Strain 1

Formalism, a continuum of the pictorial tradition

Titian, Pastoral Concert,

1508, Renaissance

Renaissance painting‟s

illusionism and

naturalism

Manet, Luncheon on

the Grass, 1863,

Realism - Modernism

Modernist painting‟s

flatness

Van Gogh, Starry Night,

1888; Post-

Impressionism,

Modernism

Matisse, Joy of Life;

Fauvism,

Modernism

Strain 2

Modernism’s conceptual strain, Duchamp’s assisted readymades (Fountain, 1917;

L.H.O.O.Q., 1919), are ruptures in the continuum of a pictorial tradition

Pollock, Autumn Rhythm,

1950, Abstract

Expressionism, ModernismPicasso,

Desmoiselles

d’Avignon, 1907,

Modernism

Kandinsky, German

Expressionism, Modernism

Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), 1950,

oil on canvas, Abstract Expressionism, Modernism

Autumn Rhythm is a formalist painting--

it is about flatness, about denying imagined physical entry by fending off illusionism and naturalism.

It is about itself and about entrenching itself in its medium of painting which is, by 1960, as much

about physical flatness as it is about opticality and pure vision in that it depicts space that can only

be traversed with the eye.

Strain 1

Formalism

Strain 2

Conceptualism

Autumn Rhythm employs conceptualism--

The painting is the frozen record of the event that the photographer Hans Namuth captured.

The event is elevated over the record, over pure vision, for conceptual performance artists: they

eliminate the record and concentrate on the event itself and its requisite interactivity, its need for an

audience to complete the work.

Hans Namuth, Jackson

Pollock, 1950, depicts his

action painting, photograph

A Formalist work is Art as Pure Vision.

Art as separate from life and theater, Art

and Objecthood.

A Conceptual work is also concerned

with the objecthood of art but not to

celebrate it and further entrench it its

own medium but to address its own

condition as a materially and

contextually defined “art” object.

Conceptualism is a critique of the

formalist notion of opticality, that there is

a separate autonomous sphere of

aesthetic experience.

Formalism exists on an art historical

continuum, the continuum of the pictorial

tradition, and is part of a narrative of the

history of Western painting.

Conceptualism ruptures the art historical

continuum. Duchamp‟s assisted

readymades are not part of but rather

critiques of art history and the continuous

narrative.

Postmodernism is like modernism‟s

conceptualism in that it too critiques art

history but it does so through a critique of

art history‟s fabrication and maintenance of

modernism, which assumes that the

supposed culture of modernism culminates

in privilege of: progress towards “the new”

in form and style; the myth of originality;

the one reality of the Western subject, the

natural reality, to which aesthetic space

responds and can separate itself from.

Defining Postmodernism:

In response to Abstract Expressionism and formalist painting

Focus on: -Jackson Pollock -Barnett Newman

-Clement Greenberg

Terms: from art critic Clement Greenberg-

allover (Pollock) vs. easel picture;

color-space and optical (Pollock, Newman) vs. homeless

representation (Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns);

“easel picture”

Both part of the pictorial

tradition; “allover” painting

is an innovation, a renewal

of the pictorial tradition!

“allover” painting

“color space” and “optical”

Barnett Newman, Vir Heroicus Sublimis, 1950s, oil

on canvas, Color-field painting, Modernism

“homeless representation”

Willem de Kooning, Woman and Bicycle,

1950s, oil on canvas, Abstract

Expressionism, Modernism

Terms continued: from art critic Greenberg-

areas of competence, purity of medium vs. between

media or blurring of media, the ‘event’ or ‘theater’ (from

art critic Michael Fried);

avant-garde vs. kitsch (1940);

avant-garde as enemy of art in its embrace of kitsch

vs. art as renewal of continuous pictorial tradition

(1960);

optical illusion or pure vision (1960)

Neo-Dada

‘flatbed picture plane’

Immediate and pure vision of “post-painterly abstraction,”

also called “color-field painting,”

Morris Louis, Saraband, 1950s, oil on canvas, Color-field painting, Modernism

was new and American; was connected to the constant renewal of the pictorial painting

tradition; and was opposed to the avant-garde, to “neo-Dada,” to the infection of painting by

the logic of the readymade and the conceptualism strain of modernism.

For the Formalist Greenberg in 1960:

avant-garde, in its embrace of kitsch is an enemy of art

because art is defined as renewal of the continuous pictorial

tradition through the maintenance of separate aesthetic space

that can only be traversed with the eye.

avant-garde, for Greenberg in 1960=Harold Rosenberg and

Lawrence Alloway’s definitions of action painting as: -a self-

revealing gesture or event outside of opticality; -breaking down

distinctions between art and life; -aligned with Dada and neo-

Dada’s embrace of the non-aesthetic, commercial sphere of

modern consumer societies in the assisted readymade.

For Greenberg, modernism‟s avant-garde conceptual strain

cheapens and confuses the modernist project, which for him is

only upheld in the formal strain, which by 1960 is only the

notion of pure visuality, painting as pure vision.

Neo-Dada; “flatbed picture plane,” no

longer a vertical picture plane to look

at or through

Jasper Johns, Target with Four Faces, 1950s, encaustic

on newspaper and collage on canvas with objects,

Modernism

Defining Postmodernism: In response to Pop art

Focus on: -Andy Warhol -James Rosenquist

-Roy Lichtenstein -Ed Ruscha -Richard Hamilton

Terms:

Pop

banality

mass culture

high and low art

appropriation

commercial design

‘obscenity’ and ‘plagiarism’

‘the handmade readymade’ life ‘mediated’; images ‘screened’

Roy Lichtenstein, Popeye, 1960s, Oil on

canvas, Pop art, Modernism straddles

Postmodernism

Andy Warhol, Campbell’s Soup Cans,

1960s, Oil on canvas, Pop art,

Modernism straddles Postmodernism

banality of „Pop‟- low art forms of mass culture overrun high art Originality

challenged to various degrees- Lichtenstein always effaced brand names;

Warhol never did

„obscenity‟ and „plagiarism‟ were the more serious accusations thrust on

Duchamp‟s 1917 urinal artwork, titled Fountain

„Pop‟ art- first associated with the Independent Group in England, to which

Hamilton belonged; for a formalist like Greenberg, art that drew its sources

from commercial design and popular culture, even though it transformed them

through a process called appropriation, mocked the emotive depths of

Abstract Expressionism and this entire tradition in Western art

Richard Hamilton, Just what is it that makes today's home so different, so appealing?,

collage, Pop art, Modernism straddles Postmodernism

„the handmade readymade‟- uses comic book images; a painted depiction

of printed code, the Ben Day dots devised by Benjamin Day in 1879, and

caused any distinctions between hand and machine to be difficult to

recover; Lichtenstein dots convey the sense that life, all that we see, was

somehow „mediated‟ and all images „screened,‟ viewed beforehand

Roy Lichtenstein, Drowning Girl, 1960s, oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas,

Modernism straddles Postmodernism

Some versions of Pop approach social commentary-

James Rosenquist, F 111, 1960s, oil on canvas, Pop art, Modernism

straddles Postmodernism

Detail, F111

Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych, 1960s, silkscreen, Pop art,

Modernism straddles Postmodernism