June 30 |
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Action vs. Abstraction |
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"We have differences but we're not made different. If you don't agree with me, you're wrong." - Clement Greenberg
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Clement Greenberg viewing a Kenneth Noland canvas |
Assignments Due: Worksheets #3 & #4 |
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Competing Sensibilities in Post-War American Art |
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Harold Rosenberg |
Harold Rosenberg |
Clement Greenberg |
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Action |
Abstraction |
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Expression of the individual |
All-over composition |
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Gestural marks that declared the artist's heroic existence |
Large expanses of color |
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Barnett Newman. Onement I.
1948.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3474/3211173661_0c46241358.jpg
Suggestions in Onement |
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Barnett Newman. Onement I.
1948. |
A oneness with another being |
When you atone you connect and communicate |
Jews atone during Yom Kippur |
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Cabbalists regard Yom Kippur as a time to reflect on the mystery of creation |
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Genesis |
The separation of light and darkness |
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The beginning of life |
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Red-brown field of color |
Suggests the earth |
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Hebrew word for earth = adamah |
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In Genesis, Adam was made from earth |
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Barnett Newman. Vir Heroicus
Sublimis (Man, Heroic and Sublime). 1950-51. approx. 8' X 18'
http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=79250
Viewers absorbing Vir Heroicus Sublimis
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3277/3106241220_a8f5193a94.jpg
Sublime
= lofty, grand or exalted in thought, expression or manner; of outstanding
spiritual, intellectual or moral worth; tending to inspire awe usually
because of elevated quality |
Caspar David Friedrich. Monk by the Sea. 1808 - 09. |
Epiphany
= an appearance or manifestation of a divine being; a sudden manifestation
or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something; an intuitive
grasp of reality through something usually simple and striking
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"Instead of making cathedrals out of Christ , man or life, we are making them out of ourselves, out of our own feelings." - Barnett Newman |
Mark Rothko. Green and Tangerine on Red. 1956.
A Rothko
painting "is not a picture of an experience, it is an experience."
- Rothko admirer |
Mark Rothko 1961 |
Mark Rothko. Red, Orange, Tan, and Purple. 1949. |
Mark Rothko. Seagram Murals. 1958 - 60.
Hess, Barbara. Abstract Expressionism. Koln: Taschen, 2005.
Mark
Rothko. Rothko Chapel. 1964.
Hess, Barbara. Abstract Expressionism. Koln: Taschen, 2005.
Barnett Newman. Broken Obelisk. 1963. (outside of the Rothko Chapel)
Janson, H.W. and Anthony F. Janson. History of
Art. 6th Ed. Vol. 2. North Carolina: Prentice Hall and Harry N. Abrams, 2001.
2 vols.
Queen Hapshetsut's Obelisk at Karnak |
Washington Monument and Reflecting Pool |
Willem de Kooning
1904 - 1997
Willem de Kooning. Still Life: Bowl, Pitcher and Jug. c. 1921. |
Willem de Kooning. Seated Woman. c. 1940. |
Willem de Kooning. Pink Angels. 1945.
Willem de Kooning. Painting. 1948.
Wilem de Kooning. Excavation. 1950.
Willem de Kooning. Woman I.
1950 - 52. |
"I like beautiful women, in the flesh; even the models in the magazines. Women irritate me sometimes. I painted that irritation in the Woman series. Maybe... I was painting the woman in me." - De Kooning "There is no plot in painting. It's an occurrence which I discover by, and it has no message." - De Kooning |
Willem and Elaine de Kooning 1953. |
"To establish once and for all that I did not pose for these ferocious women. I was taken aback to discover in Hans' photograph that I and the painted lady seemed like…mother and daughter. We're even smiling the same way."- Elaine de Kooning |
Vagina dentata = Latin for toothed vagina. Various cultures have folk tales about women with toothed vaginas, frequently told as cautionary tales warning of the dangers of sex with strange women. |
Willem de Kooning. Woman and Bicycle. 1952 - 53. |
| iconomaniacs episode 8 | |
David Smith
1906 - 1965
Pablo Picasso. Guitar. 1912 - 1913. Sheet metal and wire. |
Julio Gonzalez. Woman Combing Her Hair. c. 1931. |
David Smith. Hudson River Landscape. 1951.
"Is my work...the Hudson River, or is it the travel, the vision, the ink spot, or does it matter?" - Smith |
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Similarities with Ab Ex painting: |
Shiny, burnished
surface calls attention to the flatness of forms |
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Rough welding
implies spontaneity like action painting |
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Improvisational construction method related to automatism |
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Used industrial "everyday man" materials |
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David Smith. Cubi XVII. 1963. (side view and frontal view) |
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David
Smith. Cubi XXVII. 1965.
http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/images/lists/work/146B_2_lg.jpg
Purchased by Eli Broad in 2005 for $23.8 milion making it the most expensive contemporary work sold at auction at the time
Newman, Pollock and Smith
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/newman/images/newman_pollock_smith.jpg
Core ideas
of Greenbergian Formalism: |
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Modern art
was a means of resisting the leveling of culture produced by capitalism |
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http://blogs.sun.com/jag/resource/18841E.jpg |
Proposed a distinction between high and low art/ culture |
Kitsch = mass produced, low quality, consumer culture |
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Towards a Newer Laocoon 1940 |
Urged artists to break with the traditional dominance of subject matter |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Degenerate_art_exhibit.jpg |
Modern art was like philosophy in that it explored conditions under which we experience and understand the world |
Art should not simply illustrate experience |
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Used the fear of communism in support of abstraction and formalism |
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The arts should remain autonomous |
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Art forms should avoid "confusion" with each other as they are stronger when they do not mix |
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American Type Painting 1955 |
Recognized that painters were moving towards greater emphasis on the flatness of the picture plane |
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Clyfford Still. 1947-R, No.
2. 1947. |
Dialogue on flatness moved their art away from the Old Masters |
Artists had previously seen the flatness of the picture plane as a hurdle to overcome in the attempt to depict three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface |
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Modernist Painting 1961 |
Traced interest in the flatness of the picture plane back to the Impressionists |
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Edouard
Manet. Luncheon on the Grass ( |
Considered the history of the avant-garde as a continuous stripping away of subject matter, illusion and pictorial space |
Favored a dialogue on the unique, formal qualities of paint |
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Concept of the "mainstream" as a strictly linear progression of art history |
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Each new style builds on its predecessors |
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Only one dominant style exists at any given time |
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All other styles should be ignored |
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"Any painter today, not working abstractly is working in a minor mode." |
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Pollock, Greenberg, unidentified boy, Frankenthaler & Krasner
http://www.aaa.si.edu/images/polljack/reference/AAA_polljack_6311.jpg
