Piero Manzoni

Artist's Shit No. 014

May 1961

Metal, paper, and "artist's shit".

explores the relationship between art production and human production

See: Artist's Breath - series of balloons filled with Manzoni's breath

Kazuo Shiragr

Challenge to the Mud (Making a Work of Art With Ones Body)

October 1955

Performance with mud 

Shiraga also has a number of works on paint where he uses his body (feet) in mark making.

Allen Kaprow

18 Happenings in 6 Parts

first perfomed 1959 (pictred 1964)

Willem de Ridder and George Macunis

Fulxkit

1963-1967.

Vinyl case with mixed media 

Yoko Ono

Cut Piece

1946,1965.

Performance with scissors and artist's clothing.

Carolee Schneeman

Meat Joy

1964.

Staged at the Judson Church New York and at the Festival of Free Expression in Paris, running time varies.

Donald Judd

Untitled

1966.

Amber Plexiglas and stainless steel.

Donald Judd

Untiled (Stack)

1967

Lacquer on galvanized iron, twelve units, vertically installed 

Eva Hesse 

Several

1965

Acrylic, paper-mache, rubber hose. 

Eve Hesse

Repetition Nineteen III

1968.

Fiberglass and polyester resin, nineteen units.

Eve Hesse

Contingent

1969

Fiberglass and polyester resin, latex on cheesecloth, eight units.

Richard Tuttle 

Sum Confluence 

1964. 

Acrylic on plywood.

Richard Tuttle

Cloth Octagolan 2

1967.

Dyed and sewn canvas.

Jannis Kounellis 

12 Cavalli (12 Horses)

1969.

Installation at Galleria L'Attic, Rome

Michelangelo Pistoletto

Venere delle Stracci [Venus of the Rags]

1967, 1974.

Marble and textiles.

Ed Ruscha

Every Building on the Sunset Strip

1966.

Accordion-folded book.

On Kawara

July 20, 1969 (Today series paintings)

1969.

Sol Lewitt

Modular Open Cube

1976

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Arshile Gorky- The Liver Is The Cock's Comb ,1944

-one of a series of remarkable drawings he created during his fertile period

-identified asone of his greatest paintings

-bears little resemblance to its namesake

-transition between surrealism to abstract expressionism

-influenced by jazz and living in nyc in post ww II

Barnett Newman, Onement 1, 1948

·         Related phenomenology of presence explored

·         Portrayed to be Newman’s artistic breakthrough

·         First time vertical bands were used to define the spatial structure of his work, later dubbed as a zip which became his signature mark

·         The zip simultaneously divides and unites the composition

·         Preferred the word zips over bands because it spoke of activity instead of a motionless state

·         Undermined the philosophical idea that a form merely conveys a preexisting content

Barnett Newman

Vir Heroicus Sublimis,1950-51. Oil on canvas. 7’ 11 3/8 ” x 17’ 9 ¼”

·         Newman’s largest painting at the time

·         Meant to overwhelm the senses

·         Newman wanted the piece to be viewed from a short distance

·         Title means “ Man, Heroic, Sublime” in Latin

·         The zip simultaneously divides and unites the composition

·         Preferred the word zips over bands because it spoke of activity instead of a motionless state

·         Undermined the philosophical idea that a form merely conveys a preexisting content

William De Kooning, Excavation, 1950. Oil and enamel on canvas, 80 ½ x 100 ½

·         Largest painting up to 1950

·         Exemplifies the artistic innovative style of expressive brushwork and distinctive organization of space

·         His point of departure was an image of woman working in a rice field from Bitter Rice an Italian Film Noir movie

·         The composition reflects his technically masterful painting process

-Aptly titled, the composition reflects his technically masterful painting process: an intensive building up of the surface and scraping down of its paint layers, often for months, until the desired effect was achieved.

Willam De Kooning Woman I, 1950-52. Oil on canvas , 6’ 3 7/8” x 58”

·         Reflects the age old cultural ambivalence between reverence for and fear of the power of the feminine

-her threatening gaze and ferocious grin are heightened by de Kooning’s aggressive brushwork and intensely colored palette.

-believed oil painting was invented for flesh

Jackson Pollock, War, 1947. Pen and Ink, and colored pencils on paper, 20 5/8 x 26 “

·         Only drawing he ever titled

·         Relates to iconographically complex images he produced earlier

·         The destruction of war is conveyed both by the fierceness of the graphic execution and by the imagery

·         Narrative is one of horrific proportions

·         Drawing from the psychological language of surrealism that fueled his early works

·         Influenced by Picasso’s Guernica and "The Dream and Lie of Franco," 

- has a personal dimension, drawing on from the psychological language of Surrealism that fueled his early works

Jackson Pollock Autumn Rhythm ( Number 30), 1950. Enamel on canvas, 105 x 207 in

·         Lyrical composition comprised of the intricate skeins of lines

·         No central point of focus, no hierchy of elements in the composition

·         Every bit of surface is equally significant

·         Worked the canvas on a flat on the floor constantly moving all around it

·         Work is a record of its process of coming into being

·         Drips are direct evidence of the very physical choreography of applying paint with the artists new methods

Bruce Connor, Child. 1959-60, Wax, nylon, cloth, metal, twine, and high chair, 34 5/8 x 17 x 16 ½”

·         Made in protest against capital punishment

·         Based on the case of Caryl Chessman a deathrow inmate sentenced to death and a sexual conviction

·         Best known sculpture, departs from prior works

Bruce Connor, 

Looking Glass, 1964. Mixed Media , 60 ½ x 48 x 14 ½

·         A meditation on male desire, vanity, and mass marketed ideals of feminity and beauty

-The scratched, torn, and burned surfaces of the photographs add to the distinct sense of repulsion or frustration conveyed by this work.

-Conner's use of found materials influenced his fellow Northern California artists and inspired a widespread interest in the sculptural style now known as assemblage.

Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage, Automobile Tire Print, 1953. Black paint on twenty sheets of paper mounted on fabric , 16 ½ in x 264 ½ in

·         Developed as a weapon against the expressive mark in a range of work

·         Meant to attract fleeting and ambient impressions the way Cage’s music opened itself to the noise of its audiences

·         The logic of noncomposition based on Duchamps work was an influence, labeled as destructive art 

Robert Rauschenberg-Erased De Kooning,  1953. Traces oh ink and crayon on paper, mat, label, and gilded frame, 25 ¼ in x 21 ¾ in x ½ in

·         Set out to discover wether an artwork could be produced entirely through erasure

·         Jasper Johns helped with the framing and also labeling and naming of the art piece

·         He idolized De Kooning which made the erasure of this piece more significant than if it was his own work, which he attemped to use but didn’t work as well

·         Labeled as destructive art

·         Promoted as a scandal since De Kooning was very admired by the art world at the time

·         Labeled as a Dadaist rerun

·         Hostilec attitude toward Abstract Expressionism and it’s dominance over advanced art world

Robert Rauschenberg- Monogram, 1955-59

-his mad esthetic output, while jovial and fearless, borders on being suicidal and squandering and can lead to art that peters out, turns theatrical or becomes formulaic.

-contributed enormously to postwar ideas about agglomeration, order, appropriation, duplication, assemblage, collage and photo-into-painting, his esthetic garrulousness often turns his work into a department store: something scanned, not studied

- convinced that all things in the world are equal that the work itself often equals out and gets slushy in the mind

-artistic suicide bomber: a true believer who is unafraid to have his work look cruddy.

Jasper Johns,  Target with Plaster Casts.1955. Encaustic and collage on canvas, 51 x 44 x 3 ½

·         An irony of to test what one expects a work of art to do

·         Used to preformed conventional, depersonalized, factual, exterior elements

·         Transforms a familiar image to a tangible object by building up the surface with the encaustic

·         Sculptural precise re inforces the objectiveness of the painting

Jasper Johns, 

Three Flags, 1958. Encaustic on canvas, 307/8 x 40 ½ x 5 in

·         Reintroduced geometry back into art

·         Signaled a transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art

·         Transformed pieces into data for examining perception, visual ambiguity, and the meaning of art itself

·         Examines rather engaging in the personal expression

Yves Klein, Anthropometry, Princess Helena, 1960

-Used female bodies as living paint brushes

-the series was named after the study of human body measurements

-he stayed clean and never dirtyed himself in that manner of painting

-stageg a series as an elaborate performances for audiences

Yves Klein, Leap Into The Void, 1960

-paradoxically created the impression of freedom and abandon through a highly contrived process

-hired photographers Harry Shunk and Jenn Kender to photograph montages

-photos were multiple photos printed together

-supposed to represent the indifference in this world

-recalls film stills taken on sets of silent movies

Piero Manzoni, Achrome, 1957

-an empty space without lines or colours, devoid of any sign that might imply a meaning or a reminiscence of the artist's work on the materials of art

- transformed into a work of art by itself, throughout a self-sufficient process

-held on to the "tautological closure" that inspired his first works

-works of art purged of color and characterized by unconventional surfaces that he referred to as "the living flesh.

-encouraged interpretation of his work to focus on the physical matter of which it was made.