Early and Mid-20th Century Art

- still life painting

- violent contrasts of color

- thinly applied colors; white of canvas shows through

- energetic painterly brushwork

- may have been influenced by decorative quality of Asian art

- broad patches of color anticipate Color-Field painting later in century

Goldfish

- movement toward abstraction; representational objects suggested rather than depicted

- title derived from musical compositions strongly articulated use of black lines

- colors seem to shade around line forms

- felt that sound and color were linked; Kandinsky generally believed to have synesthesia

- gave musical titles to works like "Composition" and "Improvisation"

- wanted viewer to respond to a painting the way one would to an abstract musical composition like a concerto, sonata, or symphony

Improvisation 28 (second version)

- "unwilling volunteer" driver in the artillery in WWI, rather than be drafted into infantry

- declared unfit for service; lung problems and weakness; mental breakdown-scholarly debate whether or not faked to avoid service

- painted during recuperation period

- drawn face; loss of right hand indicates his feeling that he has an inability to paint

- nude model represents what he used to paint, but no longer can

- nightmarish quality

- colors not representational, but symbolic and chosen to provide jarring impact

- expressive quality of horrified facial features and grim surroundings

- titled perspective moves things closer to the picture plane

- life plagues by drug abuse, alcoholism, then paralysis

Self-Portrait as a Soldier

- themes of war and poverty dominate her works

- themes of women grieving over dead children; her son died in WWI, then she became a socialist

- Karl Liebknecht among the founders of the Berlin Spartacus League that became the German Communist Party

- 1919: Liebknecht shot to death during a Communist uprising in Berlin called the Spartacus Revolt

- no political reference in woodcut

- human grief dominates

- stark black and white of woodcuts to magnify grief

Memorial Sheet for Karl Liebknecht

- first Cubist work, influenced by late Cezanne and African masks

- represents five prostitutes in a bordello on Avignon Street in Barcelona, each posing for a customer

- poses not traditionally alluring but awkward, expressionless, and uninviting

- three on left more conservatively painted, two on right more radical; reflects dichotomy in Picasso

- multiple views expressed at the same time

- no real depth

- influenced by Gauguin's primitivism

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

- Analytical Cubism; worked in concert w/ Picasso to develop this style

- rejected naturalistic and conventional painting

- fractured forms; breaking down objects into smaller forms

- clear-edged surfaces sit on picture plane, not recessed in space

- nearly monochrome

- not portrait of Portuguese musician; exploration of shapes

- only realistic elements: stenciled letters and numbers; suggest dance hall poster behind guitarist?

- cafe atmosphere

The Portuguese

- symbolic, almost Cubist, rendering of male and female bodies

- intertwined and enveloped figures

- two eyes become one, almost Cyclops-like

- interlocked bodies

- Brancusi worked in Rodin's studio

- fourth stone version of this subject, done as a commission; first was one of Brancusi's earliest efforts at stone carving; second, a plaster cast, exhibited at the Armory Show; third used as tombstone in Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris over the body of a suicide victim: young Russian anarchist (artist asked by a friend of the deceased, who had jilted her, for a marking of her grave; artist said take what you want; he took this); there may have been many more undocumented versions

The Kiss (129)

- photographed the world as he saw it, arranged little and allowed people and events to make their own compositions

- interested in compositional possibilities of diagonals and lines acting as framing elements

- diagonals and raming effects of ladders, sails, steam pipes, etc.

- depicted poorest passengers on a ship traveling from the US to Europe in 1907; some may have been people turned away from entrance to the US, more likely artisans whose visas had expired and were returning home

- published in October 1911 in Camera Work

- influenced by experimental European painting; compared to Busist drawing by Picasso; Cubist-like in arrangement of shapes and tonal values

- represents social divisions of society

- steerage: the part of a ship reserved for passengers w/ the cheapest tickets

The Steerage

- ready-made, actually a found object Duchamp deemed to be a work of art

- entered in an unjuried show for the Society of Independent Artists (which he was a part of) under a different name; "accepted" but hid during the exhibition; resigned afterward

- signed by "artist" R. Mutt, a pun on Mutt and Jeff comic strip and Mott Iron Works

- title Fountain a pun; fountains spout liquid, a urinal meant to collect; added irony placing urinal upside down

Fountain (second version)

- done in response to Picasso's claim that anything looks good in fur; went to store right after meeting to buy materials

- combination of unlike objects: fur-covered teacup, saucer, and spoon

- erotic overtones

- assemblage

- combined traditionally female and genteel objects vs. masculinity of sculpture done in harde surfaces in great scale and made vertically

- chosen by visitors of a Surrealist show in New York as the quintessential Surrealist work of art

- fame came young (22 when she made it) and inhibited growth as an artist

Object (Le Petite-Déjeuner en Fourrure)

- juxtaposition of two self-portraits

- left: Kahlo dressed as a Spanish lady in white lace

- right: Kahlo dressed as a Mexican peasant; stiffness and provincial quality of Mexican folk art serves as direct inspiration for artist

- two hearts twined together by veins cut by scissors at one end and lead to portrait of husband, Rivera at other; painted at time of divorce

- barren landscape, two figures sit against wildly active sky

- rejected label of Surrealism

- vien acts as an umbilical cord, symbolically associating Rivera as husband and son

- blood on lap suggests many abortions and miscarriages, also her surgeries related to her polio

The Two Fridas

- Cuban-born artist whose career took him to Europe and US

- interested in Cuba's mixture of Hispanic and African cultures

- influenced by African sculpture; Cubist works; Surrealist paintings (member of Surrealist movement in Paris)

- "intended to communicate a psychic state"

- addresses history of slavery in colonial Cuba

- crescent-shaped faces suggest African masks

- rounded backs, thin arms and legs, pronounced hands and feet

- meant to suggest sugarcane, which are grown in field, not jungles

The Jungle

- one of main figures in Russian avant-garde movement

- graphic art for political and propaganda purposes

- influenced by Cubism and Futurism

- five year plan: Soviet practice of increasing agricultural and industrial output in five years; launched in 1928; considered complete in 1932

- emphasis on growth of heavy industry rather than consumer goods

- hugs increases in electrical output (dominant industrial symbol in work)

- double page spread in a book

- red dominates: color of Communist Soviet Union

- CCCP Russian abbreviation for the Soviet Union

- large portrait of Lenin dominates; although deceased, his image is used to stimulate patriotism

Illustration from The Results of the First Five-Year Plan

- only primary colors used

- severe geometry of form, only right angles; gridlike forms

- no shading of colors

- asymmetrical composition

Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow

- cantilevered porches extend over waterfall; accent on horizontal lines; architecture in harmony w/ site

- living room contains glass curtain wall around 3/4 sides; embraces woods around

- floor of living room and walls of building made from stone of the area

- hearth is center of house, an outcropping of natural stones surrounds it

- suppression of space devoted to hanging a painting; Wright wanted architecture to dominate

- irregularity and complexity of ground plan and design

Fallingwater

- three bedroom villa w/ servant's quarters

- boxlike horizontal quality; abstraction of a house

- main part lifted off ground by narrow pilotis; house appears to float on them

- turning circle on bottom floor a carport, so that family members can enter directly from car

- all space utilized, including roof (patio)

- no historical ornamentation

- subtle colors: white on exterior symbolized modern cleanliness, the new, simplicity, healthful living

- open interior free of many walls

- furniture build into walls

- ribbon windows wind around second floor

- streamlined look

- living spaces around open courtyard-type setting on second floor; surrounded by glass

- patrons: Pierre Emilie Savoye, wanted a country house

Villa Savoye

- reflection of Minimalist movement in painting

- "less is more" can be seen in this building: great simplicity, geometry of design, elegance of construction

- set back from street on wide plaza balanced by reflecting pools

- bronze veneer gives skyscraper monolithic look

- interplay of vertical and horizontal accents

- steel-and-glass skyscraper became the model after WWI

- triumph of International Style

Seagram Building

- series of 60 paintings depicting migration of African-Americans from rural south to urban North after WWI

- overall color unity in series unites each painting

- forms hover in large spaces

- flat simple shapes

- unmodulated colors

- collective African-American experience, little individuality to figures

- goes back to tempera paint; influenced by Italian masters of 14th and 15th centuries

- collective unity achieved by painting one color across many panels before going on to next color

- angularity of forms

- scene involved public restaurant in North; segregation emphasized by yellow poles that zigzag down center

- titled table tops show surface of table

- narrative painting in an era of increasing abstraction

The Migration of the Negro

- 50 x 13 feet

- originally in lobby of Hotel Del Prado

- after 1985 earthquake that destabilized hotel, placed in Alameda Park, Mexico City's first city park; build on grounds of Aztec marketplace

- three ears of Mexican history depicted: conquest and colonization of Mexico by Spanish; Porfirio Diaz dictatorship; revolution of 1910

- depicts a who's who of Mexican politics, culture, and leadership: Sor Juana; Benito Juarez, five term president; General Santa Ana handing the Keys of Mexico to General Winfield Scott; Emperor Maximilian and Empress Carlota; Jose Marti, father of Mexican independence (tipping hat); General Porfirio Diaz w/ medals, asleep; police officer ordering a family out of an elitist park; Francisco Madero, martyred president; artist at center, age ten, holding hands with Caterina ("Death") dreaming of a perfect love, w/ Kahlo behind

- horror vacui; didactic; colorful

- revival of fresco painting, a Mexican specialty

Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Park

- ferocious woman w/ great fierce teeth and huge eyes

- large bulbous breasts satire on women who appear in magazine ads; smile said to be influenced by ad of woman selling Camel cigarettes

- slashing of paint onto canvas

- jagged lines create overpowering image

- smile cut out of female smile from magazine ad

- blank stare; frozen grin

- ambiguous environment: vagueness, insecurity

- combination of stereotypes; ironic comment on banal and artificial world of film and ads

- one of series of six on woman theme

- influenced by everything: Paleolithic goddesses to pin-up girls

- think and think black lines dominate

Woman, I

- painted directly on unprimed canvas; absorbs paint more directly

- uses runny paint, sometimes thinned w/ turpentine

- landscape as starting point; basis for imagery in the works

- accentuates 2dness of canvas

- worked in avant-garde New York School at mid-century

The Bay

- screen=printing photographic images onto backgrounds of rectangular shapes

- repeated imagery drains image of Monroe of meaning

- 50 images from film still from a movie, Niagara

- cult of celebrity

- left, in color, represents her in life; right, in black and white, represents her death; work down four months after tragic death

- Marilyn's public face appears highlighted by bold, artificial colors

- private persona of individual submerged beneath public face

- social characteristics magnified: brilliance of blonde hair, heavily applied lipstick, seductive expression

Marilyn Diptych

- first installed on Beinecke Plaza, New Haven, in 1969

- intended as a platform for public speakers; rallying point for anti-Vietnam era protests

- erected secretly

- tank-shaped platform base w/ lipstick ascending--anti-war symbolism

- male and female forms unite: themes of death, power, desire, and sensuality

- sculpture made of inexpensive and perishable materials

- refurbished w/ steel, aluminum, fiberglass; reinstalled in 1974 in front of Morse College at Yale

- first monumental sculpture by Oldenburg

Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks

- Kusama: internationally renowned Japanese-born artist; got start sowing large works of art featuring huge polka dots; one of foremost innovators of Happenings; works in a wide variety of media, including installations

- originally featured as non-participant in 1966 Venice Biennale

- 1500 large, mirrored, stainless steel balls placed on lawn under sign: "Your Narcissism for Sale"

- artist offered balls for 1200 lira ($2 each) as commentary on commercialism and vanity of current art world

- references ancient myth of Narcissus, young man so enraptured by own image in reflecting water, he stares at it indefinitely until he becomes a flower

- later moved to water, where floating balls reflect natural environment (and viewers) around work; placement makes stronger connection to myth

- move w/ currents of water and wind, reflecting organically made ever-changing viewpoints

- installation has been exhibited in many places around the world, both in water and in dry spaces

Narcissus Garden

- coil of rock in part of Great Salt Lake; in extremely remote and inaccessible area that features abandoned mines and equipment

- upon walking on, twisting and curling path changes participant's view from every angle

- tractor w/ native stone used to create

- a jetty is supposed to be a pier in the water; now transformed into curl of rocks sitting silently in vast empty wilderness

- coil image seen in North American earthworks

- artist liked blood red color of water due to presence of bacteria that live in high salt content

Spiral Jetty

- house designed for family of three

- wife: musician; hence music room w/ two pianos, an organ, and a harpsichord

- husband: bird watcher; large windows facing woods

- post-modern mix of historical styles

- Venturi's comment on International Style: "Less is a bore"

House in New Castle County