The Fifties
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FORMALISM
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 (1949-1958)
Albers’ 1963 Interaction of Color, a
classic pedagogical text
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Page from Albers’ Interaction of Color
Helen Frankenthaler (US,1928 - 2011), Mountains and Sea,
1952, charcoal and oil on unprimed canvas, 7’2” x 9’9”
“Post-painterly abstraction,” “Color Field painting”
Helen Frankenthaler in her studio with
Mountains and Sea, 1952, on the right.
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
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
Ellsworth Kelly (US, b. 1923), Red Blue Green, 1963, c. 84 x 136 inches, oil
on canvas, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
Ellsworth Kelly, Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA
Los Angeles, February, 2008
Figurative Revival of the Fifties
What was formalist NY critic Clement Greenberg’s view of “the return to
the figure”? (p. 156 Fineberg)
Grace Hartigan (US, 19222008), Summer Street,
1956, oil on canvas
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.”
What does Fineberg say about this portrait’s
“perverse irony”? (p. 158)
Rivers and Frank O’Hara at work on
collaborative lithograph, 1958
Larry Rivers, Double Portrait of Berdie [mother-in-law],oil on canvas, 1954
Rivers was also a jazz saxophonist who had studied at Juilliard
(Miles Davis was a classmate.)
Larry Rivers, The Studio, 1956, oil on canvas, 6’10” x 16 ft, Minneapolis
Institute of Art
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/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4mQCnhKCd4
David Amran and Alfred Leslie discussing 1959 independent artist film, Pull
My Daisy, filmed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, narrated by Jack Kerouac
and featuring Allen Ginsberg (“Howl” was written in 1955), the Beat poets
and New York Figurative painters, including Larry Rivers and Alice Neel.
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, 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, (1922-1993,
born Portland, Oregon, active Bay
Area), 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, 60 × 50 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
Joan Brown ,Fur Rat, 1962, wood, chicken wire, plaster, string, raccoon fur,
and nails; 20 x 54 x 14 in. University of California, Berkeley Art Museum.
Bay Area Funk (Beat) and Figuration overlapped. Joan Brown was a student
of Elmer Bischoff part of both movements.
Joan Brown c.1960
Exhibition of works from the
early 70’s including cardboard
sculptures (begun in her kitchen
from household materials while
her studio was under
renovation)
Joan Brown (US, 1938-1990), Bay Area Figuration, student of Elmer Bishoff
(left) Wolf in Studio, enamel on masonite, 90 x 48”, 1972, Crocker MA,
Sacramento
(right) Self With Fish, 1970 Brown is second generation Bay Area Figuration
Bruce Conner (US 19332008) St Valentine’s Day
Massacre/Homage To Errol
Flyn, 1960, mixed media.
Collection SFMOMA
Conner moved to San
Francisco in 1957 and wasa
key figure in the Beat
community, along with visual
artists Jay DeFeo, Joan
Brown, and Manuel Neri, and
poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
Michael McClure, and Philip
Lamantia. Formed “The Rat
Bastard Protection
Association,” which included
Joan Brown and Jay de Feo
Bruce Conner, Snore, 1960, 36 1/2 x 15 x 20 inches, wood, fabric, nylon, string,
metal vent, paint, metal can, etc., Collection The Fine Arts Museums of San
Francisco
A still from Bruce Conner’s first film, A Movie (1958), which was created by
piecing together scraps of B-movies, newsreels, novelty shorts, and other
preexisting footage.
The university library has a DVD with two films by Bruce Conner: Crossroads
and Looking for mushrooms
America is Waiting: http://www.ubu.com/film/kitchen_conner.html
Bruce Conner, life-sized photogram from
the Angel series (1973-75), images of
Conner's own body floating on a black
background.
Jay De Feo, The Rose, 195866, 129 x 92 x 11 in., oil on
canvas with wood and mica,
weighs over a ton. Whitney MAA
Related work on view at
SFMoMA
A still from Bruce Conner’s film, The White Rose, 1967 (When painting was
removed from her upstairs apartment out the window.)
Cover of the influential anthology of writings by Dada artists
and writers edited by Abstract Expressionist painter, Robert Motherwell, 1951
(In 1951 “painter” was a synonym for “artist.”)
(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; (right) Hugo Ball performing Dada poem at
the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, Switzerland, 1916
New York Dada
In Advance of a
Broken Arm by Marcel
Duchamp, 1915
Sources for Neo-Dada of the 1950s
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
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-abitch, 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