Mexican Muralism to Land Art

Mexican Muralism (Post-1910-1920 Revolutions)

  • Emerged after the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920).
  • Sought new art forms to uplift the people and support revolutionary ideologies.
  • Themes:
    • Heroicizing the labor class.
    • Racial unity.
    • Indigenous identity.
    • Focus on national Mexican history and forging a new identity.
  • Key figures: "Los Tres Grandes".
  • Extended throughout Latin America.
  • Orozco:
    • The Trench or Deconstruction of the Old Order.
    • Escuela National Preparation at Asan Ildefonso College, 1932.
    • Art about and for the people.
    • Large-scale murals in public spaces (schools).
    • Murals depict figures looking towards a broken city, symbolizing the future of the country.
    • Possible response to Futurism.
  • Diego Rivera (1886-1957):
    • Drew upon Marxism (Karl Marx) as a political ideology and the foundation for communist theories.
    • Distribution of Arms, Mexico City.
    • Figures united by a red ribbon with words from a revolutionary folk song.
    • Figures emerge from the frame, engaging the viewer.
    • Frida Kahlo, Rivera's wife, is often a central figure.
    • References to the Soviet Union, labor class, and class struggles.

Rivera: History of Mexico Murals (1929-1939)

  • Presents Mexican history as a continuous narrative.
  • Covers the Spanish conquest, revolution, and a Marxist-influenced future.
  • Intertwines class struggle with the Indigenous past.
  • Separates itself from European influences, emphasizing the Aztec Empire.
  • Considers the allocated space, integrating the image into the wall.
  • Allows viewers to place themselves within the scene.
  • Intertwines Mexican national identity with its indigenous past, blurring racial hierarchies and merging European and indigenous cultures.
  • Features the eagle with the cactus, symbolizing Mexican history and serving as a national "flag".
  • Reflects cycles of belief systems and the Mexican Revolution through a Marxist lens.
  • Technique:
    • Links Renaissance fresco and Mesoamerican wall painting traditions, using murals as a form of propagation, like the church did during the Renaissance.

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954)

  • Did not create murals; focused on private and personal works.
  • Addressed broader topics and incorporated Mexican identity into her personal identity.
  • The Two Fridas (1939):
    • One Frida in a lace dress (representing Europe) and another in indigenous clothing, connected by their hearts.
    • Portrays pain related to her identity and physical suffering.
  • Rejected being labeled a Surrealist painter.
  • Used painting as a way to express her physical pain.
  • The Broken Column (1944):
    • Visually represents her internal feelings.
    • Felt overshadowed by her husband's fame as a muralist.
    • Asserted her agency as an artist.
    • Gained greater recognition in recent decades and has surpassed Rivera’s status.

Orozco: Prometheus (1930)

  • Created in America after losing funding in Mexico.
  • Depicts Prometheus, both celebrated and feared, symbolizing change in the Mexican-American context.
  • Brought Marxist ideologies to the U.S.

American Scene Painting

  • Expressed a sense of place, favoring realism over modernist abstraction.
  • Focused on figurative and narrative images, small-town rural life, and responses to the Great Depression.
  • Sought an American national identity.
  • Grant Wood:
    • From Iowa, painted scenes of the U.S.
    • Plait Sweater (1931):
      • Clear and not fragmented.
      • Return to blended strokes and forms instead of gestural brushstrokes.
      • Classical compositions reminiscent of European portraiture.
    • Stone City: Celebration of rural life.
    • Regionalist style.
    • American Gothic (1930):
      • Celebrates the middle class and rural life.
      • Depicts a father and daughter duo modeled after his dentist and sister, reflecting American values such as hard work, home ownership, and the role of the church.
      • Evokes an ordered society.
      • Ambiguous expressions reflecting gender roles.
  • Wyeth: Christiana’s World (1946)
    • Realist painter working in a regionalist style, depicting scenes from Pennsylvania and Maine.
    • Paints one of his neighbors suffering from polio.
    • Ambiguous psychological image.

Charles White

  • Chronicled African American life, focusing on agency, class, and racial struggles.
  • Our Land (1951):
    • Portrays a working-class woman in her home, reflecting her financial agency.
    • Emphasizes her strength through her arms and hands.
    • Propagandistic.
  • This Our Brother (1942):
    • Symbolizes obstruction of the old and a move towards the new, showcasing political activism through paint.

Benton: American Today (1930)

  • Midwestern American muralist at the forefront of the American Regionalist movement.
  • Opposed modernism.
  • Panorama of American life, depicting urban and rural scenes, regional industries, and social evolution.
  • Comprised of 10 canvases painted with egg tempera, integrated with the room's molding and design.
    • Presents multiple times and places simultaneously.
    • Uses planes and trains to represent progress and dynamism.
    • Addresses economic despair during the Great Depression.

Jackson Pollock: Going West (1934)

  • Marked by expressive brushwork and fragmentation.
  • Reflects Manifest Destiny.

Abstract Expressionism

  • Post-WWII, America becomes the new art center.
  • American artists rejected European modernism, seeking a new American painting language.
  • First American movement to gain international acclaim.
  • Shared themes and exhibitions.
  • Masculine art form, though some women made an impact.
  • Explored mythological themes to respond to WWII's horrors.
  • Incorporated ideas of symbols reacting to Karl Jung's ideas.
  • Pluck Moon Woman Cuts the Circle (1942).
  • Newman The Blessing (1944).
  • Gottlieb Apparition (1945).
    • Often figural, related to science and nature.
  • Stylistic Qualities:
    • Flat, lacking background or foreground.
    • Use of the entire picture plane.

Jackson Pollock (cont.)

  • Born in Wyoming, attended the Art Students League in NYC.
  • Known for "all-overness," swirling lines, and broken forms pressed against the picture plane.
  • Use of the handle of paint.
  • She Wolf (1943):
    • Referencing the origin story of Rome (Romulus and Remus).
    • Not interested in dimensionality.
    • Idea of a figure, evoking biomorphic primordial forms.
    • Established his style in 1943.
  • Mural (1943):
    • Commissioned for Peggy Guggenheim's house.
    • Marked a turning point, introducing non-figural forms, large scale, and expressive handling of paint.
    • Driven by gesture, with biomorphic figures.
    • Connects to Mexican muralists.
    • "Action painting" - body movement as a tool.
  • Summertime 9A (1948):
    • Drip technique: sticks and brushes to flick and pour paint directly onto the canvas.
    • Translation of physical action; using fluid house paint.
    • Controlled gestures to manipulate paint behavior.
    • "Primitivism" - draws from Southwest indigenous cultures.
  • One: Number 31 (1950):
    • Solo show with wall-sized paintings.
    • Reduced palette with natural colors and themes, all drip technique.

Lee Krasner

  • Pollock's wife, worked at home on a smaller scale.
  • Explored symbols, marks, and gestures.
  • The Season (1957):
    • Made after Pollock's death, allowing her to take space.
    • Depicts fruit, leaves, and nature with feminine, brighter colors and dark outlines.

De Kooning

  • Dutch-American artist, part of the NY Abstract Expressionist scene.
  • Shift from European modernism to gestural, expressive forms and colors.
  • Pink Angels (1945):
    • Plays with form, becoming more figural through gesture.
    • Dripping paint with loose brushwork.
  • Woman I (1953):
    • Revision of the classical female nude.
    • Explores the physical opportunities of paint through immediate gestures made over a long period.

Barnett Newman

  • Focused on intellectual and psychological qualities of art.
  • Combined layers of paint to create flat fields of color divided by vertical "zips" (lines of color).
  • Reduced painting to essential qualities of space and color.
  • Vir Heroicus Sublimis (1950):
    • Reflects the viewer’s verticality through large gestures.
  • Onement I (1948):
    *Philosophical thoughts.

Mark Rothko

  • Born in Latvia, developed a color field strategy to explore the universal human condition.
  • Aimed to evoke pure emotional experience, wanting viewers to cry.

CoBrA (1948-1951)

  • European avant-garde movement (Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam) with about 30 members.
  • Incorporated animal imagery and elements of folk art, children's art, and art from Africa/Pacific Islands.
  • Characterized by bold colors and spontaneous brushwork reflecting social conditions.
  • Key Figures:
    • Asger Jorn
    • Karle Appel
    • Constant
  • Interested in Automatism:
    • Surrender control over art-making to the unconscious mind.
  • Masson Atomic Drawing (1925).
  • Asger Jorn Untitled for 8 Lithografier (1945):
    • Experiments with spontaneous lines and semi-figurative representation, at the edge of abstraction.
  • Appel Questioning Children (1949):
    • Evokes poverty witnessed by Appel.
    • Nailed discarded wood to an old window shutter, using vibrant colors.
  • Apple Hip Hip Hoorah (1949).
    • "Wanted to start again like a child."
  • Jorn Letter to my Son (1956):
    • Colorful with semi-human, semi-animal figures, lacking perspectival organization.
  • Constant The Ladder (1949).
    • Child-like imagery with a dream-like feeling.
  • Maro The Harlequins Carnival (1924).
    • Painted the subconscious of his life experiences and memories.

POP ART (1950s-1960s)

  • Responded to popular and commercial culture.
  • Started in London, intrigued by American mass media's impact on British life; developed fully in the U.S.
  • Expressed the optimistic spirit of the 1960s.
  • Elevated popular culture as raw material to fine art status.
  • Richard Hamilton: Just what was it that made yesterday’s different so appealing? (1956)
    • Considered the first work of Pop Art.
    • Includes themes of:
      *Commit strips
      *Cinema
      *Commercial design
      *Nudes
      *Cheap decor
  • Considered the first work of Pop Art.
    • Magazine cutouts presenting an updated Adam and Eve surrounded by modern conveniences.

Jasper Johns

  • Pioneer of Pop Art, raised in SC, served in the Korean War, befriended Rauschenberg.
  • Invented a new style that was the harbinger of pop, minimal and conceptual.
  • Antithetical to Abstract Expressionism.
  • Reflects conscious control.
  • Flag (1954):
    • Used quotidian imagery: flags, targets, cans, maps.
    • Encaustic painting: beeswax and pigments applied in thin layers.
    • Breaks from non-objective painting by representing a recognizable object.
    • Layers, texture, context, and history are revealed.

Rauschenberg

  • Erased De Kooning 1953:
    • Explore the limits and definition of art.
      *Rauschenber wanted to discover weather an artwork could be produced entirely through erasure- a art focused on the removal of marks rather than their accumulation. - Label is integral!
      *When digitally enhanced you can see the erased image
    • Combine Paintings: merging features of painting and sculpture.
      *Trash that he collected is art
  • Bed (1955): Real bed materials: pillow, sheets etc. But also paint and pencil. Combines hang on the wall like a traditional painting but reaches into the three dimensions with various elements. References Pollock with the paint dripping. Recongizable theme
    • Charlene (1954) - It has many materials both front he painting work but also just found objects. Combination between painting a sculpture
    • Rebus (1955):
      *Rebus: a puzzle devise which combines the use f illustrated pictures with the individual letters to depict the words and or phrases. A collection of words and images an unsolvable puzzle!
      *Uses the silk screen process
      Escape the familiarity of objects and collage
      Evoke the era in which all categories of culture coexisted.
      *Uses screening printing found images from books/magazines
    • Estate (1963)
    • Exile (1962):
      *Undermines the artistic concepts of originality and authenticity which are necessary for the museum discourse. The silkscreen princess enabled the artist to easily multiple enlarge and alter the same images for repeated use. He has repeated imagery: mosquito and umbrellas.

Lichtenstein

  • Lichtenstein Girl with Ball 1961:
    • He said that almost anything could be a fair subject matter for art. ADVERTISMENTS: he transformed the photographic image into a painting using techniques of the comic string artist.
    • Got it from an advertisement from a hoten in the poconos!
      Uses bold black contors and a minimal color pallete
      Return to figuration!
    • Adaptiing cartoons.
    • I know Brad, 1963
      Adapting comic strips and greatly enlarges them. The speech balloons were adapted and simplified black outlines and black primary colors! BLUE YELLOW ECT
    • *Its not an Engagement Ring is it
      Cropped and simplified the source images to focus on dramatic emotions or actions. He both represents and crizises the flat (go back to slides) He used war and romance comic books!
      *Adapting comic strips and greatly enlarges them. The speech balloons were adapted and simplified black outlines and black primary colors! BLUE YELLOW ECT He often used The Ben Day Process to create his works
      A printing and potoengraving technique dating from 1879- named after illustrator and printer Benjamin Denry Day Jr. Commonly appears as dots!
      Ben Day Process!
    • Eddie Diptych 1962 :
      *hinged! Painted in two panels → takes us the the realm of religion and mideval relgious art!
      Eddie is the object of the painting
      Elevates the comic strip into a relgious work of art!

Lichtensteins Brush strokes series 1965

It elevates subject to it's most basic form and element
Focus on the use of the dots!!
Presenting the brush store as the subject of the painting. To its most basic symbol!! Return to primary colors: like mondrian!
Lichtenstein from Cathedral Series 1969. He transformed to industrial he responded to photographs of moet’s works by created a series of “manufactured monet’s” he reprised monets’ haystacks and the face of the cathedral in his Ben-day dot style!

Andy Warhol. He silk screen

  • Made the viewer consider the aesthetic qualities of everyday images such as coke bottles and soup cans that we readily overlook. Multiple theby making a grid like look.

  • Green Coca Cola 1962:
    Before he experienced with the coke bottle in more traditional techniques (1961, coca cola 1, and coca cola 4 in 1962) they go from ore ordinary: the artist’s hand is more visible earlier before going into more advertisement and industrial
    Bottles are sightly askew, disturbing the grid and making them seem handmade but also streamlined and mass produces!

  • Twenty Five Marilyn's blue 1962
    Pick a photograph, transfer it in flue onto silk and then roll ink across so that the ink goes through Warhol: Gold Marylyn Monroe 1962: the image on a gold background evokes a religious tradition of painted icons.

Minimalists - Focused on Geometric Abstraction

reject traditional artistic techniques. It should focus on it's own reality and materials versus a depiction of real life, experience, and/or emotion.

They use industrial materials and forms.
*Roots in Malevich, Mondrian and De Stij.

JUDD - His work featured many objects that exist between painting and sculpture, But neither. One nor the other.

  • Untitled 1963:
    *Morris Column 1961- called for simple forms that can be grasped intuitively by the viewer
    *Morris Untitled 1969: Plastic and steel. Stack works. Rejected the hiearchal composition that activates negatie space.
    *Combinied painting and sculpture and architecture.

Post Minimalism: everyday objects in simple forms. Used simple materials and basic forms