Fifties 20Other 20Tendencies 202011

							„Fifties, Other Tendencies




    http://www.laurentianum.de/ldalbe03.gif
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

                                                   http://www.laurentianum.de/ldalbe03.gif
Page from Albers‟ Interaction of Color
         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
Morris Louis, Dalet Kaf, 1959, acrylic resin (Magna) on canvas, 100 x 143 in
Morris Louis, Buskin, magna on raw canvas, 1959, 79 X 104 in., Hirshhorn, D.C.
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
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, 1922-
  2008), 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/
         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4mQCnhKCd4


David Amran and Alfred Leslie discussing 1959 independent artist film, Pull
My Daisy, narrated by Jack Kerouac and featuring Allen Ginsberg (Howl was
written in 1955) the Beat poets and New York Figurative painters, Larry
Rivers, 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, 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
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 1933-2008) Suitcase, 1961-1963, 22x24x9" / crayon on paper,
fabric, beads on lace, glitter, soot, wax, graphite and a plastic yo-yo.
A still from “A Movie,” a 1958 short by Conner selected for preservation by the National
Film Registry. Conner‟s films were assemblages of found footage.
Bruce Conner, Inkblot Drawing 5/28/1995, a Rorschach-like ink-and-pencil work.
             Conner worked with a wide variety of visual media.
Jay De Feo, The Rose, 1958-
66, 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
        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 anti-
       aesthetic, 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