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This introduction to contemporary art explores the transition from the "Modern" paradigm to the post-European, post-modern, and post-colonial era. It focuses on the political and social causes behind the move from Paris to New York as the culture capital of the world. The essay highlights three works of art as examples and discusses the social context and historical events that shaped the art world during this period.
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Contemporary ArtWhat and when is it? An Introduction World (cosmopolitan) culture shifted away from the “Modern” paradigm with World War II: c.1945-1968 Post-Europe Post-Modern Post-Colonial
For the quiz on Tuesday, you will write a concise (15-minute) essay about the so-called “end” of modern art: the transition from Paris to New York as the culture capital of the world. What were some of the political and social causes of the move? Identify three works of art (name and nationality of artist, title of artwork, date, medium, and movement) that serve as examples.
Paris World Fair 1937German Pavilion (left) by Albert Speer with Comrades, by Joseph Thorak(right) USSR Pavilion with Vera Mukhina,The Worker and The Collective Farm Woman,
Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937, Paris Worlds Fair, Spanish Pavilion
ANXIOUS VISIONS for the End of the Age of Europesocial context of Surrealist imagerySalvadorDali, Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: Premonitions of Civil War1936, oil on canvas, 39 x 39”
Hitler and Goebbels visit the Degenerate Art Exhibition, Munich, 1937(insert below) Max Beckmann, German Expressionist, at MoMA NYC in 1947 with 1933 painting, Departure
(left) Nazi 1937 degenerate music poster – Jazz, Jewish (Star of David) and Black(right) Degenerate art show installation – Dada with Kurt Schwitters and Paul Klee artworks visible
Man Ray photo portraits of Marcel Duchamp (French 1887-1966) (right) Duchamp as Rrose Sélavy c. 1920New York Dada Father of conceptual art, which has characterized all major art (in one way or another), worldwide, since the 1960s
Marcel Duchamp. Bottle Rack, 1914/64, bottle rack made of galvanized ironBicycle Wheel, 1913, “Readymade”: bicycle wheel, mounted on a stool, originals lost
Duchamp, Fountain 1917 (photographed in 1917 by Alfred Stieglitz), New York DADADuchamp said he chose his objects on "visual indifference…as well as a total absence of taste, good or bad."
Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q, 1919, reproduction with hand drawn mustache and goatee “Readymade Assisted”
National Socialist (Nazi) Realism Arno Breker, (left) Comradeship, 1940; (right) The Party, 1938
(Top left) Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister for People's Enlightenment and Propaganda: (Below left) 1938 Nazi propaganda rally in Graz. "We came from the people, we remain part of the people, and see ourselves as the executor of the people's will.“(right) Hans Haacke, And You Were Victorious After All, Graz, Germany, 1988 (above, reconstruction of Nazi propaganda (1938): a public art work attacked and destroyed)
Nazi Fuhrer Adolph Hitler (Austrian,1889-1945) Photograph sent to Eva Braun after occupation of Paris,1940The Fall of Paris is a watershed for the end of Modernism
Nazi (Axis) Blitzkrieg of London, beginning in 1941, inaugurating the ceaseless bombing of civilian populations throughout the war by both sides
Soviet (Ally) bombing of Berlin, August 11, 1941 Dresden, September 1945 after fire bombings by British & American air forces – 30,000 deaths
(left) Francis Bacon (British), panel from Three Studies for a Crucifixion, 1947(right) Alberto Giacometti (Swiss), Pointing Man, 1947 Europe after the War: Existentialist Expressionism
American hydrogen bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, August 6, 1945 Aftermath of Hiroshima bomb – estimated 170,000 deaths
Miyako Ishiuchi (Japanese, b.1947), Mother’s, Venice Biennale 2005 Japanese Pavilion
Post-colonialismis the important historical context for globalism Decolonization of Europe’s world empires occurred after the two world wars.
The Algerian War of Independence from France (1954 -1962), one of many such ant-colonial wars for national identity. De-colonization characterized the post-modern period. Bomb blast, Algiers, 1957 Poster for film about the Algerian War of Independence from France.
Berlin Wall, August 13, 1961, the GDR began under the leadership of Erich Honecker to block off East Berlin and the GDR from West Berlin by means of barbed wire and antitank obstacles. Construction crews replaced the provisional barriers by a solid wall.
USSR under Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, de facto dictator from 1928-1953 Karp Trokhimenko (Ukraine,1885-1975), as Organizer of the October Revolution, oil on canvas, 85 x 117 cm, early 1940s. Commissioned by the Stalinist government. Socialist Realism was mandated by Stalin, Hitler, and Mao and is therefore called “totalitarian art.”
Vitaly Komar (b. Moscow,1943) and Alex Melamid (b. Moscow,1945)(left) Stalin and the Muses, 1981-2, oil on canvas, 6x7ft 7in.(right) Double Self-Portrait as Young Pioneers, 1982-83, oil on canvas, 72 x 50 in. (from Nostalgic Socialist Realism series).
After 1989 and the end of the Cold War, the relationship to the past implied by “post” (postmodern, postcolonial, etc.) has dropped away. Today the hegemonic (dominant) world cultural paradigm is globalism.
The People's Republic of China was established on October 1, 1949 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, 1966-1976 – Socialist Realism imposed China Post WWII Xin Liliang (1912) The Happy Life Chairman Mao Gives Us, Government poster, 1954
To carry the Great Revolution of Proletarian Culture out to the End, 1972 Work Hard for Speeding Up the Modernization Of Agricultural Machinery, 1972 Socialist Realism during The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, 1966-1976 Work Hard to Realize the Fourth Five Year Plan of National Economy, 1972 Quotations of Mao,1967
"The People's Liberation Army of China is a grand school of Mao Tse-tung Thought“1970s Socialist Realism during the Cultural Revolution
(left) Hung Liu (China, b. 1948) with her Socialist Realist painting of Mao as student at the Central Academy of Art, Beijing in early 1970s (right) Hung Liu participating in a Happening with Allan Kaprow at UC San Diego in the early 1980s
Fang Lijun (Chinese, b. 1963) Series 2 No 2, 1991-1992, oil on canvas, 6 ½ ft square“Cynical Realism” (versus “Socialist Realism” of Mao’s Cultural Revolution)
American Abstract Expressionism New York becomes the art capital of the world in the post-war post-modern decades – c. 1940 -1989 (from the fall of Paris to the fall of the Berlin wall)
FALL OF PARIS AND RISE OF THE NEW YORK SCHOOL(left) Hitler occupies Paris, 1940Photograph of the artists exhibiting in the Artists in Exile show at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, March, 1942. Left to right, first row: Matta, Ossip Zadkine, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger; second row: André Breton, Piet Mondrian, André Masson, Amédée Ozenfant, Jacques Lipchitz, Pavel Tchelitchew, Kurt Seligmann, Eugene Berman. Photograph by George Platt Lynes
Max Ernst (French, born Germany, 1891–1976), exile from Paris to NYC in 1941 Europe After the Rain, 1942-44, oil on canvas, 21x 58”Decalomania, Surrealist “Anxious Visions,” and automatist methods
André Masson (French, 1896-1987), emigrated to US in early 1940s(left) Why dids’t thou bring me forth from the womb?, 1923, pen & ink on paper(right) Battle of Fishes, 1926, sand, gesso, oil, pencil, and charcoal on canvas, 14 x 28” Surrealist sources influential on New York artists: abstract biomorphism, automatism, and mythological subjects (used also by Freud)
Wilfredo Lam, (Cuban French, 1902 -1982, Paris, 1940 return from Paris to Cuba)(left) The Jungle, gouache on paper mounted on canvas, 1943; (right) The Warrior, 1947 Between 1942 and 1950, Lam exhibited regularly at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. Négritude and Créolité: Modernism in Diaspora
New York Interwar Modernism Stuart Davis (US, 1892-1964) Lucky Strike, oil on canvas, 1921
Isamu Noguchi (Japanese-American,1904-1988) Kouros, 1945, pink Georgia marble on slate base, 117” H. Compare Kouros, Attic, late 7th c.BC, marble, 76” (both in NYC at the Metropolitan MA(right) Noguchi, Herodiade set for Martha Graham, 1935: Biomorphic Surrealism
(left top) Buson, by Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988). Japan, Kita Kamakura, 1952. Unglazed Karatsu stoneware, 8-1/4 x 6-1/2 x 3-3/8”. (right) Great Rock of Inner Seeking1974, basalt, H:127 7/8” with stone commemorating poet Buson near Osaka Japan; (below left) Noguchi Garden Museum, Long Island City with traditional garden in Japan. Transcultural art avant la lettre
Louise Bourgeois (French-American, b.1911), (left) Quarantania, 1947-53, painted wood on wood base, 62” high(right) photoportrait of Bourgeois by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1982
Mexican Modernists active in US in the 1930s(left) David Siqueiros (Mexican, 1896-1974), Echo of a Scream, 1937(right) José Orozco (Mexican 1883-1949), The Epic of American Civilization: Modern Migration of the Spirit, fresco mural: 14th panel, Dartmouth College, 1932-34
Diego Rivera (Mexican, 1886-1957) Man, Controller of the Universe, fresco, Palace of Fine Arts, Mexico City, 1934; Incomplete Rockefeller Center New York City original was destroyed. Communist Social Realism (rejection of modernist style)
Thomas Hart Benton (US,1889-1975),Steel, from the America Today murals, The New School, New York City, 1930, tempera with oil glaze. Regionalism (Social Realism and rejection of modernist style, which he called “Ellis Island Art” Self-Portrait for Time, 1934
Dorothea Lange (US, 1895 -1965), (left) Migrant Mother, 1936; (right) White Angel Breadline, San Francisco, 1933, Social RealismThe Great Depression and the Works Progress Administration (WPA-FSA)
