Western Art Optional quiz

Action Painting

A painting technique and style where paint is randomly splashed, thrown, or poured on the canvas. Artist: Willem De Kooning Title: Woman 1 This painting has huge swaths of paint and pigment. This suggests the image's rawness and intensity. His paintings sometimes had holes in them, the result of his vigorous painting. "The American Action Painters" : The artists would view a canvas as a place to act, not just a place to reproduce or redesign an object. On the canvas was not a picture but an event. The painter did not approach the canvas with an image in mind, he went up with his material to do something other than what the canvas is already. ITs how the artist organizes his emotional and intellectual energy like it was a living situation. Analyze it by analyzing the potential assumptions made by the artist during its creation.

Hard-Edge Painting

A painting where there is abrupt transitions between color areas. Artist: Ellsworth Kelly Title: Red Blue Green She distilled the painting down to its essential elements, producing space, elemental images. She has razor-sharp edges and a clearly delineated simple abstract shapes. She emphasize the use of pure form and color. She suppressed gesture in favor of spatial unity. She distilled paintings to its essential elements emphasizing of pure line, form, and color.

Existentialism

A philosophy declaring the ridiculous idea of human existence and the impossibility of achieving certainty. Promoted atheism and questioned god. Themes of pessimism and despair. Struggle in isolation with anguish to make decisions without absolutes. Express the artist's state of mind, goal of striking emotional chords of the viewer. Artist: Alberto Giacometti Title: Man Pointing No. 5 Thin, featureless figure. Very rough looking. Rather than showing a solid and mass bronze figure, its very thin and elongated. Its swolloed up by the surface around it. It shows isolation and fragility. It spoke to the pervasive despair that emerged after the world war.

Zips

A vertical band of color. It is used to divide the color field and to view things on each sides as separate entities. Artist: Barnett Newman Title: Vir Heroicus Sublimis (Sublime Heroic Man) The work has a single slightly modified color field that is split up by narrow bands called "zips". He did not want them to be viewed as specific entities, separate from the main ground, but as inturruptions and a way to separate the color fields and give them scale. By having a simplified composition, it increase the color fields capacity to express his feelings about the tragic condition of modern life and the human struggle to survive. When seeing it, a viewer really feel they are in the presence of the epic.

Formalism

A way to study art that emphasis on an artwork's visual elements rather than its subject. Artist: Jackson Pollock Title: Number 1 This work does not contain any illusions or explicit subject material. It avoids direct communication of any significant experience made from the work. He wants the viewer to interpret the work intuitively with a free mental state free from structured thinking. This would be done just through analyzing the visual elements of the work. He wants to create absolute natural emotions just through what is on the canvas and not with any specific objects that may lead the viewer to one specific conclusion.

Minimalism

An extreme form of abstract art and it is composed of simple geometric shapes based on the square and the rectangle. Minimalist artworks generally lack identifiable subjects, colors, surface textures, and narrative elements. They are best described as 3D objects. Artist: Tony Smith Title:Die By rejecting illusionism and reducing sculpture to basic geometric figures, he emphasized his arts "objecthood" and concrete tangibility. In doing so, they reduced experience to its most fundamental level, preventing viewers from drawing on assumptions or preconceptions when dealing with art before them.

Found Object

Art created from "normal" objects that are modified to be made as art but they are not usually materials that are considered artistic since their original purpose is non-art. Artist: Louise Nevelson Title: Tropical Garden 2 She used found objects to express her personal sense life's underlying significance. She assembled sculptures made of found wood objects and forms. She enclosed the small sculptures into boxes of various sizes and joined the boxes together to make walls. She then painted it all in a single hue. Its a mysterious field of shapes and shadows. It represents a magical environment. The box frame and the precision manufacturing of the objects create a rough geometric structure that they eyes roam over freely.

Assemblage

Art form on a defined surface where 3D elements project out from it. Artist: Louise Bourgeois Title: Cumul 1 Uses an organic quality. A collection of round headed units huddled with their heads protruding and a collective cloak dotted with holes. They are different with their own personality. There is a contrast of high gloss and matte finish of the objects. Can be sexual.

Chromatic Abstract Expressionism

Art that relied on how the colors of a work showed emotions. Artist: Barnett Newman Title: Vir Heroicus Sublimis (Sublime Heroic Man) They show a more quieter aesthetic compared to Gestural Abstract Expressionism. Emotional resonance comes from the eloquent use of color. The work has a single slightly modified color field that is split up by narrow bands called "zips". He did not want them to be viewed as specific entities, separate from the main ground, but as inturruptions and a way to separate the color fields and give them scale. By having a simplified composition, it increase the color fields capacity to express his feelings about the tragic condition of modern life and the human struggle to survive. When seeing it, a viewer really feel they are in the presence of the epic.

Gestural Abstract Expressionism

Art that relied on the expressiveness of energetically applied pigment. Artist: Jackson Pollock Title: Number 1 The work is full of abstractions and emphasizes the creative process. They include rhythmic drips, splatters, and dribbles of paint that draw viewers into a lacy spider web. He uses sticks and brushes to fling, pour, and drip paint. His work was spontaneous and choreographed. He emphasized the creative process and immersed himself in his painting during its creation. He rejected traditional painting methods and dripped his paint while the canvas was on the floor instead of vertically. He can walk around on the painting and become part of the painting. He uses non traditional tools and never sketches his painting beforehand, it comes from his unconcious.

Combine

Artwork where the artist combines many different objects onto the painting's surface like items, newspaper, photographs, and clothes. Artist: Robert Rauschenberg Title: Canyon He uses images from the mass-media. He set out to make works that are open and indeterminate. This one looked like a painting with 3D objects attached to it. It has pieces of printed paper photographs covering the canvas.

Encaustic

It is hot wax painting. Where heated beeswax is mixed with color pigments that is used as the medium. Artist: Jasper Jones Title: Three Flags He sought to draw attention to common objects in the world. They are viewed regularly but rarely scrutinized. Three flags, painted on top of each other and the smallest one closest to the viewer. Reverse traditional perspective since smallest object is closest. It's made of wax with dissolved pigment, mixed with newsprint on three overlapping canvases. This makes them have a profound surface texture, emphasizing to the viewer that they are looking at a handmade painting, not machine-made fabric. The painting, like the flags, is an object, not an illusion of other objects.

Abstract Expressionism

Making art that is abstract but also has some expressive or emotional effect. The emotional effect is subjective and its created spontaneously. Artist: Arshile Gorky Title: Garden in Sochi A childhood memory of the garden near his birthplace. Women rub breasts on rocks beneath tree tied with strips of their clothes, wishes will be granted. Left = woman. Middle = rock and tree. Bottom Right = 2 shoes; represent slippers given by his father before he abandoned them.

Impasto

Painting technique of putting a thick layer of pigment of plaster, glue, sand, asphalt, and other common materials. Artist: Jean Dubuffet Title: Vie Inquiete (Ueasy Life) He shows the tortured version of the world. Crude images that children and the insane produce. Smeared and gashed surfaces of crumbling walls and worn pavements with random individuals.

Silk-Screen Printing

Robert Rauschenberg's own commercial medium to reproduce images. Artist: Andy Warhol Title: Green Coca-cola Bottles He would select an icon of mass-produced consumer culture and then multiplied it, reflecting Coke's saturation of the product in American Society.