Transcript Slide 1

Lecture 31 -2, part 1: Jasper John’s Target with Four Faces appears on the cover of Artnews, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol
begin using cartoons and advertisements as source material followed by Rosenquist, Ruscha, among others giving birth to the Pop
Art Movement
part 2: Pop Art’s response to American cultural values and idealism, the work of Andy Warhol
Jasper Johns
Your book discusses Jasper Johns and his Artnews cover. I would like to go
into further detail about this artist. “Jasper Johns was born in 1930 in
Augusta, Georgia, and raised in South Carolina. He began drawing as a
young child, and from the age of five knew he wanted to be an artist. For
three semesters he attended the University of South Carolina at Columbia,
where his art teachers urged him to move to New York, which he did in late
1948. There he saw numerous exhibitions and attended the Parsons School
of Design for a semester. After serving two years in the army during the
Korean War, stationed in South Carolina and Sendai, Japan, he returned to
New York in 1953. He soon became friends with the artist Robert
Rauschenberg (born 1925), also a Southerner, and with the composer John
Cage and the choreographer Merce Cunningham.
Jasper Johns
Together with Rauschenberg and several Abstract Expressionist painters of
the previous generation, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Barnett
Newman, Johns is one of most significant and influential American painters
of the twentieth century. He also ranks with Dürer, Rembrandt, Goya,
Munch, and Picasso as one of the greatest printmakers of any era. In
addition, he makes many drawings—unique works on paper, usually based
on a painting he has previously painted—and he has created an unusual
body of sculptural objects.
Johns' early mature work, of the mid- to late 1950s, invented a new style
that helped to engender a number of subsequent art movements, among
them Pop, Minimal, and Conceptual art. The new style has usually been
understood to be coolly antithetical to the expressionistic gestural
abstraction of the previous generation. This is partly because, while Johns'
painting extended the allover compositional techniques of Abstract
Expressionism, his use of these techniques stresses conscious control rather
than spontaneity.
Johns' early style is perfectly exemplified by the lush reticence of the large
monochrome White Flag (left) of 1955. This painting was preceded by a
red, white, and blue version, Flag (1954–55; Museum of Modern Art, New
York) left, and followed by numerous drawings and prints of flags in
various mediums, including the elegant oil on paper Flag (1957). In 1958,
Johns painted Three Flags (Whitney Museum of Art, New York) bottom
left, in which three canvases are superimposed on one another in what
appears to be reverse perspective, projecting toward the viewer.
The American flag subject is typical of Johns' use of quotidian imagery in
the mid- to late 1950s. As he explained, the imagery derives from "things
the mind already knows," utterly familiar icons such as flags, targets,
stenciled numbers, ale cans, and, slightly later, maps of the U.S.
It has been suggested that the American flag in Johns' work is an
autobiographical reference, because a military hero after whom he was
named, Sergeant William Jasper, raised the flag in a brave action during the
Revolutionary War. Because a flag is a flat object, it may signify flatness or
the relative lack of depth in much modernist painting. The flag may of
course function as an emblem of the United States and may in turn connote
American art, Senator Joseph McCarthy, or the Vietnam War, depending on
the date of Johns' use of the image, the date of the viewer's experience of it,
or the nationality of the viewer. Or the flag may connote none of these
things. Used in Johns' recent work, for example, The Seasons (Summer), an
intaglio print of 1987, it seems inescapably to refer to his own art. In other
words, the meaning of the flag in Johns' art suggests the extent to which the
"meaning" of this subject matter may be fluid and open to continual
reinterpretation.
As Johns became well known—and perhaps as he realized his audience
could be relied upon to study his new work—his subjects with a
demonstrable prior existence expanded. In addition to popular icons, Johns
chose images that he identified in interviews as things he had seen—for
example, a pattern of flagstones he glimpsed on a wall while driving. Still
later, the "things the mind already knows" became details from famous
works of art, such as the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald
(1475/80–1528), which Johns began to trace onto his work in 1981.
Throughout his career, Johns has included in most of his art certain marks
and shapes that clearly display their derivation from factual, unimagined
things in the world, including handprints and footprints, casts of parts of the
body, or stamps made from objects found in his studio, such as the rim of a
tin can.”
Source: Jasper Johns (born 1930) | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Let us explore just a few more of Jasper John’s paintings.
Jasper Johns Periscope (Hart Crane), 1963
Jasper Johns, Fool's House, 1962
Jasper Johns, Jubilee, 1959
Jasper Johns, Map, 1962
Jasper Johns, Target 1958
Your book discusses Clement Greenberg's essay “Modernist Painting” I
want to further address some of the topics he mentioned in this very
important essay! I find T. R. Quigley’s summery of Greenberg’s essay to be
very interesting! “Greenberg's concern in this essay is to argue that there is
a logic to the development of modernist art and, in particular, modernist
painting. He identifies the essence of Modernism as "the use of the
characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself - not in
order to subvert it, but to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence".
(755) It is the intensification of a self-critical tendency that began with the
eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. "Modernism",
Greenberg tells us, "criticizes from the inside [rather than from the outside],
through the procedures themselves of that which is being criticized." (Ibid.)
This starting point has important implications for the thesis of autonomy.
[See Clive Bell: "The Aesthetic Hypothesis".]
Clement Greenberg
Self-Justification:
According to Greenberg, every "formal social activity" requires a rational
justification, i.e. there must be reasons given to justify a particular activity.
Without this justification, the activity in question (e.g. painting, philosophy,
physics, poetry, mathematics, etc.) is discredited and weakened. Many take
the view that this is what happened with religion. Post-Enlightenment art
(i.e. roughly speaking, art produced after the Eighteenth Century) was at
once in precisely this situation of needing a justification. Thus, it was called
upon to establish its own autonomy by means of a "deduction", i.e. an
argument for its legitimacy and its capacity to provide us with experience
that cannot be obtained through any other art or social practice.
This process of self-justification must be done piecemeal - medium by
medium. To be modern, each art form is eventually called upon to discover
and exhibit, through its own procedures, the unique contributions that it
makes to human experience as well as to art as a whole. As a result of this
self-justification, each art form achieves greater specialization and security.
The Specificity of the Medium:
The uniqueness of an art form ultimately depends upon the specificity of
the medium, i.e. the characteristics that it shares with no other form of art.
Once this specificity has been discovered, Greenberg claims, the
progressive modernist is called upon to purge all elements not essential and
specific to the medium. Nothing borrowed from the medium of another art
can be tolerated. Thus, under Modernism, each art searches for "purity" and
in that purity, absolute autonomy not only from other advanced art forms,
but from mundane everyday life and popular (mass) culture as well. (All
forms of popular culture are referred to by Greenberg as kitsch.) [See
Greenberg, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch"]
In this sense, pre-Modernist realist painting presents a problem in that it
tends to conceal the specificity of the medium and, hence, the purity of
painting. That's because realism encourages the viewer to move through the
surface and into the illusionistic space of the representation. Modernist
painting, on the other hand, uses the painting itself to call attention to
painting. The flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties of the
pigment - all these things that were denied by traditional painting are
reasserted by modernist painting (which is, historically speaking, the work
of Manet and his successors).
Jasper Johns - "Numbers in Color", 1958-1959
Flatness as the Defining Feature of Painting:
Modernism reasserts the two-dimensionality of the picture surface. It forces
the viewer to see the painting first as a painted surface, and only later as a
picture. This, Greenberg says, is the best way to see any kind of picture.
For example, since sculpture is inherently three dimensional, it is absolutely
necessary that modernist, i.e. pure, painting eschew any illusion of threedimensionality. It must do this in order to sustain its autonomy. This is the
real rationale for abstraction; not simply to avoid representation, but to
avoid the impurity and inauthenticity of representing three dimensional
space on a two-dimensional surface. [Cf. Bell.] A painting is to be looked
at, not looked into. Its space is to be traveled through with the eye alone.
According to Greenberg, this sort of resistance to sculptural effects is very
much a part of, and can be found in, the historical tradition of painting in
the West.
The Historical Continuity and Teleology of Painting:
This testing of the indispensable in any given medium is not tied to a pull
towards freedom. (It is not, as Nietzsche would say, a Dionysian feature of
artistic practice.) Rather it is a self-disciplining of art. (In that sense,
Nietzsche would claim, it is Apollonian.) It is a testing of the limiting or
boundary conditions specific to an art form. This movement in art has never
been followed explicitly; it has not been a program followed consciously by
artists. Thus, the individual achievements of artists seem to be a vehicle for
the larger unfolding pattern or rationale. (Cf. Hegel's theory of history.) In
other words, picture-making seems to have a logic of its own and is part of
a continuous development within a tradition. In other words, Modernism is
not a radical breaking away or liberation from all that is old and established
in art. It is not something radically new. It is merely art's self-awakening.”
(Quigley)
If you are interested you may find the essay “Modernist Painting” in its
entirety online at: http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/modernism.html
Andy Warhol
I appreciate that we are getting into some rather complicated ideas,
concepts, and issues! As the class progresses our topics will become more
complicated! So, please stay involved and studious! So far, in this class we
have traveled through decades after decades of art and society! Keep in
mind just as technology has grown exponentially both in applications and
complexity since 1870 to present day, so has philosophy, science, and art! I
feel that many of you are beginning to understand that not all art should be
judged solely on its physical/aesthetic qualities. This understanding of art is
rather superficial, just as you wouldn’t want to judge
a book by its cover, neither should you judge a work of art just on the way it
appears. It takes work , research, and contemplation to understand many of
the concepts that the artists we are discussing are trying to express through
their artwork. This is how much of the “wall” between artists and the
general public has been created. When some people do not immediately
“get it” they don’t want to put the energy into trying to figure it out.
As you are all becoming aware though (through your hard work and study),
many of the artworks we have discussed are making far more sense to you
so, that “wall” is falling! Or, at least you understand why many individuals
would consider something art, even if you don’t. Well, enough ranting for a
moment! We are going to discuss a very exciting group of artists! A few of
you may have even heard of some of them before, such as Andy Warhol.
Another artist that invokes many to say, “what’s the point?” Or, “Who cares
it’s a bunch of soup cans, how is that art?” Just as before I ask you to
consider the artists themselves, what they may have been trying to say, as
well as, some of the societal issues of the time these artists were working in.
Andy Warhol
I want to discuss the beginnings of the Pop Art Movement. “The term PopArt was invented by British curator Lawrence Alloway in 1955, to describe
a new form of "Popular" art - a movement characterized by the imagery of
consumerism and popular culture. Pop-Art emerged in both New York and
London during the mid-1950s and became the dominant avant-garde style
until the late 1960s. Characterized by bold, simple, everyday imagery, and
vibrant block colors, it was interesting to look at and had a modern "hip"
feel. The bright color schemes also enabled this form of avant-garde art to
emphasize certain elements in contemporary culture, and helped to narrow
the divide between the commercial arts and the fine arts. It was the first
Post-Modernist movement (where medium is as important as the message)
as well as the first school of art to reflect the power of film and television,
from which many of its most famous images acquired their celebrity.
Common sources of Pop iconography were advertisements, consumer
product packaging, photos of film-stars, pop-stars and other celebrities, and
comic strips.
Pop-art, like nearly all significant art styles, was in part a reaction against
the status quo. In 1950s America, the main style was Abstract
Expressionism, an arcane non-figurative style of painting that - while
admired by critics, serious art-lovers, and experienced museum-visitors was not "connecting" with either the general public, or with many artists.
Very much a painterly style, the more abstract and expressive it became,
the bigger the opportunity for a new style which employed more
figurative, more down-to-earth imagery: viz,(sic) something that the wider
artist fraternity could get its teeth into and that viewers could relate to.
Thus Pop-art, which duly became the established art style, and which in
turn was superseded by other schools after 1970.
David Hockney A Bigger Splash 1967
Claes Oldenburg Geometric Mouse Scale A 1969
In some ways, the emergence of Pop-art (and its ascendancy over
Abstract Expressionism) was similar to the rise of Dada and its broader
based successor Surrealism (and their ascendancy over Cubism). Both the
superseded schools (Abstract Expressionism and Cubism) involved highly
intellectual styles with limited appeal to mainstream art lovers. True,
Dada was essentially anti-art, but the years during which it flourished
1916-1922 were marked by great polarization and political strife, and as
soon as things calmed down most Dadaists became Surrealists. In any
event, as explained below under Aims and Philosophy, Pop-art shares
many of the characteristics of Dada-Surrealism and is indebted to it for
several techniques derived from Kurt Schwitters' collages, the
"readymades" of Marcel Duchamp, the iconic imagery of Rene Magritte
and the brash creations of Salvador Dali (eg. Mae West Lips Sofa; Lobster
Telephone).
And if Surrealism was essentially internalist, and escapist in nature,
while Pop-art was defined by external consumerist forces, both were
consumed by the need to make a strong visual impact on the general
public. Another artist who may have had an impact on Pop-art, is
Edward Hopper (1882-1967) the realist painter of urban America.
Although his painterly style is very different from most pop works, his
simple images of ultra-American everyday scenes (eg. "Night Hawks",
1942 and "Gas", 1940) were well known to the pop generation, and may
have informed their paintings.
British Pop-Art emerged from within the Independent Group - an
informal circle of artists including painter Richard Hamilton, curator
and art critic Lawrence Alloway, and sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi, that
met in the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.
Andy Warhol Electric Chair 1965
From the first meeting, in 1952, when Paolozzi presented a number of
collages assembled from magazine clippings and other "found objects",
including his (now) celebrated collage entitled "I was a Rich Man's
Plaything" (created 5 years previously in 1947) their discussions centered
largely around the artistic value and relevance of popular mass culture.
Four years later, in 1956, another member of the group, Richard
Hamilton, produced his own collage, "Just what is it that makes today's
homes so appealing?" (left bottom)- which, along with Paolozzi's 1947
collage, is regarded as one of the earliest examples of British Pop-Art. In
1961, a number of Pop-style works by Derek Boshier, David Hockney,
Allen Jones, RB Kitaj and Peter Phillips, featured in the Young
Contemporaries Exhibition. In 1962, further publicity was given to
British Pop when the BBC screened "Pop Goes the Easel", a film by Ken
Russell which explored the new movement in Britain.
Meanwhile in America, during the mid-1950s, the art world was being
rocked by a number of artists attached to small movements (eg. NeoDada, Funk Art, Lettrism, Beat Art, Polymaterialism, Common-Object, to
name but a few), many of whom were incorporating articles of mass
culture in their works. They wanted their art to be much more inclusive
than traditional styles (like Abstract Expressionism), so they used non-art
materials and focused on ordinary, easily recognizable subjects that
expressed the popular culture of the day.
Among this upsurge of innovation, work by Robert Rauschenberg, Ray
Johnson (1927-95) and Jasper Johns, was beginning to make an impact on
the important New York art scene. Between them, they opened up a whole
range of new subject matter: Johns, with his paintings of flags,
Richard Hamilton Just What Is It that Makes Todays Homes So Different So
Appealing 1956
targets and numbers, as well as his sculptures of objects like beer cans;
Rauschenberg, with his collage and assemblage art, and "combine
paintings" (in which a painted canvas is combined with various objects or
photographic images - such as: "Monogram" [1955-9] comprising a
stuffed goat with a tire around its middle) of stuffed animals, Coca-Cola
bottles, and other items; Johnson with his celebrity collages of James
Dean, Shirley Temple and Elvis. Other influential pioneers and advocates
of Pop-art were the composer John Cage (an influential teacher at the
Black Mountain College in North Carolina), and the Performance artist
Allan Kaprow.
George Segal The Diner 1964-66
This rising tide of new thinking was further enhanced by renewed interest
in earlier avant-garde movements like Dada and Surrealism, whose
enduring vitality was reinforced by the influence, if not the actual
presence, of several ex-Dadaists and Surrealists, like Marcel Duchamp,
Max Ernst, and local converts, such as Joseph Cornell. That said, it is
important to state that while American avant-garde artists of this period
(especially Rauschenberg) were indebted to earlier Europeans (like
Duchamp, Schwitters et al) for establishing certain traditions (like
collage), their unique focus was on producing art which reflected the
reality of contemporary America.
By the early 1960s, a cohort of Pop-style artists began to gain fame
through solo exhibitions in places like New York and Los Angeles, several
of whom used commercial printmaking techniques (eg. screen-printing) to
create their art, rather than traditional painterly methods. These new
talents included: Jim Dine, Robert Indiana, Alex Katz, Roy Lichtenstein,
Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Tom Wesselmann, and Andy Warhol.
Several works, later to become icons, were shown for the first time. They
included Lichtenstein's comic strip oils, Warhol's silkscreen prints of
Marilyn Monroe and Campbell's soup cans, and Oldenburg's monumental
vinyl burgers and ice-creams.
Tom Wesselmann Great American Nude 1964
Strangely, until late 1962 or early 1963, these artists were still labeled by
critics as New Realists or some other such term. Thus the two important
art shows held in the autumn of 1962 - one curated by Walter Hopps at the
Pasadena Art Museum, the other at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York were entitled "The New Painting of Common Objects" (Pasadena) and
"New Realism" (New York). Only hereafter was the term Pop-art used as a
technical name for the movement, partly due to the critics discomfort with
the term Realist, and partly due to the presence in New York of Lawrence
Alloway - now a curator at the Guggenheim Museum - who advocated the
adoption of the term.
From 1963 onwards, Pop-art spread throughout America and, helped by
British Pop-artists, established itself on the Continent. The movement's rise
was aided by parallel growth in other areas. In economics, via the growth
of the world economy in general and the American economy in particular;
in science, via the spread of television; in contemporary music, (which
itself became known as "Pop") through the miniaturization of radio,
increased record production, the appearance of cult groups like The
Beatles, and the phenomenon of pychedelia; and lastly through an
expanding art market.
Roy Lichtenstein Drowning Girl 1963
Robert Rauschenberg Choke
During the later 1960s, Andy Warhol emerged as the Damien Hirst (an
artist we will discuss later) of his day, gaining fame and notoriety in equal
amounts for his iconic celebrity screenprints, his conceptualist film work,
his increasingly sleek art production methods and his self promotion - at
least until he was shot and seriously wounded on June 3, 1968. Roy
Lichtenstein, too, became a household name through his comic-strip blowups and several prestigious retrospectives on both sides of the Atlantic.
Meantime, Rauschenberg won the Grand Prize at the 1964 Venice
Biennale, and maintained his avant-garde reputation by helping to form
EAT (Experiments in Art and Technology) in 1966 to boost collaboration
between artists and engineers, while Johns maintained his high standing by
winning first prize at the 1967 Sao Paulo Biennale.
Perhaps inevitably, having weathered the conformity of the 1950s, and the
panic of the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), American Pop-art reached its
peak during the second half of the 1960s, only to find itself infected and
undermined by the angst of the Vietnam War era, and the corresponding
rise of anti-Americanism.
The Aims, Philosophy and Methods of Pop Art
No international art movement that lasts for more than 15 years and
encompasses all known art types, genres and types of media, as well as
entirely new forms, can be summed up in a few sentences. Even so, no
understanding of Pop-art is possible without taking into account the
following concepts which help to characterize its core.
Andy Warhol Marilyn Monroe 1962
Claes Oldenburg Floor Cake 1962
Instant Meaning
The basic idea behind Pop-art was to create a form of art with instant
meaning. This was in sharp contrast to the super-intellectualism of
Abstract Expressionism with its esoteric canvases so beloved by arts
professionals. To achieve their goal of instant meaning, Pop artists
experimented with new commercial processes, like acrylic painting,
collage on canvas using materials not normally associated with painting,
and silkscreen printing. In addition, the imagery and color schemes for
most Pop-art painting and sculpture was taken from high-profile and
easily recognizable consumerist or media sources such as: consumer
goods, advertising graphics, magazines, television, film, cartoons and
comic books. People and objects were presented in bright, often highlycontrasting colors, while compositions were typically very simple and
visually appealing to the general public.
Art Can be Made From Anything
Up until the 20th century, traditional fine art painting was normally done
in oils: sculpture in bronze, stone or wood. Furthermore, subjects were
typically those deemed worthy of aesthetic treatment: the human nude,
the human face, the classic landscape, genre-scene or still life. Even
Cubism, despite its revolutionary nature, tended to observe many of these
artistic conventions. Then came the First World War and the anti-art
movement known as Dada. This movement initiated the idea that art can
be created from all sorts of stuff, including the most banal everyday
scraps of material. Pop-artists maintained and developed this idea. They
presented the modern world of popular culture with whatever materials
they though appropriate, no matter how low-brow or trivial.
The Idea is More Important Than the Work of Art Itself
Also, up until Dada, the essential feature of traditional fine art was the
work itself - the painting, sculpture, etching, carving or whatever.
Without a "work of art", there was nothing. All attention was therefore
focused on the quality of the finished product, and the skills required to
produce it. Dada rebelled against this by celebrating the "idea behind
the artwork" rather than the work itself. Many Pop-artists continued this
tradition of Conceptual Art. They placed more importance on the
impact of the work, and less importance on the making of it. Like the
use of low-brow materials, this emphasis on a work's concept and
impact was interpreted as an attempt to debunk the gravitas of the art
world. This was partly true: some Pop artists did share the anti-art and
anti-aesthetic credo of earlier Dadaists. However, mainstream Pop was
more positive and more concerned to create new forms of expression,
using new methods and new pictorial imagery, than to denigrate
tradition. Indeed, many Pop-artists saw themselves as contributing to,
rather than junking, fine art.
A More Inclusive and More Relevant Style of Art
No matter how exquisitely conceived and painted, and how well
received by influential art critics like Clement Greenberg (1909-94),
Harold Rosenberg (1906-78) and others, Mark Rothko's monumental
works of Abstract Expressionism were largely unknown to the American
(or British) public at large. In contrast, almost everyone recognized
Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and numerous other celebrities, as well as the
popular foods and other branded products brands that rapidly became the
staple subject of Pop-art. Thus from a very early stage, Pop-art declared
its intention to reject the elitist character of traditional or high-brow art
in favor of populist pictures of well-known subjects.
Jasper Johns Field Painting 1963-64
For most people in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a trip to an art
museum entailed a tedious trawl past rows of obscure paintings, most of
which were neither understandable nor entertaining. Typically, most
famous works (and the artists who created them) could not be
appreciated simply by viewing them, but required close study of a
museum guidebook. Pop art was instrumental in opening up the world
of painting and sculpture to ordinary people who, perhaps for the first
time in their lives, could instantly recognize and appreciate the exhibit
in front of them. They might not like it, but they were far less likely to
feel intimidated by an everyday image they could relate to. In this
sense, Pop-art made museums and galleries more relevant to the
general public.
(http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/pop-art.htm)
Andy Warhol Campbell Soup Cans
Alex Katz, Ted Berrigan, 1967
Robert Indiana LOVE 1967
Andy Warhol
Perhaps one of America’s most famous artists, if not the most famous PopArtist of all time is Andy Warhol. “Born Andrew Warhola in a working
class suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on August 6th 1928 to Slovak
immigrants (Ondrej and Julia Warhola [Varchola in Slovakia]). Warhol
showed an early interest in photography and drawing, attending free classes
at Carnegie Institute.
Andy Warhol about the age of 3, with his mother Julia and brother John, 1932
(Andy is the boy on the right)
Warhol's father worked in a coal mine, and the family lived at 55 Beelen
Street and later at 3252 Dawson Street in the Oakland neighborhood of
Pittsburgh. The family was Byzantine Catholic and attended St. John
Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church. Andy Warhol has two brothers
John and Paul. His father died in an accident when Andy was 13 years old.
Warhol came down with St. Vitus' dance in third grade, an affliction of the
nervous system causing involuntary movements which is believed to be a
complication of scarlet fever. He was frequently bed-ridden as a child and
became an outcast amongst other students. When in bed he drew a lot,
listened to the radio and collected pictures of movie stars.
Years later Warhol described the period of his sickness as very important in
the development of his personality and in the forming of his skill-set and
preferences. The 1940s in America was psychologically grim. The country
had just recovered from the Depression and the Second World War had
brought the cruel outside world to the hearts and minds of isolationistminded Americans. The average man worried about protecting his interests
at home from Fascists, Communists and atomic bombs. It was an
atmosphere of conformity and insecurity.
Andy was the only member of his family to attend college. In 1945 he
entered the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now known as Carnegie
Melon University), where he majored in pictorial design.
Upon graduation, Warhol moved to New York with fellow students Philip
Pearlstein and Phil's wife Dorothy Kantorand found steady work as a
commercial artist working as an illustrator for several magazines including
Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and The New Yorker.
Andy Warhol
The Beat movement was there, slamming the mentally lethargic, decadent
attitude of the middle class. Artists and writers were out to alter the public
consciousness. New York was also the home of breakthrough creativity in
the commercial arts industry. Madison Avenue was the advertising and
editorial hub of the world. It was the perfect place for an illustrator to make
a living.
"Well, Andy was immediately employable. I was a very uncertain thing—my
portfolio was one of those elaborately worked out, intellectualized things
about the US Constitution (2B), and unfortunately, I hit New York in the
beginning of the McCarthy era, and as soon as I walked in and somebody
saw it, they immediately assumed I was some sort of political kook ... Andy
went right to the heart of the matter, he knew—that's what I mean by he was
immediately employable; he was only interested in illustration, and they
were very direct." - Philip Pearlstein.
Hand-colored studio portrait of Shirley Temple with handwritten inscription:
"To Andrew Worhola [sic] from Shirley Temple", 1941
(Perhaps proof of an early preoccupation with Pop Culture?)
He became well-known for his whimsical ink drawings (left bottom) done
in a loose, blotted ink style which were shown at the Bodley Gallery in New
York. He also did advertising and window displays for retail stores such as
Bonwit Teller and I. Miller. Ironically, his first assignment was for Glamour
magazine for an article titled "Success is a Job in New York." Throughout
the nineteen fifties, Warhol enjoyed a successful career as a commercial
artist, winning several commendations from the Art Director's Club and the
American Institute of Graphic Arts. During this period, he shortened his
name to "Warhol." In 1951 he won his first ADC Award for a CBS record
illustration. Andy also had his first solo exhibition at the Hugo Gallery in
1952, exhibiting Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman
Capote. Subsequently, Warhol's work was exhibited in several venues
throughout the fifties including his first group show at The Museum of
Modern Art in 1955.
In 1953 the artist produced his first illustrated book, A is an Alphabet and
Love is a Pink Cake, which he gave to his clients and associates.
In 1956 he and other pop artists had an important group exhibition at the
renowned Museum of Modern Art. With a burgeoning career as an
illustrator and artist, he formed Andy Warhol Enterprises in 1957.
Warhol also traveled to Japan, Southeast Asia, Italy and Holland in 1956
and had two exhibitions at the Bodley Gallery. The work for I. Miller,
Harper's Bazaar, and Noonday Press won him additional ADC awards and
business was booming so he hired several assistants:
(http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/popart/Andy-Warhol.html)
“In the late 1950s, Warhol began to devote more energy to painting. He
made his first Pop paintings, which he based on comics and ads, in 1961.
The following year marked the beginning of Warhol’s celebrity. He debuted
his famous Campbell’s Soup Can series, which caused a sensation in the art
world. Shortly thereafter he began a large sequence of movie star portraits,
including Marilyn Monroe,(left top), Elvis Presley, and Elizabeth Taylor.
Warhol also started his series of “death and disaster” paintings at that time.
Between 1963 and 1968 Warhol worked with his Superstar performers and
various other people to create hundreds of films. These films were scripted
and improvised, ranging from conceptual experiments and simple narratives
to short portraits and sexploitation features. His works include Empire
(1964), The Chelsea Girls (1966), and the Screen Tests (1964-66).
Warhol’s first exhibition of sculptures was held in 1964. It included
hundreds of replicas of large supermarket product boxes, including Brillo
Boxes and Heinz Boxes (left bottom). For this occasion, he premiered his
new studio, painted silver and known as “The Factory”. It quickly became
“the” place to be in New York; parties held there were mentioned in gossip
columns throughout the country. Warhol held court at Max’s Kansas City, a
nightclub that was a popular hangout among artists and celebrities. By the
mid-1960s he was a frequent presence in magazines and the media.
Warhol expanded into the realm of performance art with a traveling
multimedia show called The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, which featured
The Velvet Underground, a rock band. In 1966 Warhol exhibited Cow
Wallpaper and Silver Clouds at the Leo Castelli Gallery.
Warhol self-published a large series of artists’ books in the 1950s, but the
first one to be mass-produced was Andy Warhol’s Index (Book), published in
1967. Two years later he co-founded Interview, a magazine devoted to film,
fashion, and popular culture. Interview is still in circulation today. His later
books include THE Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back
Again) (1975), Exposures (1979), POPism (1980), and America (1985).
Most of his books were based on transcribed conversations.
In 1974, Warhol started a series of Time Capsules: cardboard boxes that he
filled with the materials of his everyday life, including mail, photos, art,
clothing, collectibles, etc. The artist produced over 600 of them and they are
now an archival goldmine of his life and times.
Throughout the 1970s Warhol frequently socialized with celebrities such as
Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Truman Capote, both of whom had been
important early subjects in his art. He started to receive dozens—and soon
hundreds—of commissions for painted portraits from wealthy socialites,
musicians and film stars. Celebrity portraits developed into a significant
aspect of his career and a main source of income. He was a regular
partygoer at Studio 54, the famous New York disco, along with celebrities
such as fashion designer Halston, entertainer Liza Minnelli, and Bianca
Jagger. In 1984, Warhol collaborated with the young artists Jean-Michel
Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, and Keith Haring. Warhol returned to
painting with a brush for these artworks, briefly abandoning the silkscreen
method he had used exclusively since 1962.
Andy Warhol Cow, 1966
In the mid-1980s his television shows, Andy Warhol’s T.V. and Andy
Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes were broadcast on New York cable television and
nationally on MTV. He created work for Saturday Night Live, appeared in
an episode of The Love Boat and produced music videos for rock bands
such as The Cars. Warhol also signed with a few modeling agencies,
appearing in fashion shows and numerous print and television ads.
Warhol was a prolific artist, producing numerous works through the 1970s
and 1980s. His paintings, prints, photographs, and drawings from this
period include: Mao, Ladies and Gentlemen, Skulls, Hammer and Sickles,
Shadows, Guns, Knives, Crosses, Dollar Signs, Zeitgeist, and Camouflage.
Warhol’s final two exhibitions were his series of Last Supper paintings,
shown in Milan and his Sewn Photos (multiple prints of identical photos
sewn together in a grid), exhibited in New York. Both shows opened in
January 1987, one month before his death.
Andy Warhol Little Electric Chair, 1964-1965
Critics’ opinions differ regarding the social commentary in Warhol’s work.
The artist was deliberately evasive about his intentions and his work allows
for diverse and often contradictory readings. As noted by one biographer,
Warhol thought that the electric chair reflected a “typically American way
to go.” Does this preclude a statement on capital punishment? Or does the
artist see the chair as merely another American icon; a Campbell’s soup can,
Marilyn Monroe figure or Coca-Cola logo? Warhol seems to adopt, as art
critic Robert Rosenblum maintains, “the stance of an aesthete-observer in
the face of any subject, whether a stalk of asparagus or a murder.”
The social intent of his work may lie in its very ambiguity and the
possibility for multiple interpretations. Do Warhol’s portraits pay homage to
Jackie’s stately example of mourning—her public grief as the widowed
First Lady? Or do they mirror, in their constancy and repetition, the media’s
relentless portrayal of the events surrounding President John F. Kennedy’s
assassination? In this work, as in others, the artist seems to both celebrate
and critique American culture.
Fame infatuated Warhol. His art reflects an ongoing fascination with
Hollywood and celebrity culture. In the 1960s, Warhol achieved his own
celebrity status. His Ray -Bans and black leather jacket cut a stylish image
of New York underground cool. Warhol was featured prominently in
magazines and news stories. People clamoring to see the artist’s enigmatic
figure mobbed the opening to his 1965 retrospective at the Institute for
Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. In the 1970s, Warhol’s nightly forays
into Studio 54, the premier club of the time, solidified his iconic reputation.
Business flourished as the rich and famous commissioned him to paint their
portraits. By this time, Warhol had traded in his downtown leather jacket for
an uptown tux. He was seen with everyone from country singer Dolly
Parton to President Jimmy Carter. The 1980s saw yet another Warhol
incarnation as he hosted Andy Warhol’s TV and modeled high fashion.
Andy Warhol Vote McGovern, 1972
Filmmaker, photographer, painter, commercial illustrator, music producer,
writer, and even fashion model--Warhol was a true radical in his approach
to art. The breadth and significance of his influence has made him one of
the most important artists of our time. He challenged traditional boundaries
between art and life, art and business, and different media. In the process he
turned everyday life into art and art into a way to live the everyday-collecting, documenting, reproducing, experimenting and collaborating with
the people, places and things around him. Warhol’s enthusiasm for life was
rivaled only by his love of the methods of capturing it. He loved the
framing device--the camera, the silkscreen, the empty box, the tape
recorder, the shopping bag; the telephone—as much as the content it
framed. Perhaps Warhol’s greatest innovation was that he saw no limits to
his practice. His Pop sensibility embraced an anything-can-be-art approach-appropriating images, ideas and even innovation itself.
(http://www.warhol.org/aboutandy/career/#ixzz13gkxjV48)
Fame nearly killed Warhol. “In 1968 Valerie Solanas, a periodic factory
visitor, and the sole member of SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men)
walked into the Factory and shot Warhol. The attack was near fatal and he
was briefly declared dead (doctors opened his chest and massaged his heart
to help stimulate its movement again).
Andy Warhol Mao, 1972
On June 3rd 1968 she arrived at The Factory and waited for Warhol in the
lobby area. When he arrived with a couple of friends, she fired three shots
from a handgun at Warhol. She then shot art critic Mario Amaya and also
tried to shoot Warhol's manager, Fred Hughes, but her gun jammed. Just
then, the elevator arrived. Hughes suggested she take it, and she did, leaving
the Factory.
That evening Solanas turned herself in to the police and was charged with
attempted murder and other offenses. Solanas made statements to the
arresting officer and at the arraignment hearing that Warhol had "too much
control" over her and that Warhol was planning to steal her work. Pleading
guilty, she received a three-year sentence.
Warhol refused to testify against her. The attack had a profound impact on
Warhol and his art, and The Factory scene became much more tightly
controlled afterwards. For the rest of his life, Warhol lived in fear that
Solanas would attack him again.
"It was the Cardboard Andy, not the Andy I could love and play with," said
close friend and collaborator Billy Name. "He was so sensitized you
couldn't put your hand on him without him jumping. I couldn't even love
him anymore, because it hurt him to touch him." While his friends were
actively hostile towards Solanas, Warhol himself preferred not to discuss
her.
Warhol barely survived. He never fully recovered and for the rest of his life
had to wear a bandage to prevent his injuries from worsening. Years later,
his wounds would still occasionally bleed after he overexerted himself.”
(http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/popart/Andy-Warhol.html)
Valerie Solanas
Andy’s Mother (right) just after the shooting
Alice Neel World of hurt 1970
Andy Warhol's 1962 Campbell's Soup Cans
1969 Esquire magazine
Andy Warhol Brilo Box 1969
Andy Warhol Skull, 1976
Andy Warhol Statue of Liberty, 1962
Richard Avedon Andy Warhol, Artist, New York City, August 14, 1969
Richard Avedon Andy Warhol, artist, New York City 1969
ROY LICHTENSTEIN
Let us also discuss Roy Lichtenstein. “Born into a middle class family on
October 27, 1923 in New York City, Roy Lichtenstein attended public
school until the age of 12, before being enrolled into a private academy for
his secondary education. The academy did not have an art department, and
he became interested in art and design as hobby outside of his schooling. He
was an avid fan of Jazz and often attended concerts at the Apollo Theater in
Harlem. He would often draw portraits of the musicians at their instruments.
During 1939, in his final year at the academy, he enrolled in summer art
classes at the Arts Students League in New York under the tutelage of
Reginald Marsh.
Roy Lichtenstein
On graduating in 1940, Lichtenstein left New York to study at the Ohio
State University which offered studio courses and a degree in fine arts. His
studies were interrupted by a three year stint in the army during World War
II. He returned to his studies in Ohio after the war and one of his teachers at
the time, Hoyt L. Sherman, is widely regarded to have had a significant
impact on his future work (Lichtenstein would later name a new studio he
funded at OSU as the Hoyt L. Sherman Studio Art Center). Lichtenstein
entered the graduate program at Ohio State and was hired as an art
instructor, a post he held on and off for the next ten years. In 1951 he had
his first one-man exhibition at a gallery in New York, the exhibition was a
minor success. He moved to Cleveland in 1951, where he remained for six
years, doing jobs as various as draftsmen to window decorator in between
periods of painting. His work at this time was based on cubist
interpretations of other artist’s paintings such as Frederic Remington. In
1957 he moved back to upstate New York and began teaching again. It is at
this time that he adopted the Abstract Expressionism style, a late convert to
this style of painting; he showed his work in 1959 to an unenthusiastic
audience.
He began teaching at Rutgers University in 1960 where he was heavily
influenced by Allan Kaprow, also a tutor at the University. His first work to
feature the large scale use of hard edged figures and Benday Dots was Look
Mickey (1961, National Gallery, Washington DC) (see left top). In the same
year he produced six other works with recognizable characters from gum
wrappers or cartoons. In 1961 Leo Castelli started displaying Lichtensteins
work at his gallery in New York, and he had his first one man show at the
gallery in 1962, the entire collection was bought by influential collectors of
the time before the show even opened. Finally making enough money to
live from his painting, he stopped teaching in the same year.
Using oil and Magna paint his best known works, such as Drowning Girl
(1963, Museum of Modern Art, New York), feature thick outlines, bold
colors and Benday Dots to represent certain colors, as if created by
photographic reproduction. Rather than attempt to reproduce his subjects,
his work tackles the way mass media portrays them.
His most famous image is arguably Whaam! (1963, Tate Gallery, London),
one of the earliest known examples of pop art, featuring a fighter aircraft
firing a rocket into an enemy plane with a dazzling red and yellow
explosion. The cartoon style is heightened by the use of the onomatopoetic
lettering WHAAM! and the boxed caption "I pressed the fire control... and
ahead of me rockets blazed through the sky..." This diptych is large in scale,
measuring 1.7 x 4.0 m (5'7" x 13'4"). (see next slide)
Most of his best-known artworks are relatively close, but not exact, copies
of comic book panels, a subject he largely abandoned in 1965. (He would
occasionally incorporate comics into his work in different ways in later
decades.) These panels were originally drawn by lesser known comic book
artists such as Russ Heath, Tony Abruzzo, Irv Novick, and Jerry
Grandinetti, who rarely received any credit. Artist Dave Gibbons, said of
Lichtenstein's works: "Roy Lichtenstein's copies of the work of Irv Novick
and Russ Heath are flat, uncomprehending tracings of quite sophisticated
images." Lichtenstein's obituary in The Economist noted that "this is to miss
the point of Roy Lichtenstein's achievement. His was the idea. The art of
today, he told an interviewer, is all around us."
Roy Lichtenstein Hopeless 1963
Roy Lichtenstein Whaam 1963
During the seventies and eighties, his work began to loosen and expand on
what he had done before. He produced a series of “Artists Studios” which
incorporated elements of his previous work. A notable example being
Artist's Studio, Look Mickey (1973, Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis) which
incorporates five other previous works, fitted into the scene.
In the late seventies this style was replaced with more surreal works such as
Pow Wow (1979, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst,Aachen).
In addition to paintings, he also made sculptures in metal and plastic
including some notable public sculptures such as Lamp in St. Mary’s,
Georgia in 1978.
His painting Torpedo...Los! (next slide) sold at Christie's for $5.5 million in
1989, a record sum at the time, one of only three artists to have attracted
such huge sums for art produced within the artists lifetime.
In 1995 Lichtenstein was awarded the Kyoto Prize from the Inamori
Foundation in Kyoto, Japan
In 1996 The National Gallery in Washington DC became the largest single
repository of the Artists work when he donated 154 prints and 2 books. In
total there are some 4,500 works thought to be in circulation.
He died of pneumonia on September 29, 1997 at New York University
Medical Center. Twice married, he was survived by his wife, Dorothy, who
he wed in 1968 and by his sons, David and Mitchell, from his first
marriage.”
Roy Lichtenstein Girl at Piano, 1963
(http://www.artinthepicture.com/artists/Roy_Lichtenstein/Biography/)
Roy Lichtenstein Torpedo...Los!
At this point in class we are going to discuss two very difficult Art
Movements to understand, Minimalism and Conceptual Art.
Minimalism, is certainly one of those kinds of art that makes the
general public scratch their heads and ask, “Is this art?” the
answer to most individuals is immediately, no. I ask you once
again to keep an open mind, and reflect on how sometimes the
most simple things are worth exploring. Minimal Artists were
highly interested in the incredibly subtle ways in which we
perceive art. Remember truth, honesty, and purity of expression
were also all topics these artists were deeply interested in! I
promise if you can survive the first part of this lecture I will
reward you with the Photorealism Movement ! A movement many
find very interesting!
Tony Smith Free Ride 1962
Tony Smith Free Ride 1962
“Though never a self-proclaimed movement, Minimalism refers to
painting or sculpture made with an extreme economy of means
and reduced to the essentials of geometric abstraction. Minimalist
art is generally characterized by precise, hard-edged, unitary
geometric forms; rigid planes of color—usually cool hues or
commercially mixed colors, or sometimes just a single color;
nonhierarchical, mathematically regular compositions, often based
on a grid; the reduction to pure self-referential form, emptied of
all external references; and an anonymous surface appearance,
without any gestural inflection. As a result of these formal
attributes, this art has also been referred to as ABC art, Cool art,
Imageless Pop, Literalist art, Object art, and Primary Structure art.
Minimalist art shares Pop arts rejection of the artistic subjectivity
and heroic gesture of Abstract Expressionism . In Minimal art
what is important is the phenomenological basis of the viewer's
experience, how he or she perceives the internal relationships
among the parts of the work and of the parts to the whole, as in the
gestalt aspect of Morris's sculpture. The repetition of forms in
Minimalist sculpture serves to emphasize the subtle differences in
the perception of those forms in space and time as the spectator's
viewpoint shifts in time and space.”
(http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/glossary_Minimalism.
html )
Minimalism was a, “term used in the 20th century, in particular
from the 1960s, to describe a style characterized by an impersonal
austerity, plain geometric configurations and industrially
processed materials. It was first used by David Burlyuk in the
catalogue introduction for an exhibition of John Graham’s
paintings at the Dudensing Gallery in New York in 1929. Burlyuk
wrote: ‘Minimalism derives its name from the minimum of
operating means. Minimalist painting is purely realistic—the
subject being the painting itself.’ The term gained currency in the
1960s. Accounts and explanations of Minimalism varied
considerably, as did the range of work to which it was related.
This included the monochrome paintings of Yves Klein, Robert
Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, Frank Stella and Brice Marden, and
even aspects of Pop art and Post-painterly Abstraction. Typically
the precedents cited were Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades, the
Suprematist compositions of Kazimir Malevich and Barnett
Newman’s Abstract Expressionist paintings. The rational grid
paintings of Agnes Martin (next slide) were also mentioned in
connection with such Minimalist artists as Sol LeWitt.
Dan Flavin "Monument" for V. Tatlin 1 1964
After the work of such critics as Clement Greenberg and Michael
Fried, analyses of Minimalism tended to focus exclusively on the
three-dimensional work of such American artists as Carl André,
Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, LeWitt, Robert Morris and Tony Smith,
although Smith himself never fully subscribed to Minimalism.
These artists never worked or exhibited together as a self-defined
group, yet their art shared certain features: geometric forms and
use of industrial materials or such modern technology as the
fluorescent electric lights that appeared in Flavin’s works.
Minimalists also often created simple modular and serial
arrangements of forms that are examples of Systems art. LeWitt’s
serial works included wall drawings as well as sculptures.
Judd and Morris were the principal artists to write about
Minimalism. Judd’s most significant contribution to this field was
the article ‘Specific Objects’ (1965). (also mentioned in your
reading) Judd’s article began by announcing the birth of a new
Agnes Martin. Tremolo. 1962
type of three-dimensional work that could not be classified in
terms of either painting or sculpture and, in effect, superseded
both traditions. Judd’s concept became retrospectively identified
with his own boxes and stark geometric reliefs of the period .
Originally, however, he explained his idea with reference to the
work of a heterogeneous selection of artists, including Lee
Bontecou, John Chamberlain, Klein, Yayoi Kusama (b 1929),
Claes Oldenburg, Richard Smith, Frank Stella and H. C.
Westermann (1922–81). The article was also copiously illustrated
with works by such artists as Richard Artschwager, Flavin, Jasper
Johns, Phillip King, Morris, Rauschenberg, Stella, and with one of
Judd’s own pieces. Judd distinguished the new work by means of
its compositional ‘wholeness’, which, unlike previous art, was not
‘made part by part, by addition’. He was later to focus the critical
implications of this distinction with a dismissive reference (1969)
to the ‘Cubist fragmentation’ of Anthony Caro’s work. For Judd,
his own work achieved its formal integrity principally by adapting
into a third dimension the ‘singleness’ that he observed in the
compositions of such painters as Barnett Newman, Jackson
Pollock, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still.
Donald Judd Untitled (Stack) 1967
Morris’s influential ‘Notes on Sculpture’ appeared a year after
Judd’s article. In it he established the criteria by which his own
recent work could be evaluated. Like Judd, he repudiated an
aesthetic based on Cubist principles. ‘The sensuous object,
resplendent with compressed internal relations, has had to be
rejected’ (Artforum, v/2 (Oct 1966), p. 23). In its place Morris
proposed a more compact, ‘unitary’ art form. He was especially
drawn to simple, regular and irregular polyhedrons. Influenced by
theories in psychology and phenomenology, Morris argued that
these configurations established in the mind of the beholder
‘strong gestalt sensation’, whereby form and shape could be
grasped intuitively. Judd and Morris both attempted to reduce the
importance of aesthetic judgment in modernist criticism by
connecting the question of the specificity of the medium to
Barnett Newman Voice of Fire 1967
generic value. Nevertheless, a distinction between the categories
of art and non-art was maintained with Judd’s claim that ‘A work
needs only to be interesting’.
For Greenberg and Fried, Minimalist work was united by the
threat it posed to their modernist aesthetic. The modernist
response to Minimalism was outlined in Greenberg’s ‘Recentness
of Sculpture’ and Fried’s ‘Art and Objecthood’ (both 1967). Both
critics were troubled by claims for Minimalism as a new art form,
and were also concerned at the Minimalist elimination of complex
compositional relations and subtle nuances of form, which they
believed to be essential qualities of modernist sculpture. The
critical resistance that Minimalism met in its initial stages
persisted, and censure arose not only from modernist critics but
also from the tabloid press. This was particularly evident in the
abuse that was given to André’s sculpture made from building
bricks, Equivalent VIII (1966; London, Tate), (left) upon the
occasion of its exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London in 1976.
Carl Andre Equivalent VIII 1966
From the 1960s the Minimalists’ work remained remarkably
consistent, continuing its geometric and serial forms (e.g. LeWitt’s
Cube Structures Based on Five Modules, 600×800×700 mm,
1971–4; Edinburgh, N.G. Mod. A.). Conceptual art inherited many
of the concerns as well as the contradictions of Minimalist
discourse. Attempts were made by Joseph Kosuth, among others,
to resolve its complex views on the relationship between aesthetic
judgment and the art object. Minimalism’s sense of ‘theatricality’
stimulated much subsequent work in the fields of installation and
performance art, where it helped facilitate a critical engagement
with the spectator’s perception of space and time. The concept of
‘theatricality’ was first used in connection with Minimalism by
Michael Fried to characterize the absence of ‘presentness’ in the
spatial and temporal experience of the art work. While Fried was
critical of this situation, his analysis led, by default, to a
reassessment of Minimalism from an anti-humanist perspective.”
(Want)
We have seen the term, “Conceptual Art” used a number of times
when discussing Sol LeWitt’s work. In fact he is often labeled a
Conceptual Artist. Keep in mind he can be both a Minimalist and
Conceptual Artist. Artists are not always confined to being
involved in one art movement. Often, an artist starts out in one
movement, making a certain type of art. During the course of his
or her life they may move into a completely different style of
artwork or be involved with another movement.
Robert Morris Untitled 1965/71
Robert Morris Untitled 1967
One of the things interesting about Minimalism and Conceptual
Art is that it shares many similarities and philosophies. So often
you will hear the names of one artist used when discussing both
movements. I want to discuss Conceptual Art further. “Few artistic
movements are surrounded by so much debate and controversy as
conceptual art. For conceptual art has a tendency to provoke
intense and perhaps even extreme reactions in its audiences. After
all, whilst some people find conceptual art very refreshing and the
only kind of art that is relevant to today's world, many others
consider it shocking, distasteful, skill-less, downright bad, or, and
most importantly, not art at all. Conceptual art, it seems, is
something that we either love or hate.
This divisive character is, however, far from accidental. Most
conceptual art actively sets out to be controversial in so far as it
seeks to challenge and probe us about what we tend to take as
given in the domain of art. In fact, this facet of evoking argument
and debate lies at the very heart of what it is trying to do, namely
to make us question our assumptions not only about what may
properly qualify as art and what the function of the artist should
be, but also what our role as spectators should involve, and how
we should relate to art. It should come as no surprise, then, that
conceptual art can cause frustration or vexation – to raise difficult
and sometimes even annoying questions is precisely what
conceptual art in general aspires to do. In reacting strongly to
conceptual art we are, in other words, playing right into its hands.
The first difficulty that a philosophical investigation of conceptual
art encounters has to do with isolating the object of examination,
or at least the category of objects under scrutiny. In the words of
the art historian Paul Wood,
[i]t is not at all clear where the boundaries of ‘conceptual art’ are
to be drawn, which artists and which works to include. Looked at
in one way, conceptual art gets to be like Lewis Carroll's Cheshire
cat, dissolving away until nothing is left but a grin: a handful of
works made over a few short years by a small number of artists…
Then again, regarded under a different aspect, conceptual art can
seem like nothing less than the hinge around which the past turned
into the present. (Wood 2002, 6)
Joseph Beuys, How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (26 November 1965),
performance documentation at Galerie Alfred Schmela, Düsseldorf.
On a strict historical reading, the expression ‘conceptual art’ refers
to the artistic movement that reached its pinnacle between 1966
and 1972 (Lippard 1973). Amongst its most famous adherents at
its early stage we find artists such as Joseph Kosuth, Robert
Morris, Joseph Beuys and Mel Ramsden, to name but a few. What
unites all conceptual art of that period is the absorption of the
lessons learnt from other twentieth-century art movements such as
Dadaism, Surrealism, Suprematism, Abstract Expressionism and
the Fluxus group, not to mention the attempt to once and for all
‘free’ art of the Modernist paradigm. Most importantly, perhaps,
conceptual art sought to overcome a backdrop against which art's
principal aim is to produce something beautiful or aesthetically
pleasing. Art, early conceptual artists held, is redundant if it does
not make us think. Yet most artistic institutions are not conducive
to reflection and continue to promote a consumerist conception of
art and artists based on beauty and technical skill and this,
conceptual artists in the mid-1960s to the early 1970s agreed,
must be denounced. The job of conceptual artists is instead to
encourage a revisionary understanding of art, artist, and artistic
experience.
Whilst conceptual art in its purest form might arguably be limited
to works produced during these five or six years nearly half a
century ago, it seems overly narrow – certainly from a
philosophical perspective – to limit our inquiry to works produced
during that period alone. For although the work created during
that time might generally be conceived as more directly antiestablishment and anti-consumerist than later conceptual art, the
spirit of early conceptual art seems to have carried on relatively
undiluted into the very late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as
witnessed by pieces such as Tracey Emin's Unmade Bed, Damian
Hirst's The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of
Someone Living, (next slide) and The Chapman Brothers' My
Family.
The highly individualized character of the intellectual exploration
that conceptual art urges us to engage in has always been such that
any attempt to pinpoint a specific common denominator other than
this general vision and approach to art, art-making and society at
large invariably fails to catch its very essence. The means of
artistic expression, we are told, are infinite and the topics
available for questioning and discussion are limitless. It belongs to
the very nature of conceptual art, then, to be – like Lewis'
Cheshire cat – elusive and slippery. Conceptual artists, be it
Joseph Beuys or Damian Hirst, pursue artistic originality and
representation in every possible way. For that reason, one might
find ourselves obliged to replace the slightly lofty cliché
according to which there are as many definitions of conceptual art
as there are conceptual artists with the further claim that there are,
in fact, as many definitions of conceptual art as there are
conceptual artworks.
Joseph Beuys, I like America and America likes me 1974 installation
Nevertheless, in the midst of this deliberately produced
uncertainty about the nature of conceptual art, a handful of
characteristics and general aims do seem to recur, and although
they should not be seen as criteria for conceptual art strictly
speaking, they may be considered tenets fundamental to (most)
conceptual art.
Damian Hirst's The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living 1991
The Limits of Art and the Role of Artists
First and foremost, conceptual art challenges our intuitions
concerning the limits of what may count as art and what it is an
artist does. That is to say, works of conceptual art encourage us to
think about the kind of things that may be considered to be art,
and about exactly what the role of the artist should be. It does so,
on the one hand, by postulating ever more complex objects as
candidates for the status of ‘artwork’, and, on the other hand, by
distancing the task of the artist from the actual making and
manipulating of the artistic material.
Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965.
Joseph Kosuth, Four Words Four Colors 1965.
A characteristic way in which conceptual art explores the
boundaries of the artwork is by questioning where the realm of the
artistic ends and that of utility begins. Continuing the tradition of
Marcel Duchamp's readymades such as Fountain, or Bottlerack, it
sets out to overthrow our traditional conceptions of what an art
object should be made of and what it should look like. The
artwork is a process rather than a material thing, and as such it is
no longer something that can be grasped merely by seeing,
hearing or touching the end product of that process. The notion of
agency in art-making is thus particularly emphasized. In many
cases, the ‘art-making’ and the ‘artwork’ come together, as what is
sought is an identification of the notion of the work of art with the
conceptual activity of the artist. Conceptual art, politicised and
influenced by events such as the ‘May Days’ in Paris (1968), the
‘Hot Autumn’ in Italy (1969), the Vietnam War, and the rise of
feminism, promotes a rapprochement between art-making and
criticism – both artistic and social – by raising questions about the
products of artistic activities and the very purpose of art. To use
the words of Joseph Kosuth, it ‘both annexes the functions of the
critic, and makes a middle-man unnecessary.’ (Guercio 1999, 39).
Artistic Media
As a direct result of its examination of what may properly qualify
as art and its ensuing very broad conception of what may
constitute an art object, conceptual art rejects traditional artistic
Mel Ramsden's secret painting.
media such as conventional painting or sculpture. Instead, it
adopts alternative means of expression, including performances,
photography, films, videos, events, bodies, media, new readymades and new mixed media. In a nutshell, then, nothing
whatsoever can be ruled out in principle as possible artistic media,
as can be seen, for example, in Richard Long's photograph of a
line made in the grass by walking Bruce Nauman's nine minute
film of the artist himself playing one note on a violin whilst
walking around in his studio and Piero Manzoni's act of signing a
woman's arm.
Art as Idea
The most fundamentally revisionary feature of conceptual art is
the way in which it proclaims itself to be an art of the mind rather
than the senses: it rejects traditional artistic media because it
locates the artwork at the level of ideas rather than that of objects.
As process matters more than physical material, and because art
should be about intellectual inquiry and reflection rather than
beauty and aesthetic pleasure, the work of art is said to be the idea
at the heart of the piece in question. In the words of Kosuth, ‘[t]he
actual works of art are ideas’ (Lippard 1973, 25). For conceptual
art, ‘the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work’
(LeWitt 1967, 166). Art is ‘de-materialized’; art is prior to its
materialization and is ultimately rooted in the agency of the artist.
If art is de-materialized in this fashion, it is less likely, or so the
early conceptual artists held, to be institutionalized.
Dan Graham View Interior, New Highway Restaurant, Jersey City, NJ 1967
The claim that the conceptual artwork itself is to be identified
with the idea that may be seen to underlie it has far-reaching
ramifications. It not only affects the ontology of the conceptual
artwork but also profoundly alters the role of the artist by casting
her in the role of thinker rather than object-maker. Moreover, it
calls for a thorough review of the way in which we perceive,
engage and appreciate artworks. Further still, it links art so
intimately to ideas and concepts that even a principled distinction
between the domain of art and the realm of thought seems difficult
to preserve.” (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conceptual-art/)
Exam III
Vocab:
Assemblage
Combines
Happenings/Performance Art
Pop Art
Minimalism
Conceptual Art
Artists:
Robert Rauschenberg
John Cage
Jasper Johns
Andy Warhol
Roy Lichtenstein
Joseph Beuys
Artwork:
Target With Plaster Casts 32-1
Erased Willem de Kooning Drawing Lect 31 slide 15
Marilyn Diptych 32-10
How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare 32-15