Art 1 Lecture 2

June 23
Breaking It Up

"Every so often, a painter has to destroy painting. Cezanne did it, Picasso did it with Cubism. Then Pollock did it. He busted our idea of a picture all to hell. Then there could be new paintings again." - Willem de Kooning		Jackson Pollock. Composition with Pouring II. 1943. Emmerling, Leonhard. Pollock. Koln: Taschen, 2003.

Assignments Due:	Student Information Sheet
	Worksheet #1

Hugo Ball performing Karawane at the Cabaret Voltaire. 1916. http://www.earlham.edu/~vanbma/20th%20century/images/ball4.jpg	Avant-garde = artists or works that are novel or experimental

	relates to military term for soldiers who explore battlefield ahead of advancing army
	suggests small group of intellectuals who push the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm

Manet. Luncheon on the Grass (Le Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe). 1863.
Stokstad, Marilyn. Art History. Revised Second ed. Vol. 2. New York: Prentice Hall Inc., and Harry N. Abrams Inc., 2005.

Claude Monet. Impression: Sunrise. 1872. Preble, Duane, Sarah Preble and Patrick Frank. Artforms. Seventh ed. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002.	The term "modernism" develops out of the avant-garde

	Modernism = philosophy that affirms the power of human beings to make, improve, deconstruct and reshape their lives, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation. The term covers many political, cultural and artistic movements rooted in the changes in Western society at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

The Modern World Emerges	Charles Sheeler. Rolling Power. 1939. Arnason, H.H. and Elizabeth C. Mansfield. History of Modern Art. Sixth edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2010.
At the turn of the 20th century, a number of traditional points of view were replaced with radical new ways of thinking

Einstein publishes his Theory of Relativity in physics
Increasing industrialization changes the way people live, buy and work
Freud introduces his concepts of the subconcious mind
The Wright brothers invent a machine that allows humans to fly
Ford's assembly line quickly and efficiently producesquickly and efficiently cutting edge machinery
And... the traditional center of the art world in Paris was beginning to lose its hold

Characteristics of Modern Art:	Pablo Picasso. Les Demoiselles D'Avignon. 1907. Stokstad, Marilyn. Art History. Revised Second ed. Vol. 2. New York: Prentice Hall Inc., and Harry N. Abrams Inc., 2005.
Discarded “traditional” forms of art as old-fashioned and irrelevant
Embraced disruption
Believed in universals and the essential
Valued innovation (being the first)

The 1913 Armory Show introduces radical European abstraction to America for the first time

Armory Show Main Hall

Armory Show Main Hall
http://www.usc.edu/schools/annenberg/asc/projects/comm544/library/images/415.html

Marcel Duchamp. Nude Descending A Staircase, No. 2. 1912. Preble, Duane, Sarah Preble and Patrick Frank. Artforms. Seventh ed. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002.	Responses to the Armory Show and Duchamp's Nude:
	President Theodore Roosevelt exclaimed, "That's not art!"
	New York Times critic said Duchamp's painting resembled "an explosion in a shingle factory."
	American Art News offered a prize to anyone who could find the nude
	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Stamp-ctc-armory-show.jpg

Marcel Duchamp. Fountain. 1917.
Stokstad, Marilyn. Art History. Revised Second ed. Vol. 2. New York: Prentice Hall Inc., and Harry N. Abrams Inc., 2005.

American Regionalism
Edward Hopper. Early Sunday Morning. 1930.	Grant Wood. American Gothic. 1930. Stokstad, Marilyn. Art History. Revised Second ed. Vol. 2. New York: Prentice Hall Inc., and Harry N. Abrams, 2005.

Social Realism
Thomas Hart Benton. Boomtown. 1928. http://www.scottzagar.com/arthistory/images_gallery/thomas%20hart%20benton%20-%20boomtown%20-%201928_288_t.jpg	Ben Shahn. The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti. 1931 - 32. http://blogimg.goo.ne.jp/user_image/53/04/d006d0b668efa0ea418aee97ed0b9ea6.jpg

"I wallowed in every cockeyed ism that came along, and it took me ten years to get all that modernist dirt out of my system."
- Thomas Hart Benton

The Arts of the West

Thomas Hart Benton. The Arts of the West. 1932.

Farm Security Administration 1935 - 1944	Dorothea Lange. Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California. 1936. Hirsch, Robert. Seizing the Light: A History of Photography. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2000.

Resettlement Administration (later known as the FSA) intended to move distressed farmers into more economically viable service and industrial jobs
Roy E. Stryker appointed chief of the historical section
Historical section's aim was to gather visual evidence in support of the RA's good works and to distribute these images, free of charge, to the nation's news agencies

Federal Art Project 1935 - 1943	Anthony Velonis. Federal Art Project poster. 1938. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:East_side_west_side.jpg	WPA exhibition posters http://www.siegmanandsons.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/wpa-collage.gif

FAP artists received the famous salary of $23.86 / week at a time when a Woolworth's clerk earned $11 /week

Fostred a sense of community amongst artists
Spoke of the importance of art to the United States

The Mexican Muralists - "Los Tres Grandes"

Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siquieros & Diego Rivera

American artists identified with the Mexican Muralists because they sought many of the same goals:

In search of a distinctive national imagery and style

Belief in use art as a vehicle for social change

Embraced the notion that art was for "the people" rather than the wealthy elite

Prometheus

Jose Clemente Orozco. Prometheus. 1930.
Harth, Marjorie L. Jose Clemente Orozco: Prometheus. Pomona College Museum of Art.

David Siqueiros. America Tropical. 1932.

Man, Controller of the Universe

Diego Rivera. Man, Controller of the Universe. 1934.
Fresco at the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City.
Stokstad, Marilyn. Art History. Revised Second ed. Vol. 2. New York: Prentice Hall Inc., and Harry N. Abrams Inc., 2005.

Pablo Picasso. Guernica. 1937. 11' X 23'. Oil on canvas.
http://likovna-kultura.ufzg.hr/images31/Picasso.Guernica2.jpg

"Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war for attack and defense against the enemy." - Pablo Picasso

Guernica

Guernica after attack

Historic Context		Attack on Pearl Harbor. December 7, 1941. http://www.journaltimes.com/nucleus/media/1/20051206-pearl3.jpg

1929	Great Depression begins
1933	Hitler's Nazi Party seizes power
	New Deal begins - program of government spending to end the Great Depression
1936 - 1939	Spanish Civil War
1939 - 1945	WWII - the largest and deadliest war in history with over 62 to 78 million deaths (22 to 25 milion military casualties)
1941	Japanese attack Pearl Harbor
1945	US bombs Hiroshima and Nagasaki - first use of the atomic bomb
	Founding of the United Nations

Bernard Waldman. The Fat Man mushroom cloud resulting from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki. August 9, 1945.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Nagasakibomb.jpg

Nagasaki before and after nuclear bombing. 1945.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Nagasaki_1945_-_Before_and_after_%28adjusted%29.jpg

Lee Miller. Buchenwald. April 1945.
Marien, Mary Warner. Photography: A Cultural History. Second edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.

Dresden after allied bombing in 1945
http://www.carleton.ca/ces/EULearning/images/dresde2.jpg

After WWII		Alfred Eisenstaedt. V.J. Day. 1945. Marien, Mary Warner. Photography: A Cultural History. Second edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.

Europe	United States
Left in ruins - few resources to rebuild	Housing and construction boom spawned by GI returns
Many countries remain politically divided	Country invigorated by new found strength and prominence
Many artists had immigrated to the U.S.	Sense of artistic community blossoms in NY

The artistic community in New York begins to blossom		The Art Students League, NY http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Art _Students_League_sun_jeh.JPG/300px Art_Students_League_sun_jeh.JPG

	Important art schools and groups:
	Art Students League
	Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts
	The Club
	Cedar Tavern

Peggy Guggenheim in her Art of This Century Gallery http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_mb6hU_h-MnE/SiPuuLrq8cI/AAAAAAAACiA/G_0KiRBSeZc/s400/40909596.jpg		New venues to see and exhibit art in:
		Museum of Modern Art
		Museum of Non-Objective Painting (will later become the Guggenheim Museum)
		Betty Parsons Gallery
		Sidney Janis Gallery
		Art of This Century Gallery

Arshile Gorky
1904 - 1948


Vassily Kandinsky. Improvisation No. 30 (Cannons). 1913. Stokstad, Marilyn. Art History. Revised Second ed. Vol. 2. New York: Prentice Hall Inc., and Harry N. Abrams Inc., 2005.	Arshile Gorky. The Betrothel II. 1947. Lucie-Smith, Edward. Movements in Art Since 1945. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2001.

Arshile Gorky dancing at a party	Vostanik Manoog Adoyan

	Arshile = refers to the hero Achilles
	Gorky = Russian for bitter

	"The bitter Achilles"

Arshile Gorky. The Artist and His Mother. 1926 - 36.
http://www.whitney.org/www/research/gorky/index.html

Arshile Gorky. Garden in Sochi. c. 1943.

Sochi = Russian resort on the Black Sea

Sosi = poplar tree in Armenian

"It was the custom in our family at the birth of a son to plant a poplar tree which would later have the birth date and name carved on it. Gorky as a child loved his tree and took great pride in caring for it." - Vartoosh

The Liver in the Cock's Comb

Arshile Gorky. The Liver is the Cock's Comb. 1944.

Multiple layers of meaning for "liver" :
one who lives
the liver was the source of passion for the ancients


"I do not believe in anarachy in art. There must be some structure...For me, art must be a facet of the thinking mind...unrelenting spontaneity is chaos." - Arshile Gorky

The Calendars

Arshile Gorky. The Calendars. 1946 - 47.

" Loved ones or "loveds"

Arshile Gorky. The Last Painting. 1948.
http://www.museothyssen.org/thyssen_ing/coleccion/ficha419.htm

Arshile Gorky Retrospective at MOCA