Contemporary Art 1945-1970 9/2/10 This thing we know as modern art was taking place in New York, which

makes it the first major art movement that happened in the US. The other art movements were taking place all throughout Europe. Gustave Courbet is the father Realism, Eduard Manet the father of Impressionism, and Pablo Picasso the father of Modernism. The Pantheon of artists that have been declared parents of movements of art are primarily white males. Initially art was taught by copying and through teaching strict guidelines on how things should be done. When those traits have been learned, then an artist could develop their own style. There are skills that artists need to be artists, but that seems to be lost when it comes to modern art. What skills are needed to become a modern artists? The idea of the Avant-garde has become synonymous with modern art. This idea of the Avant-garde is constant forward thinking. 19th century dilemma that has been passed on is the question of idealism vs. realism. These two schools became rival schools. Artists like Thomas Couture was still painting Roman scenes in 1847. Gustave Courbet just wanted to paint what was exactly in front of him. Manets Olympia was a scandalous painting that raised awareness of the dirty realness that people did not want to be reminded of. As in this painting the main figure is not a demure beauty, instead she is a prostitute completely unapologetic over her nudity. The flowers are from a suitor and the cat represents infidelity. Modern art changes the idea that all artists are painters. Modern sculpture is pushed aside, but new modes of art were beginning to pop up. 9/7/10 One of the myths is that New York is the epicenter of important artwork. It wasnt until the 1970s that a tension developed between the east and west coast. New York is known as the place where the more relevant issues happen. Ellis Island is here, so there is a constant flow of people. A myth was created around that to become significant you had to go to NY. Prior to this myth it was believed you had to go to Paris. Stereotypes in the early 1900s it was believed that American didnt have a culture, that Europe was cultured and sophisticated. Kadinsky in 1912 moved to Germany to try to pull people into an animalistic level, by paintings objects that were not recognizable. He was considered strange, as he was among the first to create abstract people. His belief was that to look at an abstract

object you become more spiritual since you will try to make sense of it and make it into something real and concrete. At the center of the art world in Paris, big changes were occurring in the studio of Pablo Picasso. Picasso was experimenting with tearing apart whole objects and painting/drawing them as though ripped apart. Cubism was an avant-garde that put itself in front of everything anyone else had been/was working on. Cubism questions how we paint objects in space. Where is space and where is the object. This is a question that contemporary art poses. Armory show created a giant scandal with the painting Nude Descending a Staircase 1912 by Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp, a Parisian artist, had this piece in the New York show. The piece broke all norms of seeing, it was challenging for the viewer. The piece received a great load of criticism, and was severely mocked. Alfred Stieglitz brought anyone who wanted to be cosmopolitan into a community of kindled spirits. Stieglitz started a gallery called 291, which became a location where you could see advanced European art, along with local American Art. This gallery stands for everything that is modern in American up until WWII. A tsunami of new ideas stormed into this gallery that combined and transcended cultures. This helped get America out of its rut. A modernist idea that arose from this time is that the artist does not have to imitate the world, but should rather emote the world. American artists were borrowing a voice, and making it their own. This sprouted the question as to what American art is? Joseph Stella a Romanian artists is considered an American artist. Stella adopted the American culture and incorporated the concept into his art. The Brooklyn Bridge became a quintessential structure associated with modernity, change, machinery, and technology. This is part of the culture of the new world. Albert Gleizes, a European immigrant, began to paint under the impact of what was occurring in NY. He painted the sensation and intensity that came with the city. He wrote the first theoretical cubist piece explaining what cubism was. Marcel Duchamp In 1913 turned up in New York and began working with young American artists. This is when he came up with a notion of the things that are produced in this country. Questioned being a modern artist and living around extraordinary ordinary objects. Duchamp explored objects that had to do with everyday life, as he found paintings to be boring and far less significant. The bicycle like the Eiffel Tower was a sign of modernity, associated with modern life and speed.

American culture has been viewed by a society obsessed with hygiene and stocked with an overload of things that the rest of the world had never considered necessary. New York was the post for the Dada movement. At this time one of the arguments was that America doesnt have the culture Europe has, but it does have pop culture. Jazz as the quintessential music culture. Advertisements, advertising, marketing, neon. America became a sea of signage, and explosion of advertisement, imagery, etc... Stuart Davis Responsible for painting Lucky Strike 1921, which was called billboard cubism. He also painted Egg Beater in 1924. He took domestic mass produced objects to paint, this influenced Pop Art in the 60s. Other cultures didnt understand painting the banality of everyday art. Grant Wood Painted American Gothic in 1930 (the painting of the man with the pitch fork and his daughter standing in front of their home. Depicts a rural domestic lifestyle, dealing with reality. This era raising the question of provincialism and authenticity. Wood was saying that New York is not all of America, that the rest of America is rural and not as modern. The rest of the country was dealing with economic issues. America gearing up for WWII contributed to understated messages in American art. Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood were associated with Americanism. The Mexican muralists David Siquieros, Diego Riviera, and Jose Clemente Orozco, where among the more famous muralist artists. David Siquieros A Mexican muralist who painted the piece America Tropica in 1931. The piece caused a stir and was covered over with more appropriate art. This brings attention to the stir art was causing, and how scandalous it was likely to become. These murals functioned as social moralization, it is restating the culture wars between realistic and abstract art. Art in the political landscape of the 1930s was playing a political part, and this is why some artists chose to go against making abstract art. The muralists wanted to reach across people despite culture and language, and this was their argument for naturalistic art. In the early 1930s the sense of the bankruptcy, whether the ideals of progressive art were over. Man at the Crossroads a mural by Diego Rivera commissioned to be painted at the Rockefeller Plaza in 1934 cause a great deal of controversy. There were images or

present and past social related images, along with images of communism because it is about ordinary people. This brought into question the artists ability to say what they wanted to say with their art. Many artists at this time were painting and advocating the same cause, but this is greatly overlooked. 1,100 public murals were commissioned between 1935 and 1943. Thomas Hart Benton was one of the leaders of the American Regionalist art movement, and thus ignored modern European movements like cubism. Pablo Picasso Painted Guernica in 1937, which was commenting on the bombings on the small town in Spain during WWI. Stayed away from anything too photographic in order to express his emotions and feelings about objects and subjects. Scale became an object lesson for other artists. This piece is mural size.

Surrealism: biomorphism and automatism. This was a movement that emerged from Paris. This is an exploration of the unconscious mind. This was one of the avant-garde cultures that emerged in the 1930s. Surrealism provided a venue for expressing the things that were absolutely taboo. Joseph Cornell put together boxes that told stories that didnt really tell stories at all. Part of the concept of his pieces is free-association (Freud). Hans Hofmann taught at the Art Students League in NY, he introduced abstract painting to NY. If you choose color properly, you can compose images by causing the eye to push and pull objects. Museum of Modern art was set up in 1939. Jackson Pollock The golden-boy of the 1940s art scene. Early Pollock works show that he was clearly a student of Thomas Hart Benton, and later moving onto a muralist violent style common within the work of other muralists. Pollock was also influenced by Picasso in his earlier works. 1938-1939 is when artists began reading works by Carl Jung, which had a new explanation on how the human unconscious works, he believed in the collective unconscious. Automatism (visual free association), Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock both made this kind of art in their earlier career. This free association at this point is related to Jungs theory, not Freuds. The fall of Paris, because of the Nazis in 1940, symbolized to many the end of the old world. This fall of Paris meant that a large number of the population had to get out and came to America. This is considered the second immigration. Class Notes September 14

Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman created simplistic pieces that mainly consisted of geometric forms and strong colors. When America entered WWII, art changed to how countries felt they related to one another. Alberto Giacometti Was a sculptor who created pieces that are routinely interpreted as human beings, that walk this earth despite there being no purpose. He is a post-war survivor. He is reacting to a world where everything that used to make sense no longer makes sense. Thomas Hart Benton Painted propagandistic images of the of Japanese as the enemy in one of his mural series. Norman Rockwell During the war he painted a series of the four freedoms upon which America is based. Pictographic paintings explored primitive imagery. Adolph Gottlieb is among the artists producing these works. This was influenced by Jungs theory, which says that if we tap into our unconscious self, then we can become healthy full beings. These pieces were leaving their art to be open for exploration, while the more realistic pieces are like written literature. Painting shouldnt try to do what literature does. Alfred Barr Founding director of MOMA in NY. Propagandized European art. Is responsible for the famous of the cover for the catalogue for Cubism and Abstract Art in 1936. Ad Reinhardt Came up with the cartoon How to Look at Modern Art in America in 1946. Jackson Pollock Played around with the same types of images that Gottlieb did, before that he trained under Thomas Hart Benton, and also created murals. His painting has been referred to as action painting as well as drip painting. To recreate his journey or process you need to have the visual of what was occurring when he was creating his pieces. Pollocks painting has been seen as the artist pissing on his canvas. Notes September 16 Mark Tansey Painted Triumph of New York School 1984. This piece of his comments on American triumphing over European art. Rothko Chapel in Houston Built in 1970. Octagonal shaped building containing triptychs by Rothko. This type of work contributes to the elitist mentality associated with American art. Jackson Pollock

Looking at a photograph of Pollock painting almost substitutes for the experience of actually looking at one of his pieces. This brought to attention that painting could be brought to a whole new scale, as well as art viewing. The Irascible Eighteen was on the cover of Life magazine in 1950 This photograph shows 18 of the artists that were not chosen for the M.E.T. exhibit. The photograph includes Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning, Hedda Stern, Jackson Pollock, Theodora Stamos, Mark Rothko, were among the 18 in this photograph. They are among the generation of the first American artists. These were artists that did not want a label put on them. Each one of them developed a new style. They wanted nothing to do with copying European art. Barnett Newman His art was saying that modern people have more in common with primitive people. Has a piece were the canvas is painted in all black. To him this was taking a giant risk, yet, it wasnt a terribly new concept. All his pieces were painted in a mature style, which has also been called zip painting. Fields of intense color intersected by this vertical, carefully calculated colors. The notion of putting presence in a void can be related to as an object standing. Robert Motherwell Has a consisting style, of unrelenting black and white spaces in his paintings. The idea of making a mark being the only thing that a painter can really do is leave behind this marking. Has an art history background. One of his most famous series is Allergies of a Spanish Republic. For him these were painting a sense of loss. Mark Rothko Frequently associated as a member of the New York school. He stands for a certain approach and risk of making art. His work is about the effect of pools of color. Rothko takes out anything that you can derive and make sense of. Adolph Gottlieb Worked openly with cryptic primitive images. Eclipse looks like people singing to the sun/moon gods. Explores primitive imagery, and tends to use monotone colors. Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg Two very famous art critics, with two very different ideas on what a critic does. Greenberg seen as the man who got to dictate how modern art would be talked about. His idea of discussing art became the formal way. Emphasizes the formal aspects of a painting. Rosenberg had a more philosophical idea on what art was. That it was more about the act rather than what was actual on the canvas. Leads into performance art. The act of daring to make a picture, therefore the actual product isnt important, but rather the fact that they acted.