The Return to Painting Continued: American

Neoexpressionist Painting

focus on: -Julian Schnabel -David Salle -Eric Fischl

-Susan Rothenberg

Textbook: Chapter 8, pp. 222-251, 266-268

East Village Art Scene: Beginnings of Street Art and its

Commodification

focus on: -The Times Square Show -Jean-Michel

Basquiat -Keith Haring -art dealer Jeffrey Deitch

Textbook: Chapter 14, pp. 461-479

Commodity Art and Neogeo

focus on: -Baudrillard redux -Andy Warhol redux

-Jeff Koons

Textbook: Chapter 15, pp. 482-519

1980s, Art World and Art Market in New York City

The contemporary art world and all its component parts

as we know them today were established in the 80s.

Power nexus of:

Galleries

Museums

Art critics

Collectors,

and finally, the artists themselves, the Art

Stars/celebrities, comprised the network.

Abstract Expressionism:

Postwar Modernist

Movement in the West

Early 20th

Century

German

Expressionism

Kirchner

formed The

Bridge groupKandinsky formed The Blue Rider group

Expressionism: early 20th century

Modernist movement in the West

Julian Schnabel, Portrait of God, 1980s, oil paint and

canvas, Neo-Expressionism, Postmodernism

Julian Schnabel, Vita, 1980s, oil paint, shattered plates on wood.

Neo-Expressionism, Postmodernism- painting movement inspired by earlier

expressionistic styles that gained popularity in early 80s; characterized by large, figurative works,

crudely and rapidly painted, often with objects imbedded in their surfaces, such as broken plates

or straw.

David Salle, Muscular Paper, 1980s, oil paint, polymer paint

and charcoal on canvas and fabric, Neo-Expressionism,

Postmodernism; painter known for his composite paintings juxtaposing

fragmented figures and environmental images, often using photographs from

romance and pornographic magazines as his source material.

David Salle, Gericault’s Arm, 1980s, acrylic paint on canvas,

Neo-Expressionism, Postmodernism

Eric Fischl, Bad Boy, 1980s, oil paint on canvas, Neo-

Expressionism, Postmodernism; known for his large canvases

depicting uncomfortably intimate scenes of middle-class suburban life and

sexuality depicted in a naturalistic style; his reliance on photography suggests a

debt to the earlier realist movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

Susan Rothenberg, Tattoo, 1970s, acrylic paint on canvas,

Neo-expressionism, Postmodernism; major series of large paintings with the

horse as the central image; themes resonate with history and metaphor; reacting against

intellectually-based Art, the style is characterized by a fusion of abstraction and figuration and

an emphasis on the creative process of manipulating images.

Susan Rothenberg, Blue Head, 1980s, acrylic on canvas

painting, Neo-Expressionism, Postmodernism; revived

expressionist personal painting styles whose subject matter is almost

representational; Minimalist meets figurative images of a face and a hand

East Village Art Scene: Beginnings of Street Art and its

Commodification

focus on: -The Times Square Show -Jean-Michel

Basquiat -Keith Haring -art dealer Jeffrey Deitch

Textbook: Chapter 14, pp. 461-479

Re: Art world hype and celebrity in the 80s

“There is certainly a perception that hype itself is

perhaps the most important new medium in the

corporate world as well as the art world. The process

of promotion, the selling, the culturalization of art

ideas and images has become an art form itself.”

-Jeffrey Deitch, art dealer

Deitchprojects.com

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Hollywood Africans, 1980s, oil on canvas,

Street art meets Neo-expressionism, Postmodernism

Link his painting with street art/graffiti art as much as with the

neo-expressionists; his work was primitive and neo, historical

and contemporary

The Times Square Show, 1980, Street art meets punk/do-it-

yourself aesthetic meets Neo-expressionism, organized by

Colab in an abandoned building; featured 100 artists “blurred the

boundaries between high and low culture, and between who is „qualified‟ to be an

artist, a musician-or both” (Michael Shore, 1980), both aesthetics based on

anarchic impulses and the trivialities of mass culture BUT the works themselves

were less radical (they often referenced art history) than the rhetoric about them

But Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Kenny Scharf, were the

only street inspired artists that that art world took to heart

The Times Square Show brought graffiti artists/street artists

from the South Bronx into the art world- art scene initially took to

the crude drawing and flourescent colors because related to bad art/diy aesthetic

and to the history of primitivism in Western art

Keith Haring, Untitled works, 1980s, Street art meets

Commodity art, Postmodernism- mass produced his repertory in

thousands of drawings, prints, paintings, sculptures, murals, t-shirts, buttons,

and banners; opened the Pop Shop

“Like a master rapper who can rhyme line after line in a never

ending cadence, Haring keeps unfolding his images with a

visual syncopation.”- Jeffrey Deitch, art dealer

Commodity Art- movement that emerged from the East

Village scene and coalesced in 1986 and challenged

Neoexpressionism‟s dominance in the art world;

Baudrillard, who believed that mass media had replaced

reality with web of images and simulacra, was their cult

figure. “Simulations had become more real than reality-or

„hyperreal‟- and had come to refer to nothing outside

themselves” (Sandler, p. 484).

Artists, exemplified by Jeff Koons, that went “shopping” for

already existing images in order to communicate a lust for

commodities!

Jeff Koons, New Hoover Convertible, 1980, Commodity Art,

Postmodernism

brand new vacuums stacked or paired, “state of being new,”

like “readymades” but communicated a lust for commodities

Jeff Koons, Rabbit, 1980s, part of Equilibrium sculptures,

Commodity art, Postmodernism

remades not readymades; all his work moving forward would

be fabricated (he could afford to fabricate because from 1980-

85 he was a commodity broker on Wall Street- just as much

part of his body of artwork as his art objects!)

Jeff Koons, Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1980s,

Commodity art, Postmodernism

Commentary on consumerism in art and the celebration

of banality; Koons was argued to be “the child of the

consumer society” and the heir of Warhol

Hummel figure