Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937

-statement about tragedy in Spain-->Nazi bombers destroyed city of Guernica -Cubism

-somewhat surrealist-->play w/world of dreams -ghost-like, fragmented bodies -faces, even of animals are screaming

-gray wash based on black and white newspapers because P was in Paris and his knowledge of the event came from the newspaper -space is fragmented and doesn't quite make sense -->reflects chaotic mood of war

-can't make sense of entire space

Lee Krasner, Noon, 1947

-more about the action of painting and being in the moment then rendering realistically

-similarities to full fathom five, a painting by Pollock (her husband) was created around the same time -->uses the entire canvas

-->no need to put things or even shapes in their art -->all about gesture called these paintings her "Little paintings"

Jackson Pollock, Guardians of the Secret, 1943

-center symbolizes a secret being guarded

-wolf-like figure being born out of abstraction--> guarding a secret

-loose gestural mark-making

-beginning to play with dripping

-Freudian and Jungian influence due to Pollock exploring himself through psychotherapy

Hans Hofmann, The Third Hand, 1947 -exploration of liquidity of paint (influenced by dialogue with Pollock)

-interested in the properties of paint, only interested in materiality

- older then Krasner and Pollock, he starts a school in NYC, teaches both of them

Lee Krasner, Untitled, 1940

-Krasner studied under Hofmann-->he taught the push and pull method(every action must have a reaction in your painting, there must be a balance)

-Krasner is interested in line and uses heavy outlines to distinguish one part of the painting from another

Jackson Pollock, Full Fathom Five, 1947

-similar to Krasner's Noon, created around the same time --> uses entire canvas --> no need to render even shapes -->all about gestures -Pollock began working in a large barn with his canvas on the floor

-dripping is not chaotic, rather he moves his hand very carefully

-plays with the physicality of paint

Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm, 1950

-created at the high point in his career

-he would work on the paintings on the floor but view them on the wall, sometimes he would ruin a painting by taking it too far

de Kooning, Excavation, 1950

-de Kooning's attempt to create a masterpiece/statement

-about the growth of NYC-->layers of NYC due to constant building on top of the past, physically and culturally, contains outlines of buildings, teeth, eyes

-process of searching for the painting, as if another painting is happening underneath the painting

de Kooning, Woman I, 1950-52

-going against pressure of the abstract by painting the figure

-many paintings painted over each other, painting, scraping away and repainting

-draws while creating paintings, cutting and pasting onto the canvas to see how this work

-fragmentation of the body -playing with ideals of women-->large lips, eyes and breasts with a small waist but creates something grotesque

-similar to venus of villendorf

-obsessed with the process of painting rather then the result, Greenberg has to tell him to STOP painting, that the painting was done already

Rothko, Earth and Green, 1955

-wants paint to sink into the canvas and stain canvas

-uses sponges, not about gesture (gestural group=de Kooning, Pollock and Krasner)

-color hums and radiates from the canvas

-interested in simple forms used to express complex ideas

-sense of some primitive landscape due to his use of horizontal lines

-never uses a hard edge--> no end of one color and beginning of another

-asks the question: what is the pure, expressive potencial of color?

Barnett Newman, Onement I, 1948

-calls line in center a "zip" -thickly painted--> vertical line creates a new hole in the canvas

-signature style

-used tape to create line

-oneness in sense of God-relating to sense of atonement/yom kippur

-act of creation and division

zip evokes God's separation of light and dark -->colors refer to Genesis -->red brown field of background=Earth

Jean Dubuffet, Large Sooty Nude, 1944

-interested in the art of the insane and children

--> appreciated these people's experience and truthfulness

-drawing of a body based on experience of the body, rather then artistic tradition

-resolutely resistent to ideas of beauty--> defies all conventions and expectations

-mixes paint with sand, gravel, charcoal, dust, broken glass-->paint becomes a thick paste and physicality of paint becomes important

Jean Dubuffet, Tree of Fluids, 1950

-created by layering thick paste made from paint, dust, charcoal etc and then a layer of just oil paint and then repeat-->shows physicality of human body

-woman's body is not wrapped up in ideals of beauty -body appears open

Alberto Giacometti, Woman With her Throat Cut, 1932-33

-Giacometti was interested in existentialism

-represents a violent and tragic victim of the human condition

-woman's body is splayed open

-meant to be displayed on the floor to enhance sense of terror

Alberto Giacometti, Man Pointing, 1947

-G was obsessed with the nature of perception

--> how does seeing define what we know?

-wanted to create the experience of seeing figures emerge from the distance-->the moment when you first perceive a person

-figures are fighting to exist in the air around them-->air is threatening to dissolve them

-generalized faces and bodies

Barnett Newman, Vir Hiroicus Sublimus, 1950-51

-translates to "Man Heroic and Sublime"

-pure solid read--> brush strokes are not visible -5 zips irregularly placed all in different colors act as anchors for the pure red

-statement against domestication of painting-->can't be hung over a mantle and forgotten about-->demands interaction

-meant to be viewed from close up-->viewer should be surrounded by it for an experience of the sublime

Francis Bacon, Painting, 1946

-called his paintings the result of "one accident of top of another

-originally a designer which influenced his work (the color of the walls-->very 50's, the bridge and roads etc)

-very frightening

Francis Bacon, Study After Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1953

-B was very interested in art history

-contains element of the original portrait but with pope screaming horrifically

-absolute terror and fear-->sense of blur and motion like fallin down an elevator shaft

-blur and movement lines reference photography

-sense that figure is imprisoned in space =splattered red is referencing blood

Lucian Freud, Interior, in Paddington, 1951

-Freud was obsessed with diving in deep-->no detail too small to render

-elements of distortion-->F dives deep into individual parts so that overall picture becomes slightly distorted-->this doesn't matter to F because his art is about obsession

Lucian Freud, Woman Smiling, 1958/59

-F is looking obsessively close to the figure

-->leaves the viewer uncomfortable-->no one should get to scrutinize another this closely

-figures eyes are averted--> uncomfortable with closeness

-fascination with the non ideal human body

-thicker brush strokes and oils result in a more sculptural image

Andrew Wyeth, Christina's World, 1948

-debate over whether W was great--> very popular, two sides to arguement

1."magical realism"-->finding the uncanny and surprising in the everyday world

2.christina could not walk so she dragged herself around, ie a sentimental fluff story

-formal element that work in the painting to give the viewer a feeling of unease-->tiny house in distance, tracks of truck in field, gloominess of sky

Norman Rockwell, The Connoisseur, 1962

-R did covers of the Saturday Morning Post thus spoke to a broad American audience

-for many years illustration was considered lesser art

-depicted fleeting moments -differences between Pollock and Rockwell's work

-P-->viewer is supposed to perceive the whole, find a meaning, explore

-R--> presents a narrative, perceived in parts

Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains and Sea, 1952

-stain painting--> dilutes paint with turpentine and didn't prime canvas thus linen absorbs the paint

-sense of spontaneity, accident and exploration -importantly different from what other artists were doing-->less action then Pollock and de Kooning

-critics spoke about her art differently because she was female-->saying that she was not in control of the paint, fundamentally passive

Morris Louis, Russet, 1958

-part of his veil series

-very thing paint a la Frankenthaler but not described by critics through gender influences

-paint was poured from the lop of the canvas, letting it fall and stain canvas

-non-material quality, like just paint floating

Morris Louis, Alpha Tau, 1960-61

-his unfurled series -sort of like a veil inside out a lot of white in the middle, Why?-->asks what is a painting/enough to create a painting

-colors appear particularly pure next to white

Kenneth Noland, Bridge, 1964

-N called these shapes chevrons

-playing with intense color -->organizing colors around shape of canvas and edge of canvas to create a negative space

-insistence on the optical, physical limits of canvas

Cy Twombly, The Italians, 1961

-takes idea of action paintings and pushes it in a different direction-->does action painting need to be done with a paintbrush?-->uses pencil, crayon, oil

-draws and then covers them up

-moves to Rome and becomes interested in Italian history-->sketches have sense of accrued historical stories

-sketchy, messy, gritty-->connection to graffiti

-interested in chaos-->the gritty and the dirty

Robert Rauschenberg, White Painting (3 panels), 1951

-R spent a summer at Black Mountain College in North Carolina--> tons of important art ppl there

-all different types of art practiced together a la the Bauhaus-->intermingling artists

-R inspired by composer John Cage who wrote 4 min and 33 sec (just listening to the world for that amount of time) -->artist's highlighting the everyday world and showing that it is special what is the line btwn art and the world?

-these canvases were painted completely white -acted as a screen for shadows to fall on

-contingent on the surrounding world-->trying to capture everyday life on a canvas

Robert Rauschenberg, Erased de Kooning, 1953

-R asked de Kooning to give him a drawing to erase it

-ghost of drawing still there but pretty much erased, he spent a shit ton of time erasing it because de Kooning gave him a hard one to erase to try and one up R

-symbolizes wiping the ab-ex plate clean and moving forward

-emphasizes the importance of de Kooning by rendering drawing invisible--> makes viewer question what it once looked like

Robert Rauschenberg, Bed, 1955

-uses the actual quilt and pillow from R's bed

-flat-bed picture plane -->bed is something that defines our horizontal existence-->perfect subject for flat-bed picture plane

-paint is intersecting w/materiality of quilt and pillow

-why is paint on everyday objects considered a piece of art?

-perhaps R not quite confident that without paint it could be considered art

Robert Rauschenberg, Monogram, 1955-59

-powerful tension btwn junk and organized and tight

Robert Rauschenberg, Retroactive 1, 1964

-contingent on viewer's response to images

-used silkscreen

-what was the role of the Kennedy image?

-goes from using everyday objects to using images that are everywhere

Jasper Johns, Flag, 1954

-playing w/the idea of a found object

-something special about a flag-->its identity resides in the fact that it's symbol not in its material -->is he representing or presenting the flag

-viewer's reaction of the painting is contingent on their reaction to the flag

-flat-bed picture plane-->flat b/c a flag is flat not for greenberg's reason for flatness

Jasper Johns, Target with Plaster Casts, 1955

-target-->like a flag, does not have a material identity

-a target tells you where to look

-objects at top are fighting for attention from the target 

Jasper Johns, Painting With Two Balls, 1960

-sense of drama and tension-->are bas about to be swallowed by the painting, or is the canvas being ripped open by the balls?

Yves Klein, Untitled Blue Monochrome (IKB82), 1959

-created painting to be rejected by the top salon in europe-->this was exactly what he wanted and based his whole career around it

-created resin with chemist friend-->paint fragile, very material like a sneeze would blow it away

-about the spiritual

-created many paintings that looked the same but priced them based on his perception of the amount of spiritualness

Yves Klein, Ritual for a Zone of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility, 1959

-had ppl pay in gold, gave them a reciept that they had to destroy and then put half the gold in the seine river

-had ppl pay for a spiritual space

Yves Klein, Anthropometry, 1960

-used female models as "brushes"

Piero Manzoni, Achrome, 1958-59

-M saw Klein's show (he is also european) and was inspired 

-created this very physical work

Piero Manzoni, Artist's Shit, 1961

-canned his own shit and sold it for its weight and gold

-is everything an artist makes art?

Piero Manzoni, Base of the World, 1961

-proclaimed all the world as Manzoni art by putting a pedistal at the "bottom" of the earth