Chapter 34: The Emergence of Post Modernism

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Chapter 34 The Emergence of Post Modernism

• The Later 20th Century

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WWIIs Aftermath

• Disruption and upheaval !!!
• End of colonialism brings conflict across the
  globe
• The Cold War frightens the world
• Civil rights movement
• Womens movement
• Sexual revolution
• Conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and more
• 60s counter culture revolution

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The Art Worlds focus shifts to U.S.

• Super power the focus of the free world
• Art critic Greenbergs power spotlighted artists
  that rejected illusionism, embraced abstraction
  and focused on the properties of the artists
  medium
• Greenbergian formalism
• Avante Garde and Kitsch (he continued to
  alienate the public with art they didnt relate
  to )

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Modern, Modernist, Post Modernist

• Modern Art The last few centuries (knowing your
  time is different
• Modernism (ists) 1850s 1950 Avant-Gard that
  captured the culture and sensibilities of their
  age against realistic and illusionistic art,
  called attention to 2D of canvas.
• Post Modernist see next slide

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POSTMODERNISM

• A rejection of modernist principles yet at times
  it seems it accepts everything
• A broad term that can encompass a variety of
  styles and movements
• A populist (for the people) movement tried to
  explore the relationship between art and mass
  culture.

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Post War Expressionism

• The absurdity of human existence
• Existentialism and Kierkegaard
• Atheism, pessimism and despair
• Francis Bacons Painting captures the violence
  and brutality of the war and the world

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Giacometti

• Capturing the existentialists picture of
  humanity
• Isolated, alienated, and lost
• Figures swallowed by the space around them
• Rough, agitated surfaces
• Emotive

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Jean DuBuffet
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Abstract Expressionism
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Jack the Dripper (Jackson Pollack)

• Ab. Exp. 1st major American Avant-Garde NYC,
  1940s
• Expressing the artists state of mind
• Collective unconscious and psychic automation
  again

Read Quote p. 1037
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Pollack continued

• The primacy of process
• Rhythmic drips, splatters and dribbles
• Improvisational style tied him to Kandinsky, the
  surrealists, Jung.

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Cake Break !!!10 minutes to decorate your cake!

• Cake one Surrealist
• Cake two De Stijl
• Cake Three- Art Deco or choice
• Cake Four Abstract Expressionist

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William de Kooning Woman I 1950

• Rooted in figurative art but brushstrokes reveal
  its relation to gestural abstraction
• Process again
• From advertising and history images of woman
  (see next slide)

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Ab exp part 2 Chromatic Exp.

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Barnett Newman

• Biology and Native American art
• Simplified works to just fields of color with
  zips through them
• Colors capacity to express feeling
• In the presence of an epic

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Mark Rothko

• Universal themes
• Realism conflicts with the sublime idea of the
  universe which is at the core of art
• The simple expression of the complex thought
• Tragic and timeless
• Kinship with the primitive
• Color expressing basic human emotions

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The Rothko Chapel

• Newmans Broken Obelisk in memory of MLK

• The people who weep before my paintings are
  having the same religious experience I had when I
  painted them
• Mark Rothko

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The Rothko Chapel

• The Chapel has two vocations contemplation
  and action. It is a place alive with religious
  ceremonies of all faiths, and where the
  experience and understanding of all traditions
  are encouraged and made available. Action takes
  the form of supporting human rights, and thus the
  Chapel has become a rallying place for all people
  concerned with peace, freedom, and social justice
  throughout the world

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David SmithCubi XIX, 1964

• Not officially abstract expressionist but some
  ties
• He rubs the surface with steel wool creating
  random patterns
• Simple geometric forms on a monumental scale
• Almost human form

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Post Painterly Abstraction

• Developed from Abstract Expressionism
• Cool, rational, controlled (as opposed to passion
  and wildness of Ab. Exp.)
• Post Painterly no evidence of artists hand (as
  opposed to Ab. Exp. or even Van Gogh)
• Distilling painting down to its essential
  elements.
• Two types Hard Edge and Flat Color Field

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Post Painterly Abstraction
h a r d e d g e
Razor sharp edges
Kelly
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Frank Stella
Purity in art
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Post Painterly Abstraction

• Developed from Abstract Expressionism
• Cool, rational, controlled (as opposed to passion
  and wildness of Ab. Exp.)
• Post Painterly no evidence of artists hand (as
  opposed to Ab. Exp. or even Van Gogh)
• Distilling painting down to its essential
  elements.
• Two types Hard Edge and Flat Color Field

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Helen FrankenthalerBay Side, 1967

• Color field again reducing to basic elements
• Poured paint onto canvas and let it soak in
• Thus flat
• Spontaneous

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Morris Louis Saraband, 1959 Acrylic resin on
canvas

• Again pouring
• Veils series
• Pour and tilt canvas

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Minimalist Art
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Minimal Art (abc art)

• Movement in sculpture
• Striving for purity basic forms
• Concentrated on three dimensionality
• Works often lacked identifiable subjects, colors,
  textures or narratives.
• Not illusionistic (representational)
• Critic Greenburg (who loved Ab.exp) didnt like
  minimalism all in the idea, not much else.

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not symbolic
JUDD
not representat ional
searching for clarity and truth
just the objecthood
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Maya Lin, Vietnam Memorial - 1981
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Lins Vietnam Memorial

• Minimalist
• Names of 57, 939 killed or missing (in order of
  their death date)
• Wanted a memorial that was honest about war and
  be for the people who gave their life.
• A cut in earth - the grass would grow back around
  it but the scar would remain

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Lin
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Diverse Sculptural Directions
Everyone choose one and know it.
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• Nevelsons
• Tropical Garden
• Architectural fragments
• Monochromaticunity
• Magical places

• Bourgeois
• Cumul I
• Sensuous
• Organic
• Biomorphic?
• Sexual
• Landscape
• One among many

• Hesses Hang Up
• focus on absurdity
• Non art
• Suggesting the fragility and grandeur of life

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Performance Art

• Challenging artistic conventions (again)
• Developing the fourth dimension (time)
• Temporary works called happenings
• Often interactive
• Captured the rebellion of the 60s
• Tied to DADA through subversiveness and chance
  component.
• Later fluxus will stage events single
  action theater

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Cage
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Performance Art
How to explain pictures to a dead hare.
Homage to New York
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Performance Art
Shaman like, Beuys evokes a sense of mystery
to help revolutionize human thought so that
each personcould become .free and creative
Destruction as creation. Dada like kinetic
sculpture.
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Conceptual Art The art is in the idea
What Is Chairness?

• A real chair
• A photo of a chair
• The definition of chair

Kosuths One and Three Chairs
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Conceptual Art?

• Bruce Nauman
• Read Title
• 1967
• Explored what is art
• Fun with words
• Neon usually non artistic (commercial)

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Alternatives to Modern Formalism

• The Avant-Garde (abstract expressionists, post
  painterly abstractionists, minimalists) had
  alienated much of the public
• Movements such as Pop Art, Super Realism and
  Environmental Art were committed to the
  communicative power of art and to reaching a wide
  audience

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Pop Art (popular art based on popular cutlure)
Johns
Richard Hamilton
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Hamilton

• Interested in the way advertising shapes society.
• Commenting on modern consumer driven world
• Mass media
• Mocking tone
• First Pop Artist

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Jasper Johns and the everyday
E ncaustic
Focusing on the seen but not looked at
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• Rauschenberg
• combines
• Assemblages
• Multimedia
• No more one subject in a combine than there is on
  the front page of a paper.

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Andy Warholmass mediamass producedconsumer
driven society
he produced thousands of each at the factory
Note the mediums
MORE THAN 15 MINUTES
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• Quotes From Andy Warhol
• "In the future, everyone will be famous for 15
  minutes."
• "An artist is someone who produces things that
  people don't need to have but that he - for some
  reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give
  them."
• "Once you 'got' Pop, you could never see a sign
  the same way again. And once you thought Pop, you
  could never see America the same way again."
• "I've decided something Commercial things really
  do stink. As soon as it becomes commercial for a
  mass market it really stinks."
• "It would be very glamorous to be reincarnated as
  a great big ring on Liz Taylor's finger."

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Roy Lichtenstein

• The comic book a
• mainstay of America
• pop culture!
• Faithful to original
• A throw away as great art
• BENDAY DOTS!!!

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Claes Oldenburg
Ordinary objects contain a functional
contemporary magic, but we have lost
appreciation because we focus on the objects
use
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Oldenburg

• Consumer products
• Art as consumer product

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Superrealism
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Superrealists (photorealists)Also looking for
something more accessible for the public

• Audrey Flack

• Marilyn
• Projectors and air brushes
• Attention to detail
• Still lifes
• Alludes to Dutch
• vanitas or vanity paintings
• Look for the clues about death

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Site Specific and Environmental Art
Smithsons Spiral Jetty
Tied to the ecology movement.
Christo
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Environmental Art Christo

• The unopened package
• Temporary works that live on in photos and film

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Richard Serras Title Arc 1981ART YOU CANT
IGNORE

• Alter the space and traffic flow
• Altered the decorative function of the plaza
• Bring people into contact with the sculpture
• Forced viewers to reconsider the plazas physical
  space as sculptural form

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Modernism and Post Modernism Architecture
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Modernism

• Stressing simplicity in the organic and geometric

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Frank Lloyd Wrights N.Y. Guggenheim
The organic again inspired by snail shell
Thick walls
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Mysterious Floating Roof!
Architecture? Sculpture? Both!
A sacred cave.
Le Corbusiers Notre Dame de Haute,
1955 Brutalism
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Utzons Opera House
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Saarinens TWA Terminal at JFK in NYC.
Van Der Rohes Seagram Building
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• Van Der Rohe
• Less is more
• Purity
• Often copied
• Thin left a plaza
• Glass skin
• On stilts (floating)
• Bronze color richness.
• Exuded power
• God is in the details designed everything.

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Postmodernism

• Thought modern architecture restrictive, sterile
  and impersonal
• Didnt react to or reflect the character of the
  cities they were built in
• Postmodernists are much more complex and eclectic
• Embraced the messy, diverse and chaotic nature of
  city life
• Created a dialogue between past and present
  took classical elements but mixed them with
  modern designs or materials

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Postmodernism
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Moores Piazza dItalia New Orleans, 1979

• For Italian American community so what style
  should he use?
• Roman, Renaissance (circle shape), even Mannerism
  (fragments).
• Add whimsy and mix.

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Johnson is one of the true giants in
architecture (lol)
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More Post Modernist Architecture
House in Delaware Form should be separate from
function rejection of the established rules
Portland Building An enlarged Jukebox
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Renzo Pianos Pompidou National Center of Art
and Culture
Did new addition to the High Museum!!!
Read p. 1066 hey, 1066 that makes you think
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DECONSTRUCTIVIST ARCHITECTURE

• A cultures art, architecture, music and
  literature are constructs that form and inform
  the culture (kind of messages from the guys in
  charge telling us what we should be).
• Deconstructing these books, buildings etc for
  messages can tell us much about a society

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DECONSTRUCTIVIST ARCHITECTURE

• Buck the system
• Tried to disorient the viewer
• Dissonance, imbalance, asymmetry, irregularity,
  disorder
• CHAOS!

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Gehrys GuggenheimBilboa, Spain

• A mass of asymmetrical, imbalanced forms
• Not a vision of stability seems like it is
  collapsing
• Metallic flowers
• Disorder and randomness

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Postmodernism in painting, sculpture and new media

• Neo Expressionism

• Art as a Political Weapon

Channeling the expressionists
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Neo Expressionists

• Confronting German History

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Chris Ofili The Holy Virgin Mary

• Paper Collage, oil, paint, glitter, polyester
  resin, map pins and cow dung on linen
• Simple floating figure
• Tiny images of genitalia from pornographic mags
  (putti)
• Dung from Africa

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Art as a political weapon see slide show on Judy
Chicago
Cindy Sherman
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• Barbara Kruger, Untitled (YGHTSOMF), 1981

• Miriam Schapiros Anatomy of a Kimono, 1976

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• Ana Mendietas Flowers
• Earth-body work, 1973

• Faith Ringgolds Whose Afraid of Aunt Jemima

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• Lorna Simpsons Stereo Style

• David Hammons
• Public Enemy

• NA

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• Leon Golub mercanaries

• Jaune Quick to See Smiths Trade (gifts for
  trading land with white people)

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• Woinarowiczs
• When I put my hands on your body

• Abakanowiczs
• Backs

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• Wodiczkos
• The Homeless Projection

• Ourslers
• Mansheshe

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• Tansleys A Short History of Modernist Painting

• Jeff Koon s
• Pink Panther