Art Since 1900 | Exam #2 | Dr. Bevin Butler

that time again, huh?

De Stijl

-Avoiding narrative and emotional content.

-Desire to minimize “facture” - evidence of the artist’s hand or process (visible brushstrokes, etc).

-Goal was a “scientifically based, universal language of the senses” that could “unify art and unify humanity.”

-Manifesto written 1918, published 1922

Geometric Abstraction

Total abstraction with strong geometric basis

Theo van Doesburg

-(1883-1931).

-Writer, actor, painter; Founder of De Stijl.

-Spirituality of painting as an art of ”the mind” rather than of everyday life

Piet Mondrian,

(1872-1944)

-Painter & art theorist

-Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Geometric Abstraction (De Stijl)

-“Seeking the Spiritual through the Rational”

-Neoplasticism – New Form – Flatten foreground and background (unify the composition as a whole)

-square guy

-Later interest in jazz music in NYC

Staatliches Bauhaus

-“National House of Building"

-German art school

-combined fine arts, design, and craft; individual artistic creativity + mass production

-Influenced nearly all areas of modern art, design, architecture, and arts education

-Closed in 1933 due to persecution by Nazi regime

László Moholy-Nagy

-(1895-1946)

-Hungarian educator, designer, painter, experimental photographer

-Inspired by De Stijl and Russian avant-garde artists

-Commitment to scientific investigation – kinetic sculpture and photograms (same time as Man Ray, but apparently unaware) as “light modulators”

Josef Albers,

-(1888-1976)

-German artist and educator; student → faculty at Bauhaus; Founder of Black Mountain College in 1933

-Married textile artist Annie Fleischmann (Albers)

-Taught foundations, furniture design, and glass painting at Bauhaus school

-Explorations of light and color with geometric forms

Wassily Kandinsky

-(1866-1944)

-Joined Bauhaus faculty in 1922 to teach Theory of Form & led mural painting workshop

Surrealism

-Depictions of an absurd world; opposed “rationality and convention” in art

-Between WWI & WWII

-Does not fully reject tradition; wanted to confirm the “invincibility of artistic genius”

-Creative genius is from the subconscious mind; creative impulse; total originality; masculinity

-followed Freud’s philosophies and used Freudian techniques to access subconscious mind

Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud

-(1856-1939)

-Psychoanalysis to explain human aggression and deviance (in the wake of WWI)

-According to Freud:

-Personalities develop in childhood, importance of mother-son relationship (Oedipus Complex)

-Repressed s3xual desires

-Women as triggers for male feelings of shame and inadequacy (rejection or “Lack”)

-Result: women as objects of desire and/or fear

André Breton

-Surrealist writer and artist; pioneer of “Automatic Writing”

-Visual artists applied these methods to

drawing and painting

-Surprising results; love of the unexpected

and spontaneous

Exquisite Corpse

Surrealist game

Max Ernst

-(1891-1976)

•Delighted in “happy accidents” that made his artworks beyond his conscious control

•Ambiguous images – no clear meaning or interpretation

René Magritte

-(1898-1967)
-One of the most successful Surrealist artists
-Ordinary, everyday objects in unexpected contexts
-Challenges reality

Salvador Dali

(1904-1989)

-Combines Surreal content with hyper-realistic elements

-Themes: eroticism, death, decay

-Fluidity of time; Memento Mori

Frida Kahlo

-(1907-1954)

-Mexican painter

-“They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams or nightmares. I painted my own reality.”

-Physical and emotional pain

Abstract Expressionism

• Combines Abstraction (non-naturalistic or objective imagery) & Expressionism (emotional art)

• Based largely in New York City during and after WW2

• Opposed all forms of social realism, anything promoting nationalism, and even ”pure” geometric abstraction

Gestural Painters

• action painting

• Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline

Franz Kline

(1910-1962)

• Born in Pennsylvania; taught at Black Mountain College & Pratt Institute (NYC)

Willem de Kooning

(1904-1997)

• Dutch-born painter moved to U.S. in 1926; Also taught at Black Mountain College (close friends with Franz Kline)

• incorporates figural stuff by 50s

Jackson Pollock

(1912-1956)

• Splashed, dripped, poured paint onto canvas unrolled on the ground – “Action Painting”

• Focus is actions & gestures of artist

• The process becomes the subject matter –the act of creation is the art

• large-scale canvases dominate viewers’ field of vision

Color Field Painters

Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Ad Reinhardt

Clyfford Still

1904-1980

• U.S. Painter from North Dakota, Washington, Alberta

• Taught at several universities (including VCU) before working in NYC

• jagged shapes guy

Ad Reinhardt

(1913-1967)

• New York painter

• Studied with art historian Meyer Schapiro

• enjoyed single colors

Barnett Newman

(1905-1970)

• New York painter; Son of Polish Jewish immigrants

• “Zips” – Thin vertical lines in paintings (and prints)

Mark Rothko

(1907-1970)

• Color Fields – total abstraction

• Contemplation & Emotion

• hates notion of paintings being about color relationships

• interest in religion eventually leads to ______ Chapel

• gets sick in 1968, commits suicide in 1970

The Harlem Renaissance

(c 1918-1930s)

• neighborhood (NYC); “The first overtly race-conscious cultural movement in America”

• W.E.B. du Bois & Alain Locke (New Negro Movement) – Any conception of Black identity needed to be created by Black people (erasing the denigrating/negative stereotypes in favor of a positive/neutral self-image)

• Impacts Arts & Culture – Poetry (Langston Hughes), Music (esp. Blues & Jazz), and the Visual Arts

• No particular style in visual arts; grouped based on subject matter and philosophy of the “New Negro” movement

Palmer Hayden

• folk art feel

• common subject matter

Palmer Hayden, Untitled (Dreamer), 1930. Oil on Canvas, 12 X 18 in

Palmer Hayden, Midsummer Night in Harlem,
c 1936. Oil on Canvas, 25 X 30 in.

Aaron Douglas

• created Prodigal Son for book of biblical poetry

  • brings story into modern day, lots of Black American culture (jazz)

• known for silhouettes

Aaron Douglas, Into Bondage, 1936. Oil on Canvas, 60 X 60 in.

Archibald Motely

• more detail & naturalism

• dabbles in different styles through later 1920s

Archibald Motley, Portrait of my Grandmother,1922. Oil on Canvas, 38 X 24 in

Archibald Motley, Cocktails, 1926. Oil on Canvas, 32 X 40 in.

Nationalism and Regionalism in American art

• side effect of isolationist policies after WWI l

• Naturalistic representations of American life; Intrinsically “American” themes

• Against avant-garde modernist abstraction

Federal Art Project (FAP)

• established by Works Progress Administration in 1935

• government-sponsored program to support artists during economic recession

• resulted in pressure to create art pleasing to the governing body

American Regionalism

• Emphasize agrarian ideals, embrace “the heartland,” propagandistic potential

Thomas Hart Benton, The Sheepherder,
1934. Oil on Canvas, 48 X 66 in

Thomas Hart Benton

• swirls and sweeps, landscapes, colors

• America Today mural series

Primitivism

self taught, amateur

American Primitivism

• folk art inspo, still rejecting European “fine art”

Grandma Moses

• American Primitive painter

• flat landscapes w/ simplistic figures

Grandma Moses, Sugaring Off, Dark Sky,1948. Oil & Tempera on Canvas Board

Social Realism

• More socially conscious/critical, though more towards society than America

• Desire to represent “the masses”

• Art as a weapon to fight against capitalist exploitation

Edward Hopper

• obituary read: “painter of lonliness”

• lack of busy streets in paintings: The Nighthawks

Romare Bearden

• Social Realism & Harlem Renaissance

• works in both painting and collage

Jacob Lawrence

• simplicity to communicate through strong subject matter

• known for Migration of the Negro series

Romare Bearden, Factory Workers, 1942.
Gouache & Casein on Kraft Paper, 37 ½ X 29 in.

Jacob Lawrence, The Migration of the Negro series (40: The Migrants
arrived in Great Numbers), 1940. Casein Tempera on Board, 12 X 18 in.

Mexican Revolution

• (1910×1920)

• civil war

• ends with present-day Constitution of Mexico

“Economic Miracle”

• (1940-1970)

• Shift from violent uprisings since Mexican Revolution to more political stability and economic success

“The Great Three”

• most well known Modern Mexican artists

  • Diego Rivera

  • José Clemente Orozco

  • David Alfaro Siqueiros

Diego Rivera

• (1886-1957)

• Mexican painter and Communist activist

• Studied in Europe 1907-1921 (met Picasso & Gris; saw Renaissance frescoes in Italy)

• Monumental fresco/mural paintings

• Attempt to ”create a national style reflecting both the history of Mexico and the socialist spirit of the Mexican Revolution”

• Simple forms with bold areas of color

• Inspiration of Aztec and Maya style

• frequently hides Marx in works

Diego Rivera, Re-Created Rockefeller Mural (Man, Controller of the Universe), 1934.

Man at the Crossroads

• Rivera hired by & painted for Rockefellers

• depicts capitalism and communism with positive Soviet rep

• repainted elsewhere in 1934; og plastered over and later removed

José Clemente Orozco

• (1883-1949)

• Expressive, brash, “fiery” style

• Not as positive about industry and technology as Rivera

• The Epic of American Civilization
  

The Epic of American Civilization

• 24 mural panels at Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH), painted at same time as Rivera’s Rockefeller project

• Themes: Indigenous groups and European colonists in North America; Impacts of war and rapid industrialization

José Clemente Orozco, Cortez and the Cross (The Epic of American Civilization), 1932-1934, Mural, Dartmouth College.

José Clemente Orozco, Gods of the Modern World (The Epic of American Civilization), 1932-1934, Mural, Dartmouth College

David Alfaro Siqueiros

(1896-1974)

• Experimental techniques and imagery; fervent political activist and Communist (taught artists like Jackson Pollock in U.S. around 1935-1940

• Echo of a Scream

• Death to the Invader

Echo of a Scream

• Painted the year Siqueiros joined the antifascist Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War

• Based on a news photograph of a child among
  rubble in the Sino-Japanese War

Death to the Invader

• Mural project that creates an unconventional sense of space (covers the walls and vaulting of a small library)

• Indigenous Chileans and Mexicans fighting against European (Spanish) colonialization

Frida Kahlo

(1907-1954)

• Mexican Surrealist painter; subjects of physical pain and emotional grief

• Sick with polio as a child

• Bus accident in 1925 – Crushed spine, pelvis, and foot (back/body brace); suffered from chronic pain

• Became icon of Mexican heritage in 1970s

• Recurring subject matter and immediately recognizable fashion, accessories, hair, etc

  • barren land, plants, “crown“ of thorns, hair flowers

Frida Kahlo, The Broken Column, 1944, Oil on Masonite, 15 ¾ X 12 in.

Rufino Tamayo

• (1899-1991)

• Painter working in Mexico and New York City

• Born in Oaxaca (ART TOUR!)

• WPA artist until foreign artists were banned

• Not interested in politically-charged work

• Universal statements about the human condition, trauma, war, nature

• primary colors w/black & white, bold & bright colors, abstracted & geometric, dogs, watermelons

Rufino Tamayo, Animals, 1941, Oil on Canvas, 30 X 40 in