Mod + Contemp Art Quiz 3

Autumn Rhythm, Jackson Pollock 1950

• Too large to take in all at once, almost literally
• unfolds as you gaze across it

• Shows relinquishing of SOME control, in that gravity and
• physics takes power of where EXACTLY paint lands on canvas instead of brush

• Innovation of Abstract Expressionist, non-compositional;
• no moment in the canvas is more or less important than any other; “any-other-ness”

• It is COMPLETELY abstract, as in other are no figures
• buried beneath paint

• Autonomy of art- Canvas/art is outside social life,
• outside everyday life---autonomy can perhaps be achieved through
• anti-illusionism/opticality

-Mural sized (important quality for Pollock)

-all-over-ness, element of repetition as well

-non compositional

• -non hierarchical (all three of these mean no part of
• canvas is any more important than another)

• -paintbrush is divorced from canvas (brush does not
• touch canvas)

• -OPTICALITY- only eyes can traverse, not a space for our
• bodies, no clear content or subject matter, lines do not provide contour of
• anything

• -an anti-drawing, painting about painting (purely
• Greenberg)

-skene (?)

• -GOOD EXAMPLE OF MODERNIST AUTONOMY- paintings about
• painting, do not reference anything else, no real-world reference,

• -this withdrawal was important in the US for many
• reasons, one of them being the restrictive art forms being forced on artists in
• Europe during this time period

Free Wheeler, Cy Twombly 1955

• Canvas seems destroyed, defaced; Presents different
• relationship from Pollock (“I am here” becomes “I was here”). Seems graffitied

Abstract Expressionist

4'33", John Cage 1951

• Actual performance was the moments before music is
• usually played (walking to piano, putting up sheet music, pulling out bench)
• and sitting silently, hoping to hear the silence, which he realized does not
• exist. We hear ambient noises, but
• dismiss them so quickly that we do not remember them.

Was an idea emulated in other abstract expressionists pieces, including White Painting (3 Panels) by Rauschenberg

White Painting (Three Panels), Robert Rauschenberg 1951

• Cage describes this as NOT an absence of art, or a
• negation. This is a presencing, the making visible
• of things now perceived that are normally dismissed. Rather than paintings being empty, they are filled with
• passing shadows, dust that collectss

-response to abstract expressionism

-formally have the same all-over-ness

• -during this time, there is a concerted effort from
• trained artists such as Rauschenberg, to de-skill themselves, to render
• the artists language as something that is not lofty or specialized, a
• democratization of the art-making practice perhaps

-What makes something art? Answer becomes the concept, not skill (BIG shift in art)

• -NOT empty, has shadows, dust, opened up work to its
• environment, to the effects of time

• -rejects modernism, dependant on its environment on the
• people who pass in front of it, “landing strip” for lights and shadows and all
• other ephemeral things

Post modern REJECTION of abstract expressionism

Factum I and II, Robert Rauschenberg 1957

• Worked on these simultanously, are never separated from each other (shared by MOCA
• and MOMA). One is NOT a copy of
• the other; are a critique of expressionist gesture; captures language of
• Rauschenberg, however does not attempt to capture spontaneous or unconscious
• nature as Pollock did. Betrays expressionist claims to authenticity and
• originality

• Flatbed picture plane- internal psychic shift; works of
• art are not oriented to us on the vertical, on the optical that de koonings and pollocks are, they are not
• oriented to our vision, but instead to our space of working; works like these
• do not mke sense to Greenbergian sense; Steinberg
• believed works like these let the world in again; canvas is not about the
• artists internal turmoil, nor this pure opticality- they are about YOUR lives, all these things ou would find on your
• own desk

• Art object ceases to
• make claims to transcendence, to revelation, instead is about the lives that
• you lead as the viewers, and is about the everyday world; remarkable shift that
• happens in 1950’s as response to abstract expressionism and paintings like “Autumn
• Rhythm” (REJECTION OF MODERNIST AUTONOMY)

Flag, Jasper Johns 1954-55

Encaustic, oil and collage on fabric mounted on plywood

• (collage
• element)

mummifies gestures in surface

Ready-made design

Recalls all-overness of abstract expressionism

Challenging Mud, Kazuo Shiraga 1955

Gutai (Gutai Group)= tangible, or concrete

• Interesting translation of certain qualities of abstract
• expressionism into completely different environment, can be construed as
• creative misreading; exact opposite of opticality (completely figurative, yet shows that clash of artist and art, that confrontation)

Bed, Rauschenberg 1955

Horizontality of bed relates to "making" as Renaissance verticality of painting related to "seeing", so says Steinberg

Drowning Girl, Roy Lichtenstein 1963

-made sketch, then project it onto the canvas

• -ben day dots stenciled
• on

• -very clear mix of the high and low (brow), and shades
• of grey with regards to authorship (we know the author of the original comic
• strip);

-"handmade ready-made"

Little Big Painting, Roy Lichtenstein 1965

Pop artists are also engaging in the __ of the absract expressionists

• -rendering calls up an abstract expressionist brush
• stroke, but involves skill (sketch, projection onto canvas)

• -suggests artist’s hand, attest to spontaneity, but are
• completely contrived (not painted with spontaneity at all)

• -still have reference to popular culture with Ben Day
• dots

Campbell's Soup Cans, Andy Warhol 1962

• -no evidence that he cared what order they were put in,
• 32 flavors at the time had come out

• -He ate only this soup for a year, so can be considered
• a self-portrait

• -originally shown on shelves, mimicking their
• positioning in a supermarket

• -looks repetitive, but there are little differences
• largely as a result of the screenprinting process itself (but like the soup itself, ever can we
• buy has a small difference to the flavor, or specific volume to the last drop)

-what we consume defines us (what flavor do we prefer)

Marilyn Diptych, Andy Warhol 1962

• -handmade qualitiy in that they are SO different (some crystal clear, some
• completely defaced)

• -these images stop us, do not grant us access to
• Marilyn, to her persona, to her life; not about Marilyn the person, about the
• production of these images, how people become readymade objects to be
• reproduced just as a campbells soup can ad infinitem

The Week That Was, Andy Warhol 1963

• Image of Jackie Kennedy before and after JFK
• assassination, some RIGHT after he was shot

• -through jackie and her kids, we mourned the president, she became a
• SYMBOL of the mourning

• -these photos from Life magazine (two issues), seem to
• represent her authentic experience of her trauma and the mourning, the photos
• give us jackie

• -does warhol give us jackie? We don’t
• get full access to the narrative (images out of chronological order), flips
• image so we don’t know which is the real image, bleaches and blues some images
• (detaches them from reality, uses color for formal reasons)

• *crops photos so we don’t see the photos in the
• environment she is in

• -photographs do not get us to the true moment, Life does
• not get us there, is also just a representation

Thirteen Most Wanted Men, Andy Warhol 1964

-commissioned for the world’s fair

• -uses mug shots of most wanted men in NY, taken the text
• off so we don’t know who they are or their crimes, enlarged them and put them
• in a position of celebration or power, we just see the appeal of the shots

• -splits up the mugshots (frontal and profile views) so that they face each
• other, manipulating the codes of the mug shot

• -NOT CURRENT mug shots, were no longer felons at large
• being persued

• -if the police don’t want them, who does? Warhol most likely, known gay men; or
• perhaps they want each other, or perhaps WE want them

• -through the title, they become associated with the
• status of the deviant; Robert Moses (organizer of the fair) didn’t want it up,
• left it up to Warhol to cover it up, who painted it silver so that the figures
• still haunts the surface from beneath

• -act of man
• (police) wanting another man (criminal) is ITSELF a criminal act

• -worlds fair is arena
• where we are supposed to celebrate the bright future of the country, warhol is stirring up the past,and representing people
• that do not celebrate this

Youth Portrait: October 18, 1977, Gerhard Richter 1988