ARTF 100 - Modern and Postmodern Practices

NOTE: this tool is meant to be a supplement, NOT a replacement for studying. Take everything here with a pinch of salt, cause I am not the professor.

Dada and absurdity

A short-lived avant-garde movement (but became more of an attitude) emerging after WW2, which focuses on the ironic and absurd. This art movement critiqued all types of authority: institutions, traditions, logic itself, and the past. Artists of this movement embraced intuition, absurdity, chance, improvisation, the unconventional, and humor to critique our ties to the past. This art movement also expanded the idea of what art could be.

Modernism

A cultural perspective that embraced the continued progression of human civilization towards a utopian ideal, breaking ties with the past in search of the new. There is a focus on a single and universal truth, authenticity and purity of form, originality, and the innovative and the new. The art’s meaning was tied to the form and also defined by the artist.

Post-modernism

A cultural skepticism of Modernism’s certainty in describing reality through an objective universally understood truth. This art movement sees that multiple truths can exist at the same time, rather then a singular reductive truth that applies to everyone. Reality stems from one’s unique personal experience to arrive at a truth rather than an external truth claimed to be valid for all race, cultures, traditions, or groups. Followers of this movement also saw that nothing was original, nothing is pure or authentic. Visual art mirrored our external reality, an image with no inherent meaning. This means that an artwork’s meaning is not fixed and depended on context.

The ready-made

Artwork that is made by taking ordinary manufactured items from their expected context and ordinary function, and putting it into a new context. This opened the door for any kind of material, image, or object to be used in the making of an artwork. It also challenged what could be considered art, how art is made, and what role the artist plays in art.

Deconstruction

The critical challenge of the established meaning of the cultural form or idea, often understood as a text. This goes beyond mere analysis and questions the assumed meaning the text.

Appropriation

The intentional borrowing, copying or incorporation of pre-existing image, artwork, or aesthetic form into a new one. When incorporating a pre-existing media into a new form, the artist relies on the media’s familiarity to the viewer, and invests new meaning by using it in a new context / function.

Shifts in visual representation and cultural/ philosophical perspective

Each historical period is a reaction against / rejection of the previous period. Each era of art often addresses issues within their time period (for example war) and challenges the status-quo.

Abstract Expressionism

Artists employed a purely abstract, or non-objective, approach to visual representation. These artists used pure abstraction as an attempt to have the artwork relate to everyone in some way, universally. Meaning, since their style was purely abstract, it transcended any specific culture or language.

Pictorial space

The illusion of depth on a 2d image

Avant-garde

Those ahead of their time and the rest of society in thought and creative expression, the ‘artistic genius’

Anti-art

“Art” that emerged as a means of mocking/ rebelling against the art establishment.

Mark Rothko and Color Field Painting

His paintings used large blocks of color that lacked any sort of representation. This is also known as color field painting. He purposely selects certain colors in certain compositions to evoke something in the viewer.

Robert Motherwell

His visual style bridged the vast expanses of color field painting with the expressive gesture of the Abstract Expressionists, such as in action painting.

Jackson Pollock and Action Painting

This artist’s style used a dynamic, energetic approach to painting that emphasized movement. His paintings were visual records of how he moved, gestured, and applied the paint onto canvas.

Marcel Duchamp

He used ordinary manufactured objects taken from their expected context and ordinary function and turned them into an aesthetic one, also known as the ready-made. He expanded on what could be considered art, and what role the artist played in the art process.

Pop art

An art movement that adopted the look and processes of popular and consumer culture: advertising, industrial and product design, mass media (television and movies), and commercial art and design. These artists did not focus on creating original imagery, but used imagery already in circulation.

pop/ popular culture

Icons, media, images, etc that are popular and you see in everyday life.

James Rosenquist 

Used a representational painting style to paint images of pop art/ culture. He would often collage together imagery from source material commonly found in mainstream society. He is known for being a billboard painter.

Robert Rauschenberg

Influenced by John Cage and the composer’s ideas on incidental sound as valid in composing music. He’d incorporate found objects and trash into artworks he’d make, known as combines, blurring the line between art and life, reminiscent of Duchamp and the Dadaist movement.

Combines

Artworks that literally combined found objects with painted imagery into a single piece (mixed media)

Roy Lichtenstein

Transformed the singular panels of comic books into dramatic, large-scale paintings. The drama of his paintings was due to their epic scale.

Consumerism & consumer culture

The consumption or acquisition of material goods and services in ever increasing amounts.

Jasper Johns

Uses everyday items and symbols and recontextualizes it in his artwork. Examples of this is his painting of the American flag. (Is it a flag, or is it a painting?)

Andy Warhol

His works explored the relationships between celebrity, consumer culture, and art. He is known for his process of commercial printing, reproducing images of celebrities over and over again. The image of the celebrity becomes more of a symbol of society rather than a real person. He also did representations of many name-brand products.

Jean-Michel Basquiat

An artist that channeled the black experience through his artwork using Pop art’s appropriation of icons and images, Dada’s satire and humor, Abstract Expressionism’s dynamic bodily gestures, and directed hip hop and punk rage at the status quo.

Hybridity

The mixing of distinct media, techniques, and artistic forms and materials that normally have no relation to each other to create a unique aesthetic result.

superflat

A theory relating to the distinct representation of flat space, asymmetry, and abstraction prevalent in historical and contemporary pop Japanese art

Otaku

A young person (usually male) who’s fanatically obsessed with manga and anime, its merchandising, and all other manner of cultural production stemming from Japanese comics and animation.

Sequential art

A series of juxtaposed images shown in succession in a deliberate sequence, using either time or space.

common good

Something that which benefits the whole or a majority of a group.

David Hammons

This artist takes on the role of a jester, poking fun at all that is sacred to the elite, the fine art establishment, and even his own fellow artists and Black community. He uses word play, figurative language, puns, cross-cultural mash ups, high art concepts, and familiar materials from everyday life to critique issues on race and class.

Ruben Ortiz Torres

Using hybridity of different cultures, symbols, and materials, he explores the porous nature of the Mexican-American border.

Takashi Murakami

He is known for his Japanese Pop Art, and the Superflat theory. He recognizes our relationship with consumerism: We are addicted/ “consumed” by the very things we desire.

Lowrider Culture

Lowriders reflect the Hispanic history of colonialism and oppression. The cars of Hispanic laborers would “drop down” like a lowrider. Lowriders have ties to the Baroque period and Latin American colonialism.

Relational aesthetics

An open ended artform that focuses on human behavior, relationships, and interaction as the inspiration, and actual material for artmaking.