Chapter 30 Later 20th Century After 1945 Key Ideas

• Late modern art is a restless era of great experimentation, beginning with The New York School • Contemporary art is characterized by short-lived movements • Most artists work in a variety of media • Modern architecture has been radically altered by the introduction of the computer, which makes drawing ground plans easier and more efficient, and checks for structural errors • The number of female artists, patrons, and customers has grown bringing about a closer equality of the sexes. Vocabulary • Deconstruction architecture-seeks to create a seemingly unstable environment with unusual spatial arrangements • Action Painting: an abstract painting in which the artist drips or splatters paint onto a surface like a canvas in order to create his or her work • Assemblage: a three-dimensional work made of various matilterials such as wood, clthloth, paper, and milliscellaneous objects • Benday Dots: named for inventor Benjamin Day. This printing process uses the pointillist technique of colored dots from a limited palette placed closely together to achieve more colors and subtle shadings • Color Field: a style of abstract painting characterized by simple shapes and monochromatic color • Earthwork: a large outdoor work in which the earth itself is the medium • Installation: a temporary work of art made up of assemblages created for a particular space, like an art gallery or museum. Existentialist humanity- Alienated, solitary, and lost in the world’s immensity

GIOCOMETTI, Man Pointing BACON, Painting

Painted in the aftermath of WW II , this intentionally revolting image of a powerful figure presiding over a slaughter is Bacon’s indictment of humanity and a reflection of war’s butchery. Abstract Expressionism – 1950s

• Sometimes called The New York School • First American avant-garde art movement • Developpged as a reaction against artist like Mondrian and Malevich, who took the Minimalist approach to abstraction • Seeks to have a more active representation of the hand of the artist on a given work such as Action Painting -it rejjppygected the tradition of applying pigment to stretched canvases supported vertically before the painter on an easel Abstract Expressionism Pollock, Number 1, Lavender Mist, 1950

•Action Painting: the artist places a canvas on the floor and drips and splatters paint onto the surface •Immense painting engulf viewer •Spontaneous painting •Limited color palette De KOONING, Woman I •Chromat ic abstractionist paintings •Visual experiences consisting of two or three large rectangles of pure color with hdhazy edges ROTHKO, No. 14 Red White Blue

Ellsworth Kelly, Red Blue Green Orange Curve Post-Painterly Abstraction Helen Frankenthaler, The Bay, • Coined by critic Clement 1963 Greenberg in conjunction with an exhibit ion of the same name at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1964, featuring contemporary American and Canadian artists. • Loose, visible pigment application

Morris Louis, Saraband, 1959 Hyena Stomp

Decanter

FRANK STELLA, Mos a Menos Op (short for Optical) Art – 1960s • Artistic movement of the 1960s in which painters sought Ridge Riley, Fission, 1963 to produce optical illusions of motion and depth using only geometric forms on tow- dimens iona l surfaces • Relies on optical illusions David Smith, Cubi XIX Abstraction in Sculpture

Three Ovals Soar

Cubi XXVII Donald Judd, Untitled

Untitled Untitled

Double Wall Piece

•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 interppylay of solids , voids , and shadows Poppp or Popular Art Richard Hamilton, Just What is • Draws on materials of the everyday It That Makes Today’s Homes So world, items of mass popular culture Different, So Appealing? 1956 like consumer goods or famous singers • Pop artist saw no distinction between “high” art or the design of mass- produced items • It glorifies the common place, bringing the viewer face to face with everyday reality

Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe, 1964 dtildetail

Jasper Johns, Flag Robert Rauschenberg, Canyon, 1959

Monogram, 1955-59

•Creates works with combines, which intersperse paitdinted passages with scul ltptural e lemen ts A Quatt ro M ani IV •Combines : His personal variations of assemblages (made from already existing items) Lichtenstein, Hopeless

Drowning Girl

Benday Dots

•Frames inspired by cartoons and comic books •Hard, precise drawing •Artist chooses a moment of transition or crisis The Head (1992), 100 Campbell Soup Cans

Andy Warhol, Green Coca- Cola Bottles

Campbell's Soup Can Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych

Self-Portrait

John Lennon Marilyn Monroe VIDEO: Why is this Art? Warhol's Soup Cans on Smarthistory VIDEO: Warhol's Gold Marilyn Monroe on Smarthistory Claus Oldenburg, One-person show at the Green Gallery Giant Ice Bag

Floor Burger Produces Pop sculptures that incisively comment on American consumer culture Superrealism or Photorealism

• Expanded Pop’s iconography in both painting and sculpture • Pop art and photorealism were both reactionary movements stemming from the ever-increasing and overwhelming abundance of photographic media, which by the mid 20th century had grown into such a massive phenomenon that it was threatening to lessen the value of imagery in art. • Photorealism uses cameras and photographs, which are then transferred to canvas in ppgaint with tight and precise compositions. AUDREY FLACK, Marilyn

World War II, April 1945

•Her paintings are still lifes that present the viewer with collection of familiar objects •Incorporates photos of Marilyn Monroe to comment on her tragic life LlLyle

Phil 1969 Self-Portrait CHUCK CLOSE, Big Self-Portrait Young shopper

Dishwasher

DUANE HANSON, Supermarket Shopper Rita the Waitress Contemporary Art Photography- After the 60s • Photographers in the 1960s, inspired by the social change of the time, created artwork that was based more on a concept than on formal beauty. The 60s began what we call the “post-modern” age. Postmodernism is an attempt to subvert and destroy boundaries based on style, medium, politics and other social constructs. The post- modernists were concerned with questioning those constructs. • The major themes in contemporary art are Identity, Time, Place, an d Cu lture (including Technology). “Blaze Starr At Home”, 1964, Diane Arbus Identity

• The social constructs that define both personal and group identities- gender, ethnicity, class and economic status- are a rich source of material for postmodidern artists. Most explore what social definitions of identity mean, both psychologically and “KinggQ and Queen of a Senior Citizens’ sociologically. Dance”, 1970, Diane Arbus Diane Arbus • Arbus is arguably the most influential female photographer after World War II. After studying with another famous photographer, Lisette Model, AbArbus made pho tograp hs thtthat called into question the creative rights of a photographer as well as the sheer ability of a phhhotograph to reveal something secretive.

Untitled FEMINISM Elevates woman’s arts and crafts to same level as fine art. Embraces: • Arts and Crafts • Female sensuality •Increasing awareness and acceptance of feminist issues in society •Easier for female artist to express themselves in a way that would bring interest in their art to great public Judy Chicago Dinner Party 1974–79. Mixed media: ceramic, porcelai n, ttiltextile • Wanted to educate viewers about women’ s role in history and the fine arts • Aimed to establish a respect for women and their art • Using crafting techniques (traditionally practiced by women – china painting and stitchery) • Originally conceived as a feminist • Last Supper attended by 13 women as “honored guests” but in the course of her research the number expanded to 39

CINDY SHERMAN, Untitled Film Still #35

•69 photographs in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York •Artist uses herself as the primary figure in the series •Imitates the way that images of women have been stereotypically depicted in movies •Criticizes the concept of women as objects to be merely gazed at Cindy Sherman

• Sherman’s “Untitled Film Stills” cast the artist herself as a solitary heroine in a cultural drama. By playing various stereotypical roles,,p Sherman explores the meaning of identity in culture. The title of the series encourages viewers to complete the rest of the “film” on their own.

Untitled Film Still #14. 1971 Ana Mendieta,

•Earth/body sculpture •Appears covered with flowers in a grave or womblike cavity to address issues of birth and death along with our connection with earth.

Flowers on Body Modern Architecture

•Curvilinear patterns of the outside reveal a circular domed walkway on the inside •Glass dome dominates an interior well of space •Exhibits placed on the walls around the spiliiraling ramps •Circular motif dominant throughout FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, Solomon R. Guggenheim the builidng Museum, New York City •Exterior resembles a ship, nun’s habit, a dove or praying hands •Roof seems to float over the body of the building •Random placement of windows has a deeply religious effect •SiSweeping roo fbdf bends downward over the nave

LE CORBUSIER, Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, France JOERN UTZON, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia •Actually three buildings: the largest is the concert hall, the second the opera house, the third the restaurant •Grouppgings of fanlike vaults that resemble shi p’s sails – in Syyydney Harbor , surrounded by water on three sides •Vaults grow upward form their bases, are independent structures, glass connects them MICHAEL GRAVES, The Portland Building, Portland Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe and Philip Johnson, Seagram Building

• A reflection of the minimalist movement in pa int ing • Mie’s saying “Less is More”, great simplicity, geometry of design, elegance of construction • StSet bkback from the s tree t on a w ide 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 WW II • A triumph of the International Style of architecture ( emphasis more on architectural style, form and aesthetics) Robert Venturi, Vanna Venturi Hosue, Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, 1962 • Venturi asserted form should be separate from function and structure • one of the first prominent works of the postmodern architecture movement • the five room house stands only about 30 feet tall at the top of the chimney • monumental front facade - an effect achieved by intentionally manipulating the architectural elements that indicate a building's scale – recalling a classical temple • thlhidhe central chimney and staircase dominate the interior of the house RICHARD ROGERS and RENZO PIANO , Georges Pompidou National Center of Art and Culture, Paris

•Functions as an art museum and a cultural complex •Interior framework of the buildinggp 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 Bilbao Museo, Bilboa, Spain

•Appearance of asymmetrical exterior with outside walls giving no hint to interior spaces •Irregular masses of titan ium walls •Sweeping curved lines •Deconstructionist architecture •Good example of how computers can help architects render shapes and meaningful designs in an imaginative way

Interior Site Art, Earth Art, Environmental, or Earthworks 1970s to today

• Depend en t on its loca tion to ren der fu ll mean ing • Often works of Site Art are temporary and other times they remain but need the original environment intact in order for it to be fully understood such as earthworks ROBERT SMITHSON Spiral Jetty •Coil of rock in a part of the Great Salt Lake; located in an extremely remote and iiblthtftbddidiiitinaccessible area that features abandoned mines and mining equipment •Upon walking on the jetty, the twisting and curling path changes the participant’s view from every angle •Artist used a tractor with native stone to create the jjyetty •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 like Serpent Mound, Ohio Performance Art

Conceptual Art • Performance artist New Media replace traditional • During the 1960s • The “artfulness’ stationary artworks and 1970s, many of art lay in the wi th movem en ts, gestures, and sounds avant-garde artittists artist’s idea, embraced rather than in performed before an audience, whose technologies its final members sometimes previously expression. participate in the unavailable in their • Artists regarded performance attempt to find the idea, or • Because earliest new avenues of concept, as the performance were artistic expression. defining created before • The most popular handheld video camera, new media were component of the only records are the video recording the artwork documentary and computer photographs taken at graphics. the events. New Media Art - Uses computer Performance Art imaging to create futuristic Joseph Beuys, How to Explain geometric versions of Surrealistic Pictures to a Dead Hare, 1965 dreamscapes with a vivid illusi on of space

David Em

Conceptual Art Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965 A chair, a photograph of a chair, and a definition of a chair VIDEO: Rauschenberg's Bed on Smarthistory VIDEO: MOMA Curator Discusses the work of Jackson Pollock CHALLENGING TRADITION: NEO-DADA, COLOR FIELD, and MINIMALISM: ((g,p,,,Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Helen Frankenthaler, Donald Judd, and Eva Hesse) ACTIVITIES and REVIEW Compare and contrast the two works, one by Jackson Pollock and the other by Robert Rauschenberg in terms of their approaches to art making.

How does one convey a sense of sincerity while the other one displays an interest in irony? (This question is addressed in the Smarthistory video on Rauschenberg’ s Bed.) Both buildings have Postmodern architectural elements, discuss how the buildings differ from Modernist architecture.

MICHAEL GRAVES, The Portland Robert Venturi, 1961 Building, Portland, 1980 What artistic concerns motivate the creation of earthworks such as Spiral Jetty?

ROBERT SMITHSON Spiral Jetty

How does this chart reflect a current view of 1950s America? What type of “ audience” do you think Johns had in mind when creating Flag? Compare an d con tras t the ways these ar tis ts c ha llenge d the artistic traditions of America and Europe. Consider issues of media and gender in your answer.

Judy Chicago Dinner Party Jackson Pollock, Number 1, 1974–79. Mixed media 1950 (Lavender Mist), 1950.