Modern art II

Question 1

Europe between the World Wars 1914-1939

Answer 1

1. the outbreak of WWI in 1914 interrupted the artistic life in major cities
2. new movements in different places emerged during war time
3. some continued with the research into the purity and essence of art
4. others reacted to the shock caused by the war
5. shift of cultural center from Paris to New York after WWII

Question 2

Major Currents

Answer 2

1. Suprematism - Russia
2. De Stijl and Neo-Plasticism - Netherlands
3. Dada - Zurich, new york, Berlin, Paris
4. Surrealism - Paris and beyond

Question 3

Suprematism

Answer 3

1. a russian movement
2. first movement of pure geometrical abstraction
3. advocated the supremacy of the new art over old conventions of depicting objects from nature
4. a new painterly realism based upon the supremacy of pure geometric shapes, free from any political or social meanings
5. Kazimir Malevich

Question 4

Kazimir Malevich - Suprematist Composition: airplane flying

Answer 4

1. Black Square - zero of form, recalls religious icons in russian tradition, puts an end to old conventions and becomes the origin of a new pictorial language

Question 5

De Stijl & Neo-Plasticism

Answer 5

1. a dutch group of young artists published a magazine named De Stijl (the style)
2. inspired by the analysis of form of Paul Cezanna and Cubism
3. advocate the absolute devaluation of tradition, emphasized the need for abstraction and simplifcation
4. art is composed of straight lines, rectangles or cubes, colour is simplified to the primaries of red, yellow and blue and the neutrals (or primary values) i.e. black, white and grey
5. called their style Neo-Plasticism - relied on a formal scheme to capture the underlying, ideal geometry of the universe
6. piet mondrian

Question 6

Piet Mondrian - Pier and OCean (Composition no.10)

Answer 6

1. horizontality symbolizes feminity and eternity
2. verticality symbolizes masculinity and action in time
3. construction in purely vertical and horizontal lines - powerful, possesses the basic form of beauty, reveals universal truth
4. the cross - mystical concept of life and immortality
5. oval frame - the cosmic egg, a symbol of creation

Question 7

Piet Mondrian - Composition with Red, Black, Blue, Yellow and Grey

Answer 7

1. expresses the mystical unity of the universe as tension and forces in perfect balance
2. a Neo-plastic composition with the dynamic balance of vertical and horizontal linear structure, simple pure but powerful
3. colours have diverse qualities: light colour advances while dark colour recedes, the composition is therefore 3 dimensional

Question 8

Dada

Answer 8

1. WWI caused a deep crisis in western culture
2. an artistic and cultural movement launched in Zurich, then spread to New York, Berlin and Paris
3. they blamed the Western ideals of progress, rationality and materialism to have caused the war
4. dada - a word found randomly in a dictionary
5. creative process - relies on chance and intuition, against any rational reasoning
6. upheld absurdity and anarchy
7. Jean Arp and Marcel Duchamp

Question 9

Jearn Arp - Collage Arranged According to the Laws of Chance

Answer 9

1. a so-called “Chance Collage”
2. torn paper squares were dropped on a sheet of paper and then glued to form the arrangement

Question 10

Marcel Duchamp - Fountain

Answer 10

1. Readymades - manufactured objects promoted to high art through the random choice of the artist -> anticipates pop art
2. artist - guided by visual indifference or the absence of aesthetic judgement
3. art can be made out of virtually anything, requiring little or no manipulation by the artist
4. a urinal, submitted to an exhibition in New York, signed and dated R. Mutt 1917

Question 11

Marcel Duchamp- the bride stripped bare by her bachelors

Answer 11

1. upper half - the bride in machine-like form
2. lower half - 9 uniformed bachelors with other machines
3. an act of love is represented as an ill-functioning mechanical process, resulting from unpredictable and faulty gestures of the machine
4. casts sarcasm on the naive optimism of total trust on technology and progress
5. draft pistons or nets, nine shots that mised the nets, and shattered glass, that the artist says completed the art
6. the artist mocked grand narratives of traditional art with randomly compiled malfunctioning industrial compoents
   — Nine Malic Molds (Bachelors)
   — Glider, water wheel
   — Chocolate grinder, sieves, scissors
   — oclist witnesses

Question 12

Surrealism

Answer 12

1. started as a literary movement in Paris, extended into at after the decline of dada
2. adopted the elements of randomness and absurdity from the Dadists
3. strongly influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis - surrealists invented a visual language heavily relied on the symbolism of dreams and the unconscious
4. automatism - used unconventional means to unlock the creative potential of the mind
5. precursors
   — Giorgio de Chirico
6. Joan Miro, Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali

Question 13

Giorgio de Chirico - The uncertainty of the poet

Answer 13

1. named his works “metaphysical art”
2. the juxtaposition of the classical bust (aphrodite) and exotic fruit (banana) decontextualized from their usual contexts evokes a sense of absurdity
   3.train - symbol of the voyage of the mind into the unknown
3. roman arcade - an enigma

Question 14

Joan Miro - birth of the world

Answer 14

1. an automatic painting
2. paints were poured and spilled on the canvas randomly - creation is intervened by chance before the artist’s manipulation and meaning is given
3. anticipates abstract expressionism - gestural abstraction

Question 15

Rene Magritte - Treachery of Images (this is not a pipe)

Answer 15

1. “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” exposes the contradiction between an image and our interpretation of it
2. pipe - like an advertisement
3. inscription contradicts with the verbal interpretation of the image, confounds pictorial reality, challenges our natural tendency to speak of images
4. language - conscious and rational

Question 16

Rene Magritte - attempting the impossible

Answer 16

1. the painter fakes reality
2. is he a magician, bringing his muse to life?
3. a dream or reality?

Question 17

Salvador Dali - Persistence of Memory

Answer 17

1. the watches are “nothing more than the soft, extravagant, solitary paranoiac-critical Camembert cheese of space and time”
   2.Familiar objects painted with miniature precision presented in unusual context, and in unnatural condition - the sense of absurdity, like in the scene of a dream
2. a dreamscape - influence of Freudian psychoanalysis

Question 18

Modern art in America

Answer 18

1. Armory show (International exhibition of Modern art) of 1913 exposed american artists to european art from 19th to 20th century - a powerful impetus for the advancement of avant-garde movement in America
2. European artists moved to america during the world wars
3. some american artists explored typical american cityscapes and life in their art
4. Edward Hopper
   — refused to be categorized
   — strong tendency of realism

Question 19

Art Deco (Precisionism) (painter)

Answer 19

1 Georgia O’Keeffe
2. Charles Demuth

Question 20

Georgia O’keeffe - radiator building – night, New York

Answer 20

1. Precisionism - hard-edged geometric simplification inspired by Cubism (also Cubo-realism)
2. depicts typically American urban scenes
3. dramatic light - influenced by cinema

Question 21

Charles Demuth - My Egypt

Answer 21

1. industrial landscape - abstract beauty of machines
2. grain elevators - simplified geometric forms, as pure and simple as Egyptian pyramids
3. light beams - transparent planes and diagonal lines - recall Cubist fragmentation

Question 22

Edward Hopper - nighthawks

Answer 22

1. fluorescent lights enhance the eerie feel of the lonely street corner
2. loneliness and isolation - characteristic of American life in the metropolises from the Depression era to WWII

Question 23

Abstract Expressionism

Answer 23

1. Post-war american art
2. using abstract language to express the artist’s state of mind with the goal of causing emotional impact in the viewer
3. developed along 2 lines - gestural abstraction, chromatic abstraction
4. mainly New York School painters
5. Gestural abstraction
   — Action painting - willem de kooning, jackson pollock
6. chromatic abstraction
   — colour field painting - mark rothko, barnett newman

Question 24

Willem de Kooning - Gotham news

Answer 24

1. the artist used emotion-packed “gesture” in the creative process
2. charcoal was dipped in wet paint and moved about violently on the canvas
3. gotham = newyork in batman comics; captures the metropolitan pulse of New york: crowded, confusing, energetic, violent

Question 25

Jackson Pollock - number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist)

Answer 25

1. abandoned traditional brushwork completely;
2. used a wide variety of paints
3. creative process - improvisation reliance on the unconscious
4. an allover painting covered by a labyrinthine network of lines, splashes, and paint drips

Question 26

Hans Namuth - jackson pllock working on an action painting in his long island

Answer 26

google

Question 27

Mark Rothko - Colour field painting: red band, no.8 (black form painting)

Answer 27

1. Colour Field Painting –a simple expression of complex thoughts;
2. color –a doorway to another reality, expresses basic human emotions

Question 28

pop art

Answer 28

1. reacts to the overwhelming consumer culture of 1960s
2. adopts easily identifiable icons form popular culture
3. simple language, flatness, reduction of details for easy comprehension
4. bright, pure colour to please the public
5. easy reproduction - emulates the industrial mass production
6. british pop art
   — Richard Hamiton
7. american pop art
   — roy lichtenstein
   — andy warhol
   — robert rauschenberg
   — jasper johns

Question 29

Richard Hamiton - just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing

Answer 29

1. a collage of images taken from contemporary magazines from united states

Question 30

Roy Lichtenstein - whaam!

Answer 30

1. dramatic subject is based on heroic images in the comics of WWII battles
2. comic books - commercial art, mainstay of american popular culture, elevated to the status of high art
3. detail
   — the background of benday dots is produced by a metal mesh screen
   — retaining the original feature of the comic strip image

Question 31

Roy Lichtenstein - hopeless

Answer 31

1. visual language - dark black outlines, unmodulated colour areas, square dimensions printing using benday dot system
2. a melodramatic scene common to popular romance comic books of the time

Question 32

Andy Warhol - 210 coca-cola bottles, campbell’s soup cans

Answer 32

1. synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas (cocacola)
2. endless rows of cocacola or campbell cans are arranged as they might appear on supermarket shelves or an assembly line in a factory

Question 33

Andy Warhol - green marilyn

Answer 33

1. images of idol are represented in a cool and mechanical way
2. mask-like quality of the image - garish colours and flat applications of paint

Question 34

Andy Warhol - green marilyn Diptych

Answer 34

1. contemporary idols are treated like consumer products
2. created soon after the suicide of the star, her image is repeatedly reproduced mechanically to highlight her status as a consumer product