Later Europe & Colonial Americas 4.3

Later Europe & Colonial Americas 4.3

1750-1980 Century

TOPIC 4.3 Materials, Processes, and Techniques in Later European and American Art

In the mid-19th century, advances in technology, such as the steel frame, ferro concrete construction, and cantilevering, hastened the development of building construction. Skyscrapers proliferated and led to an international style of architecture that was later challenged by postmodernism.

Artists employed new media, including:

• Lithography
• Photography
• Film
• Serigraphy

They used industrial technology and prefabrication, as well as many new materials, to create innovative and monumental works, culminating with massive earthworks. The advent of mass production supplied artists with ready images, which they were quick to appropriate. Performance was enacted in novel ways and recorded on film and video.

(4) 110. Still Life in Studio.

 Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. French. 1837. 19^th century. Photography.

 Learning Objective: Daguerreotype

Themes:

Innovation
Technology
Still life
Science

Still Life in Studio by artist Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre is a work of photography.

What is a Daguerreotype?

Each produced a single image (the “negative” is the plate/photo). These images are one of a kind, and there is no way to reproduce them.

The Process

The artist took a plate of silver-plated copper and exposed it to iodine to make it light sensitive. Then he exposed it to light in the camera.

Initially, this light exposure took about eight hours. Later technology improved and ranged depending on how much light was present. The stronger the light, the less the exposure needed. For example, in the middle of the day there was ample light.

At this point, mercury fumes would develop. This was stabilized with salt water (hypo)*. This step was added after they realized the plates continued to develop through being exposed to light. Many early images have simply turned black.

Function

This work was experimentation only and not made for a patron. The artist wanted to make a permanent image using light and chemistry.

Art or Science

A medium of artistic expression?  A powerful scientific tool? What use could it possibly be for? It could be so easily manipulated and wasn’t powerful enough yet to capture great details or small objects.

Content

Still lifes were common.  This was not point and click photography! With an exposure time of up to eight hours, anything other than still lifes was difficult to take photos of.  Even sitting completely still for ten to fifteen minutes without moving was challenging.

The earliest daguerreotypes were still lifes with plaster casts of antique sculpture. For practical reasons white casts reflected light well. Still lifes were immobile during long exposures.

For symbolic reasons white casts lent an aura of “art” and “classicism” to photos and helped to legitimize them.

Context

 The principle of a camera had been discussed since antiquity, but it wasn’t discovered until 19^th century. Think of Vermeer’s camera obscura.

About the Artist

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre’s (1787-1852) had been searching since the mid-1820s for a way to take a photo using light and chemistry. By 1829, he showed his new medium at both the Science Academy and Fine Arts Academy in Paris. Even from the start, it was unclear where photography would fit best.

This is one of only about 25 of Daguerre’s images to survive.

 

(4) 114. Nadar Raising Photography to the Height of Art.

 Honoré Daumier. French. 1862. (Related to) 19^th century. Photography.

Learning Objective: Late 19^th century Lithograph

Themes:

Satire
Print
Technology
Science
Text and image
Innovation

Nadar Raising Photography to the Height of Art a work by French born artist Honoré Daumier is a lithograph.

NOTE: Clearly this is not a photograph, however, it is grouped here so that we can continue to think about photographic developments throughout the 19^th century.

Lithograph (what Daumier used)

• Keeps the sketchy, “drawing-like” quality that cannot be captured in a woodcut, engraving, or etching and makes this reproducible like a print.
• Hinges on the principal that water and oil cannot mix.
• An image is drawn onto a stone slab with an oily crayon.
• Water is then rolled over the stone.
• The oily crayon repels the water, and the stone absorbs the water because it is porous.
• Oil is rolled over the stone. The oil adheres to the oily crayon but is repelled from the areas where there is water.
• Paper (with high cotton content) is applied to top to transfer image using pressure.

Collodion (what Nadar used in the image)

• Take a glass plate
• Coat gun cotton (aka collodion) on it à this is light sensitive and stays wet
• Expose plate to light (exposure time of 3-5 minutes) (1% of original time of daguerreotypes)
• Must develop plate while wet à anywhere you took the photo, you had to have a portable darkroom with you.

Function

This is a satire. It mocks both the difficulties of the method and the uncertain status of photography. It mocks the literal and figurative elevation of art.

Daumier believed it would take more than just going “up” to elevate photography to fine art. He did not believe photography was art. This was done in response to a French court decision in 1862 that determined that photos could be considered works of art.

This incited a large amount of mockery regarding photography.

What Do We See?

Nadar is a mad-scientist or absent-minded professor. After the perfect shot, he is about to lose his top hat, and tumble out of his hot air balloon. He will do anything for art!

What kind of photo is he taking? A collodion photo. The difficulty with these photos is you must develop it instantly! That means, not only is he struggling to get the perfect photo up in this blustery hot air balloon, but he also has a portable darkroom with him.

Below, every building in Paris has “photographie” written on it. Not only is all of Paris apparently “photo-worthy” to photographers (something that those who didn’t like photography thought ridiculous), but it will literally become a popular subject for photographers.

Context

Nadar was known for capturing the first aerial photographs from the basket of a hot air balloon in 1858.

Daumier’s lithograph (and what Nadar had done in the hot air balloon) touched on a controversial subject. People felt the photo took pictures of them without their permission. Later, in 1870, the government bought Nadar’s balloon for surveillance purposes.

Daumier’s print captured the anxieties over the accelerated growth, industrialization, and changes regarding privacy in Paris, France, and Europe.

There was a 19^th century debate over whether photography could be considered “art”. Some people said photography was just “worse painting”. They said it didn’t capture any of the emotion of painting. It was thought that it didn’t require any skill and that you just pushed a button.  It was said to eliminate the artist altogether. Or that anyone could do it without training!  Others said it would never have a use for science.

 

(4) 117. The Horse in Motion.

 Eadweard Muybridge. American. 1878. 19^th century. Photography.

Learning Objective: Late 19^th century albumen print

Themes:

 Print
Technology
Science
Innovation

 The Horse in Motion by Eadweard Muybridge is an Albumen print.

 Form

 Dry glass plate method:

This is the same process as collodion method, but:

• You do not have to develop while wet (uses dry collodion instead)
• Reduced exposure time to 1/25^th of a second (allows you to photograph moving objects)

How did he do it?

Muybridge set up a row of cameras with tripwires. Each would trigger a picture for a split second as the horse ran by.

Now, how did Muybridge replicate the photos for publication in a magazine?

Albumen print

• Take a dry glass photo
• Coat with silver nitrate (which is light sensitive)
• Take paper
• Coat with egg white (albumen) and salt
• Place wet side of glass with wet side of dry glass plate
• Expose to light
• Light helps the image to soak onto the paper and transfer the image over

Function

Muybridge was commissioned by Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University, governor of California and horseman. The work was designed to settle the question of whether a horse ever takes all four legs completely off the ground during a gallop. The human eye is not capable of breaking down such a fast action.

Stanford had made a $25,000 bet ($605,000 today) that all the hooves did come off the ground.

He hired Muybridge to prove he was right. He paid Muybridge $42,000 THEN (today, that is $1,018,000.00 +)

Content  

• 12 photographs shot in rapid succession
• Shows that, yes, a horse does bring all four hooves off the ground

Context

This marked a new purpose for photography. It really could answer scientific questions. Photographic technology could do something that humans couldn’t do.

Interestingly, people did not believe these pictures were real, accusing him of forging them.

Photography now was used for a scientific purpose.

People were still skeptical.  What skill or talent did it take? It could be manipulated. It wasn’t artful

Muybridge’s stop motion technique was an early form of animation that helped pave the way for the motion picture industry.

Zoetrope: instructions came in magazines to cut out the strips, place them in a circle and tape together the ends, lock through holes on the top and then spin it.

Zoopraxiscope: expensive version

 

(4) 124. Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building.

 Louis Sullivan (architect). American. 1899-1903. 19^th-century architecture.

Learning Objective: Chicago Style skyscraper

Themes:

Public
Technology
Innovation
Architecture
Commercial

Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building by architect Louis Sullivan was constructed from steel, glass, and terra cotta. The building stands in Chicago, Illinois, US.

Form

Sullivan wrote his treatise on skyscraper architecture The Tall Office Building Considered Artistically in 1896. He was a pioneer of American commercial architecture.

Examples of Chicago Style:

• clean and streamlined
• grid-like
• simple with little to no ornamentation

This type of architecture got its start in Chicago, hence the name.

Sullivan coined the term form follows function. If form followed tradition or precedent, it would look classical.  With this architect’s method a building would reflect or telegraph its purpose. This is why we think buildings “look like prisons” or “look like banks” today.

Tripartite skyscraper

• Base level with ground floor for business
  • Easy public access accomplished by a rounded corner door
  • Light, open space from ample windows
  • Windows on this floor are much larger than higher floors
  • Decorative and appealing

• Infinite number of floors for offices, designed to look the same and serve the same function
  • Should display efficiency and height (power, ingenuity, momentum)
  • Windows are all identical to display productivity

• Topped with a distinct cornice line to mark the top of the building

• Iron and steel framework (skeleton) made possible open floor plans and large glass windows
  • Achieve height + open floor plans
    • Replaced old load bearing walls

SUB-IMAGE 1 (Floor plan)

• Large glass windows
• Rounded corner entryway to attract shoppers from both streets

Function  

• Department store for dry goods merchant Schlesinger-Mayer
• Office space for company

Content

The building received its name in 1904 when Carson Pirie Scott bought the building.

Department store for dry goods merchant Schlesinger-Mayer.

• Bottom floor was for shopping
• Upper floors were individual offices

SUB-IMAGE 2 (Entryway)

The gorgeous entryway is made of cast iron. The decorative program gave the building a chance to be distinguished from buildings around it. This made it more attractive to potential customers. A pedestrian’s eye will be immediately attracted to the bronze-colored ground floor.

The ornamentation is Art Nouveau a style that embraced natural decorative elements, twisting, ornate, curling vines, floral elements.

Context:

The late 19^th century and early 20^th century in America saw the increase of wealth for the middle class. It became a consumer culture. Department stores and banking/offices needed to be built.

There was now a professionalization of jobs and an increase in white-collar jobs.

 

(4) 127. The Steerage.

 Alfred Stieglitz. American. 1907. 20^th century. Photography.

Learning Objective: Early 20^th century photography

Themes:

Abstraction
Appropriation
Print

Museum: Metropolitan and Getty have copies

The Steerage by Alfred Stieglitz is a photogravure.

Strictly speaking, a photogravure is not a photograph, because the image isn’t made in a darkroom.  The negative is transferred onto a copper plate coated with gelatin. The plate is dipped in a succession of etching acid baths, which eat away at the darker areas of the plate which have more gelatin. Next, the artist prints the image with ink.

Why would you use this? It is one of the best methods to mass produce large editions of photographs that are good quality. They have a very sensual velvety feel.

This is a study of composition, shape, rhythm, value, and line. Photography can capture abstraction in the same manner that painting can.

The artist explained:

A round straw hat, the funnel leading out, the stairway leaning right, the white drawbridge with its railings made of circular chains – white suspenders crossing on the back of a man in the steerage below, round shapes of iron machinery, a mast cutting into the sky, making a triangular shape.

 I stood spellbound for a while, looking and looking. Could I photograph what I felt, looking and looking and still looking? I saw shapes related to each other. I saw a picture of shapes and underlying that the feeling I had about life. […]

Spontaneously I raced to the main stairway of the steamer, chased down to my cabin, got my Graflex, raced back again all out of breath, wondering whether the man with the straw hat had moved or not. If he had, the picture I had seen would no longer be. The relationship of shapes as I wanted them would have been disturbed and the picture lost.

But there was the man with the straw hat. He hadn’t moved. The man with the crossed white suspenders showing his back, he too, talking to a man, hadn’t moved. And the woman with a child on her lap, sitting on the floor, hadn’t moved. Seemingly, no one had changed position. […] [It] would be a picture based on related shapes and on the deepest human feeling, a step in my own evolution, a spontaneous discovery.

Function

Stieglitz’s function was to argue for the elevation of photography to a fine art. It was an argument for photography’s merits. The emphasize was on how photography is different than painting.

Considered the first modernist photograph – why? Prior to this, photographers had tried to always emulate painting (think of Still Life in Studio).

Photography’s strengths are clarity and realism. This was the first photo that did not aim to emulate painting in style and subject matter.

There was an unintended function. It became associated with Documentary Photography and journalism. It also conveyed a message about its subjects and immigrants, even though this wasn’t Stieglitz’s intent.

Content  

• Upper and lower-class immigrants and travelers together on a boat
• Formal arrangements of diagonals, colors, tones

Context

 Stieglitz ran an art gallery and published many art journals, that focused on photography

He was familiar with the debates about immigration reform and the ghastly conditions that steerage passengers were subjected to. Interestingly, Stieglitz, the son of a German immigrant, was opposed to admitting the uneducated and marginal to the USA.

Stieglitz’s wife Emmeline and their daughter were going to France. Emmeline was from a wealthy family, and Stieglitz was very class-conscious. Here is what he had to say about it.

How I hated the atmosphere of the first class on that ship. One couldn’t escape the ‘nouveau riches.’ […] On the third day out I finally couldn’t stand it any longer. I had to get away from that company. I went as far forward on the deck as I could […]

 As I came to the end of the desk I stood alone, looking down. There were men and women and children on the lower deck of the steerage. There was a narrow stairway leading up to the upper deck of the steerage, a small deck at the bow of the steamer. To the left was an inclining funnel and from the upper steerage deck there was fastened a gangway bridge which was glistening in its freshly painted state. It was rather long, white, and during the trip remained untouched by anyone. On the upper deck, looking over the railing, there was a young man with a straw hat. The shape of the hat was round. He was watching the men and women and children on the lower steerage deck. Only men were on the upper deck. The whole scene fascinated me.  

 

(4) 129. The Kiss.

 Constantin Brancusi. Romanian. 20^th century sculpture.

Learning Objective: Early 20^th century sculpture

Themes:

Male-female relationships
Abstraction
Cross-cultural
Appropriation

Museum: Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Kiss by artist Constantin Brancusi is a stone sculpture measuring 1 foot 10 inches tall.

This is a Subtractive sculpture in the round. It has no negative space. The emphasis is on the original/starting shape of the block of stone. This is an abstraction of human bodies.

The right angles of the elbows align with and emphasize the block. A single incised line separates the two figures. This leaves the block very raw. Its emphasis is on cubic quality and the rough surface. This was radical. Donatello, Michelangelo, Houdon – emphasized the technical finish. Rodin began to “roughen” up sculpture, and this was a total disregard of academic finish.

The work is not on a pedestal and is meant to be directly on the ground. This takes the sculpture out of the academic realm.

This work is a manipulation of the human body to fit form, rather than to fit style.

It is a rejection of academic tradition: idealization, finish, scale, size, and pedestal.

Function  

• 1) Redefine sculpture and start where his teacher Rodin left off
• 2) Reject authority and strictures of the academy
• 3) Be inspired by primitivism
• 4) Show a modern take on a traditional subject (lovers)
• 5) Attempt to maintain the materiality of the stone (make content fit form, not content fit style)

Content

 Two half-length figures who hold each other tight in an embrace.

• Emphasis is on the union of these two figures
• Female figure: longer hair, slight suggestion of breasts, eye is smaller
• Just like Klimt’s version – in terms of the union of the figures

About the Artist

Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) was not technically a cubist, but he was inspired by Cubism. He was a student of Rodin’s.  The mentor broke rules about the idealization of sculptural figures. He took issue with the classical ideal.

Brancusi took what his teacher did a step further. Brancusi was an outsider to modernism (like Munch as a Norwegian was). He was Romanian and went to the Academy in Bucharest.

Brancusi was inspired by primitivism (African art), as well as Assyrian and Egyptian art.

 

(4) 139. Fallingwater.

 Frank Lloyd Wright. American. 1936-39. Prairie Style.

Learning Objective: Prairie Style architecture

Themes:

Domestic
Private
Man v. nature
Light
Status
Architecture
Water
Site-specific

Fallingwater by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright is a building constructed of stone that stands in Fallingwater, Pennsylvania.

 Form

Prairie Style gets its name from its long horizontal lines, inspired by the prairies and plains. Fallingwater is integrated into the landscape, horizontal lines, horizontal windows, restraint in decoration and a stacked quality.

Wright called this his “organic architecture,” inspired by Transcendentalism. Most materials came from the site or broader area.  It is central and natural with an in situ stone core for the fireplace.

The color palette is limited:

• light ochre (yellowy tan)
• “Cherokee red” based on natural rock color

There is a liberal use of glass. The house has no walls facing the waterfall. Corner-turning windows do not use mullions and create unbroken views of nature. Elongated horizontal windows encourage the viewer to look outside.

The architecture creates the Illusion that the stream flows through the house. The powerful falls is heard from every room.

The ceilings are low reaching only up to 6 feet and 4 inches.  This encourages you to move towards the windows for the feeling of openness.

The floor is polished with wax to give it the appearance of wetness.

The house is darkest at the entrance and gets lighter as you move towards the back by the windows.

The use of cantilever construction allowed Wright to hang the house over the falls. Cantilever is a long projecting beam that has reinforcing wire-mesh and steel bars embedded inside of it to increase tensile strength. He used reinforced concrete or ferroconcrete.

Edgar Kaufmann Sr, the Pittsburgh department store tycoon, commissioned Wright to build Fallingwater. Kaufmann sent a copy of Wright’s blueprints to his personal engineer who found the ground of Fallingwater unstable and dimensions of the cantilever untenable. He did not recommend that Wright proceed with the house. The architect was upset but permitted an increase in the number and diameter of the structure’s steel reinforcements.

Function

This was created as a private home and weekend retreat for the Kaufmann family.

The clients were very interested in modern art and Wright’s work. It was a sign of status to have a weekend home.

The house was designed to be in harmony with nature. It is not just plunked down on top of the waterfall. It looks like it has grown out organically. It tumbles downward and outward like the waterfall itself.

Content  

• Private home / weekend retreat

SUB-IMAGE 1 (Interior)

Wright designed the original interior furnishings. Notice the designs are simple and matching the exterior in colors and materials.

• First floor: living room, kitchen
• Second floor: three bedrooms
• Third floor: study and bedroom of son, Edgar Kaufmann Jr.

Context

 The mid 1930s were bad years for American architecture. It was the time of the Great Depression. Almost no private homes were built.

Wright and his wife were struggling to keep Taliesin, his studio/home, out of foreclosure.

Wright was also being viewed by his contemporaries as “out of style”. In a review of architecture in 1932, he was criticized for his “unwillingness to absorb the innovations of his contemporaries”.

Philip Johnson, the designer of the Seagram Building, would call Wright the “greatest architect of the 19^th century” to jab at how old and outdated he was.

Wright developed an apprenticeship program called “the fellowship” to create business. Edgar Kaufmann Jr. was one of his first apprentices.

Kaufmann Sr. asked Wright about making a summer home for his family. They owned a large chunk of property in this area but the spot with the waterfall was their favorite.  Wright visited the site in December 1934. He rejected a conventional view of the waterfall and wanted to make the house a part of it.

Wright procrastinated for 9 months until Kaufmann Sr. called and said he was driving 140 miles to Taliesin to see what Wright had done.

Apprentice Edgar Taffel said: Wright briskly emerged from his office, sat down at the table with the plot plan and started to draw. The design just poured out of him. ‘Lilian and Edgar will have tea on the balcony…they’ll cross the bridge to walk in the woods…’ Pencils were being used up as fast as we could sharpen them. Erasures, overdrawing, modifying, flipping sheets back and forth. Then, the title across the bottom was scribbled: ‘Fallingwater.’

The whole process took two hours.

Wright was influenced by Transcendentalism meaning all nature and humanity are connected. He was also influenced by Japanese architecture and wanted to create harmony between man and nature.

 

(4) 146. Seagram Building.

 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. American. 1954-1958. Architecture: Modernism.

Learning Objective: Modern skyscraper

Themes:

Public
Technology
Innovation
Appropriation
Status
Architecture

Seagram Building in New York City was designed by architects Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, with interior furnishings by Philip Johnson. Constructed from steel with a glass curtain wall and bronze the building measures 515 feet tall with 38 stories. When it was constructed, the cost was astronomical an $36 million dollars.

 Mies believed that “Less is More”

• Evokes the simplicity of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye and International Style
• Symmetrical, sense of balanced proportion
• Clean, simple, geometry
• Vertical mullions rise without interruption (these are only decorative and part of the curtain-wall architecture)
• Elegance of construction
• Bronze mullions were rubbed with oil at least once a year, so they do not oxidize and become patina in color.

Even though we might think this was not classical because of its different color and lack of ornamentation, it invokes the classical precedent.

These features include:

• Bronze: common in Greek sculpture
• Pillars in front of building are fluted
• Building is set atop a base similar to a stylobate
• There is a sense of symmetry and proportion

Technological innovations:

• Used glass and metal, not stone and brick
• Curtain-wall architecture: outermost walls are non-structural

Function

• Office building for Seagram Liquor company (this was their headquarters)
• Ushered in a new era of skyscrapers (minimalist geometries without ornament/detail)
• Testament to just how influential the Seagram Building was that it now seems commonplace
• Created standard for modern skyscraper

The Story

This office building with an empty space in front was innovative and radical at the time. The open, urban plaza set the building back from Park Avenue and created a pedestrian space.

 Inside, the building is luxurious in its use of bronze, travertine, and marble.

Office spaces were furnished by Philip Johnson who was the director of architecture at MOMA.

Historical Notes  

Seagram, a large Canadian liquor company was the largest at that time. It flourished during prohibition because they were based in Canada, and not the United States.

The initial building pan was rejected by Phyllis Lambert, daughter of a Seagram owner. She was a Harvard architecture student and said the original design was the ugliest thing she had ever seen. She gave her father three choices of architects to employ.

• Frank Lloyd Wright was rejected because at the age of 90 he was considered too old.
• Le Corbusier was discovered to be too difficult to work with.

So, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was given the gig!

About the Architect

German-born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a director of a German architecture school called the Bauhaus. Nazis eventually shut down for being too modernist!

He came to the US in the late 1930s. His love of classical architecture and sculpture were his inspiration

 

(4) 147. Marilyn Diptych.

 Andy Warhol. American. 1962. Pop Art.

 Learning Objective: Pop Art print

Themes:

Ideal woman
Commemoration
Duality
Death
Portrait

Museum: Tate London

Marilyn Diptych by Andy Warhol is an artwork created with oil, acrylic, and silk-screen enamel on canvas. It measures 6 feet 7 inches by 8 feet 8 inches.

 A diptych: two panels meant to be viewed together.

 Enamel is an opaque shiny colored glass powder that begins as a liquid and hardens.

Warhol developed the technique of projecting photographic images to silk screen. It enabled him to produce repetitive patterns using a stencil.

To create art like this, mesh cloth is stretched over a heavy wooden frame. The design is printed using a squeegee to force color through the pores of the material. The canvas sits underneath and the ink squeezes through to make the image. Any mistakes are a result of the process, rather than with the artist. Ultimately, the artist becomes a machine, removed from the process of intimate artmaking.

It was inspired by Abstract Expressionists in terms of scale only and announces that the subject is grandiose. The all over composition, allows the viewer’s eye to wander.

Why was this Work Made?

Commemoration of movie star Marilyn Monroe after her death.

• It takes an image that ALREADY existed and which the artist did not create.

Profitability

Warhol showed he could profit off a celebrity’s image. The silkscreen medium allowed for multiple works and therefore multiple profits. Additionally, he had assistants make the silkscreens for him!

Ruminate on Notion of Duality

• Satisfaction vs. Desensitization/Boredom
• We want images of celebrities but after we get them, we are indifferent
• Our lives really don’t change in any meaningful way
• He captures our indifference to her image. Does it really matter that there are 50 instead of 1?
• American life is depersonalized and repetitive

Obsession and Religion

• Obsession with celebrity vs. obsession with religion. Warhol struggled with his Catholic faith.
• Our obsession with celebrity borders on the religious. That is why he uses a diptych, commonly reserved for religious imagery.
• Use of gold is deliberately reminiscent of Byzantine icons
• Invites us to worship Marilyn as we would Mary

Celebrity Persona vs Death

• Contrast of vivid color with black and white and the fading in the right panel are suggestive of her mortality (Marilyn had in fact just died of suicide)
• She is right in front of us (celebrities live on in images) but disappearing (her body does not exist anymore)

The Details

 50 images (25 color, 25 black and white) of Marilyn’s publicity photograph from the 1953 film

Her image: seductive, heavy-lidded eyes, parted plump lips

The Rest of the Story

Pop Art argued that our obsessions and culture are exalted enough that they can be ennobled into art. This way, Pop Art shows us what matters to us.

Marilyn Monroe died in August, 1962 of apparent suicide. Warhol’s artwork was made just a few months later.

About the Artist

Before becoming a leading artist in the Pop Art movement of the 1960s, American-born Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was an illustrator for both print magazines, as well as advertising.

He was noted for using everyday objects in his work. Examples includes the pieces like Campbell’s Soup Cans. As noted above, his works often include celebrities such as movie star Elizabeth Taylor, Mick Jagger from the Rolling Stones, and rock legend Elvis Presley.

 

(4) 149. The Bay.

 Helen Frankenthaler. American. 1963.  Abstract Expressionism (Color Field).

Learning Objective: Color Field painting

Themes: Abstraction

 Museum: Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Bay a work of acrylic on canvas by Helen Frankenthaler measures six feet eight inches by six feet and nine inches.  

Color Field is a classification of painting which is achieved through “fields” of color.  The only subject is the color and it is in a non-representational form.

Acrylic is a fast-drying paint. It is water-soluble, so it can be kept rich and thick, or loosened to have a watercolor look.

To soak stain the artist uses diluted acrylic paint, thinned with turpentine so it will run. Here, Frankenthaler poured paint onto the canvas. Then, the canvass was lifted and tilted at various angles so the paint would flow across the surface.

Action painting is the physical manner of applying paint, then picking up the canvas and letting the paint drip across the surface. It is a combination of the unpredictability of gravity and the artist’s control.

What is our physical response to color?

We respond to colour in this painting in the same way we might respond to a sunset stained-glass window. These examples illustrate that colors do not have to represent something in particular, but they can instead have an ambiguous quality.

The goal is for the viewer to focus purely on the colors and shapes in the work.

Colours Chosen by the Artist

The painting includes different shades of blue, grey, green, and brown.

In Frankenthaler’s Own Words

In a 1965 interview for Artforum Magazine Helen Frankenthaler said, “When you first saw an Impressionist painting, there was a whole way of instructing the eye. Dabs of color were understood to stand in for real things. It was a guitar or a hillside. The opposite is going on now. If you have bands of blue, green, and pink, the mind doesn’t first think sky, grass, and flesh. These are colors and now the question is what are they doing with themselves and with others.”

Historical Notes 

• Frankenthaler was one of the handful of women among the traditional all boys’ club of the Abstract Expressionists
• Clement Greenberg (art critic) believed that if art made after WWII was going to have any real impact on the world, it would have to radically change and truly move towards the abstract.
• Post WWII despair led to an interest in abstraction (remember this same thing happens after WWI)

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Later Europe & Colonial Americas 4.3

1750-1980 Century

TOPIC 4.4  Theories and Interpretations of Later European and American Art