Europe and America 1945-70 Still from Mad Men opening credits, AMC television series
Europe and America 1945-60
People & Events :
Response to upheaval and devastation of WW II
Rise of consumerism in 50s
Influence of European avant-garde in exile in U.S.
New York & the New York School
Clement Greenberg & Greenbergian formalism
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI, Man Pointing , 1947. Fig. 15-2.
Themes :
Formal exploration (purity)
Self-expression
Isolation and despair
The sublime
Consumer and popular culture
Forms :
Abstraction, realism, found objects, new media
Europe and America 1945-60 Francis Bacon, Painting , 1946, fig.15-3
Painting and Sculpture, 1945 to 1960 JACKSON POLLOCK, Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), 1950. Fig. 15-4.
Painting and Sculpture, 1945 to 1960
Abstract Expressionism, gestural abstraction
Rise of American modernist painting
Act of creation most important
All-over composition (no central focus)
Greenbergian formalism?
Jungian psychoanalysis?
JACKSON POLLOCK, Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), 1950, oil, enamel, aluminum paint, fig. 15-4. At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to actrather than as a space in which to reproduce, redesign, analyze or express an object real or imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event. -Harold Rosenberg, 1952
Painting and Sculpture, 1945 to 1960 WILLEM DE KOONING, Woman I, 19501952. Fig. 15-5.
Painting and Sculpture, 1945 to 1960
Abstract Expressionism, gestural abstraction
Expressive, energetic application of paint
Retains figure
Inspired by Cubist formal
analysis
Critique of women in advertisements
Act of painting (2 yrs to complete painting, 200 attempts)
WILLEM DE KOONING, Woman I, 19501952. Fig. 15-5.
Woman II, III, & IV Venus of Willendorf Picassos Les Demoiselles dAvignon, 1907 1950s Camel Cig. ad
Painting and Sculpture, 1945 to 1960 Robert Rauschenberg, Canyon , 1959, mixed media, fig. 15-15 Rembrandt, Rape of Ganymede 1635, oil
Painting and Sculpture, 1945 to 1960 Robert Rauschenberg, Canyon , 1959, mixed media, fig. 15-15
Proto-Pop
Combine (found object
assemblage)
Includes stuffed bald eagle, pillow hanging from string, photo of young son
Open and indeterminate
meaning
Resists over-manipulation of
objects
Resembles Dada collage and anti-aesthetic (Duchamp)
Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made (I try to act in the gap between the two). -Rauschenberg
Painting and Sculpture, 1960 to 1970
People & Events :
Youth culture rejects
traditional values
Protest against war
pacifist movements in 1960s
Civil and womens rights
(African American, Gay &
lesbian)
Assassinations of JFK (1963), MLK (1968)
Vietnam War (until 1975)
President Elect by James Rosenquist 1960-61/1964, oil on masonite General Nguyen Ngoc Loan Executing a Viet Cong Prisoner in Saigon by Eddie Adams, 1968, Associated Press
Painting and Sculpture, 1960 to 1970
Themes:
Formal exploration
Consumer and popular
culture
Accessibility & inclusion
Objectivity (vs. subjectivity)
Forms:
Pop Art
Minimalism
Mass production (the serial
image/object)
Found images/objects
Performance & body art
Louise Nevelson, Tropical Garden II , 1957-59, painted wood, fig.15-11
Painting and Sculpture, 1960 to 1970 ANDY WARHOL, Marilyn Diptych, 1962. Fig. 15-17.
Painting and Sculpture, 1960 to 1970
Pop Art
Established commercial
illustrator
Commentary on
celebrity (public persona)
Mass production (serial)
Combines printing
& painting
References film
Produces painting
at factory, breaks
rules of high art
ANDY WARHOL, Marilyn Diptych, 1962. Fig. 15-17. Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait in Drag , 1981 Celebration or critique?
Painting and Sculpture, 1960 to 1970
Pop Art
Popular comic books, romantic melodrama
Resulted out of a challenge from his young son (I bet you cant paint as good as that)
Benday dots, look of comic book
Slight alteration of image, retained most of original
Blurs lines between high art medium and low -brow entertainment
Plagiarism?
ROY LICHTENSTEIN, Hopeless, 1963. Fig. 15-16.
Painting and Sculpture, 1960 to 1970 La Fillette, Robert Mapplethorpe, 1982 Louise Bourgeois, Cumul I , 1969, marble Fig. 15-12
Like biomorphic surrealism
Body as landscape
Sexual suggestiveness
(castration fantasies?)
Painting and Sculpture, 1960 to 1970
Minimalism
Tangible qualities of the object
Purity of form without embellishment
Embraces qualities of the materials
Removes deception & illusion
Pure abstraction (objecthood)
DONALD JUDD, Untitled, 1969. Fig. 15-10.
Superrealism
Translation of photograph to painting by grid
Systematic, objective
process
One of many portraits of self and friends
All using standard size
(9 x 7)
Painting and Sculpture, 1960 to 1970 Chuck Close, Big Self-Portrait, 1967-68 Acrylic, fig. 15-18
Superrealism
Painted with an airbrush
Average Americans
Emptiness and
loneliness of
daily American life
Gritty realism
vs. idealism
Painting and Sculpture, 1960 to 1970 Duane Hanson, Supermarket Shopper , 1970 Polyester resin and fiberglass, fig. 15-19
Contemporary Superrealism Ron Mueck, A Girl (2006, 15 long) and Spooning Couple (2005, 1/2 scale)
