Late 20th Century Art

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Late 20th Century Art

• Post WWII

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Key Ideas

• Experimentation in a restless era
• Short-lived, intense movements
• Variety of media used by individual artists (not
  just a painter or sculptor)
• Technological advances digital media
• Closer equality of the sexes in art

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Post War EuropeanFigural Art

• Alberto Giocometti, Swiss, Walking Man, bronze,
  1960
• Figural art was used to stay close to the human
  condition of the war
• Response to the human casualties of war
• Similar to the fleshiness of concentration camp
  survivors
• plaster

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Post War EuropeFigural Art

• Francis Bacon, English, Head Surrounded by Sides
  of Beef, 1954, oil on canvas
• Jean Debuffet,,French, Cow with the Subtile Nose,
  1954, oil on enamel on canvas
• Art brut childlike primitive

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Abstract ExpressionismThe New York School

• Reaction against minimalist abstraction
  (Mondrian, Malevich)
• Jackson Pollack, Number 1, 1950, oil, enamel,
  aluminum paint on canvas. Action painting,
  Immense size.
• William de Kooning, Woman II, 1952, oil on
  cnavas. Slashed paint, woman with huge breasts
  mocking magazine ads, ferocious women.

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New York School Sculpture

• Louise Nevelson, Sky Cathedral, 1958, wood.
• Cubist influence
• Shallow boxes with wooden contents
• Huge constructions painted black to unify the
  composition

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Color Field Painting

• Mark Rothko, Orange and Yellow, 1956, oil on
  canvas
• Tension in the color relationships
• Blocks of color with hazy edges
• No names beyond colors used
• only in expressing basic human emotions
  tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. And the fact
  that a lot of people break down and cry when
  confronted with my pictures shows that I can
  communicate those basic human emotions . . . The
  people who weep before my pictures are having the
  same religious experience I had when I painted
  them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by
  their color relationship, then you miss the
  point.
• I realize that historically the function of
  painting large pictures is painting something
  very grandiose and pompous. The reason I paint
  them, however . . . is precisely because I want
  to be very intimate and human. To paint a small
  picture is to place yourself outside your
  experience, to look upon an experience as a
  stereopticon view or with a reducing glass.
  However you paint the larger picture, you are in
  it. It isnt something you command! Rothko

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Pop Art1950s-1960s

• Andy Warhol, Marilyn, Campbell Soup Cans
• 15 minutes of fame
• Mass marketing
• Mass popular culture
• The Factory
• Richard Hamilton, Just What is it that Makes
  Todays Homes So Different, So Appealing?, 1956,
  collage.

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Pop Art

• Roy Lichtenstein, Hopeless, 1963, oil on canvas.
• Heavy black outlines
• Benday dots
• Inspired by comic books
• Precise drawing

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Minimalism/Postminimalism

• Frank Stella, Avicenna, 1960. Aluminum paint on
  canvas.
• Suppression of personality
• Denies all representation
• Lacks narrative
• Precursors were Mondrian/malevich

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Site Art (Earth Art)

• Dependent on location for meaning
• Continues today
• Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970. Great Salt
  Lake, Utah
• Christo, Running Fence, 1972-76. Nylon Fence,
  Sonoma and Marin Counties, CA.