“Investigate an Art Issue”
Internal Assessment
3.5
“I tend to like things that already exist.” In this statement, Neo-Dadaist and said precursor to Pop Art Jasper
Johns issues his preference to making objective art. And through the study of his works we discover John’s
arrives at a belief of ‘Art as Object’; that painting is as object as the authentic thing itself. American Realist
Edward Hopper’s painting offered a pictorially poetic observation of the starkness and loneliness of America
linking his inner world of emotion and fantasy with an observation of the outer world, using representational
means to deconstruct and reconstruct the real, breaking down the process of perception and the ability to
perceive. And so his obvious favour toward the representational methods of art is his means of transforming
American images to discuss a social condition where a true sense of the ‘real’ has perhaps been lost. However,
Abstract Expressionists such as Pollock sought to abandon representational and objective means and believed
art should transcend subject and become an inevitable expression of the inner life of the artist. Jasper John’s “I
tend to like things that already exist” is a reactionary view against the rejection of the Abstract Expressionists of
the figurative world upon the focus on the self, the artist. His view is reactionary, succeeding Abstract
Expressionism and at the early stages of Post-Modernism but Edward Hopper’s work and justified preference of
objective art is current of the times Pollock was producing the avant-garde works of Abstract Expressionism
which denied the subject.
In his appropriation and recontextualisation of “things the mind already knows”1 Jasper John’s discusses the
very function of fine art, pursuing an exploration into how the eye and mind perceive what is ‘real’ and making
the conclusion that people will readily accept the idea of an illusionistic painting existing as an object in itself.
Using common and often banal images belonging to everyday American culture, Johns paints his subject matter
with the intention of removing their former associations and creating a response in the viewer by presenting
them as works of art, or objects separate from the original object, separate from a representation or illusion of
the object and separate from all meaning the object would normally hold. For example, Flag 1955 is John’s
painterly, tactile and two dimensional painting of the American flag, intended to be divorced from its symbolic
connotations, it is neither a illusionistic painting of a flag nor it is a painting of an abstract symbol loaded with
patriotic meaning, it is a visual object that is “a third object in its own right”2. In making Painted Bronze II: Ale
Cans 1964 Johns uses cast bronze, a material rich in tradition and artistic skill to re-create two Ballantine Ale
cans - which represent completely anonymous, banal and impersonal qualities in this time of mass industry – to
give them a entirely new significance, now existing as two hand-made, hand-painted and distinctly different
objects. Johns was ironic in his detatchment from his subject matter but his personal painterly style by which he
recreated them.
In response to renowned teacher Hans Hoffman’s comment “You do not work from nature”, Jackson Pollock
states “I am nature”. This sums up his denial of reference to the physical world with the intentions of making art
through intuitive and introspective techniques such as automatism in order to draw from the unconscious and
produce an expression of the inner most being of the artist. Works such as Number 1A 1948 and Number 8 1949
are perfect examples of the ‘drip paintings’ through which Pollock demonstrates the technique he has developed
of an all-over action painting, where by he drips and flings strings of fluid paint from a stick in an automatic and
spontaneous motion of the wrist, arm and body onto a canvas stretched out on the floor. Believing that the
painting “has a life of its own”3 Pollock works inside his painting, aware not of the external material world
around him but only of his inner being and therefore achieving a statement of the sublime. Pollock along with
other fellow Abstract Expressionists, sought to transcend subject; “things that already exist”, and produce not a
picture but an event on canvas sourced directly from the inner reality of the artist, to be experienced by the
viewer. As Rosenberg the critic concisely described it “What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an
“Topic 2 Pop Art: Commercial and Popular Images and Processes”, School textbook, P.23,
www.california-pawnshop.com/overture/johnsjasper.htm
3
Elizabeth Frank, “Jackson Pollock” Vol. Three, Modern master Series, P. 68
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event. What matters always is the revelation contained in the act…a painting that I can act is inseparable from
the biography of the artist”.
But what is interesting is that at the same time in America, realist Edward Hopper believed also that he was,
through his painting, making a connection between his inner world and the external presence of art. Vastly
unlike the Abstract Expressionists, Hopper utilises the subject and the external world around him as the way of
conveying his own feelings and fantasies, and often unconsciously, reveals this feeling of loneliness and
isolation at the heart of civilisation of America that to viewers and critics alike severly characterise his work.
“Nighthawks seems to be the way I think of a night street. I didn’t see it as particularly lonely.. Unconsciously,
probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.”4 As a realist, Hopper paints from observation, and his
perception, transformation and expression of what he sees around him (“things that already exist”) means, in his
case, a detachment which allows an openness for the viewers individual perception to determine the
interpretation of his works. While critics and viewers make conclusions as to the meaning behind Hopper’s
scenes, the artist himself refrains from voicing any strict meaning behind what he has painted and we can see
this in his quote concerning Nighthawks. A cinematic-type shot painted of a city scene at night, famously
depicting a couple sitting, touching but not close, at a bar with two other characters, not related but within the
same realms of circumstance. The painting looks in through the window of the bar from the dark street outside
and the glass acts as a separation, a seal off of the people from the city. Hopper may have painted the scene in
this way as to express a divide from these city dwellers from Nature, but his paintings like this one, do not act as
a narrative, of the before and after of an event, but capture a moment of recognition, a recorded moment in time.
Hopper’s deconstruction and reconstruction of the ‘real’ (of external reality and experienced reality) is achieved
because he rejects a mimetic representation of what he observes and allows “image and imagination, and
representation and aesthetic construction [to be] independent in his work”5. This is evident in the way Hopper
uses signs of Nature and Civilisation to convey imaginary and subconsciously conjured up images and fantasies
(in the viewer’s mind) in what appears initially a painted scene representational of reality. In Seven A.M Hopper
divides the composition in two with the contrast of the white of a building and the darkness of woods beside it,
immediately we value these two subjects as signs of Civilisation and Nature and understand the contrast to be
the tension drawn between the wild expanse of the forest and the orderly domestication of the wooden store.
Both parts of the painting, while mutually exclusive of each other are devoid of humans also, and this
realisation of the viewer is a door Hopper opens for the viewer’s imagination, allowing own conclusions to be
made about the accessibility and inaccessibility of Nature and Civilisation. And so we can deduce that Hopper’s
realist style, while appearing narrative and strictly observational are more “metaphors of silence” 6 that via the
absence of subject Hopper’s paintings have impact on the viewers perception and imaginative interpretation of
the artwork because they are aware of what is unexpressed.
“I tend to like things that already exist”. Jasper John’s explicitly favoured art that utilised subject and object
as means of creating new meaning over the pure abstraction and automatism of Abstract Expressionists such as
Pollock. Pollock believed in the transcending of subject and technique (for example illusionistic and
representational devices) in order “to move into the realm of the inevitable”7 and find expression of the inner
self. John’s rejected this high regard of pure abstraction and brought back the subject with fierce intent that his
transformation of common material objects into works of art separate from representation or symbolism or
commonly accepted meaning, would mean art became an object in itself. He was responsible of being part of a
change in the perception of the function of fine art. However if we look at Edward Hopper’s adhesion to the
subject, in his realist painting during the same period as the Abstract Expressionists, we can value the opinion
that observation and representation of subject is a powerful tool of transforming perceptions of reality. Each
artist’s primary intent is a search for reality in art, and each belief on the objectivity of art, I conclude, is just as
valid as the next. For I agree with Rauschenberg when he said “Any incentive to paint is as good as any other.
There is no poor subject.. Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made.”8
Rolf Guenter Renner, “Edward Hopper 1882-1967 Transformation of the Real”, p. 80
Ditto, p.93
6
Joseph Anthony Ward, “American Silences. The Realism of James Agee, Walter Evans, and Edward Hopper”, Baton
Rouge, 1985, p.19
7
Robertson and B.H Friedman, “Lee Krasner: Painting, Drawings and Collages”
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Marco Livingstone Thames and Hudson 2001, “Pop Art – A Continuing History”
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