Contemporary ArtWhat and when is it? An Introduction

World (cosmopolitan) culture shifted away from the “Modern” paradigm with World War II: c.1945-1968

Post-Europe

Post-Modern

Post-Colonial

For the quiz on Tuesday, you will write a concise (15-minute) essay about the so-called “end” of modern art: the transition from Paris to New York as the culture capital of the world. What were some of the political and social causes of the move? Identify three works of art (name and nationality of artist, title of artwork, date, medium, and movement) that serve as examples.

Paris World Fair 1937German Pavilion (left) by Albert Speer with Comrades, by Joseph Thorak

(right) USSR Pavilion with Vera Mukhina, The Worker and The Collective Farm Woman,

Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937, Paris Worlds Fair, Spanish Pavilion

ANXIOUS VISIONS for the End of the Age of Europesocial context of Surrealist imagery

Salvador Dali, Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: Premonitions of Civil War1936, oil on canvas, 39 x 39”

Hitler and Goebbels visit the Degenerate Art Exhibition, Munich, 1937(insert below) Max Beckmann, German Expressionist, at MoMA NYC in 1947 with 1933

painting, Departure

(left) Nazi 1937 degenerate music poster – Jazz, Jewish (Star of David) and Black(right) Degenerate art show installation – Dada with Kurt Schwitters and Paul Klee artworks visible

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 all major art (in one way or another), worldwide, since the 1960s

Marcel Duchamp. Bottle Rack, 1914/64, bottle rack made of galvanized ironBicycle Wheel, 1913, “Readymade”: bicycle wheel, mounted on a stool, originals lost

Duchamp, Fountain 1917 (photographed in 1917 by Alfred Stieglitz), New York DADADuchamp 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 (above, reconstruction of Nazi propaganda (1938): a public art work attacked and destroyed)

Neo Rauch (German, b. 1960) Das Neue (The New), 2003

Nazi (Axis) Blitzkrieg: Bombing of London, 1941

Nazi Fuhrer Adolph Hitler (Austrian,1889-1945) Photograph sent to Eva Braun after occupation of Paris,1940

The Fall of Paris is a watershed for the end of Modernism

Nazi (Axis) Blitzkrieg of London, beginning in 1941, inaugurating the ceaseless bombing of civilian populations throughout the war by both sides

Soviet (Ally) bombing of Berlin, August 11, 1941

Dresden, September 1945after 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

Aftermath of Hiroshima bomb – estimated 170,000 deaths

Miyako Ishiuchi (Japanese, b.1947), Mother’s, Venice Biennale 2005 Japanese Pavilion

Post-colonialismis the important historical context

for globalism

Decolonization of Europe’s world empiresoccurred 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 post-modern period.

Bomb blast, Algiers, 1957Poster for film about the AlgerianWar of Independence from France.

World map in 1980: The Cold War (1947-1991)

Berlin Wall, August 13, 1961, the GDR began under the leadership of Erich Honecker to block off East Berlin and the GDR from West Berlin by means of barbed wire and

antitank obstacles. Construction crews replaced the provisional barriers by a solid wall.

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 Stalin, Hitler, and Mao and is therefore 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, BeijingApril 15 – June 4 1989

1989

After 1989 and the end of the Cold War, the relationship to the past implied by “post” (postmodern, postcolonial, etc.) has dropped away. Today the hegemonic (dominant) world cultural paradigm is globalism.

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

Work Hard to Realize the Fourth FiveYear Plan of National Economy, 1972

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

"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 inthe 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. Photograph by George Platt Lynes

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 (used also by Freud)

Wilfredo Lam, (Cuban French, 1902 -1982, Paris, 1940 return from Paris to Cuba) (left) The Jungle, gouache on paper mounted on canvas, 1943; (right) The Warrior, 1947

Between 1942 and 1950, Lam exhibited regularly at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York.

Négritude and Créolité: Modernism in Diaspora

New York Interwar Modernism

Stuart Davis (US, 1892-1964)Lucky Strike, oil on canvas, 1921

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

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 and the Works Progress Administration (WPA-FSA)

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)

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 RealHofmann’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

Gorky & Willem de Kooning in Gorky’sStudio, 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

Post WW II: New York “steals” the idea of Modern Art: from Paris(left) Jackson Pollock painting, 1950; Willem de Kooning painting Woman I, 1951