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The Pennsylvania State University the Graduate School College Of The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of Arts and Architecture CUT AND PASTE ABSTRACTION: POLITICS, FORM, AND IDENTITY IN ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONIST COLLAGE A Dissertation in Art History by Daniel Louis Haxall © 2009 Daniel Louis Haxall Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2009 The dissertation of Daniel Haxall has been reviewed and approved* by the following: Sarah K. Rich Associate Professor of Art History Dissertation Advisor Chair of Committee Leo G. Mazow Curator of American Art, Palmer Museum of Art Affiliate Associate Professor of Art History Joyce Henri Robinson Curator, Palmer Museum of Art Affiliate Associate Professor of Art History Adam Rome Associate Professor of History Craig Zabel Associate Professor of Art History Head of the Department of Art History * Signatures are on file in the Graduate School ii ABSTRACT In 1943, Peggy Guggenheim‘s Art of This Century gallery staged the first large-scale exhibition of collage in the United States. This show was notable for acquainting the New York School with the medium as its artists would go on to embrace collage, creating objects that ranged from small compositions of handmade paper to mural-sized works of torn and reassembled canvas. Despite the significance of this development, art historians consistently overlook collage during the era of Abstract Expressionism. This project examines four artists who based significant portions of their oeuvre on papier collé during this period (i.e. the late 1940s and early 1950s): Lee Krasner, Robert Motherwell, Anne Ryan, and Esteban Vicente. Working primarily with fine art materials in an abstract manner, these artists challenged many of the characteristics that supposedly typified collage: its appropriative tactics, disjointed aesthetics, and abandonment of ―high‖ culture. Although many of their contemporaries focused on the formal attributes of the cut and paste, Krasner, Motherwell, Ryan, and Vicente explored the semiotic potential and metaphoric implications of the medium. Their approach to collage overlapped in several ways—for example their nonobjective styles, autobiographical mapping of identity, political resonance, and preference for papier collé—yet a great variety defines their work. Anne Ryan juxtaposed traditional formats with recycled materials, eschewing the conventions of consumerism and femininity available in the postwar years. The hybrid nature of collage appealed to Esteban Vicente, a Spanish-American artist who mined the duality of his cultural inheritance for syncretic constructions. The critical language of the pastoral affords an opportunity to reconsider Lee Krasner‘s work in collage because it features many rhetorical devices of the bucolic tradition, including irony and dialectics, in addition to the contingency, iii naturalism, and escapist reverie that characterize the genre. And finally, Robert Motherwell executed an abstract tribute to composer John Cage on a large scale, conflating music with collage while testing notions of composition and historicism. Hardly the apolitical or clichéd medium that critics deemphasized at mid-century, collage offered unlimited possibilities in the era of Abstract Expressionism, ranging from the formal and the aesthetic to the social and the political. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations……………………………………………………………………………….vii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………..xxv Chapter 1: Introduction: The Pasted-Paper Revolution Comes to New York……………………1 Historiography of Abstract-Expressionist Collage………………………………………..9 From Revolution to Put-Together: Collage in New York and the Critical Reception………………………………………..19 De-politicizing the Cutout: Collage and Abstract Expressionism…………….................42 Chapter 2: Blue with China Ink: Robert Motherwell, John Cage, and the Possibilities of Collage………………………..61 Asian Sources…………………………………………………………………………….66 Pioneers of Collage………………………………………………………………………74 The Void, Mythmaking, and Abstract Expressionism…………………………………...89 Possibilities and Collage…………………………………………………………………99 The Poetics of Collage: From Joyce to Mallarmé……………………………...............109 ―An Absurd Premise‖…………………………………………………………………..128 Chapter 3: Esteban Vicente, National Identity, and the Borders of Collage…………………...137 Spanish Roots and New York Beginnings……………………………………………...138 ―Paintings with Paper‖………………………………………………………………….142 A Tradition of Spanish Modernism…………………………………………………….147 In Defense of Spain……………………………………………………………………..153 Collage, War, and the Politics of Abstraction…………………………………………..171 The National Identity of Collage……………………………………………………….185 v Vicente, Collage, and the Aesthetics of Abstract Expressionism………………………192 Vicente and Americana…………………………………………………………………207 Hybridity and Collage…………………………………………………………………..211 Chapter 4: Lee Krasner‘s Pastoral Vision: Collage and the Nature of Order………..................216 Learning from the Masters: Krasner‘s Early Collages…………………………………218 Springs and the Pastoral Retreat………………………………………………………..227 The Nature of Order…………………………………………………………………….235 Pastoral Escapism: Role Play and the Contingency of Identity………………………...245 New York School Pastorals…………………………………………………………….253 From Modesty of Means to Sensual Experience: The Pastoral Collage………………..263 Chapter 5: The Politics of Thrifting: Anne Ryan, Consumerism, and the Gendering of Collage……………………………..267 Materials and Process in the Era of Abstract Expressionism…………………………..273 Femmage and the Existential Subjectivity……………………………………………...289 Resisting Consumerism: Collage in the Age of Novelty and Obsolescence…………...300 Material and Texture: The Roots of Design……………………………………………305 Chapter 6: Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………..313 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………320 vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A complete set of illustrations may be found on file at the Department of Art History, 240 Borland Building, The Pennsylvania State University. Fig. 1.1 Announcement for ―Exhibition of Collage,‖ 1943. Reproduced in Angelica Zander Rudenstine, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1985. Fig. 1.2 Laurence Vail, Screen, 1940. Three-paneled screen with papier collé, 64 ½ x 61 ½ x 164 in. Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. Fig. 1.3 Peggy Guggenheim in Art of This Century Gallery, ca. 1943. Reproduced in Susan Davidson and Philip Rylands, eds., Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Story of Art of This Century. Venice: Peggy Guggenheim Collection; Vienna: Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Foundation, 2004. Fig. 1.4 George Grosz, Remember Uncle August, the Unhappy Inventor, 1919. Collage, 19 ¼ x 15 ⅝ in. Centre Pompidou, Paris. Fig. 1.5 Max Ernst, The Hat Makes the Man, 1920. Gouache, pencil, oil, and ink on cut- and-pasted printed paper on paper, 13 ⅞ x 17 ¾ in. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Fig. 1.6 Robert Motherwell, Pancho Villa, Dead and Alive, 1943. Cut-and-pasted printed and painted papers, wood veneer, gouache, oil, and ink on board, 28 ¼ x 35 ⅞ in. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Fig. 1.7 Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Chair Caning, 1912. Oil and oilcloth on canvas, with rope frame, 10 ⅝ x 13 ¾ in. Musée Picasso, Paris. Fig. 1.8 Pablo Picasso, Man with a Hat, 1912. Cut-and-pasted colored paper and printed paper, charcoal, and ink on paper, 24 ½ x 18 ⅝ in. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Fig. 1.9 Georges Braque, Guitar, 1913. Cut-and-pasted printed and painted paper, charcoal, pencil, and gouache on gessoed canvas, 39 1/4 x 25 5/8 in. Museum of Modern Art, New York. vii Fig. 1.10 Pablo Picasso, Glass, Guitar, and Bottle, 1913. Oil, pasted paper, gesso, and pencil on canvas, 25 ¾ x 21 ⅛ in. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Fig. 1.11 Juan Gris, Breakfast, 1914. Gouache, oil, and crayon on cut-and-pasted printed paper on canvas with oil and crayon, 31 ⅞ x 23 ½ in. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Fig. 1.12 Jean (Hans) Arp, Collage Arranged According to the Laws of Chance, 1916-17. Torn-and-pasted paper and colored paper on colored paper, 19 ⅛ x 13 ⅝ in. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Fig. 1.13 Georges Grosz, The Convicted Monteur John Heartfield after Franz Jung‘s Attempt to Get Him Up on His Feet, 1920. Watercolor, ink, pencil, and cut-and- pasted printed paper on paper, 16 1/2 x 12 in. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Fig. 1.14 Johannes Baader, The Author of the Book Fourteen Letters of Christ in His Home, 1920. Cut-and-pasted gelatin silver prints, cut-and-pasted printed paper, and ink on book pages, 8 ½ x 5 ¾ in. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Fig. 1.15 John Heartfield, The Peaceable Fish of Prey, 1937. Photomontage, 15 ¼ x 10 ¾ in. Reproduced in Volks-Illustreirte 6 (12 May 1937): 307. Fig. 1.16 Paul Citroen, Metropolis, 1923. Collage, 30 x 23 ⅛ in. University of Leiden, Leiden. Fig. 1.17 André Breton, Max Morise, Jeannette Tanguy, Pierre Naville, Benjamin Péret, Jacques Prévert, and Yves Tanguy, Exquisite Corpse, 1928. Composite collage of cut-and-pasted printed paper on paper, 11 ⅜ x 9 in. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Fig. 1.18 Salvador Dalí, Illumined Pleasures, 1929. Oil and collage on composition board, 9 ⅜ x 13 ¾ in. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Fig. 1.19 Joseph Cornell, Medici Slot Machine, 1942. Box construction with painted glass. 15 ½ x 12 ¼ x 4 ⅜ in. Private Collection. Fig. 1.20 Jackson Pollock, Number 29, 1950. Enamel paint, steel, string, beads, colored glass and pebbles on glass, 121.9 x 182.9 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Fig. 1.21 Jackson Pollock, Wooden Horse: Number 10A, 1948. Oil,
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