Late Twentieth-Century Art 1945- Today

Chapter 36

Time period 1945-todayAbstract expressionism 1940’s-50’s Dekooning, PollockPop Art 1955-1960’s Hamilton, Lichtenstein, WarholColor Field painting 1960’s RothkoConceptual Art 1960’s Performance Art 1960’sOp Art 1960’sMinimalism 1960’s-1970’s JuddSite Art 1970’-1990’s Lin, SmithsonFeminist Art 1970’s and beyond Kruger, ShermanVideo, Computer, andDigital Art contemporary

Key Ideas

• Late modern art is a restless era of experimentation, beginning with the New York School

• Contemporary art is characterized by short-lived movements of intense activity

• Technological developments have brought about a flood of new products that artists use to express his, her self

Key Ideas

• Variety of media• Architecture has been radically altered by the

introduction of the computer, makes drawing ground plans and sections easier and more efficient than before: computer automatically checks structural errors

• The number of important female artists, gallery owners, patrons, and customers has grown significantly in the modern era, closer equality of the sexes.

Historical Background

• World War II devastation was the backdrop for the last half of the twentieth century

• Fascist menace was replaced by smaller deadly conflicts

• Television brought global issues into the living room, racism, environment, weapons of mass destruction, causes tension in parts of the world not physically touched by conflict.

Historical Background

• Artists quick to use political and social issues to create artwork

• Rapid growth of technology brought advances in medical sciences and everyday living.

• New media fertile ground for artistic exploration, plastics, video projections, computer graphics, sound installations, fiberglass products, and lasers.

Patronage and Artistic Life

• Abandonment of Paris as the center of the art world since 1650

• New York, financial and cultural capital of United States, became the new center of art; many Europeans fled there because of the active artistic community that had no fear of experimentation.

Patronage and Artistic Life

• Mondrian, Duchamp, and Kandinsky moved to New York to galvanize modern American artists to create the New York School

• Pollock, DeKooning, and Frankenthaler settled here to do their most impressive paintings

Innovations of Modern Architecture

• The computer has totally changed architecture since 1945

• Programs like AutoCAD and MicroStation automatically check for errors

• Make feasible designs that used to only exist in the mind

• Guggenheim Bilboa Museo shows how computers help architects draw shapes and meaningful designs in an imaginative way.

Innovations of Modern Architecture

• New products that make buildings lighter, cheaper, and more energy efficient.

• The next question is, “How can cost efficiency and expensive new technology be brought into a meaningful architectural plan?”

Characteristics of Modern Architecture

• Historical associations have been banned from modern architecture

• Proud display of technology, Innovative materials like titanium in Gehry’s work, unusual shapes like the late buildings of Le Corbsier or Wright.

• Natural light supplemented by artificial light• Wrights dome in the Guggenheim presage the

modern fascination with glass and its properties

Characteristics of Modern Architecture

• Modern buildings either harmonize with their surroundings or stand out being completely different. Wright’s Guggenheim Museum stands out from the rectangular buildings surrounding it but harmonizes with the Manhattan landscape

• The Georges Pompidou Center has outdoor piping and is very different from the working class neighborhood around it, but is the center of community attraction.

Le Corbusier, Notre Dame-du-Haut, 1950-1955, Ronchamp, France

•Exterior resembles a ship, a nun’s habit, a dove (the Holy Spirit), or praying hands

•Spaces for outdoor services

•Roof seems to float over the body of the building

•Random placement of windows has a deeply religious effect of scattered light on the interior; thick walls are punctured by stained glass windows

•Undressed concrete has a primitive feeling

•Sweeping roof bends downward over the nave

Frank Lloyd Wright, Guggenheim Museum, 1943-1959, New York

•Curvilinear patterns of the outside reveal a circular domed walkway on the inside.

•Glass dome dominates a well of space

•Exhibits placed on walls around the spiraling ramps

•Poured concrete

•Circular motif dominant through out the building

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building, 1956-1958, New York

•A reflection of the Minimalists movement in painting

•Mies’s saying “Less is more” can be seen in this building with its great simplicity, geometry of design, and elegance of construction

•Set back from the street on a wide plaza balanced by reflecting pools

•Bronze veneer gives the skyscraper a Monolithic look

•Interplay of vertical and horizontal accents

•Steel-and-glass skyscraper became the model after World War II

•A triumph of the International Style of architecture

Joern Utzon, Sydney Opera House, 1959-1972, Sydney, Australia

•Actually three buildings; the largest is the concert hall, the second the opera house, the third the restaurant

•Groupings of fanlike vaults that resemble ship’s sails; Sydney Opera House surrounded by water on three sides

•Vaults grow upward from their bases, are independent structures, glass connects them

•Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, Georges Pompidou Center, 1977, Paris

•Interior framework of the building is exposed

•Color coded system;

•Red: escalators, elevators, stairs

•Green; plumbing

•Blue; air ducts, air conditioning

•Yellow; electricity

•Interior has interchanging walls, flexible viewing spaces

•Predominance of metal and glass

Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Bilboa Museum, 1997, Bilboa. Spain

•Appearance of asymmetrical exterior with outside walls giving a hint to interior spaces

•Irregular masses of titanium walls

•Sweeping curved lines

•Called Deconstructive architecture- architecture that seeks to create a seemingly unstable spatial arrangements.

Innovations of Modern Painting

• Oil on canvas still preferred medium• 1950 new paint; acrylics. Takes little time to

dry, do not change color when dry. Crack with time much faster than other paints. Artists who are working for the ages prefer oil. Extenders may promote the life of acrylics

Innovations of Modern Sculpture

• Marble carving is dead, unforgiving• Modern sculpture is faster to produce, easier to

reproduce• Come in a variety of textures: high polish porcelains

by Jeff Koons to knotty fabrics of Magdelena Abakanowicz. Anything that can be molded is experimented with

• Combination of objects into works of art: Assemblages. Large Assemblages are called installations and can take up a whole museum room

Characteristics of Abstract Expressionism

• The New York School, Abstract Expressionism of 1950’s is the first American avant-garde movement.

• Reaction against Mondrian and Malevich Minimalist approach to abstraction.

• More active representation of the artist hand on a given work. Action Painting

Jackson Pollock; Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), 1950, oil, enamel, and aluminum paint on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C,

•Action painting; the artist places a canvas on the floor and drips and splatters paint onto the surface

•Immense paintings engulf viewer

•Spontaneous and improvisational execution

•Limited color palette

Willem de Kooning, Woman II, 1952, oil on canvas, Museum of Modern Art, New York

•Ferocious woman with great fierce teeth an huge eyes

•Large bulbous breasts are a satire on women who appear in magazine advertising; smile said to be influenced by an ad of a woman selling Camel cigarettes

•Slashing of paint onto canvas

•Jagged lines create an overpowering image

Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 110, 1971, oil on canvas, Guggenheim Museum, New York

Louis Nevelson, Sky Cathedral, 1958, wood, Museum of Modern Art, New York

New York School Sculpture

•Huge wooden constructions made of miscellaneous wooden parts; furniture, dowels, moldings, and so on, but painted black, unifying the composition

•Shallow boxes with wooden contents

•Complex interplay of recession and projection

•Cubist influence in the arrangement of forms

Robert Rauschenberg, Canyon, 1958

Robert Rauschenberg, Monogram, 1955-1959

Characteristics of Color Field Painting

• Lacks the aggression of Abstract Expressionism.

• Relies on subtle tonal values that often are variations of monochromatic hues

• Rothko, images mysteriously hovering in an ambiguous space.

• Barnet Newman, more clear-cut definition of forms with lines descending through the composition. Popular in 1960’s

Mark Rothko, Four Darks in Red, 1958, oil on canvas, Whitney Museum, New York

•Rectangular paintings with two, three or four blocks of color

•Rich color stretches across the picture plane

•Radically simple compositions

•Tension exists in the harmony of the color relationships, by extension a tension exists in harmonious relationships in life, in one’s self

•Luminous colors seem to recede and emerge

•Hazy edges

•Paintings have no titles, just the names of the colors used

Morris Louis, Where, 1960, Magna on canvas, Hirshhorn Museum and Garden, Washington D.C.

Characteristics of Pop Art

• Pop or Popular, art coined by English critic in 1955, • Drew on materials of everyday world, items of mass

popular culture, consumer goods or famous singers- pop artist saw no distinction between the two

• Magnified the common place, face to face with everyday reality, like an expendable object.

• Thought that Pop Art is a reaction against Abstract Expressionism

Richard Hamilton, Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?, 1956, collage, Kunsthalle Tubingen, Tubingen, Germany

•Mass marketing of products put together in a collage; Armor ham, Ford insignia, Tootsie Pop, and so on

•Mass-marketed items placed in almost a Surrealist arrangement; a woman with headlights for breasts wearing a lampshade, a romance comic book as a framed painting

•Myriad of contemporary details

•An Abstract Expressionist painting is a rug; a photograph of the moon is ceiling art

Roy Lichtenstein, Hopeless, 1963, oil on canvas, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne

•Heavy black outlines frame areas of unmodulated flat color

•Frames inspired by cartoons and comic books

•Hard, precise drawing

•Artist chooses a moment of transition or crisis

•Benday dots

Roy Lichtenstein, Wham, 1963, Tate Museum, London

Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe, 1964, silkscreen and oil on canvas, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York

•Marilyn’s public face appears highlighted by bold, artificial colors

•Private persona of Marilyn submerged beneath the public face

•Social characteristics magnified; brilliance of blonde hair, heavily applied lipstick, seductive expression

Andy Warhol, Campbell Soup Can, 1964, silkscreen on canvas, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York

Characteristics of Minimalism

• Abstraction that denies representation of any kind, on the objects or in the title

• Lacks all narrative, gestures, and impulses.• Piet Mondrian and Kasimir Malevich were

precursors to the Minimalist movement that lasted from 1960’s to 1970’s

Donald Judd, Untitled, 1968, stainless steel and plexiglass, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

•Geometric boxlike shapes aligned in a row or on a wall

•Highly polished surfaces

•Personality of the artist completely suppressed

•Objects have spaces between the boxes which create a dynamic interplay of solids, voids, and shadows

Characteristics of Site Art

• Earth art, dependent on its location to render full meaning

• Site art is temporary, as the works of Cristo and Jeanne-Claude

• Sometimes works remain, need the original environment intact to be fully understood

• Dates from 1970’s to today

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970, Great Salt Lake, Utah

•Coil of rock growing into a part of the Great Salt Lake that is located in an extremely remote and inaccessible area

•Upon walking on the jetty, the twisting and curling path changes the participant’s view from every angle

•A jetty is supposed to be a pier in the water, here it is transformed into a curl of rocks sitting silently in a vast empty wilderness

•Coil is an image seen in North American earthworks of Serpent Mound, Ohio

Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1981-1983, black granite, Washington D.C.

•V-shaped monument cut into the earth with 60,000 casualties of the Vietnam War listed in the order they were killed or reported missing.

•One arm of the monument points to the Lincoln Memorial, the other to the Washington Memorial

•Black granite is a highly reflective surface so that viewers can see themselves in the names of the veterans

•Strongly influenced by the Minimalist movement

Andy Goldsworthy, Iris Leaves with Rowan Berries,

Andy Goldsworthy, Icicle Star Joined with Saliva

Andy Goldsworthy, Incredible Serpentine Tree Roots

Christo and Jean Claude, Valley Curtain, 1970-1972, Rifle, Colorado

Christo and Jeanne-ClaudeThe Gates, Central Park, New York City, 1979-2005

Characteristics of Conceptual Art

• Artist sees a work of art in its purest form, as a thought or the thought process in his or her mind.

• Realizes a work in a representational format, but more often looks down on an artistic product as a reduction of the original thought

• Movement reached height in 1960’s

Characteristics of Performance Art

• The act of making the art the ultimate goal• Finished product is the result of an action but

no the principal intention• May incorporate dance, music, film,a nd other

activities into their creation• From the 1960’s

Characteristics of Op Art

• Optical art is strictly abstract that relies on optical illusions

• Fine lines in receding and emerging patterns to create three-dimensional effect

• Vary the length and waviness of the line to make a mind-boggling illusion

• From the 1960’s

Bridget Riley, Movement in Squares, 1961

Characteristics of Feminist Art

• Easier for female artists to express themselves bringing interest in their art to general public about their social issues

• Some female artists feel labeling of Feminist is categorizing and demeaning. They want to be accepted as artists not by gender

• Began in 1970’s

Barbara Kruger, 1980’s, Titles are the words on the image

•Artist began as a graphic designer for Mademoiselle magazine

•Works have a mass-media influence

•Words placed in large photos as design elements, and to highlight a message

•Large single image with a short catchy phrase, much like magazine ad layouts

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Stills,

•Sixty-nine in the collection of th Museum of Modern Art, New York

•Imitates the way that images of women have been stereotypically depicted in the movies

•Criticizes the concept of women as objects to be merely gazed at

Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, 1974–79. Ceramic, porcelain, textile , Brooklyn Museum

Characteristics of Video Art, Computer Art, and Digital Art

• Technology allows alternative ways to express artist’s visions

• Infinite ways to manipulate images, alter size, color, background, shape, and continuity of the object.

• Original idea becomes subservient to the process the can be used to recreate it.

Test

1. Action painting is a characteristic of

A. Abstract ExpressionismB. Pop ArtC. Color Field PaintingD. Conceptual Art

2. Cindy Sherman and Barbara Kruger create works that

A. Express satisfaction with the status quoB. Question racial relationships in the U.S.C. Foresee environmental problems if

Americans are not watchful todayD. Criticize the media’s perception of women

3. The Spiral Jetty is located in

A. Lake SuperiorB. Long Island SoundC. Great Salt LakeD. San Francisco Bay

4. Minimalist artists of the 1960’s and 1970’s were inspired by earlier twentieth century artists such as

A. Pablo PicassoB. Salvator DaliC. Piet MondrianD. Frida Kahlo

5. “Less is more” is the artistic philosophy of

A. Mies van der RoheB. Judy ChicagoC. Andy WarholD. Roy Lichtenstein

6. Pop art bases its philosophy on

A. Abstract artB. Architectural formsC. Mass marketingD. Classical art

7. Benday dots are important in the work of

A. Richard HamiltonB. Roy LichtensteinC. Maya LinD. Helen Frankenthaler

8. Christo’s and Jeanne-Claude’s work depends on

A. Federal fundingB. Site considerationsC. A feminist messageD. Permanent structures

9. Op art is a form of

A. AbstractionB. SurrealismC. Pop artD. feminism

10. Mark Rothko’s work can be described as

A. Essentially narrative in qualityB. Needing a title for an explanation of the

meaningC. Colors rectangularly placed on a canvasD. Conceptual art

Essay

• Maya Lin’s quote about her Vietnam Veterans Memorial was “ I wanted to work with the land and not dominate it.” Choose a work of Site art, or a work that is heavily reliant on its site and discuss its relationship to the environment around it. Refer to the quotation in your remarks.