Théodore Maurisset

La Daguerreotypomanie

1839 (published in 1840)

lithograph

• Showcases how photography had become a big-deal in France, we can see people lined up to have their photograph taken.
• Photography went on to be included in the World's Fair in 1855. And Later in 1862, the French government officially declaired that photography was legally an art form.
• Felix Nadar in the air balloon above.

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Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Comtesse d'Haussonville

1845 

oil on canvas (Academic Painting)

• Artist trying to cater to the new social group of the middle class.
• Example of how photography influenced painting.  Painters tried to create a snapshot.  This is shown by how there is no intention to create a cleaned up space.  The pose is somewhat casual.  And the painting is cropped in a way to be more reminisent of photography.

Felix Nadar

Sarah Bernhardt

c.1860s

Photograph, albumen print

• Using photography to capture the emotions and the esscence of the moment that is being photographed.
• Shows how photography began to take over the function of documentation away from painting.
• Formal aspects of academic painting is referenced.

Alfred Stieglitz

The Steerage

1907

choride print (straight photography)

• Used straight photography to show that photography is an art form in its own right; photography doesn't need an artist's touch (manipulation).
• Stieglitz is interested in the geometrical shapes and contrast.  The formal issues of composition is what Stieglitz is concerned about.  
• He is interested in the formal qualities not the social dimensions of what is being photographed.

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*Alfred Stieglitz

Equivalent

1930

choride print (straight photography)

• Equivalent is more about the abstract qualities of the cloud formations and not documentation.  
• The light and dark contrast and shapes reflect and express the emotion of Stieglitz.
• Here photography is trying to develop itself to be closer to painting, but still is straight photography.

*Lewis Hine

Child in Carolina Cotton Mill

1908

gelatin silver print on masonite

(documentary photography)

• Hine was commissioned to document Child labor for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC).
• These photos were taken to change public opinion; but Hine didn't want it too look too gloomy to scare off the middle class.
• The perspective of the photograph aligns itself to the work in that it seems like the task is endless for the child and other children working in the mill.
• The light coming in shows that she is trapped working here when she should be having a life in the outdoors playing like children should.

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*Dorothea Lange

Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California

1936

Photo (entire series)

(documentary photography)

• Photographs are from the California Migrant Worker camps of those that came from areas affected by the dustbowl (oklahoma, kansas, nebraska).
• Main photograph shows 3 of her 7 children.
• Lange was commissioned by the Federal Farm Security Administration.
• The famous photo is cropped to create a triangular compositio.  Reminisant of the Madonna and child paintings of the Renaissance.
• The close-up is what makes the photo so relatable to the public. (mix of emotion, uncertainty, despair, hope, and also looking to the future a confidence that she can make it through for her children).
• Creates empathy and compassion in viewers.
• Mother, Florence thomson, migrated from Oklahoma, her first husband died.
• Photo idealizes her more as mother rather than a farm worker. Passed off as the poster child for white Americans when in fact she was a cherokee native american.  But she never was helped despite being so famous. (problem with objective photography if American would have recieved the photo the same way if they saw her this way).
• Empty plate in other photos.

Marcel Duchamp

Bottle Rack (Bottle Dryer)

1914

galvanized iron (readymade)

• Rejected by the art world, but made to challenge the focus on creator and authenticity in artwork by using a readymade.
• Trying to show that the idea came first, not example; that theory becomes art.

*Marcel Duchamp

Fountain (lost original)

1917

urinal (readymade)

• Found object that was redesignated as an art object.
• One of the most famous art pieces of the 20th century because it symbolizes how the idea of creation begins to shift.
• Contemporaries though thought that the was plagiarism and vulgar.
• While Duchamp was originally anti-art his work really became an expansion of the arts; concept of 'what is art.'
• Fountain is art because it says it's art and that is how the concept of art is changed.
• Duchamp is bringing the object into a new environment, out of the bathroom to the art world, and therefore changes its significance creating a new way to consider that object.

*Hannah Höch

The Beautiful Girl

1919-20

collage

• Used found clips in the mass media..  She collages the photos to comment on the mass media itself.
  
• Made during the Weimer republic, time between world war I and II.
• Represents the new woman.
• Women began entering the work force, gaining the right to vote.
• Hoch utilizes the photos to create deeper meaning and symbolism within the collage:  BMW = materialism, clock = time changing (for women), tire = mobility, light bulb = education/enlightment (for women), body = women becoming sex object/more exposed.
• Show that anyone can make a collage; utilize the recognizable popular imagery.

*Richard Hamilton

Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?

1956

collage on paper

• Richard Hamilton has inspiration from Hannah Hoch's collages, but modifies the collage idea to not deal with the new women, but more about the new common household.
• One could say Hamilton is the father of pop art, creating art directed to the yound and popular.
• Overall representing mass consumption and consumerism, utilizes mass media clips: tootsie pop, movie theater, vacuum ad, tv, comic book., canned ham, recording device.
• Moon on ceiling represents the universe coming into the home (tv etc).
• Also shows idealized couple of the United States, showing that people become commodities themselves. The male is athetic, female is sexualized.

Claes Oldenburg

Soft Toilet

1966

vinyl, kapok, wood

• Oldenburg first makes a mock up of artwork in canvas then makes the real artwork later in vinyl.
• Toilet morphs into something else, this invites associations to human characteristics such as a face.

*Andy Warhol

32 Campbell's Soup Cans

1962

synthetic polymer paint on 32 canvases

• Made to show how American is obsessed with consumerism.
• The stacking of the cans replicates the experience of walking in the store to puchase soup.
• The line between high culture (art) and low culture (the soup) is blurred.  Bringing a low culture suject into the art world. 
• Anyone can have a campbell soup can.
• The artwork takes advantage of label recognition, the label is only thing really necessary to be painted.

Andy Warhol

Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I)

1963

silkscreen

• Represents the emotional disconnect and numbing effect the public starts to get from seeing the same images in the media over and over again no matter how gruesome. The overexposure is due to the mass media continually exposing these kinds of imagery to the public. (mass media flooding imagery)
• The way the photo is repeated and overlayed in the artwork represents the repetition of the imagery in the media as well.
• This results in people not really studying the images to see the bigger picture of what's happened

*Roy Lichtenstein

Little Big Painting

1965

painting

• Comments on the personal expression seen in art at the time (like Pollock), trying to recreate a spontaneous painted feeling even though the lines and composition is made in a mechanical way.
• Mocking artists who favor abstract painting. (recreated the brush stroke; mocking the brush stroke)
• Sought to make the artwokr look mechanically created.

Tom Wesselmann

Great American Nude #27

1962

collage

• Wesselmann associated the female nude with consumer items showing that the nude is competing for attention with these items and in a way is saying how the female body has turned into a commodity mass media at the time.
• Point of shocking society and breaking taboo against nudity, but does not try to objectify women, but have a more political message.

*Haim Steinbach

Supremely Black

1985

mixed media construction

• Steinbach was fascinated with consummerism.
• Signifies how the walthy middle class in the 80s was interested in popular culture and commodities and took a materialistic outlook on the world.  Shopping became a meaningful pastime in the 80's (retail therapy).
• Steinbach's work looks very directly at collecting, shopping, and displaying.
• The number 3 on the Bold boxes corresponds with the number of boxes.
• Steinbach utilizes color and shape to make an appealing composition in Supremely Black.
• The shelf is really the only thing made by the artist.  The shelf is used to replicate the experience of shoppoing, but also to elevate the importance of the items similar to how they would be elevated when placed in a consumer's home.
• By taking relativily cheap and unimportant objects, it shows that any object can have value and can become important in a consumer's life.

Haim Steinbach

Charm of Tradition

1985

mixed media construction

• Theme of nature vs culture; manmade materials over the use of leather.
• Nike is the goddess of Victory, the shoes can be though to show that humans have overpowered nature and become victorious.

*Jeff Koons

Ushering in Banality

1988

polychromed, carved wood

• Chooses to make a banal object, something insignificant, unimportant. Unoriginal and unimaginative.
• Banality is taking advantage of recognizable low-culture subjects and brigning them into the high arts.
• Shows how people will attach emotions to things that would otherwise be insignificant.

*Jeff Koons

Puppy

1992

flowering plants, earth, wood, steel

• Set up Puppy in response for not being invited to an exhibition in the next town over.
• Puppy as a subject of insignificance and banality.  People attaching emotions to a somewhat meaningless object (or creature).