4.2 neo dada

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

Neo-‐Dadaism

The Legacy of Marcel Duchamp Rediscovery of Marcel Duchamp in the 1950s

Eliot Elisofon, Marcel Duchamp, 1952 LIFE

Robert Motherwell, ed., The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology 1951

The Legacy of Marcel Duchamp Dadaism: profoundly “anK-‐art”

“The Dadaist considers it necessary to come out against art, because he has seen through its fraud as a moral safety valve . . . . art . . . is a large-‐scale swindle.” Richard Hulsenbeck

The Legacy of Marcel Duchamp The “ready-‐made” challenged accepted ideas about art

Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1913 Museum of Modern Art

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917 (1964 replica) Tate Gallery

The Legacy of Marcel Duchamp  Art should be “handmade”

 Art should be “original”  Art should be disKnct from the “commonplace”

 Art should be “beauKful”  Art should “express intended meaning”

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917 (1964 replica) Tate Gallery

The Legacy of Marcel Duchamp Duchamp also challenged prevailing ideas about the nature of creaKvity

John D. Schiff, Marcel Duchamp, 1958/1959 Image source: h^p://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/11/view/2045/designboom-‐x-‐mas-‐picks-‐from-‐art-‐and-‐design-‐aucKons-‐kunsthaus-‐lempertz.html

“All in all, the creaKve act is not performed by the arKst alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreKng its inner qualificaKon and thus adds his contribuKon to the creaKve act.” Marcel Duchamp, “The CreaKve Act,” 1957

Neo-‐Dada These ideas had a deep influence on Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg

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

Robert Rauschenberg Rauschenberg studied with Josef Albers at Black Mountain College – where he met the American composer John Cage

Allan Grant, Robert Rauschenberg , 1953 LIFE

John Cage Cage revoluKonized modern music with his exploraKon of “aleatory” music (sounds produced by chance)

John Cage preparing a piano, c. 1964 Image source: h^p://usoproject.blogspot.com/2008/01/european-‐premiere-‐john-‐cage-‐variaKons.html

John Cage Cage re-‐conceptualized music as an an orchestraKon of concrete sounds assembled by chance

He wanted “to let sounds be themselves rather than vehicles for manmade theories or expressions of human senKment”

John Cage preparing a piano, c. 1964 Image source: h^p://usoproject.blogspot.com/2008/01/european-‐premiere-‐john-‐cage-‐variaKons.html

John Cage 4’ 33” performed before a live audience in Woodstock in 1952

John Cage, 4’ 33”, 1952

h^p://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HypmW4Yd7SY

John Cage Cage collaborated with the choreographer Merce Cunningham, who also taught at Black Mountain College

John Cage and Merce Cunningham, London, 1962; photographed by Hans Wild. Courtesy of the John Cage Trust at Bard College. Image source: h^p://www.rbge.org.uk/the-‐gardens/edinburgh/inverleith-‐house/archive-‐exhibiKons/inverleith-‐house-‐archive-‐main-‐programme/john-‐cage-‐and-‐merce-‐cunningham

John Cage Cunningham pioneered a new form of dance based on “found movement”

Merce Cunningham Image source: h^p://www.senKreascoltare.com/arKcolo/949/merce-‐cunningham-‐lulKma-‐danza-‐di-‐merce.html

John Cage He used random movements based on ordinary acKviKes such as walking, falling, or jumping

And he eliminated any kind of narraKve or emoKonal expressionism that would imply a pre-‐determined concept

Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Way StaHon, 2001 Photo by Tony Dougherty: Flickr

“There’s no thinking involved in my choreography . . . I don’t work through images or ideas . . . When I dance, it means: this is what I am doing.” Merce Cunningham

Robert Rauschenberg Rauschenberg designed sets for Cunningham’s dance performances and parKcipated in some of his producKons

Robert Rauschenberg, set design for Merce Cunningham’s, MinuHae, 1954 Private collecKon Image source: h^p://arthistory.about.com/od/from_exhibiKons/ig/rauschenberg_combines/rrc_02.htm

Merce Cunningham, MinuHae, 1954 Set design by Robert Rauschenberg Image source: h^p://www.voiceofdance.com/v1/features.cfm/1645/Merce-‐Cunningham-‐and-‐A-‐History-‐of-‐UnconvenKonal-‐CollaboraKon645.html

Robert Rauschenberg While sKll at Black Mountain College, Rauschenberg completed White PainHng, which consisted of seven panels of canvas painted a monochrome white

Photograph of Robert Rauschenberg seated on UnKtled (Elemental Sculpture) with White PainKng (seven panel) behind him at the basement of Stable Gallery, New York (1953). © Photograph: Allan Grant Life Magazine

Arnold Newman, Josef Albers, 1948

Robert Rauschenberg They were the inspiraKon for Cage’s 4’ 33”

Robert Rauschenberg, White PainHng, 1951 Guggenheim Museum

Robert Rauschenberg The painKngs were so blank they became recepKve to the shadows and other effects caused by the surrounding environment


In the words of Cage, these painKngs “were airports for shadows and for dust, but you could also say that they were mirrors of the air.”

Robert Rauschenberg


“What Rauschenberg was geong at was a kind of painKng in which the arKst -‐-‐ his personality, his emoKons, his ideas, his taste -‐-‐ would not be the controlling element. He was thus moving in a direcKon contrary to the subjecKve art of the New York Abstract Expressionists – the so-‐called “acKon painters,” who have sought to make their own encounter with paint and canvas the subject of their art.” Calvin Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors: Five Masters of the Avant Garde, p. 204

Robert Rauschenberg

Martha Holmes, Painter Jackson Pollock working in his studio, cigareê in mouth, dropping paint onto canvas, 1949 LIFE

“There was something about the self-‐confession and self-‐confusion of abstract expressionism -‐-‐ as though the man and the work were the same -‐-‐ that personally always put me off because at that Kme my focus was in the opposite direcKon. I was busy trying to find ways where the imagery, the material and the meaning of the painKng would be, not an illustraKon of my will, but more like an unbiased documentaKon of what I observed, leong the area of feeling and meaning take care of itself.” Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg The picture is no longer “about” the arKst

Its content is the viewer’s own perceptual experience


Ellsworth Kelly, Colors for a Large Wall, 1951 Museum of Modern Art

Robert Rauschenberg In 1957 Rauschenberg created Factum I and Factum II -‐-‐ two pictures that were idenKcal to one another

He wanted to see if there was any difference between the “original” and its “copy”

He said he couldn’t tell the difference

Robert Rauschenberg, Factum I and Factum II, 1957 Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and Museum of Modern Art

Robert Rauschenberg, Factum I and Factum II, 1957 Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and Museum of Modern Art

Which one is authenKcally “expressive” and which one is “faked emoKon”?

Robert Rauschenberg Erased de Kooning draws on a familiar Dada strategy – the act of defacing a work of art

Robert Rauschenberg, Erased de Kooning, 1953 SFMOMA

Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q., 1919, Private collecKon Image source: About.com

Robert Rauschenberg In 1955 Rauschenberg created his first combine

Robert Rauschenberg, Bed, 1955 Museum of Modern Art

"Combine" is Rauschenberg's term for a work that joins elements of painKng and sculpture. . . A Combine is not only a painKng transformed into a sculpture but a turbulent collision of a threadbare downtown lifestyle with the demands of high art. Frances Colpi^, Art in America h^p://findarKcles.com/p/arKcles/mi_m1248/is_11_94/ai_n27084087/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1

Robert Rauschenberg It consists of actual bed sheets, pillow, and quilt, splaêred with paint and scribbles, and hung verKcally like a painKng


Robert Rauschenberg Is this “painKng”?

Is this “sculpture”? Is this “art”?


Robert Rauschenberg, Bed, in Museum of Modern Art Image source: h^p://seamslikely.blogspot.com/

Robert Rauschenberg Pollock had already challenged the idea that art must be made from “fine art” materials

Martha Holmes, Jackson Pollock pouring sand into his painKng, 1949 LIFE

Robert Rauschenberg Rauschenberg took this one step further by suggesKng that art could be made, literally, from anything

Wallace Kirkland, Robert Rauschenberg creaKng artwork using blueprint paper and sun lamp. 1951 LIFE

“PainKng relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in the gap between the two). A pair of socks is no less suitable to make a painKng than wood, nails, turpenKne, oil, and fabric.” Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg Rauschenberg was looking for a way to make art that did not involve simulated realiKes or emoKons


“I don’t want a picture to look like something it isn’t. I want it to look like something it is” Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg He liked to work with real things because it leaves room for the viewer


“I would like to make a painKng and a situaKon that leaves as much space for the person looking at it as for the arKst.” Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg What is the difference between a “painKng” and an “object”?

Un-‐made Bed I Image source: h^p://denisefotheringham.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/the-‐narraKve-‐conKnued/

Robert Rauschenberg, Bed, in Museum of Modern Art Image source: h^p://seamslikely.blogspot.com/

Robert Rauschenberg We expect a picture to express an arKst’s idea

Felipe T. Marques Image source: h^p://www.flickr.com/photos/pseudopff/51890707/

Robert Rauschenberg Objects mean only what we bring to them

Un-‐made Bed I Image source: h^p://denisefotheringham.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/the-‐narraKve-‐conKnued/

Robert Rauschenberg

“I don’t want a painKng to be just an expression of my personality. I feel it ought to be much beêr than that. And I’m opposed to the whole idea of concepKon-‐execuKon -‐-‐ of geong an idea for a picture and then carrying it out. I’ve always felt as though, whatever I’ve used and whatever I’ve done, the method was always closer to a collaboraKon with materials than to any kind of conscious manipulaKon and control.” Robert Rauschenberg


Robert Rauschenberg

Ellsworth Kelly. Photograph © Jack Shear

"I want to eliminate the 'I made this' from my work.” Ellsworth Kelly

“I am less interested in marks on the panels than the ‘presence’ of the panels themselves. In ‘Red, Yellow, Blue,’ the square panels present color.” Ellsworth Kelly

Robert Rauschenberg Rauschenberg’s combines are a random collecKon of elements drawn from everyday life

In Canyon, the arKst affixed a taxidermed bird to the canvas, along with a pillow dangling from a piece of rope

Robert Rauschenberg, Canyon, 1959 Private collecKon

Robert Rauschenberg First Landing Jump includes automobile parts and a working light bulb

Robert Rauschenberg, First Landing, Jump, 1961 Museum of Modern Art

Robert Rauschenberg There were other arKsts making art from “junk” in the 1950s, but they transformed their materials into aestheKcally pleasing objects

John Chamberlain, Hatband, 1960

Louise Nevelson, Black Wall, 1964, Hirshhorn

Robert Rauschenberg Rauschenberg lev his materials in their raw un-‐edited state


Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg retrospecKve at the Metropolitan Museum, 2005 Image source: h^p://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/visualarts/NYT-‐Kimmelman-‐Rauschenberg-‐in-‐Retrospect-‐12-‐23-‐05.html

“Some art tries to transcend messy reality. The combines celebrate it . . . They're in the trenches, where real life happens.” Michael Kimmelman, “Art Out of Anything: Rauschenberg in Retrospect,” New York Times, Dec 23, 2005 h^p://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/visualarts/NYT-‐Kimmelman-‐Rauschenberg-‐in-‐Retrospect-‐12-‐23-‐05.html

Robert Rauschenberg


“Rauschenberg’s uncompromising acceptance of ‘inappropriate’ materials unequivocally marked him as a renegade . . . The results infuriated criKcs . . . The component materials of his ‘combines’ . . . seemed uêrly too ephemeral and pedestrian to qualify as high art. “ Barbara Haskell

Robert Rauschenberg One of Rauschenberg’s most controversial pieces was Monogram

In this work, the arKst placed a stuffed goat on a canvas laid horizontally on the floor

Robert Rauschenberg, Monogram, 1955-‐9 Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Robert Rauschenberg What is a painKng?

Does it have to be on “canvas”? Does it have to go on the wall?


“Aver you recognize that the canvas you are painKng on is simply another rag then it doesn’t maêr whether you use stuffed chickens or electric light bulbs or pure form” Robert Rauschenberg

"There is no reason not to consider the world as one giganKc painKng." Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg By taking the “painKng” off the wall and puong it on the floor, Rauschenberg was re-‐defining what a “picture” is


Robert Rauschenberg


“For the criKc Leo Steinberg, Rauschenberg’s work . . . marked a highly significant turn in the development of painKng. This was a turn away from the idea of painKng as an illusion of space behind the literal plane of the canvas, and toward the ‘flatbed picture plane’ in which the canvas becomes a surface more like a table-‐top or pin-‐board.” David Batchelor, Minimalism, p. 15

Robert Rauschenberg


“This is not a composiKon. It is a place where things are, as on a table or a town seen from the air” John Cage

Robert Rauschenberg Do these random elements add up to make a story?


Robert Rauschenberg Scholars have aêmpted to decipher the dense iconography of the combines


Rembrandt, The AbducHon of Ganymede, 1635 Alte Meister Gallerie, Dresden, Germany

Robert Rauschenberg Many have detected homosexual allusions


William Holman Hunt, The Scapegoat, 1854-‐55 Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool

Robert Rauschenberg But Rauschenberg’s combines ulKmately defy -‐-‐ and oven exceed -‐-‐ any singular interpretaKon


Robert Rauschenberg


“I believe, however, that . . . this search for the "hidden meaning" is misguided-‐-‐not because it is wrong (there can be no "wrong" interpretaKon of Rauschenberg, as John Cage noted), but because it is too limited. Or rather too limiKng: Profoundly anKtheKcal to Rauschenberg's Cagean leveling of hierarchies, this approach edits out the noise and selects, among many possible elements, those that can be synthesized into a narraKve through a chain of associaKon . . . this iconological method surrepKKously transforms Rauschenberg's Combines into old-‐master pictures.” Yves Alain Blois, “Rauschenberg’s Combines,” Ar\orum March 2006 h^p://findarKcles.com/p/arKcles/mi_m0268/is_7_44/ai_n26804452/pg_2?tag=content;col1

Robert Rauschenberg Rauschenberg’s combines are as cluêred and random as life itself

And life cannot be reduced to a simple narraKve or meaning


Robert Rauschenberg In 1962 Rauschenberg discovered the technique of photo silkscreen, already being used by Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol, Double Elvis, 1963 MOMA

Robert Rauschenberg This technique of transferring ready-‐made images from the media became the basis for his silkscreen painKngs of the 1960’s

Burton Berinsky, Robert Rauschenberg with silkscreen painKngs, 1967 Image source: h^p://www.Kme.com/Kme/magazine/arKcle/0,9171,1806817,00.html

Robert Rauschenberg Media imagery became a new kind of “found object”

Robert Rauschenberg, RetroacHve I, 1963 Wadsworth Atheneum

John F. Kennedy accepKng the DemocraKc presidenKal nominaKon, July 15, 1960 Image source: h^p://www.laits.utexas.edu/gov310/VCE/JFK_Accepts/


Robert Rauschenberg, Estate, 1963 Philadelphia Museum of Art

Robert Rauschenberg As John Cage observed, the imagery streams across the picture like mulKple TV sets tuned to different channels


John F. Kennedy, 1960 Image source: h^p://pro.corbis.com/Enlargement/Enlargement.aspx?id=IH015378&ext=1

Robert Rauschenberg


“I was bombarded with television sets and magazines, by the excess of the world. I thought an honest work should incorporate all of those elements, which were and are a reality.” Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg


“I find it nearly impossible to free ice to write about Jeepaxle my work. The concept I planetarium struggle to deal with ketchup is opposed to the logical community liv tab inherent in language horses and communicaKon. My fascinaKon with images open 24 hrs. is based on the complex interlocking if disparate visual facts heated pool that have no respect for grammar. The form then Denver 39 is second hand to nothing. The work then has a chance to electric service become its own cliche. Luggage. This is the inevitable fate” Robert Rauschnberg

Robert Rauschenberg


“Rauschenberg’s canvases were loaded with image shards . . . The surface of the painKng now received a kaleidoscope of informaKon, a process that created what the art historian Leo Steinberg called a ‘flatbed picture plane’ . . . [which]] was a metaphor for the contemporary mind itself -‐-‐ a ‘running transformer of the external world, constantly ingesKng incoming unprocessed data to be mapped in an overcharged field.” Lisa Phillips. The American Century

Robert Rauschenberg Rauschenberg’s “kitchen-‐sink-‐and-‐all” approach to art was a direct assault on the “purity” demanded by Clement Greenberg and other advocates of “pure painKng”

Clement Greenberg looking at a painKng by Ken Noland Image source: h^ps://www.artnet.sk/Magazine/features/kostabi/kostabi9-‐11-‐18.asp

“There is simply no way to fit an arKst like Rauschenberg into a scheme of theory that insists art has to get purer and purer and flaêr and flaêr unKl its "pictorial essence" is at last defined . . . Our experience of the world and of art, he insists, is never pure and cannot be.” Robert Hughes h^p://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2006/jan/26/art1

Robert Rauschenberg He proposed that anything could be the material of art

“It is largely, if not exclusively, thanks to Robert Rauschenberg that Americans since the 1950's have come to think that art can be made out of anything . . . [and] to suggest that the stuff of life and the stuff of art are ulKmately one and the same.” Michael Kimmelman, Art Out of Anything: Rauschenberg in Retrospect, NY Times, December 23, 2005 h^p://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/visualarts/NYT-‐Kimmelman-‐Rauschenberg-‐in-‐Retrospect-‐12-‐23-‐05.html

Wallace Kirkland, Robert Rauschenberg creaKng artwork using blueprint paper and sun lamp. 1951 LIFE

Robert Rauschenberg But Rauschenberg also challenged the prevailing noKon of art as individual expression

Martha Holmes, Painter Jackson Pollock working in his studio, cigareê in mouth, dropping paint onto canvas, 1949 LIFE

“Rauschenberg aêmpted to deny that there was a fixed core idenKty at all . . . . Instead of discovering oneself in the act of painKng, one perpetually reconstructs oneself in the process of adapKng to one’s encounters with the world.” Jonathan Fineberg, p. 178

Robert Rauschenberg Is “self expression” ever really original, or is it merely a “collaboraKon” with pre-‐exisKng materials and meanings?

Express Yourself, by Monica Arone h^p://socialdesigner.com/submissions/express-‐yourself

A Lump of Clay Image source: h^p://www.flickr.com/photos/40298691@N00/101243346

Robert Rauschenberg Do images express our ideas, or do we use images to make meaning?

Do we speak language, or does language speak us?


Barbara Kruger, You Are Not Yourself, 1984

Jasper Johns Jasper Johns also wanted to eliminate the “I made this” from his art

Jasper Johns Image source: h^p://www.mycontemporary.com/gallery/arKst/name/ma^hew_marks_gallery

Jasper Johns He used “readymade” images like flags and targets to make us reflect on the acKvity of seeing and knowing

Jasper Johns, Flag, 1954-‐5 Museum of Modern Art

Jasper Johns, Target, 1958 Image source: Saatchi Gallery

“It all began," he says, "with my painKng a picture of an American flag. Using this design took care of a great deal for me because I didn't have to design it. So I went on to similar things like the targets—things the mind already knows.” “Art: His Heart Belongs to Dada,” Time Magazine, May 4, 1959 h^p://www.Kme.com/Kme/magazine/arKcle/0,9171,892526,00.html

Jasper Johns Rather than focus on the arKst, he focused on the role of the viewer in making meaning

Jasper Johns Flag in the Museum of Modern Art Image source: h^p://www.daleyblog.com/weblog/photos/photoblog_04/

Jasper Johns Although it is a later work, The CriHc Sees is a good place to begin

Jasper Johns, The CriHc Sees, 1964


Jasper Johns The criKc “sees” with his mouth, rather than his eyes


Jasper Johns This means he does not “receive” meaning, but imposes his own ideas on the work

Norman Rockwell, The Connoisseur, The Saturday Evening Post, January 13, 1962

Jasper Johns CriKcs of the Kme made much of the “expressive” meaning of Abstract Expressionism

Norman Rockwell, The Connoisseur, The Saturday Evening Post, January 13, 1962

Jasper Johns They saw the arKst’s personality embedded in the marks he made on the canvas

“It is always the case that interpretaKon of this type indicates a dissaKsfacKon (conscious or unconscious) with the work, a wish to replace it by something else. InterpretaKon, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. It makes art into an arKcle for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories.” Susan Sontag, “Against InterpretaKon”

Jasper Johns Rauschenberg and Johns did not buy into this mythology

“Everything Abstract Expressionism was, Rauschenberg and Co. weren't. Ab-‐Ex was big, lovy, abstract and made by older straight men. This neo-‐Dada, proto-‐Pop and Pop art was smaller, cooler, figuraKve, vernacular and oven made by younger gay men. As Rauschenberg professed, "I could never make the language of Abstract Expressionism work for me -‐-‐ words like 'tortured,' 'struggle' and 'pain,' I could never see those qualiKes in paint. How can red be 'passion?' Red is red. Jasper and I used to start each day by having to move out from Abstract Expressionism.” Jerry Salz h^p://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/saltz/saltz1-‐11-‐06.asp

Jasper Johns, PainHng with Two Balls, 1960. EncausKc and collage on canvas with objects. CollecKon of the arKst

Jasper Johns PanHng with Two Balls is an ironic send up of the mythology of Abstract Expressionism

Jasper Johns, PainHng with Two Balls, 1960. EncausKc and collage on canvas with objects. CollecKon of the arKst

Jasper Johns Johns was deeply influenced by the linguisKc theories of Ludwig Wi^genstein

Jasper Johns in 1966 with one of his flag painKngs Image source: h^p://angelfloresjr.mulKply.com/journal/item/6965?&show_intersKKal=1&u=%2Fjournal%2Fitem

Jasper Johns Wi^genstein proposed that the meaning of language is not “intrinsic” to the words themselves, but is socially produced

Jasper Johns LinguisKc theory teaches us that the relaKon between “signifiers” and “signifieds” is arbitrary, rather than inherent

Jasper Johns False Start explores the slippery relaKonship between signifiers and signifieds

Jasper Johns, False Start, 1959 Museum of Modern Art

Jasper Johns What is the relaKonship between a color and its name?


Jasper Johns What happens when you separate a signifier from its signified?


Jasper Johns It is similar to what happens when you repeat a word over and over


RedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRedRed

Jasper Johns The word becomes dislocated from its meaning


Jasper Johns And we see it “as it is” for the first Kme -‐-‐ divorced from the convenKonal meaning aâched to it


Jasper Johns To see with our eyes is very different from seeing with our mind


Jasper Johns Ellsworth Kelly, and Josef Albers were both exploring this idea by different means

Ellsworth Kelly, Colors for a Large Wall, 1951 Museum of Modern Art

Josef Albers, Homage to the Square: With Rays, 1959 Metropolitan Museum

Jasper Johns And so were Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage


Jasper Johns The mind, with its expectaKons, said there was nothing to see or hear


Jasper Johns But if one truly looked or listened, without preconcepKon, there was much to see and hear


Jasper Johns By dislocaKng signifiers from their signifieds, Johns forces us to think about the relaKons between seeing and knowing

“How can red be 'passion?' Red is red. Jasper and I used to start each day by having to move out from Abstract Expressionism.” Jerry Salz h^p://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/saltz/saltz1-‐11-‐06.asp


Jasper Johns The work that catapulted Johns to fame was his painKng of a flag

Eliot Elisofon, Art dealer Leo Castelli in his art gallery surrounded by artwork (L-‐R): Arundel Castle by Frank Stella, American Flag by Jasper Johns, unKtled by Lee Bontecou, Torso by Eugene Higgens and The Bed by Robert Rauschenberg, 1960 LIFE

“Jasper Johns, 29, is the brand-‐new darling of the art world's bright, bri^le avantgarde. A year ago he was pracKcally unknown; since then he has had a sellout show in Manhaân, has exhibited in Paris and Milan, was the only American to win a painKng prize at the Carnegie InternaKonal, and has seen three of his painKngs bought for Manhaân's Museum of Modern Art by Director of CollecKons Alfred Barr Jr.” “Art: His Heart Belongs to Dada,” Time Magazine, May 4, 1959 h^p://www.Kme.com/Kme/magazine/arKcle/0,9171,892526,00.html

Jasper Johns The painKng looks simple, but the quesKons it raises are complex

Jasper Johns, Flag, 1954-‐5 MOMA

Jasper Johns Is it a painKng or an object?


“I've always thought of a painKng as a surface; painKng it in one color made this very clear. Then I decided that looking at a painKng should not require a special kind of focus like going to church. A picture ought to be looked at the same way you look at a radiator.” Jasper Johns, “Art: His Heart Belongs to Dada,” Time Magazine, May 4, 1959 h^p://www.Kme.com/Kme/magazine/arKcle/0,9171,892526,00.html

Jasper Johns Is it “expressive”?


Jasper Johns What makes a “drip” or a “smudge” expressive?

“I didn’t want my work to be an exposure of my feelings.” Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns Does it have meaning?


Jasper Johns What did the flag mean in the 1950s?

Robert Frank, Parade – Hoboken, New Jersey From the Americans, 1958

Senator Joseph McCarthy, Time, March 8, 1954

Jasper Johns


“Nineteen fivy-‐four was, in reality, a year of hysterical patrioKsm . . . . This was the year when McCarty, pushing his luck too far, had taken on the Army as a new domain of invesKgaKons . . . . The American public was bombarded with uninterrupted media coverage . . . . Johns took the American flag and reduced it from a potenKally emoKonal symbol to a passive, flat, neutral object .” Moira Roth, “An AestheKcs of Indifference,” Ar\orum, Nov 1977, p. 50

Jasper Johns


“But I wasn't trying to make a patrioKc statement," says Johns. "Many people thought it was subversive and nasty. It's funny how feeling has flipped.” Interview with Jasper Johns h^p://www.buzzle.com/editorials/7-‐26-‐2004-‐57112.asp

Jasper Johns It is impossible to a^ribute arKsKc intenKon to the flag, since it is essenKally a “found object”

The arKst is not the “author” of its meaning

Jasper Johns Flag in the Museum of Modern Art Image source: h^p://www.daleyblog.com/weblog/photos/photoblog_04/

Jasper Johns In his series of targets, Johns employed another familiar symbol

Jasper Johns, Target with Plaster Casts, 1955

Jasper Johns The target moKf has also been interpreted as an invesKgaKon into familiar public symbols and their presumed meaning


Jasper Johns


“Everyone "knows" what a target is-‐-‐a test of a marksman's skill. But beneath its muteness a target is supercharged with an imagery of aggression: every target implies a weapon and someone aiming. This had an inescapable point in the mid-‐'50s, when poliKcians and all the American media were pounding into the collecKve imaginaKon, like a 10-‐in. spike, the message that the whole naKon was a target for Russian thermonuclear weapons.” Robert Hughes, “Behind the Sacred Aura,” Time Magazine, Nov 11 1996 h^p://www.Kme.com/Kme/magazine/arKcle/0,9171,985520-‐2,00.html

Jasper Johns The compartments above are filled with plaster casts of body parts – which evokes another kind of “targeKng”


“This is part of the background to Johns' targets, and a li^le further back is another form of "targeKng"-‐-‐the virulent hatred and distrust of homosexuals as deviants and possible spies that the right encouraged.” Robert Hughes, “Behind the Sacred Aura,” Time Magazine, Nov 11 1996 h^p://www.Kme.com/Kme/magazine/arKcle/0,9171,985520-‐2,00.html

Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns, Target with Four Faces, 1955

“Four Faces, 1955, is all about threat and concealment. Its impassive, idenKcal plaster casts of faces are contained in a box with a hinged door, a "closet" above the ominous target. Your gaze, in looking at them, is assimilated to the eye of the inquisitor, hunKng out what is concealed. It is a pessimisKc and, above all, defensive image.” Robert Hughes, “Behind the Sacred Aura,” Time Magazine, Nov 11 1996 h^p://www.Kme.com/Kme/magazine/arKcle/0,9171,985520-‐2,00.html

Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns, Target with Four Faces, 1955

“Bodies, we believe, simply mean -‐-‐ though of course they mean differenKally: female bodies mean differently than male, black than white, old than young, and so on. In this context, these plaster casts, defleshed, decontextualized, made arKfact, strip the body of any ‘inherent’ corporeal meanings. Instead, the body -‐-‐ just like a target -‐-‐ conspicuously awaits its use by the viewer.” Jonathan Katz, “Dismembership: Jasper Johns and the Body Policic,” in Amelia Jones, ed. Performing the Body/Performing the Text (Routledge, 1999), p. 177

Jasper Johns In his flags and targets Jasper Johns drew on Marcel Duchamp’s concept of the “readymade”


Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1913 MOMA

Jasper Johns Painted Bronze explored the concept of the readymade from a different angle

Jasper Johns, Painted Bronze, 1960

“I was doing at that Kme sculptures of small objects – flashlights and light bulbs. Then I heard a story about Willem de Kooning. He was annoyed with my dealer, Leo Castelli, for some reason, and said something like, ‘That son-‐of-‐a-‐bitch; you could give him two beer cans and he could sell them.’” Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns Is this “art?


Jasper Johns Why is Painted Bronze different from Degas’ Liale Dancer?


Degas, Liale Dancer, 1880; 1922 Metropolitan Museum

Summary

“Advanced art, from Walt Whitman to Jackson Pollock, for the most part rested on the romanKc assumpKon that meaningful subject maêr emanates from within the individual. But the art of both Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns called this noKon into quesKon.” Jonathan Fineberg

Jackson Pollock in front of a blank canvas

Summary

“In an implicit aâck on ontology they recast man as a nexus of informaKon, reorienKng input rather than originaKng content.” Jonathan Fineberg


Summary

“By the end of the fivies the human mind began to seem to more and more arKsts and intellectuals like a complex circuit board for processing ‘nature.’ Meanwhile, ‘nature’ came increasingly to mean representaKons of things as well as the things themselves. This radical shiv in culture affected all quarters of the culture, with the explosive development in electronics and mass media being its major catalyst.” Jonathan Fineberg

Marshal McLuhan Image source: h^p://www.britannica.com/blogs/2009/03/marshall-‐mcluhan-‐and-‐the-‐wired-‐future/

Summary

Marshal McLuhan Image source: h^p://www.britannica.com/blogs/2009/03/marshall-‐mcluhan-‐and-‐the-‐wired-‐future/

Education

4.2 neo dada