Introduction © Fall 2012

Art 109A: Contemporary Art Westchester Community College Fall 2012 Dr. Melissa Hall

What is Art? What do you think of when you think about “art”? • Painting • Sculpture • Photograph

Image source: Metropolitan Museum

What is Art? Much of the art that has been made since 1945 deliberately challenges our expectations about what a work of art should look like

Linda Weintraub, Art on the Edge and Over, 1995

Art Since 1945 This course will begin in 1945, when artists first began to grapple with the aftermath of World War II

We will examine the various ways that artists endeavored to engage with the changing world in which they lived.

In the process, we shall see how the very definition of what “art” could be was dramatically transformed.

George Grosz, Painter of the Hole I, 1947

The Concept of the Avant Garde The concept of the avant garde originated in the 19th century

Damien Roach, Avantgarde, 2008 http://www.sieshoeke.com/exhibitions/damien-roach-2008

Avant Garde: any creative group active in the innovation and application of new concepts and techniques in a given field (especially in the arts) radically new or original; "an avant-garde theater piece"

http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=avant-garde

The Concept of the Avant Garde Avant Garde: advance troops who scout out enemies ahead of the army

Soviet troops advance in the rubble of Stalingrad, WW II Image source: http://ahoy.tk-jk.net/GermanFieldMarshalsWW2/FieldMarshalFriedrichWilh.html

The Concept of the Avant Garde Gustave Courbet exhibition at the Paris World’s Fair 1855

Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers, 1849 (destroyed)

The Concept of the Avant Garde Courbet’s work did not look like “art” to viewers at the time

W.P. Frith, Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Birth of Venus, 1879 Museé d’Orsay

The Concept of the Avant Garde It was as shocking as Duchamp’s urinal, or Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings were to later audiences

Norman Rockwell, The Connoisseur, 1962

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917 Tate Gallery

The Concept of the Avant Garde Much of the art we will study does not look like “art”

Carl Andre, Equivalent VIII, 1966 Tate Gallery

The Concept of the Avant Garde Avant garde art questions what art is or can be

Damien Roach, Avantgarde, 2008 http://www.sieshoeke.com/exhibitions/damien-roach-2008

What is Art?

The Concept of the Avant Garde Avant-garde art challenges accepted values in order to make us think differently

Image source: http://www.noordinarylife.biz/Creative_Mind_Mapping.html

The Concept of the Avant Garde If it doesn’t challenge us, then it probably isn’t “avant garde”

Image source: http://qualityjunkyard.com/2009/07/30/how-to-think-outside-the-box/

Referring to the contemporary art market, David Hammons said: “The system is making people offers they can’t refuse when it should be making them offers they can’t understand.” http://nymag.com/arts/art/season2007/38981/

Modernity, Modern Art, and Modernism The avant garde emerged at a time of rapid technological advancement and “modernization”

Currier & Ives, The Progress of the Century, c. 1876 Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pingnews/2941008151/

Modernity, Modern Art, and Modernism “Modernity” gave rise to a new concept of historical time

Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, 1936

Modernity, Modern Art, and Modernism Courbet’s predecessors looked to the past

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Birth of Venus, 1879 Museé d’Orsay

Ludovisi Venus Roman copy of a Late Classical original National Museum of Rome

Modernity, Modern Art, and Modernism Modern art looked to the future

Fernand Léger, The City, 1919 MOMA

Modernity, Modern Art, and Modernism Modern art in the 20th century moved towards abstraction

Formalism replaced subject matter, narrative, and reference to the observable world

Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 28 (second version), 1912 Guggenheim Museum

Formalism Meaning was now communicated through formal elements, rather than through subject matter

Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying, 1915 MOMA

Modernism and Progress Experts argued that the trend towards abstraction represented “progress”

Alfred Barr, Cubism and Abstract Art, Museum of Modern Art, 1936

Modernism and Progress Abstract Art was considered to be “better” and more “advanced” than figurative art

George L. K. Morris, Nautical Composition 1937-42 Whitney Museum

Ben Shahn, The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, 1932-32 Whitney Museum

Modernism and Autonomy Abstract art was also believed to be “autonomous” because it is independent of reference to the observable world

Carl Mydans, Alfred Barr, 1953 LIFE

Alfred Barr, Cubism and Abstract Art, Museum of Modern Art, 1936

“[A] work of art . . . is worth looking at primarily because it presents a composition or organization of color, line, light and shade. . . since resemblance to nature is at best superfluous and at worst distracting, it might as well be eliminated.” Alfred Barr, Cubism and Abstract Art, 1936

Modernism and Autonomy

Hans Hoffmann, The Golden Wall, 1961 Art Institute of Chicago

Hans Hoffman in his studio, 1957

“Let me confess: I hold my mind and my work free from any association foreign to the act of painting” Hans Hoffmann

Crisis The Great Depression and the rise of Fascism in the 1930s created a crisis for avant garde artists

Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler Dorothea Lange, White Angel Breadline, San Francisco, 1933 National Archives

Making Choices Does art need to be realistic to be politically effective?

Joan Miro, Birth of the World, 1925 Museum of Modern Art

Ben Shahn, this is Nazi Brutality, 1945 National Archives

Modernism and Autonomy Meanwhile, avant garde art was being suppressed abroad

Guidebook cover to the “Degenerate Art” exhibition, Munich, 1937 Image source: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=2078

Boris Vladimirski, Roses for Stalin,1920

Modernism and Autonomy Exiled Communist leader Leon Trotsky defended artistic experimentation

Leon Trotsky

“Art, like science, not only does not seek orders, but by its very essence cannot tolerate them . . . . Art can become a strong ally of revolution only insofar as it remains faithful to itself.” Leon Trotsky, “Art and Politics,” 1938

Avant Garde and Kitsch Clement Greenberg, “Avant Garde and Kitsch,” Partisan Review, 1939

Political argument in defense of autonomous art

Clement Greenberg

Avant Garde and Kitsch Greenberg argued that art must be autonomous from “kitsch”

“Kitsch: popular, commercial art and literature . . . magazine covers, illustrations, ads, slick and pulp fiction, comics, Tin Pan Alley music, tap dancing, Hollywood movies, etc., etc.” Clement Greenberg, “Avant Garde and Kitsch”

Avant Garde and Kitsch Kitsch is “popular culture” – the “culture of the masses”

Adolf Wissel, Farm Family from Kahlenberg, 1939

“If kitsch is the official tendency of culture in Germany, Italy and Russia, it is not because their respective governments are controlled by philistines, but because kitsch is the culture of the masses in these countries, as it is everywhere else. The encouragement of kitsch is merely another of the inexpensive ways in which totalitarian regimes seek to ingratiate themselves with their subjects. Since these regimes cannot raise the cultural level of the masses . . . they will flatter the masses by bringing all culture down to their level.” Clement Greenberg, “Avant Garde and Kitsch”

Avant Garde and Kitsch

Heinrich Knirr, Portrait of Adolf Hitler 1937

“Kitsch keeps a dictator in closer contact with the ‘soul’ of the people.” Clement Greenberg, “Avant Garde and Kitsch”

Modernism and Politics Greenberg implied that to make abstract art was “radical,” politically subversive, and a challenge to the status quo

Art & Language, Portrait of V.I. Lenin with Cap, in the Style of Jackson Pollock III 1980 Tate Gallery

Russian Communist leader Vladimir Lenin making public appearance. Moscow, 1919 LIFE

Triumph of Modernism After World War II, “American type” Modernist abstraction became the dominant art form in the United States, and soon became a global phenomenon

Frank Scherchel, People looking at a painting by artist Jackson Pollock at an American art show, France, 1955 LIFE

Jackson Pollock: Is He the Greatest Living Painter in the United States?, Life Magazine, 1949

Triumph of Modernism Although considered “radical” and subversive, Modernism was embraced by institutions like the Museum of Modern Art

Bruce Maud Design http://www.brucemaudesign.com/work_museum_of_modern_art.html

Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. Philip L. Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone, Architects, 1939. Robert Damora, Photographer, 1939. Image source: http://www.robertdamora.com/

Triumph of Modernism Corporate collections gravitated towards Modernist abstraction

Ronald Bladen, The Cathedral Evening, 1972 Empire State Plaza, Albany

Triumph of Modernism And wealthy collectors discovered that Modernism was a good investment

An anonymous phone telephone bidder paid £36.8m for Rothko’s 1950 White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose) at Sotheby’s in New York (May 2007) Daily Mail

Mark Rothko, White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose), 1950

Triumph of Modernism Modernism became the new “academy” -- and like Courbet, the new avant garde rebelled against it

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Birth of Venus, 1879 Museé d’Orsay

Postmodernism Postmodernism was a reaction against Modernism

Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture: Critical Essays, Beacon Press, 1961

John Latham John Latham, Still and Chew, 1967 performance in which he and fellow students at Saint Martin’s School in London chewed pages from Clement Greenberg’s Art & Culture

Postmodernism Postmodernism: first used in the field of architecture

Postmodern architecture broke with the International Style and began incorporating an eclectic mix of elements

Michael Graves and Associates, Team Disney Building, Burbank, California, 1991

Postmodernism

http://schools.walkerart.org/arttoday/index.wac?id=2362

Postmodernism has been used to categorize widely diverse styles and concerns about making art. What unifies postmodern art, if anything, is a reaction to modernism—at times destroying or debunking traditionally held rules or canons of modern art; at other times copying masterworks of the past in new ways. http://schools.walkerart.org/arttoday/index.wac?id=2362

Postmodernism

“The last generation . . . was arguably the most abnormal, surprising, chaotic, and troubling era in the entire history of art. All traditions in the realm of the visual came tumbling down to an extent never demonstrated before. Inherited ideas about the relationship between visuality and reality in general were confounded . . . . Around 1960, the idea became widespread that the aesthetic approach was not really the only available way to make and appreciate the importance of art . . . . Instead of pure form and color, the values of criticism, analysis, cognition, social commentary, wit, humor, surprise and reversal now prevail. These values have become the generalized underpinnings of a broad post-Modern approach that contains many styles . . . Yet it has always been a part of the idea of democracy that it must have built-in mechanisms of self-criticism, of which the arts can be one among others.” Arthur Danto, “Value in an Age of Chaos,” in Linda Weintraub, Art on the Edge and Over, p. 254-58.

Postmodernism Formalist principles no longer apply

Image source: http://ihateblogs123.blogspot.com/2009/03/elements-and-principles-of-design.html

For much contemporary art or art being made today, the content or meaning is more important than the materials or forms used to make it. Until very recently, artists were making art that would engage viewers visually through subject matter and the composition of elements and principles. Contemporary artists seem to be more interested in engaging viewers conceptually through ideas and issues. The elements of art, while still present at times, are often not adequate to understanding the meaning of contemporary art. http://schools.walkerart.org/arttoday/index.wac?id=2362

Modernism Postmodernism Line Appropriation Shape Time Color Performance Value Space Texture Hybridity Form

Postmodernism

Cia Guo-Qiang, Innoportune: Stage One, 2004 Seattle Art Museum (as seen in Guggenheim installation, I Want to Believe

Hybridity “For artists today, the choice of materials and media for creating art is wide open. Some artists continue to use traditional media such as paint, clay, or bronze, but others have selected new or unusual materials for their art, such as industrial or recycled materials, and newer technologies such as photography, video, or digital media offer artists even more ways to express themselves. Many artists working today incorporate more than material or technique in ways that create hybrid art forms. Combinations of still image, moving image, sound, digital media, and found objects can create new hybrid art forms that are beyond what traditional artists have ever imagined.” http://schools.walkerart.org/arttoday/index.wac?id=2377

Postmodernism 1.  “After” Modernism; “after”

1968 2.  Skeptical: questions belief

in given truths 3.  Subjective: rejects

possibility of “objectivity” in the belief that all truth is contingent

4.  Self reflexive: self consciously aware of its own practice

5.  Hybrid: blurring of distinctions between genres and media (rejection of categories/pigeon-holes)

6.  Plural: accepting of plurality, multiplicity, diversity

Image source: http://farisyakob.typepad.com/blog/2007/02/pseudomodern_co.html

Postmodernism Rejection of most of our beliefs about “art”

Sarah Maple, Art is Crap Image source: http://isiria.wordpress.com/2008/12/13/sarah-maple-art/

Postmodernism Today’s art is more about ideas than beauty or skill – which is why you need to demonstrate creative thinking in your portfolio

Image source: http://andreas-creative-thinking.blogspot.com/

When Was Postmodernism? Some believe that Post Modernism began in the1950’s with the work of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg

Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, 1950s Image source: http://jameswagner.com/nyc/2008/05/

When Was Postmodernism? Others suggest it began with Marcel Duchamp and the Dada Movement in the1920s

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917 Tate Gallery

Gordon Parks, Marcel Duchamp, 1952 LIFE

When Was Postmodernism? Still others believe that Post-modernism began with the “dematerialization” of the art object in the 1960’s

Lucy Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966-1972, University of California Press, 1973

When Was Postmodernism? Postmodernism’s origins are multiple and complex

Michael @ Picasaweb

When Was Postmodernism? Some think it’s already over, since it is no longer possible to “shock” people when the “avant garde” itself has become a commodity

Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New – a book and BBC television series that aired in the 1980s

http://nymag.com/arts/art/season2007/38981/

When Was Postmodernism? Whenever it began, Postmodernism is where we are today

This course will help us understand how we got here

Image source: http://farisyakob.typepad.com/blog/2007/02/pseudomodern_co.html

How This Course is Structured Chronological overview

Topics covered on different weeks may be happening at the same time

How This Course is Structured Criteria for choosing artists to cover:  Historical importance  Recently re-discovered or “hot” (theory darlings)  Personal biases

Jeff Koons with Pink Panther (1988) Photo by Kevin Nance Artnet

Survival Tips How to survive this class . . . .

ART HISTORY

Survival Tips Don’t expect to like everything

Image source: http://www.chrismadden.co.uk/art/bogeyman.html

Survival Tips Don’t expect to use the same criteria to evaluate every work of art

Image source: http://www.sculptthefuturefoundation.org/criteria.html

Survival Tips Much art since 1945 is designed to challenge things like “criteria,” “standards,” or “principles of good design”

Image source: http://www.designsojourn.com/what-are-your-principles-of-good-design/

Survival Tips Don’t expect me to “defend” what we are looking at as art

If it’s in a museum, it’s art – like it or not!

Piero Manzoni, Artist’s Shit, 1961

Survival Tips Focus on “understanding” rather than “liking” (not the same thing!)

Understand Modern Art Breath Spray http://www.blueq.com/shop/item/114-productId.125837315_114-catId.117440520.html

Survival Tips Be prepared to “not get it”

Focus on what you do know, and what you can handle

Image source: http://www.friendsorenemies.com/web/foe/journals/sugarimgoindown13/entry/2838851/

Image source: http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/im-confused/

Survival Tips Learn from the critics who write art reviews

Survival Tips 80 % description

15% quotation of artist/curator statements

5% interpretation of “meaning”

Approximate Language When we talk about contemporary art, we rarely say “this means that”

Image source: http://www.fusion.uk.com/Publisher/Article.aspx?ID=129787

Approximate Language Suggests Explores Addresses Engages with Seems to be concerned with Raises questions about Interrogates the notion that Challenges ideas about Raises questions about

Image source: http://www.fusion.uk.com/Publisher/Article.aspx?ID=129787

Evasive Language And, it is always fashionable to say a work of art is

Ambiguous Contradictory Has multiple (or multivalent) meanings

Image source: http://www.fusion.uk.com/Publisher/Article.aspx?ID=129787

Contemporary Art Contemporary art is what is happening now

This course will cover art from 1945-1990

Kate Gilmore, Shoe shopping http://www.channels.com/episodes/show/10772191/Kate-Gilmore-Shoe-Shopping

Contemporary Art The Art21 website is a good place to explore artists working today

http://www.pbs.org/art21/

Contemporary Art Artcyclopedia: database for researching artists by name or movement

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/

Contemporary Art Links to museum websites (reliable resources)

Contemporary Art And articles and reference sites