POSTMODERNISM IN ART: AN

INTRODUCTION

The end of modernism: 1960s art and culture

Tutor: James Clegg

Gerhard Richter (1986) Blue. Oil on canvas (300cm * 300cm)

Jackson Pollock (1952) Blue Poles number 11. (212.9 cm * 488.9 cm)

What was modernism in art?

Clement Greenberg (1909- 1904)

Clement Greenberg

“The task of self-criticism [in modern art] became to eliminate from the specific effects of each art any and every effect that might conceivably be borrowed from or by the medium of any other art. Thus would each art be rendered ‘pure’, and in its ‘purity’ find the guarantee of its standard of quality as well as of its independence.” (Greenberg [1965] 2004, p.775)

Edouard Manet (1872) Berthe Morisot with a Fan. Oil on canvas.

Claude Monet (1908) Water Lilies. Oil on canvas (98 * 89cm)

Jackson Pollock (1950) 1950 Number One (Lavender Mist) Oil on Canvas (221 * 300cm)

The consequences of Greenberg’s modernism: “...visual art should confine itself to what

is given in visual experience, and make no reference to anything given in any other order of experience” (Ibid p.777)

Backgound: Morris Louis (1961) Theta. Acrylic on Canvas

Robert Motherwell (1949) At Five in the Afternoon.

Barnett Newman (1950-1) Vir Heroicus Subliminus [man heroic sublime].

Clifford Still (1948) Clifford Still [?]

MinimalismFrank Stella (1959) Marriage of Reason and Squalor

Minimalism

Agnes Martin (1964) The Peach

Minimalism

Donald Judd (1966) Untitled. Stainless Steal and Yellow PlexiGlass

Donald Judd (1974) Untitled [six boxes] . Brass.

Minimalism

Robert Morris, Installation at the Green Gallery, New York, December 1964.

Harold Rosenberg (1906-1978)

Action painting?

60s Culture

Carolee Schneemann (1975) Interior Scroll

Andy Warhol (1963) Ambulance Disaster

Daniel Burden (1968) Untitled.

Jenny Holtzer

Gilbert and George (1984) Life.

Questioning modernism The art practices of the 1960s reflected a

broader questioning of the values underpinning society.

In art, these questions would be directed against the conventions assuring modern art of it’s “purity”: the autonomy of traditional disciplines (such as painting or sculpture), the separation of art from life or popular culture, the gallery system, the status of artist and role of the spectator, to name but a few.

Art & Language (1980) Portrait of Lenin by V. Charangovich (1970) in the Styile of Jackson Pollock II.

Gerhard Richter (1986) Blue. Oil on canvas (300cm * 300cm)

Jackson Pollock (1952) Blue Poles number 11. (212.9 cm * 488.9 cm)

References Fried, M ([1965] 2004) Three American Painters, in W and Paul Wood (eds)

Art in Theory: 1900-2000. Oxford, Blackwell publishing. Pp. 787-93. Fried, M ([1966] 2004) Shape as Form: Frank Stella’s New Paintings, in W

and Paul 793-5. Greenberg, C ([1962] 2004) After Abstract Expressionism in Harrison, W

and Paul Wood (eds) Art in Theory: 1900-2000. Oxford, Blackwell publishing. Pp. 785-787.

Greenberg, C ([1965] 2004) Modernist Painting in Harrison, W and Paul Wood (eds) Art in Theory: 1900-2000. Oxford, Blackwell publishing. Pp. 773-9.

Hopkins, D (2000) After Modern Art: 1945-2000. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Newman, B ([1946] 2004) The Sublime is Now, in W and Paul Wood (eds) Art in Theory: 1900-2000. Oxford, Blackwell publishing. Pp. 580-2.

Newman, B ([1952] 2004) Interview with Dorothy Gees Seckler, in W and Paul Wood (eds) Art in Theory: 1900-2000. Oxford, Blackwell publishing. Pp. 783-5.

Rosenberg, H ([1952] 2004) The American Action Painters, in Art in Theory: 1900-2000. Oxford, Blackwell publishing. Pp. 589.