Josh's Blog

Henri Matisse, Le Bonheur de Vivre (The Joy of Life) (1905), oil on canvas
-Scene of golden age
-Fauvism
-Warm climate
-Ocean
-Physically pleasurable as possible (uses color as almost abstraction)
-Bases painting on color concepts—soft and pleasing colors and lines
-Visual pleasure
-Hedonism

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), oil on canvas
-oused the red light district of Barcelona.
Title is the name of the street which h
-Suggests beginning of cubism—Inspired by F
-brothel—a painting of prostitution
auvism, but not nearly as vivid.
‐aggressiveness of women (primal/savage) ‐non pleasurable although it takes place is a brothel ‐The women are painted from the viewpoint as if WE are the client.

Georges Braque‐Deconstructed
, Violin and Palette (1909-10), oil on canvas
-With Picasso, they decided to create a new, different movement than Fauvism.
- Wanted to make the paintings more difficult to create and to discifer
-Reveals more strategy of Analytic Cubism
-as if it’s a smashed still life of someone playing the violin.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Street, Berlin (1913), oil on canvas
-German Expressionism—the expression of fear of modernism. Interestingly portrayed through very modern methods of painting.
-Consumerism (man looking into window of shop, automobile in painting)
-Modernity = downfall of society
-Modern women preying on men (g-Angularity of brush strokes create ‐Broad colors create forbiddance
old diggers)
awkward feeling

Gino Severini, Armored Train in Action (1915), oil on canvas
-Italian Futurism
-War with military technology
-Was the precursor to world change ‐war is the realization and result of technology ‐cubism fused with violence caused by military technology

Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Painting (Eight Red Rectangles) (1915), oil on canvas
-1st artist to push abstraction to its full non-referential extreme
-Painting was abowere – paint on a ‐Modern feeling
ut liberating art from suppression and to represent then as what they flat surface.

Tument to the Third International (1919-20), wood, iron, & g
atlin, Model for the Monlass - rebranded suprematists

Piet Mondrian, Composition with Yellow, Red, and Blue (1927), oil on canvas
-Reducing it to basic primary colors
-Reduced painting down to black line white ground
-Achieved balance on canvas
Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye, Poissy-sur-Seine (1929-30), architecture
-Load bearing function is on the small columns outside
-Lots of open areas, large windows- maximum usage of functional space
-For modern world, rational, truth, function… not interested in decoration or ornament.

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain (1917),
-readymade
-berlin dada
-rejected because it was indecent
-Turned the object on it's back and signed it which turned it into art
-Artist was trying to shake up things and upset people.- interrupt and break our assumptions on urinals.
-Fled to the US. because he felt the artists had more freedom, he saw what was happening in Germany. he moved to New York.
-he set up the American society of independent artists.
-he wanted no authority and he wanted anyone to be able to join.. and exhibit what ever you wanted to.
-he wanted to test this idea so he anonymously submitted a urinal. and it was rejected because it was a violation to any art that people have seen.
-he proposed it be displayed on its back. He bought it and signed it and sent it in. it was called indecent because he didn’t make it, and because it was associated with bodily functions.
-here’s for the first time someone saying its my art because i chose it.
-He called this strategy READYMADE. It was made by someone else.
-he wrote that when u look at it u look at art.
-he was a dada artist and they slap u in the face. thats what they do.

Max Ernst, The Horde (1927), oil on canvas
-Frottage(rubbing)
-rubbing on an uneven surface and it showed him where to paint
-automatism
-his idea was that this was getting stuff out of his unconscious
-left with blue canvas
-developed a violent and horrific unconcious. through the rorshad test.

Salvador Dali, Birth of Liquid Desires (1930), oil on canvas-
-surrealist
-Dali would paint by using paranoid critical method: getting into the state of mind of an insane person, or trying to tap into the unconscious mind. you had to work yourself up into a state of derangement and think of bizarre things in order to get yourself into that state of mind of a mental person Memories from his childhood. [Paranoid/critical method]
-formally trained and academically inclined painter
-a world representation of a dream
-chose to paint in a small scale
-there is a half man and half women, and he is embracing into flowers.
-there is a dresser with clothes coming out. he is drawing these things out of memories and things he had as a child.
-liked to make objects almost like swiss cheese—holes.
-strange title. its a painting about the nonsense of the unconscious. the mixtures of sex and gender, the desire and the use of liquids and things in the painting. its about him probing his unconscious. The nonsense of the unconscious.

Alexander Calder, Lobster Trap and Fish Tail (1939), hanging mobile
-1st to focus on this
-Sculpture is dynamic.
-It shifts and moves in response to the viewer.
-Turned sculpture notions upside down:
1.
Hung from ceiling
2.
Dynamic: in constant movement
3.
Responds to presence [interactive]

Aaron Douglas, Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery through Reconstruction (1934), oil on canvas
-Tried to make art to recall African art in contemporary African American experience
-The concentric circles seem to highlight a ballot [middle] and emancipation proclamation [right].
- Man is pointing at the capitol building and gaining power through the ballot and have a say in the country.
- originally was going to go into a library in harlem
- documentary image of important moments for the emancipation of slaves and voting rights...

Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) (1950), oil on canvas
-Large canvas
, unrolled them on the floor and painted on them
-dripped and splattered paint ‐automatism ‐didn’t think about what he was doing, just did it

Mark Rothko, Brow
n, B
lue, Brown on Blue (1953), oil on canvas
‐fields of floating color ‐shared experience ‐Action painting was male dominated

Robert Rauschenberg, Canyon (1959), combine painting
‐readymade ‐garbage pasted on canvas with paint spl‐made fun of the abstract expressionists
attered on

Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych (1962), oil, acrylic, and silk screen on enamel on
canvas - alter piece o‐ready made
f pop culture

Jean Tanguely, Homage to New York (1960), self-destroying sculpture
-spools of paper and canvas a washing machine motor
-the machine would shake and the spools would unroll and it would get crumbled underneath the machine. then there is paint that would drip down onto it.
-its a parody of jackson pollock
-he said he could make a machine that paints paintings like automatism
-at the end of the performance, the whole thing imploded and blew up.
-kind of to represent the way pollock died in a fiery car accident isolating the performance aspect of pollocks work.
-the performane of painting itself is what the art is all about, the painting in the end is just a record of that.
-it is a kinetic sculpture...caulder and tanguely do have this in common..

Frank Stella, Avicenna (1960), aluminum paint on canvas
-They wanted to make art that restates what it is.
-a major painter associated with minimalism
-they were tired of people make art that was a part of them, or what they felt.
-He made shaped canvases. So that the viewer would know every stroke was determined by the shape of the canvas. A topological painting.
-trying to get away from high art and sophistication
“what you see is what you see”
-wanted to get away from metaphors and show the objects for what they are.

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty (1969-70), black rock, salt crystal, and earth spiral
-he was interested in science and wanted to bear it in his art.
-the spiral represents elementary natural forces.
-its a living entity....sometimes its uls ymade
nder water, sometimes its above water, sometimes its
covered in rock crysta
‐the landscape as the read‐refusal of art world ‐you have to go to the art

Betye Saar, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972), mixed mediums ritique about racial sis
Draws on pop culture [maple syrup] to make a figurative c
‐Didn’t like the pop culture ideals, saw it as somewhat of an identity cris
tereotypes.
‐Played off of readymade, with a strong political thrust
‐Happy mami has been armed, shoot her way out of oppressive society ‐Civil Fights Movement Vs. Black Power Movement (Black Panthers) ‐begins to tie into feminism as well, since it is an African American woman. This is a race, and sexist discrimination.

Barbara Kruger, We Won’t Play Nature to Your Culture (1983), Photostat
-Cut out from a magazine.
-Antagonistic effect of text that negates the meaning of the image. A unified front of women, calling out the culture that has been constructed by men. “Political interventions”
-These were shown as billboards to appeal directly to the general public.
-Trying to make a political st-Photography as mains artisti‐woman blinded by nature
atement for a specific sect of society [women]
c mode as it is contemporary.
‐woman associated with natur‐2
e and man to culture
nd generation feminist work

Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S. (1995), video installation
-Playback of images of viewer or info of the state played within the space.
-Immerses the spectator looking at the image is included in the actual art
-It responds to viewer presence
-Using new
technology as post modern.
-New media for new s
ociety.
‐video art ‐brand new medium m all the states within the neon tubes that outlined
‐TVs broadcast news reports frothe states ‐Some tvs broa
d
cast the viewer • Possible throwback to baroque (including the viewer in the painting)