ART ASSIGNMENT PART ONE of TWO
Homework Assignment:
Please annotate one artwork you like from Chapter Three: A Dialog with Europe in your textbook. My CHOICE Willem de Kooning, Woman and Bicycle, 1953
Whenever I am writing for research presentation or publication, this is how I begin. The point is to make sure you're not missing anything in terms of basic data or interpretive frameworks.
When I take notes on a lecture at a conference, this is the way I like to organize my notes, as well.
Structure outline to follow
Identify the artwork
Identify Period Style
Identify Subject Matter:
Discuss Historical Context:
Discuss Visual Elements (Line, Color, Texture, Composition etc.)
Discuss It's Place in Ideas of Time:
EXAMPLE of mine from another class I taught:
1.)See the artwork here: https://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=78699
Jackson Pollock. Untitled No.1A. Oil and enamel on unprimed canvas. 1948. PLEASE include HYPERLINK ON LINE 1.
2.)Identify Period Style: Abstract Expressionism
3.)Identify Subject:The painting is non-representational. It is designed not
to have an explicit subject. Pollock was asked why he didn't paint the external, natural world. He sharply replied: "I am nature".
The painting is himself, and he is his action. The style of the painting emphasizes a moving, acting person, operating in the context of Western painting.
4.)Historical Context (comment in a few sentences): This artwork is a heartfelt response to the horrors of the Great Depression, World War II, the fear of another big war (with the Soviet Union/China/anywhere else that "went Communist"), and the belief that modern civilization was on the verge of collapse. The abstract expressionists wanted to create a "new civilization" from the ground-up, based in the absolute freedom of the individual artist, the use of psychoanalysis to heal the depression, anxiety, and warlike death-drive of modern humans, and a new appreciation for the art and culture of "primitive" peoples like Native Americans. They also found inspiration in earlier modern art and music, especially abstract painting and bebop jazz. The part of New York where they worked included jazz clubs, some of the first "American Chinese" food take-out places, and a sense of being "alternative" and open-minded. It was also somewhat racially-integrated-a later black painter raised in Alabama during the 1930s commented that hanging out at the Cedar Tavern was the first time he went to a bar where white people drank. Apparently a white man who'd never seen him before asked if he was an artist, and the black painter said "I'm a painter." The white man bought him a beer, which was the sign of acceptance to the "club" atmosphere of the tiny modern art world of the time. Willem de Kooning, for one, was a mentor to the great contemporary painter Jack Whitten, who is also African American. The Native American (Anishnaabe) painter George Morrison would hang out there, too, and said he grew a thin mustache and people usually thought he was a "rich Persian businessman" (that was before the 1953 Iranian coup d'etat,helping pave the way for the crazy Iran of today) This small contribution to de-segregation is an under-recognized cultural legacy of the "New York School."
5.)Comment on use of visual elements (line, color, etc.): Pollock's so-called "drip paintings" create immersive force-fields of liquid, energetic line across the soft woven texture of unprimed canvas. The color is carefully restricted, using mostly analogous colors that harmonize with each other and contrast with the beige unprimed canvas . The compositions have no focal point, but lead the viewer's eye in organic swooping motions around the horizontal picture plane, suggesting the energy of the human mind and body freed from normal social manners and conventional ways of painting. Most Abstract Expressionist paintings were huge by the standard of previous abstract painting. Audiences in the late 1940s and 1950s found this use of scale dizzying, more like being pulled into an unsettling "environment"than seeing the smaller, more visually "contained" abstract paintings of prewar America or Europe.
While earlier abstract painters like Arthur Dove often worked at a 16"x20" scale Pollock's paintings are typically around eight by ten feet in size!
6.)Comment on associated critical theory (IN THIS CLASS: REFER TO YOUR FINEBERG
TEXTBOOK): We discussed two quite different, positive readings of Abstract Expressionism in art criticism. The first was that of Clement Greenberg, which emphasize the pure "opticality" of Pollock's work. He meant that Pollock had "purified" painting of everything outside of "painting itself." He meant that there was no subject matter, no narrative, no illusion of three-dimensionality-just pure, flat paint on a flat canvas. This is its general place in the "trend" Greenberg thought he saw in studying hundreds of years of painting in the West. The move was from the "window" theory of the painting to the "screen" idea of modern times.The other critical reading is that of Harold Rosenberg, who called this "action painting." He stressed the freedom and contingency of the modern artist, freely creating without reference to a previous system of art values.he other critical reading is that of Harold Rosenberg, who called this "action painting." He stressed the freedom and contingency of the modern artist, freely creating without reference to a previous system of art values. Each brushstroke was a gesture toward the absolute freedom of modern artists, no longer illustrating stories or using figures but instead focusing on expressing action, energy, and spontaneity. Meyer Schapiro mostly agreed with this view, emphasizing the way modern artists sought a personal, expressive, intuitive style of painting because mainstream modern society was based on externally-focused conformism, mass-production, and alienating technology. In most modern jobs, people have routine and assignments, not spontaneity or personal expression. Modern art helps fill the gap
PART 2 of TWO WEEK (3) ASSIGNMENT
The Meaning Of Freedom
One of the major themes of existentialism is freedom. For the existentialists that influenced the Ab-Ex painters, the basic problem of life was to find meaning in a situation of total personal freedom. If we can do anything (assuming we're tough enough to accept the consequences), how do we choose? How do we determine what to do with our freedom?
How do you think about freedom in your life? What art forms (music, visual art, the arts broadly) do you think convey freedom in your personal sense?