2. The NewYork School: a.k.a. Abstract Expressionism
•Action Painting
•Color Field
Modernist Sculpture
Movements Against Abstract Expressionism:
•Minimalism
•Pop Art
•Assemblages and Happenings
•Earthworks
•Conceptual Art
Chapter 22:Art Since 1945
3. Art after WWII
Decisively moves from Paris, to NewYork. Many European artists
fled the Nazi regime and mixed with American avant-garde. By
1941,André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Piet Mondrian, Marcel
Duchamp and Max Ernst were all living in NewYork, where they
altered the character and artistic concerns of the NewYork art
scene.
NewYork became the cultural center for the arts.
5. Abstract Expressionism:
A continuation of European Modernism by combining
Expressionism with Abstraction.Thus the painted gesture
had to carry the expression.
•Looked to primitive myth for inspiration.
•Used Jungian psychology’s idea of the collective unconscious.
•Directness of expression was the most important quality.
•Emphasized the artist’s gesture.
The artists made monumentally scaled works that stood as
reflections of their individual psyches—and in doing so,
attempted to tap into universal inner sources.
6. "The NewYork School" was not an actual school, but rather a
nickname given to a hub of diverse artists that were exploring
the creative subconscious with large scale canvases that are
intended to engulf the viewer.
Jackson Pollock (1912–1956)
Lee Krasner (1908–1984)
Willem de Kooning (1904–1997)
Franz Kline (1910–1962)
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991)
Mark Rothko (1903–1970)
Barnett Newman (1905–1970)
Abstract Expressionism
7. In the late 1940s, Pollock pushed beyond the Surrealist
strategy of automatic painting by taking his canvas off the
stretcher, placing it on the floor, and throwing, dripping,
and dribbling paint onto it to create a sublime abstract
calligraphy as it fell.
Jackson Pollock (1912–1956)
Best-known Abstract Expressionist
artist. Born in Wyoming and moved
to NewYork in 1930. Pollock was
self-destructive and an alcoholic by
age 16. For most of the 1940s
Pollock was free of alcohol, when he
was supported emotionally by Lee
Krasner and when he created his
most celebrated art
11. Jackson Pollock,White Light, 1954.
“Action Painting” Painting that
is the evidence of an action,
such as Pollock’s pouring of
paint.
Abstract Expressionism
14. Jackson Pollock, Number 27, 1950, 1950.
"At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American
painter after another as an arena in which to act—rather than as a
space in which to reproduce, re-design, analyze, or 'express' an
object, actual or imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not
a picture but an event." -Harold Rosenburg
16. The NewYork School
Jackson Pollock, Number 1, 1948
One is a masterpiece of the "drip," technique, the radical method that
Pollock contributed to Abstract Expressionism. Moving around an
expanse of canvas laid on the floor, Pollock would fling and pour
ropes of paint across the surface.The canvas pulses with energy:
strings and skeins of enamel, some matte, some glossy, weave and
run, an intricate web of tans, blues, and grays lashed through with
black and white.The way the paint lies on the canvas can suggest
speed and force, and the image as a whole is dense and lush—yet its
details have a lacelike delicacy.
17. The Surrealists' embrace of accident as a way to bypass the conscious
mind sparked Pollock's experiments with the chance effects of gravity
and momentum on falling paint.
Yet although works like One have neither a single point of focus nor any
obvious repetition or pattern, they sustain a sense of underlying order.
This and the physicality of Pollock's method have led to comparisons of
his process with choreography, as if the works were the traces of a
dance. Some see in paintings like One the nervous intensity of the
modern city, others the primal rhythms of nature.
Abstract Expressionism
28. Willem de Kooning,Woman IV, 1952-1953.Willem de Kooning,Woman and Bicycle, 1952-1953.
Abstract Expressionism
29. Woman, 1950
Willem de Kooning
De Kooning made both
figurative and abstract art at
various points in his career,
sometimes concurrently. Of
nonfigurative work, he said,
"even abstract shapes must
have a likeness." In a legendary
and emblematic exchange
between de Kooning and the
critic Clement Greenberg, the
latter questioned whether a
truly modern artist could
justify figurative painting: "In
today's world, it's impossible to
paint a face." De Kooning's
response: "That's right. And it's
impossible not to."
31. After Pollock...
Contemporary artists and critics interpreted Jackson Pollock’s
innovation as the activity or action of painting and not necessarily
the result.This led to an emphasis on the artist’s action, namely
the beginnings of performance art.
But one critic realized that this resulted in the death of
painting and argued a different stance.
Clement Greenberg
32. Greenberg’s Theory
If any art form is to survive the onslaught of mass media
and make itself better it must do the thing that only it can do.
This idea is called medium specificity.
•Literature is best at telling a story.
•Film is good for representing time.
•Sculpture is about taking up space.
•Painting is best at being “flat” and “optical”.
That's right Greenburg thought that the essential quality of
painting was flatness and color. Painting, for instance, had to
display it’s essential character, as an object..... Platonic?
33. Abstract Expressionism has two main styles.
1). Gestural “Action Painting”
i.e. Jackson Pollock’s Drip Paintings
2). Flattened “Color Field” Painting
i.e. Rothko’s Stained Colored shapes.
34. Mark Rothko,American,
1903-1970
No.25, 1947
Abstract Expressionism
In the early 1940s, under the
influence of European
Surrealism and of Carl Gustav
Jung’s theories on the
collective unconscious, Rothko
abandoned the vestiges of
Expressionism in his work and
began using archaic symbols as
archetypal images transmitting
the emotions embedded in
ancient myths.
36. Mark Rothko
Untitled (Violet, Black,
Orange,Yellow on
White and Red) 1949
Abstract Expressionism
“Color Field” Painting:
Artists who used large, flat
“fields” of colored shapes.
Usually painted very thinly.
Championed by Greenburg
because it was flat and
“optical”
38. Mark Rothko, Orange
andYellow, 1956.
Abstract Expressionism
For Rothko, his glowing, soft-edged rectangles of luminescent color
should provoke in viewers a quasi-religious experience, even eliciting
tears.As with Pollock and the others, scale contributed to the meaning.
For the time, the works were vast in scale.And they were meant to be
seen in relatively close environments, so that the viewer was virtually
enveloped by the experience of confronting the work. Rothko said, "I
paint big to be intimate." The notion is toward the personal (authentic
expression of the individual) rather than the grandiose.
For Greenberg flatness is the
truthful condition of the surface
of the painting. Renaissance
perspective was a kind of lie
perpetuated through illusion.
42. In 1943, Rothko, with his friend the painter Adolph
Gottlieb, wrote several philosophical statements that
would continue to guide his painting for years to come:
"We favor the simple expression of the complex thought.
We are for the large shape because it has the impact of
the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane.
We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and
reveal truth."
The NewYork School: Color Field Painting
Abstract Expressionism
43. No. 37/No. 19
(Slate Blue and
Brown on Plum)
Mark Rothko
(American, born
Latvia.
1903-1970)
1958.
53. Modernist Sculpture
•Abstract forms
•Increasingly using modern materials,
steel, iron etc.
•Interesting in using space interestingly.
•The view changes as you circle the
sculpture.“in the round”
•Explored “negative space”.
54. Brancusi's Studio, ca. 1920
Edward Steichen (American, born
Luxembourg, 1879–1973)
Gelatin silver print
Modernist Sculpture
The Romanian artist
Constantin Brancusi
(1876–1957) settled in
Paris in 1904. He admired
the semi-abstracted forms
of much art beyond the
Western tradition,
believing that the artists
who made such art
succeeded in capturing the
“essence” of their subject.
55. Bird in Space, 1923
Constantin Brancusi (French, born Romania, 1876–1957)
Marble
Modernist Sculpture
Brancusi wrote,
“What is real is not the external form but
the essence of things. Starting from this
truth it is impossible for anyone to express
anything essentially real by imitating its
exterior surface.”
59. Hepworth, Barbara,
Dame, 1903-1975
Forms in Echelon,
1938
Modernist Sculpture
Hepworth made exquisitely
crafted sculptures punctuated
with holes so that air and light
could pass through them.This
work consists of two
biomorphic shapes carved in
highly polished wood. She
hoped that viewers would let
their eyes play around them,
letting their imaginations
generate associations and
meanings.
67. Alexander Calder,
La GrandeVitesse
Modernist Sculpture
Alexander Calder trained
as an engineer and took
some art classes before
traveling to Paris in 1926.
Although not an official
member of the
movement, his sculpture
was particularly admired
by the Surrealists, with
whom he exhibited on
occasion.
68. Alexand Calder,
Untitled, 1976
Modernist Sculpture
Like other sculptors of his
generation, he explored negative
space, removed sculpture from its
pedestal, and hung it from the
ceiling.
His sculptures are brushed into
movement by air currents.
Calder’s metal sculptures, which
are attached to wire arms and
hung from the ceiling, are termed
mobiles.
74. David Smith, Cubi
XXVII, 1965
Modernist Sculpture
David Smith came to
sculpture through painting.
He then worked in the WPA
Federal Art Project. But skills
learned in his youth in
Indiana, where he had
summer jobs working in a
Studebaker car factory,
eventually came to the fore
in his art making.When he
saw magazine illustrations of
welded sculpture by Pablo
Picasso and Julio González, he
himself began welding metal
constructions.
76. David Smith, Cubi XXVII, March 1965.
Modernist Sculpture
Later in his career, Smith
would note the
overwhelming potency
of steel as a medium:
"What it can do in arriving
at a form economically, no
other medium can do.
What associations it
possesses are those of this
century: power, structure,
movement, progress,
suspension, brutality."
77. Donald Judd, Untitled, 1969.
Minimalism
•Not about expression.
•Fabricated by experts and made with
industrial materials, plexi-glass,
aluminum, plywood etc.
•Serial or “counting” logic used form
composition.
•Made the viewer aware of the space
around them. Privileges a physical
experience over emotion.
81. In the 1960s Donald Judd proposed a new way of making and
experiencing art, breaking ground in the exploration of volume, interval,
space and color.
He favored industrial materials such as aluminium, perspex, sheet metal
and plywood. From the mid 1960s onward all of Judd’s works were
fabricated by skilled specialists to his precise specifications. By
encouraging concentration on the volume and presence of the structure
and the space around it, Judd’s work draws particular attention to the
relationship between the object, the viewer and the specific context of
the object’s environment.
Minimalism
84. By 1961 Dan Flavin had begun to make Minimalist works using
incandescent or fluorescent electric lights, such as Icon I1 which
consisted of a monochrome painted wooden square with an
incandescent light mounted on the top right edge. He frequently
dedicated pieces to historic and contemporary art figures who
inspired him.
Minimalism
85. Minimalism
Dan Flavin, Icon II (the
mystery to John Reeves),
1961
By 1961 Dan Flavin had
begun to make Minimalist
works using incandescent
or fluorescent electric
lights, such as Icon I1 which
consisted of a monochrome
painted wooden square
with an incandescent light
mounted on the top right
edge. He frequently
dedicated pieces to historic
and contemporary art
figures who inspired him.
89. Anti-modernism
Because of AbEx’s dominance of the market for $ and ideas.
Subsequent artists sought to distance themselves from the
aims of Abstract Expressionism and Modernist Sculpture.
Pop Art (art as mass culture and commerce)
Assemblages and Happenings (art as real life)
Earthworks (art in the landscape)
Conceptual Art (art as idea)
91. Pop Art:
In the late 1950-60s, several artists began to focus their
attention on the explosion in visual culture, fueled by the
growing presence of mass media and the rising disposable
income of the postwar young.
For the first time in America, individual identity was
determined by what people purchased largely dictated
by television, film, and print advertising.
Pop artists critiqued the fiction of this new popular culture
largely by embodying it totally.
Major figures
Andy Warhol
Roy Lichtenstein
Claes Oldenburg &
CoosjeVan Bruggen
95. Roy Lichtenstein actually painted the dot patterns and speech
balloons from comic books and newspaper reproductions, in
large, meticulously rendered frames. He also introduced much
needed humor, making fun of himself and the art world.
Here his cartoon brushstrokes make fun of the Abstract
Expressionist art movement. Even Classical Greece gets the
comic book treatment? The very idea of individual expression
in a consumer era becomes suspect. Can you express
yourself truly outside of corporate or media branding?
Pop Art
100. Andy Warhol (1928–1987).
Warhol created an immense body of work between 1960
and his death in 1987, including prints, paintings, sculptures,
and films.
Born Andrew Warhola the son of Polish immigrants,
Pittsburgh. After getting his degree in illustration he begins
working as a graphic artist in NewYork. Later shifts to
painting.
Pop Art
101. Pop Art
A Warhol shoe illustration for a fashion magazine, 1955.
102. Water Heater Andy
Warhol (American,
1928-1987) 1961
Pop Art
His earliest
paintings were of
those very same
kinds of advertising
that he created.
105. Campbell's Soup Cans, AndyWarhol , 1962
Pop Art
When Warhol first exhibited these thirty–two canvases in 1962, each
one simultaneously hung from the wall like a painting and rested on a
shelf like groceries in a store.The number of canvases corresponds to
the varieties of soup then sold by the Campbell Soup Company. with
a different flavor to each painting.
Warhol argued that past art demanded thought and understanding,
whereas advertising and celebrity culture demanded only immediate
attention,very quickly becoming uninteresting and boring.
106. Warhol also used a “grid”
composition.
This is also an “all-over”
style that assumes a kind of
limitless expanse of objects
that continue outside of
the frame of the picture.
Like a supermarket aisle.
Pop Art
Andy Warhol, 100 Cans, 1962
108. Andy Warhol reveled in the indirect process of printmaking that
simulated mass production. He frequently used photographic
silkscreen techniques to give a mechanical look, removed from
the personal touch of the artist’s own hand.
His studio,“The Factory” as he referred to it, often included
numerous assistants. His works present a sort of portrait of
America in the sixties: products, people and symbols in a cool
and detached view.The question never answered by Warhol is
whether he was criticizing or celebrating popular culture.
Pop Art
109. Andy Warhol, Gold Marilyn Monroe, 1962
Pop Art
Marilyn Monroe was a legend when
she committed suicide in August of
1962, but in retrospect her life seems
a gradual martyrdom to the media
and to her public.After her death,
Warhol based many works on the
same photograph of her, a publicity
still for the 1953 movie Niagara.As
the surround for a face, the golden
field in Gold Marilyn Monroe (the only
one of Warhol's Marilyns to use this
color) recalls the religious icons of
Christian art history—a resonance,
however, that the work suffuses with
a morbid allure.
110. In reduplicating this photograph of a heroine shared by
millions,Warhol denied the sense of the uniqueness of the
artist's personality that had been implicit in the gestural
painting of the 1950s. He also used a commercial technique—
silkscreening—that gives the picture a crisp, artificial look;
even as Warhol canonizes Monroe, he reveals her public
image as a carefully structured illusion. Redolent of 1950s
glamour, the face in Gold Marilyn Monroe is much like the star
herself—high gloss, yet transient; bold, yet vulnerable;
compelling, yet elusive. Surrounded by a void, it is like the
fadeout at the end of a movie.
Pop Art
111. Andy Warhol, North American;American, 1928 - 1987, Marilyn x100, 1962
Pop Art
123. “An artist is somebody who produces
things that people don’t need to have.”
- AndyWarhol
"In the future everyone will be world
famous for fifteen minutes."
•Had a studio called “the
Factory” that made his work
with him. Combined with his
screen-print technique this
made for limitless
combinations of material.
•Also made many films once
the camera became affordable.
•Started Interview magazine in
the 80’s.
•Managed the band, TheVelvet
Underground.
Pop Art
127. In 1963, while Warhol was working on his Death and Disaster paintings,Art News published
an interview with him by Gene Swenson:
G.S. When did you start with the “Death” pictures?
A.W. I guess it was the big plane crash picture, the front page
of the newspaper: 129 Die. I was also painting the Marilyns. I
realized that everything I was doing must have been Death. It
was Christmas or Labor Day—a holiday—and every time you
turned on the radio they said something like “4 million are
going to die.” That started it. But when you see a gruesome
picture over and over again, it really doesn’t have any effect.
Pop Art
128. Orange Disaster #5, 1963.
Acrylic and silkscreen enamel
on canvas, 106 x 81 1/2 inches
Pop Art
131. Andy Warhol, North American;American, 1930 - 1987
Birmingham Race Riot, 1964, Screenprint
132. Andy Warhol, ( American, 1930 - 1987) Electric Chairs, Screenprints, 1971
133. Andy Warhol, ( American, 1930 - 1987) Electric Chairs, Screenprints, 1971
134. Andy Warhol, ( American, 1930 - 1987) Electric Chairs, Screenprints, 1971
135. Andy Warhol, ( American, 1930 - 1987) Electric Chairs, Screenprints, 1971
136. Andy Warhol, ( American, 1930 - 1987) Electric Chairs, Screenprints, 1971
137. Andy Warhol, ( American, 1930 - 1987) Electric Chairs, Screenprints, 1971
138. Andy Warhol, ( American, 1930 - 1987) Electric Chairs, Screenprints, 1971
139. Andy Warhol, ( American, 1930 - 1987) Electric Chairs, Screenprints, 1971
140. Andy Warhol, ( American, 1930 - 1987) Electric Chairs, Screenprints, 1971
141. Andy Warhol, still from film “Empire”, 1964
Pop Art
The eight-hour, five-minute film solely
of the Empire State Building.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMCeDBn1Zu0
146. Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes
"Well...I'd done all the Campbell's
Soup Cans in a row on the canvas,
and then I got boxes made to do
them on a box--but that looked
funny because it didn't look real- I
just had the boxes already made up
though.They were brown and looked
just like boxes, so I thought it would
be great just to do an ordinary box."
147. Like Warhol and Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929) made ironic
critiques of the new consumer culture, but in the case of the Swedish-
born Oldenburg he turned his subjects into sculptural monuments.
“I'd like to get away from the notion of a work of art as something outside of
experience, something that is located in museums, something that is terribly
precious,”
Oldenburg declared. In 1961 he presented a new body of work whose
subject matter he had culled from the clothing stores, delis, and bric-a-
brac shops that crowded the Lower East Side.The earliest Store
sculptures, which debuted in spring 1961 at the Martha Jackson Gallery,,
are wall-mounted reliefs depicting everyday items like shirts, dresses,
cigarettes, sausages, and slices of pie. Oldenburg made them from
armatures of chicken wire overlaid with plaster-soaked canvas, using
enamel paint straight from the can to give them a bright color finish.At
the gallery, the reliefs hung cheek by jowl, emulating displays in low-end
markets.
Pop Art
150. Environment Art:
Creates a 3D space for
people to have a whole
range of sensory
experiences—visual,
auditory, kinetic, tactile.
The viewer becomes a
participant.
Artworks = props
Oldenburg, Claes, 1929-
Title Store
Date 1961
Pop Art
153. "Empire" ("Papa") Ray Gun
Claes Oldenburg (American,
born Sweden 1929)
1959.
Pastry Case, I
Claes Oldenburg (American, born Sweden 1929)
1961-62
Pop Art
154. Two Cheeseburgers, with Everything (Dual Hamburgers)
Claes Oldenburg (American, born Sweden 1929)
1962.
Pop Art
157. Pop Art
Men's Jacket with Shirt and Tie
1961
Muslin soaked in plaster over wire
frame, painted with enamel. 41 3/4
x 29 1/2 x 11 3/4" (106 x 74.9 x
29.8 cm).
158. Claes Oldenburg, Soft Light
Switches GhostVersion), 1971
version of a 1964 original. Claes Oldenburg, Soft Pay-Telephone, 1963.
Pop Art
160. Giant Soft Fan
Claes Oldenburg (American,
born Sweden 1929)
1966-67
Oldenburg turned consumer
products into bodies.They
were human scale, their skin
sagged and they looked
exhausted.
161. Soft Calendar for the Month of August
1962
Canvas filled with shredded foam rubber, painted with liquitex and enamel.
41 3/4 x 42 1/2 x 4 1/4" (106 x 108 x 10.8 cm).The Metropolitan Museum
of Art,
Pop Art
162. Later in his career he turned more exclusively to public art projects.
Oldenburg’s humor is evident in his large-scale public projects, such
as LIPSTICK (ASCENDING) ON CATERPILLAR TRACKS, made for
his alma mater,Yale University. Oldenburg was invited to create this
work by a group of graduate students from the School of
Architecture who specified that they wanted a monument to the
“Second American Revolution” of the late 1960s, a period marked by
student demonstrations against theVietnam War. Oldenburg
mounted a giant lipstick tube on top of steel tracks taken from a
Caterpillar tractor.
Visually the sculpture suggests both the warlike aggression of a
mobile missile launcher and the eroticism of a lipstick, perhaps in a
play on the popular slogan of the time,“make love, not war.” The
lipstick was to have included a suggestive balloonlike vinyl tip
that could be pumped up with air and then left to deflate slowly, but
the pump was never installed and the drooping tip, vulnerable
to vandalism, was quickly replaced with a metal one.
Pop Art
163. Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Lipstick (Ascending) on CaterpillarTracks, 1969-1974
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut Cor-Ten steel, steel, aluminum, cast resin; painted
with polyurethane enamel
The lipstick monument was
installed provocatively on a plaza
in front of both theYale War
Memorial and the president’s
office. Not surprisingly,
Oldenburg was asked to remove
it. In 1974, however, he reworked
the sculpture in the more
permanent materials of fiberglass,
aluminum, and steel and donated
it toYale, where it was placed in
the courtyard of Morse College.
164. Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen,
Batcolumn, 1977, Steel and aluminum
painted with polyurethane enamel
96 ft. 8 in. (29.5 m) high, Harold Washington
Social Security Center, 600 West Madison
Street, Chicago
165. Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van
Bruggen, Spoonbridge and Cherry ,
1988. Minneapolis Sculpture Garden,
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis,
Stainless steel and aluminum painted
with polyurethane enamel, 29 ft. 6
in. x 51 ft. 6 in. x 13 ft. 6 in.
169. Jasper Johns, Target
with Four Faces, 1955.
Into the Sixties: “Neo-Dada”
Neo-Dada:
New generation was re-
using the strategies of the
Dada movement..
Used of everyday objects.
“Assemblages”.
Rejection of Abstract
Expressionism.
172. Robert Rauschenberg, (American, 1925-2008)
Born in Texas. Created paintings with street trash and a
collision of images.
Tried to create art that “worked in the gap between art
and life.”
Into the Sixties: Assemblages
In the early 1950s, a generation of
younger artists in NewYork
challenged the assumptions of
Abstract Expressionist artists.
They believed that art should be
firmly anchored in real life.
176. Into the Sixties: Assemblages
Robert Rauschenberg. Bed. 1955
Assemblages:
which Rauschenerg called
“combines” are collaged trash,
re-aestheticized into a
composition.
Also critical of AbEx gestures.
177. Into the Sixties: Assemblages
Robert Rauschenberg, Collection (formerly Untitled), 1954
181. Monogram (1955-1959). Rauschenberg placed on the ground an
Abstract Expressionist–style painting serving as pasture for an Angora
goat, which is stuffed and encircled by a pneumatic tyre. Because he
used his heritage of Abstract Expressionism in a manner thought to be
ironic and disdainful, Rauschenberg was accused by his enemies of the
time of destroying painting. In fact, all his work seems to derive from
assemblage.
Robert Rauschenberg,
Monogram, 1955-59
Assemblages also critiqued the remove of
abstract painting from “real life’ by the
simplest means, they attached it directly
to the surface of the picture. Here the
Dada use of found objects was not
skeptically motivated but rather
idealistically motivated to return art to
everyday subjects. Even if humorous.
184. Into the Sixties: Assemblages
Robert Rauschenberg,
Buffalo II, 1964
“[Being in New
Y o r k ] w a s t h i s
constant, irrational
juxtaposition of
things that I think
one only finds in the
city.”
186. Into the Sixties: Assemblages
Robert
Rauschenberg,
Satellite, 1955
During the 1960s Rauschenberg
became increasingly interested
in performance, and he
collaborated with the composer
John Cage, the choreographer
Merce Cunningham, and the
Judson Dance Theater. Much of
Rauschenberg's later work used
silkscreening, a practice that
enabled him to explore his
interests in repetition and
process.
191. Existentialism:
• Popularized by philosophers
like Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
“Existence precedes essence”.
• No underlying universal order.
• Humans have complete
freedom, to define humanity.
•This is both a blessing and an
immense burden.
•The “Void”.
Leap into theVoid, 1960
Yves Klein (French, 1928–1962)
192. The foundational tenet of existentialism is that ‘existence
precedes essence’. According to Jean-Paul Sartre, a human
being first exists, ‘encounters themselves in the world’, and
defines themselves afterwards.This choosing of oneself is
unavoidable: we are, Sartre says, condemned to be free, and
are wholly responsible for our choices.
This stance proved highly influential in intellectual and artistic
circles in the 20 years following the Second World War,
starting in Paris.
Existentialism
193. Allan Kaprow in his Environment “Yard,” 1967
Into the Sixties: Happenings
194. Trained as a painter, Kaprow intuited an expanded scale and space from
the work of Jackson Pollock. He also studied composition at the New
School for Social Research in NewYork with John Cage (a close friend
of Rauschenberg), whose use of nonmusical and ambient sounds as well
as his openness to chance and accident made him a key figure of
influence during this period. In 1965 Kaprow explained his evolution
from collage to environments and happenings. His works expanded
until they filled the gallery, creating an integrated environment for the
spectator.
"I immediately saw that every visitor to the environment was part of it. And
so I gave them opportunities like moving something, turning switches on --
just a few things. Increasingly during 1957 and 1958, this suggested a more
'scored' responsibility for the visitor. I offered them more and more to do until
there developed the Happening....The integration of all elements --
environment, constructed sections, time, space, and people -- has been my
main technical problem ever since."
Into the Sixties: Happenings
195. Into the Sixties: Happenings
Although tightly scripted and
planned, Kaprow's early
happenings maintained an air
of unstructured spontaneity.
This was because they had
none of the usual trappings of
theatre -- plot, dialogue,
character, or professional
performers -- and no
resemblance to the traditional
visual arts.
196. Into the Sixties: Happenings
Allan Kaprow in his Environment “Yard,” 1967 Pasadena edition with participants.
198. “Happenings”
No identifiable stage
Lack of a storyline
Anyone could be an actor/participant
Cannot tell between set, props or costumes
No set time period for completion
What does this sound like? Real life!
Into the Sixties: Happenings
199. “A Happening is an assemblage of events performed or
perceived in more than one time and place. Its material
environments may be constructed, taken over directly from
what is available, or altered slightly; just as its activities may
be invented or commonplace.
A Happening, unlike a stage play, may occur at a
supermarket, driving along a highway, under a pile of rags,
and in a friend’s kitchen, either at once or sequentially. If
sequentially, time may extend to more than a year.
The Happening is performed according to plan but without
rehearsal, audience, or repetition. It is art but seems closer
to life” -Allan Kaprow
Into the Sixties: Happenings
200. The walls of the first
room were covered
randomly with words
that were hand
lettered on pieces of
paper or stenciled on
rolls of canvas, and
which could be added-
to by visitors and read
in any order or
direction.
202. Kaprow's The Courtyard (1962) Composed of discordant noise,
circling bicyclists, tires swinging from windows, and showers of
spot-lit, glittering tin foil, The Courtyard was a modern-day fable
(set in a hotel for transients on Bleecker Street) showing the
ascension of a goddess in the guise of a teenage girl, dressed in a
nightgown and carrying a transistor radio blaring the latest hits.
During the piece, she slowly made her way through the audience
and climbed a ladder up a giant mountainlike sculpture in the
middle of the courtyard. Striking cheesecake poses for a pair of
paparazzi on a mattress (the fan attaining the immortality of the
starlet), the girl was then swallowed up by another mountain
descending from the rooftop—a deus ex machina for our media
age.
Into the Sixties: Happenings
203. Into the Sixties: Happenings
“What is a Happening?
A game, an adventure, a
number of activities engaged in
by participants for the sake of
playing.”
–Allan Kaprow
204. Allan Kaprow, Household, women with clothesline 1964.
Into the Sixties: Happenings
Anarchic events intended to break through the complacency and
conformity of mainstream American life and described by Susan
Sontag at the time as "animated collages."
210. Donald Judd, Untitled, 1969.
Minimalism
•Not about expression.
•Fabricated by experts and made with
industrial materials, plexi-glass,
aluminum, plywood etc.
•Serial or “counting” logic used form
composition.
•Made the viewer aware of the space
around them. Privileges a physical
experience over emotion.
211. Minimalism into Earthworks
Robert Smithson, Yucatan Mirror
Displacements (1–9), 1969 (detail)
Earthworks:
“Site-specific” art made
from and incorporating
the landscape.
Takes the physical
presence of Minimalism
outside!
Also meant as a
resistance to market
forces, inability to sell the
work, only experience it
directly.
212. Mirror Stratum, Robert Smithson (American, 1938-1973, 1966
Minimalism into Earthworks
Smithson made both:
“Non-sites”- samples of
mineral or vegetable material
taken outside their natural
situation.
“Sites”- works created
outside of the gallery or
museum, on the site of the
geological environment
chosen by the artist.
213. Corner Mirror with Coral, Robert Smithson (American, 1938-1973), 1969
Minimalism into Earthworks
216. Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, Great Salt Lake, Utah, 1970
Earthworks
Robert Smithson (1938–1973) created SPIRAL JETTY one of the most
significant earthworks, in 1970.This is a 1,500-foot spiraling earthen
jetty that extends into the Great Salt Lake in Utah.To Smithson, the
Great Salt Lake represented both a primordial ocean that cultivated
life and a dead sea that killed it. Smithson liked the way that skeletons
of abandoned oil rigs along the lake’s shore looked like dinosaur
bones; his jetty was supposed to remind viewers of the remains of
ancient civilizations. Smithson also incorporated one of the few living
organisms found in the otherwise dead lake into his work: an alga that
turns a reddish color under certain conditions.
219. Walter de Maria,The Lightning Field, 1977. Near Quernado, NM. Stainless steel poles,
average height 20' 7 1/2", overall 5,280' x 3,300
Earthworks
220. The Lightning Field, 1977, by the American sculptor Walter De Maria, is a
work of Land Art situated in a remote area of the high desert of western
New Mexico. It is comprised of 400 polished stainless steel poles installed
in a grid array measuring one mile by one kilometer.A full experience of
The Lightning Field does not depend upon the occurrence of lightning, and
visitors are encouraged to spend as much time as possible in the field,
especially during sunset and sunrise. In order to provide this opportunity,
Dia offers overnight visits during the months of May through October.
Earthworks
221. Walter De Maria. TheVertical Earth Kilomter,1977. Kassel, Germany
TheVertical Earth Kilometer (1977), located in Kassel, Germany, is a one-
kilometer-long solid brass round rod five centimeters (two inches) in
diameter, its full length inserted into the ground with its top reaching flush
to the surface of the earth.
222. Nancy Holt,Views
Through a Sand
Dune,
Narragansett
Beach, Rhode
Island, 1972
Early works of
Nancy Holt, such as
Views through a Sand
Dune were simple
interventions into
the landscape that
enhanced or altered
the viewer’s
experience of that
environment.
Earthworks
227. The trenches line up across a large gap formed by the natural shape
of the mesa edge. Including this open area across the gap, the
trenches together measure 1,500 feet long, 50 feet deep, and 30 feet
wide (457 meters long, 15.2 meters deep, 9.1 meters wide). 240,000
tons (218,000 tonnes) of rock, mostly rhyolite and sandstone, was
displaced in the construction of the trenches.
Located the Nevada desert, Double Negative can be visited by
anyone with a set of directions, a sturdy vehicle, and good walking
shoes. Still, as with most Land art, most of us will know it only
through photographs.
Earthworks
228. Michael Heizer, Double Negative, 1969
"As long as you're going to make a sculpture, why not make one that
competes with a 747, or the Empire State Building, or the Golden
Gate Bridge."
- Michael Heizer
235. John Baldessari, An Artist Is Not
Merely the Slavish Announcer . . .,
1966–68.
Conceptual Art:
Took thought as the
important art experience.
Used objects to produce
interesting conditions, not
for enjoyment.
Heavily influenced by
Plato.
237. Conceptual art literally “dematerialized” the art object by suggesting
that the catalyst for a work of art is a concept and the means by
which the concept is communicated can vary.The conceptual work
of art usually leaves behind some visual trace, in the form of a set of
instructions, writing on a chalkboard, a performance, photographs, or
a piece of film, and in some cases even objects.
Conceptual art is theoretically driven and is noncommodifiable
because it leaves no precious object behind for purchase, although
collectors and many museums now collect the “trace” objects left
behind. Realize that the mass media and the flow of information in
the 1960’s and 1970’s was only growing.
Conceptual art can be considered the aesthetics of information.
Conceptual Art
238. Marcel Duchamp,
Fountain, 1963
replica of 1917 original.
The importance of Duchamp’s “Fountain” is not in
the object, rather it is external to it.
i.e. what it makes you think about.
Conceptual Art
240. Conceptual Art
Joseph Kosuth, One andThree Chairs, 1965,
Joseph Kosuth presents the dictionary definition, a photo, and an actual
chair. Which is the best representation? He shifted his art into ideas and
documented them in ways that had little or no material or aesthetic
value. Perhaps all three are chairs, or codes for one: a visual code, a
verbal code, and a code in the language of objects, that is, a chair of
wood. If both photograph and words describe a chair, how is their
functioning different from that of the real chair, and what is Kosuth's
artwork doing by adding these functions together?
242. •Conceptual artists used counting logic to make the
composition.
•Eliminates the “hidden genius” of the artist.
•Makes the work more understandable to the public.
•Elimination of artistic subjectivity.
Minimalism into Conceptual Art
13 23 33
243. Serial Project, I (ABCD), Sol LeWitt (American, 1928-2007), 1966.
Conceptual Art
Sol LeWitt like the Minimalists, uses basic forms, in the belief that "using
complex forms only disrupts the unity of the whole"; like the Conceptualists,
he starts with an idea rather than a form, initiating a process that obeys
certain rules, and that determines the form by playing itself out.The
premise of Serial Project demands the combination and recombination of
squares, cubes, and extensions of these shapes, all laid in a grid.
244. •Conceptual art frequently involved “re-framing” or
naming of an activity or object as art.
•The art object is then a form of language to suggest
an idea or evidence of the ideas implementation.
Conceptual Art
“When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the
planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a
perfunctory affair. The idea becomes the machine that makes the
art.”
-Sol Lewitt
245. "The aim of the artist would not be to instruct the viewer but to give him
information.Whether the viewer understands this information is incidental
to the artist; he cannot foresee the understanding of all his viewers. He
would follow his predetermined premise to its conclusion avoiding
subjectivity. Chance, taste, or unconsciously remembered forms would play
no part in the outcome.The serial artist does not attempt to produce a
beautiful or mysterious object but functions merely as a clerk cataloging
the results of his premise.”
-Sol Lewitt
Conceptual Art
246. Lines in Four Directions, Superimposed in
Each Quarter of the Square Progressively
Sol LeWitt (American, 1928-2007)
(1971).
Conceptual Art
250. Conceptual Art
Piero Manzoni:
Magic Base, 1961
Piero Manzoni, Italian painter and
conceptual artist. He was self-taught as
an artist. Shortly after he began painting
he started to question the traditional
aims and methods of the artist,
expressing the nature of his searching in
both writings and the objects that he
produced.
Pictured below is the Magic Base, a plinth
that would transform the person who
stands upon it into an artist.
252. Piero Manzoni “BASE HOLDING
UP THE WORLD” SOCLE du
MONDE, 1961
Conceptual Art
253. Conceptual Art
During the last period of his life
he realized his most monumental
work, Socle of theWorld (1961), an
iron block that supposedly served
as the ‘base of the world’.
Manzoni’s pedestal, (and
Conceptual art in general) can
allow you to dramatically shift
your perspective on the world.
It allows a “re-framing” of our
viewpoint.
254. Hans Haacke born 1936
Condensation Cube
1963–5
Medium
Perspex, steel and water
Object: 305 x 305 x 305 mm
Conceptual Art
256. Seurat’s ‘Les
Poseuses’
Haacke outlines the changes in ownership of the painted
sketch along with some biographical data.The work charts the
change of the painting from a work of art with little value to a
commodity worth more than 1,000,000 dollars and kept in a
bank vault.
257. Hans Haacke Seurat’s
‘Les Poseuses’ (small
version) 1888-1975
(1975)
Institutional Critique: Conceptual art that criticizes unjust
museum or social practices.
258. Hans Haacke: Shapolsky et al., Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a RealTime Social System, as of
May 1, 1971, suite of panels with photographs and typed text, 1971 (Paris, Pompidou, Musée
National d’Art Moderne);
260. Considered the most personal and intimate of his works, I GOT UP is
part of a continuous piece produced by On Kawara between 1968 and
1979 in which each day the artist sent two different friends or
colleagues a picture postcard, each stamped with the exact time he
arose that day and the addresses of both sender and recipient.
Conceptual Art varies greatly depending on the information that it is
using. It can be cold, or inviting, it can be mechanical, political or
romantic depending on the interests of the artist.
Conceptual Art
262. Conclusion
By the end of the 1960’s art at that time included wildly different
media and practices under it’s umbrella. It could be a happening with
no record, or an abstract oil painting. It could be a comic book or a
mirrored box on the floor. By and large the art styles of the explosion
of creativity in1960s’ still forms the basic units of contemporary art
today.You still see Pop Art, Performance Art, etc.The artists are still
working through the implications of all of this expansive thinking.
One thing is clear by 1975 however.The Modernist project, that of
International Style housing, and Greenberg style Color Field Painting,
or Modernist Sculpture is at best not in touch with the world, or at
worst represents an idealism that doesn’t consider the perspectives of
huge classes of people. An alternative to European Modernism is
needed…. enter Postmodernism.
