NEW MODELS FOR ARCHITECTURE: MODERNISM TO POSTMODERNISM

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (exterior view from the north), New York, 1943-1959 (photo 1962).

The form Frank Lloyd Wright used as the basis for his design for the Guggenheim Museum was the spiral of a snail’s shell.

Frank Lloyd WrightKaufmann House (Fallingwater)Bear Run, Pennsylvania1936-39

Forms that provided the inspiration for Le Corbusier's Notre Dame du Haut (FIGS. 34-42 and 34-43) were the shape of praying hands, the wings of a dove, and the prow of a ship.Notre Dame du Haut differ from Le Corbusier's earlier works in that it is organic, a fusion of architecture and sculpture, rather than the strict geometry of his earlier works.

LE CORBUSIER, Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, France, 1950-1955.

JOERN UTZON, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia, 1959-1972. Reinforced concrete; height of highest shell, 200'.

Two architectural metaphors used in the Opera House in Sydney Australia:The buoyancy of seabird wings.The sails of the tall ships that brought European settlers to Australia.

EERO SAARINEN, TWA terminal, Kennedy Airport, New York, 1956-1962.

Designer of the TWA Terminal at Kennedy Airport in New York City was Eero Saarinen.The design motif did he use throughout the structure was the curvilinear vocabulary that suggests wings and flight.

Architectural style represented by the Seagram Building in New York was the modernist corporate skyscraper and Mies van der Rohe’s idea of “less is more.”

LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE and PHILIP JOHNSON, Seagram Building, New York, 1956-1958.

Skidmore, Owings and MerrillSears TowerChicago, Illinois1974

Impression the Sears Tower in Chicago intended to project was intimidating and imposing.

Features of the building helped to create this intimidating and imposing impression was the tower’s size, coupled with the black aluminum that sheathes it and its smoked glass.

CHARLES MOORE, Piazza d'Italia, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1976-1980.

Historical styles are cited by Charles Moore in his Piazza d’Italia (FIG. 34-48):Italian architecture, all the way back through to the time of Roman culture: the Greek agora or the Roman forum, the Renaissance, Mannerism, and Baroque.

Philip Johnson and John Burgee's classicizing postmodern design for the AT&T in New York City incorporates elaborate shapes, motifs, and silhouettes freely adapted from historical styles. The design is crowned by a pediment broken by an orbiculum.

MICHAEL GRAVES, The Portland Building, Portland, 1980.

Aspects of Graves’ Portland Building that can be considered Postmodernist:Capital-like large hoods on one pair of opposite facades and a frieze of stylized Baroque roundels tied by bands on the other pair; a painted keystone motif, and other painted surfaces; the assertion of the wall, the miniature square windows, and the painted polychromy.

ROBERT VENTURI, JOHN RAUCH and DENISE SCOTT BROWN, house in Delaware (west elevation), 1978-1983.

Lionel Venturi’s work and writing departed from the Modernist axiom “form follows function” in that he asserted that form should be separate from the function and structure and that decorative and symbolic forms of everyday life should enwrap the structural core.

RICHARD ROGERS and RENZO PIANO, Georges Pompidou National Center of Art and Culture (the "Beaubourg"), Paris, 1977.

The official name for the “Beaubourg”:The Georges Pompidou National Center of Art and Culture.

Significant about its structure is the anatomy of the building is fully exposed to the outside, as well as its “metabolism”: the pipes, ducts, tubes, and corridors.

DECONSTRUCTIVIST ARCHITECTURE

Using deconstruction as an analytical strategy, architects attempt to disorient the observer by disrupting the conventional categories of architecture. The haphazard presentation of volumes, masses, planes, lighting, and so forth challenges the viewer’s assumptions about form as it relates to function.

GÜNTER BEHNISCH, Hysolar Institute Building, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany, 1987.

Six adjectives that describe Deconstructivist architecture:

Disorder DissonanceImbalanceAsymmetryUnconformity

Irregularity

FRANK GEHRY, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain, 1997.

POSTMODERNISM IN PAINTING, SCULPTURE,

AND NEW MEDIAOne way that Postmodern artists challenge the Modernist emphasis on originality and creativity:They address issues of the copy or reproduction and the appropriation of images or ideas from others.Jameson argues that the intersection of high and mass culture is a defining feature of Postmodernism in rejecting the notion that each art work contains a fixed meaning, Postmodern artists are influenced by the ideas of Deconstructivist theorists.

JULIAN SCHNABEL, The Walk Home, 1984-1985. Oil, plates, copper, bronze, fiberglass, and bondo on wood, 9' 3" x 19' 4". Eli Broad Family Foundation and the Pace Gallery, New York.

Characterization of the style of Julian Schnabel:Neo-Expressionism. He was interested in the physicality of objects, like attaching broken crockery to his canvas in “The Walk Home,” which superficially recalls the work of the gestural abstractionists and Abstract Expressionism, but is also an amalgamation of media.

His work has been considered as a restatement of the Abstract Expressionist style.

SUSAN ROTHENBERG, Tattoo, 1979. Acrylic, flashe on canvas, 5' 7" x 8' 7 1/8" x 1 1/4". Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (purchased with the aid of funds from Mr. and Mrs. Edmond R. Ruben, Mr. and Mrs. Julius E. Davis, the Art Center Acquisition Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts, 1979).

Susan Rothenberg is characterized as a Neo-Expressionist in that her works fall in the area between representation and abstraction. The loose brushwork and agitated surface classify her as a Neo-Expressionist.

CONFRONTING GERMAN HISTORY:

The theme is seen in many of Anselm Kiefer’s works:A reexamination of German history, particularly the Nazi era, and evoking the feeling of despair.

ANSELM KIEFER, Nigredo, 1984. Oil paint on photosensitized fabric, acrylic emulsion, straw, shellac, relief paint on paper pulled from painted wood, 11' x 18'. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia (gift of Friends of the Philadelphia Museum of Art).

CHRIS OFILI, The Holy Virgin Mary, 1996. Paper collage, oil paint, glitter, polyester resin, map pins, elephant dung on linen, 7' 11" x 5' 11 5/16". The Saatchi Collection, London.

Ofili’s Holy Virgin Mary elicited such a strong reaction because the Virgin Mary is surrounded by tiny images of genitalia and buttocks cut from pornographic magazines, and he attached clumps of elephant dung to the painting.

The persuasive powers of art to communicate with a wide audience is freshly embraced by artists who investigate in their own artwork the dynamics of power and privilege, especially in relation to issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and class.

ART AS A POLITICAL WEAPON

Two artists who consider themselves to be feminist artists. Judy ChicagoMiriam Schapiro

JUDY CHICAGO, The Dinner Party, 1979. Multimedia, including ceramics and stitchery, 48' x 48' x 48' installed.

The Dinner Party is designed to celebrate the achievements and contributions women have made throughout history.Techniques used to create The Dinner Party:A massive triangle, each side lined with thirteen place settings of identical utensils and individually painted sculptural porcelain plates with a long table runner covered with imagery that reflects significant facts about the life and culture of the “invited guests” (women from history). The table runners use traditional needlework techniques such as needlepoint and embroidery.

MIRIAM SCHAPIRO, Anatomy of a Kimono (section), 1976. Fabric and acrylic on canvas, 6' 8" x 8' 6". Collection of Bruno Bishofberger, Zurich.

The type of art Miriam Shapiro is most famous for huge sewn collages, assembled from fabrics, quilts, buttons, sequins, lace trim, and rickrack.

“femmage”:Women had been doing collages long before Picasso introduced them to the art world.

CINDY SHERMAN, Untitled Film Still #35, 1979. Black-and-white photograph, 10" x 8".

Cindy Sherman produced a series of film stills in which she transformed herself

The issue that was of primary concern to Cindy Sherman was the way much of Western art has been constructed to present female beauty for the enjoyment of the “male gaze,” and in women’s images and identities.

BARBARA KRUGER, Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face), 1983. Photostat, red painted frame, 6' 1" x 4' 1".

Issues Barbara Kruger wanted her art to draw attention to was the culturally constructed notion of gender and the strategies and techniques of contemporary mass media.

Ana Mendeita's Untitled No. 401 is a documentary photograph of one of the earth-body sculptures in the Silueta series that document a dialogue between landscape and the female body.

GENDER AND CULTURAL HERITAGE

ANA MENDIETA, First Silueta, 1973. Color photograph of earth/body work with flowers, executed at El Yaagul, Oaxaca, Mexico . Need dimensions. Courtesy of the Estate of Ana Medieta and Galerie Lelong, New York.

The artist whose works constituted “a dialogue between the landscape and the female body” was Ana Mendieta.Feelings Ana Mendieta works evoke are sensuality and spirituality, especially the spirituality inherent in nature.

The issue of major concern to Kiki Smith was “who controls the body, and the socially constructed nature of how external forces shape people’s perceptions of their bodies.”

HANNAH WILKE, S.O.S.-Starification Object Series, 1974-82. Ten black-and-white photographs with 15 chewing-gum sculptures in Plexiglas cases mounted on ragboard, from a series originally made for S.O.S. Mastication Box and used in an exhibition-performance at The Clocktower, January 1, 1975, 3' 5" x 5' 8".Courtesy Ron Feldman Fine Arts, New York.

KIKI SMITH, Untitled, 1990. Beeswax and microcrystalline wax figures on metal stands, female figure installed height 6' 1 1/2" and male figure installed height 6' 4 15/16". Collection Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (purchase, with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee).

Faith Ringgold Who's Afraid of Aunt Jemima? 1983 Acrylic on canvas with fabric borders, quilted 7 ft. 6 ins. x 6 ft. 8 ins.

Three artists who used their art to explore issues involved with being African American women:Faith RinggoldAdrian PiperLorna Simpson

ADRIAN PIPER, Cornered, 1988. Mixed-media installation of variable size; video monitor, table, and birth certificates. Collection of Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Combating racism:Adrian Piper's installation Cornered included a video monitor placed behind an overturned table. Piper spoke to viewers on the video monitor with a directness that forced viewers to examine their own behaviors and values.

"Lynch Fragments"Melvin Edwards's small wall-hung welded steel sculpture Some Bright Morning (in the Lynch Fragment series) is made from found metal objects. The series focuses on the metaphor of lynching as a way to provoke thought about the legacy of racism

Issue Melvin Edwards explored in works like Tambo were the history of collective oppression, such as lynching.

LORNA SIMPSON, Stereo Styles, 1988. 10 black-and-white Polaroid prints and 10 engraved plastic plaques, 5' 4" x 9' 8" overall. Collection of Raymond J. Learsy, Sharon, Connecticut.

Counteracting objectification:In Stereo Styles, a series of Polaroids and engravings, Lorna Simpson focuses on African American hairstyles as a strategy to reveal and subvert conventional representations of gender and race. Simpson also comments on the appropriation of African-derived hairstyles as a fashion commodity, and correlates specific hairstyles with personality traits.

DAVID HAMMONS, Public Enemy, installation at Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1991. Photographs, balloons, sandbags, guns, and other mixed media.

Challenging cultural icons:The central element of David Hammons's installation Public Enemy are large black-and-white photographs of a public monument depicting Teddy Roosevelt seated on a horse, flanked by an African American man and a Native American man. The work revealed and sharply commented on the racism embedded in received cultural heritage.

Trading with the white man:Jaune Quick-to-See Smith's Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People) is a large-scale painting with collage elements and attached objects that explores the politics of identity. Quick-to-See Smith uses cultural heritage and historical references to comment on the present and to challenge stereotypes and unacknowledged assumptions.

JAUNE QUICK-TO-SEE SMITH, Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People), 1992. Oil and mixed media on canvas, 5' x 14' 2". Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia (museum purchase 93.2).

Native American artist who used cultural heritage and historical references to comment on the present was Jaune Quick-To-See Smith.

LEON GOLUB, Mercenaries (IV), 1980. Acrylic on linen, 10' ´ 19' 2". Collection Mr. and Mrs. Ulrich Meyer, Chicago.

Brutal visions of violent times:Leon Golub's Mercenaries (IV) explores a condition of being through an image reminiscent of news photos of anonymous characters who participate in violence, terrorism, and torture.

The figures loom over the viewers, with the viewer’s eye line at the mercenaries’ knees, and they are placed so close to the front plane that their feet are cut off by the edge of the painting, trapping them with the viewer in the painting’s compressed space.

Three stylistic features of Leon Golub’s art that characterize his brutal vision of contemporary life:Modeled with shadows and gleaming with highlights, the guns contrast with the harshly scraped, flattened surfaces of the figures.

The rawness of the canvas reinforces the rawness of the imagery; Golub scraped off applied paint and dissolved other areas with solvent.

MAGDALENA ABAKANOWICZ, artist with Backs, at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France, 1982. Copyright © Magdalena Abakanowicz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY/Marlborough Gallery, NY.

The medium Magdalena Abakanowicz use for her expressive sculptures was fiber.

Dealing with AIDS:David Wojnarowicz dealt with issues of homophobia and the tragedy of AIDS in his disturbing and eloquent When I Put My Hands on Your Body in which he overlaid a photograph of a pile of skeletal remains with typed commentary of his feelings about watching a loved one dying of the disease

DAVID WOJNAROWICZ, When I Put My Hands On Your Body, 1990. Gelatin-silver print and silk-screened text on museum board, 2' 2" x 3' 2".

The subject David Wojnarowicz was exploring in the work shown on was AIDS.

KRZYSZTOF WODICZKO, The Homeless Projection, 1986-1987. Outdoor slide projection at the Soldiers and Sailors Civil War Memorial, Boston, organized by First Night, Boston.

Exposing the nexus of power:For The Homeless Projection, Krzysztof Wodiczko projected images of homeless people on all four sides of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Civil War Memorial on the Boston Common.

The artistic technique Wodiczko utilized to draw attention to the plight of the homeless was outdoor slide images projected onto a war memorial monument.

You TubeGlobal Groove

NAM JUNE PAIK, Global Groove, 1973. Video still.

From video to computer images:Nam June Paik's video Global Groove combines in quick succession fragmented sequences of female tap dancers, poet Allen Ginsberg reading his work, a performance of cellist Charlotte Moorman using a man's back as her instrument, Pepsi commercials from Japanese television, Korean drummers, and a shot of the Living Theatre group performing a piece called Paradise Now.

Six interests that video technology allowed Nam June Paik to combine:PaintingMusicEastern philosophyGlobal politics for survivalHumanized technologyCybernetics

DAVID EM, Nora, 1979. Computer-generated color photograph, 1' 5" x 1' 11". Private collection.

Computer-Generated landscapes:In Nora, David Em uses computer imaging to create futuristic geometric versions of Surrealistic dreamscapes with a vivid illusion of space.

JENNY HOLZER, Untitled (Selections from Truisms, Inflammatory Essays, The Living Series, The Survival Series, Under a Rock, Laments, and Child Text), 1989. Extended helical tricolor LED electronic display signboard, 16" x 162' x 6". Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, December 1989-February 1990 (partial gift of the artist, 1989).

The authority of signs:For a major installation at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Jenny Holzer created a large continuous LED display spiraling around the museum's interior ramp composed of purposefully vague and ambiguous but authoritative sounding statements.

Four artists who utilized computers and/or video in their work:David Em

Jenny Holzer

Bill Viola

Tony Oursler

Bill Viola - the CrossingYou Tube

BILL VIOLA, The Crossing, 1996. Installation with two channels of color video projection onto 16'-high screens.

Digital sensory experience:Bill Viola's The Crossing is an installation piece involving two color video channels projected on sixteen-foot-high screens. The installation's elemental nature and its presentation in a dark space immerse viewers in a pure, sensory experience.

Bill Viola uses digital video to encourage introspection and explore spirituality.

Sculptural video projections:Artist Tony Oursler, manipulates his images, projecting them onto sculptural objects. This has the effect of taking such images out of the digital world and insinuating them into the "real" world.

TONY OURSLER, Mansheshe, 1997.Ceramic, glass, video player, videocassette, CPJ-200 video projector, sound, 11" x 7" x 8" each. Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York.

POSTMODERNISM AND COMMODITY CULTURE

Symbols of What's Wrong Today?:Jeff Koons's trite and kitschy porcelain sculpture Pink Panther intertwines a magazine centerfold nude with a well-known cartoon character.

JEFF KOONS, Pink Panther, 1988. Porcelain, 3' 5" x 1' 8 1/2" x 1' 7". Collection Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (Gerald S. Elliot Collection).

Postmodern artists exhibit a self-consciousness about their places in the continuum of art history. Artists demonstrate their knowledge about past art and express awareness of the mechanisms and institutions of the art world. Postmodern art may also be a critique of or commentary on fundamental art historical premises.

POSTMODERNISM AND THE CRITIQUE OF ART HISTORY

The history of art in art history:In his A Short History of Modernist Painting, Mark Tansey provides viewers with a summary of the various approaches to painting artists have embraced over the years.

MARK TANSEY, A Short History of Modernist Painting, 1982. Oil on canvas, three panels, each 4' 10" x 3' 4".

Tansey’s A Short History of Modernist Painting illustrates the ambiguities and paradoxes of Postmodernist Pictorialism in that it demonstrates the artist’s consciousness of his place in the continuum of art history and also functions as a critique on fundamental art historical premises by creating metaphors of how painting has been addressed during different eras.

Satirical ceramic sculpture:Robert Arneson's ceramic sculpture California Artist was created as a direct response to the critic Hilton Kramer's derogatory comments on the provincialism of California art.

ROBERT ARNESON, California Artist, 1982. Glazed stoneware, 5' 8 1/4" x 2' 3 1/2" x 1' 8 1/4". San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (gift of the Modern Art Council). Copyright © Estate of Robert Arneson/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

Robert Arneson

Robert Arneson was reacting to a negative review by a critic that Californian art was provincial in his self-portrait known as California Artist.

Ways the work is a critique of the contemporary art world is that it responded directly to an art critic’s comments, Arneson revealed his comprehension of the mechanisms (e.g. art criticism) people use currently to evaluate and validate art.

Postmodern artists have consciously reappraised the processes of art historical validation, reassessed art institutions (museums and galleries), addressed the role of these institutions in validating art, and scrutinized the discriminatory policies and politics of these institutions.

POSTMODERNISM AND ART INSTITUTIONS

Museums and the politics of art:In MetroMobiltan, Hans Haacke focused his attention on the politics of art museums and illustrated the connection between the realm of art and the "real" world of political and economic interests.

HANS HAACKE, MetroMobiltan, 1985. Fiberglass construction, three banners, and photomural, 11' 8" x 20' x 5'. Collection Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

Hans Haake is critiquing the mobil’s sponsorship of the Metropolitan Museum of Art show “Treasures of Ancient Nigeria.” He implied that the sponsorship was driven by Nigeria’s being one of the richest oil-producing countries in Africa. More generally, he is critiquing the politics of art museums and how these politics affect the art exhibited and museum visitors’ understanding of art history in MetroMobiltan

The "conscience of the art world":The sexist and racist orientation of the major institutions is addressed by the anonymous Guerrilla Girls, who itemize in a poster the numerous obstacles women artists face in the contemporary art world.

GUERRILLA GIRLS, The Advantages of Being A Woman Artist, 1988. Poster.

Guerrilla Girls.Website

The Guerrilla Girls are a New York-based group of female artists who considers it their duty to call attention to injustice in the art world, especially what they perceive as the sexist and racist orientation of the major institutions. Their agenda was that they hoped to improve the situation for women artists.