Modern Art Midterm

Grosz, Pillars of Society, 1920 (Berlin)

-Can see the effect of WWI on the artists

Mark Rothko, White and Greens in Blue, 1957 (PC)

-Color Field -same as last slide

not in slide

?

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Milli Asleep, c. 1910 (Bremen) -German Expressionism "the Bridge" -dancing figure with a rhythmic quality of African art in the background -Jagged, Gothic style of the mature Brücke group -strong patterns

German Expressionism Die Brücke (The Bridge group)

Max Ernst, Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale, 1912, oil on wood with wood construction (MoMA)

"Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale (fig. 14.5), a 1924 dream landscape in which two girls—one collapsed on the ground, the other running and brandishing a knife— are frightened by a tiny bird. The fantasy is given peculiar emphasis by the elements attached to the panel—the house on the right and the open gate on the left. A figure on top of the house clutches a young girl and seems to reach for the actual wooden knob on the frame. Contrary to Ernst's usual method of working, the title of this enigmatic paint- ing (inscribed in French on the frame) preceded the image."

Magritte, The Treachery (Perfidy, Treason) of Images, 1928-9 (LACMA)

"this is not a pipe" -lithography -underscores Magritte's fascination with language to the painted image -meaning that an image is not to be confused with something tangible -Magritte does not want us to see his work as the object just as he does not want us to accept that this is not a pipe

Warhol, Brillo Box (Soap Pads), 1964, paint and silkscreen ink on wood (MoMA)

-"Warhol's work in the early 1960s consciously destabilised the distinct domains of high culture and commercial art, but the Brillo Soap Pad boxes went a step further." -again we see repetition within a grid -"I like things to be exactly the same over and over again."- Andy Warhol -precise copies of the exact objects in shape and color, -"This "visual emptiness" was precisely Warhol's goal: to portray the extreme superficiality of the prosperous society in which he lived and worked." https://www.phillips.com/detail/andy-warhol/UK010113/9

Gorky, The Liver is the Cock's Comb, 1944 (Buffalo)

-"a vain and conceited man; a dandy" -Gorky is depicting his painful childhood experience of the Armenian Genocide and his close "affinity to nature" through his unique approach of color and form https://www.albrightknox.org/artworks/k19564-liver-cocks-comb

Jackson Pollock, Number One (Lavender Mist), 1950 (NGA)

-"drip paintings" -"On the canvas was not a picture, but an event." Harold Rosenberg, "The American Action Painters," Art News (December 1952) -"allover"

Target with Plaster Casts, 1955, encaustic and collage on canvas with wood construction and plaster casts (Coll. David Geffen)

-Almost don't notice what is going on bc it is such a basic motif -There has been speculation that he is talking about himself as a target.

Rothko, Green and Tangerine on Red, 1956 (Phillips)

-Color Field: Pg. 392 "In 1943 Rothko, Newman, and Adolph Gottlieb stated their purpose in a letter to The New York Times, which stated: "We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth." -wanted to elicit a deep emotional response within viewer -paintings designed to absurd and engulf the viewer

Meret Oppenheim, Object (Luncheon in Fur; Furry Teacup - Chinese Gazelle), 1936 (MoMA) diameter of cup 9 3/8" -fetish

-Domesticity + eroticized social intercourse ("Freudian erotic ambivaleence and sexual anxiety") p. 340 -FETISH

Jasper Johns (American, b. 1930), Three Flags, 1958, encaustic, on canvas (Whitney)

-Encaustic: wax in pigment -you can get a waxy surface which gives a great sense of texture -Three canvases that give a sense of illusionism even though it is a completely obvious phenomenon

Pop Art

-Introduced in Britain in the mid-1950s -Popular Culture and Its Implications: "Western movies, science fiction, billboards, and machines." (p. 482) -Especially in America.... -"American popular culture was embraced as a liberating, egalitarian force by a new generation who had little time for the restricting exclusivity of 'high culture,' a notion that included not only aristocratic classicism but also the essentially minority pleasures of modernist abstraction." (p. 482)

Agnes Martin, Canadian/American, 1912-2004), Happy Holiday, 1999, acrylic and graphite on canvas (Tate and NG Scotland) 5' x 5'

-Minimalist / Gorky-like biomorphic abstractions -her line was not uniformly straight despite using a ruler -rectangles she describes are irregular and imperfect -she said: "When I cover the square with rectangles," she explained in 1967, "it lightens the weight of the square, destroys its power."

Donald Judd, Untitled, 1989 anondized aluminum and clear plexiglas (The Cleveland Museum of Art)

-One of Minimalism's most important sculptors and theorists -His art criticism and, in particular (1965 essay "Specific Objects,") he helped to define the convictions behind the Minimalist questioning of the traditional categories of painting and sculpture -repeated identical units (often quadrangular) at regular intervals -known to color over the galvanized iron with bold colors - Judd's minimalist sculpture was different from his predecessors as it emphasized on "his search for an absolute unity or wholeness through repetition of identical units in absolute symmetry"

Roy Lichtenstein, Whaam!, 1963, oil and magna on two canvas panels (Tate, London)

-Pop Art -used Benday dots -use of cartoon imagery as huge scale art -Whaam!belongs to a group of paintings that he made in the early 1960s. -"By virtue of its monumental scale, and dramatic subject (one based on heroic images in the comics of World War II battles), Whaam! became a kind of history painting for the Pop generation. The artist's depictions of giant, dripping brushstrokes, meticulously constructed and far from spontaneous, are a comedic Pop riposte to the heroic individual gestures of the Abstract Expressionists"

Andy Warhol marilyn monroe

-Pop Art -Warhol based these early paintings on appropriated images from the media; later he photographed his subjects himself. -Warhol used a mechanical photo-silkscreen process that further emphasized his desire to eliminate the personal signature of the artist and to depict the life and the images of his time -As in his portrait of Monroe, Warhol allowed the layers of silkscreen colors to register imperfectly, thereby underscoring the mechanical nature of the process and encouraging observers to contemplate the fate of the then recently deceased Monroe

Hans Hofmann (German-born American, 1880-1966), The Gate, 1959-60 (Guggenheim) 6'2" x 4'

-The Gate was painted in 1959-60 as part of a series of works loosely devoted to architectonic volumes. Hofmann used rectangles of color to reinforce the shape of his essentially unvarying easel-painting format. - Although The Gate is subjectless, Hofmann insisted that, even in abstraction, students should always work from nature in some form. -With determination, a viewer can see that the complex spatial relationship established by the floating planes of color begins to resemble the gate of the title.

Andy Warhol (1928-87),Electric Chair, From Death and Disaster Series, 1967, painting, screenprint

-Warhol created a series of canvases that applied his disturbing sense of impersonality to press photographs of death and disaster scenes. - this suggested that "familiarity breeds indifference," even to such disturbing aspects of contemporary life. - "Little Electric Chair (fig. 19.41), taken from an old photograph, shows the grim, barren death chamber with the empty seat in the center and the sign SILENCE on the wall." -chilling image esp through the use of abstraction

Willem de Kooning, Woman I, 1950-52 (MoMA)

-abstract expressionism -new york school -gesture painting -a return to the figure. Woman I took Kooning a long time to finish. First of Kooning's group of Woman paintings -roots in Paleolithic fertility fetishes to American billboard advertisements -Rejection of typical women form -"Gigantic eyes, massive breasts, and toothy grin" - https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79810

Andy Warhol MoMA exhibition 2015

-different soups and the number of flavors of Campbell soups at the time- his signature image -monotonously lined up in the gallery just as they would be in the grocery store shelves -all about consumerism & mimicking the traits of advertisements seen on televisions, magazines, billboards at time

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970, rocks, earth, algae, salt, Great Salt Lake, Utah, 1,550

-disappears and reappears due to the changing tides of water levels in Great Salt Lake -Smithson described it as "matter collapsing into the lake mirrored in the shape of a spiral."

Arshile Gorky (Armenian- American, 1904-1948), The Artist and His Mother, ca. 1926-42 (NGA) - Armenian refugee

-exploration of modern painting mixed with an emotional evocation of personal and national tragedy -Young Gorky next to his mother , he wears long formal coat with a collar -Palette is dominated by warm rose and terracotta -" loose, dry brushwork and the structuring of the composition through broad areas of colors rather than line" -NGA https://www.nga.gov/collection/highlights/gorky-the-artist-and-his-mother.html

Frank Stella, Ileana Sonnabend, 1963, metalic paint on canvas, sculpture and installation,

-iconic example of art that moved beyond abstract expressionism towards minimalism -reduced image of symbolism and remained a geometric form "He famously quipped, "What you see is what you see," a statement that became the unofficial credo of Minimalist practice" -"He believes that the painting should be the central object of interest rather than represenative of some subject outside of the work. -Stella experimented with relief and created sculptural pieces with prominent properties of collage

Max Ernst, Elephant Celebes, 1921 (PC)

-informed by a collage aesthetic -surrealist -images are all unrelated on a rational level -Ernst shows a bizarre combination of images which allows for pictorial exploration of the irrational -animal w/ tusks is ambiguous

Sol Lewitt, Modular Modular Open Cube Pieces (9 x 9 x 9) Floor/Corner 2 (Corner Piece), 1976, painted wood (The Detroit Institute of Arts)

-minimalist sculptures and paintings -LeWitt's essay argued that the most important aspect of a work of art was the idea behind it rather than its form: "The idea becomes a machine that makes the art."

Andre Masson, Battle of Fishes, 1926, sand, gesso, oil, pencil and charcoal on canvas

-related to the sadism of huma being and the brutality of all living things -this is a sand painting which Masson made by freely applying adhesive and then throwing sand on top -imagery is aquatic and he described the fish as anthropomorphic -art should be grounded in conscious -The image that emerged suggests a savage underwater battle between sharp-toothed fish. -Masson, who was physically and spiritually wounded during World War I, joined the Surrealist group in 1924. He believed that, if left to chance, pictorial compositions would reveal the sadism of all living creatures.

Jasper Johns, Painted Bronze, 1960, painted bronze, 5 1/2 x 4 3/4 (Museum Ludwig, Cologne)

-sophisticated in the way he works with images that are very familiar to us, yet transforms us in front of our eyes objects -hand painted bronze & mounted like sculpture. -has all the gravitas of Egyptian sculptures (Imenotep and his wife for ex.) & has aura that raises them from regular old ale

Salvador Dalì, Persistence of Memory, 1931 (MoMA)

-surrealist -greens and yellows recall nineteenth-century chromolithographs. The space is as infinite as Tanguy' -picture has objects that are recognizable but within an unsusal context, unnatural characteristics and unexpected scale -it is rumored that he was inspired by a melting Camenbert cheese on a table

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Street, Berlin, 1913 (MoMA) - Reminiscent of Caillebotte's view of a Paris street in 1877 - Concept of the Flaneur - an image of wealth and dissolute behavior on the streets of Berlin -Gothic Style marks similar to woodcuts -woman lifting up her skirt and man viewing reflections in the window to procure a prostitute - figures emerge from the canvas with distorted faces that resemble African masks

115

Erich Heckel, Standing Child, 1910 -Admired synthetism - Heckel first made woodcuts in 1904. While in Dresden the four Brücke artists used an adolescent girl named Fränzi as a model. - ideal child of the new society, at once innocent and wise. - Although there are traditional elements in this composition the standing figure, the landscape beyond the window there is nothing complacent about it. -In contrast to her unformed, almost sexless body, the child's strong, crudely drawn face conveys in a minimum of detail an expression implying knowledge beyond her years.

119

Kandinsky, First Abstract Watercolor, 1910 (Paris MMA) - backdated to compete -overall painting; no compositional panning Levels of understanding: color music synesthesia -pure abstract forms, ephemeral -synesthesia, symphonic organization -music is unique because it is an art of duration

123

Pablo Picasso, Accordionist, 1911 (GUG) -analytic cubism -Muted color and dissection

151 -Analytic Cubism

Georges Braque, The Portuguese (The Emigrant), 1911 (Basel) -analytic cubism bordering on synthetic

151 -Analytic Cubism(touches synthetic with words)

Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Chair Caning, 1912 -Synthetic -verbal -collage

152 -Synthetic Cubism

Umberto Boccioni, The City Rises, 1910 - Among modernist movements Italy's futurism was exceptionally vehement in its denunciation of the past -movement and technology -distinct repetitive strokes -Facism association

195

Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913 -Unique Forms of Continuity in Space integrates trajectories of speed and force into the representation of a striding figure. -It does not depict a particular person at a specific moment, but rather synthesizes the process of walking into a single body. -For Boccioni, one of the key figures in the Italian Futurist movement, this was an ideal form: a figure in constant motion, immersed in space, engaged with the forces acting upon it.

196

Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition: White Square on White, 1918 -He studied aerial photography and wanted White on White to create a sense of floating and transcendence. -White, Malevich believed, was the color of infinity and signified a realm of higher feeling, a utopian world of pure form that was attainable only through nonobjective art. -ISuprematism to signify "the supremacy of pure feeling or perception in the pictorial arts"; and pure perception, he wrote, demanded that a picture's forms "have nothing in common with nature."

203

Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, c. 1919, photomontage and collage with watercolor (Berlin)

227 230 -Photomontage -Political Dada

Otto Dix, The Skat Players, 1920 (Berlin)

236 -Can see the effect of WWI on the artists -images of people decapitated and skin falling off illustrates the effects of warfare and the inhumanities that came out of it

Piet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872-1944), Composition, 1929 (Guggenheim) in the artist's own frame -De Stijl -Neo-plasticism was in fact an ideal art in which the basic elements of painting - colour, line form - were used only in their purest, most fundamental state: only primary colours and non-colours, only squares and rectangles, only straight and horizontal or vertical lines - Horizontal and vertical

263

Vasily Kandinsky, Composition VIII, 1923 - more measured and geometric, but forms still havean aura -theosophy - spiritual combo of all religion -he adopted some aspects of the geometrizing trends of Suprematism and Constructivism—such as overlapping flat planes and clearly delineated shapes—his belief in the expressive content of abstract forms alienated him from the majority of his Russian colleagues, who championed more rational, systematizing principles

285

Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage, 1907, gelatin-silver print (AI Chicago) - "straight" photography -While traveling in first class, Steiglitz got bored and wandered over to steerage to take this photo. The result "a study in mathematical lines ... in a pattern of light and shade."

365 Stieglitz began his photographic studies in Berlin

Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965 (Paris MMA)

555-561 -conceptual art -picture of a chair, actual chair and definition of chair -makes a viewer question what does it mean to be a chair and do all fall under the concept of a chair -"presents one of the earliest Conceptual explorations of language as a means of repre- sentation. The piece consists of an actual chair accompanied by a full-scale photograph of it and a dictionary definition of "chair." These three representations of "chairness" evoke Plato's Theory of Forms, which holds that the true form of something exists only in the idea of that thing—all rep- resentations of the idea are degraded versions."

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907 (MOMA) -early "African" Cubism -Influence of Cezanne -simultaneity -dissections

Arnason Chap. 7

Wassily Kandinsky, The Blue Rider, 1903, oil on cardboard - Blue rider was the spiritual side of German Expressionism - free use of forms ad color conveyed intense moods or ideas - Theosophy, mysticism, and the inner creative force --> expression of the soul -The blue rider here becomes a symbol of this movement -St George, the Russian patron saint -Kandinsky wanted the artwork is up to interpretation -The blue of the rider was considered a spiritual color by Kandisky and might be a way of giving a spiritual overtone to this work.

Arnason, 121-124 Wassily Kandinsky and the Blue Rider group - the counterpart to the Brücke - Spiritual - meaning of color - symbol of the Blue Rider (St. George) Franz Marc - pictures of animals

Hugo Ball reading the poem Karawane at the Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, 1916, photograph (Kunsthaus, Zurich) - dada performance -nonsense

Chapter 10 -Zurich, 1916

Robert Rauschenberg, Bed, 1955, mixed media (MoMA)

Neo Dada -use of collage and assemblage -sexual reference to the bed -splashed paint in an abstract expressionism manner over a bed with pillows and quilt

Richard Hamilton (British, 1922-2011), Just What is It that makes Today's Homes So Different, so Appealing? 1956 (Tübingen)

Pg. 457 Arnason -Richard Hamilton defined pop art in 1957 as "Popular (designed for a mass audience), Transient (short-term solution), Expendable (easily forgotten), Low cost, Mass produced, Young (aimed at youth), Witty, Sexy, Gimmicky, Glamorous and Big Business." -Hamilton was a disciple of Marcel Duchamp -This work shows a "modern apartment" inhabited by a commercialized male and. female- -traditional portrait in background -accents of Pop: the tootsie roll, television, theater in background, advertisement for vacuum cleaner, cutouts of magazines etc. "Like Adam and Eve in consumer's paradise"

Lee Krasner (1908-84), Milkweed, 1955, oil, paper, and canvas collage on canvas, 6' 10 3/8" x 4' 9 ¾" (Buffalo, Albright-Knox)

pg 338 -remarkable achievement for its mixture of painted areas and collage giving a sense of organic quality and a certain gestural quality-nothing like her husband Jackson Pollock -shows how complex the fact of gesturalism can be