Transgressors of Convention - Essay Example

Modern Art: Transgressors of Convention A Critical Assessment Word Count: 3185 Pages: 13 Intro The critical assessment of three works of Modern art for their transgressions against aesthetic and/or social and institutional conventions will be covered in the span of this essay. Texts from internet searches and Questia will be included to provide factual material and background. The relationship between these works of art and others in the Modern art era will be examined, their similar as well as different approaches. Abstract is the most recognized of the Modern arts. Generally associated with nonrepresentational work (Kahmi 2003) it includes cubism, expressionism and constructivism. Other forms of modern art, examined in this paper, are Primitivism, Avant-Garde and Performance Art. Their relationship to other works in the Modern art era include their similarities in color usage, strength, vividness, shock factor and other types of emotional appeal, minimalist approaches, unexplained elements or nonrepresentational elements, even lack of traditional materials. Their differences show the desire of an artist to be individually judged from their counterparts, despite evidence that explains the subconcious 'community' that shows up in all artists' work. As Sholette writes, "how can the artist be defined as an autonomous producer detached from politics, history and the market" given the constant grouping of people, even through debit cards that are created with a computer program called "Clever". "Clever locates these Web-based fraternities "even before members are aware of their community's existence"" 1 And "the boundary between Self and Other is fluid rather than fixed." (Sholette 1999) The Activist art collective critiques the bourgeois notion of self-institutionalization. But much of Modern art is simply the "challenging of the power of realism" (Whiteley 2002) by producing pieces with their own power. 1 Gregory G. Sholette, "Counting on Your Collective Silence: Notes on Activist Art as Collaborative Practice," Afterimage 27.3 (1999): 18 Primitivism - Three Nudes - Schmidt-Rottluff Die Brucke (the bridge) began as an offshoot of German expressionistism when four architectural student/artists had the desire to be the evolutionary 'bridge' between the man of today and the 'superman' of tomorrow, but instead seemed to show their yearning to return to natural origins. Primitivism provides an alternative to the "sophisticated illusionism" and offered a more 'authentic' way of being. (Stokstad 2002) Three Nudes - Dune Picture from Nidden 1913 This work is representative of that which draws from primitivistic concepts2 of Africa, South America, "children and the mentally ill." (Stokstad 2002) Semi-representational, the figures in the piece are developed as a part of the whole instead of being separated from the background, as in portrait work. The message seems to be about the unity between these women figures and Nature. Considered crude drawing and simplistic in its arrangement of elements, the composition holds power in its saturation of color, the strength of its lines, the movement of its forms. Despite its seeming lack of thought, the design elements are planned and executed as well as a formal painting. The Die Brucke artists did go back to Nature to northern Germany during their summer breaks and their paintings often reflected their dislike for urban life, urban alienation. The contrasts are shown from their paintings of the psychological distancing of city society (Kirchner, Street, Berlin) to the inviting warmth of Three Nudes. (Stokstad 2002) Perhaps the freedom felt by more citizens of Europe in the early part of last century led the Die Brucke artists toward greater criticism of their world, to Expressionism and Activist art. But it was still not socially acceptable. 2 The word 'primitive' . . . categorized art of Africa, Pacific Islands and indigenous Americas . . . means 'early' . . . implies that these civilizations are frozen in their cultural development instead of developing, especially by missionaries of the colonialism eras. Stokstad 2002. Art critique became popular during the time when avant-garde art was exploding onto the art scene (Ency. Brit.) Notwithstanding the comment made by Theodore Roosevelt at the 1913 Armory Show that he preferred his Navajo rugs to the abstract art, abstracts became more legitimized with supporters like millionaire Walter Arensberg. The support of Duchamp's work by Arensberg may have been a speculator's greed in action, but it spurred the private collectors to begin collecting Modern art. An example of an institution delineating the acceptability of art comes when Alfred Barr, head of the Museum of Modern Art (NY) in 1929, created a diagram of art development. In it Cubism3 reigns supreme, having come from, according to Barr, Cezanne and neo-impressionism and drawing a path to Suprematism, Constructivism, De Stijl and finally to Abstract art. The fact that he left out German Expressionism, Dadaism and Surrealism shows an academic prejudice toward formality. (Ency. Brit.) The 1940's saw Picasso's cubism rise to its peak during the avant-garde period. Time magazine began critical reviews in depth of the art world but with difficulty in understanding it so that the artists themselves were forced to become critics in order to 'clarify and justify' their work. (Ency. Brit.) In the '60's it became clear that the criticism of art was taken so seriously that it was an "indispensable" part of the art scene. The "Steiglitz Circle" of 1924 to 1934 was a group of Modern art artists being exhibited by Alfred Steiglitz. It was "an experiment in anti-academic and art-critical practice" (Marshall 2005). Steiglitz had wanted to bring European Modern art to New York, but confided in a friend that the art had become stagnant and conventional. To revive the art community, a group of artist friends and writers, including the now famous Georgia O'Keefe, began exhibiting their work and spawning essays about this new "spirit" of 3cubism also Cubism (kybzm) n. A nonobjective school of painting and sculpture developed in Paris in the early 20th century, characterized by the reduction and fragmentation of natural forms into abstract, often geometric structures usually rendered as a set of discrete planes. American Heritage Dictionary, 4th edition. American art (Marshall 2005). In addition to their commitment to philosophies of Walt Whitman and democracy and Pueblo culture4, " the circle sought to reconcile subjective expression with universal communicability" (Marshall 2005). Despite the Steiglitz high ethics and social agenda, they seemed to have missed the fact that America was becoming more consumer-oriented and less labor-oriented. Which leads to the Avant-garde era of art. After World War II, the dominance of the United States also translated into dominance for American artists in their influence across the ocean to Paris. They were forerunners of the Modern art scene but some European artists of the time were somewhat sidelined by the American popularity. One in particular, English artist Francis Bacon whose scenes of terror became very well known, is shown below. (Stokstad 2002) French painter, Jacque Dubuffet created a form of "raw art" or art brut, that conveyed a sense of childishness along with his mixed bag of media, tar, sand, mud, etc. He also 'celebrated' graffiti, which led to an appreciation of art informel or "formless art". Examples of artists of this time and mindset are Jean-Paul Riopelle from Montreal who began spreading paint directly onto his canvas to create patterns of color remiscent of stained glass, and Spanish painter Antoni Tapies with his fascination of street graffiti. Graffiti of today is generally despised by conventional people and thought of as desecration of city walls, they preferring brick to paint apparently. Or maybe it is the boldness of the venture they despise (Stokstad 2002). "Chicago's three-year-old Graffiti Blasters program has an annual budget of $4 million and a staff of 52. The program, run by the Department of Streets and Sanitation, sends out cleaning crews to remove graffiti on both public and private property." 5 4"The peoples thus described were not only warriors and peasants but, in addition, the heirs of a great cultural tradition." Marilyn Stokstad, Art History (New York: Harper & Row, 1986) 81 5 Gil Schamess, "Graffiti: Basta! Cities Are Fighting This Message of Decay," Planning Dec. 1996 Abstract expressionism, or the New York School, is also a part of the avant-garde era. Robert Motherwell said in 1951, "Every intelligent painter carries the whole culture of modern painting in his head." 6 With the increase of European artists coming to the United States in the late '40's, the psychology that fueled expressionism became mixed between Freudian and Jungian notions7. Surrealism was a large force behind expressionism (Stokstad 2002). Bringing these factors together was Arshile Gorky of Armenia with his compositions entitled "The Garden of Wish Fulfillment"8. His traumatic emigration from Turkey and the death of his mother created a background for his vivid images (Stokstad 2002). After the 1940's, expressionism led to "action painting" which experimented with the fields of color and also the handling of paint (Stokstad 2002). This was known as gesturalism. Art critic Harold Rosenberg stated, ". . . What was to be on the canvas was not a picture but an event." Such 'gesturalists' were Jackson Pollock, de Kooning and Yves Klein, shown below. 6 Hilton Kramer, "Jackson Pollock & the New York School," New Criterion Jan. 1999: 17 7European artists held the thinking of the unconscious from Freud's work while American artists subscribed to the work of psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Stokstad 2002 8Because of his commitment to Surrealism and to Ingres' linear elegance, Gorky was dubbed the Ingres of the Unconscious. Stokstad 2002 Avant-garde - Head VI - 1949 Francis Bacon created this oil on canvas in London during the 1940's war years, having learned to paint in his middle years. (Stokstad 2002) The painting depicts a screaming person in a clear box with yellow 'symbols' wearing a purple robe. As in another painting, Pope Innocent X, the figure seems terrorized and the box surrounding the figure is a simple white line 3D construction. The top of the head seems to be missing, as if the figure is disappearing.Bacon drew from expressionist work such as Munch's, and also Diego Velazquez's Pope Innocent X. There is great specificity in the teeth of the figure which contrasts with the loose application of paint on the rest of work. Drab colors contrast with the touches of white, and somehow create a feeling of horror when viewing the painting. To suggest that there are any similarities to traditional paintings, outside of two dimensionality, in this work is a stretch of imagination in itself. From the seemingly unconstructed splashes of color to the baffling images in yellow, the only real 'explanation' within this piece is the mouth opened wide in a scream. There seems to be a pull string, as if attached to a light fixture, just above the figure's nose. Maybe the pope-like figure has enclosed himself in the box for the purpose of screaming in the dark without being heard. Contrary to rules pertaining to design9, the 'mouth' is perfectly centered within the painting. The line of the box divides the painting vertically into rough thirds. There is no particular explanation of light source or direction. The perspective of the symbols on the left seem unlikely. Textural qualities of the canvas have been accentuated with no apparent reason within the composition. 9 Patricia Monahan, et al., Art School: a complete painter's course. (2000) Octopus Publishing, London. Pg. 320+ Performance Art - "Anthropometries of the Blue Period" Yves Klein - 1960 Klein dragged slim naked women through blue paint onto a canvas before an audience in 1960 at the International Art Gallery in Paris to achieve this 'art'. Transgress: violate, break, encroach, overstep. Artists of the Modern age, more than any other, have worked hard to find ways to violate any rule, any more, they can to make their statement. This artist chose the shock value of nude women to emphasize his plan to use people as his paintbrushes. The female nude virtually disappeared from acceptable contemporary art by the 1980's (Madonald 2001). Some might think this has been a form of censorship. One North Carolina politician made a lot of problems for artists whose work was shown in public places if it depicted the nude figure. Feminists have been divided by the subject of nudes in art, some feeling it oppressed women while others felt it freed them (Cheng 2002). "To the extent that the Girls' art reflects their own time and place, the group's fluid organization responds to the contingent requirements of their artistic site." 10 In other arenas of art, using the body AS the canvas has been increasingly popular in recent years. From cultural "norms" such as "scarification from Africa, piercing among the Inuit, the use of lip plates and plugs by many cultures, neck stretching from Myanmar, head shape alteration in South America and Egypt, and foot binding in Asia" (Rosko 2005) comes modern body art. Instead of being thought of as only decorative, 10 Meiling Cheng, In Other Los Angeleses: Multicentric Performance Art (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002) 238 however, a good part of this fad is about making a statement. Mehndi, an Eastern and Asian art form, uses henna to create images on the human body for spiritual or religious reasons (Rosko 2005). Americans might show their allegiance to their country or their fondness for motorcycles, among other things, in their body art. The Sacred Naked Nature Girls are a group of four women from Los Angeles who performed an improvisation naked one day on the beach, and from it they developed this concept of a nativity ritual (Cheng 2002). Their work deals with ethnicity, identity, sexuality and culture. In this way they can "rally around" conceptual and performative issues. The lack of definition for "Performance Art" provides a lot of freedom to create a work without bending to the will of conformism. There is a sense of detachment about art performances from political or social problems (Cheng 2002). And there is a transiency about art performances11 for they don't often stay in one location long or repeat their performance the same way twice or even charge money. "Blue and gold, emptiness and immateriality, the body and the elements" are the common themes used by Yves Klein (Carboni 2001). The blue symbolizes the universe's pure sensibility. His earlier work of the 1950's included objects such as sponges pigmented an ultramarine blue. In a series of paintings called "Peintures feu", the artist Klein used a flamethrower to create marks on canvases. Critic Carboni writes "Presence and concept, life and art achieve a point of unforgettable fusion" which seems to be reaching for a way to explain such art. The Anthropometries are referred to as "hovering curiously between nature and culture" by Carboni, as he applauds Kleins way of discarding the traditional artist's tools. He goes so far as to compare the 'imprints' of the nude bodies to ancient rock drawings or the Holy Shroud. Klein is called a figure of complexity. 11 The Sacred Naked Nature Girls internationally toured their first piece, Untitled Flesh, an all-nude performance, initially presented in Boulder, Colorado, in April 1994. Their second piece, Home. The Last Place I Ran to Just about Killed Me, premiered at Highways in August 1996. SNNG presented its third piece, The Party-which the ensemble cocreated with an outside director, Elia Arce-for five evenings in October 1997, also at Highways. The critical point of this paper about Klein's (and others') 'artwork' is that, despite a point of view that experimentation is necessary to find new ways of creating, work such as Klein's is gimmick, designed to get attention, possibly to make money. Having found no indication of real thought or effort in this 'work' in the literature available, Klein and others undermine the achievements and work that more skilled and hard-working artists have created. It seems that critics such as Carboni lend more credence to 'works of art' such as this then the actual creator does. The creator simply performs the act with little concern for what the public may think of it, which is fine, but explains nothing. To summarize, the transgression of 'norms' or conventional ideologies of art has become nearly a 'norm' of modern society. Having its roots in formal art combined with new psychologies, political upheavals, national pride and just plain perverse natures, Modern art's experiments and successes have pushed the artworld toward new modes of expression. Taking art out of the 'box' that consisted of rules and frames has been freeing for those who feel the need to express their beliefs or emotions without those contraints. Impact on the audience is a different subject. And marketability is also not within the boundaries of this discussion. Two big events seem to have catapulted changes in art method more than any other, the industrialization of the world and the world wars of last century. Industrialization caused a great change in how city life was perceived, some embracing the fast life, some hating it. Both showing their affection or disaffection in their artwork. Some artists rebelled against the "machine" that seemed to be taking over their lives. In the 1960's there was rebellion toward "Big Brother". The same is not true of current artists toward the computer age. The world wars of the 1900's affected more people in more ways than probably any other part of history. There were vast numbers of emigrants from all over the world moving to other parts of the world and bringing their cultural points of view with them, artistically and otherwise. The traumas shared by the events show up in their work in striking design, color and subject-matter. Finding new mediums, new 'canvases', new methods to express their minds has pushed modern artists to ever more interesting places. The rules of art should be considered and honored, and then broken when needed. References art criticism Art criticism in the 20th century > Avant-garde art comes to America Encyclopdia Britannica Article Retrieved 3/20/06 from http://wwwa.britannica.com/eb/article-236412 pg 11 Carboni, Massimo (2001) Yves Klein. Artforum International magazine. Vol. 39 Issue 6 Feb. 2001 pg. 159 Kramer, Hilton, (1999) Jackson Pollock & the New York School, New Criterion Jan. 1999: 17 Meiling Cheng (2002) In Other Los Angeleses: Multicentric Performance Art (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press) 238 Kahmi, Michelle. (2003) Extravagant Claims for Abstract Art Unwarranted. Retrieved from http://www.artsjournal.com/letters/20030208-3517 3/20/06 Marshall, Jennifer (2005) Celeste Connor, Democratic Visions: Art and Theory of the Stieglitz Circle, 1924-1934 Retrieved 3/20/06 from http://dsc.gc.cuny.edu/part/part9/modernism/reviews/marsh.html Mcdonald, Helen. (2001) Erotic Ambiguities: The Female Nude in Art. Routledge. London. Pg. 31 Monahan, P., Seligman, P. Clouse, W., (2000) Art School: a complete painter's course. Octopus Publishing, London. Pg. 320+ Rosko, Keith. (2005) Body Art: Connecting Past and Future. School Arts. Vol. 104 Issue 6 Feb. 2005 pg. 28 Gregory G. Sholette (1999) "Counting on Your Collective Silence: Notes on Activist Art as Collaborative Practice," Afterimage 27.3 : 18 Stokstad, Marilyn. (2002) Art History. Harry Abrams. NY pp. 1065, 1127, 1140 Schamess, Gil, (1996) Graffiti: Basta! Cities Are Fighting This Message of Decay, Planning Dec. 1996 Whiteley, Brett. (2002) Painting is the argument between what it looks like and what it means. Art Right Now2. Retrieved 3/20/06 from http://gallery.discoverymedia.com.au/artzinePub/story.aspid=8§ion=ArtStud Images Three Nudes http://www.contracosta.cc.ca.us/Art/TheRiseOfModernismPart2StudyImages.htm http://images.google.com/imagesq=Three+Nudes+and+Schmidt-Rottluff&hl=en&btnG=Search+Images) Head VI www.ibiblio.org Yves Klein www1.uol.com.br/.../ nuh/enuhmonklei01.htm Read More