Chapter Twenty-Two
The Contemporary Contour
Culture and Values
Cunningham and Reich and
Fichner-Rathus, 8th Ed.
1945 CE
United States drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945
World War II ends in Europe and Japan in 1945
United Nations General Assembly meets for first time in 1946
The transistor is invented in 1947
Israel becomes an independent state in 1948
Mao Zedong becomes leader of Communist China in 1949
1950 CE
Korean War begins in 1950
United States explodes first hydrogen bomb in 1952
Korean War ends with a truce in 1953
School segregation is outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954
U.S. civil-rights movement begins in the South
Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, is launched by the Soviet Union in 1957
1960 CE
East Germany erects the Berlin Wall in 1961
Soviet Union launches first human into space in 1961
An American orbits the earth in space in 1962
A TV signal crosses the Atlantic via a satellite in 1962
U.S. president John F. Kennedy is assassinated in 1963
United States builds up troops in Vietnam in 1964
National Organization for Women is founded in 1966
Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy are assassinated in 1968
A U.S. astronaut takes the first walk on the moon in 1969
1970 CE
Supreme Court decision in Miller v. California effectively ends
censorship in 1973
United States withdraws from Vietnam in 1975
Microsoft is established in 1975
Apple Computer is established in 1976
1981 Space shuttle first flies
Communist governments of Eastern Europe fall beginning in
1989
1990 CE
East and West Germany reunite in 1990
Soviet Union is dissolved in 1991
Google is incorporated in 1998
Terrorists attack World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001
United States invades Afghanistan in 2001
United States invades Iraq in 2003
Facebook is launched in 2004
United States withdraws from Iraq in 2011
Toward a Global Culture

Artistic satire of modern warfare


Global economy, New World Order


Economic, social inequities
Search for individual, social meaning


Heller, Pynchon, Kubrick
Social, political oppression
Artist as voice of protest, hope
Existentialism

Kierkegaard (1813-1855)



Autonomous individual, self-examination
Who am I? What am I doing here? Where
am I going?
Sartre (1905-1980)


Implications of atheism
Individual place, freedom, ethics
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)—Danish
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881)—Russian
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)—German
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936)—Spanish
Nicholas Berdyaev (1874–1948)—Russian
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)—Czech/German
Martin Buber (1878–1965)—Austrian/Israeli
Jacques Maritain (1882–1973)—French
Karl Jaspers (1883–1969)—German
Franz Kafka (1883–1924)—Czech/German
José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955)—Spanish
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)—German
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980)—French
Albert Camus (1913–1960)—French
Existentialism






Thought + Action
Multi-media expression
Emphasis on anxiety, alienation
Existentialist theater, fiction
Beat poets as existentialists
Camus’ absurdity of the world
Alberto Giacometti, Man Pointing, 1947.
Bronze, 70 ½″ × 40 ¾″ × 16 ⅜″ (179 ×
103.4 × 41.5cm). Museum of Modern Art,
New York, New York.
Postmodern 1960s+

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
A reaction to and continuation of modernism
a Rejection of any rational order
Abandons traditional literary forms, often
combining different genres & styles; an
explosion of movements
Nihilism: no reason for values or morality, or
rejection of values: believes in nothing,
cynical, randomness of existence
Playfulness, parody, & irony

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
Women: Susan Glaspell, Charlotte Gilman Perkins
African American:James Baldwin, Toni Cade
Bambara, James McPherson, Ralph Ellison
Native American: Zitkala-Sa, Mourning Dove
John Cheever, Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike
Jewish American: Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Bernard
Malamud
Metafiction: representations of fiction, storytelling, or
art in general.
Magical Fiction—use of metaphysical devices: John
Barth, Donald Barthelme, and Robert Coover
Visual Arts
Abstract Expressionism


Devoid of recognizable content
Subjective aesthetic experience


Line, color, shape
New York School: The First Generation

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956)



Radical break from tradition
“all over” composition
Action painting
Barnett Newman wrote:
"We felt the moral crisis of a world in
shambles, a world destroyed by a great
depression and a fierce World War, and
it was impossible at that time to paint
the kind of paintings that we were
doing—flowers, reclining nudes, and
people playing the cello."*
Adolph Gottlieb, writing with Rothko and
Newman in 1943, explained, “We favor
the simple expression of the complex
thought.”**
Japanese Girl
Hans Hofmann
35½ x 43½"
Casein and Oil on Plywood
1935
Jackson Pollock
(American, 1912–1956)
The She-Wolf
1943
Oil, gouache, and plaster on canvas
41 7/8 x 67"
Arshile Gorky
The Leaf of the Artichoke Is an Owl
1944
Oil on canvas
28 x 35 7/8"
Clyfford Still
(American, 1904–1980)
1944-N No. 2
1944
Oil on canvas
8' 8 1/4" x 7' 3 1/4"
Ecstasy
Hans Hofmann
60 x 68"
Oil on Canvas
1947
University of California,
Berkeley Art Museum
William Baziotes
(American
1912–1963)
Dwarf
1947
Oil on canvas
42 x 36 1/8"
Mark Rothko
(American, born Russia (now Latvia). 1903–1970)
No. 1 (Untitled)
1948
Medium
Oil on canvas
Barnett Newman
(American,
1905–1970)
Abraham
1949
Oil on canvas
6' 10 3/4" x 34 1/2"
Willem de Kooning
American, born the Netherlands.
1904–1997
Painting
1948
Enamel and oil on canvas
42 5/8 x 56 1/8"
Adolph Gottlieb (American, 1903–1974)
Man Looking at Woman
1949
Oil on canvas
22.7 Mark Rothko,
Magenta, Black,
Green on Orange
(No. 3/No. 13),
1949
22.4 Jackson Pollock, One, Number 31, 1950.
Pollock would say, “Any attempt on
my part to say something about it …
could only destroy it.”
Mark Rothko, Slow
Swirl at the Edge
of the Sea, 1944,
oil on canvas,
191.4 x 215.2 cm
Franz Kline (American, 1910–1962)
Chief
1950
Oil on canvas
58 3/8" x 6' 1 1/2"
Barnett Newman (American, 1905–1970)
Vir Heroicus Sublimis
1950-51
Oil on canvas
7' 11 3/8" x 17' 9 1/4" (242.2 x 541.7 cm)
Willem de
Kooning,
Woman I,
oil on canvas,
1950-52
Visual Arts
Abstract Expressionism


The New York School: The First
Generation
Lee Krasner


Willem de Kooning


Easter Lilies (1956)
Paintings of women
Mark Rothco

Enormous canvases
22.5 Lee Krasner, Easter Liliesm 1956
Adolph Gottlieb
Blast, I
1957
Oil on canvas
7' 6" x 45 1/8"
Hans Hofmann
(American, born
Germany. 1880–
1966)
Cathedral
1959
Oil on canvas
6' 2" x 48"
The Golden Wall
Hans Hofmann
59½ x 71½"
Oil on Canvas
1961
The Art Institute of Chicago
Franz Kline (American, 1910–1962)
Le Gros
1961
Oil on canvas
41 3/8 x 52 5/8"
David Smith
(American, 1906–1965)
Cubi X
1963
Stainless steel
10' 1 3/8" x 6' 6 3/4" x 24"
Robert Motherwell (American, 1915–1991)
Elegy to the Spanish Republic, 108
1965-67
Oil on canvas
6' 10" x 11' 6 1/4"
Visual Arts

The New York School: The Second Generation

Joan Mitchell

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Helen Frankenthaler


Most important woman to work in the gestural idiom of
abstract expressionism
Color-field painter
Minimal Art

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Ascetic use of line, color
Frank Stella
Donald Judd
22.8 Joan Mitchell,
Untitled, 1957
22.9 Helen
Frankenthaler, The
Bay, 1963
22.10 Frank Stella, Mas o menos (More or Less), 1964
Visual Arts


Conceptual Art
Joseph Kosuth


“What you see is what you see”
Barbara Kruger

Prioritizes the idea of the work over the
object
22.12 Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965
22.13 Barbara
Kruger, Untitled
(“Money makes
money and a
rich man’s
jokes are
always funny”)
and Untitled
(“You want it
You need it You
buy it You
forget it”), 2010
Visual Arts

Site-Specific Art

Robert Smithson


Maya Ying Lin


Land art—within natural surroundings
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Christo and Jeanne-Claude

Financed by the artists
22.14 Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970
22.15 Maya Ying Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1982
Visual Arts

Pop Art


Robert Rauschenberg

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Universal images of popular culture
Combine paintings
Jasper Johns
Andy Warhol
Claes Oldenburg
22.21 Jasper Johns, Three Flags, 1958.
22.22 Andy Warhol,
Green Coca-Cola
Bottles, 1962
Visual Arts

Superrealism

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
New to the eye but doing something very
old
Audrey Flack
Art, Identity, and Social Consciousness



Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro
Cindy Sherman
Guerrilla Girls
22.27 Guerrilla Girls, 1989
Visual Arts

Art, Identity, and Social Consciousness


Robert Mapplethorpe
Romare Bearden

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Synthesis of cubism and abstract
expressionism
African-American experience
Faith Ringgold
Anselm Kiefer
Shirin Neshat
22.28 Robert Mapplethorpe, Ken Moody and Robert Sherman,
1984
22.30 Faith Ringgold, Tar Beach, 1988
22.32 Shirin Neshat,
Allegiance with
Wakefulness
1994
Contemporary Sculpture


Continuity + Experimentation
New materials, technical skills



David Smith (1906-1965)
Alexander Calder (1898-1976)
Assemblage


Disparate materialsOrganic wholes
Nevelson, Antoni, Whiteread
22.33 David
Smith, Cubi
XIX, 1964
22.34 Alexander Calder, The Star, 1960.
22.35 Louise Nevelson, Royal Tide IV, 1960
Architecture

Louis Sullivan (1856-1924)


“Form follows function”
Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959)




Function is accomplished through form
Organic architecture
Flow of space vs. obstruction of space
Guggenheim Museum (1957-1959)
22.38 Frank Lloyd Wright, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
1957-1959
Architecture

Counterpoint to nature

Le Corbusier


New brutalism
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip
Johnson

Seagram Building
22.39 Le Corbusier, Chapel of Notre-Dame-du-Haut, 1950-1954
22.40 Ludwig Mies
van der Rohe and
Philip Johnson,
Seagram Building,
1958
Architecture

Postmodernism

Classical motifs, Bauhaus severity



Humana Building
Georges Pompidou National Center for Arts
and Culture
Deconstructivist Architecture


Frank Gehry
Santiago Calatrava
22.42 Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, Georges Pompidou
National Center for Arts and Culture, 1977
,
22.43 Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, 1997
22.45 Santiago Calatrava, World Trade Center Transportation Hub,
scheduled to open in 2015
Visual Arts

Video

Bill Viola


Pipilotti Rist


Video and sound installation
Video-performance artist
Matthew Barney

CREMASTER series
Some Trends in Contemporary
Literature

Human search for meaning


Experiences of the war



Samuel Beckett
Elie Weisel
American Literature
Literature of social, political protest


John Updike
Edward Albee
Some Trends in Contemporary
Literature

African American Literature


Maya Angelou
Feminist Perspectives
Sylvia Plath
 Anne Sexton

Music

Structuralism



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Precise organization, control
Devoid of subjective emotional expression
Electronic music, synthesizers
Aleatoric Music, “sound events”

John Cage (1912-1992)
Music
The New Minimalists

Reich’s The Desert Music (1983)



Repetitions of simple chords, rhythms
State of heightened concentration
Philip Glass (b. 1937)



Influenced by non-Western music
Repeating modules
Operas as “happenings”
Music
Traditional Approaches to Modern Music


Innovative approach to symphony
Dimitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)



Political commentary, nature of death
Traditional symphony orchestra
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)



Violence of contemporary life
Opera genre
Inspired by earlier masterpieces
Modern Approaches to
Traditional Music Genres

John Adams


Rock Opera



Nixon in China
Tommy
Jesus Christ Superstar
Musicals

Phantom of the Opera
Modern Approaches to
Traditional Music Genres

Musicals and Social Consciousness




South Pacific
West Side Story
Hair
Popular Music




Rock and Roll
Rock Music
Hip-hop and Rap
Pop music and the music video
Chapter Twenty-Two: Discussion Questions



With contemporary art in its various forms, to what extent is the
media the message? What does the composition of the art itself
contribute to the artist’s theme, message, or primary emotion?
Explain, citing specific examples.
The evolution of Western artistic traditions reveals subtle
changes in the ways in which the role of the artist is perceived.
What is the role of the 21st century artists? How is this role
different than/similar to artists from other historical epochs?
Explain.
As an individual living in the 21st century, what artistic form,
genre most appeals to you? Why? Do you prefer to view art as a
reflection of your personal values (subjectively), or is your
attraction to art one of an objective nature? Explain, citing
specific examples when appropriate.