american art, 1970 to present

Art Since 1970

postmodernism: a reaction against modernist formalism, seen as elitist . Far more encompassing and accepting than the more rigid confines of modernist practice, postmodernism offers something for everyone by accommodating a wide range of styles, subjects, and formats, from traditional easel painting to installation and from abstraction to illusionism. Postmodern art often includes irony or reveals a self-conscious awareness on the part of the artist of art-making processes or the workings of the art world.

-from Gardner’s Art Through the Ages

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdO9orWQ-Nk

Art Since 1970Themes & Styles:• Appropriation

(pastiche) • Multi-media works• Blurring of boundaries

between high vs. low• Self-consciousness • Deconstruction

(destabilizing meaning)• Socio-political nature• Inclusiveness &

individuality

Kehinde WileyNapoleon Leading the

Army over the Alps, 2005, oil, American

Jacques-Louis DavidNapoleon Crossing the St. BernardPass, 1801, oil, French

Painting is about the world that we live in. Black men live in the world. My choice is to include them. This is my way of saying yes to us. -Kehinde Wiley

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jNKBOMOTPA

Feminist Art

JUDY CHICAGO, The Dinner Party, 1979. Fig. 15-21.

CINDY SHERMAN, Untitled Film Still #35, 1979. Fig. 15-22.

Ingres, Grande Odalisque, 1814, oilFig.12-3

“The Gaze” & Feminist Art

Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907, oil

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face), 1981Photo/collage, fig.15-23

“The Gaze” & Feminist Art

• Trained as graphic designer

• Incorporates mass media techniques in order to subvert them

• Large scale• Image and text (black &

white)• Red frame• Questions assumptions

about beauty and femininity, objectification of women

Site-specific Art

ROBERT SMITHSON, Spiral Jetty, 1970

Site-specific Art - Earthworks

Site-specific Art - Earthworks• Concern for environment

(American SW)• Draw attention to land

(entropy) • Question role of

museums and galleries in art (resists art market)

• Shape and color determined by site = spiral salt molecules

• Not always visible• Envisioned as return to

primordial beginnings

ROBERT SMITHSON, Spiral Jetty, 1970. Fig. 15-38.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCfm95GyZt4

Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, D.C.1981-83, fig.15-34

http://video.pbs.org/video/1237561998/

Architecture (Modernist)

Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, D.C.1981-83, fig.15-34

Architecture (Modernist)• Result of juried competition held in 1981• Selected while Lin was an architecture student at Yale• Highly Controversial• Didn’t glorify the war; focus on individual cost of war• Selected minimalist (and modernist design) over classical forms • List of names of dead, chronologically from the center• Like a black, polished “cut” into the earth• One end points at Washington Monument, other at Lincoln Memorial

RICHARD ROGERS and RENZO PIANO, Georges Pompidou National Center of

Art and Culture, 1977. Fig. 15-36.

Architecture (Postmodernist)

ALEXANDRE-GUSTAVE EIFFEL, Eiffel Tower, 1889. Fig. 13-19.

Architecture (Postmodernist)

FRANK GEHRY, Guggenheim Bilbao Museo, 1997. Fig. 15-37.

• Deconstructivism = deconstructing the nature of building

• Challenge expectation of materials and appearance

• Creative freedom & signature style

• Curvilinear vs. rectilinear forms

FRANK GEHRY, Guggenheim Bilbao Museo, 1997. Fig. 15-37.

Architecture (Postmodernist)

FRANCESCO BORROMINI, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, 1665–1676. Fig. 10-7.

Performance & Conceptual Art

JOSEPH Beuys, How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, 1965, fig. 15-41

JOSEPH KOSUTH, One and Three Chairs1965. Fig. 15-41.

New Media

Bill Viola, The Crossing1996, video/sound

Fig. 15-43http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHqhaH6m9pY

• Video/sound installation• Companion videos (men

engulfed in water & flames)

• Reflects back on the viewer’s own body (sensations) immersed in a image-sound space

• Spiritual & religious meanings

• Uses elements (fire, water) as allegories of personal transformation

JEFF KOONS, Pink Panther, 1988. Fig. 15-30.

Social and Political Art

MARCEL DUCHAMP, Fountain (second version), 1950 (original version produced 1917).

Fig. 14-13.

• Postmodernism • Neo-Pop? Neo-Dada?

(Duchamp’s readymade)• Commodity culture• Cartoon character and

centerfold• Kitschy material (mass-

produced, cute, sentimental objects)

• In The Banality Show• Ironic commentary or

love of popular culture? JEFF KOONS, Pink Panther, 1988. Fig. 15-30.

Social and Political Art

Social and Political Art

Chris Ofili, The Holy Virgin Mary, 1996,

mixed media

Final Exam Review:Comparative Essay

• What are the individual characteristics of

each work in terms of style & subject?• How do they relate to the particular historic,

artistic and cultural contexts in which they were

made? • With what artistic movements are they

associated?• Why compare the two art works? What are their

similarities & differences?

#1.

Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907, oil

WILLEM DE KOONING, Woman I, 1950–1952.

#2

DONALD JUDD, Untitled, 1969. Fig. 15-10.

Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, D.C.1981-83, fig.15-34

#3

JEFF KOONS, Pink Panther, 1988. Fig. 15-30.

ANDY WARHOL, Marilyn Diptych, 1962. Fig. 15-17.

#4

JACKSON POLLOCK, Number 1,

1950 (Lavender

Mist), 1950

VASSILY KANDINSKY,

Improvisation 28 (second

version), 1912