Lecture, 1960-65
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The document provides an overview of art history from 1960-1964, focusing on the development of Pop Art and other postmodern movements. It discusses how artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, and Andy Warhol incorporated popular culture imagery and challenged notions of what constituted art. Key concepts examined include Clement Greenberg's theory of modernism, the blurring of boundaries between art and life in works by Allan Kaprow and Fluxus, and Warhol's commentary on mass media and the simulacrum through his repeated depictions of consumer goods and images of death.
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Lecture, 1960-65
- 1. History of 20th Century Art 1960-64
- 2. Word Presentations kitsch & simulacrum
- 3. Close Read: 1960b Group Discussion Questions (write down your answers and hand in at the end of class) How does Clement Greenberg define modernism? How does he apply this to the development of modernist painting since Manet? In what ways do you think this notion of flatness will be addressed & challenged by 1960s art?
- 4. The essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence… Realistic, naturalistic art had dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art; Modernism used art to call attention to art… It was the stressing of the ineluctable flatness of the surface that remained, however, more fundamental than anything else to the processes by which pictorial art criticized and defined itself under Modernism. For flatness alone was unique and exclusive to pictorial art. -Clement Greenberg, Modernist Painting, 1960 Mondrian Close Read: 1960b
- 5. Greenberg & Jackson Pollock Installation view of Pollock’s Number 13A, 1948: Arabesque, 1948
- 6. Greenberg’s Evolution of Modernist Painting Manet Monet Cezanne Picasso
- 7. Kenneth Noland, Whirl, 1960
- 8. 1960 • How does Louis’s Saraband reflect Greenberg’s characteristics of modernist painting? • Almost purely optical (resists tactility of Pollock’s work) • Shimmering, translucent veil created by dripping down side of canvas • Removes artist’s hand • Is Greenberg protecting high modernist art from the emerging Pop Art movement (aka kitsch)? Is Pop Art anti-modernist? Is it a joke on modernism? Morris Louis, Saraband, 1959 Roy Lichtenstein, Brushtroke with Splatter, 1966
- 9. Lichtenstein & Mondrian – Pop vs. Modernism Piet Mondrian, Composition Lichtenstein, Golf Ball, 1962 No. 10, Pier and Ocean, 1915
- 10. Nouveau Realisme http://www.nytimes.com/video/arts/design/100000000761945/tinguely.html Jean Tinguely, Homage to New York, 1960
- 11. What makes an artist “great”? What makes him (or her) awful? LIFE magazine 1949 (Pollock) 1964 (Lichtenstein) Terms used to describe (and ridicule) Pop Art: • deadpan • unoriginal • Neo-Dadaist • ironic • plagiaristic • banal • kitsch • cool
- 12. Roy Lichtenstein, In the Car, 1963
- 13. 1960 – Pop in America • From 1961-65, Lichtenstein made series of paintings based on comic books • Known for these works though also devoted much of career to updating old masterworks (Monet, Cezanne) • Interested in simplicity, unification, clarity of vision, questions of form • Criticized both for content and process Roy Lichtenstein, Popeye, 1961, oil Elzie Crisler Segar, Popeye the Sailor, ca.1930, comic strip Content • appropriated popular image • brought “low” art form (comic) into “high” art context Process • appropriated image • seemed to directly copy (but didn’t) • sketched panels, projected and traced sketches • Thick contour lines, primary colors Benday dots
- 14. So, is Pop Art Anti-Modernist? • Lichtenstein interested in new “possibilities for painting” • Experimenting with modernist form using an unconventional process • “Lichtensteinized” modernist issues (brushstroke, flatness, the grid, the readymade) Edouard Manet, Dejeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), 1863 Marcantonio Raimondi, Judgment of Paris, 1520 Lichtenstein, Rouen Cathedral, 1969 I don’t draw a picture in order to reproduce it—I do it in order to recompose it. Nor am I trying to change it as much as possible. I try to make the minimum amount of change. - Lichtenstein Claude Monet, Rouen Cathedral, 1894
- 15. James Rosenquist, President Elect, 1960/61-64, 12’ The face was from Kennedy's campaign poster. I was very interested at that time in people who advertised themselves. What did they put on an advertisement of themselves? So that was his face. And his promise was half a Chevrolet and a piece of stale cake. -Rosenquist 1960 – Pop in America Rosenquist, F-111, 1965 Ruscha, Rain, 1970, gunpowder and pastel on paper
- 16. Allan Kaprow, Yard, 1961 1961 – The Blurring of Art & Life
- 17. 1961 – The Blurring of Art & Life • Oldenburg opens The Store in New York’s East Village (sells painted handmade plaster sculptures ranging from $25 - $800) • Interested in art as ordinary commodity • Oldenburg’s Ray Gun Theater performs Happenings there • Kaprow installs Yard in NYC courtyard (fills with tires) • Both artists interested in ephemeral & collaborative art events (Happenings), and in reusing discarded urban detritus (like Dubuffet) These things [art objects] are displayed in galleries, but it is not the place for them. A store would be better. Museum in bourgeois concept equals store in mine. - Oldenburg Allan Kaprow, Yard, 1961 Claes Oldenburg, The Store, 1961
- 18. Allen Kaprow, “Un-artist” • Interested in blurring boundaries between art & everyday life • To challenge all artistic conventions • Known for his Happenings • Loosely scripted events, no logical narrative or point • Characterized by ephemeral (cannot be reproduced), whimsical, seemingly spontaneous nature • Integrated multiple media, allowed for chance occurrences & audience participation • Context/environment very important • Resists becoming a commodity • Household included men building towers, women nests; smoke-flares throw; jam licked off a car and set ablaze (no audience present) Happenings are events that...happen...they appear to go nowhere and do not make any particular literary point. -Kaprow Kaprow, Household, 1964 Hugo Ball Karawane 1916 Dada performance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXdPAnNQIcg Household Revisited 2008
- 19. The Legacy of Jackson Pollock Pollock…left us at a point where we must become preoccupied with and even dazzled by the space and objects of our everyday life…Objects of every sort are materials for the new art: paint, chairs, food, electric and neon lights, smoke, water and old socks, a dog… Young artists of today need no longer say “I am a painter” or “a poet” or “a dancer.” The are simply “artists.” All of life will be open to them. They will discover out of ordinary things the meaning of ordinariness. Hans Namuth, Jackson Pollock painting, 1950
- 20. Everything is Art… George Maciunas, Name Cards of Fluxus Artists, 1966 …and everyone can do it. - Fluxus credo
- 21. 1962 – More Blurring of Art & Life: Fluxus Emerges • George Maciunas, leader of Fluxus, organizes series of exhibitions in Wiesbade, West Germany • Of all 60s movements, Fluxus was the most open, international, experimental “non-movement” • It resisted prevailing styles, pop and minimalism • Considered every action a form of art, from washing one’s hair to making a salad (Alison Knowles) • A DIY aesthetic, it valued simplicity over complexity • It organized concerts, festivals, performances, publications, mail art, artist books, actions • It insisted on viewer participation Maciunas, Fluxus Manifesto, 1963
- 22. 1962 - “Everything is in flux…everything flows” (Heraclitus) • Maciunas associated fluxus with human physiology, molecular transformation, and chemical transformation • Neo-dadaist? • East Meets West • Feminist Shigeko Kubota Vagina Painting 1965 Yoko Ono, Cut Piece, Kyoto, Japan, 1964 http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3dsvy_yoko-ono-cut-piece_shortfilms
- 23. Fluxus Performances Alison Knowles, Newspaper Music, 1967 (rendition) Nam June Paik, Zen for Head, 1962 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FgAT4pH21w Nam June Paik, Unprotected Music: Solo for Violin (rendition), 1962 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J41s_VnKrcM
- 24. Dan Flavin Monument for V.Tatlin, 1969 1962c – Early Minimalism
- 25. 1962c – Early Minimalism • Like in painting (the figure & ground), artists desired to dismantle illusionism in sculpture • To resist the figurative and Surrealist qualities of 40s and 50s sculpture • Inspired by previous styles and movements, including the Readymade and Russian Constructivism • The Readymade (the florescent light tube) multiplied to create a “near-serial generation of structures” • Flavin assembled these in a pyramidal structure to pay homage to Vladimir Tatlin & his Monument for the Third International (a Russian Constructivist monument to modernity and industry ca. 1920) • Flavin’s Catholic background adds a spiritual component to his sculptures (as cathedrals bathed in light?) • The material and the immaterial Dan Flavin Monument for V.Tatlin, 1969 Chartres Cathedral ca. 1200
- 26. From the Constructed Object to the Found Object Vladimir Tatlin, Monument for the 3rd International, 1919-20 Duchamp, Fountain, 1917, Readymade
- 27. I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say ‘figment.’ - Warhol 1964 – Warhol Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait (in Drag), 1981 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deRMRh8Zjgg
- 28. 1964 – Warhol • From Pittsburgh, PA, born in 1928 • Studied at Carnegie Institute, then moved to NYC • Became successful commercial illustrator (Vogue, New Yorker) • In 1960, decided to become an artist and made first paintings of Batman, Popeye, Dick Tracy • 1962-63 was watershed year—first Campbell’s Soup cans, first “Disaster” and Marilyn paintings, and first films, “Sleep” and “Kiss • Began The Factory in 1963 (until 1967)—transformed painting into a mass produced activity Warhol, Shoe, illustration ca.1956 Andy Warhol, Kiss, 1963 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr2Unu5WHXA
- 29. The more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away and the better and emptier you feel. —Andy Warhol, 1975 In what ways does Warhol’s work address the concept of the simulacrum? Warhol, White Burning Car III, 1963, silkscreen
- 30. 1964 – Warhol • From “Death in America” series • Photos taken from news sources (often not printed) • Depict car accidents, electric chairs, civil rights demonstrations • Many reflect controversial current events/issues • Reflects early TV age where images of death and disaster (war, plane crash, etc) brought into home • Repetition suggests obsessive fixation on trauma (to master fear or wallow in it?) • Simulacral (copy without an original - Barthes) or referential (form of social critique? (Crow) Both? • Mass subject (“anonymous victims of history”, pyramid builders, war victims) • The punctum (Roland Barthes) Warhol, White Burning Car III, 1963, silkscreen If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it.
- 31. Warhol: Simulacral or Referential? Warhol, Lavender Disaster, 1963, silkscreen Bruce Conner, Child, 1959
Notas do Editor
- Today’s lecture deals with the very nature of art and art appreciation. We’re just coming off the heels of modernist painting, and entering a new world following WWII and 50s prosperity (the cold war in full swing (red scare), Americans were spreading out to the suburbs, fathers were commuting to work in nice cars, mothers were cleaning house in their pearls). In the 60s, national consciousness shifted, the youth rebelled against these idyllic visions of family life. Race riots began (in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963), wars got started (Vietnam in 1964), leaders were assassinated (JFK in 1963, MLK in 1968), female contraception (“the pill”) became available (to married women) in 1965, and people began questioning the foundations of this thriving consumer culture. Also, the space race accelerated, begun by the Russians in 1957 and 1961 and continued by the U.S. in 1962 with the first American manned space flight. Neil Armstrong will walk on the moon in 1969. Art will begin to reflect these radical changes. In many ways, art of the 1960s then questions these assumptions about traditional “fine art”—what do we go see art for? To be elevated, enrapt? To contemplate existence? To receive pleasure? To escape the trivialties of everyday life in favor of timeless truths? Or to indulge in these trivialties?
- Clement Greenberg thought so. In his earlier essay, Avant-Garde and Kitsch (1939), Greenberg endows the avant-garde with the responsibility of preserving genuine culture, and protecting it from the fake culture produced by modern consumer societies, what he called “kitsch”. In a later essay, Modernist Painting, published in 1960, he outlined the natural evolution of modernist, or avant-garde, art and described its main characteristics (self-criticality, pure optical experience, and above all, flatness).
- Vision (and the frame) is “the only condition painting shared with no other art.” (Greenberg) This evolution began with Manet, continued with the Impressionists, Cezanne, the Cubists, Mondrian, Pollock, and so on. So, following this evolution, what should modernist art look like today?
- In 1949, Life magazine asked about Pollock, “Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?” and in 1964 about Lichtenstein, “Is he the worst artist in the U.S.?” Perhaps Pop is largely seen as such because it emerged in the wake of modernist painting, which was often perceived as genuine, expressive, authentic, and sincere. Today, I’d like to examine those assumptions. Is “pop art” really all those things? Is modernist painting really all those things? Are they really opposites as Greenberg would have us believe? And what does it tell us about ourselves, if anything at all?
- BenDay dots are named after the 19th century inventor who invented this technique for producing shade in a printed image—a system of dots used to create gradations of shading; likened to pointillism, invented same time. This procedure gives the effect of mechanical reproduction, the antithesis of Abstract Expressionist painting, which is perceived as organic.
- Russian Constructivism lasted from around 1913 - 1940. It advocated an art for the people and directed towards social good. In the work of a number of avant-garde artists (such as Tatlin, El Lizzitsky, and Alexander Rodchenko), there is an interest in revealing the material structure of objects and their presence in space by creating constructions that resist illusionism or manipulation. Objects are presented in their most basic forms, often in an orderly fashion (to reflect social harmony and cooperation). Much Constructivist art consists of geometric abstractions and industrial materials, since these artists and their sympathizers believed in the promise of modernity as made possible by the industrial revolution and by populist movements which advocated for the worker and common man.
- No one typifies this postwar phenomenon of the culture of spectacle and the breakdown of American social order in the form of accident and disaster than Andy Warhol. He had his hands in everything, from music production to fashion design to filmmaking, magazine publishing (Interview magazine), to artist collectives (The Factory). The spectacle in his work was celebrity-obsessed America, an obsession which frequently took a disastrous tone so that celebrity became synonymous with death and destruction. But what Warhol showed us was not the pathos of this, but our immunity to it, our complete lack of feeling in the face of it and our voyeuristic delight in watching it happen (“if it bleeds, it leads”). He projected that in his public persona. Pop art of course relies on images from popular culture for its subject and style and Warhol more than anyone mirrored American pop culture in the 60s not only because of the subject matter he worked with, but also because he himself was a celebrity who catered to celebrities, and professed an uncritical loyalty to the beauty of popular culture, even if his works suggest differently.