G. Water of the Flowery Mill The title comes from Arshile Gorky, the painter who most clearly Old Roots, New Shoots added the key element of Surrealism to mid-century American art. We also look at two of the painters most influenced by him, who developed the concept of Action . Gorky: Water of the Flowery Mill (1944, NY Met) Gorky: The Liver is the Cock’s Comb (1944, Buffalo) De Kooning: Woman and Bicycle (1952, NY Whitney) Pollock: She-Wolf (1943, NY MoMA)

H. A Brief Postwar Glimpse We are now at a point where the artist’s psyche bursts directly onto the canvas or page in sometimes complex but spontaneous terms. We look at one poet and a baker’s dozen of Abstract Expressionist painters.  Plath: Ariel (c.1960), read by the author  Barber: Medea (1946), excerpt, with 1945–60

Names & Dates: Louis Armstrong (1901–71), George Bellows (1882–1925), Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975), Irving Berlin (1888–1989), Edgard Varèse (1883–1965), Aaron Copland (1900–90), Stuart Davis (1894–1964), Willem de Kooning (1904–97), Charles Demuth (1883–1935), Arthur Dove (1880–1946), Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011), George Gershwin (1898–1937), Arshile Gorky (1904–48), Marsden Hartley (1877–1943), (1865–1929), Edward Hopper (1882–1967), Langston Hughes (1901–67), John Marin (1870– 1953), Alfred Maurer (1868–1932), Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), Sylvia Plath (1932–63), Jackson Pollock (1912–56), Morgan Russell (1886–1953), Carl Sandburg (1878–1967), Charles Sheeler (1883– 1965), John Sloan (1871–1951), Edward Steichen (1879–1973), Joseph Stella (1877–1946), Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1956), Clyfford Still (1904–80), William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) 12. What Makes Art American? What Makes Art American? C. A Convert’s Tale We look at the career of Stuart Davis, a former realist spurred by the THE of 1913 brought key works of European Armory Show in the direction of , , and later his own to America, opening new vistas of possibility. By kind of abstraction using the hieroglyphs of jazz-age America. this time, however, several American artists had already spent Davis: Ebb Tide, Provincetown (1913) time in Europe, and more Europeans would arrive in later Davis: Lucky Strike (1921, NY MoMA) decades. So the key debate was not America versus Europe, so Davis: Fin (1964, Crystal Bridges) much as how to create an American art in a context that had suddenly become global. The first hour will look at various D. Skyscrapers and Smokestacks ways of incorporating aspects of American life; the second will be concerned with different forms of abstraction. [Note: there Skyscrapers and smokestacks, both images of American might, as is currently too much in this class; it will doubtless be trimmed represented in poetry, photography, and painting in presentation. The works listed are samples only. rb.] Demuth: Aucassin and Nicolette (1921, Columbus) Demuth: I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (1928, NY Met)  Sheeler and Strand: Manhatta (1921), excerpt Sheeler: Skyscrapers (1922, Philadelphia) A. At the Armory: the Visitors E. Sound and Silence A glimpse of the Fauve and Cubist painters so strongly featured in the show at New York’s 69th Regiment Armory in 1913. Art that implies noise, art where the only songs evoke loneliness, and an artist whose works take place in silence and isolation. Matisse: Souvenir de Biskra (1907, Cone Collection, BMA) Duchamp: Nude Descending a Staircase #2 (1912, Philadelphia)  Benton: America Today (1931); Copland: Music for the Theatre  Langston Hughes: The Weary Blues, 1926  Hopper: Nighthawks (1942, Chicago), video analysis B. At the Armory: the Home Team By 1913, there were two major groups of artists working in New York. F. Natural Forms and Potent Spaces On the one hand, the , a group of realists led by Joseph Henri. On the other, a more progressive group of artists promoted by Arthur Dove and Georgia O’Keeffe, alumni of Stieglitz’s Gallery 291, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, and show in his Gallery 291. whose careers entwine with one another, moving into abstraction, Bellows: Men of the Docks (1912, Washington NGA) then emerging out again. Marin: Brooklyn Bridge (1912, NY Met) Kandinsky: Improvisation #27(1912, NY Met) Stella: Battle of Lights, Coney Island (1914, Yale) Dove: Based on Leaf Forms and Spaces (1912, lost) O’Keeffe: Black Cross, New Mexico (1929, Chicago)  Dove: paintings based on songs, video compilation.