art module 13

Rothko (American), No. 14, Abstract Expressionism, 1960

.One other one by Rothko, No. 14, this one just happens to be one of the most famous, and it really fits in very well with what I said. You have the dominant space, this time on the top. It seems to be pushing down on the other color. You have the very loose edges all around it that there's no really beginning or end, but they fade away. Another thing about Rothko, just really like with de Kooning and Pollock is, again, these canvases are very large and can feel very overpowering when you approach them.

Abstract Expressionism

Abstract Expressionism • Inspired by a Picasso show at MoMA in 1939; Picasso's work exposed Abstract Expressionists to abstraction • Major Abstract Expressionists include Pollock, de Kooning, Motherwell, and Rothko, among others • Used improvisational methods similar to many Surrealists and Kandinsky • As the name implies, it combines the mentalities of Expressionism and Abstraction • Though there were Abstract Expressionists working in Europe, this is one of the first truly American-born movements • There are two main types of Abstract Expressionism; Pollock's work is considered gestural abstract expressionism - relying on an energetic application of paint; Rothko's work is considered chromatic abstract expressionism - relying on emotional resonance of color Today we'll talk about the abstract expressionists, perhaps the largest movement that has seen an effect and an influence of earlier abstractionists. So what is Abstract Expressionism? If you think about the name, you can get a good understanding of what it is. It's a combination of abstraction and expressionism. So what these artists set out to do is to combine the mentalities of expressionism and abstraction, and by doing that, they are painting things that have an emotional quality to them. We might not all have the same emotional reaction, but the artists do want you to be emotionally invested. That's what makes them different than pure abstraction, which was a lot of times about the exploration of a color, the exploration of the lines, and it didn't necessarily have a big emotional impact. It was possible, but that wasn't the number 1 goal of the artist. So I want you to know that there are two main types of abstract expressionism.

Frankenthaler (American), Interior Landscape, Abstract Expressionism, 1964

Again, it feels as if these works, the paint just sort of comes alive for her on these canvases. There's very little definitive paint there. You can maybe see it here in the gray, the large, gray rectangle and here in the line between the brown and the tan. So as you think about Abstract Expressionism, be able to identify works by those four artists that I just showed you, and also, definitely know the difference between gestural and chromatic Abstract Expressionism.

American Pop Art movement

American Pop Art movement - group of artists who sought to reach a wider audience by using the familiar in their images; Pop Art in the US was largely spurred by the American fascination with consumer culture • Chief members of the Pop Art movement were Johns, Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Oldenburg, among others • The style of the American Pop artists was somewhat unified, common traits included strictly contemporary imagery, simplicity of themes, bold and flatly applied colors; often worked in series • Pop art (and artists) often made the ironic suggestion that art was like any other consumer product Pop Art is one of the most important American movements of the 20th century. Not only was it very representative of American culture, but it also made celebrities out of several of the artists associated with it, namely Any Warhol. So when we talk about American Pop Art, do know that there is also British Pop Art, which wasn't nearly as popular in the United States, though very successful in Europe as a movement, as well, but what we'll be talking about is American pop artists. So what the Pop Art Movement sought to do was reach a wider art audience through art by showing them things that they're very familiar with, like celebrities, maps, targets, things that they saw every day in their life, and so when we look at Pop Art, we usually are met with something that is instantly familiar. It might be altered in some way. It might be blown up to be very large. It might be colored in a different way, but it is something that we are familiar with, and pop artists, by doing this, were really, they were acting against abstract expressionists, whose work was more austere. It was more esoteric. It was more difficult for the everyday art lover to appreciate. Pop Art was something that they felt could be loved by anyone. So the chief members of Pop Art that we'll talk about are Johns, Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Oldenburg. And when we think about style of Pop Art, it can change pretty dramatically from artist to artist, but the common traits that we're going to see her bold colors, often primary colors. Not always but a lot of very basic coloring. Very contemporary imagery, simplicity, a feeling of flatness

Christo and Jeanne-Claude (Bulgarian-American and FrenchAmerican), The Gates, Central Park, New York, Earth Art, 1979 - 2005

And that brings us to really maybe their most famous work that they've done, called The Gates. That they did in Central Park. It was installed for I think maybe almost four weeks, four or five weeks, in Central Park in 2005, in the wintertime, so in January and February. And as you can see, there was snow on the ground when The Gates finally went up. And it created this beautiful contrast of the orange against the white. Even if there hadn't been snow on the ground, really the dead grass, the dead trees, of Central Park in the wintertime. This orange brightness would have just enlivened the whole place. And so what they did was create this almost golden river going throughout New York, going through [inaudible] Park. You see this, this is one of the schematic drawings that they did beforehand, this map of the park, and all the orange lines are how much of this golden river, if you want to call it, orange river, they constructed. He has this interest, both of them, they have this interest in contrast. They have an interest in reality versus the old reality. It goes back to the idea of the wrapping idea. This one playing more on the idea of contrast, the idea of natural land versus not natural. But, of course, the park itself is not natural. The park itself, even the grass and the trees, have been very purposely planted or purposely arranged. This one, well, just a point about this is, again, this one took several years obviously to compose. And a lot of people wonder, well, how did they make money? How did they really pass the time in all that time it's taking? And they do a lot of drawings. They do a lot of photographs. They do a lot of practice runs. And then those, such as this schematic drawing that you see here, are sold in their gallery in New York, the gallery that sponsors them. So it's interesting with Christo and Jeanne-Claude, we're not only seeing this final product, which is very beautiful but also very temporary, but we're also seeing smaller objects that are very permanent and that are actually very collectible and that people are very proud of and have prized Christo and Jeanne-Claude drawings. So again, it's two -- with Christo and Jeanne-Claude -- it's two very different approaches to Earth art, but the idea in general of Earth art is to have something where the gallery is removed, the museum is removed -- I know it's ironic as I've just told you that they need the galleries to introduce their schematic drawings -- but the final product does not take place there. It takes place somewhere that is open and where the statement of the artist can actually be very large and very bold and can reach a lot of people. Next, and our last lecture for this week, we'll talk about super realism and that will conclude this little part of the late 20th century.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude (American, b. 1935; French-born American, 1935-2009), Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, Germany, Earth Art, 1971 - 1995

And then when he started collaborating with his wife Jeanne-Claude, in the late '60s, early '70s, they began to have aspirations to wrap much larger objects. So in this case, they wrapped the Reichstag building, which is in Berlin. And when they began the project in 1971, they -- well, the Reichstag was in East Berlin, so it was in East Germany, communist country. Now, the project took, as you can see, over two -- well, a decade and a half, well, two and a half decades, to come to completion. Not because they needed that much time to put the fabric together or anything like that, but because there was so much red tape and so many governmental restraints and restrictions and things that they had to get approved to do it. So when it finally came to fruition in 1995, the Berlin Wall had come down, Germany was a much different place than it had been in 1971. But it was still a very interesting project. When Christo Jeanne-Claude wrapped the building in 1995, they used 119,000 square yards of fabric. They did this project over the course of about two weeks, and then it all came down. This is not something that, of course, obviously would stay up at the Reichstag, but as you can see from the droves of people that are coming to see this, that during that two weeks, it became a huge tourist attraction. It was something really for people to see. And again, what they've done with the structure is they've changed the outer appearance but without changing the inside and without changing the pure essence of the building. So their approach to Earth art is a little different than Smithson's, but at the same time they are taking something that is already there and they are altering it and changing it. Now theirs, as I said, is meant to be very temporary, as much of Smithson's was. The fact that Spiral Jetty is still around is really just by chance. So as I said, this only lasted about two weeks.

Smithson (American), Glue Pour, Earth Art, 1969

And this one is referred to as Glue Pour. And he would basically go to any sort of natural space and pour something down the side of a cliff or a mountain or hill that was not natural to that location. So obviously glue would not be natural. And he lets the Earth become the canvas. He lets the Earth and the glue in this case interact. 3 And it has almost an abstract expressions quality, if you want to think about someone like Jackson Pollock, who was throwing paint, or I'm Helen Frankenthaler who was letting the paint drip down and stain. It's very similar to that but it's done again in this outdoor very open space, and a space that could really be affected by a lot of other elements, whether it's weather or other humans or whatever. And again, these things aren't meant to last. He was always careful to clean up these pours afterwards. And in the photographs such as this one, this one is sold by the James Cohan's Gallery in New York, were sold. And so it was something of a project that was documented, and then photos or videos, whatever you want, were produced from the project. He also did some concrete pours. He did some stone pours. They weren't always such I guess a very maybe controversial material, such as glue, which really you could have a very bad environmental effect. Robert Smithson died in plane crash in 1973, right, while looking at a site for future projects near Amarillo, Texas. So he doesn't have a huge body work, but the works that he did, it really opened the door for Earth art or site-specific art are very important

Robert Smithson (American, 1938 - 1973), Spiral Jetty, Earth Art, 1970

And you see his Spiral Jetty here, which we'll look at, and another image right here. Now, Robert Smithson is the original Earth artist. And he wanted his work to be affected by nature and to be shaped by the environment, and he also wanted his artwork to be a part of the environment and a part of something much bigger than a gallery or a museum. So this is his Spiral Jetty, which is located in Great Salt Lake in Utah. It's in a very inaccessible austere, very barren location. It actually was investigated for oil drilling just a few years ago. But Smithson's widow who controls his estate had a lot of opposition to that and the site is protected now. This work plays on the idea of the spiral shape. It's turning in on itself. As you see the rocks that he used to compose it coming out and making this very perfect geometric but also organic at the same time spiral shape. It's mimicking the shape of a salt crystal, which is spiral by nature. And again, this in Great Salt Lake, so he's playing on that idea. It's important to remember that Earth art is for the most part, 99% of the time maybe, not designed to be permanent. And although Spiral Jetty was built, constructed, put together, we'll say in 1970, so therefore it's been around for about 44 years. It's not always visible. When the water level in the lake rises, then this becomes invisible to anyone on the shore. When you are above it and looking over it with, you know, in an airplane or something, you can still see it underneath the water. But it's not always visible. And that was part of what he wanted about it. He wanted something that could really withstand different affectations I guess or environmental changes in the lake and still either have a presence or maybe eventually not have a presence, as long as it's a natural occurrence that the Spiral Jetty goes away. As far as the size, this is almost a football field in length, so it's a really very massive and powerful piece. Some of the other projects that Smithson became famous for in the late '60s and early '70s are his Pores.

Willem de Kooning (Dutch/American, 1904 - 1997), Woman I, Abstract Expressionism, 1950 - 1952

Another gestural abstract expressionist that we'll discuss is Willem de Kooning, who was born in the Netherlands but came to the United States at a very young age. His paintings tend to have very strong lines, very bold colors, and a sense of violent, striking motion to them. You can again, like with Pollock, you can feel his gestures, and here, you can tell that there's been more direct contact with the painting, between the painting and the brush. So it's a little bit of a different type of gestural abstract expressionist. In Woman, we see this really a fuzzy line between abstraction and recognizable forms. Of course, we can see feet, and we can see a face. We can see the breasts and torso area of the woman, maybe even the pants, but he always claimed that he didn't set out to paint whatever appeared in his paintings, but, in this case, a woman appeared, and so he completed the painting with a few more gestural strokes to finish off the face, to finish off the waist, et cetera. He somebody that we still do refer to, of course, as gestural, and of course as abstract expressionist because he really commands this canvas, even though, sometimes, there are elements that pop through that are figura

Andy Warhol (American, 1928 - 1987), Elvis I and II, Pop Art, 1964

As you look at Andy Warhol's Elvis I and Elvis II, you see that it's photographic and it's quality, but it also has lost the three dimensionality that usually images of real people give off. So it feels very flat and in that way, again, like a piece of commercial art. When we talk about any Warhol, it's important to note that he started out as a commercial artist, so doing drawings and illustrations for products, and that love of objects was something that drew him to that career, and it then blew up into this fine art career where he focused on the everyday objects.

Carl Andre (American, b. 1935), 144 Zinc Square, Minimalism, 1967

Carl Andre is another minimalist artist who began working with Judd in the 1960s and his work tends to be more floor oriented while Judd's tended to be more three-dimensional. So this is one is 144 Zinc Square and, as you can see, you have 144 of these squares laid on the floor at a museum. And his works are also typically machine made. This one was, most of them are. We're again seeing a very industrial material in zinc and, actually, both of the, well, in a lot of Judd's outdoor works and in most of Carl's works, Carl Andre's works that are indoors, it's okay for them to be touched and they actually invite a little bit of viewer interaction with them and we have a small Carl Andre piece at our museum in Birmingham, it's only four squares so just one, basically one small corner of this larger piece, and when it's out in the contemporary galleries people are allowed to walk across it and to look at it. And it again goes back to this idea that Judd theorized about art that it could be about the purity of the form, the purity of the shape and it doesn't have to be much more complicated than that if you don't want it to be. With Carl Andre, like Judd he's taking the viewer's emotions and the artists' emotions out of it and when you think a step farther than that, because these artists are using machines they're also taking their hand out of it in some way.

Johns (American), Target, Pop Art, 1958

He also did a series of targets. This was, of course, way before the Target store was such an important part of American Pop culture, but the idea of a target was still something that, again, you knew what it was. He didn't have to investigate it to figure out what you were looking at. Even when he does it here with this chalkboard-like style, you instantly know what you're looking at. 7 So this is kind of one idea behind Pop Art, repetition, very familiar objects, things that we're very comfortable with, and Johns and Warhol really summed that up very well. They're the two strongest pop artists of that period that went along with that part of Pop Art. However, in the next lecture, we'll look at artists, pop artists, who use monumental scale to make us rethink common objects.

Pollock (American), Convergence, Abstract Expressionism, 1952 GESTURAL

Here's an image of him in his studio working on one of his canvases. Here's another one, Convergence. It has a lot more color to it. Another thing to think about, and you can kind of tell, get a sense of scale from here is these paintings are extremely large. They take up 10 to 20 feet usually across and nearly that large tall, as well. So they're very powerful in how these abstract strokes and this feeling of movement come across to the viewers. This is one work that he did pretty late in his career. 4 He didn't know it was late in his career. He died in a car crash in 1956, but after he had really been exploring abstract expressionism for a few years

Andre (American), Fall, Minimalism, 1968

Here's another one that I like by Carl Andre called Fall and if you want to think about this at one time maybe being a steel panel that was straight up and part of it has fallen down, it has sort of an interesting connotation there.

Judd (American), Untitled, Minimalism, 1970, clear and purple aluminum

Here's another work by Judd, another untitled. This one not as symmetrical but still having a sense of balance to it and if you start to look at where the spaces are and how large the spaces are it's almost as if he's trying to balance out the spaces with the solids on either side of this piece. You'll notice that he uses materials that are usually associated with some type of manufacturing, whether it's Plexiglas or aluminum, stainless steel, these types of materials that we see as very industrial.

Pollock (American), Cathedral, Abstract Expressionism, 1947

Here's another work by him, Cathedral, a different orientation. This one more on a vertical axis, but again, you see these violent drips that a lot of times are very uniform across the canvas. You see the start concentrations of black. You see very small little bits of color here, maybe over here, but very uniform across the canvas. This style of painting, where he's going with this is he is expressing himself. He's expressing himself really very physically by throwing the paint at the canvas and by walking around it and by pacing, and seeing where the paint goes. It has an expressive quality. It can have a very emotional quality when you think about this really physical movement that goes into it, but it's also abstract. There are no true images seen in these main abstract expressions paintings by Pollock.

Oldenburg and van Bruggen (American), Stake Hitch (at Dallas Museum of Art), Pop Art, 1984

Here's one more of Oldenburg and van Bruggen. This one is indoors. I show it to you just because it's a little different. Now this image that you see here on your right is in the Contemporary Gallery at the Dallas Museum of Art. This is actually right below the Contemporary Gallery in a storage area of the museum. So this is not an area where the public goes, but it's called Stake. So here is the stake that would be in the ground, and here is this rope, all made out of fiberglass, that extends up and attaches itself sort of to this wall in a faux way, and then right below it, underneath this floor, is the continuation of the stake, to make this feel very real, and there's a photograph in the gallery that shows this portion of the museum, which people can't really go to unless you work there. It's again, it's playful. It's giving you the idea that art can be something that is very everyday, but when made in this new way, we're forced to look at objects in a new way, and that's one thing that art does for people. Whether it's something that's much more serious than this, like a religious topic or something more esoteric like the expressionists, as long as it's making you see something in a new way, then the artist has done their job. So pop artists, they're doing it in a very different way, are clearly doing that.

Roy Lichtenstein (American, 1923 - 1997), Whaam!, Pop Art, 1963

In this second lecture that addresses Pop Art, we will look at three artists and how their work defines this important 20th century movement. First is Roy Lichtenstein. His works look like comics, and that's exactly what they're designed to do. Of course, the size in which Roy Lichtenstein worked is incredibly huge. This canvas, for instance, entitled Whaam! is over 5-1/2 feet tall and 13 feet wide. So when you see this in a gallery or a museum, it is very shocking. It is very bright and it is something that immediately grabs your attention, no matter what else is in the room. And what he's doing is taking these Sunday comic images, images inspired by the Sunday comics, and blowing them up, and he often takes images that are very melodramatic, that have some type of consequence to them, and he does them painted in much the same way that Seurat from the Postimpressionist Period painted, with these Ben Day dots. Ben Day dot is the type of dot that if you were to take the Sunday comics and look at it under a microscope or even a magnifying glass, you see that the color is composed of these individual dots. So Roy Lichtenstein uses that same technique when painting but uses paint instead of ink, and as he paints, you have to think about this idea that he wants it to look like a newspaper, and what is a newspaper? A newspaper is something that we discard. We throw it away. 2 It's not something you keep, but he's making these monumental paintings that appear the same way, and therefore, are valuable. So he's making you sort of question what you think of as valuable. He's also being somewhat comical in thinking about the idea of popular culture and the role that it plays in fine art, much the same way that Andy Warhol did. Taking celebrities and painting them. Here he's taking something that's very common to us, the comic book image, and blowing it up and painting it.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude (American), Surrounded Islands, Miami, Earth Art, 1980 - 1983

It's the same for the Surrounded Islands, which they did in Biscayne Bay outside of Miami. Now, these are man-made islands that were created by the constant dredging that is done in Biscayne Bay and in the other bays around Miami, to cause them or to allow them to be deep enough for boat travel. So Smithson -- or Christo and Jeanne-Claude here are really making an environmental statement about the idea that these islands are very fake. And so they put this fabric around the islands that sort of accentuates that fakeness. They use this bright pink color, which is very much associated with South Florida or Miami, South Beach, all that idea, and it caused the islands to have this, you know, very dramatic visual effect. And as you can see, they did several throughout the Bay. Now, again, these were only up for a few weeks. And Christo was very -- if you go to his website, which I give you here, ChristoJeanneClaude.net, he's very specific about making sure that you don't say that these islands were wrapped, but rather that they are surrounded. That

Jasper Johns (American, b. 1930), Flag, Pop Art, 1954 - 1955, encaustic, oil, and collage on fabric

Johns claimed that his subjects were "things the mind already knows." He rejected the inaccessible subject matter of the Abstract Expressionists. It's the same idea with what he showing us here and here and again. We are being inundated with images, and therefore, they're becoming less and less meaningful. I think of all the artists that were active in the mid- to late 20th century and are no longer alive, Andy Warhol is the one that really would have benefited the most and got the most fun out of where the 21st century has taken us, as far as technology, the Internet, and reality television. I think he's someone that clearly would have had a fascination with this. So an important quote here by Warhol also driving home that idea of repetition. "The better and the emptier you feel, the less meaning something has for you, the less emotionally invested you are." And Pop Art is not about emotions. It's about memories. It's about having connotations that connect you to something, but it doesn't have to mean that it's emotional Now we moved to Jasper Johns, who began working in the 1950s in this Pop Art style, and he's someone that, again, he likes to take things that are extremely familiar. 5 Two of his most famous series that we'll look at are the American flag and map of the United States. He rejected the idea that abstract expressionists seem to have about subject matter being really inaccessible and being something that felt above what the everyday American or the casual art observer could grasp, and so he took objects that we see every day. Whether you realize it or not, you probably see an American flag every single day. Whether you look at it or not is probably an entirely different thing. We don't study things that we know so well anymore. So unless you are forced to look at this American flag, in this case on the wall of a gallery or museum, you don't really look at it anymore. But the more you do, you realize that it is this very artistic and designworthy object. It has color. It has shape. It has asymmetry. It has all the formal elements that we associate with other works of art. Johns goes a step further by making most of his paintings have texture, as well. So in this case, you can see what he used. He used encaustic paint, oil paint, and collage on fabric. So he actually used bits of paper, making it almost into a papier-mâché quality and then painted over it with the encaustic and the oil, both thickappliquéd paints that give this painting actual texture. So it's not the same texture as an American flag. Therefore, you have to look at it, because you're not seeing it in the same way that you always do. Two other of his flags that he did in the 1950s, this one and '55, this one in '57. This one was done just on brown paper, you kind of see it peeking through, and in all white.

Minimalism •

Minimalism • Minimalism is a predominantly sculptural style that, as its name implies, is the art of extreme reduction • Focuses on precision, symmetry, and repetition to create works that do not rely on visual deception • Used machines to create some works • Explores the physical nature of the objects in his sculptures • Artists of the primary Minimalist movement include Donald Judd, Carl Andre, and Tony Smith So, Minimalism is predominately sculptural; everything that we look at is a type of sculpture in this movement. And it also is something that, it's a movement in which the element of machine is used very frequently and prevalently. So Donald Judd is one of the most important Minimalist artists that we'll discuss. He's actually the founder of the movement and he used machines quite frequently to shape his sculptures so that they would be to the exact specifications that he had required in designing the works. So this is a movement that obviously focuses on precision, on symmetry, on repetition, and it's something that really explores, as this says, the physical nature of the objects. So what minimalists set out to do is to make you look at an object without it having something to do with the rest of the world, very unlike pop art, which wants you to look at something that you're very familiar with. Minimalism wants you to look at something that you're not even sure what it is or what it's supposed to represent and in most cases it's not meant to represent anything. Most of Donald Judd's works are titled, untitled, so that they purposefully take away any association that you should have with them. Minimalism is obviously very much influenced by the De Stilj movement and also by abstraction in general

Christo (Bulgarian-born American, b. 1935) Wrapped Night Table, 1960, fabric, rope, twine, and wooden tabl

Now I move to Christo. And he's another artist like Oldenburg, who in his early part of his career, worked by himself, but later in his career, he worked with his wife. So this is something he did very early. It's called Wrapped Night Table. And it gives us a little insight into what he's going to do later in his career. He became very fascinated with the idea of wrapping something, of hiding it, of changing its outer appearance but not changing the actual essence of the object. So he did several of these wrapped objects in the 1960s.

Oldenburg and van Bruggen (American), Shuttlecocks (at Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri), Pop Art, 1994

Now this is one, Shuttlecocks, that they did in Kansas City outside of the art museum there. This is the museum that you can see in the background, and the museum has these two large lawns on either side, and on each one, Oldenburg and van Bruggen placed these Shuttlecocks or birdies, sometimes as they're called, that you use in badminton, and the board of the museum and the parks department of the city, who controls a lot of the grounds around the museum, had a really hard time with Oldenburg and van Bruggen choosing to put such a common object. That was their criticism of this piece, when, in fact, that is what Oldenburg and van Bruggen do, is they deal with common objects in their work. So it's really quite silly for the board to get upset once the object was chosen and once the initial drawings were shown of what they were going to do, and Oldenburg and van Bruggen used this argument to, you know, say that these were art. These are art objects. They are not just something common, something that can be thrown away, and common objects have a strong history in art You know, if you go back to Egyptian art, you see that the pharaoh is holding common things, things they used every day. If you look at Dutch art of the 17th century, course, you see the woman with her water jug in the Vermeer painting. You see common objects in art. Art hasn't always been reserved for only the most beautiful, only the most pristine. It's just that pop art deals with the common object, obviously, on a very large scale and also more intensely than other movements before it had. So Oldenburg and then Bruggen won, and the Shuttlecocks were placed on the lawn at the Nelson-Atkins Museum

Abakanowicz (Polish), Agora, 2005 - 2006 (installed in Grant Park, Chicago)

Now this piece has been installed outdoors, as you see it here, it's also been installed indoors and it takes on different connotations when it's placed in either location. Like Judd or Andre, she wants you to experience art without having to bring certain emotions into this. She has her own emotions that she associates with Backs but for you, the viewer; it could be something completely different. This is a piece installed at Grant Park in Chicago. Again, these are parts of bodies. These have no head and no arms, very similar to a lot of the work that Rodan did, we saw some of his unfinished but finished pieces, and these are also hollowed out like Backs are. These are metal though, not fiberglass material. This gives us this idea of countless people, of figures being just a number, of the idea that there is no really end to the masses and, again, it's outdoors It feels like it's a part of something much larger, that's something that we think about with Judd's minimalist works, that you're experiencing that, for instance, the 15 untitled works in Marfa, you're experiencing that form and you're experiencing it in this larger space that is very unconfined. And we could make that same, have that same idea about Abakanowicz's Agora. So that concludes Minimalism and it's an interesting and it's a very different approach to art that those three and many, many other artists did in the 20th century. Minimilaism was actually a very large movement and there are some painters that are also associated with it, I've just chosen to focus on the sculptural side of that movement as Judd played such a huge part in it.

Judd (American), 15 Untitled works, Minimalism, 1980 - 1984 (installed at The Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas)

Now, Donald Judd, one of the most important things he did during his life, and he passed away in 1994, was to start the Chinati Foundation, which is in Marfa, Texas, which is very much far away from anything else in Texas. It's about 300 miles from El Paso in the western part of the state and what Marfa, or as it's really become known as, this town was almost set up by Judd, it was already a small town but it was used by Judd as a place for artists to come and display their works without having any of the encumbrances that might come from a museum so they could be seen outdoors. And Donald Judd felt very strongly about minimalism not being seen within the walls of a museum but being seen as his 15 untitled works are seen here, out in the open in these, the big sky and the big open spaces of Western Texas provided a perfect foundation for that. So Marfa now continues to be really an artistic hotbed in the middle of nowhere in Texas and people flock there to see not only works by Judd but by other artists who set up residency there who are doing, using grants from the Chinati Foundation to go and work. And theories connected to Judd's work are really important as we look at these works that are really being shown in their purest form how he intended them to be seen is he wants you to relate to the purity of the shapes, the purity of the form, the directness of the object. These are objects that are not cluttered with confrontations or contradictions from our own real lives; these are pure objects. They aren't complicated by our emotions. They aren't complicated by history, by religion, or by any preconceptions and that, again, connects you back with minimalism to the De Stilj movement. If anyone ever has a chance to go to Marfa, Texas I would recommend it, though, it is incredibly difficult to get there.

Jackson Pollock (American, 1912 - 1956), number 1 1950 (Lavender Mist) GESTURAL

Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), Abstract Expressionism, 1950 •Pollock's process was as important as his final product. •He would lay canvas on the ground and walk around it and on it while painting using his famous "drip" method. •Often called "Jack the Dripper." •Pollock responded to his images as they developed, his responses shaped his work - not as random as they appear. •His work is part of the gestural abstract expressionism movement. •Directly affected the course of experimental painting in the 20th century. He is one of the most important artists of mid- to late, really just the middle of the 20th century. He didn't live very long, unfortunately. He was someone that really brought the American art scene to the forefront. You know, up until World War II, Paris was the center of the art world. Paris, sometimes Germany, those were the places where artists gathered, but after World War II and the destruction that was seen throughout Europe, that shifted to New York, and artists began congregating there. Jackson Pollock is one of this New York school of artists that was incredibly important and would also have a big influence on other American artists. So when we talk about Jackson Pollock, it's very important to understand his process, and his process was laying canvases along the floor in his studio and walking around them and basically throwing or dripping the paint. So the way that he painted was very active. It wasn't something that he sat back and sat very patiently in front of a canvas and applied paint in this very regular way, but rather, he made action toward the canvas. He would look at it. He might see that there's a collection of black up here, and he would match that. So it's not as random as it appears. 3 There is rhyme and reason to where he put his drips and his splatters, but the gestures that he made really defined that work. That's why we refer to that is gestural abstract expressionism, and he's really one of the first artist that we associate with experimental painting. Of course, the 20th and the 21st century are all about this avant-garde movement and artists being more experimental, and he's one of the first ones to really be very bold in his experiments.

Johns (American), Map, Pop Art, 1963

One more map that he did, this one in more primary colors in the background with just this overwashing gray that we tend to not usually associate with Pop Art, but he uses it here mixed in with those primary colors very well, and again, we're seeing something that's very common but in an entirely new way.

Magdalena Abakanowicz (Polish, b. 1930), Backs, 1976 - 1980

One other minimalist that we'll talk about is Magdalena Abakanowicz and her work is very different in look than Judd or Andre's but at the same time she's striving for the same type of goal in that she wants you to look at something that's very pure and very simple and experience it for yourself. Now, her work does tend to have more of an emotional context to it. Abakanowicz was born in Poland and was a refugee from that country at a very young age and a lot of her work is about the loneliness and also the masses that she experienced and saw as a refugee. So this work, Backs, is simply these fiberglass forms, shapes, that look like human backs. There's no head on any of them and they're actually hollow from the other side and she used burlap sacks to form the grooves and the textures that you see along them.

Lichtenstein (American), Drowning Girl, Pop Art, 196

One other one from Lichtenstein, again, playing on this idea of the melodramatic. "I don't care. I'd rather sink than call Brad for help." Here is this woman who's playing the role of the wronged female who is very stubborn and determined in her defiance in calling the man to come and help here, but again, the color is a little more subdued but very bright in the blue that he uses around the hair, and again, this work is very large. So you'll see this as a theme in this collection of Pop Art that we look at in this lecture, that this enlargement of the common, of the everyday is something that the pop artists were fascinated with.

Mark Rothko (American, 1903 - 1970), No. 7, Abstract Expressionism, 1949

Rothko's work is classified as chromatic abstract expressionism, relying on the emotional power and resonance of color. This is the essence of abstract expressionism. The painter is expressing himself through the abstract forms and also through this violent and very powerful approach to the canvas. Mark Rothko is an American, as well, born in Russia. An American immigrant, I should say, born in Russia, came to the United States at a young age, and he is considered the most significant chromatic abstract expressionist. So his style is a little different than de Kooning or Pollock. He relies on color, and as his work progresses through the end of his career, it really relies more and more on pure color.

Oldenburg (American) and Coosje van Bruggen (Dutch-born American, 1942 - 2009), Spoonbridge and Cherry, Pop Art, 1988

So later in his career, Oldenburg began collaborating with this wife, Coosje van Bruggen, who was born in the Netherlands, came to the United States, and this is one of their most famous works, Spoonbridge and Cherry, and he moved -- Oldenburg, as he transitioned to working with van Bruggen, he kept the idea of these monumental sizes and objects, but he began moving outdoors. 4 So that most of the work that they did together, not all of it, but most of it, are outdoor installations, and they started collaborating in the mid-1970s together. So this is Spoonbridge and Cherry, and it's in Minneapolis, and it is actually a fountain, and if you look at it closely, can see the water coming here off of the cherry, but it's incredibly large. It's fun. It's playful. It's bright. It's meant to make you look at this common object, the spoon, the common object, the cherry, things we're comfortable with, things we're familiar with, but you're looking at them in a new way because they are this new, incredible, monumental size, and Oldenburg and van Bruggen mean for their work to be playful. They mean for it to be something that grabs people's attention, much like Lichtenstein did.

Rothko (American), Untitled; Four Darks on Red, Abstract Expressionism, 1960; 1958

So this is an earlier work, and he really saw the meaning of art is a very spiritual idea, something to connect paint and canvas to the inner self and inner emotions. He was somewhat like Kandinsky in that way that he thought color could express certain ideas, not unlike the Fauves, Matisse and Derain, who also had emotional connections with color. So like I said, this is an early one, and it actually has more color than most of his. You see the yellow around the outside. You see the blue, the pink, the red, and the white. He liked to, oftentimes, use one dominant or very large form that sometimes is on the top of the canvas and sometimes somewhat in the middle that almost seems to be pressing down on the other parts, as if one color is overpowering the other, and that's part of this emotional impact that he's trying to have. Rothko had a little bit of a mental troubles throughout his life, and we see a bout of pain and sadness sometimes in his work. So here are two others, and if you notice the dates, these are little bit later than No. 7. So here's Untitled and here's Four Darks on Red, and what you see here, again, is one space that really seems to sort of dominate the rest of the canvas. In this case, it dominates it with it's really dark, nearly black color. Here, this square, rectangle, sorry, feels larger and also seems to be pushing outward a little bit more along these edges. That's another thing about how he uses color. He doesn't use line to really confine these spaces but rather let the colors sort of bleed out to the ends of where he wanted it to be. So it does have an almost spiritual like feeling to it, as the paint tends to be taking over, and he believed in pure color, and that it didn't need to have these images or figures or objects associated with it, but that this pure color, as he quotes, "Could express the basic human emotions, tragedy, ecstasy, and doom," is what he saw as the basic human emotions. That gives you a little insight into his own thoughts at the time

Lichtenstein (American), M-Maybe, Pop Art, 1963

So this one is titled M-Maybe, and you can really see the Ben Day dots here, especially if you look at her face and how he has chosen to paint this. It's very systematic. It's very regimented, and it is exactly how a comic book or a Sunday comic page does look. So this is another one that's very large. I think, about 6 feet by 6 feet, but you see the same bright colors, the sense of flatness. We talked about those facts with the other Pop Art lecture, and we see those things coming up with Lichtenstein's work, as well

Donald Judd (American, 1928 1994), Untitled, Minimalism, 1969, stainless steel and Plexiglas

So, Minimalism is predominately sculptural; everything that we look at is a type of sculpture in this movement. And it also is something that, it's a movement in which the element of machine is used very frequently and prevalently. So Donald Judd is one of the most important Minimalist artists that we'll discuss. He's actually the founder of the movement and he used machines quite frequently to shape his sculptures so that they would be to the exact specifications that he had required in designing the works. So this is a movement that obviously focuses on precision, on symmetry, on repetition, and it's something that really explores, as this says, the physical nature of the objects. So what minimalists set out to do is to make you look at an object without it having something to do with the rest of the world, very unlike pop art, which wants you to look at something that you're very familiar with. Minimalism wants you to look at something that you're not even sure what it is or what it's supposed to represent and in most cases it's not meant to represent anything. Most of Donald Judd's works are titled, untitled, so that they purposefully take away any association that you should have with them.

Warhol (American) Statue of Liberty, Pop Art, both 196

The Statue of Liberty is done with this beautiful, almost 3-D quality to it in the painting, and it's something that is, again, something that everybody recognizes. Even if you aren't American, you recognize the Statue of Liberty. Also you want to think about these, with the soup cans and with Elvis, the idea of repetition. That's very important to pop artists, not just Warhol, but a number of artists. The repetition is something that makes you become more familiar with something, and it also, sometimes if you see something too many times, it begins to lose its meaning. You can think about that with stories on the news or tragic imagery. If you see it so many times, it begins to lose its meaning, and Andy Warhol taps into that, as well.

Warhol (American), Marilyn Diptych, Pop Art, 1962, oil, acrylic, and silkscreen on canvas

The idea of Marilyn Monroe. She was an icon. She was someone that we saw if you were alive than. You saw her in a magazine, on television, in movies. You saw her again, and again, and again. So much so that you instantly know who she was, and it took away a little bit of that meaning of who she really was. So when we look at the Marilyn Diptych, think back to the polyptycs, triptycs, and diptychs, that we talked about with altered pieces from the Renaissance Period. He's made this into two parts so that she is made into this altarpiece-like presentation, and she is to -- or was to so many Americans, whether they knew it or not, she was something that was worshiped, and he's not exactly making fun of celebrity worship, but he is tapping into that part of the American psyche. That we were building celebrities up, people that we didn't really know and didn't really maybe even know that much about, but we were making them into these idols that needed to be worshiped

Frankenthaler (American), Blue Atmosphere, Abstract Expressionism, 1963, acrylic on canvas

The last abstract expressionist we'll talk about is Helen Frankenthaler, and she is a female American abstract expressionist who's actually still alive and not so much working. I don't know anymore, but she is still very active in the art scene. So her work she likes to refer to as happy accidents, and when you see her paintings, they do feel accidental. They feel as if something has been spilled, something has been dripped, something has been dropped onto the canvases, and that's exactly how she painted them. She embraced these happy accidents, and she actually saw that is very symbolic of what our world is really like. Our own lives are often a series of happy accidents. That's how she saw a real life. Also, one thing about Frankenthaler, she's one of the first artists to really use acrylic paint, which was developed in the middle of the 20th century to a really large degree and to really develop it and be very much creative with it. Her paintings, like Pollock -- not so much Pollock, like de Kooning, have very bright colors, but we don't see the brush strokes. We tend to think of her more as a chromatic abstract expressionist because of these blocks of color, and we don't really see her gestures as far as how she moved the brush, whether like Pollock, she was slicing toward the canvas or whether like de Kooning, where she was actually touching it, but this is more chromatic, in that we're just seeing the pure color.

de Kooning (Dutch/American), Door to the River, Abstract Expressionism, 1960

This is one of my favorite de Koonings, Door to the River, and so it's really pretty abstract, he gives it this title that makes us see something in it. Now if you were to see this without knowing the title, you might not associate the image of a door, but once you hear that, you do see the shape of a door coming across right in the center of the canvas, almost as if it's opened just a bit, and you can see this darkness. Whether the darkness is referring to the river, whether the river is surrounding it, we don't know. Again, bold colors, again, these violent brushstrokes.

Andre (American), 37 Pieces of Work, at the Guggenheim, NY, Minimalism, 1969

This one was on the, installed on the floor of the Guggenheim that Frank Lloyd Wright designed, so that you saw last week, and what you see here are 37 Pieces, is what he calls it. Now, they're divided into these six blocks, six by six blocks of that size. The 37th piece is the entirety of it and it was laid out on the floor in the atrium of the Guggenheim where the glass dome is above it and allowed 4 light for, really to shine in and play with the different types of metal that he used. Again, it was meant to be walked on, it was meant to be enjoyed and used and really become almost a part of the visitor experience; not only just something they saw but something they experienced. One

Johns (American), Flag, Pop Art, 1955; 1957

This one with this sort of sickly green color. Again, we instantly know it's the American flag, but he doesn't want you just to dismiss it as that. He wants you to look at it. So to make you look at it, he's taken away the common associations with it, the red, the white, and the blue, and made you look at it in a new way. So one of his maps. Again, one of the most famous series that he did, and he changes, again, the look of the map, and a map is very much like a flag.

de Kooning (Dutch/American), Composition, Abstract Expressionism, 1955

This one's called Composition. It has a lot, again, of his bold colors that we associate with him, with de Kooning. There's nothing recognizable there. Nothing appeared to him when he was painting this, he continued painting it and he continued to explore these bold lines and the bright colors, and really, these dramatic and almost violent-seeming gestures that you see throughout the canvas.

Oldenburg's one-man show at the Green Gallery, NY, 1962

This was an exhibition that Oldenburg did at the Green Gallery in New York, which was an important Pop Art gallery in the 1960s, and you can see a lot of his food pieces here. Here's the Floor Cake. Here's an ice cream cone that he did. This is Two Hamburgers. It's a pretty famous piece. It's not as large as some of the others, but it is very large, as compared to what normal hamburgers would be. So he set this all up for it to look like some sort of twisted store almost, and then he called it, he called the exhibition The Store, and it makes that comment on art as a commodity in consumer culture, just as Andy Warhol did, and he's working at the same time, in the 1960s, as Warhol was.

Oldenburg and van Bruggen (American), Match Cover, Barcelona, Pop Art, 1992

This was one they did in Barcelona before the 1992 Olympics were held in that city, and it's the Match Cover, and it's playful. You know, it has this beautiful, playful feel to it, but at the same time, it's also this dangerous object, and this object that feels as if it's sort of towering over you and intimidating you in some way, but again, you have beautiful, bright colors that are so typical of Pop Art

Warhol (American), Green Coca-Cola Bottles Pop Art, both 1962

Two other works by Warhol, the Coca-Cola Bottles. Coca-Cola is thought to be the most recognized commercial shape in the world. Not just in the United States, but throughout the world, people see the shape of that Coca-Cola bottle and know what it is, even in today's age where we don't drink Coke out of bottles as much as we used to.

Warhol (American), Sixteen Jackies, Pop Art, 1964, acrylic, enamel on canva

Warhol frequently played on the Pop Art idea of addressing the familiar. The more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away and the better and emptier you feel.--Andy Warhol This is Sixteen Jackies. 4 So it's for images of Jackie Kennedy taken just right before her husband was killed and then this one right right before, this one right before, and then afterwards. This is her watching Lyndon B. Johnson take the oath of office, and this is her at the funeral. So these are four images that were clearly probably seen over and over again in the news in the newspapers at this time, and it was something that everybody knew about. Everyone knew the story. Yet, Warhol capitalizes on that repetition and that frequency of seeing it and makes us look at it again and again, and it's just like when you say a word so many times, and if you say it and you hear it again and again, it begins to lose its meaning.

Johns (American), Map, Pop Art, 1961

Whether you realize it or not, you probably see a map of the United States almost every single day. If you see a weather report, if you watch the news, if you walk into a lot of classrooms, you see a map, but this is something that we're so used to and we so know what makes it up, that we don't really study it. So he paints it, and ironically, he paints it with this very abstract expressionist style. It looks very much like a de Kooning painting with the violent brushstrokes in the bright colors that he's applying to this canvas, but what it is is simply the United States, but he's making us look at it in a new way. He's making us see it for the balance, for the color, for the dramatic brush strokes.

Pollock (American), Portrait and a Dream, Abstract Expressionism, 1953

and he calls it Portrait and a Dream. So we assume this is the portrait on this side, and this is the dream. The dream, of course, feels completely abstracted, but the portrait you can just make out that this essence of the face or possibly two faces. It still has a very abstract quality to it. It still has this gestural, you can feel his gestures. You can see his gestures as you're looking at these lines throughout the paintings, and you also see how it really is split. You know, we have color on the side, no color on this side. Form on this side, really no form on this side, and he often let his subconscious take control of his works, and he believes that if a figure came about, it came about very naturally. So whether he intended to paint this half of the woman's face or not, we don't know, but it's what appeared as he continued to work on this canvas.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude (American), Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California, Earth Art, 1976

say that these islands were wrapped, but rather that they are surrounded. That he saw that as a very different idea. This is a project they did in California called Running Fence. It's incredibly long and stretched -- I can't remember how many miles, but miles and miles. And it gives you, A, the idea of separation. It gives you the idea of something very man-made in the presence of what's really a very beautiful natural part of the country. It was very billowing. It used this wind that is very prominent in that part of California, Sonoma wind. And it caused a lot of controversy, a lot of people didn't like it. They feared for environmental restrictions. But, again, it was only up for a few weeks, so it wasn't going to hopefully have anything that would be a long-term effect. So you're seeing this idea of fabric associated with Christo Jeanne-Claude.

• Earth Art

• Earth Art (also called Site-specific art) began in the 1960s • Earth artists believe that works lose their power and effectiveness when enclosed by museums and galleries • Pioneered by Robert Smithson This lecture addresses Earth art, sometimes called site-specific art. What these artists are trying to do is move art beyond the walls of museums and galleries. Their original projects were intended to reshape landscapes and to embrace art in a very different and original environment. And they thought that art somewhat lost its power and effectiveness when not only displayed in museums and galleries, but also when displayed next to other works of art, which could cause competing ideas to emerge. Earth art was pioneered by Robert Smithson, that's an important name to associate with this movement.

Claes Oldenburg (Swedish-born American, b. 1929), Floor Cake, Pop Art, 1962

• Encouraged audience participation in his works and in his performances • Has always worked on a large scale; his scale became monumental in the mid-1960s • Now collaborates with his wife, Coosje van Bruggen on these monumental projects Now we move to Claes Oldenburg, and in a few slides, we'll talk about him in conjunction with his wife, Coosje van Bruggen, but when Oldenburg started out, he was working by himself as a pop artist, and he wanted us to look at 3 food very early in his career, and he really focused on these large-scale food sculptures, and this one that you see here, Floor Cake. It's about 3 feet tall, about 5 feet long. So it is something that he's taken the everyday object. He's blown it up. He's made it very large. He's made it out of a different material. He's using this canvas-like material that he's painted with house paint, and we look at the cake in a new and different way. He wants us to not see these objects that we encounter every day as purely objects but as something that can be seen as artistic elements, much in the same way that Jasper Johns painted the map or painted the American flag.

Andy Warhol (American, 1928 - 1987) Campbell's Soup Can Series, Pop Art, 1962

• The epitome of American Pop Art, especially in its reliance on the use of familiar objects, and the desire to connect to the larger public • Began career as a commercial artist • Focused on the familiar, the massproduced, repetition, consumer and media fascinations; therefore using series made sense • Frequently used the silkscreen, so that images could be easily reproduced • Also a performance artist, filmmaker, and celebrity in his own right His Campbell's Soup series is one of the most important and famous series of paintings in American art, and he did it by simply taking something that he claims he was fed every day for 18 years growing up and made it into art, and when he lined all his soup can paintings up in a gallery for the first time, it looked like some overgrown, blown up grocery store aisle, and that's exactly what he wanted. He wanted artists to create things that the public instantly identified with and instantly had their own memories and connotations that they could associate with them. So when we look at the Campbell's Soup cans again, it has the sort of flat feeling, but notice, too, that the color is just spot on with what that Campbell's soup can really looks like.