MODULE 13: International Avant-Garde Since 1945: late modernism, Chapt. 29

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 Modules: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16

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After World War Two, America had the economic and political dominance to control the world. Cultural energy was reflected in marketing, industrialization, and advertising. For the artist of post-WWII, the lack of a dominant aesthetic allowed for a new preoccupation with a modern view. This vision was typified by a faith in the artist as a genius with metaphysical insights unique to their view. Abstract Expressionism and Post-Painterly Abstraction gave the artist license to explore the mysticism of the soul. Eventually artists sought new avenues of expression that would emphasize their unique contributions to an aesthetic dialogue.

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SLIDE:
Bacon “Head Surrounded by Sides of Beef” (1954) Pl. 29-3

It’s difficult to decide where to put artists such as Francis Bacon. Clearly painterly, with a great deal of appropriation from the past, his work is so idiosyncratic that it is in a genre of its own, not unlike many of the other artists of this period. What can be read from his work is a personal torture given form with expressive paint.

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SLIDE:
Dubuffet “Cow with the Subtile Nose” (1954) Pl. 29-4

For some artists the modern focus on reason is invalid. Many artists in the past have explored the irrational, but few have treated it so intimately as Jean Dubuffet. An anti-formalist to the core, Dubuffet used unusual materials such as tar, sand or mud in crude ways. His art was not so much a visual banquet, more a slop at the hog trough.

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SLIDE:
Pollock “Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)” (1950) Pl. 29-10

Jackson Pollack is recognized as a preeminant American artist of the Modernist Era. Yet he had ties to American Regionalist era also. He related the American South West primitivism to the intellectually attenuated New York school of Painting. The complex connection with European intellectual sensibility and an American radical avant-garde became a connection to much more than just art, it became a bridge to the ensuing consumer culture, to the American ethic.

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SLIDE:
Namuth “Photograph of Jackson Pollock painting” (1950) Pl. 29-9

Here Pollack’s process of ‘action painting’ or ‘automatic writing’ is clearly demonstrated. Laying the canvas on the floor was radical in its self, let alone his application of paint in a thoroughly intuitive method. Pollack forged a new public awareness of art. He gave the public a heroic icon, not unlike the anti-hero movie stars they were accustomed to. With Pollack, the public was given a strutting oracle whose ‘boozy’ prognostications and egotistical excesses became an appropriated commodity, that became Sears’ shower curtains and Armstrong tile design. His legacy gave us the artist as bohemian iconoclast.

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SLIDE:
de Kooning “Woman 1” (1952) Pl. 29-12

de Kooning’s European eloquence was soon absorbed into the American artistic ethos. His abstract interpretation of women and expressive paint application gave his work an emotional charge that was both violent and poetic.

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SLIDE:
Rothko “No. 61, Brown, Blue, Brown on Blue” (1953) Pl. 29-13

Where Pollack was all action and expressiveness in his art Mark Rothko was cool and cerebral. Rothko’s meditative lozenges of saturated color suggest a Zen-like retreat from the messiness of our cluttered existence. His detachment from obvious content may have led to the Minimalist view of art.

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SLIDE:
Newman “Vir Heroicus Sublimis” (1951) Pl. 29-14

Barnett Newman took Rothko’s detachment even further, adding a dimensional of mathematical precision to the thesis. Rather than giving the viewer a new vocabulary, his work further attenuated the involved audience. Surprisingly, this work was appropriated by a wealthy non-art world for its lack of content, pleasant colors and inoffensive presence.

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SLIDE:
Frankenthaler “Mountains and Sea” (1952) Pl. 29-17

Helen Frankenthaler brought a lyrical approachability to the Abstract Expressionist movement. Her stained paintings gave artists a broader vocabulary.

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SLIDE:
Louis “Saraband” (1959) Pl. 29-29

Morris Louis, with a nod to Frankenthaler, became leader of the next generation of a cooler Expressionist trend. This led to the movement of Post-Painterly Abstractionists.

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SLIDE:
Nevelson “Sky Cathedral” (1958) Pl. 29-16

Louise Nevelson created a variation on the Minimalist theme with her monochromatically painted, bas-relief, sculpted walls of found objects.

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SLIDE:
Smith “Hudson River Landscape” (1951) Pl. 29-15

David Smith created Minimalist sculpture with much the same results as the painters of the same movement.

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SLIDE:
Judd “Untitled” (1969) Pl. 29-33

Taking Minimalist sculpture to a Conceptual direction, Donald Judd gave form to a rarified discourse on the substance of art, its visual impact and how we perceive.

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SLIDE:
Stella “Avicenna” (1960) Pl. 29-32

Frank Stella’s blatantly irreverent canvasses reflect the constant point-counterpoint of academic discourse that has become a significant part of Contemporary Art. His use of tar (consider Dubuffett) and shaped canvasses (consider Minimalist sculpture and Post-Painterly Abstraction), were methodically premeditated.

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SLIDE:
Riley “Current” (1964) Pl. 29-31

With a tangent deviation from Minimalism, Bridget Riley created optical sensations in the movement much maligned in today’s aesthetic sensibilities- Op Art. Her work stands out primarily because of its unique visual operations, they may even refer to an Impressionist sensibility.

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