Title: Contemporary Art What and when is it? An Introduction
1Contemporary ArtWhat and when is it? An
Introduction
- World (cosmopolitan) culture shifted away from
the Modern paradigm with World War II
c.1945-1968 - Post-Europe
- Post-Modern
- Post-Colonial
2- For the quiz on Tuesday, you will write a
concise (15-minute) essay about the so-called
end of modern art the transition from Paris to
New York as the culture capital of the world.
What were some of the political and social causes
of the move? Identify three works of art (name
and nationality of artist, title of artwork,
date, medium, and movement) that serve as
examples.
3Paris World Fair 1937German Pavilion (left) by
Albert Speer with Comrades, by Joseph Thorak
(right) USSR Pavilion with Vera Mukhina, The
Worker and The Collective Farm Woman,
4Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937, Paris Worlds Fair,
Spanish Pavilion
5ANXIOUS VISIONS for the End of the Age of
Europesocial context of Surrealist
imagerySalvador Dali, Soft Construction with
Boiled Beans Premonitions of Civil War1936, oil
on canvas, 39 x 39
6Hitler and Goebbels visit the Degenerate Art
Exhibition, Munich, 1937(insert below) Max
Beckmann, German Expressionist, at MoMA NYC in
1947 with 1933 painting, Departure
7(left) Nazi 1937 degenerate music poster Jazz,
Jewish (Star of David) and Black(right)
Degenerate art show installation Dada with Kurt
Schwitters and Paul Klee artworks visible
8Cover of Dada No. 3, Marcel Janco, December 1918,
9Man Ray photo portraits of Marcel Duchamp (French
1887-1966) (right) Duchamp as Rrose Sélavy c.
1920New York Dada
Father of conceptual art, which has characterized
all major art (in one way or another),
worldwide, since the 1960s
10Marcel Duchamp. Bottle Rack, 1914/64, bottle rack
made of galvanized ironBicycle Wheel, 1913,
Readymade bicycle wheel, mounted on a stool,
originals lost
11Duchamp, Fountain 1917 (photographed in 1917 by
Alfred Stieglitz), New York DADADuchamp said he
chose his objects on "visual indifferenceas
well as a total absence of taste, good or bad."
12Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q, 1919, reproduction with hand
drawn mustache and goatee Readymade Assisted
13National Socialist (Nazi) Realism Arno Breker,
(left) Comradeship, 1940 (right) The Party, 1938
14(Top left) Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister for
People's Enlightenment and Propaganda (Below
left) 1938 Nazi propaganda rally in Graz. "We
came from the people, we remain part of the
people, and see ourselves as the executor of the
people's will.(right) Hans Haacke, And You
Were Victorious After All, Graz, Germany, 1988
(above, reconstruction of Nazi propaganda (1938)
a public art work attacked and destroyed)
15Neo Rauch (German, b. 1960) Das Neue (The New),
2003
16Nazi (Axis) Blitzkrieg Bombing of London, 1941
17Nazi Fuhrer Adolph Hitler (Austrian,1889-1945)
Photograph sent to Eva Braun after occupation of
Paris,1940The Fall of Paris is a watershed for
the end of Modernism
18Nazi (Axis) Blitzkrieg of London, beginning in
1941, inaugurating the ceaseless bombing of
civilian populations throughout the war by both
sides
19Soviet (Ally) bombing of Berlin, August 11, 1941
Dresden, September 1945 after fire bombings by
British American air forces 30,000 deaths
20(left) Francis Bacon (British), panel from Three
Studies for a Crucifixion, 1947(right) Alberto
Giacometti (Swiss), Pointing Man, 1947 Europe
after the War Existentialist Expressionism
21American hydrogen bombing of Hiroshima, Japan,
August 6, 1945
Aftermath of Hiroshima bomb estimated 170,000
deaths
22Miyako Ishiuchi (Japanese, b.1947), Mothers,
Venice Biennale 2005 Japanese Pavilion
23Post-colonialismis the important historical
context for globalism
Decolonization of Europes world empires occurred
after the two world wars.
24The Algerian War of Independence from France
(1954 -1962), one of many such ant-colonial wars
for national identity. De-colonization
characterized the post-modern period.
Bomb blast, Algiers, 1957
Poster for film about the Algerian War of
Independence from France.
25World map in 1980 The Cold War (1947-1991)
26Berlin Wall, August 13, 1961, the GDR began under
the leadership of Erich Honecker to block off
East Berlin and the GDR from West Berlin by means
of barbed wire and antitank obstacles.
Construction crews replaced the provisional
barriers by a solid wall.
27USSR under Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, de facto
dictator from 1928-1953 Karp Trokhimenko
(Ukraine,1885-1975), as Organizer of the October
Revolution, oil on canvas, 85 x 117 cm, early
1940s. Commissioned by the Stalinist government.
Socialist Realism was mandated by Stalin, Hitler,
and Mao and is therefore called totalitarian
art.
28Vitaly Komar (b. Moscow,1943) and Alex Melamid
(b. Moscow,1945)(left) Stalin and the Muses,
1981-2, oil on canvas, 6x7ft 7in.(right) Double
Self-Portrait as Young Pioneers, 1982-83, oil on
canvas, 72 x 50 in. (from Nostalgic Socialist
Realism series).
29Tiananmen Square, BeijingApril 15 June 4 1989
301989
31- After 1989 and the end of the Cold War, the
relationship to the past implied by post
(postmodern, postcolonial, etc.) has dropped
away. Today the hegemonic (dominant) world
cultural paradigm is globalism.
32China Post WWII
- The People's Republic of China was established
on October 1, 1949 - The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in
China, 1966-1976 Socialist Realism imposed
Xin Liliang (1912) The Happy Life Chairman Mao
Gives Us, Government poster, 1954
33To carry the Great Revolution of Proletarian
Culture out to the End, 1972
Work Hard for Speeding Up the Modernization Of
Agricultural Machinery, 1972
Socialist Realism during The Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution in China, 1966-1976
Work Hard to Realize the Fourth Five Year Plan of
National Economy, 1972
Quotations of Mao,1967
34 "The People's Liberation Army of China is a
grand school of Mao Tse-tung Thought1970s
Socialist Realism during the Cultural Revolution
35(left) Hung Liu (China, b. 1948) with her
Socialist Realist painting of Mao as student at
the Central Academy of Art, Beijing in early
1970s (right) Hung Liu participating in a
Happening with Allan Kaprow at UC San Diego in
the early 1980s
36Fang Lijun (Chinese, b. 1963) Series 2 No 2,
1991-1992, oil on canvas, 6 ½ ft squareCynical
Realism (versus Socialist Realism of Maos
Cultural Revolution)
37American Abstract Expressionism
New York becomes the art capital of the world
in the post-war post-modern decades c. 1940
-1989 (from the fall of Paris to the fall of the
Berlin wall)
38FALL OF PARIS AND RISE OF THE NEW YORK
SCHOOL(left) Hitler occupies Paris,
1940Photograph of the artists exhibiting in the
Artists in Exile show at the Pierre Matisse
Gallery, New York, March, 1942. Left to right,
first row Matta, Ossip Zadkine, Yves Tanguy, Max
Ernst, Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger second row
André Breton, Piet Mondrian, André Masson, Amédée
Ozenfant, Jacques Lipchitz, Pavel Tchelitchew,
Kurt Seligmann, Eugene Berman. Photograph by
George Platt Lynes
39Max Ernst (French, born Germany, 18911976),
exile from Paris to NYC in 1941 Europe After the
Rain, 1942-44, oil on canvas, 21x
58Decalomania, Surrealist Anxious Visions,
and automatist methods
40André Masson (French, 1896-1987), emigrated to US
in early 1940s(left) Why didst thou bring me
forth from the womb?, 1923, pen ink on
paper(right) Battle of Fishes, 1926, sand,
gesso, oil, pencil, and charcoal on canvas, 14 x
28
Surrealist sources influential on New York
artists abstract biomorphism, automatism, and
mythological subjects (used also by Freud)
41Wilfredo Lam, (Cuban French, 1902 -1982, Paris,
1940 return from Paris to Cuba) (left) The
Jungle, gouache on paper mounted on canvas, 1943
(right) The Warrior, 1947
- Between 1942 and 1950, Lam exhibited regularly
at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York.
Négritude and Créolité Modernism in Diaspora
42New York Interwar Modernism
Stuart Davis (US, 1892-1964) Lucky Strike, oil on
canvas, 1921
43Isamu Noguchi (Japanese-American,1904-1988)
Kouros, 1945, pink Georgia marble on slate base,
117 H. Compare Kouros, Attic, late 7th c.BC,
marble, 76 (both in NYC at the Metropolitan
MA(right) Noguchi, Herodiade set for Martha
Graham, 1935 Biomorphic Surrealism
44(left top) Buson, by Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988).
Japan, Kita Kamakura, 1952. Unglazed Karatsu
stoneware, 8-1/4 x 6-1/2 x 3-3/8. (right) Great
Rock of Inner Seeking1974, basalt, H127 7/8
with stone commemorating poet Buson near Osaka
Japan (below left) Noguchi Garden Museum, Long
Island City with traditional garden in Japan.
Transcultural art avant la lettre
45Louise Bourgeois (French-American, b.1911),
(left) Quarantania, 1947-53, painted wood on wood
base, 62 high(right) photoportrait of Bourgeois
by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1982
46(No Transcript)
47Mexican Modernists active in US in the
1930s(left) David Siqueiros (Mexican,
1896-1974), Echo of a Scream, 1937(right) José
Orozco (Mexican 1883-1949), The Epic of American
Civilization Modern Migration of the Spirit,
fresco mural 14th panel, Dartmouth College,
1932-34
48Diego Rivera (Mexican, 1886-1957) Man, Controller
of the Universe, fresco, Palace of Fine Arts,
Mexico City, 1934 Incomplete Rockefeller Center
New York City original was destroyed. Communist
Social Realism (rejection of modernist style)
49Thomas Hart Benton (US,1889-1975),Steel, from the
America Today murals, The New School, New York
City, 1930, tempera with oil glaze. Regionalism
(Social Realism and rejection of modernist style,
which he called Ellis Island Art
Self-Portrait for Time, 1934
50Dorothea Lange (US, 1895 -1965), (left) Migrant
Mother, 1936 (right) White Angel Breadline, San
Francisco, 1933, Social RealismThe Great
Depression and the Works Progress Administration
(WPA-FSA)
51Hans Hofmann (Germany,1880 - NYC,1966), (center)
Still Life With Fruit and Compote, 1936, o/c
compare (right) Henri Matisse, Woman with Hat
(Madame Matisse), 1905 (Fauvism) and Wassily
Kandinsky, Composition IV, 1916 (Blue Rider
expressionism)
52Hans Hofmann, (left) Afterglow, c.1940, o/c
(right) The Golden Wall, 1961, 60 x 70,
o/cAction Painting and Push-Pull color theory
Search for the Real Hofmanns pedagogical essays
53(left top) Arshile Gorky (Armenian-American,1904-1
948), Painting, 1936-7, o/c, 38 x 48Sources
(top right) Picasso, c. 1932 and (below right)
Joan Miro, 1933 Biomorphic Cubist Surrealism
Gorky Willem de Kooning in Gorkys Studio,
Union Square, NYC, 1936
54(left) Arshile Gorky, Water of the Flowery Mill,
1944 (left below) Gorky, Virginia Landscape
(Untitled, Study for Pastoral Series), graphite,
pastel and crayon on paper 1943. Compare
(right) Roberto Matta, Birth of America, 1942
55Arshile Gorky, The Liver is the Cocks Comb,
1944, 6 x 8 ft, o/c
56The Irascibles (Abstract Expressionists), Life
Magazine cover story, 1951
57Post WW II New York steals the idea of Modern
Art from Paris(left) Jackson Pollock painting,
1950 Willem de Kooning painting Woman I, 1951