Transcript New York Dada

Contemporary Art
What and when is “contemporary”?
An Introduction
Cosmopolitan world culture shifted away from the
“Modern” paradigm in the decades following World
War II: c.1945-1968. Contemporary art is:
Post-Europe
Post-Modern
Post-Colonial
For the quiz on Tuesday, you will write a
concise (15-minute) essay about the socalled “end” of modern art: the transition
from Paris to New York as the culture
capital of the world. What were the major
political and social causes of the move?
Identify one work of art (name and
nationality of artist, title of artwork, date,
medium, and movement) that is exemplary
of this era. Explain why.
Paris World Fair 1937
German Pavilion (left) by Albert Speer with Comrades, by Joseph Thorak
(right) USSR Pavilion with Vera Mukhina, The Worker and The Collective Farm Woman,
Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937, 11 x 23 ft, oil on canvas,
Paris Worlds Fair, Spanish Pavilion. This painting stayed at the Museum of Modern Art in
New York from 1939-1981 (death of Franco) and influenced the New York School
ANXIOUS VISIONS mark the end of the Age of Europe
social context of Surrealist imagery
Salvador Dali, Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: Premonitions of Civil War
1936, oil on canvas, 39 x 39”
Hitler and Goebbels visit the Degenerate Art Exhibition, Munich, 1937
(insert below) Max Beckmann, German Expressionist in exile, at MoMA NYC in 1947
with 1933 “degenerate” painting, Departure
(left) Nazi 1937 degenerate music poster – Jazz was
despised as Jewish (Star of David) and Black
(right) Degenerate art show installation – Dada with
artworks by Kurt Schwitters and Paul Klee visible.
Cover of Dada No. 3, Marcel Janco, December 1918,
Man Ray photo portraits of Marcel Duchamp (French 1887-1966)
(right) Duchamp as Rrose Sélavy c. 1920
New York Dada
Father of conceptual art, which has characterized major art
(in one way or another), worldwide, since the 1960s
Marcel Duchamp. Bottle Rack, 1914/64, bottle rack made of galvanized iron
Bicycle Wheel, 1913, “Readymade”: bicycle wheel, mounted on a stool, originals lost
Duchamp, Fountain 1917 (photographed in 1917 by Alfred Stieglitz), New York DADA
Duchamp said he chose his objects on "visual indifference…
as well as a total absence of taste, good or bad."
Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q, 1919, reproduction with hand drawn mustache and goatee
“Readymade Assisted”
National Socialist (Nazi) Realism
Arno Breker, (left) Comradeship, 1940; (right) The Party, 1938
(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
(Conceptualist appropriation of Nazi propaganda (1938): a public art work attacked and
destroyed)
Neo Rauch (German, b. 1960) Das Neue (The New), 2003
German Fuhrer Adolph Hitler (Austrian,1889-1945)
Photograph sent to Eva Braun after occupation of Paris,1940
The Fall of Paris is a marker for the end of Modernism
Nazi (Axis) Blitzkrieg: Bombing of London, 1941
Nazi (Axis) Blitzkrieg of London, beginning in 1941, inaugurating the ceaseless bombing
of civilian populations throughout the war by both sides
Soviet bombing of Berlin, August 11, 1941
Dresden, September 1945
after fire bombings by British &
American air forces – 30,000 deaths
(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
American hydrogen bombing of
Hiroshima, Japan, August 6, 1945
The total estimated human loss of life caused
by World War II was roughly 72 million people.
The civilian toll was around 47 million. The
Allies lost about 61 million people, and the
Axis lost 11 million.
Aftermath of Hiroshima bomb – estimated 170,000 deaths
Miyako Ishiuchi (Japanese, b.1947), Mother’s
2000-2005, Venice Biennale 2005 Japanese
Pavilion
Post-colonialism
is one of the most important
historical contexts for globalism
Decolonization of Europe’s world empires
occurred after the two world wars.
The Algerian War of Independence from
France (1954 -1962), one of many such
ant-colonial wars for national identity.
De-colonization characterized the postmodern period.
Bomb blast, Algiers, 1957
Poster for film about the Algerian
War of Independence from France.
World map in 1980: The Cold War (1947-1991)
Berlin Wall, August 13, 1961, the German Democratic Republlic (Communist East
Germany) 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.
USSR 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 totalitarian dictators, Stalin, Hitler, and
Mao and came to be called “totalitarian art.”
Vitaly 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).
Tiananmen Square, Beijing
April 15 – June 4 1989
1989
After 1989 and the end of the Cold War, the relationship
to Europe’s past implied by “post” (postmodern,
postcolonial, etc.) has dropped away. Today the
hegemonic (dominant) world cultural paradigm is
globalism.
China 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
To 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
Quotations of Mao,1967
Work Hard to Realize the Fourth Five
Year Plan of National Economy, 1972
"The People's Liberation Army of China is a grand school of Mao Tse-tung Thought“
1970s Socialist Realism during the Cultural Revolution
(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
Fang Lijun (Chinese, b. 1963) Series 2 No 2, 1991-1992, oil on canvas, 6 ½ ft square
“Cynical Realism” (versus “Socialist Realism” of Mao’s Cultural Revolution)
American 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)
FALL OF PARIS AND RISE OF THE NEW YORK SCHOOL
(left) Hitler occupies Paris, 1940
Photograph 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.
Max Ernst (French, born Germany, 1891–1976), exile from Paris to NYC in 1941
Europe After the Rain, 1942-44, oil on canvas, 21x 58”
Decalomania, Surrealist “Anxious Visions,” and automatist methods
André Masson (French, 1896-1987), emigrated to US in early 1940s
(left) Why dids’t 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
Wilfredo Lam, (Cuban French, 1902 -1982)
(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
New York Interwar Modernism
Stuart Davis (US, 1892-1964)
Lucky Strike, oil on canvas, 1921
“Colonial Cubism”
Isamu 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
(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 Seeking
1974, basalt, H:127 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
Joseph Cornell (US, 1903-1972), (left) Untitled (The Hotel Eden), 1945,
assemblage with music box, 15 x 15 x 5”
(right) Lilly Tosch, 1935, collage. Surrealism/Dada/Constructivism
Louise Bourgeois (French-American, b.1911), (left) Quarantania, 1947-53, painted
wood on wood base, 62” high
(right) photoportrait of Bourgeois by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1982
Mexican 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
Diego 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)
Thomas 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
Dorothea Lange (US, 1895 -1965), (left) Migrant Mother, 1936;
(right) White Angel Breadline, San Francisco, 1933, Social Realism
The Great Depression (1929-1940) and the Works Progress Administration and Farm
Security Administration (WPA-FSA) employed around 6000 artists, more than half of
whom lived in New York
Hans 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)
Bridge figure between Europe and US
Hans Hofmann, (left) Afterglow, c.1940, o/c; (right) The Golden Wall, 1961, 60 x 70”, o/c
“Action Painting” and “Push-Pull” color theory
Search for the Real
Hofmann’s pedagogical essays
(left top) Arshile Gorky (Armenian-American,1904-1948), Painting, 1936-7, o/c, 38 x 48”
Sources: (top right) Picasso, c. 1932 and (below right) Joan Miro, 1933
Biomorphic Cubist Surrealism // Bridge figure between Europe and US
Gorky & Willem de Kooning in Gorky’s
Studio, Union Square, NYC, 1936
(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
Arshile Gorky, The Liver is the Cock’s Comb, 1944, 6 x 8 ft, o/c
“The Irascibles” (Abstract Expressionists), Life Magazine cover story, 1951
Theodoros Stamos, Jimmy Ernst,
Barnett Newman, James Brooks,
Mark Rothko, Richard PousetteDart, William Baziotes, Jackson
Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert
Motherwell, Bradley Walker
Tomlin, Willem de Kooning,
Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt,
Hedda Sterne
Post WW II: New York becomes the capital of the art world
(left) Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) painting, 1950
(right) Willem de Kooning (1904–97) painting Woman I, 1951