Louise Nevelson

Untitled, 1950s, Painted wood. I noticed she uses alot of black and white in her art. This is one of the only colored piece I have seen from her work. Is there a meaning or reasoning for that??

Moment of Explosion

I have print of this painting and I really enjoy it. It is by Salvador Dali 1954.

Other Art

Just to continue on a previous theme about art being everywhere. I actually have a real piece of art, kinda. It's a cartoon cell. A cell is a piece of a cartoon. Instead of re-drawing the background every time a character moves, the background stays the same, and a piece of celluiod (Sp?) is placed over the background with the characters on it. When the character moves, a new cell is place over the same background, so every cell is unique. Some of the older Disney cells sell for thousands of dollars, I bought a Simpson cell (like this one) from a gallery in Croton-on-Hudson a bunch of years ago.

Nevelson

Some of Louise Nevelson's work was good. I like the film where she is telling people where to put the pieces, an inch higher "darling". I was thinking while watching that if other artists had other people actually doing their work fot them while they supervised. Can you imagine Pollack with an assistant, "You have to drip some more red over there, an inch higher."

Anyway, Nevelson has two pieces at the Storm King art center, one wood, and one steel



Dia Beacon, Storm King art center, Who knew that the Hudson Valley was such a mecca for artists?

Sidewalk art

On the other hand, this guy is amazing.

This artist has to be the master of perspective. If you look at the drawing the wrong woy, it looks like a blob, but if you look at it in the right place, at the right angle, it's amazing. How does somone do that? I can look at a canvas, and after a lot of practice, paint something reasonably well, but this must be very difficult to do.

http://www.impactlab.com/2006/03/09/amazing-3d-sidewalk-art-photos/

Basquiat

Ok so I guess I have more final thoughts.

Here's an easy one that we should be able to wrap up fairly quickly, is graffiti art actual art, or vandalism?


Art?



Vandalism?

I think that it dosen't matter how "good" we think that an artist is, the act of graffiti makes it vandalism, even if Monet were to paint waterLilys on a train or building without permission, it's vandalism. Some of these artists are very good, but the way that they express their work is not. I wouldn't want them to paint on my house, why should they be allowed to paint on a public building?

There, that shouldn't be too controversial...

Final Thoughts

As the course wraps up, I think that I have a deeper understanding of Art in general. I think that I actually get Duchamp, and think that his message is the one that I identify with the most. It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and art can be thought of in the same way. What is art? Yes the paintings in galleries are art, but art is more than oil on canvas. Everything is art. Art is sculpture, art is photography, art is 8,000 year old hand prints on cave walls, art is expressed in tattoos, and in the presentation of food in 5 star restaurants, art is film, and ultimately, art is whatever we perceive it to be, even a snow shovel.

Surealists

Like Steve, I like Dali too, I wonder if Escher is a surealist?

The Kind of Art I like

I have to admit, before I started taking this class, I knew there were styles of art I liked and did not like, but didn't realize they were created in "movements" by various kinds of artists over the years. I like things that I can easily recognize without having to have the ideas pointed out to me. I guess this is because I am a kind of straight forward guy that hates to over analyze anything. I will say that I had never heard of Georges Seurat before this course and have become immensely impressed with his "pointillism" and the incredible amount of time and concentration it must have taken him to complete his pieces. I think this class moved him into my top five because of this. However, I have always liked the works of the surrealists, like Salvadore Dali. He takes easily recognizable objects, changes them in subtle (and not so subtle)ways, and contrasts them in unique and interesting ways. I guess this is because I love reading science fiction and he seems to create environments that beg for a science fiction writer to create a story around.

Artists I like

I would have to say that my appreciation for art has increased in the last month or two. I always liked the classic style with its accuracy, and the impressionists where you could still make out the subject. The more modern stuff never really seemed like art to me, so it was a relief to see Geogia O'Keefe making fun of Pollock's work in the film about her. I guess not everyone has to agree that something is beautiful or worthy of being called art.
That being said, I actually have started liking some of the modern art. After seeing the movies and hearing about how the movements developed and what they meant, I can now look at the pieces and and say "I get it". Pollock's splashing makes sense now, and I wouldn't mind having one in my living room (not just because it would be worth more than everything else I owned combined).
I also like the minimalists, it reminds me of an episode of "Queer eye for the straight guy" that I saw a while back. The queer guys were doing over a house owned by a Marine, and they told him that his walls were too bare. He was concerned that they would put something "gay looking" on his walls, but they just painted some pieces of canvas a solid maroon color and placed them on the walls to offset the plain blue that was there. The result was nice without being gay.
I guess I don't really have anyone I can say is my favorite. As long as I can look at something and understand what it is or at least why it looks like it does, I can appreciate it. On the other hand, I still don't like Dada, ready-mades, or anything made with elephant dung or the artist's urine (Mapplethorpe) that is designed solely to offend.

Artists that I like

So out of everyone that we have studied this class, I like a lot of the artists works.

I like most of the Monet stuff, some Vangoh, some Pollack, Suerat, etc. I can even appreciate some of the more "unique" paintings, like Picasso and Duchamp. I don't like any of the Dada, and Warhol stuff.

I do like Art in general. One of my favorite artists is Beverly Doolittle. She paints Western and Native American themes..



My wife likes Thomas Kinkade paintings.



I guess they don't compare to MoMa works, but we enjoy them, and isn't that what art is supposed to be about anyway? Instead of trying to "shock and awe" people, or doing something first, how about art for enjoyment?

So everyone, who are your favorite artists/works of art?

Warhol

Andy

I've never liked Warhol. I don't like the "art" and I've never liked the person. The movie just reinforced my beliefs. Yeah most of the artists were strange in their own way, but warhol was just over the top.

Factory Girl

This movie is one you'd expect to see on the lifetime channel, but with a nicer ending. You know, "Pampered rich girl goes to the big city, gets mixed up with the wrong crowd and gets addicted to drugs and spends herself into debt, then sees the light and goes to rehab and gets clean." Only in real life she couldn't stay clean and OD's. And I know the movie was about her and not so much on Andy Warhol, but whoever wrote/directed this concentrated exclusively on his bad habits. We all know by now that the artists that start new trends and types of art are going to be messed up, and they negatively effect those around them. I'm sure all the things he did in the movie are true, or as true as we know, but she purposely chose that life and is more responsible for her own death than anyone else. I am looking forward to see the movie about Warhol himself that we are supposed to see after the final to see how they portrayed him and get to see a lot more of his artwork, not so much the movies, I am sure they are too strange for me to appreciate.

Georgia O'Keeffe

I really liked the work and story about Georgia O'Keeffe. She did seem to have a few little quirks that you'd expect from an artist, like marrying a man much older than herself and turning herself into a hermit in the desert, but she was much nicer and saner than most of the artists we have looked at. She even paints items into her pictures that are easily identified, even though the surroundings can be difficult to determine. She seems to rely on the juxtaposition of the items and the symbolism they represent as her way of differentiating herself from the rest.

Translation of Power Point for Final

Modern Art Comes to America

The Armory Show of 1913

• Over 2,000 pieces of modern European art hung for a month in 1913

• Exhibited all major moderns including Matisse and Picasso

• Notably missing form the show were the German Expressionists except for one Kirchner landscape and on Kandinsky

• Of course the critics, reporters, editorialists had a field day lampooning the work as degenerate culture

• “American Art Progress” magazine compared the Europeans to anarchists, lunatics, depraved

• The public flocked to see these innovative wonders from Europe

• Over 300,000 visitors

• The reaction by the artists was mixed, as some embraced it, while others resented it

Alfred Stieglitz

• Photographer and gallery owner, pioneer in championing photography as a medium for fine art

• The gallery endeavor at 291 5th Ave, NYC became the headquarters for the international modern ar tin the United States

291

• Alfred Stieglitz important photographer who worked to break down the artificial barrier between photography and art

• Influential in showing works never seen before in the Unites States , showing works by Cezanne, Toulouse Lautrec. Rodin, Picasso Braque, Matisse and Constantin Brancusi

• His works and the Armory show of 1913 demonstrated how old the American realistic approach to painting truly was

Georgia O’Keefe

• Promising, original young artist to show at 291

• Later became Stieglitz’s wife

• Promising use of color and form to create new paintings

• Famous for her large scale flower drawings, which were always refered to as female genitalia

Ansel Adams

• A photographer like Stieglitz

• Presented photographic views of the grand American West

• Had an exhibition with Stieglitz in the fall of 1936, which made his career as a B & W photographer

American Scene Painting

• The American artists who rejected the European modernists developed this American style

• O’Keefe gave us the great American painting “Red, White and Blue” with a cows head skull and red and blue stripes

• Preeminent art scene in America in the 1920’s

Edward Hopper

• A poet if human isolation

• “Nighthawks showing the loneliness of the café and happen chance meeting

Grant Wood

• In the early 1930’s “regionalism” emerged strident distaste for the European modernists

• Asserted itself in the Midwest

• American Gothic has become a true and cherished national emblem

• Depicts a farmer and his daughter

Dorothea Lange

• Socially conceived photojournalism and documentary photography

• Help through government agencies like the WPA and the FSA (Farm Security Administration)

• Sent photographers into the drought parched rural America

• Produced stunning views of America in distress

• Became known as the Madonna of the Depression

Diego Rivera

• The Mexican Revolution spurned a spirit of nationalistic mural painting

• Depicted propaganda, inspirational public art reflecting the history and social spirit

• Worked with the two other remarkable social minded muralists, Jose Clement Orozco and David Siqueiros

• Resurgent Feminism may have catapulted Frida Kahlo from relative obscurity to what may be the greatest Mexican artist of the 20th century

The New York School

• The foremost artistic phenomenon of its time Abstract Expressionism, the firs truly American art movement

• Mid 40’s to the end of the 60’s transferred the center of the art world from Paris and greater Europe to New York

• Paintings with an abstract rich in Emotive content

• Highly monumental scale

• Truly heroic grandeur

• Federal Art project organized by the WPA (Works Project Administration began during the crippling poverty of the Great Depression

• Enabled artists like Jackson Pollock and William DeKooning to create freely, without financial restraints

The First Generation

• Willem de Kooning, Dutch

• Mark Rothko, Russian

• Jackson Pollock, Wyoming

• Robert Motherwell, San Francisco

• Lee Krasner, New York

• Emulated the café studio life of Paris in seedy cafeterias and dingy downtown lofts

• Gave precedence to process over conception

Abstract Expressionism

• The great influence of collector and importer Peggy Guggenheim and her gallery “Art of the Century” showed these new Americans along with the great European masters

• Broken into two distinct branches

– Action Painting: Extroverted, spontaneous, gestural, painterly

– Color Field Painting: quiet, cerebral, flat atmospheric color

Willem de Kooning

• A true giant of the Abstract Expressionists

• Firmly held to his commitment to the human presence in his work

• Most famous series titled Women

• Important influence of Picasso’s “Girl Before a Mirror” acquired by the MoMA in 1938

Jackson Pollock

• Career propelled by collector Peggy Guggenheim and critic Harold Rosenberg

• Drip Paintings were the most original series of paintings to emerge in the post war period

• Lasted only from 1947 to 1950, Pollock could not sustain the vigorous energy to continue

• Led to his self-destruction

Mark Rothko

• Most renowned of the color field painters

• Bright hue in unbroken color fields contrasted sharply with the energies of the “action painters”

• Stacks of glowing atmospheric rectangles

• Pure color abstraction, stained the shapes directly onto the unprimed duct (canvas)

• Carried out with sponges and rags rather than brushes

Robert Motherwell

• Stated all my works consist of a dialect between conscious (straight lines, shapes, weighted colors) and the unconscious (soft lines, obscured shapes)

• Resolved in a synthesis which differs as a whole from either

Final Exam Study Guide Powerpoint

I was going to upload the powerpoint I made with the artworks we need to know for the final, but the blog will only allow pictures and videos. If anybody wants it, email me and I will send it to you.

kunigan@hotmail.com

See you all in 2 weeks,

Tony

Dada video

I still don't really understand what DADA was about, other than protesting everything, which makes no sense to me. I personally did not like the video at all. It gave me a headache and made me feel like I had motion sickness.

The Dada Videos from class.

In case anyone wanted to check out these videos again:

ABC's of DADA (1)


ABC's of DADA (2)


ABC's of DADA (3)

Dada

I may have been one of the few in the class to be blown away by the Dada material we watched. I thought it was completely genius and i found a more modern video clip that somewhat reminds me of the movement. Let me know what you think! 

Impression Sunrise

I have to admit I am surprised that I like modern art (some of it anyway). Being a very left brained individual, I can appreciate the expertise necessary to produce the pre-modern types of art, where art was judged by its accuracy and detail. Along comes modern art, with the artist giving his impression, rather than a detailed painting. The interesting thing is, I like it. There is enough clarity to understand what the painting represents, but the viewer is left to fill in the rest. Instead of this painting representing one particular sunrise in one specific location, it is vague enough that it can be any sunrise anywhere near the water. I would equate it to reading a book instead of watching the movie. Your own mind fills in the details and what each person sees in it is just a little different from everyone else. Is it possible that I will learn to appreciate other forms of modern art also?

Happy Artists

If you're wondering where the happy artists are, obviously you never watched the guy on PBS who has a show teaching how to paint. He is the most laid back individual I have ever seen. I almost wonder if he is perpetually stoned.
The movies have definitely helped understand the artists a lot more. I wonder if there will be a movie on "Jack the Dripper" Pollack. I would be curious to see exactly what led him down the road to throwing paint on a canvas from above. The same for the snowshovel guy.

I think that the Mexican work is the most symbolic that we have studied in depth so far. Yes some of the others were too, like the crows in the cornfield, but the paintings by Frida Kahlo were very symbolic, and the movie helped to show that aspect. If I had just seen her work without the movie, it would have been very different. Now that I know all the pain she was in, and what she went through, like loosing her baby, the car accident,etc. it is all reflected in her paintings.

Sometimes I wonder it you need more than tallent to be a "great" artist. I wonder if you also need to have some traumatic event in your life, or to be insane, or suffer from some disease, or injury. Where are all the happy artists?

Rivera/Kahlo Movies

I thought the choice of showing the short movie about Diego Rivera prior to seeing the full length movie about Frida Kaho was a great combination. During the first movie we got to see the importance of his work, then in the second movie we get to see an actor actualoly "creating" the works and how it related to her life and her interaction with him. The two of them had such completely different choices of mediums as well as the ideas they were trying to portray, but they both wanted to use a style that exemplified their Mexican heritage. I wish we had the time to movies like these and the previous one on VIncent van Gogh for all the artists we are studying. It seems to make everything more clear when we talk about the various things in class and can relate them back to what we learned about the artists themselves.

MoMA

Barnett Newman

The trip was interesting, but I still cannot say I am a fan of most modern art. I always considered art the creation of a thing of beauty (granted this is somewhat subjective). It seems to me that too many of the artists were more interested in being the first to try something new, and they seem to believe it is their sacred duty to shock and offend the world. That is why I enjoyed learning about Newman's painting, he did it specifically to shock artists.

Museum of Modern Art

Today was very interesting, I saw a lot of things that I never thought I would ever see in person. Also, in case anyone needs them for thier project, I took a few pictures of some of the things we saw. Just let me know next week if one of the pictures I have is for your project. Sadly, I think only one or two were on postcards we saw in the gift shop.

From Tony

Will we have a chance to finish the movie? Also, do we know yet whether we will be going to the city this weekend or next?

First Day of Class

Damien Hirst

Modern Art 2008

Welcome to the Modern Art Class for Mt. St. Mary's College, Session G. This will be an ongoing experiment to grow and post as we learn and discuss the nuances of Modern Art. This will be a work in progress, and hopefully will stimulate your online experiences.