The document provides an overview of the development of modern art in the 20th century, focusing on abstract expressionism and its major figures like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. It then discusses the emergence of pop art in the 1960s with artists like Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg incorporating everyday objects and imagery. The text also references developments in optical art, photo-realism, and conceptual art, questioning whether art that moves completely away from visual/tactile experiences can still be considered visual art.

1. Jackson Pollock
Action Painting: A visual choreography of
an artist’s interaction with paint and color.
This is a presentation; not representation.

3. Jackson Pollock Lavender Mist

4. Space
Form
Color
A myth maker who proclaimed
that the only valid subject
matter is that which is tragic.
“Without monsters and gods,
art cannot enact a drama.”
Rothco
Rothco

5. Motherwell Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 110

6. De Kooning Gotham News
Reshaping post-war
frustrations with a new
expressive vision.
De Kooning Woman

7. Albers Homage to the Square
Color: Its Interaction
& Expressive Qualities.
Reason vs. Intuition
Hoffman The Gate

8. Andy Warhol Campbell’s Soup
Pop Art
Familiarity breeds…?

9. Claes Oldenburg Hamburger
Quality control!

10. Oldenburg Eraser Soft Bathtub
Seeing the familiar in an unfamiliar way.

11. Contemporary Iconographics
Jasper Johns American Flag
Let’s run it up the flagpole and see how it flies.

12. Why Three?
Thiebaud Three Machines
Illustration or fine art?

13. OP Art
Bridget Riley Movement In Squares

14. 1+1=3
Albers Homage To The Square

15. Nelson Homage To Albers
Learning Never Ends Albers

16. Vasarely Optical Illusion Is permanence a factor in art?

17. Photo-Realism
It’s all an illusion
When paint mimics
photos which mimic
optical reality…
(literally speaking.)
Ralph Goings Ralph’s Diner

18. Chuck Close
A synthesis of Pointillism, Photo-Realism, Op and Intuitive Dedication..

19. Close…..UP!

20. Christo
Conceptual Art:
Environmental
Transformation
(Now there’s a thought!)

21. Art and plants thrive in fertile soil. For some, art is only
there for the picking. They plant and harvest endlessly,
with little thought of replenishing or rotating the crop.
But there are those artists and patrons who replenish, and
in so doing, harvest a crop rich in both tradition and insight.
Their soil encourages new growth and a mutation of endless
varieties of new visual and tactile experiences.
And then there are those who plant a new variety of seed
which germinates to become esoteric concepts. Their soil
Art: An bears abundant fruit, rich in verbal, philosophical, social
and political pronouncements for a chosen few. This crop
observation is not a feast for the eye or touch of a hand, for such
qualities are no longer recognized by these authors or their
supporters.
Visual/tactile art is not literature, music or dance. What
makes it unique is its ability to communicate visual ideas.
When the visual/tactile experience no longer serves as the
primary means of communicating, it may be an art form, but
one whose definition serves another master.
© 2009Richard Nelson

22. PAU