Grade 12 Art: Contemporary Art & Post Modernism
(Hard Edge, Pre-Pop Art, Pop Art, Minimalism, Conceptual Art, Photo Realism, Post Modernism)
Hard Edge
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Took the expressionism out of abstract expressionism
Calculated, impersonal abstraction instead of spontaneous subject abstraction
Sharply contoured, simple forms
Precise and cool as if made by machine
Josef Albers
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interested how colours effect and change one another
Focused on square – series Homage to the Square
Superimposed squares of subtly varied hues of how colours interact
Optical illusion of colour
The bottom and side bands of gray appear darker than the upper bands
Albers, “Homage to the square: Ascending”, 1953
Kenneth Noland
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Signature shape chevron
Non traditional compositions – chevrons seem to fly off towards
canvas edge
Pioneered shaped canvas
Noland, “ Bend Sinister” 1964
Frank Stella
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Shaped paintings
Used commercial house paint and metallic paint
Large scale protractor series – paintings based on
intersecting protractor arcs in fluorescent colours
Shape canvas and design based on mechanical drawing
tool
In the 70’s Stella entered what he called his baroque
phase and developed a new 3-D format straddling
border between painting and sculpture
Stella “Harran II”, 1967
Pre-Pop Art
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Lead by Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg against abstract expressionism
Robert Rauschenberg
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Invented a hybrid form of art – half painting and half sculpture
Used everyday and eccentric materials
“Painting relates to both are and life… I try to act in the gap between the two”
Themes of his art – multiplicity, variety and inclusion
Developed own distinct style based on expressionist brush work and accident
Rauschenberg, “ Bed” 1955
Rauschenberg, “Canyon” 1959
Jasper Johns
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Returned recognizable imagery to art
Familiar image flag, targets, and maps as subjects
“Three Flags” – stacked canvas of decreasing size
Surface richly texture encaustic – (pigment mixed with wax) – artificial
Johns, “ Three Flags” 1958
Johns, “Target with Plaster Casts” 1955
Pop Art
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Drew subjects from popular (“pop”) culture
Consumer items
playful wit
Roy Lichtenstein
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Comic book techniques as well as subjects
Bright primary colours with black and white
Outlines simplified forms incorporating mechanical printers (benday) dots and stereotyped imagery
Enlarged pulp magazines to billboard size – slaps viewer face with triviality
Lichtenstein, “Whaam’ 1963
Lichtenstein, “In the Car” 196
Andy Warhol
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Mass produced objects like Campbell's soup and images like Marilyn Monroe
Forced the public to re-examine their everyday surroundings and loss of identity in industrial society
Brought art to the masses by making art out of everyday life
American life as depersonalized and repetitive
Warhol “ 100 cans of Campbell's soup”
1962Warhol “Marilyn” 1962
Warhol “Brillo Boxes” 1969
Claes Oldenburg
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Developed large scale 3-D blow ups of familiar objects – clothespins, lipstick tubes
Power of everyday objects
Altered their scale and composition – typewriter or toilet out soft vinyl
Oldenburg “Soft Toilet” 1966
Oldenburg “Spoonbridge and Cherry” 1985-1988
Op Art
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Op Art or Optical Art developed in mid 60’s by Bridget Riley, Victor Vasarely, Richard Anuszkiewicz and
Lawrence posts
Combined colour and abstract patterns to produce optical illusions of pulsating movement
Riley “Current” 1964
Riley “Movement in Squares” 1961
Minimalism
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Reaction against abstract expressionism and pop
Cold mechanical forms
Pairing away distractions like detail, imagery, and narrative
Donald Judd “Untitled” 1969
Carl Andre “ Uncarved Blocks” 1975
Sol Lewitt “Four Sided Pyramid” 1997
Conceptual Art
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Idea more important than actual object
Emphasizes the artists thinking not manipulation of materials
Some forms – process art, environmental art, performance art, installations
Environmental Art - Robert Smithson
Smithson, “Spiral Jetty” 1970
Christo
Christo “Wrapped Reichstag” 1971-1995
Christo “Running Fence”, 1972-76
Photo Realism
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Also known as hyper realism
Reproduced photographs in painting
Adopted the flattened effect of camera image
Chuck Close
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Produces portraits that look like giant blown up photographs
Up close, viewers becomes aware of the process like building image out own inked fingerprints
Close “ Fanny/Finger Painting” 1985
Close “Emma”2002
Post Modern Art
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Post Modern is a term that refers to the art of our current era, the time after modernism.
Concepts (ideas) are often emphasized over visual qualities.
Principles
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Appropriation – using recycled imagery in art
Juxtaposition – to place together objects that would not normally go together
Recontextualization – taking images or words out of the original context and arranging them with other
images in a new context
Layering – images are placed on top of one another
Interaction of text and image – combing the two creates new suspiring meanings
Hybridity- multimedia- using many forms of media in order to fully explore a subject
Gazing – gaze is use to consider who is doing the looking and who is being looked at – who creates and
controls imagery. Gazing is a form of power. It refers to the ways in which out notions of others are
constructed through acts of looking and representing
Representin’ artists expressing identity and affiliation with a special cultural group or social group. Locating
ones artistic voice within one’s personal history and culture or origin
Doug and Mike Starn
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Hybrid art – torn, yellowed photo
assemblages
Doug and Mike Starn “Attracted to the Light” 2000-2003
Barbara Kruger
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Splices cropped photographic images with text
Uses a mock advertising style with confrontational messages
Feminist
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Kruger I Shop Therefore I Am, 1987
Jenny Holzer
Holzer, Truisms 1977-1979
Cindy Sherman
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Fabricated self-portraits dresses up like Hollywood or Old Master
stereotypes and photographs herself
Recreations are deliberately artificial
Sherman,Untitled 228, 1990
Keith Harring
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Graffiti Art first appearing studio
Trademark images – radiant baby, barking dog, zapping
spaceships and winged television set
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Haring untitled 1982
Kiki Smith
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Sculpture based on human body
Kiki Smith "Untitled (Moth)" 1993
David Hockney
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Photomontages and California pools
Hockney,Merced River,Yosemite Valley, Sept. 1982
Judy Pfaff
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Fantasy environments like colourful underworld gardens
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Pfaff, Moxibustion 1994
Jim Dine
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Pop images like tools and hearts
Dine,THE HANDKERCHIEF (CARPENTER 71) 1993
Alex Katz
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Radically stylizes imagery in clean figurative paintings
Alex Katz, “Black Scarf” (1995).
Terry Winters
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Organic forms in earthly colours
Terry Winters. Double Gravity. 1984
Brian Jungen
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is a Canadian artist from British Columbia with Swiss and Dunne-za First Nations ancestry
Jungen's art draws upon the tradition of "found art“ by reworking objects without fully concealing their
original meaning or purpose
Jungen,Prototype for New Understanding #8, 1999
Jungen,Shapeshifter, 2000
Interested in More 21st Century Artists?
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