Abstract Expressionism

I have not been on this page for a while-- it seemed as if nobody was even looking at it (see previous post). Although nobody has left a comment since then, I note that there have been a fair amount of hits on the page. Thusly, I think that I will post a few pictures.

We basically do not do abstract art in my classes, for a variety of reasons that I am not going to go into at the moment. Some of my students may assume that this is because I do not like abstract art. This is not necessarily true. While I find much of it to be questionable at best, I do actually like some of it.

Here are the two most important abstract painters of the mid-twentieth century, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. These two artists (with a handful of others), living and working in New York, basically defined what most people think of when they hear the term "abstract art".

Jackson Pollock is easily the best-known abstract painter to the public at large. This fact is largely due to the feature article that Life magazine ran on him him in 1949, skyrocketing him to fame. More recently, Pollock was the subject of the biopic "Pollock", starring Ed Harris. This is an excellent film, by the way, I highly recommend it.

(click on images below for a larger view)


Pollock, Male and Female, 1942


Pollock, She-wolf, 1943


Pollock, No. 32, 1950


Pollock, Lavender Mist, 1950

Willem de Kooning is less known outside of art circles. Within the art world however, many people feel that he was a better painter than Pollock, and de Kooning has been arguably much more influential to other painters in the last 50-60 years.


de Kooning, The Wave, 1944


de Kooning, Excavation, 1950


de Kooning, Woman V, 1953


de Kooning, Gotham News, 1955

Pollock died tragically behind the wheel in a drunk driving accident in 1956. De Kooning worked through the 1980s, but his work fell off as he suffered increasingly from Alzheimer's disease; he died in 1997, 93 years old.

Is anybody home?

I started this page mainly as a resource for my students. It appears that it is not being used very much. There are a lot of great links here for galleries, museums, art schools, and more. The low number of visitors to this page does not give me much incentive to put a lot of energy into it. However, students, if you express some interest, I will start making some more posts.

Here is a little something for you to look at. There's more where this came from if anyone is interested.


Kehinde Wiley, Portrait of a Venetian Ambassador

Some more art blogs

Two more art blog links have been added to the list of art blogs over on the right side of this page (scroll down). They are: Myartspace>blog, and Painters NYC. Both are well worth looking at-- check them out.

2D Art III Assignment: Fauvist Portrait

In this assignment, you will be creating a "Fauvist Portrait" in oil pastel, on 16" x 20" drawing paper, working from photo reference. (You may shoot your own reference photo, or we can do it in class.)

Les Fauves (French for The Wild Beasts) were a short-lived and loose grouping of early 20th century Modern artists whose works emphasized exaggerated color, as well as simplified use of line, shape, and form. An art critic gave this group their name-- it was not a compliment!

Fauvism was the first of the major avant-garde movements in European 20th century art. While this art was initially considered to be shocking, it was to become extremely influential in the evolution of 20th century art.

The leaders of the movement were Henri Matisse and André Derain. We will also look at some work by Amedeo Modigliani; although he is generally classified as an expressionist painter, some of his work has a look that is similar to that of the Fauves.

To start with, we will look at a few Fauvist paintings that are not portraits, just to give you more of an idea of what the art of the Fauves looked like. Then, we will look at several portraits.

Derain, Mountains at Collioure, 1905


Derain, Charing Cross Bridge, 1906


Matisse, Open Window, 1905


Matisse, Madame Matisse, "The Green Line", 1905


Matisse, Self-Portrait in a Striped Shirt, 1906


Matisse, Woman with Hat, 1905


Matisse, Portrait of André Derain, 1905


Modigliani, Woman with Hat, 1908


Modigliani, Head of a Young Woman, 1908

Examples of student work from AAW 2D Art III in previous years:


Leah Garvin, Self-Portrait, 2004


Aaron Mickens, Self-Portrait, 2005

2D Art II Assignment: Pop Art II

Last year in 2D Art I, we did a Pop Art project. As we learned, Pop Art was an art movement in the late 50’s and early 60’s that used as its source visual imagery from popular culture. We learned how Pop artists like Andy Warhol looked to things like consumerism and celebrity for subject matter for their art.


Warhol, Vegetable Soup, 1962


Warhol, Liz Taylor, 1964

The pieces that we did last year generally featured only one object, like Warhol's soup can, or a portrait of a celebrity such as Marilyn Monroe, or Elizabeth Taylor (as seen above).

This year, we will be focusing on the work of another Pop Artist, James Rosenquist. Early in his career, Rosenquist worked as a billboard painter, which required him to paint very large pictures of various products, in a very realistic manner. Moving away from advertising art, he brought his technical skill as a painter and his familiarity with popular culture into the world of fine art.

Differing from the single-object images that we see in much of Warhol's work, Rosenquist created complex compositions with a number of different objects or images, and attempted to “say something” about contemporary American culture. Rosenquist’s juxtaposition* of seemingly unrelated objects suggested hidden connections and new levels of meaning.

(*juxtaposition: placing two or more objects together, especially in order to suggest a link between them or emphasize the contrast between them.)

It is the juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated objects in Rosenquist's work that makes his paintings so intriguing. What do they mean? His paintings invite you to find your own interpretation.

(click on the images below for larger views)


President Elect, 1961


I Love You with My Ford, 1961


Nomad, 1963


World's Fair Mural, 1964




F-111, 1965 (these pieces are connected, and are 2 out of 4 panels)


The Swimmer in the Econo-Mist, 1998


Examples of student work from AAW 2D Art II in previous years:


Victoria Webb, 2006


Peggy Kittila, 2002

In your Pop Art piece this year, you will need to include at least three different objects. Your picture will be more interesting if the relationship of the objects is not obvious. Think carefully about this project. What will you try to say with this picture? What will it mean? Will the meaning be clear, or will it be more symbolic? Will it have a specific meaning or will it be vague? Or perhaps there may not even be a particular meaning-- you can let the viewer try to figure it out on their own, and come up with their own interpretation.

For more information on Rosenquist, click here.
To go to Rosenquist's website, click here.

Rothko painting sold for $73 million

The record price for postwar art was broken twice at a Sotheby’s auction in May 2007, first with a painting by Francis Bacon and later with a Mark Rothko painting, which went for almost $73 million.

The 1950 Rothko painting, “White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose),” of blocks of color, sold for $72.8 million to an anonymous bidder.

Shortly before, a 1962 Bacon painting of a pope, “Study from Innocent X,” sold to an anonymous bidder for $52.6 million.

Another work, an untitled painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat from 1981, sold Tuesday for $14.6 million, setting an auction record for the artist.


Rothko, White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose), 1950


Bacon, Study from Innocent X, 1962


Basquiat, untitled, 1981

Comments?

Dana Schutz

Dana Schutz (b. 1976) is an exciting and original young artist who was born in Livonia, Michigan and now lives and works in New York. Her work has been described as "teetering on the edge of tradition and innovation." (see link below for more.)


Death Comes to Us All, oil on canvas, 2003
(click on image to enlarge)

Death Comes to Us All is the painting equivalent to a psychotic episode; Schutz's man and machine meld in convincingly scary hallucination. Dana Schutz's paintings draw a fine line between escapism and invasion: her elaborate scenes are not just depictions of fantasy, but portals to plausible realities where ‘life' and ‘art' converge. Creating parallel worlds contrived in their own rules of logic, Schutz paints an interconnectedness between function and form. Adopting the role of the artist as a Dr Frankenstein-like power, Dana Schutz consolidates figuration and abstraction as a monstrous experiment, the effect of artistic vision spun out of control. (from the Saatchi Gallery website-- click here)


Reformers, oil on canvas, 2004
(click on image to enlarge)

Reformers-- what's going on in this picture? It has a lot of bright colors, but......