CONTEMPORARY ART EXAM #2
RAUSCHENBERG, Bed, 1955 (Neo-Dada)
"A pair of socks is no less suitable to make a painting with than wood, nails, turpentine, oil, and fabric." -Rauschenberg Money was tight at the time, so they made a lot of art with household items.
HAMILTON, Kaph, 1997 (New Mythologies)
"Kaph ... is the thirteenth letter of the Phoenician alphabet. The definition and the name came from a poem in which 'kaph' refers to the palm of the hand. I was thinking about how the capacity of the hand to hold something is a kind of larger metaphor behind the structure of this work." -Ann Hamilton
SAINT-PHALLE, Wendy's Wonderings & Wanderings, 1962 (Nouveau Realisme)
"Nobody was paying attention to us. No woman was ever doing what it was like for woman, no woman was doing a woman giving birth. We only had images of men throughout history. It was very important for me that it was a woman who was doing this." -Saint-Phalle
BEUYS, Felt Suit, 1970 (Performance Art)
"Not even physical warmth is meant... Actually I meant a completely different kind of warmth, namely spiritual or evolutionary warmth or the beginning of an evolution." -Joseph Beuys
RAUSCHENBERG, Black Market, 1961 (Neo-Dada)
"Painting relates to both art and life ... I try to act in the gap between the two." -Rauschenberg
MORRIS, Installation at the Green Gallery, 1964 (Process Art)
"Seeing an object in real space may not be a very immediate experienced. Aspects are experienced; the whole is assumed or constructed. Yet it is the presumption that the constructed "thing' is more real than the illusory and changing aspects afforded by varying perspective views and illumination. We have no apprehension of the totality of an object other than what has been constructed from incidental views under various conditions. Yet this process of "building" the object from immediate sense data is homogeneous; there is no point in the process where any conditions of light or perspective indicate a realm of existence different from that indicated by other views under other conditions. The presumption of constancy and consistency makes it possible to speak of "illusionism" at all. It is considered the less than general condition . In fact, illusionism in the seeing of objects is suppressed to an incidental factor." -Robert Morris
BURDEN, Shoot, 1971 (Performance Art)
"Should you watch someone doing this to themselves? How was it like or unlike watching the news footage of killings, burnings, and woundings which had poured out of American televisions since the beginning of the Vietnam War?" -Chris Burden
KIEFER, Parsifal I, 1973 (New Mythologies)
"The Americans dismissed us from our responsibilities. They mailed us Care packages and Democracy. The search for our own identity was postponed... The past is tabulated because to confront it would necessitate denial and disgust... The Germans always had difficulties with their identity. Either it was too much and too loud, or it was hidden and too subservient." -Anselm Kiefer
MORRIS, Documents, 1963 (Process Art)
"The Undersigned, Robert Morris, being the maker of the metal construction entitled "Litanies" as described in the annexed Exhibit A, hereby withdraws from the said construction all esthetic quality and content and declares that from the date hereof said construction has no said quality and content." It raised the question, what is the true value of art? If the artist no longer says that it is valuable or useful or even actual art. Is it no longer those things? It questions the role of the artist, and the experience of artwork. Can we take away the value of something?
LEWITT, The Serial Project I (ABCD), 1966 (Process Art)
"The aim of the artist would not be to instruct the viewer but to give him information. Whether the viewer understands this information is incidental to the artist; he cannot foresee the understanding of all his viewers. He would follow his predetermined premise to its conclusion avoiding subjectivity. Chance, taste, or unconsciously remembered forms would play no part in the outcome. The serial artist does not attempt to produce a beautiful or mysterious object but functions merely as a clerk cataloging the results of his premise." -Sol LeWitt
KIEFER, Your Golden Hair Margarete, 1981 (New Mythologies)
"death is a master from Germany his eyes are blue he strikes you with leaden bullets his aim is true a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete he sets his pack on to us he grants us a grave in the air he plays with the serpents and daydreams death is a master from Germany your golden hair Margarete your ashen hair Shulamith" -Paul Celant
THE CLAUDES, Packed Armchair, 1964
A way to preserve an object instead of just to showcase it. He started wrapping many things to the point his wife was getting frustrated because she couldn't find anything.
MORRIS, Litanies, 1963 (Process Art)
A wealthy businessman purchased this work, and showcased it to many people. He never paid Morris. So to get back at the man, he made a new work in mockery of it.
PERFORMANCE ART (1970's)
An art form that combines visual art with dramatic performance. It started in the 60's and 70's. Usually there is an audience, and the artist is completely in control. Sometimes they use their body as the material. We also need to consider rituals, and traditions of other cultures. Shamanist practices and religion were large influences. It is trying to act, trying to make something happen. The only problem is it is hard to document, you can't keep it forever. Most of the time it cannot be preserved or bought.
BASELITZ, The Great Friends, 1965 (German Realisms)
Are they commenting on the heroism of stupidity, the ignorance of war, or the necessity of being physically strong but mentally small if one wants to survive. Again, aside from the subject matter, abstract feelings of angst, meaninglessness and darkness are evoked by the color choices, the flatness of the picture plane, and the oddness of the composition.
ARROYO, The Blind Painters, 1975 (Figuration Narrative)
Artists are naive as to what is going on in the real world and are only aware of shapes and colors. The coats are representative of working class and could mean they are blind to the reality of lower class.
JUDD, Large Stack, 1968 (Minimalism)
As you move around it the perspective changes and so does the light shining through the orange plexiglass. He used geometric forms because he believed the square has no symbolic meaning. Judd's form of Minimalism reflected his belief in the equality of all things. "In terms of existing," he wrote," everything is equal."
NOUVEAU REALISME "NEW REALISM" (1950'S-60'S)
Founded by French artists who wanted to prove that art's preciousness had died because reality was the new primary medium. This movement was new ways of perceiving the real. Everyone was responding to their environment in post-war Europe. Art no longer had to have a deep-set meaning or purpose. It could just be unapologetically itself. This was a very new approach to reality. "A poetic recycling of urban, industrial and advertising reality." -Pierre Restany
JOHNS, Painted Bronze, 1960 (Neo-Dada)
He blurs the line between actual object and its artistic recreation. It was made in a joking matter because- "You could give him two beer cans, and he could sell em." -said Kooning. And he did cast, paint, and sell them and they were widely interpreted in many ways.
PENONE, Tree of Five Meters, 1975 (Arte Povera)
He carved into large slabs of wood and carved it back into a tree. Bringing nature back to something we destroyed and were going to use for commercialism. He rebirthed the wood into a version of its original form. Forests of new life.
DUCHAMP, Bicycle Wheel, 1913 (Neo-Dada)
He changed people's opinions of artist's craft and the general aesthetic experience by combining two mass produced items and calling them art.
POLKE, Bunnies, 1966 (German Realisms)
He enjoyed imperfections, and purposely made irregularities to the photograph. If you stand too close you can't really tell what it is, but if you stand far back enough you see the women. It was almost his own interpretation of pop art.
KOUNELLIS, Untitled, 1971 (Arte Povera)
He had J.S Bach replay the notes over and over again. It is lyrical work but in a more literal way. Again you can't really buy the entire piece, because you can't have the musician playing in your house forever. The artist is trying to escape the limits of art, it is visual and audible.
FLAVIN, Marfa Project, 1996 (Serial Art)
He is credited with "an acute awareness of the phenomenology of rooms." It was a radical new form of minimalism.
PISTOLETTO, Mirror Painting, Vietnam, 1962 (Arte Povera)
He liked to use reflections, and the mixture of everyday life with art. He painted photographic things on top of mirrors almost messing up reality and bringing you into a world you weren't in before.
THE CLAUDES, Valley Curtain, 1970 (Land Art)
He loved the reality of the works rather than coming up with the ideas. He said the real life experiences alter the path of the works and how they actually turn out. It could only be there for a few hours before the wind messed it up. The real artwork was the before, during, and after. Not the actual blockade, it was the experience.
JOHNS, Targets with Plaster Casts, 1955 (Neo-Dada)
He merged painting with sculpture and engaged the viewer in "things that which are seen but not looked at". The eyes of the plaster faces do not meet the viewer and the target implies the action of taking aim or shooting. It could be political powers targeting the masses, or the anonymity of the Internet.
JOHNS, Flag, 1955 (Neo-Dada)
He painted this because he had a dream about it. The question is whether a painting of something makes it that thing? Is this a flag or a painting? How does it differentiate from the object it represents?
ROSENQUIST, F-111, 1965 (Pop Art)
He perceived the amusement park as a "false natural environment," Rosenquist suggested that consumer wealth at that time produced a false sense of security based on the war industry. The painting invades the viewers' peripheral vision, with images of consumer products superimposed over the length of a plane depicted from nose to tail. "History is remembered by its art, not its war machines." -James Rosenquist
MONORY, Les Meurtres #10, 1968 (Figuration Narrative)
He put in place the elements that would characterize his work: the division into sequences, the distancing by the use of the blue color, the dream, the illusion, but also a critical look at society. The paintings almost have a movie-like effect and seem to be on a film reel. There is a murder scene in the bathroom, and then when you look in the mirror you become the murderer.
PENONE, Alpi Marittime, 1968 (Arte Povera)
He shows how men truly affect nature. The trace of human contact after ten years is very visible. Nature is making the work of art by just using the trace of the artist. Again you cannot buy this, it is planted outdoors.
ARMAN, Chopin's Waterloo, 1962 (Nouveau Realisme)
He took manufactured products and used them to create beautiful gestural abstractions. He personalized conceptual art.
ARMAN, Conditions of a Woman, 1960 (Nouveau Realisme)
He used his first wife's bathroom trash, and mounted it on an antique ornamental base. He raised questions about value, and brought private life to a public domain. He also explores the image of women constructed by society.
STELLA, Die Fahne Hoch, 1959 (Serial Art)
He used rhythm, and repetition and made it perfectly symmetrical. He said there was no hidden meaning in the art, that it was systematic. The title pushes us to interpret more than there is. He is challenging the concept of meaning, to make people talk about what art is. "My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there... What you see is what you see." -Frank Stella
JOHNS, White Flag, 1955 (Neo-Dada)
He wanted it to be abstract but also recognizable and common subject matter. It describes ending of certain art eras and beginning of new ones.
RAUSCHENBERG, Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953 (Abstract Expressionism)
He wanted to explore the limits or the very definitions of art. He wanted to see if you could produce an entire artwork with erasure, removing the marks instead of adding them.
ANSELMO, Torsion, 1968 (Arte Povera)
He was really attracted to the idea of forces of nature. He wanted to push men aside and bring back nature. He liked to combine organic and inorganic things to make art. His art was opposed to modernism and technology. "I, the world, things, life—we are points of energy, and it is not as necessary to crystallize these points as it is to keep them open and alive." -Giovanni Anselmo
JOHNS, Green Target, 1955 (Neo-Dada)
He was thrown into a controversy for changing arts prized possession known as Abstract Expressionism. He was introducing recognizable images in an abstract way and that was unheard of.
POLKE, Modern Art (Moderne Kunst), 1968 (German Realisms)
He worked tirelessly to produce so-called "bad-art", purposely clumsy, deliberate chaotic, distressed and often literally burned around the edges for antique effect. This particular paintings are deconstructed swastikas made into an abstract work. He was copying the Nazis by employing imagery as a means for solidifying power.
ABRAMOVIC, Rhythm 5, 1974 (Performance Art)
Her country also experienced the Holocaust. She lost consciousness because there was no oxygen in the star, and it took awhile for the audience to realize she was passed out. It was a comment on trying to get people to stop being bystanders in important real life situations. She is not asking people to be involved, she manipulated them and made them responsible for her life.
FLAVIN, Monument for Those Killed in Ambush, 1966 (Serial Art)
His wife hooked up all of the electricity. If you shift in the room you can see it is actually almost like a gun pointing at you, which isn't what you saw when you first walked in. Much like an ambush. This was a response to the Vietnam War. The red could represent an element of blood.
AMERICAN POP ART (1960'S)
In a lot of ways, the movement was a response to the commercialism which was particularly prevalent in this post-World War II period, as many aspects of the mass media and of general pop culture, such as magazine ads and comic books, were incorporated in the artwork. This art was a response to the culture at the time, which was mired in advertising and commercialism.
NAUMAN, Eating My Words, 1966 (Process Art)
In this work he is literally eating his 'words', with bread shaped in the letters W-O-R-D-S. He was bring back humor into artwork, and also introducing the use of the artist as being a part of the work. "If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product." -Bruce Nauman
SMITHSON, Incidents of Mirror Travel in the Yucatan, 1969 (Land Art)
Instead of bringing nature to us, he is bringing us to nature. The squares act as the box to capture the nature almost like a 'nonsite' again. The mirrors also break up the nature and make it an industrialized thing. It is a representation of a representation of a representation. The mirrors fragment the nature, and the photographs fragment the works, the book fragments the photographs. The work is an endless cycle.
WARHOL, Red Race Riot, 1963 (Pop Art)
It consists of four panels each depicting the same Charles Moore photograph of a black man fleeing a dog tearing at his trousers. The panels have a heightened contrast expressing a newsprint quality. Warhol used Moore's photographs without his permission, and Moore filed a lawsuit against him for copyright infringement.
PISTOLETTO, Venus of the Rags, 1967 (Arte Povera)
It is a comment on mass production, but also classical sculpture. It also could be commenting on the goddess, rich and poor, rags and riches.
SMITHSON, A Non-site, Franklin, New Jersey, 1968 (Land Art)
It is almost a commentary on making a site of something that is no longer there. It is a representation of the place but it is not the place. He doesn't have a particular stance on the destruction on the nature, he was just sort of bringing it to view. Or showing the beauty of something we might not necessarily find beautiful.
JUDD, 100 Aluminum Pieces, Marfa, 1982 (Serial Art)
It is an entire experience, because the boxes interact with the structure of the overall building, like the windows and posts. Also the way light shines through and reflects/shades certain areas of the room is also a part of the artwork. Moving through the contemplative space turns the work into a highly complex play of light and reflections. "The new three dimensional work doesn't constitute a movement, school, or style. The common aspects are too general and too little common to define a movement. The differences are greater than the similarities." -Donald Judd
LICHTENSTEIN, Big Painting, 1965 (Pop Art)
It is an ironic response to the gestural painting of Abstract Expressionism. Like most of Lichtenstein's Ben-Day dots works it is a depiction of mechanical reproduction via painting technique. And the irony comes from the depiction of the graphical version of the spontaneous painting motion in painterly detail.
SMITHSON, Spiral Jetty, 1970 (Land Art)
It possibly represents Nebulae. And you can't see the work really well unless you're in the sky. This is an aspect of what you can see and what you cannot see. There are things you cannot see but they are still there, and they are still beautiful. It cannot be bought or sold, or moved somewhere else.
TINGUELY, Meta-manic I, 1959 (Nouveau Realisme)
It resembles the aesthetics of the industrial revolution. It also was a self-drawing sculpture. It critiqued the commercialization of artworks and artist as products, and offered an alternative to art's typical structure.
SAINT-PHALLE, TINGUELY, & ULTVELT, Hon (She), 1966 (Nouveau Realisme)
It was an amusement park with a sofa, planetarium, a gallery with artworks, a 12 seat cinema, an aquarium, a milk bar in the boob, a fish pond, coin telephone, sandwich vending machine, a brain with mechanical parts (Tinguely), and a slide. Saint Phalle reclaimed woman's body as a site of tactile pleasure rather than an object of viewing. Hon was both, a colourful and playful homage to woman as nurturer and a potent demythologizer of male romantic of the female body, as an "unknown continent" and unknowable reality.
BEUYS, I Like America & America Likes Me, 1974 (Performance Art)
It was not important that people were in attendance, what was important was his experience. He believed you needed to express your trauma and guilt in order to get over it, and thought Americans hadn't in terms of Native Americans. -A triangle (impulse) -A flashlight (energy) -A coyote (Native Americans) -Brown gloves (freedom of movement) -The Wall Street Journal (the US) Beuys wished to make "contact with the psychological trauma point of the United States' energy constellation: the whole American trauma with the Indian, the Red Man," because "a reckoning has to be made with the coyote, and only then can this trauma be lifted."
BASELITZ, The Big Night Down the Drain, 1962 (German Realisms)
It was not made to be appealing. It is supposed to appear offensive and crude. There appears to be a body under the small person as well. The paintings in this collection were taken by the police for obscenity. He was painting the atrocities of the war, the monstrosities.
LAND ART (1970'S)
Land art, is variously known as Earth art, environmental art, and Earthworks. As a trend it expanded boundaries of art by the materials used and the siting of the works. The materials were for instance the soil and rocks and vegetation and water found on-site, and the siting of the works were often distant from population centers. Though sometimes fairly inaccessible, photo documentation was commonly brought back to the urban art gallery.
PENONE, To Be River I, 1981 (Arte Povera)
One stone was found in a river that had been shaped by nature. Another stone he got from a store and carved it to be identical. It is simple but also poetic. The role of the artist is to become like nature.
RAUSCHENBERG, Tracer, 1963 (Pop Art)
PEACE TOWER: In 1966 the Artists Protest Committee organized the Peace Tower in Los Angeles, a short term installation covered with 400 small panels made by artists from all around the world as artistic antiwar statements.
SMITHSON, A Non-site, Pine Barrens, New Jersey, 1968 (Land Art)
Pine Barrens is a place in New Jersey with a lot of trees. This is a site, and his work is a 'nonsite'. It is constructed by the artist to give us a view. It is bringing the real life thing to the viewer rather than a rendition of the material. "Certain sites would appeal to me more-sites that had been in some way disrupted ... pulverized. I was really looking for a denaturalization rather than built up scenic beauty..." -Robert Smithson
NEO-DADA (1950's)
Pop art that focuses on mass consumerism and the familiar images of billboards, comic strips, supermarket products, and magazine advertisements. It took place during the Vietnam War.
MORRIS, Wall Hanging, 1973 (Process Art)
Randomness was very important to Morris. He claimed that the artist does not determine the form but that the material does. He kept changing the shape of the material in different studios. (Anti-Form)
GERMAN REALISMS (1960'S)
Realism, sometimes called naturalism, in the arts is generally the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, or implausible, exotic, and supernatural elements. This movement is what was taking place in Germany during this particular time period.
SAINT-PHALLE, Portrait of My Lover, 1961 (Nouveau Realisme)
She first received worldwide attention for angry, violent assemblages which had been shot by firearms. She also often presented images of women that ran counter to formalist aesthetics of the Pop art era. "I am condemned to show everything, that is my task." -Saint-Phalle
ABRAMOVIC, Rhythm 0, 1974 (Performance Art)
She laid out a table of 72 objects of pleasure and pain and told the audience she was an object herself. The more passive she was the more aggressive they got. The longer time went on, the less they saw her as a person and more of an object. I think it shows a person's true inner nature that they don't express in their daily life, when given a helpless being. It is also a comment on the Holocaust and what did everyone do while all those people were being tortured and treated like objects?
FROMANGER, The Painter & the Model, 1972 (Figuration Narrative)
So he took a picture, projected it, and his black shadow is from him standing in front of the projector. Art is about art, and is self referential. The painting is not in the street but actually in the studio. After all the protesting and effort, people still succumb to capitalism: shopping. What is the role of the artist? Seeing the artist in his studio and reflecting on his art. Art is becoming a commodity.
WARHOL, Marilyn Diptych, 1962 (Pop Art)
Some people say the left and right sides are representative of the actresses life and death. It was to pay homage to the influential beauty queen and immortalizes a figure that herself was larger than life. "If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it." -Andy Warhol
LICHTENSTEIN, Eddie Diptych, 1963 (Pop Art)
Some writers claimed that he was one of the worst American artists and that his work was "empty." Lichtenstein considered the derived nature of his work to be a necessary feature of it, not a flaw, and often expressed that true artistic commentary on popular media was best done if the work closely imitated its original inspiration.
BEUYS, Eurasia Siberian Symphony, 1966 (Performance Art)
The Cold War was going on in Eurasia when he made this piece. The only thing that could pass across this land was animals, which is why the dead hare is included. The work was meant to heal the Cold War, and he is trying to heal it with warmth, fat, and energy.
BEUYS, Fat Chair, 1963 (Performance Art)
The animal fat encapsulates life to him. It can be solid or liquid, it keeps people fed. You can both heal burns, and make art with it. If there was no fat there would be no life. It gives you energy to live.
MORRIS, Box with Sound of Its Own Making, (1961)
The box plays the sounds of cutting and sawing. Instead of the box being the art, the actual act of creation is the true masterpiece. Another thing is no one is really going to want to own this thing, constantly playing in their home.
MONORY, Antoine, 1974 (Figuration Narrative)
The child is aiming a gun at the viewer. It was a comment on mass media and how it can affect children, and the consumer society. It shows gun violence, it is almost telling a story. Instead of a school shooter having a gun it is the child. Another interpretation is things are not always as they seem. Children can appear very innocent, but then grow up to be murderers. Murderers all start somewhere.
BEUYS, How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, 1965 (Performance Art)
The common public tries to rationalize everything and give things meaning, and this was an example of defying all logics. It also comments on the consciousness of humans AND animals. Animal rights were starting to come into play at this time. This was a communication between the human, the animal, and art and life and death. He also adopted the pose of The Pieta, much like Jesus we sacrifice animals for our own benefit. "This was a complex tableau about the problem of language and about the problems of thought, of human consciousness and of the consciousness of animals, and of course the ability of animals. This is placed in an extreme position because this is not just an animal but a dead animal... Even a dead animal preserves more powers of intuition than some human beings with their stubborn rationality." -Joseph Beuys
STELLA, The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, 1959 (Serial Art)
The interpretation is very similar to Die Fahne Hoch.
ANSELMO, Untitled "Structure that Eats", 1968 (Arte Povera)
The lettuce is going to wilt by the end of the day, the wire will loosen and the the granite with drop onto the grain. So the workers will have to feed the structure new lettuce every day. You would need a lot of lettuce, it is almost like having a pet and no one wants to buy and upkeep it. By escaping new ownership, art has become alive. Granite is the stone you use for tombs. Death and life are incorporated in this way.
FROMANGER, Le Rouge PART II, 1968 (Figuration Narrative)
The symbolism is about the same for the flags and these photographs. He made an entire album for Le Rouge.
PENONE, Cedar Tree From Versailles, 2002 (Arte Povera)
There was a huge storm and a lot of large trees had fallen, he got one and gave the tree a new life.
THE CLAUDES, Running Fence, 1972 (Land Art)
There was public uproar about this work. People didn't like the concept and they didn't believe it was art. The country folk were actually angry about the piece. But it got all of these people who don't enjoy art to TALK ABOUT IT, IT GOT THEM INTERESTED.
SAINT-PHALLE, First Tir Performance, 1961 (Nouveau Realisme)
These extreme expressions of violence attracted media attention, catapulting Saint Phalle into the ranks of avant-garde artistic rebellion. This was her first performance art, where Johns & Rauschenberg shot at it. She was then asked to join the Nouveau Realisme movement and was the first female in the group.
RAUSCHENBERG, Retroactive I, 1963 (Pop Art)
These works gave more historical context to Rauschenberg's life. He believed in Kennedy's promise in social activism and wanted to convey what a special president he was.
THE CLAUDES, Wrapped Reichstag, 1971-1995 (Land Art)
They did it after the Berlin Wall fell. The wrapped Reichstag makes lightness and softness, two qualities associated with intimate if not trivial objects, into characteristics of the greatest monumental power. There could not be a better moment in history to wrap the Reichstag, if only because of the natural symbolism of unwrapping it, a shell out of which the new Germany may emerge.
THE CLAUDES, Iron Curtain, Visconti, Paris, 1962 (Land Art)
They wanted to block circulation within the city. He couldn't go back to Bulgaria if he wanted to, and wanted to show how it feels to people. The reality of the war and being separated from places you want to go.
RAUSCHENBERG & JOHNS, Monogram, 1959 (Neo-Dada)
They wanted to provide a window into another reality, and become an entirely new artistic category. The title is from the union of the goat and the tire.
KIEFER, Nuremberg, 1982 (New Mythologies)
This field was chosen by Adolf Hitler prior to World War II as a place to stage his large Nazi rallies. Nürnberg was also chosen after the war as the location of an international tribunal, which dealt with the crimes of the Holocaust and other terrors of the Nazis. Nürnberg is shown as a place of memory, a place of reckoning, a place not yet ready to be replanted.
RICHTER, Uncle Rudi, 1965 (German Realisms)
This is a picture of Richter's uncle who served in the army and ultimately died. His photos carried a theme of death and murder. Despite being a soldier it appears Uncle Rudi is smiling in the photograph. Maybe the blurriness represents how quickly life flies by you.
SERIAL ART
This is an art movement in which uniform elements or objects were assembled in accordance with strict modular principles. The composition of serial art is a systematic process. One type of serial art is the production of multiple objects (paintings, sculptures, etc.) in sets or series. It is repetition, mechanization, no story or emotion, intense mechanization.
PROCESS ART (1970's)
This is an artistic movement as well as a creative sentiment where the end product of art and craft, the objet d'art (work of art/found object), is not the principal focus.
ARROYO, The Spanish Caballero, 1975 (Figuration Narrative)
This painting was before his exile and portrays a sort of ironic critical stance to his current political situation. It portrays that the upper class is emasculated in their passivity of the government. Or that Spain was trying to seduce Europe as a tourist attraction. Another interpretation is the mockery of masculinity through consumerism.
FROMANGER, Le Rouge, 1968 (Figuration Narrative)
This took place during the Revolution of Mai 68 or the Student & Worker Strikes. The red equals the revolution and the people, while the blue represents the police. Or the blue could mean nobility, the white could mean church, and red mean lower class/revolution. Basically it represents the common people taking over, and he remade this concept for most flags.
WESSELMANN, Still Life #30, 1963 (Pop Art)
This was a good example of mass consumerism, and the affects of a capitalist society. There are multiple brand advertisements in the painting.
TINGUELY, Homage to New York, 1960 (Nouveau Realisme)
This was a homage to a city that rebuilds itself over and over, and how machines tend to sometimes work. It was supposed to express ironic social commentary. He believed life and art were meant to contain continuous change and instability and should refute the static art of the past.
MORRIS, Body-Space-Motion-Things, 1971, (Process Art)
This was a new radical idea that viewers can be interactive with artwork. The art isn't the objects themselves, but experience of the viewer. Being a part of something.
STELLA, Ctesiphon I, 1968 (Serial Art)
This was a part of his protractor series. He made many renditions of the same sort of concept. He was trying to make canvasses 3D and challenge the dimensional plane. It is almost void of emotion or expression. He adhered to geometry to make a work of art.
ARTE POVERA, "POOR ART" (1970's)
This was art in Italy at the end of the War. Italy in the 1960's was very fashionable and full of design, it was a complete transformation of society and economy that might have happened too fast. They lost contact with nature and became a very consumer oriented society. "It is a new attitude, which pushes the artist to move and constantly escape the conventional roles, the clichés, society imposes on him in order to take possession of a "reality" which is the real kingdom of his being. After having been exploited, the artist becomes a guerrillero: he wants to chose the location of the combat and to be able to move in order to surprise and attack." -Germano Clelant, Arte Povera, 1967
FIGURATION NARRATIVE (1960'S-70'S)
This was the European (French) counterpart of the American Pop Art movement. Images from advertising, comics, film and photography were used as motifs, but also images from earlier times of art history were taken on and integrated into new and surprising contexts, they often turned out as politicized narrations. The works often told a story.
RICHTER, Herr Heyde, 1965 (German Realisms)
This was the psychiatrist that was thoroughly involved in the nazi regime called the eugenics programme for psychiatric patients. This regime starved Richter's aunt to death in the mental facility.
OLDENBURG, Lipstick on Caterpillar Tracks, 1969 (Pop Art)
This work comments on the funding of war with commercial products, along with the ideas of masculinity and femininity and roles we place on genders in society. "I am preoccupied with the possibility of creating art which functions in a public situation without compromising its private character of being anti-heroic, anti-monumental, anti-abstract, and antigeneral. The paradox is intensified by the use on a grand scale of small-scale subjects known from intimate situations-an approach which tends in turn to reduce the scale of the real landscape to imaginary Dimensions." -Claes Oldenburg
RAUSCHENBERG, Minutiae, 1954 (Combine Series)
This work was described as getting the room into the picture, and breeching the boundaries of a work of art and the space beyond. Cunningham choreographed a dance piece. Cage created a score. Rauschenberg created the space the dancers could work through and around.
LEWITT, Cubes with Hidden Cubes, 1977 (Process Art)
Though the arrangements of his tower like structures are conceptually simple, depending on the vantage point of the viewer, the cubes overlap, challenging depth perception and concentrating the overall intensity of the works. The work is absolutely purposeless. "The most interesting characteristic of the cube is that it is relatively uninteresting. Compared to any other three-dimensional form, the cube lacks any aggressive force, implies no motion, and is least emotive. Therefore, it is the best form to use as a basic unit for any more elaborate function, the grammatical device from which the work may proceed." -Sol LeWitt
NAUMAN, Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square, 1968 (Process Art)
Walking became a means of not making. As we watch the artist pacing his studio for hours at a time, this sense of isolation is palpable, as his footsteps echo around the empty space. This aesthetic of confinement and entrapment goes beyond reflecting Nauman's own personal struggle with the artistic production of objects, to reflect wider societal concerns about production and productivity in capitalist society.
HAMILTON, Tropos, 1993 (New Mythologies)
We have a hard time assigning value to experiences that can't be worded. The ground is covered in horse hair, and she singes the lines of the book with a fire-tool. She claims it is all about how an experience is made or perceived. The burning smell absorbed into the horsehair. Tropos = root Tropism = turning toward an external stimulus Heliotropism = turning toward light
KOUNELLIS, Untitled in Galleria L'Attico, Rome, 1969 (Arte Povera)
You have to take care of them, to clean it, to keep it orderly. The horses are stinky and make a mess. The sounds and smells make the exhibit very different from anything before. It made people uncomfortable and uncertain in an art gallery, almost putting men back in their place. You also can't buy and sell this work, it cannot be owned.
