Module: Art Theory and History for Senior Students Course Code: AVI 4M the non-figurative approach of European abstract schools such as Futurism, the Bauhaus and Ana- lytical and Synthetic Cubism. This style of art encompasses a wide range of artists with different approaches but generally has an image of being rebellious even to the point of being nihilistic.
POLLOCK AND ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM *main source for biographies and art movements is Abstract expressionism was primarily an Amer- http://en.wikipedia.org/ ican art movement that developed after the second world war. It was the first North American move- ment to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world. The movement's name is derived from a com- bination of the emotional intensity of the German Expressionists artists from the early 1900's with
Namuth, Hans (1915-1990) © Copyright"The Artist in 1950," research photograph associated with the exhibition, "Jackson Pollock." December 19, 1956 through February 3, 1957. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gelatin-silver print, 8 x 8" (20.3 x 20.3 cm). Photographic Archive. The Museum of Modern Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm, (No. 30). 1950. 105”x Art Archives, New York. © Copyright MUST be cleared prior to 207”. enamel on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, release! Location :The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, U.S.A. Photo Credit : Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/ New York. Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY JACKSON POLLOCK (1912-1956) Jackson Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming in the American mid-west. Throughout his childhood, his family lived on a succession of "truck" farms in Arizona and southern California. When he was sixteen, Pollock first studied art at Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles, where he met Philip Guston and Reu- ben Kadish, two friends who later became artists. In 1930, at age eighteen, Pollock moved from Los Angeles to New York City, settling in Greenwich Village. He immediately enrolled at the Art Students League, where he studied drawing and painting for five semesters with the American Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton, who soon became his mentor and friend. From 1942, when he had his first one-person exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim'sArt of This Century gallery in New York, until his death in an automobile crash at age forty-four in 1956, Pollock's volatile art and personality made him a dominant figure in the art world and the press. In 1947–48 he devised a radically new innovation: using pour and drip techniques that relied on a lin- ear structure. He created canvases and works on paper that redefined the categories of painting and draw- ing. Referring to his 1951 exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery, fellow Abstract Expressionist painter Lee Krasner, who was Pollock's wife, noted that his work "seemed like monumental drawing, or maybe painting with the immediacy of drawing — some new category."
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Jackson Pollock. "Number 27". 1950, 1950. Oil, enamel, and aluminum paint on canvas, 49 × 106 in. (124.5 × 269.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase 53.12 © 2009 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York To many, the large eloquent canvases of 1950 are Pollock's greatest achievements. "Autumn Rhythm," painted in October of that year, exemplifies the extraordinary balance between accident and control that Pollock maintained over his technique. The words "poured" and "dripped," commonly used to describe his unorthodox creative process, which involved painting on unstretched canvas laid flat on the floor, hardly suggest the diversity of the artist's movements (flicking, splattering, and dribbling) or the lyrical, often spiritual, compositions they produced.
POLLOCK MATURE PERIOD | 1947-1956
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Franz Kline, "Mahoning", 1956. Oil and paper collage on canvas, 80 × 100 in. (203.2 × 254 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art 57.10 © 2009 The Franz Kline Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Franz Kline [1910 – 1962] Kline was an American painter mainly associated with the Abstract Expressionist painters centered around New York. He was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, attended Girard College, an academy for fatherless boys; attended Boston University; spent summers from 1956-62 painting in Provincetown, Mas- sachusetts, and died in New York City of a rheumatic heart disease. He was married to Elizabeth Vincent Parsons, a British ballet dancer. Kline's best known abstract expressionist paintings are in black and white. Kline re-introduced color into his paintings around 1955, though he used color more consistently after 1959. Kline's paintings are generally dynamic, spontaneous and have dramatic impact, Kline often closely referred to compositional drawings. KLINE"S MATURE "ACTION PAINTING" STYLE OF THE 1950's
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Hans Hofmann, "Rhapsody", 1965, Oil on canvas, H. 84-1/4, W. 60-1/2 inches (214 x 153.7 cm.), Gift of Renate Hofmann, 1975 Accession Number 1975.323, © 2010 Renate, Hans & Maria Hofmann Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Hans Hofmann [1880 – 1966] Hofmann was a German-born American abstract expressionist painter. In 1932 he immigrated to the United States, where he resided until the end of his life. Before moving to the United States he worked with the Bavarian government as assistant to the direc- tor of Public Works. Through this, Hofmann was able to develop his knowledge of mathematics. He even went on to develop and patent devices such as the electromagnetic comptometer, a radar device for ships at sea, a sensitized light bulb, and a portable freezer unit for military use. Even with such great abilities in sci- ence and mathematics, Hofmann started to take great interest in creative studies later in his career he was revered as an influential teacher.
HOFMANN'S MATURE PERIOD | 1940-1966
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Helen Frankenthaler, "Flood", 1967. Synthetic polymer on canvas, 124 × 140 in. (315 × 355.6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art 68.12 © 2009 Helen Frankenthaler/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Helen Frankenthaler [1928 - ] Helen Frankenthaler is an abstract expressionist painter that has been a major contributor to the his- tory of postwar American painting. She began exhibiting her large-scale abstract expressionist paintings in contemporary museums and galleries in the early 1950s. She was included in the 1964 Post-Painterly Abstraction exhibition curated by Clement Greenberg that introduced a newer generation of abstract paint- ing that came to be known as Color Field painters. Born in New York City, she was influenced by Hans Hofmann, and Jackson Pollock's paintings. Frankenthaler has a home and studio in Darien, Connecticut
HELEN FRANKENTHALERS MATURE COLOUR FIELD PERIOD | 1950's-
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Louise Nevelson, "Dawn’s Wedding Chapel II", 1959. Painted wood, 115 7/8 × 83 1/2 × 10 1/2 in. (294.3 × 212.1 × 26.7 cm) with base. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Howard and Jean Lipman Foundation Inc. 70.68a-m © 2009 Estate of Louise Nevelson/Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York Louise Berliawsky Nevelson [born Leah Berliawsky |1899 – 1988] Nevelson was an American artist known for her abstract expressionist “crates” grouped together to form a new creation. She used found objects or everyday discarded things in her “assemblages”, one of which was three stories high. Nevelson studied at the Art Students League in New York City during 1929-30. She later studied with Hans Hofmann in Munich, and worked as an assistant to Diego Rivera. As a part of the Works Progress Administration, Nevelson taught art at the Educational Alliance art school on the Lower East Side of Man- hattan, New York City.
LOUISE NEVELSON'S MATURE STYLE | 1960's-
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The concept of pop art refers not as much to the art, style of techniques used but to the attitudes that led to the production of art derived from popu- lar culture. Characterized by themes and techniques drawn from popular mass culture, such as advertis- ing, comic books and mundane cultural objects, WARHOL AND POP ART pop art is widely interpreted as a reaction to the Pop art was an art movement that emerged in then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism. It the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the is also associated with the artists' use of mechani- United States. Pop art challenged tradition by as- cal means of reproduction or rendering techniques. serting that an artist's use of mass-produced visual *main source for biographies and art movements is images was a part of the fine art tradition. http://en.wikipedia.org/
Self-Portrait Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) 1966. Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987) Self-portrait 1979 Silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on nine canvases, Instant color print 61 x 50.8 cm (24 x 20 in.) Purchase, The Each canvas 22 1/2 x 22 1/2" (57.2 x 57.2 cm), overall 67 5/8 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Gift, Joyce and x 67 5/8" (171.7 x 171.7 cm). Gift of Philip Johnson. © 2010 Robert Menschel Gift and Rogers Fund, 1995 Accession Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Number 1995.251 © 2002 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Society (ARS), New York Visual Arts/ARS, New York ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987) Andrew Warhola, known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art.After a successful career as a commer- cial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author, and member of highly diverse social circles that included bohemian street people, distin- guished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons. Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documen- tary films. He coined the widely used expression 15" minutes of fame". Warhol showed early artistic tal- ent and studied commercial art at the School of Fine Arts at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (now Carnegie Mellon University). In 1949, he moved to New York City and began a career in magazine illustration and advertising. During the 1950s, he gained fame for his whimsical ink drawings of shoe advertisements. RCA Records also hired Warhol to design album covers and promotional materi- als.
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Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987) Vegetarian Vegetable from Campbell's Soup II 1969 Screenprint sheet: 35 1/8 x 23 1/16 in. (89.2 x 58.6 cm) Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Peter Eider-Orley, 1972 Accession Number 1972.724.3
It was during the 1960s that Warhol began to make paintings of iconic American products such as Campbell's Soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles, as well as paintings of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Muhammad Ali and Elizabeth Taylor. He founded "The Factory," his studio during these years, and gathered around himself a wide range of artists, writers, musicians, and underground celebrities. He began producing prints using the silkscreen method. Warhol survived an attempted murder in 1968 and after his recovery began a quieter period of produc- tivity in the 1970's which included a number of celebrity portraits. His work in the 1980's is often criti- cized having lost its edge and a "sell out" of his fame. Warhol died in New York City after complications from a routine gallbladder surgery. ANDY WARHOL'S MATURE STYLE | 1962 - 1967
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Roy Lichtenstein, Girl in Window (Study for World’s Fair Mural), 1963. Oil on canvas, 68 3/16 × 56 1/8 in. (173.2 × 142.6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of The American Contemporary Art Foundation Inc., Leonard A. Lauder, President 2002.254 Roy Lichtenstein |1923 – 1997] Roy Lichtenstein was a prominent American pop artist who drew inspiration from the old-fashioned comic strip as subject matter. Roy Lichtenstein was born in Manhattan into an upper-middle-class New York family. Lichtenstein first became interested in art and design as a hobby and enrolled in summer classes at the Art Students League of New York. In 1949 Lichtenstein received a M.F.A. degree from the Ohio State University. In 1951 Lichtenstein had his first one-man exhibition at the Carlebach Gallery in NewYork. In 1961 Lichtenstein began his first pop paintings using cartoon images and techniques derived from the appearance of commercial printing. This phase would continue to 1965. Most of his best-known artworks are relatively close, but not exact, copies of comic book panels, a subject he largely abandoned in 1965. ROY LICHTENSTEIN'S MATURE STYLE | 1961 - 1965
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Robert Rauschenberg, Satellite, 1955. Oil, fabric, paper, and wood on canvas with stuffed pheasant, 79 3/8 × 43 1/4 × 5 5/8 in. (201.6 × 109.9 × 14.3 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Claire B. Zeisler and purchase with funds from the Mrs. Percy Uris Purchase Fund 91.85 Art © Robert Rauschenberg/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Robert Rauschenberg |1925 – 2008] Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence with his 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to the style of Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations. Rauschenberg was both a painter and a sculptor and the Combines are a combination of both. He also worked with photography, printmaking, papermaking, and performance art. From 1949 to 1952 Rauschenberg studied at the Art Students League of New York. Rauschenberg lived and worked in New York City as well as on Captiva Island, Florida until his death from heart failure on May 12, 2008. ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG'S MATURE STYLE | MID 1950's - 1960's
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Jasper Johns, Three Flags, 1958. Encaustic on canvas, 30 7/8 × 45 1/2 × 5 in. (78.4 × 115.6 × 12.7 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; 50th Anniversary Gift of the Gilman Foundation Inc., The Lauder Foundation, A. Alfred Taubman, Laura-Lee Whittier Woods, and purchase 80.32 Art © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Jasper Johns |1930 – ] Jasper Johns is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and printmaking. Johns studied at the University of South Carolina from 1947 to 1948, a total of three semesters. He then moved to New York City and studied briefly at the Parsons School of Design in 1949. In 1954, after returning to New York, Johns met Robert Rauschenberg and they began a long term relationship. He is best known for his flag paintings which he painted after having a dream of theAmerican flag. His work is often described as aNeo-Dadaist , as opposed to pop art, even though his subject matter often includes images and objects from popular culture. Jasper Johns is still considered a pop artist. Johns currently lives in Sharon, Connecticut and the Island of Saint Martin. JASPER JOHN'S MATURE STYLE | MID 1950's - 1960's
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Marisol, Women and Dog, 1964. Wood, plaster, synthetic polymer, taxidermic dog head, and miscellaneous items, dimensions variable. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art 64.17a-g Art © Marisol/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Marisol Escobar |1930 – ] Maria Sol Escobar, otherwise known simply as Marisol, is a sculptor born in Paris of Venezuelan lineage, living in Europe, the United States and Caracas. Her education included study at the Art Students League of New York, and as a student of Hans Hofmann. In 1951, when she discovered Pre-Columbian artifacts marisol decided to give up painting and focus on sculpture. Marisol worked mostly with terracotta and wood. Marisol’s first exhibition was in The Leo Castelli Gallery in New York in 1958. In the 1960s Marisol began to be influenced by pop artists such asAndy Warhol and Roy Lichten- stein. One of her best-known works from this period is The Party, a life-size group installation of figures at the Toledo Museum of Art. All the figures, gathered together in various guises of the social elite, sported Marisol’s face. MARISOL'S MATURE STYLE MID | 1950's - 1960's
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Chapter 4: Five Post Modern-Isms 63 Module: Art Theory and History for Senior Students Course Code: AVI 4M In contrast to the Abstract Expressionists, Minimalists work included geometric, often cubic forms, repetition, neutral surfaces, and industrial materials. One of the first artists specifically -as sociated with Minimalism was the painter, Frank Stella, whose early "stripe" paintings were high- lighted in the 1959 show, "16 Americans", orga- nized by Dorothy Miller at the Museum of Modern STELLA AND MINIMALISM Art in New York. Minimalism in visual art, sometimes referred to as literalist art and ABC Art emerged in New York in the 1960s. It was a reaction against the painterly *main source for biographies and art movements is forms of Abstract Expressionism. Minimalism was a http://en.wikipedia.org/ term not generally embraced by the artists associated with the movement.
Frank Stella. Berlin, 2004. Photo: Angelika Platen. Location : Photo Credit : Bildarchiv Preussischer Frank Stella, Gran Cairo, 1962. Synthetic polymer on canvas, Kulturbesitz / Art Resource, NY 85 1/2 × 85 1/2 in. (217.2 × 217.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art 63.34 FRANK STELLA (1936- ) Frank Stella is an American painter and printmaker and a significant figure inMinimalism . Stella was born in Malden, Massachusetts. After high school he went on to Princeton University and majored in history. His early art influences were the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline. Stella moved to New York in 1958 after his graduation. He is one of the most well-regarded post- war American painters who still works today. Frank Stella has reinvented himself in consecutive bodies of work over the course of his five-decade career. Upon moving to New York City, he reacted against the expressive use of paint by most painters of the abstract expressionist movement, instead finding himself drawn towards the "flatter" surfaces of the "tar- get" paintings of Jasper Johns. He began to produce works which emphasized the picture-as-object, rather than the picture as a representation of something. Many of the works are created by simply using the path of the brush stroke, very often using common house paint. This was a departure from the technique of creating a painting by first making a sketch. 64 Chapter 4: Five Post Modern-Isms Module: Art Theory and History for Senior Students Course Code: AVI 4M
Harran II, 1967. Polymer and fluorescent polymer paint on canvas, 10 x 20 feet (304.8 x 609.6 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Gift, Mr. Irving Blum 82.2976. © 2009 Frank Stella/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York This new aesthetic found expression in a series of paintings, the Black Paintings (60) in which regular bands of black paint were separated by very thin pinstripes of unpainted canvas. Stella joined dealer Leo Castelli’s stable of artists in 1959. From 1960 he began to produce paintings in aluminum and copper paint which used a wider range of colors, and are his first works usingshaped canvases - often being in L, N, U or T-shapes. These later developed into more elaborate designs. In the 1960s, Stella began to use a wider range of colors, typically arranged in straight or curved lines. Later he began his Protractor Series of paint- ings, in which arcs, sometimes overlapping, within square borders are arranged side-by-side to produce full and half circles painted in rings of concentric color. These paintings are named after circular cities he had visited while in the Middle East. The Museum of Modern Art in New York presented a retrospective of Stella’s work in 1970, making him the youngest artist to receive one. During the following decade, Stella introduced relief into his art, which he came to call “maximalist” painting for its sculptural qualities. The shaped canvases took on even less regular forms in the Eccentric Polygon series, and elements of collage were introduced, pieces of can- vas being pasted onto plywood, for example. His work also became more three-dimensional to the point where he started producing large, free-standing metal pieces, which, although they are painted upon, might well be considered sculpture. FRANK STELLA'S MATURE STYLE | 1960's - 1970's
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Richard Diebenkorn Cityscape I (formerly Landscape I), 1963; painting; oil on canvas, 60 1/4 in. x 50 1/2 in. (153.04 cm x 128.27 cm); Collection SFMOMA, Purchase with funds from Trustees and friends in memory of Hector Escobosa, Brayton Wilbur, and J. D. Zellerbach; © Estate of Richard Diebenkorn
Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #125, 1980. Oil on canvas, 100 × 81 in. (254 × 205.7 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Charles Simon Purchase Fund, the Painting and Sculpture Committee, and anonymous donors, by exchange 80.36 Richard Diebenkorn [1922 – 1993 ] Richard Diebenkorn was a well-known 20th century American painter. His early work is associated with Abstract Expressionism. His later work (best known as the Ocean Park paintings) were minamilist in style and the source of most of his worldwide acclaim. Richard Diebenkorn was born in Portland, Oregon. In 1940 Diebenkorn entered Stanford University. His early inspiration for painting was the work of Edward Hopper. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, he lived and worked in various places and developed his own style of abstract expressionist painting. By the mid-1950s Diebenkorn had become an important figurative painter, in a style that bridged Henri Matisse with abstract expressionism. In 1967 Diebenkorn returned to abstraction, this time in a geometric style. The "Ocean Park" series which began in 1967 and developed for over twenty-five years became his most famous work and resulted in more than 140 paintings. Based on the aerial landscape and the view from his studio window, these large-scale compositions are named after a community in Santa Monica, California. DIEBENKORN'S MATURE STYLE | 1967 - 1993
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LOVE Robert Indiana (American, born 1928) 1967. Screenprint, composition and sheet: 33 15/16 x 33 15/16" (86.3 x 86.3 cm). Publisher: Multiples, Inc., New York. Printer: Sirocco Screenprinters, North Haven, Conn. Edition: 250. Riva Castleman LOVE Robert Indiana 1970 Cor-ten steel Dimensions 144 Fund. © 2010 Morgan Art Foundation Ltd. / Artists Rights Society x 144 x 72 in. Currently On View Copyright © Morgan Art (ARS), New York Foundation Ltd./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 415.1990 Robert Indiana [1941 – ] Robert Indiana was born Robert Clark in New Castle, Indiana. He moved to New York City in 1954 and joined the pop art movement, using distinctive imagery drawing on commercial art approaches blended with existentialism, that gradually moved toward what Indiana calls "sculptural poems". In 1962, Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery hosted Robert Indiana's first New York solo exhibition. He has since enjoyed solo exhibitions at over 30 museums and galleries worldwide. Indiana's iconic work LOVE was first created for a Christmas card for the Museum of Modern Art in 1964 and later was included on an eight-cent United States Postal Service postage stamp in 1973, the first of their regular series of "love stamps." Sculptural versions of the image have been installed at numerous American and international locations. In 2008, Indiana created an image similar to his iconic LOVE (letters stacked two to a line, the letter "o" tilted on its side), but this time showcasing the word "HOPE," and donated all proceeds from the sale of reproductions of his image to Democrat Barack Obama's presidential campaign, Raising in excess of $1,000,000. Indiana has lived as a resident in the island town of Vinalhaven, Maine since 1978. Indiana has been a theatrical set and costume designer. INDIANA'S MATURE STYLE | 1960's -
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Human/Need/Desire Bruce Nauman (American, born 1941) 1983. Neon tubing and wire with glass tubing suspension frames, 7' 10 3/8" x 70 1/2" x 25 3/4" (239.8 x 179 x 65.4 cm). Gift of Emily and Jerry Spiegel. © 2010 Bruce Nauman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 228.1991.a-g Bruce Nauman [1941 – ] Bruce Nauman is a contemporary American artist whose work spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance art. Nauman studied mathematics and physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and art at the University of California. In 1966 he became a teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute. In 1979, Nauman moved to New Mexico where he continues to work and live along with his wife, the painter Susan Rothen- berg. Much of his work is characterized by an interest in language, often manifesting itself in a playful, mischievous manner. For example, the neon Run From Fear- Fun From Rear, or the photograph Bound To Fail, which literalizes the title phrase and shows the artist's arms tied behind his back. There are however, very serious concerns at the heart of Nauman's art.
NAUMAN'S MATURE STYLE | 1970's -
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68 Chapter 4: Five Post Modern-Isms Module: Art Theory and History for Senior Students Course Code: AVI 4M Outdoor site-specific artworks often include landscaping combined with permanently sited sculptural elements. Tthe movement is linked with Environmental art. Indoor site-specific artworks may be created in conjunction with (or indeed by) the architects of the building.
CHRISTO AND SITE SPECIFIC ART More broadly, the term is sometimes used for any work that is (more or less) permanently Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in attached to a particular location. . Artists produc- a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the loca- ing site-specific guikworks include Max Neuhaus, tion into account while planning and creating the Robert Smithson, Andy Goldsworthy, Christo and artwork. The actual term was promoted and refined Jeanne-Claude, Dan Flavin and Richard Serra. by Californian artist Robert Irwin, but it was actually first used in the mid-1970s by young sculptors, such *main source for biographies and art movements is as Lloyd Hamrol and Athena Tacha. http://en.wikipedia.org/
Christo (1935-) and Jeanne-Claude (1935-2009) © Copyright Running Fence, Project for Sonoma and Marin Christo (1935-) and Jeanne-Claude (1935-2009) © Copyright Counties, California. Drawing in 2 parts. 1976. Crayons, Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California. 1972- printed map, photocopies glued on paper. Inv.: AM 1999- 1976. Color photograph by Wolfgang Volz. © Copyright Christo 180. Photo: Philippe Migeat. © Copyright Christo 1976. 1976.Location :Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Location :Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France Photo Credit : CNAC/MNAM/Dist. Pompidou, Paris, France Photo Credit : CNAC/MNAM/ Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, NY Dist. Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, NY Christo (1935-) & Jeanne-Claude [1935-2009] Christo (born Christo Vladimirov Javacheff,) and Jeanne-Claude (born Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon) were a married couple who created environmental works of art. Their works include the wrap- ping of the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont-Neuf bridge in Paris, the 24-mile (39 km)-long artwork called Running Fence in Sonoma and Marin counties in California, and The Gates in New York City's Central Park. Christo and Jeanne-Claude first met in Paris in October 1958. Their works were credited to just "Christo" until 1994 when the outdoor works and large indoor installations were retroactively credited to "Christo and Jeanne-Claude". They contend the purpose of their art is simply to create works that force people to see familiar landscapes in new ways. Christo was born in Bulgaria. His father was a scientist, and his mother the secretary at the Academy of Fine Arts. Christo settled in Vienna, and enrolled at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. After only one semester there, he traveled to Geneva and moved to Paris in 1958. His life in Paris was characterized by financial hardship and social isolation but earned money by painting portraits. Chapter 4: Five Post Modern-Isms 69 Module: Art Theory and History for Senior Students Course Code: AVI 4M
The Gates, Project for Central Park, New York City, 2004 Christo (American, born in Bulgaria, 1935) Drawing in two parts: graphite, charcoal, pastel, wax crayon, enamel, hand drawn technical data, photograph, fabric, and tape on paper a): 15 x 96 in. (38.1 x 243.8 cm) b): 42 x 96 in. (106.7 x 243.8 cm) Gift of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 2006 (2006.553a, b) At the end of 1969 Jeanne-Claude and Christo wrapped the coast of Little Bay in Sydney, Australia with the aid of 130 workers who devoted 17,000 work hours. The project required 9,5600 m2 of syn- thetic fabric and 56 km of rope. After initial resistance from the authorities and the public, reactions were largely positive. In 1970 Christo and Jeanne-Claude created the Valley Curtain project a 400-meter long cloth stretched across Rifle Gap -a valley in the Rocky Mountains near Rifle, Colorado. Later projects included "Running Fence": a fabric fence, made from steel posts and steel cables, running through Sonoma and Marin Counties, California, the "Wrapped Reichstag building" in Berlin, the Pont-Neuf bridge in Paris,"Wrapped Walk Ways", a covering of footpaths in a Kansas City park, "Surrounded Islands" - eleven islands in Miami's Biscayne Bay surrtounded with 603,850 m2 of pink polypropylene floating fabric and "Umbrellas" in Japan. Their last project together was "The Gates" in Central Park, New York, The cost of the project was $21 million US dollars which was raised entirely by Christo and Jeanne- Claude selling studies, drawings, collages, works from the 1950s and 1960s. They do not accept any sponsorship, nor did the city of New York have to provide any money for the project. Christo and Jeanne- Claude donated all the money raised from the sale of souvenirs such as postcards, t-shirts and posters to "Nurture New York's Nature, Inc." CHRISTO AND JEANNE-CLAUDE'S MATURE PERIOD | 1972-2009
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Spiral Jetty from atop Rozel Point, in mid-April 2005. It was created in 1970 and still exists although it has often been submerged by the fluctuating lake level. It consists of some 6500 tons of basalt, earth and salt. Robert Smithson [1938 – 1973 ] Robert Smithson was an American artist famous for his land art. Born in New Jersey he studied painting and drawing in New York City at the Art Students League of New York. His early exhibited art- works were in the Pop Art style but Smithson emerged in 1964 as a proponent of the emerging minimalist movement. He began to use glass sheet and neon lighting tubes to explore visual refraction and mirroring. Smithson was interested in applying mathematical impersonality to art. Some of Smithson's writings influ- enced the pivotal earthwork explorations which characterized his last works. In 1967 Smithson began exploring industrial areas around New Jersey and was fascinated by the sight of dump trucks excavating tons of earth and rock. This resulted in the series of 'non-sites' in which earth and rocks collected from a specific area were installed in the gallery as sculptures, often combined with mirrors or glass. In 1969 he began producing land art pieces. For Smithson it was not necessary that deforming become a visual part of a landscape it was more important that the temporal "scar" was worked over by natural or human intervention. On July 20, 1973, Smithson died in a plane crash, while surveying sites for his work Amarillo Ramp in Texas. Despite his early death, and relatively few surviving major works, Smithson has a following amongst many contemporary artists. SMITHSON'S MATURE STYLE | Late 1960's -
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Long, Richard (1945-) © Copyright Cornwall Slate Circle. 1981. 400 cm diam. AM1982-130. Photo: Philippe Migeat Location :Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France Photo Credit : CNAC/MNAM/Dist. Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, NY Richard Long [1945 – ] Richard Long is an English sculptor, photographer and painter and one of the best known British land artists. Long studied at the West of England College of Art 1962-5 and then went to St Martin’s School of Art and Design, London during. Within a year after he graduated from St Martin’s, the artist became close- ly associated with the emergence of Land Art. Long made his international reputation during the 1970s with sculptures made as the result of epic walks taken through rural and remote areas in Britain, or as far afield as the plains of Canada, Mongolia and Bolivia. Guided by a great respect for nature and by the formal structure of basic shapes, Long never makes significant alterations to the landscapes he passes through. Instead he marks the ground or adjusts the natural features of a place by up-ending stones for example, or making simple traces. He usually works in the landscape but sometimes uses natural materials in the gallery. Different modes of presentation are used to bring his experience of nature back into the museum or gallery. He often imitated painting by applying mud in a very liquid state by hand to a gallery walls. In his stone circles the unevenly shaped raw materials put into a geometric structure represent the relationship between man and nature LONG'S MATURE STYLE | 1970's -
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72 Chapter 4: Five Post Modern-Isms Module: Art Theory and History for Senior Students Course Code: AVI 4M As a full-fledged art movement, Photoreal- ism evolved from Pop Art as a reaction to Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. Photorealsits work directly from a photograph systematically transfering the image onto canvas by projecting the slide or by using traditional grid techniques. The first generation of American photoreal- CLOSE AND PHOTO REALISM ists includes such painters as Richard Estes, Ralph Photorealism is the genre of painting based on Goings and Chuck Close. Duane Hanson and John using the camera to create a painting or sculpture DeAndrea are sculptors associated with photoreal- that appears to be very realistic. The term is primar- ism for their painted, life-like sculptures complete ily applied to paintings from the late 1960s and early with simulated hair and real clothes. 1970s. The evolution of technology has brought forth photorealistic paintings sometimes referred to as "Hyperrealism.".
*main source for biographies and art movements is http://en.wikipedia.org/
Chuck Close, Phil, 1969. Synthetic polymer on canvas, 108 × 84 in. (274.3 × 213.4 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from Mrs. Robert M. Benjamin 69.102 CHUCK CLOSE (1940 - ) Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits. Though a catastrophic spinal artery collapse in 1988 left him severely paralyzed, he has continued to paint and produce work that remains sought after by museums and collectors. Most of Close's early works are very large portraits based on photographs of family and friends. In 1962, he received his B.A. from the University of Washington in Seattle. He then attended graduate school at Yale University, where he received his MFA in 1964. After Yale, he lived in Europe for a while on a Ful- bright grant. When he returned to the US, he worked as an art teacher at the University of Massachusetts. Close had been known for his skillful brushwork as a graduate student at Yale University.He made a choice in 1967 to make art hard for himself and force a personal artistic breakthrough by abandoning the paintbrush. Close's first one-man show was in 1970. His work was first exhibited at the NewYork Museum of Modern Art in early 1973. In 1979 his work was included in the Whitney Biennial.
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Self-Portrait Chuck Close (American, born 1940) 1997. Oil on canvas, 8' 6" x 7' (259.1 x 213.4 cm). Gift of Agnes Gund, Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder, Donald L. Bryant, Jr., Leon Black, Michael and Judy Ovitz, Anna Marie and Robert F. Shapiro, Leila and Melville Straus, Doris and Donald Fisher, and purchase. © 2010 Chuck Close 215.2000 One photo of Philip Glass was included in his black and white series in 1969, redone with water col- ors in 1977, again redone with stamp pad and fingerprints in 1978, and also done as gray handmade paper in 1982. To create his grid work copies of photos, Close puts a grid on the photo and on the canvas and copies cell by cell. Typically, each square within the grid is filled with roughly executed regions of color. His first tools for this included an airbrush, rags, razor blade, and an eraser mounted on a power drill. His first pic- ture with this method was Big Self Portrait, a black and white enlargement of his face to a 107.5 in by 83.5 in canvas, made in over four months in 1968. Close has also continued to explore difficult photographic processes such as daguerreotype. In 2000, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.Close currently lives and paints in Bridgehampton, New York. Ironically, while being one of the most successful portrait artists of his time, Close is also afflicted with prosopagnosia (face blindness), a condition that prevents him from recognizing people's faces. CHUCK CLOSE'S MATURE PERIOD | 1970 -
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Richard Estes, The Candy Store, 1969. Oil and synthetic polymer on canvas, 47 3/4 × 68 3/4 in. (121.3 × 174.6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art 69.21 Richard Estes [1932 - ] Richard Estes is an American artist, best known for his photorealist paintings. The paintings generally consist of reflective, clean, and inanimate city landscapes. At an early age, the Estes family moved to Chicago, where he studied fine arts atThe School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1952–56). Estes later moved to New York City and for the next ten years worked as a graphic artist for various magazine publishers and advertising agencies. In 1966 he was financially able to "quit his day job". Most of Richard's paintings from the early 1960s are of city dwellers engaged in everyday activities. The settings were always in the daytime, never the nighttime. Beginning around 1967, he began to paint storefronts and buildings with glass windows and the reflected images shown on these windows.The paint- ings were based on color photographs he would take. His works have also been exhibited at the Metropoli- tan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. In 1971, Richard was granted a National Council for the Arts fellowship. ESTES' MATURE STYLE | 1967 -
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Duane Hanson, Woman with Dog, 1977. Cast polyvinyl polychromed in synthetic polymer, with cloth and hair, 46 × 48 × 51 1/2 in. (116.8 × 121.9 × 130.8 cm) overall. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from Frances and Sydney Lewis 78.6 Art © Estate of Duane Hanson/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Duane Hanson [1925 – 1996 ] Duane Hanson was an American artist based in South Florida known for his lifecast realistic works of people, cast in various materials, including polyester resin, fibreglass, Bondo and bronze. Duane Hanson was in Alexandria, Minnesota. After attendance at Luther College and the University of Washington, he graduated from Macalaster College in 1946. Following a period teaching high school art, he received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills in 1951. Around 1966 Hanson began making figural casts using fiberglass and vinyl. Works that first brought him notice were of figures of brutal and violent subjects, These works, cast from actual people, were made of fiberglass (polyester resin reinforced with fiber- glass,) painted to make the revealed skin look realistic with veins and blemishes. Hanson then clothed the figures with garments from second-hand clothing stores and theatrically arranged the action.These works contained strong social comment and can be seen as modern parallels to the concerns of 19th-century French Realists such as Honore Daumier and Jean Francois Millet - artists Hanson admired. HANSON'S MATURE STYLE | 1970's - 1990's
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