Leftovers

Question 1

Answer 1

Aaron Douglas

Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery Through Reconstruction

1934

Central figure holding up Emancipation Proclamation

NY public library

selective history, all things important to AA

art deco, African influence in style, form, abstract sense

Question 2

Answer 2

Willem de Kooning

Woman 1

1950 - 55

felt Pollack had “broken the ice” by releasing line from its traditional role of describing form

dripping, scratched paint, loose, gestural

woman, sense of fertility?

Question 3

Answer 3

John Steuart Curry

Baptism in Kansas

1928

large, critical acclaim, Whitney acquires in 1931, saw as a vision of America, rooted in rural experience, simple farmhouse landscape

strong religious undercurrent, family values, Dove symbol of spirit, strong light, authenticity

resonates with urban audience, feels America lost its way by 1930s, desperation after Depression, celebration of piety, rural life

Question 4

Answer 4

Helen Levitt

New York

1940

documents NY street scenes

humanity to children, spirit of youth, capturing exuberant joy, ignoring reality of their life/hardships

Question 5

Answer 5

Charles Sheeler

Self Portrait

1923

only see painted reflections of the interior, no depiction of the individual, ambivalent

promise of connection and sociability in the phone and open shade, instead lying there unused

Question 6

Answer 6

Walker Evans

Subway Portrait

1938

taken anonymously, hid camera in his coat, wants to capture essence of subject without filters of pose and self presentation

Question 7

Answer 7

William Glackens

Central Park, Winter

1905

leisure park scene

more about middle class over urban hardships

Question 8

Answer 8

Man Ray

L’Homme

1918

(later titled Le Femme)

Dada surrealism

Question 9

Answer 9

Martin Johnson Heade

Approaching Thunderstorm

1859

odd, water very black, selective reflection

Question 10

Answer 10

Aaron Douglas

Aspects of Negro Life: The Negro in an African Setting

1934

art deco

Question 11

Answer 11

Jacob Lawrence

Migration of the Negro, #1: During the World War there was a great migration North by Southern Negros, 1940-41

Life in the South was bad for AA - Jim Crow, KKK, lynching, many migrated North to economic boom

first painting of the large series

migrants embarking on journey to big cities

most famous of series, 60 panels total, similar in palette, painted one color at a time in each panel, thinking about color/form and narrative as a whole, folk elements, flat perspective, no facial features

Question 12

Answer 12

Mark Rothko

Number 10

1950

sense of canvas oriented as he worked, turning and twisting to create layers, subtle, complex

Question 13

Answer 13

George Bellows

Tennis at Newport

1919

Question 14

Answer 14

Lisette Model

Sailor and Girl in Sammy’s Bar

1944

life as lived rather as life as presentation, descriptive

Austrian immigrant, Guggenheim scholarship in 1966

Question 15

Answer 15

Thomas Hart Benton

Susanna and the Elders

1938

subject done many times, updated for contemporary times

without title painting of nakedness but title makes it about nudity

idealized nude Americans can view without feeling guilty

Benton- Pollock’s teacher, celebrates region, rebel against “art for art sake” not good if general public can’t understand/access, needs to be familiar, democratic art, abstract art for elitists

Question 16

Answer 16

John Henry Twatchman

End of Winter

after 1889

inspiration from land in Greenwich, CT

express emotional and spiritual comfort found there

seasonal transition, meditative quality

Question 17

Answer 17

Lee Krasner

Abstract #2

1946-48

Benton would hate and call meaningless pattern, jealous this was the direction art was going and leaving him behind

Question 18

Answer 18

Jacob Lawrence

The Tombstone

1941

dark work all around, emphasis on death, sullen figures

child in stroller reaching for white doll, all other figures AA

Question 19

Answer 19

Childe Hassam

Allies

1918

Question 20

Answer 20

Childe Hassam

Spring Morning in the Heart of New York

1890

Question 21

Answer 21

Grant Wood

American Gothic

1931

sense of formality, types not individuals, stiff pose

statement of nationalism, portrayal of family and region

Question 22

Answer 22

Charles Sheeler

Of Domestic Utility

1932

could not get back to work after wife died, view of house in Doyleston, PA that he rented with wife and Morton Schamberg

everyone who he had in his life disappeared

all works have photographic basis expect this one

pitcher is precariously balanced, hearth of fireplace has logs stacking in corner, kindling according to art historians Clancy says no

Question 23

Answer 23

Marcel Duchamp

In Advance of a Broken Arm

1916

Question 24

Dada

Answer 24

rejects traditional Western values, takes on artistic realm, forerunners to performance art

Blames middle class for ills and large cultural and social problems

consider reason and logic to be symbols of capitalist society

anti-art, against aesthetics, looks different in different countries - hard to pin down distinct style, doesnt want to fit a category

celebrates the machine - modern experience

Duchamp heads up NY dada group, meets artists through Stieglitz

work seen as violating trends

Question 25

Answer 25

Jasper Johns Flag 1955 newspaper, encaustic paint Johns moves us out of the color field and action painters and is deliberately figural seems to have narrative elements but complicates them by construction and process newspaper up close can see images/text coming through painting has a heavy, textual quality

Question 26

Answer 26

Julian Alden Weird The Factory Village 1896

Question 27

Answer 27

Childe Hassam Room of Flowers 1894

Question 28

Answer 28

Jackson Pollock Autumn Mist: Number 1 1950 no meaning, requires viewer to activate overwhelmed, visual interest, meditative canvas not primed, needs to de-acidify regularly, difficult to clean Pollock doesnt worry about changes, creation not as a finished result but abou the artist's process, spontaneous moment of creation

Question 29

Answer 29

Charles Demuth My Egypt 1927 Grain elevator - elevated to status of significant architectural achievement, placed in center looking up, revered object Title refers to Egyptian period, how important pyramids were, cultures have architectural icons, grain elevator as last great monument of America, celebrating American ingenuity/industrial accomplishments vectors, overlapping planes, uses color to differentiate, basic geometric shapes, vectors emphasize monumentality

Question 30

Answer 30

Andrew Wyeth Christina's World 1948 revival of tempera painting Christina had polio, couldnt walk, house seems unreachable narrative of struggle and difficulty

Question 31

Answer 31

Ralston Crawford Steel Foundry, Coatesville, PA 1936 - 37 sky painted differently than building, fence reductive, simplified forms, no shading/shadow no attempt to create space or window of reality, some perspective, no emphasis on real background

Question 32

Answer 32

Charles Sheeler Church Street El 1923 no visible brushwork, hard edges, clean lines, abstraction, solid blocks of color, geometric shape, overlapping vectors, close cropping removes pictorial details, respect for the city

Question 33

Answer 33

John Steuart Curry Mississippi 1935 dustbowl - blamed on mechanized farming, plow tore up the land and caused erosion, runoff, ground couldnt absorb Farming as the breadbasket of America, responsible for hardships

Question 34

Answer 34

Charles Demuth Steamship "Paris" 1920 - 22 celebrates the machine and architectural forms that are particular to the US, meticulously rendered, detail distinctively American

Question 35

Answer 35

Edward Hopper House by the Railroad 1925 desolate, lonely, appears sinister railroad is visual block that stops you no trees, empty, strange, lonely world

Question 36

Answer 36

Franz Kline New York 1953 "I dont advance that I am going to paint a definite experience, but in the act of painting..."

Question 37

Answer 37

Julian Alden Weir The Laundry, Branchville 1894

Question 38

Answer 38

Grant Wood Parson Weem's Fable 1939 Washington stops after 2 terms, immediately memorialized after death Parson Weems - historian/folklorist who fabricated Washington Cherry Tree tale as appropriate mode of parenting, importance of honesty Wood paints himself into painting pulling curtain back, somewhat colonial, celebration of America 1939 world fair painting makes clear fables are inventions - small man child Washington, enslaved labor force in background- not the slave owner Washington people celebrated

Question 39

Precisionism (The Immaculates)

Answer 39

No formal manifesto, consistent style/subject reduced composition to simple shapes, geometric, clear outline, minimal detail, emphasis on abstract form of subject, overlapping planes, no evidence of artist hand, mechanical artistry, precise line borrowed freely from European movements - cubism, futurism celebration of technology, expressionism of speed defined themselves as distinctively American artists, selected American landscape - industrial, urban, factories, mills 2views of machines place in contemporary America 1) utopian ideal of technology bringing order to modern world, enhancing with speed, efficiency, 2) dehumanizing effects of technology, replace workers, pollution, dominate landscaep in destructive way

Question 40

Cubism/Futurism

Answer 40

deconstructing object no philosophical impulses addressing problem of painting - how do you show 3D object on 2D space, limitation

Question 41

Answer 41

Charles Demuth I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold 1928 abstract portrait (not physical likeness) of friend William Carlos Williams, poet, titled derived from name of his poem imagery from poem "The Great Figure" sights and sound of fire engine speeding down the street, intersecting line, vibrant urban energy visual collage, cityscape, movement, flow, explosion, grabs attention, reminiscent of 1920s advertising, poster portrait

Question 42

Regionalism

Answer 42

artists of the mid-West, American realists, reacting to European modernists thinking about national themes understood by common man, nostalgin, engaging American identity Benton, Curry, Wood, Hopper, Hartley, Wyeth

Question 43

Answer 43

Edward Hooper Early Sunday Morning 1930 reduced NY street to bare essentials, no human presence only suggestions - curatains at different levels, dark inside long early morning shadows would have never appeared on 7th ave, runs North to South, unpopulated street, emphasis on simplified forms no sense of setting, anonymous, lonely, frozen quality of time, momentary, mysterious

Question 44

Answer 44

Edward Hopper Nighthawks 1919 all night diner, 3 anonymous figures expressive possibilities of light, flourescent, eerie glow, beacon on dark corner, unnatural environment viewer shut out by glass, construction of zones symbols of human isolation, urban emptiness

Question 45

New American Abstraction 1940s - 1950s

Answer 45

Action Painting - gestural abstraction, relies on stroke, movement, articulation of voyage of the brush/paint, emphasizes physical act of painting Pollock, Motherwell, Kline, Krasner, de Kooning Color Field - large fields of flat color, spread across or stained on canvas, unbroken surface, consistiency of form Rothko, Frankenthaler, Newman

Question 46

Conclusions

Answer 46

painting to respond to unspeakable - heal the nation, depict heros national identity - attempt to explain what is American relationship btw. European and American art issues of industrialization, shift in landscape, rise of the city importance of shifting class, racial, gender identities, how they play out in art, perspective and paint can alter painting moved through aesthetic trends - crisis in presentation, explore nature of painting, deconstruct painting to take on historical/traumatic events American art on precedence of significant change, social circumstances being wrestled by artists, ways to convey what is happening inAmerica

Question 47

Harlem Renaissance

Answer 47

1920s evolved from series of cultural trends - economic boom, growing cities, mass migration (rural to urban), end of slavery, failure of reconstruction, period of dislocation, isolation economic independence, racial pride, cultural/politcal activism, how to advance situation of American negro change happens in Harlem, emblematic site for urban black culture, overflowing with black migrants, dominate population, sense that AA culture is having impact on shape of America, jazz