‘Fifties, Other Tendencies
“By the end of the fifties the art world had vastly expanded, ushering in
a new influx of university-educated artists who did not appear to have the
‘moral crisis in relation to what to paint,’ which Barnett Newman described….
University educations, it seems, had actually made them less interested in
discussing intellectual, social, and political issues and had instead taught them
about careers.”
Fineberg 146
Helen Frankenthaler (US, b. 1928), Mountains and Sea,
1952, charcoal and oil on unprimed canvas, 7’2” x 9’9”
“Post-Painterly abstraction,” “Color Field Painting” (late “Modernist” painting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsoaxUcwp3s
Helen Frankenthaler in 1950 on seeing Pollock's paintings, Autumn Rhythm
and Lavender Mist: “It was as if I suddenly went to a foreign country and
didn't know the language, but had read enough, and had a passionate
interest, and was eager to live there. I wanted to live in this land. I had to
live there, and master the language."
Photograph: Jackson Pollock (far left) with Lee Krasner (far right), Clement
Greenberg, unidentified child, and Helen Frankenthaler at the beach near
Springs, Long Island. Unidentified photographer, ca. 1952.
Helen Frankenthaler, Magic
Carpet, 1964, 96 X 68 inches,
acrylic on canvas
Color Field Painting
Morris Louis (US, 1912-1962), Tet, 1958, synthetic polymer on canvas, 8 x 13ft.
Influence of Frankenthaler (1953 visit) and Clement Greenberg
Jules Olitski (Ukrainian-US, 1922-2007) (right), Draky 1966, and (left)
Comprehensive Dream, both are 120 x 92 inches, acrylic on canvas.
Greenbergian Formalism – Color Field – Post-Painterly Abstraction
Kenneth Noland (US, 1924-2010) Turnsole, 1961, synthetic polymer paint on
unprimed canvas, 7' 10 1/8" x 7' 10 1/8“
“Noland made his first completely individual statement when, as he said, he
discovered the center of the canvas.”
Visitor in front of Turnsole in 2004
Josef Albers (German-US,1888 -1976) selections from
series, Homage to the Square: (top right) Ascending 1953;
and (lower right) Atuned, 1958, both are oil on masonite.
Émigré Bauhaus master, influential teacher at Black
Mountain College (1933-1949) and Yale University (19491958)
Albers’ 1963 Interaction of Color, a
classic pedagogical text
http://www.laurentianum.de/ldalbe03.gif
Ellsworth Kelly (US b. 1924), Red Blue Green, 1963, c. 84 x 136 inches, oil
on canvas, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
Ellsworth Kelly (b. 1923), installation at the Broad museum of
contemporary art, Los Angeles, February, 2008.
Grace Hartigan (US, 19222008), Summer Street,
1956, oil on canvas
Grace Hartigan, New England October, 1957, oil on canvas
68 x 83 in. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y.
New York School poet, Frank O’Hara and Grace Hartigan published
together in Folder, a independent magazine (New York 1953-1956)
(left, at table) Frank O’Hara, Larry Rivers, Grace Hartigan (and David Smith standing
at far left) at the Five Spot, NYC 1957
(right) Larry Rivers, Jack Kerouac, David Amram, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso
“New York School”poets and Beat poets
Larry Rivers (US painter, sculptor,
printmaker, poet and musician,1923-2002)
Portrait of Frank O’Hara,1954, o/c, 97"/ 53”
Rivers and O’Hara at work on
collaborative lithograph, 1958
Larry Rivers, Double Portrait of Berdie, oil on canvas, 1954
Larry Rivers, The Greatest
Homosexual, 1964, oil, collage,
pencil and colored pencil on
canvas, 80 X 61 in. Hirshhorn, DC
Alice Neel (Pennsylvania US, 1900-1984 active NYC),
(right) Joe Gould, oil on canvas, 1933, 39 x 31 in. Tate Modern, London
(left) Pregnant Maria, oil on canvas, 1964, 32x47 in., private collection
http://www.aliceneel.com/home/
Robert Frank (Swiss-US, b. 1924)
Drug Store – Detroit, 1955-56,
from The Americans
Robert Frank, Trolley, New Orleans, 1955, from The Americans
Robert Frank, The Parade, Hoboken, New Jersey, 1955, from The Americans
1959 independent artist film said to
define the Beat generation, Pull My
Daisy, was directed by Robert Frank
and Alfred Leslie, narrated by Jack
Kerouac and featured Allen Ginsberg
and New York Figurative painters, Larry
Rivers and Alice Neel
http://www.veoh.com/watch/v6406893Mx
Qs3zEx
“I saw the best minds of my generaton destroyed by madness,
starving hysterical naked…burned alive in their innocent flannel
suits on Madison Avenue…or run down by the drunken taxicabs of
Absolute Reality.”
from poem “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg, 1955
Clyfford Still (US, 1904-1980), 1951
(right) Mark Rothko,1952
Taught at the California School of Fine Art (now San Francisco Art Institute)
Abstract Expressionist influence on Bay Area painters:
David Park, Elmer Bischoff, and Richard Diebenkorn
David Park (US, 1911-1960), (left) Seated Man in a T-Shirt, 1958, SFMoMA
(right) Art, Nature & Civilization, 1934, WPA Mural, San Francisco, Hayes Valley
(below right) Three Violinists and Dancers, 1935-37
WPA Social Realism
Bay Area Figurative Expressionism
David Park, Torso (detail, right) 1959, SFMoMa
"David was keen about Abstract Expressionism as long as it had the immediacy and
tangibility and goopy sensuous arrangement of forms, but when it got into the very
serious 'views of the cosmos' he didn't go along with that." (Elmer Bischoff)
Richard Diebenkorn, (Born Portland,
Oregon, active Bay Area, 1922-1993),
Coffee, 1958, oil on canvas. Bay Area
Figuration
Compare:
(left) Edward Hopper, Morning Sun, oil on canvas, 1952
(right) Richard Diebenkorn, Woman in Profile, oil on canvas, 1958
Richard Diebenkorn, Cityscape I,
(Landscape No. 1), 1963, oil on
canvas, 6o × 5o in, San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art
Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park
No. 54, 1972, oil on canvas,
SFMOMA
Elmer Bischoff (US, 1916 -1991), Two Figures on the Seashore, 1957, o/c
(right) Orange Sweater, 1955. Bay Area Figuration
Cover of the influential anthology of writings by Dada artists
and writers edited by Abstract Expressionist painter, Robert Motherwell, 1951
NEO-DADA
(In 1951 “painter” was a synonym for “artist.”)
(left) Italian Futurist music event, 1913, The music of chance and “noise,”
including the sounds of urban life; (center) Hugo Ball performing Dada poem
at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, Switzerland, 1916
Historical sources for Neo-Dada of the 1950s
New York Dada
In Advance of a
Broken Arm by Marcel
Duchamp, 1915
Jean Arp, Collage Arranged According
to the Laws of Chance, 1916. Dada
John Cage (US, 1912-1992) early 1950s, prepared piano, aleatory (chance) music,
Zen Buddhism and the I Ching (Book of Changes)
"In the nature of the use of chance operations is the belief
that all answers answer all questions.“
Don’t try to change the world, you’ll
only make it worse.
-Cage
Allan Kaprow (US, 1927-2006), 18 Happenings in 6 Parts, Reuben Gallery, NYC, 1959
Art News, October 1958, published Allan Kaprow’s article, "The Legacy of Jackson
Pollock,” which was an analysis of Pollock's work and a meditation on the meaning
of Pollock’s death (1956) for the painting avant-garde.
LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) and artist Steve Roden reinvented
18 Happenings in 6 Parts (1959/2008) over five nights from April 22 through
April 26, 2008.
Allan Kaprow, Yard, Martha Jackson Gallery, NYC 1961; compare (right) Pollock
painting, 1950 From “Action Painting” to performance art.
Young artists of today need no longer say, "I am a painter" or "a poet" or "a dancer."
They are simply "artists." All of life will be open to them.
- Allan Kaprow, “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock,” 1958 (Artnews)
Allan Kaprow, photograph from Household, a Happening commissioned by
Cornell University, 1964. Open link below for 2008 re-enactment s of
Happenings for the MoCA Los Angeles Allan Kaprow retrospective
http://www.moca.org/kaprow/index.php/category/household/
Jiro Yoshihara (Japan 1905-1972), Painting, 1960
founded Gutai (Gutai Bijutsu Kyokai - Concrete Art Association) in Osaka in 1954
When Jiro Yoshihara died in 1972 the Gutai Art Association was dissolved.
Shozo Shimamoto (Japan 1928), (left) Ana (Holes), 1954, oil on layers of pasted
newspapers, pierced, 46 x 36”, Tate London. Gutai movement
(right) Painting, 1955, oil on paper, slashed and punctured
Atsuko Tanaka (Japan,1932-2005), Electric Dress [as performance (left) and
display as object (right)] 1956, Gutai http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdXcZq16yFc
Blinking incandescent lights covered with red, blue, yellow, and green enamel paint.
Flashing on a circuit, the shapes and colors of the figure wearing the costume changed
constantly, giving the impression of a body in constant motion even when standing still.
“I was seated on a bench at the Osaka station, and I saw a billboard featuring a
pharmaceutical advertisement, brightly illuminated by neon lights. This was it! I would
make a neon dress!” - Tanaka
The “dress” also references the traditional kimono and the nervous system of the body
Atsuko Tanaka Electric Dress
performance photos, 1956, Gutai
Presages the extreme and sometimes
dangerous performances of the 1970s
feminist movement.
Saburo Murakami, Gutai perfomance: Smashing Through (21 panels of 42 papers)
second Gutai exhibition, Tokyo, 1956
Internationally, performance art of the post-WW II era came out of painting.
Kazuo Shiraga (Japan b. 1925), Challenge to the Mud, Gutai performance, 1955
Art as a marriage of concept and raw material:
the Gutai notion of allowing the “cry of the material”
Shiraga, Second Gutai exhibition,1956, “action” painting (verb) with feet;
(center below) Painting (object)
(right) Gutai exhibition of Shiraga’s paintings (objects) made with feet
http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/871451/video-takesada-matsutanicontinuing-the-gutai-spirit
VIDEO: Takesada Matsutani, Continuing the Gutai Spirit
Marcel Duchamp (center) with Carolyn Brown and Merce Cunningham after a
performance of Walk Around Time. Sound by John Cage, set (after Duchamp’s Large
Glass) by Jasper Johns. Mid-1960s Neo-Dada
Rrose Sélavy by
Man Ray, 1920
Marcel Duchamp,The Large Glass or
The Bride Stripped Bare by her
Bachelors, Even, 1915-23
(below) photo of Duchamp by British
Pop artist, Richard Hamilton, c.1968
Robert Rauschenberg (US, 1925 - 2008), seated on Untitled (Elemental Sculpture) with White
Painting (seven panel) behind him in the basement of Stable Gallery, New York (1953).
Paintings were used for the famous Black Mountain “Event” of 1952 by John Cage, who
acknowledged that the White Paintings enabled him to compose in August 1952 his iconic 4'33‘‘,
during which the pianist sits at the piano but does not play. Neo-Dada
John Cage’s statement for the 1953 Stable show: White Paintings: "... No subject/
No Image/No taste/No object/No beauty/No message/ No talent/No
technique.../No idea...“
Fred McDarrah (US, b. 1926), Dillon's Bar, University Place: Frank O'Hara, Robert
Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Jasper Johns, and Anna Moreska, at
Dillon's Bar, NYC, Nov. 10,1959. Johns and Rauschenberg were intimate between
1954-1962, when their most historically significant work was produced.
(right, L-R) Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, and John Cage on tour with the
Merce Cunningham dance company
Robert Rauschenberg, Carolyn Brown, and Alex Hay, Pelican, (MoMA archival footage,
41 seconds): http://www.sfmoma.org/multimedia/videos/37
Pelican was presented first at America on Wheels, a roller skating rink in Washington,
D.C. on May 9, 1963 in conjunction with The Popular Image exhibition at the Washington
Gallery of Modern Art.
Robert Rauschenberg, Bed, 1955. Combine
painting: oil and pencil on pillow, quilt, and sheet
on wood supports, 6' 3“x 31” x 8" horizontal
production with vertical display, like Pollock.
Neo-Dada
Detail: iconoclastic, scatological
treatment of paint, an antiaesthetic, abject, post-Abstract
Expressionist parody of gesture
painting. “Paint” includes
toothpaste and nail polish.
"I could never make the language of Abstract Expressionism
work for me -- words like 'tortured,' 'struggle' and 'pain,' I
could never see those qualities in paint. How can red be
'passion’? Red is red. Jasper and I used to start each day by
having to move out from Abstract Expressionism.“
Robert Rauschenberg
(left) Robert Rauschenberg, Erased de Kooning Drawing,1955, SFMoMA, Neo-Dada;
(right) Willem de Kooning, Woman 1, oil on canvas, 1952, MoMA NYC, Abstract
Expressionism. Art after Abstract Expressionism has been called “The Academy of the
Erased De Kooning.”
Rauschenberg on The Erased de Kooning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpCWh3IFtDQ
As his contribution to an exhibition of portraits, Robert Rauschenberg sent
a telegram to the Paris Galerie Iris Clert in 1961, which said: 'This is a
portrait of Iris Clert if I say so.‘ Neo-Dada conceptualism
Rauschenberg, Monogram, 1955 - 59, Combine: oil and collage on canvas with objects.
Emblem of the artist who “destroys” painting? What could the dingy tennis ball behind the
goat signify? The tire?
2005 exhibition of Robert Rauschenberg’s Combines from the 1950s
Metropolitan MA, NYC
Robert Rauschenberg, Factum I and Factum II, 1957, oil, ink, pencil, crayon,
paper, fabric, newspaper, printed reproductions, and painted paper on canvas, 61 x
35“. Nearly identical mixed media paintings that parody the “originality” myth of the
avant-garde, especially Action Painting’s “signature” gesture.
Robert Rauschenberg on stage in Paris for performance painting with New
Realist artists, 1961. Target of real flowers by Jasper Johns. Niki de Saint
Phalle “shoot painting,” Tir, against back wall. Kinetic sculptor Jean Tinguely
looks through stage curtain.
Rauschenberg, (left) Tracer, oil & silkscreen ink on canvas, 84 x 60”,1963
(right) Retroactive I, 1964. “I don’t want a picture to look like something it
isn’t. I want it to look like something it is. And I think a picture is more like
the real world when it’s made out of the real world.”
A photograph is an actual trace of the real world.
Jasper Johns (US, b.1930), Flag. 1954–55, encaustic, oil, and collage on fabric
mounted on plywood (three panels) 42 1/4 x 60 5/8" MoMA NYC. Literal, conceptual
painting. Parodic gestures of Abstract Expressionism are congealed in wax, thus
contradicting and reifying the aesthetic of individualism. Non-introspective.
Johns’ flags and targets, numbers and letters were “things the mind already knows .
. . things that were seen and not looked at, not examined.”
Jasper Johns, Target with Plaster Casts, 1955, encaustic and collage on canvas with objects,
newsprint visible beneath the wax, 51 x 44 x 3.5” A target is already flat (parodic reference to
Greenberg and Kenneth Noland): a “sign,” a “thing the mind already knows.” Is this a target or
a representation of a target?
Jasper Johns, Painted Bronze, hand painted cast bronze (one of two casts), 5.5 x 8 x
4.75”, 1960, Proto-Pop (Neo-Dada) In 1960, Johns heard that de Kooning had
complained of Leo Castelli, Johns’ famous dealer: "That son-of-a-bitch, you could give him
two beer cans and he could sell them.“ Also an homage to his friendship with
Rauschenberg, who had moved to Florida in 1959.
“It was as though the painter
standing in front of the canvas,
brush in hand, found that what
was on the end of that brush was
no longer a medium of wordless
expression: it was art history, art
criticism, art theory, concepts …
words.”
Charles Harrison,
“Conceptual Art, the Aesthetic
and the End(s) of Art”
Jasper Johns, False Start, 1959, oil
on canvas, 67 1/4 x 54"
“It’s a different art world from the one I grew up
in. Artists today know more. They are aware of
the market more than they once were. There
seems to be something in the air that art is
commerce itself.”
Jasper Johns, 2008
Johns just accepted the 2011 Medal of Freedom, the United
States’ highest civilian award