midterm terms

Question 1

Federal Art Project

Answer 1

FDR founds the FAP as part of the New Deal, intended to provide artists with work producing art for public institutions such as government offices

Question 2

Jungian archetype

Answer 2

conceptualized by Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung - the idea that common images and symbols show up again and again within all cultures throughout history (eagles, fire, etc)

Question 3

Popular Front

Answer 3

influenced by Leon Trotsky and Karl Marx, the American Communist Party’s attempt to bring communism to the US, generally successful in NY

Question 4

“Towards a Free Revolutionary Art”

Answer 4

written by Diego Rivera and Andre Breton, the piece argues that artists must fight for their right to exist but warns about art for art’s sake (abstract art) - leads some American artists to identify as “Trotsky-ites”

Question 5

“Three Centuries of American Art”

Answer 5

1938 exhibition of American art in France that was widely hated by French critics, contributed to the American artists’ sense of cultural inferiority compared to Paris

Question 6

The Irascibles

Answer 6

photo of key AbEx artists published in Life magazine in 1953 - included Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning, and just one woman, Hedda Sterne (who later said the men hated that she was included) … no artists of color were included

Question 7

Non-hierarchical composition

Answer 7

technique that does away with the traditional subject/background relationship associated with painting before 1945 (think Pollock or Rothko)

Question 8

All-over composition

Answer 8

similar to non-hierarchical composition, all-over composition gives equal attention and importance to the entire canvas (think Pollock)

Question 9

Hans Namuth

Answer 9

German photographer and filmmaker who photographed many prominent AbEx artists, famously recorded Pollock working

Question 10

Gestural Abstraction

Answer 10

technique characterized by intentional movement, paint is often dripped or splashed across the canvas, artists include de Kooning and Kline

Question 11

Action Painting

Answer 11

technique where paint is thrown, dripped, or splashed onto a canvas rather than carefully applied, artists include de Kooning and Kline

Question 12

Color-Field Painting

Answer 12

abstract technique that emerged in NY in the 40s and 50s, characterized by large swaths of bright and contrasting colors, artists include Rothko and Newman

Question 13

Clement Greenberg

Answer 13

American critic who called AbEx the quintessential “American-Type Painting” and identifies three key constitutive elements that are highlighted by modern painting (medium specificity): flatness, properties of the pigment, and the shape of the support

Question 14

Harold Rosenberg

Answer 14

American critic who says that artists confront the void when they confront the canvas (art is an existential act), places emphasis on the act of painting rather than the painting itself

Question 15

“Is Modern Art Communistic?”

Answer 15

written by Alfred Barr Jr, this 1952 New York Times piece pointed out that modern art was “damned” in both Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany - argued that modern art is the opposite of communistic

Question 16

The De Luxe Show

Answer 16

1971 show in Houston’s Fifth Ward organized by Black artist Peter Bradley with the goal to “bring first-rate art to people who don’t usually attend shows” … the first interracial art show in America, partially funded by Rice University’s Institute for the Arts

Question 17

Some American History

Answer 17

controversial art show housed at Rice’s Art Barn featuring white artist Larry Rivers’ work alongside several Black artists - themed around slavery, but only Rivers’ work appeared to explicitly reference slavery because the other artists were abstract in style - representative of the broader phenomenon of Black artists being “lumped politically,” as Bradley put it

Question 18

Post-painterly abstraction

Answer 18

“anti-compositional” or “not-so-pure” painting that is more abstract, emerged in the late 50s and 60s, offering both literal shape (of the canvas) and depicted shape (what is painted)

Question 19

Black Mountain College

Answer 19

many new artists meet up and collaborate at BMC in North Carolina, including Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, Merce Cunningham

Question 20

4’33”

Answer 20

composed by controversial composer John Cage, 4’33” is a silent piece of the titular length in three movements - the “work” becomes a framework that is filled by uncomfortable, ambient noise

Question 21

“The Legacy of Jackson Pollock”

Answer 21

Allan Kaprow writes this 1958 piece exploring the impact of Pollock’s work, specifically the “Act of Painting” - the way he made painting a ritualistic performance and emphasized the action of it

Question 22

Happening

Answer 22

the brain-child of Allan Kaprow, Happenings arise from the fascination with the performance of art - he creates large-scale environments that integrate the “stuff of everyday life” and dissolve the barrier between audience and art

Question 23

Class in experimental music composition, the New School, 1959

Answer 23

John Cage taught classes in experimental composition at the New School, attended by several artists who became prominent in the Fluxus movement - contributed to artists turning away from the dominance of American AbEx

Question 24

George Maciunas

Answer 24

postwar immigrant from Lithuania, father of the Fluxus movement who associated it with the “radical legacies” of the global left and wanted to dissolve the distinction between art and life

Question 25

Event Score

Answer 25

developed by George Brecht, Event Scores were brief typed instructions for “Events,” often simple actions or objects that were to be included

Question 26

Fluxshop

Answer 26

Maciunas conceptualized Fluxshops as showrooms where attendees could purchase artworks made by Fluxus artists

Question 27

Fluxkit

Answer 27

conceptualized by Maciunas, Fluxkits held a curated selection of art, often in a briefcase, a sort of portable mini-museum

Question 28

Specific Objects

Answer 28

piece written by Donald Judd that laid groundwork for the Minimalist movement, claiming that the representative modern art is neither painting nor sculpture but “three-dimensional work” … famously states that art “needs only to be interesting”

Question 29

Eccentric Abstraction

Answer 29

1966 exhibit organized by Lucy Lippard that eventually became a key example of postminimalist art, featuring her own work and that of Eva Hesse

Question 30

Anti-Form

Answer 30

Robert Morris uses this term to refer to his pieces that are impossible to display in the exact same configuration twice and do not have a single “final result” (often large felt pieces that were draped, but his piece “Steam” is the most famous example - literally a cloud of steam) - considers the style connected to Pollock’s drip paintings

Question 31

Verb list

Answer 31

this is a 1967 Richard Serra piece where he wrote “to _______” with various verbs in the blank over and over again, connected conceptually to the idea of action painting

Question 32

“The idea becomes the machine that makes the art.”

Answer 32

Sol LeWitt believed that the role of the artist was to create an idea rather than the physical piece…he would write detailed instructions for how paintings should be done, which became his art - people buy the instructions and then make the painting themselves

Question 33

Serial composition

Answer 33

serial composition, associated often with Andy Warhol, is characterized by many identical or near-identical repeating units

Question 34

The Factory

Answer 34

The Factory was Andy Warhol’s studio, which became a popular hangout for NY creatives…he was fascinated with the idea of mechanical production (hence the name) and wanted to “get more art to more people”

Question 35

The Exploding Plastic Inevitable

Answer 35

this was Andy Warhol’s 1966 multimedia show, featuring The Velvet Underground performing live with film projected on top of them

Question 36

Ferus Gallery

Answer 36

LA contemporary art gallery that was the first on the West Coast to have a solo show for Andy Warhol, where he showed his famous “Campbell’s Soup Cans” for the first time

Question 37

The Independent Group

Answer 37

collection of artists associated with the Pop Art movement that would meet to discuss popular images and put on exhibitions as a group, included influential architects Peter and Alison Smithson

Question 38

“But today we Collect Ads”

Answer 38

written by Peter and Alison Smithson, this piece argued that one of the “traditional functions of fine art, the definition of what is fine and desirable for the ruling class…has now been taken over by the ad-man” - essentially emphasizes how central advertisement is to popular culture and thus to art