The document discusses modernist painting and Clement Greenberg's theory of modernism from the 1960s. It provides Greenberg's definition of modernism as using the methods of a discipline to critique itself, in order to strengthen its competence. Greenberg emphasized the flatness of the picture plane as unique to painting. The document also discusses Morris Louis' abstract painting Saraband from 1959 as exemplifying Greenberg's theories through its shimmering, translucent veil created by color drips and the removal of the artist's hand from the work.
2. The essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of
characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline
itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more
firmly in its area of competence…
Realistic, naturalistic art had dissembled the medium, using art to
conceal art; Modernism used art to call attention to art…
It was the stressing of the ineluctable flatness of the surface that
remained, however, more fundamental than anything else to the
processes by which pictorial art criticized and defined itself under
Modernism. For flatness alone was unique and exclusive to
pictorial art.
-Clement Greenberg, Modernist Painting, 1960
Mondrian
3. Greenberg & Jackson Pollock
Installation view of Pollock’s Number 13A, 1948: Arabesque, 1948
7. 1960
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How does Louis’s Saraband reflect
Greenberg’s characteristics of
modernist painting?
Almost purely optical (resists tactility
of Pollock’s work)
Shimmering, translucent veil
created by dripping down side of
canvas
Removes artist’s hand
Is Greenberg protecting high
modernist art from the emerging
Pop Art movement (aka kitsch)?
Is Pop Art anti-modernist? Is it a joke
on modernism?
Roy Lichtenstein, Brushtroke with
Splatter, 1966
Morris Louis, Saraband, 1959
8. What makes an artist “great”? What makes him (or her) awful?
LIFE magazine
1949 (Pollock)
1964 (Lichtenstein)
Terms used to describe (and ridicule) Pop Art:
• deadpan
• Neo-Dadaist
• plagiaristic
• kitsch
• unoriginal
• ironic
• banal
• cool
10. 1960 – Pop in America
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From 1961-65, Lichtenstein made
series of paintings based on comic
books
Known for these works though also
devoted much of career to updating
old masterworks (Monet, Cezanne)
Interested in simplicity, unification,
clarity of vision, questions of form
Criticized both for content and
process
Roy Lichtenstein, Popeye, 1961, oil
Process
Content
• appropriated
popular image
• brought “low”
art form (comic)
into “high” art
context
• appropriated image
• seemed to directly
copy (but didn’t)
• sketched panels,
projected and traced
sketches
• Thick contour lines,
primary colors
Benday dots
Elzie Crisler Segar, Popeye the Sailor, ca.1930, comic strip
11. So, is Pop Art Anti-Modernist?
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Lichtenstein interested in new
“possibilities for painting”
Experimenting with modernist form
using an unconventional process
“Lichtensteinized” modernist issues
(brushstroke, flatness, the grid, the
readymade)
Edouard Manet, Dejeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), 1863
Lichtenstein, Rouen Cathedral, 1969
Marcantonio Raimondi, Judgment of Paris, 1520
Claude Monet, Rouen Cathedral, 1894
I don’t draw a picture in order to reproduce it—I
do it in order to recompose it. Nor am I trying to
change it as much as possible. I try to make the
minimum amount of change. - Lichtenstein
12. Lichtenstein & Mondrian – Pop vs. Modernism
Lichtenstein, Golf Ball, 1962
Piet Mondrian, Composition No. 10, Pier and Ocean, 1915
14. 1960 – Pop in America
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Images from magazines,
manipulated and collaged
them in painted form
From 1957-60, earned living
as a billboard painter (sign
painting techniques applied to
large scale paintings)
Appropriation of popular
imagery (’49 Chevrolet, JFK
campaign poster) with
commercial design
Kennedy assassinated in
1963
James Rosenquist, President Elect, 1960/61-64, 12’
The face was from Kennedy's campaign poster. I
was very interested at that time in people who
advertised themselves. What did they put on an
advertisement of themselves? So that was his
face. And his promise was half a Chevrolet and a
piece of stale cake.
-Rosenquist
Rosenquist, F-111, 1965
15. 1960 – Pop in America
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Ruscha moved to L.A. from
Oklahoma to study at Chinouard
(now Cal Arts)
First worked in advertising
Involved in Ferus Gallery and
included in groundbreaking Pop
exhibition New Painting of
Ed Ruscha, Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights, 1962
Common Objects at Pasadena
Art Museum (both organized by
Walter Hopps) in 1962
Applied Johns’s interest in signs
& Duchamp’s interest in
wordplay to a study of popular
signage, language and
typography
Signs as abstract forms
Isolates language to heighten The Cool
School (clip)
ambiguity & mystery
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbQjmKA1V7o
Ruscha, Rain, 1970, gunpowder and pastel on paper
17. 1961 – The Blurring of Art & Life
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Oldenburg opens The Store in New
York’s East Village (sells painted
handmade plaster sculptures ranging
from $25 - $800)
Interested in art as ordinary commodity
Oldenburg’s Ray Gun Theater
performs Happenings there
Kaprow installs Yard in NYC courtyard
(fills with tires)
Both artists interested in ephemeral &
collaborative art events (Happenings),
and in reusing discarded urban detritus
(like Dubuffet)
These things [art objects] are displayed in
galleries, but it is not the place for them. A
store would be better. Museum in bourgeois
concept equals store in mine. - Oldenburg
Allan Kaprow, Yard, 1961
Claes Oldenburg, The Store, 1961
18. The Legacy of Jackson Pollock
Pollock…left us at a point where we must
become preoccupied with and even
dazzled by the space and objects of our
everyday life…Objects of every sort are
materials for the new art: paint, chairs, food,
electric and neon lights, smoke, water and
old socks, a dog…
Young artists of today need no longer say “I
am a painter” or “a poet” or “a dancer.” The
are simply “artists.” All of life will be open to
them. They will discover out of ordinary things
the meaning of ordinariness.
Hans Namuth, Jackson Pollock painting, 1950
19. Allen Kaprow, “Un-artist”
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Interested in blurring boundaries between
art & everyday life
To challenge all artistic conventions
Known for his Happenings
Loosely scripted events, no logical
narrative or point
Characterized by ephemeral (cannot be
reproduced), whimsical, seemingly
spontaneous nature
Integrated multiple media, allowed for
chance occurrences & audience
Hugo Ball
participation
Karawane
Context/environment very important
1916
Dada
Resists becoming a commodity
performance
Household included men building towers,
women nests; smoke-flares throw; jam
licked off a car and set ablaze
(no audience present)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXdPAnNQIcg
Happenings are events that...happen...they appear
to go nowhere and do not make any particular
literary point. -Kaprow
Household Revisited
2008
Kaprow, Household, 1964
20. Everything is Art…
Fluxus credo
George Maciunas, Name Cards of Fluxus Artists, 1966
… and everyone can do it. -
21. 1962 – More Blurring of Art & Life: Fluxus Emerges
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George Maciunas, leader of Fluxus,
organizes series of exhibitions in
Wiesbade, West Germany
Of all 60s movements, Fluxus was the
most open, international, experimental
“non-movement”
It resisted prevailing styles, pop and
minimalism
Considered every action a form of art,
from washing one’s hair to making a salad
(Alison Knowles)
A DIY aesthetic, it valued simplicity over
complexity
It organized concerts, festivals,
performances, publications, mail art, artist
books, actions
It insisted on viewer participation
Maciunas, Fluxus Manifesto, 1963
22. 1962 - “Everything is in flux…everything flows” (Heraclitus)
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Maciunas associated fluxus with
human physiology, molecular
transformation, and chemical
transformation
Neo-dadaist?
East Meets West
Feminist
Valie Export, Tapp and Tastkino (Pet and Paw), 1968
(Viennese Actionism)
Shigeko Kubota
Vagina Painting
1965
Yoko Ono, Cut Piece, Kyoto, Japan, 1964
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3dsvy_yoko-ono-cut-piece_shortfilms
23. Fluxfests
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Multi-player games with Flux-Sports
component
Included activities like the "Slow
Speed Cycle Contest" or the
"Handicap Run," whose participants
ran "while drinking vodka, eating
porridge, eating ice cream, spitting…
etc..”
Reflected Maciunas’ belief that
Fluxus events "must be simple,
amusing, [and] concerned with
insignificances”
An exhibition in a hat (walked around
Paris from 4 a.m. to 9 p.m.) became
portable gallery
Robert Fillou, Galerie Legitime, 1962
Art is what makes life more interesting than art.
-Robert Filliou
24. Fluxus Performances
Alison Knowles, Newspaper Music, 1967 (rendition)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FgAT4pH21w
Nam June Paik, Unprotected Music: Solo for Violin (rendition), 1962
Nam June Paik, Zen for Head, 1962
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J41s_VnKrcM
25. 1964 – Warhol
I always thought I'd like my own
tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and
no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say
‘figment.’ - Warhol
Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait (in Drag), 1981
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M--oHOn4a0U
26. 1964 – Warhol
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From Pittsburgh, PA, born in 1928
Studied at Carnegie Institute, then
moved to NYC
Became successful commercial
illustrator (Vogue, New Yorker)
In 1960, decided to become an
artist and made first paintings of
Batman, Popeye, Dick Tracy
1962-63 was watershed year—first
Campbell’s Soup cans, first
“Disaster” and Marilyn paintings,
and first films, “Sleep” and “Kiss
Began The Factory in 1963 (until
1967)—transformed painting into a
mass produced activity
Warhol, Shoe, illustration ca.1956
Andy Warhol, Sleep, 1963
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkQMJBlO0v8
27. The more you look at the same
exact thing, the more the
meaning goes away and the
better and emptier you feel.
—Andy Warhol, 1975
Warhol, White Burning
Car III, 1963, silkscreen
28. 1964 – Warhol
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From “Death in America” series
Photos taken from news sources (often
not printed)
Depict car accidents, electric chairs, civil
rights demonstrations
Many reflect controversial current
events/issues
Reflects early TV age where images of
death and disaster (war, plane crash, etc)
brought into home
Repetition suggests obsessive fixation on
trauma (to master fear or wallow in it?)
Simulacral (copy without an original Barthes) or referential (form of social
critique? (Crow) Both?
Mass subject (“anonymous victims of
history”, pyramid builders, war victims)
The punctum (Roland Barthes)
If you want to know all about Andy Warhol,
just look at the surface of my paintings and
films and me, and there I am. There's
nothing behind it.
Warhol, White Burning Car III, 1963, silkscreen
29. Warhol: Simulacral or Referential?
Warhol, Lavender Disaster, 1963, silkscreen
Bruce Conner, Child, 1959
Hinweis der Redaktion
{"1":"Today’s lecture deals with the very nature of art and art appreciation. We’re just coming off the heels of modernist painting, and entering a new world following WWII and 50s prosperity (the cold war in full swing (red scare), Americans were spreading out to the suburbs, fathers were commuting to work in nice cars, mothers were cleaning house in their pearls). In the 60s, national consciousness shifted, the youth rebelled against these idyllic visions of family life. Race riots began (in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963), wars got started (Vietnam in 1964), leaders were assassinated (JFK in 1963, MLK in 1968), female contraception (“the pill”) became available (to married women) in 1965, and people began questioning the foundations of this thriving consumer culture. Also, the space race accelerated, begun by the Russians in 1957 and 1961 and continued by the U.S. in 1962 with the first American manned space flight. Neil Armstrong will walk on the moon in 1969. Art will begin to reflect these radical changes. In many ways, art of the 1960s then questions these assumptions about traditional “fine art”—what do we go see art for? To be elevated, enrapt? To contemplate existence? To receive pleasure? To escape the trivialties of everyday life in favor of timeless truths? Or to indulge in these trivialties?\n","2":"Clement Greenberg thought so. In his earlier essay, Avant-Garde and Kitsch (1939), Greenberg endows the avant-garde with the responsibility of preserving genuine culture, and protecting it from the fake culture produced by modern consumer societies, what he called “kitsch”. In a later essay, Modernist Painting, published in 1960, he outlined the natural evolution of modernist, or avant-garde, art and described its main characteristics (self-criticality, pure optical experience, and above all, flatness). \n","8":"In 1949, Life magazine asked about Pollock, “Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?” and in 1964 about Lichtenstein, “Is he the worst artist in the U.S.?” Perhaps Pop is largely seen as such because it emerged in the wake of modernist painting, which was often perceived as genuine, expressive, authentic, and sincere. Today, I’d like to examine those assumptions. Is “pop art” really all those things? Is modernist painting really all those things? Are they really opposites as Greenberg would have us believe? And what does it tell us about ourselves, if anything at all?\n","25":"No one typifies this postwar phenomenon of the culture of spectacle and the breakdown of American social order in the form of accident and disaster than Andy Warhol. He had his hands in everything, from music production to fashion design to filmmaking, magazine publishing (Interview magazine), to artist collectives (The Factory). The spectacle in his work was celebrity-obsessed America, an obsession which frequently took a disastrous tone so that celebrity became synonymous with death and destruction. But what Warhol showed us was not the pathos of this, but our immunity to it, our complete lack of feeling in the face of it and our voyeuristic delight in watching it happen (“if it bleeds, it leads”). He projected that in his public persona. Pop art of course relies on images from popular culture for its subject and style and Warhol more than anyone mirrored American pop culture in the 60s not only because of the subject matter he worked with, but also because he himself was a celebrity who catered to celebrities, and professed an uncritical loyalty to the beauty of popular culture, even if his works suggest differently.\n","4":"Vision (and the frame) is “the only condition painting shared with no other art.” (Greenberg) This evolution began with Manet, continued with the Impressionists, Cezanne, the Cubists, Mondrian, Pollock, and so on. So, following this evolution, what should modernist art look like today?\n","10":"BenDay dots are named after the 19th century inventor who invented this technique for producing shade in a printed image—a system of dots used to create gradations of shading; likened to pointillism, invented same time. This procedure gives the effect of mechanical reproduction, the antithesis of Abstract Expressionist painting, which is perceived as organic.\n"}