Exam #1 Study Guide

Exam #1 will be given on Thursday, September 16 and will cover Arnason chapters 17, 18 & pages 518 - 531 and Fineberg chapters 1 – 6

 

 

Click here for a printable version of this study guide.

 

Key Images
Be able to identify the title, artist and date of the following images.
Artist Title Date

Thumbnail Image

Jean Dubuffet
Large Sooty Nude
1944
Arshile Gorky
The Liver is the Cock's Comb
1944
Alberto Giacometti
Man Pointing
1947
Robert Motherwell
At Five in the Afternoon
1949
Jackson Pollock
Number 1
1949
Willem de Kooning
Excavation
1950
Barnett Newman
Vir Heroicus Sublimis
1950 - 51
David Smith
Hudson River Landscape
1951
Willem de Kooning
Woman I
1950 - 52
Alberto Burri
Sacco H8
1953
Helen Frankenthaler
Mountains and Sea
1952
Francis Bacon
Study After Velazquez's Portrait of
Pope Innocent X
1953
Mark Rothko
Green and Tangerine on Red
1956
Lee Krasner
Easter Lilies
1956
Morris Louis
Tet
1958




Key Terms
Know the definition and historical significance of the following terms.
 
Abstraction
Epiphany
Picture plane
Abstract Expressionism
Existentialism
Purified abstraction
Action Painting
Federal Arts Program
Regionalism
Allover composition
Figurative
Representational
Armory Show
Formalism
Social relevance
Art Brut
Kitsch
Sublime
Art Informel
The Mainstream
Surrealism
Art of This Century Gallery
Modernism
The Spanish Civil War
Automatism
The Modern Man
Tachisme
Avant-garde
Mural
World War II
Color Field
MOMA
Zip
Elegy
The New York School
 

 

 

People
Know the contributions, and the significance of those contributions, each of the following people made to the history of art.
 
Georges Bataille
Marcel Duchamp
Mexican muralists
Thomas Hart Benton
Clement Greenberg
Harold Rosenberg

 

 

Questions to consider
What elements characterize modern art?
What events and circumstances prompted the shift of art world power from Paris to New York?

How was a sense of community fostered amongst artists living in New York during and after WWII?  Why was this   community so important to American artists?
What problem did Peggy Guggenheim propose to critics in the 1945 exhibition “A Problem for Critics?” 
What characteristics/ approaches did the New York School artists share?  Why did they prefer to be called the “New York School” instead of “Abstract Expressionists?”
Why did Harold Rosenberg call the work of the New York School "Action Painting?"
What was so innovative about Jackson Pollock’s drip technique?
How did David Smith apply the language of painting to sculpture?
What were the core ideas to Greenberg's formalism?