S. Navy did not appreciate the publicity. Before the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., could publicly display the painting in a show slated for that year, retired naval officer Hugh Rodman demanded its confiscation. -Blurring lines of gritty social contexts of the time -He shows army men within a complicated and multifaceted exchange of sexual preferences which they express but are also objects of desire themselves. -"Appreciation" vs. History -In "A Different American Scene: Paul Cadmus and the Satire of Sexuality," Richard Meyer explores the work of American artist Paul Cadmus and its relationship to censorship and homosexuality in 20th century American art. Meyer argues that Cadmus's work challenges dominant cultural norms and values, particularly with regards to sexuality and desire. He suggests that Cadmus's use of satire and irony in his paintings serves to subvert traditional moral and social codes, and to critique the repressive attitudes towards sexuality that were prevalent in American society at the time. Meyer examines a number of Cadmus's paintings, including his famous work "The Fleet's In!" which depicts a group of sailors carousing in a seedy bar. Meyer argues that the painting, with its frank depiction of homoerotic desire and its use of humor and irony, represents a bold challenge to dominant cultural norms around sexuality and morality. However, Meyer also notes that Cadmus's work was often subject to censorship and condemnation, particularly by conservative religious and political groups. He suggests that this censorship was driven in part by a fear of homosexuality and a desire to suppress any representations of non-heteronormative desire and behavior.
Asbury Park South, 1920, Florine Stettheimer
-The painting is notable among Stettheimer's works for its depiction of Black life in America during the 1920s. -Asbury Park South features a scene of activity in the seaside city of Asbury Park, New Jersey. -Her choice to paint this scene was both a means to show the virtue, class, and dignity of the Black community, as well as to express solidarity in the fight for desegregation -In Stettheimer's painting, both white and Black individuals are seen congregating together, a scene of racial harmony that was far from the reality of that era (1920s). -Shifting social classes/mixing of races: utopian modernity -blending familiarity (a beach day) with fantasy (a desegregated space)
Untitled, 1949, Lee Krasner
-Untitled is part of a late-1940s series called Little Images that Krasner made on a tabletop in her bedroom, which she began soon after she and her husband, Jackson Pollock, moved from New York City to Springs, Long Island. -For this work she used repetitive strokes to apply thick paint, often squeezed straight from the tube. The composition is a grid-like structure filled with indecipherable marks. -Krasner likened these symbols to Hebrew letters, which she had studied as a child but could no longer read or write. In any case, she said, she was interested in creating a language of private symbols that did not communicate any one specific meaning. -Wagner article --> discusses how she was often overshadowed by her husband who had similar forms, she questions the place of gender in the abstract expressionist movement by working in this particular way and being married to Pollock.
Gamin, c. 1929, Augusta Savage
-painted platser -Savage was the most acclaimed sculptor working during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and '30s, and Gamin is her most famous work. -It was long thought that the image was a generic figure; however, recent research reveals that it depicts her nephew. The warm characterization likely arises from the close bond shared between artist and model. The sitter was reportedly Savage's nephew, Ellis, who'd left Florida with the rest of his family to stay with her in Harlem. -In a 1940 Chicago Defender article about "Gamin" Elizabeth Galbreath wrote, "You like him because you think you know him. You have a feeling that he is the one who threw the baseball into your window pane, who recited such a funny little speech in Sunday school at Easter, and who was wrestling with your own youngster and tore his shirt. You like him even more when Miss Savage tells you that it was because of talent shown in this work that she was sent to study in Europe on a Rosenwald Fund scholarship." -Only black female artist shown at the 1939 World Fair -She was one of the firsts to consistently detail black physiognomy -- certain stereotypical physical features -During Harlem Renaissance, art had a function on the world, was supposed to be propaganda for a positive effect. -Demand to make non-stereotypical/racist imagery -Uses shifting states of figuration + representation but also familiar visual features, to counteract negative black stereotypes.
4'33", 1952 (score in proportional notation), John Cage
4'33" (In Proportional Notation) is one of three versions of the score for Cage's "silent piece," a musical composition first performed by the pianist David Tudor in Woodstock, New York, in 1952. While the lost original score used conventional musical notation to signify three periods of silence, this version is composed of a series of vertical lines that visually represent the duration of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. During the piece's premiere, Tudor sat quietly at his piano, opening and closing the keyboard lid to mark the progression of the three movements. The audience waited in anticipation of the performance, but their expectations of a conventional concert were shattered. Cage recounted, "You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. During the second, raindrops began pattering the roof, and during the third people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out." Cage saw silence as a way to attune audiences to the soundtrack of everyday life, to bring them to consider all the sounds around them as music, thus undoing the idea of a hierarchy of sound, opening up the infinite possibilities of ambient sound, and rethinking the very notion of what music is. As a piece of music that cannot be controlled by the composer and which is necessarily different every time it is performed, 4'33" also exemplifies Cage's interest in using chance as a compositional strategy.
Lingerie Counter, 1962, Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg touches on postmodern pop themes - consumer culture - with his burger sculpture and his ice cream cone on the floor His lingerie counter → using lingerie has an especially lowly and excluded subject matter in a gallery - its not the same bougie content of uptown galleries This was in the 2nd street gallery rented out - he saw the impact of choosing this especially salacious content in such a gallery... -Certain elements of grossness, awkwardness -Mimicks how lingerie stores display goods by trying to make them attractive, by making them unattractive by stiffening it with glue and plaster, rendering it all useless when not framed as an erotic item. -Creates tension between museum objects and the vivid everyday objects on display -he is known for installing everyday objects to comment on mass culture which is a theme of postmodern pop that Oldenburg works in. -Uses cheap goods for installations -- lingerie, cheeseburgers, ice cream, etc.
Self-Portrait, 1962, Beauford Delaney
His own portrait is different than the James Baldwin one -- he paints himself as more grim in tone and expression, smoking a pipe with a stern expression, reflects his own mental health. -while not totally abstract, it is still expressive and reflects the self subjectivity of the modern movement
Composition 16, c. 1954-1956, Beauford Delaney
In 1953, at the age of fifty-two, Delaney left New York for Paris, where he would live for the rest of his life. Delaney did not begin to paint gestural abstractions such as this one until after this move. He began Composition 16 the following year, the "16" probably meaning that this was his sixteenth painting in Paris. -Using densely applied oils to paint ribbonlike swirls in greens, reds, and yellows—colors that would dominate his palette in both abstract and figurative works over the next two decades—Delaney realized his goal to "remember the sculpture and structure of color." -Abstract Expressionism has distinct/pecular/autographic pectoral marks, expressions of private feelings translated via their paint placements -It was without mediation of figurative elements, which changed shifting stakes of figuration and representation in artworks. In the essay "On the Painter Beauford Delaney," James Baldwin reflects on his personal relationship with the artist and their shared experiences as black Americans in the mid-20th century. Baldwin begins by describing Delaney's work, noting its bold use of color and abstraction, and its powerful evocation of emotion and feeling. He suggests that Delaney's work reflects a deep understanding of the complexities and contradictions of the human experience, and a commitment to exploring the depths of the human soul. Baldwin also reflects on his personal relationship with Delaney, noting that they met in the 1940s and became close friends. He suggests that their shared experiences as black Americans living in a deeply divided and unequal society gave them a shared perspective on the world and a deep sense of camaraderie and mutual understanding. Throughout the essay, Baldwin emphasizes the importance of art and culture in challenging dominant cultural norms and values, and in providing a space for marginalized and oppressed communities to express themselves and find common ground. He suggests that Delaney's work represents a powerful example of this kind of cultural resistance, and that it continues to inspire and challenge artists and thinkers today. Overall, Baldwin's essay offers a powerful reflection on the relationship between art, culture, and social change, and the importance of artists like Beauford Delaney in challenging dominant cultural norms and values. It highlights the ongoing struggles for representation and recognition faced by marginalized communities, and the role that art can play in shaping our understanding of the world and ourselves.
Trio A, choreographed 1966, performed for camera 1978, (n.b. this slide represents your familiarity with the dance as a whole), Yvonne Rainer
In the postmodern era, we see happenings. -This piece is a form of Judson dance (minimalist dance) inspired by this particular artist -Appears like there was no choreography involved, but its actually super precise -Seamless flow of everyday movements, sleeping, walking, toe tapping, kneeling...the ordinariness of her movements -Abandons aesthetic of modern/classical dance technique, no dramatic poses/leaps. -She ushered in a new kind of dance with stripped down choreography, causal and spontaneous performance. -Refusal of spectacle
Looking for Langston, 1988/1989, Isaac Julien
Isaac Julien's Looking for Langston is a film that explores the life and legacy of Langston Hughes, a prominent African-American poet and writer of the Harlem Renaissance. The film combines archival footage, black and white cinematography, and scripted scenes to create a poetic and dreamlike atmosphere. The film also addresses themes of black gay desire and cultural identity, particularly in relation to the experiences of black gay men in the 1980s. Looking for Langston is considered a landmark work of queer cinema, and it has been praised for its visual beauty, emotional power, and political resonance. -Highlights homophobia, denial, oppression, upper class gay community, celebration of black gay identity + desire during this era, wealthier queer community still confined to bourgeoise standards -Munoz article says that both this film and the photographs by Van Der Zee explore mourning and melancholia, expressing their own grief and loss, while also critiquing social/political systems that perpetrate such oppressive feelings -these works are contradictory and complex, there is not clear interpretation -- making them useful tools for introspective thought as a viewer.
Ladies and Gentleman (Iris), 1975, Andy Warhol
Ladies and Gentlemen 135 is a screenprint by Andy Warhol, part of his 1975 Ladies and Gentlemen portfolio. The series contains portraits of Black and Latinx drag queens and trans-women, photographed at The Factory after being recruited by Bob Colacello from The Gilded Grape bar. Iris, whose last name is unknown, is the model in Ladies and Gentlemen 135. Warhol used his Polaroid camera to shoot hundreds of photos of the models, with many not making it into the Ladies and Gentlemen portfolio but used in other photo series. The models' identities remained largely anonymous until 2014, with Wilhelmina Ross and Marsha P. Johnson being the most well-known. During their photoshoot, Warhol took 36 Polaroids of Iris, three of which he went on to use for 26 paintings. While Iris did not sign her Polaroids, she has been identified by Corey Tippin, who was part of the Warhol scene in the early 1970s and knew Iris personally. We know very little about Iris's life. She may have moved to Paris in 1977. Ladies and Gentlemen 135 explores gender performance and portrays Iris with the grace and glamour characteristic of all Warhol's portraits.
Gaea, 1966, Lee Krasner
Lee Krasner's styled changed dramatically between 1940 and 1960. In the 40's, she preferred a tight, thickly painted small canvas where every line and color was under her aegis; Krasner's early work seems to abstract the work of the women who hollowed out a space for women's art. The large X's, the zig-zags and crosshatching recalls the deligent work of homemakers mending cloth items around the house — perhaps, even the bedsheets — in a sense, reproducing and reimagining the everyday life of the family and, thus, Woman. In the 60's, Krasner's style exploded in their application of form, color and content. The canvases Krasner used during this period are enormous, often over five feet tall and ten feet wide. The paintings themselves are painted gesturally with single brush strokes requiring the body's full range of motion. Krasner's use of color is dynamic while simultaneously employing a more limited palette. Via splattering, smearing, rubbing and rolling, Krasner's colors blend together at their margins in unique swirls and gradients. The paintings' contents often take rounded shapes, resembling non-human life, the nude body, and the landscape. To continue the earlier metaphor, Krasner had finished her work inside of the house and, in the 1960's, had set out to free Woman from the home and discover Woman throughout the world. In the author's opinion, Gaea (1966) is the pinnacle of Krasner's work in the 60's. A simple color scheme. Sensuous, voluptuous forms, recalling infantcy, the latency of sexuality, the fulfillment of desire and the return to it all. The pink feel like strawberry mother's milk. The purplish browns — Gaea herself. The off-toned white being nothing but the space the Mother is raising is in.
The Bay, 1963, Helen Frankenthaler
Looking closely you can see that the shades of blues that run into one another are part of a specific process of pouring paint on to the canvas rather than painting the colors onto the surface with a brush, as the leading Abstract Expressionist painters, like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline, were so famous for doing. Fankenthaler used a soak-stain method with diluted acrylic paint. She chose acrylics for their flexibility and control, allowing her to pour thinned paint onto unprimed canvas and control the movement and viscosity of the paint. Instead of using a brush, fankenthaler lifted and tilted the canvas to allow the paint to flow across the surface. Her method required her to account for gravity and the unpredictability of liquids on a flat surface, resulting in a blend of the artist's control and the forces of nature.
Marilyn Diptych, 1962, Andy Warhol
Marilyn Diptych 1962 He is starting to use silk screens at this point One half is colored, the black and white section has elements of error with ink fading in some squares, too much ink in another square The image Warhol uses is not from Marilyn in the movie Niagara, but an advertising still image of her that was placed in magazines to market the film He used pre existing imagery of his subjects, brand recognition, appropriating images from somewhere - from an advertisement, items marketed for people's homes, like refrigerators and ice boxes, but were pretty expensive for the time Very interested in the seductions of post ww-ii american consumer culture. The haziness, smudging qualities of these ads, usually in newspapers, black and white. It's not like abstract expressionism where these formal qualities mean something deeper - cuz they don't here. Works of pop art are commentative, not means of expression in the way abstract expressionism is. Meyer article - focuses specifically on Warhol's "Clones" series, which consists of multiple, nearly identical portraits of individuals, argues that Warhol's use of repetition and multiplication is a reflection of the mass media culture of the 1960s, in which images were endlessly reproduced and disseminated. He suggests that Warhol's "Clones" are a kind of self-portrait, representing the artist's own persona as both singular and multiple, unique and mass-produced. the emphasis is on repetition and sameness, blurring the boundaries between individual and mass-produced image. -Warhol's "Clones" can also be read as a commentary on issues of gender and sexuality. He notes that the subjects of the "Clones" series are often androgynous or gender non-conforming, challenging traditional notions of binary gender identity. Additionally, he suggests that the repetition and multiplication of these images reflects Warhol's own experience as a gay man, whose identity was often stigmatized and marginalized by mainstream culture.
Marisol, Women and Dog, 1963-1964, Marisol
Marisol is sometimes deliberately put in a position where butt inst out, intimate, boobs, art pushes boundaries of medium, john's playing w dimensionality, spiningin what art can be, hodge podge of different art, influence of abstract expression, distance it looks like nice sculpture, but its everyday stuff, marisol is 3 dimensional but there are painted elements Photo of marisol's face, taxidermy dog, Marisol → bourgeois representation of public femininity, feminized structure, of a particular class, potentially being looked at, x-rayed in public space. Like jasper johns' target w/ plaster class - using recognizable mediums and juxtaposing them with facial/familiar elements. In the women w/ the dog, she relates the two, implies domesticity, adds fabric like dresses to the figures There's a degree of playfulness by tricking with the viewer's eye- which parts are volumetric and which are painted on. Engaging w similar concerns about consumption Why was she excluded from this category? Woman, venezuelan, When you see from the front, you can't see the back Exposure, butt out and breasts out, casting from the body, real taxidermy dog, real physical part, but other parts are painted Figurative / abstraction
Seated Figure and Nude, 1966, Emma Amos
Neo-Dada -imitation of female figures -different radicalized women in different plains of the canvas...one sitting looking up, another nude woman walking out of frame -women are in the nude but she diminishes the sexual aspect as she is strutting off -Emma Amos explored politics of race, sexuality, gender, and black subjectivity in a white dominant world -She liked using bright color, patterns, mythical photography
Proposition #2 "Make a Salad," 1962, Festival of Misfits, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, October 24, 1962, Alison Knowles
Neodada - Fluxus Happenings -Sense of ambiguity in happenings, no one is telling you exactly what its about -Feminist aspects are up to the viewer to interpret -Evocation of the everyday, a feminized activity like making salad, showing sphere of domesticity/labor of women at the time Fluxus artists were thinking in a subterranean way about gender and consumption, as related to our own bodily processes - taste, eating, desire, sex, etc.
Bed, 1955, Robert Rauschenberg
Neodada -- Playing with vertical/horizontal planes, dissolving distinctions between paint and sculpture. -playing with the everyday - closing gap between art and life, -playing with change and the individual -- fusing out ideas of intentionality in authorship and the presence/absence of what is there. -symbols of humor, experimentation, playfulness, etc. -this piece is a playful take on the abstract expressionism movement -he is doing the opposite of what we think a bed should look like by making it messy and chaotic.
[No Title "Rope Piece"], 1969-1970, Eva Hesse
No Title by Eva Hesse (commonly referred to as Rope Piece) is a tangled minimalist sculpture consisting of rope, latex, string and wire. When installed, No Title (Rope Piece) is primitively suspended from the ceiling by utilizing eleven anchor points and wire. Individual strands of rope nearly touch the floor, while heavily intertwined bundles hang closer to the ceiling. Eva Hesse's seminal sculpture, No Title (Rope Piece), embodies structured chaos while emphasizing materiality, absurdity, and abstraction, in conjunction with other minimalist and post- minimalist sculptures of the 1960's.
Slant Board, 1961, (photo of performance at the Stedelijk Museum, 1982), Simone Forti
Originally performed in downtown Manhattan loft spaces in the early 1960s, Forti's nine influential Dance Constructions are based on a set of tasks that each serve as a prompt for physical engagement. Slant Board, pictured here, features three or four performers who pull on and hang from lengths of rope as they move from top to bottom and side to side on a wooden ramp placed at a forty-five-degree angle to the floor. Forti's use of the everyday movements of walking, climbing, and standing—in contrast to the typically virtuosic gestures of modern and classical dance—radically upended traditional ideas about what a dance can be and who should perform it. Sharing the concerns of the Minimalist sculpture of the same era, Forti's Dance Constructions reject the notion that an artwork should be the product of an individual's personal self-expression and demonstrate that the human body, like inanimate objects, is made up of material with mass, volume, weight, and a spatial relationship with its environment.
Repetition Nineteen III, 1968, Eva Hesse
Repetition Nineteen III is composed of 19 translucent, bucket-like forms, each approximately 20 inches tall. Minimalist artists explored serial repetition of identical units, but Hesse loosened that principle. Her forms are handmade and irregular rather than manufactured and hard-edged. They are similar to one another in size and shape, but none of them are exactly alike. Repetition Nineteen III sits directly on the gallery floor. Hesse was flexible about the arrangement of the nineteen units that make up this work. She did not give specific instructions about how her work was to be arranged, so its overall shape varies with each installation. Hesse used a wide range of materials to make her sculptural works. She was drawn to newly developed materials like fiberglass, which hadn't been used for sculpture before Hesse began working with it. Aware of the instability of materials like fiberglass, which discolors and deteriorates over time, Hesse said, "Life doesn't last; art doesn't last. It doesn't matter."
White Painting [three panel], 1951, Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg painted a series of canvases white in 1951, known as the White Paintings. Each work consists of a different number of panels, ranging from one to seven. The panels are uniform in size, proportionally balanced, and modular. Rauschenberg wanted the paintings to be pristine, so they were repainted or refabricated from scratch by friends or studio assistants, making them remakeable. Scholars have mainly focused on the White Paintings' role as receptors for light and shadow, rather than their remakeable nature. The White Paintings are typically treated as a group rather than as individual works, as they all have the same surface and emerged from the same concept. This essay aims to address the physical history of a specific three-panel White Painting and the repainting and refabrication shared by all five works, positioning them as a groundbreaking precursor to Conceptualism. landing strips for light, vehicle to see shifting light / environmental qualities around it. Absence of Pollock style -- he is commenting on the movement by showing a lack thereof. John Cage wrote about this --> said these pieces were airports for lights, shadows, particles, so they will catch whatever sticks to them. So, does this contribute to the painting? What does a painting have to be?
Portrait of Sidney Janis Selling Portrait of Sidney Janis by Marisol, by Marisol, 1967-1968, Marisol
Sidney was an art seller, / gallerist, one on left is art she made of him and the one on right is him selling the art, funny joke, Deeply aware of this marketplace economy as an artist How does marisol fit into pop? Her work is charming and delightful
Thirteen Most Wanted Men, 1964, Andy Warhol
Thirteen Most Wanted Men is a series of paintings created by Andy Warhol in 1964. The original piece was a mural created for the exterior wall of the New York State Pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair in Queens, New York. The mural consisted of a grid of black and white mug shots of thirteen men, all of whom were wanted by the New York City Police Department for various crimes. The mural was created in secret by Warhol and his team, without the knowledge or approval of the fair's organizers. The piece caused controversy and was painted over shortly after it was unveiled, due to concerns over its subject matter and the perceived glorification of criminals. Warhol responded by creating a series of paintings based on the original mural. The paintings feature enlarged versions of the individual mug shots, each painted in bright, bold colors. The faces are cropped and distorted, with a halo-like circle surrounding each image. The paintings were shown at the 1964 World's Fair, but the controversial nature of the piece caused them to be removed from the exhibition.
First, 1961, Anne Truitt
Three slender, peaked white planks point upwards to the sky, joined together at the back by two horizontal bands and standing on a thin plinth. At first glance, the work resembles a section of suburban garden fence, but on closer examination the three posts reveal subtle variations from one another in height, width and point shape, giving them a fragile, almost human quality. The central pillar is taller than the two on either side, and the upper horizontal beam resembles outstretched arms holding them together into a tight group, perhaps a reference to the experience of Truitt and her younger twin sisters during their childhood. As referenced in the work's title, this sculpture was the first Truitt made in a new, pared down abstract style. These early sculptures made allusions to her own experiences in the world, resembling the picket fences, tomb stones and clapboard houses in the coastal town of Easton where she grew up. This marriage between minimal geometry and personal experience came to characterise all of Truitt's work even as her sculptures became increasingly abstract, lending her practice an individuality that would prove hugely influential. Acrylic on wood - Baltimore Museum of Art
Mountains and Sea, 1952, Helen Frankenthaler
This work is a perfect example of Frankenthaler's technique of making pictures entirely by "staining," a process in which she poured thinned paint onto raw, unprimed canvas. This method results in fields of transparent color that seem to float in space, with the weave of the canvas establishing the flatness of the image. Her arrangement of colors and shapes often evoke the natural environment, and each work creates a unique visual space and atmosphere.
Sans II, 1968, Eva Hesse
major figure of 1960s Postminimalist and feminist art, Eva Hesse used materials such as latex, fiberglass, felt, wire, and plastic in her groundbreaking sculptures. Her unstable, flexible media made her structures slack and spindly—radical departures from traditional, monumental sculpture and Minimalist ideals. Hesse also made paintings and drawings. Throughout her practice, eroticism and the female body were major themes.
Oxidation Painting, 1978, Andy Warhol
Similar to a jackson pollock piece visually - all over composition, abstract, etc. Warhol painted the copper with his urine - intended humor involved - he is criticizing the heteronormative and macho male era of the jackson pollock abstract painters before him. Gives us a sense of Warhol's perception of art's history before him. Mockery of high brow art. "the canvas is an arena in which to act" Pop Art extends beyond Warhol though...also not just US pop culture It typically deals with post WWII consumer culture Marks a return of representational imagery after the dominance of abstract expressionism
Keep, 1962, Anne Truitt
Anne Truitt's sculptures often refer to people and places she has known, or to specific experiences. All are scaled to relate to the human body. An early mature work by the artist, Keep is both intimate and intimidating. Its bulky shape gives the impression of a crenellated battlement (a keep is the innermost structure of a medieval castle). Its title is also a loaded word suggesting possession, protection, and preservation. Truitt draws meaning from deeply felt, personal associations. "It's the human experience that is distilled into art that makes it great," she said.
Music, Pink and Blue No. 2, 1918, Georgia O'Keeffe
Barbara Lyns article --> O'keefe was seen as a problematic feminist bc of these works that celebrate phallic imagery by painting these for male viewing and desire --but if you closely analyze, her works can be seen as critiques of the male gaze --she magnifies and beautifies the feminine anatomy, making desire a site of pleasure and agency, and not just a passive object.
Marisol, The Party, 1965-1966, Marisol
Her party piece - Staged set, orientation of women figures, placing them like chess pieces Elements of trickery are of great interest to Marisol - from a distance you see these grandiose wealthy appearing figures, but when looking up close the materials are rather cheap. Line between consumption and market