Art History II Instructor Dustin M Price

What did we cover last time?

-The Rape of Europa Film - Remember that there are two questions that I want you to specifically be able to answer for exam 3 1)

How many Polish artworks were on the missing and/or stolen list during the making of this film, and what percentage of the actual stolen artworks do they believe that represents? 2) What specific building/national treasure was bombed by the Allies in Pisa, Italy (lead).

Lets move onto post-war art and artists

World War II:

- The United States recovered much quicker that most of Europe in an economic sense after WWII but the emotional damage was severe -The horrors of WWII surpassed those of WWI, horrors that we cannot even fathom - The human loss was profound more than 30 million people lost their lives, and a further 40 million were displaced - The inhumanity of the German concentration camps as well as, the horror of the dropping of nuclear bombs shook all of humanity to its very core - Many European artists right after the war used art to try to come to terms with what had happened

World War II:

-One of the most distinctive postwar European art movements was

Art Informel

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Art Informal or Formless Art was an attempt by artists to express authentic post WWII humanity through very simple, minimal, honest marks

- One such artist was Wolfgang Schulze, (known as Wols) the informal leader of the movement - He was a German born anti-Nazi expatriate that left Germany when Hitler came to power, moving to France -He lived through the decadence, devastation, and inhumanity of the war mostly in France (in a refugee camp in the south) - His work (left) is highly simplistic but at the same time very telling

Franz Kline

Black Reflections

, 1959

Abstract Expressionism:

-At this point in history the world had, and was, abruptly changing in many ways. Artists were coping with these changes while trying to articulate a new visual language, a new exploration into what art could be - There is going to be a lot of artwork that we look at in during this era that many of you might say, “A child could have done that” - Please remember that these artists had a reason for what they were doing. They were seeking answers to deep, complicated questions regarding expression and artistic communication -They were carrying Modern Art on their shoulders. What looks like regression , is in fact, progression Robert Motherwell

Two Figures

1958

André Masson. Automatic Drawing. (1924) Jackson Pollock

Untitled

, ca. 1948 –49

Abstract Expressionism:

“The crisis of war and its aftermath are key to understanding the concerns of the Abstract Expressionists -These young artists, troubled by man's dark side and anxiously aware of human irrationality and vulnerability, wanted to express their concerns in a new art of meaning and substance -Direct contact with European artists increased as a result of World War II, which caused so many —including Dalí, Ernst, Masson, Breton, Mondrian, and Léger—to seek refuge in the U.S. -The Surrealists opened up new possibilities with their emphasis on tapping the unconscious One Surrealist device for breaking free of the conscious mind was psychic

automatism

—in which automatic gesture and improvisation gain free rein.”

Abstract Expressionism:

“In the years following the end of World War II, a small group of American painters living in New York seized the spotlight of artistic innovation--which for the past century had focused primarily on Paris--and rose to preeminence in the national and international art world - Among them Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Adolph Gottlieb, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, and Clifford Still who challenged the aesthetic establishment and created the style of painting known today as Abstract Expressionism -Like any historical phenomenon, Abstract Expressionism defies precise definition. Even the term itself is subject to debate. "Action painting," "American-type painting," and the "New York School" are phrases often used to describe this movement

Abstract Expressionism:

- We will give it a shot though. Here is how Merriam-Webster defines it:

an artistic movement of the mid-20th century comprising diverse styles and techniques and emphasizing especially an artist's liberty to convey attitudes and emotions through nontraditional and usually nonrepresentational means

- Those associated with Abstract Expressionism were linked by their rejection of both social realism and geometric abstraction two dominant strains in American art in the 1930s, and by their interest in aspects of European-based Cubism and Surrealism.

- For them, art was no longer about copying forms in nature but was the expression of intangible ideas and experiences

Jackson Pollock

Abstract Expressionism:

-Paul Jackson Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming, but his farming and ranching family left there before he was a year old -He developed a drinking problem at around the age of 15 (which ruined his life, the life of many around him, and many future artists) -He enrolled at the Art Students League in New York, where his mentor Thomas Hart Benton imbued his pupil with antimodern prejudices -From August 1935 until 1942, Pollock was employed most of the time by a federal art project (PWAP) -the strains of poverty and fear of failure as an artist exacerbated his alcoholic tendency In 1937 he first sought treatment, and following a breakdown the following year, he was hospitalized for several months

Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner

Abstract Expressionism:

-From 1939 through 1941, he worked successively with two Jungian analysts who assisted his emergence as an individualistic creative personality. As part of his therapy, he produced drawings in which he reoriented his interests toward aspects of the period’s fascination with primitivism and surrealism - Shortly after he met his future wife Lee Krasner -Lee was a better trained, more accomplished artist, and better acquainted among the people who counted in the New York art world Krasner intuited Pollock’s potential greatness and undertook to shape his success.

-Her support both professional and personal no doubt had a profound impact on Jackson

Jackson Pollock

Male and Female

c1942 Jackson Pollock

Birth,

c1938-41

Jackson Pollock’s studio near Springs Long Island Jackson Pollock

Blue Poles: Number 11

Abstract Expressionism:

-To escape the milieu of New York Lee and Jackson moved to Springs, a village within the town of East Hampton -Over the next year and a half, his painting lost its haggard belligerency to more relaxed and expansive rhythms, realized on a large scale. Imagery gradually evaporated as manipulation of paint became central. -His direction at this point probably benefited from the emphasis on process, linear freedom -In 1947 he embarked on the all-over drip paintings that permanently sealed his reputation as a giant of twentieth-century art - So what is the deal with these drip paintings? Why are they so important to Modern Art? Why are they still so controversial?

Jackson Pollock

Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)

1950

Abstract Expressionism:

- In 1954 he painted relatively few works, though the dense

White Light

demonstrates continued power (Left) -Nevertheless, by early 1955, he had reached a creative impasse. Depressed, he perhaps questioned his own worth but, feeling that his art had been misunderstood, insisted that it had not received the recognition it deserved -Perhaps in defiance of his own best interests, which had always benefited from creative activity, he more or less stopped painting -On an August night the next year (1956) only a few hundred yards along Fireplace Road from his home and studio, he ran his convertible off the road, catapulted from the car when it flipped over, collided with a tree, and died instantly

Abstract Expressionism:

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“color-field painting, with Action painting, one of two major strains of the 20th-century art movement known as Abstract Expressionism. The term typically describes large-scale canvases dominated by flat expanses of colour and having a minimum of surface detail.”

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“

Color-field paintings typically have a unified, single-image field and differ qualitatively from the gestural, expressive brushwork of such artists as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning” - Mark Rothko was a champion among color-field painters

Abstract Expressionism:

“One of the preeminent artists of his generation, Mark Rothko is closely identified with the New York School -During a career that spanned five decades, he created a new and impassioned form of abstract painting (color field painting) -Rothko's work is characterized by rigorous attention to formal elements such as color, shape, balance, depth, composition, and scale; yet, he refused to consider his paintings solely in these terms. -He explained:

It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing

. - Mark Rothko was born Marcus Rothkowitz in Dvinsk, Russia”

Abstract Expressionism:

“Rothko attended Yale University in 1921, where he studied English, French, European history, elementary mathematics, physics, biology, economics, the history of philosophy, and general psychology -Rothko gave up his studies in the fall of 1923 and moved to New York City -In the social climate of anxiety that dominated the late 1930s and the years of World War II, images from everyday life- however unnaturalistic--began to appear somewhat outmoded -If art were to express the tragedy of the human condition, Rothko felt, new subjects and a new idiom had to be found. He said, "It was with the utmost reluctance that I found the figure could not serve my purposes....But a time came when none of us could use the figure without mutilating it."

Mark Rothko,

Untitled,

1948

Abstract Expressionism:

- Rothko once wrote: "We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.“ - By 1947 Rothko had virtually eliminated all elements of surrealism or mythic imagery from his works, and nonobjective compositions of indeterminate shapes emerged -Rothko largely abandoned conventional titles in 1947, sometimes resorting to numbers or colors in order to distinguish one work from another. The artist also now resisted explaining the meaning of his work. "Silence is so accurate," he said, fearing that words would only paralyze the viewer's mind and imagination

Abstract Expressionism:

“To stand in front of a Rothko is to be in the presence of the pulsing vibrancy of his enormous canvases; it is to feel, if only momentarily, something of the sublime spirituality he relentlessly sought to evoke” - Nietzsche, myth, and Jewish and social revolutionary thought were all important influences on Rothko's life and art -Like other New York School artists, Rothko used abstract means to express universal human emotions, earnestly striving to create an art of awe-inspiring intensity for a secular world - Rothko took his own life on February 25, 1970, in his New York studio

Untitled (Black on Grey)

1969/1970

Exam III: Vocab:

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Art Informal

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Abstract Expressionism

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Formalist

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Color Field Painting

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Artists:

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Jackson Pollock

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Lee Krasner

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Willem de Kooning Mark Rothko

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Artwork:

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Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) 31-78

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Woman I 31-81

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Untitled (Black on Grey) Lect 29 slide 22