Chapter TwentyTwo The Contemporary Contour 1945 Present

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Chapter Twenty-TwoThe Contemporary Contour1945
- Present

• An Era of Many Names
• The Postindustrial Era
• The Computer Age
• The Information Age
• The Late-Capitalist Age
• The American Age
• The Atomic Age
• The Space Age
• The Age of Globalization

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Toward a Global Culture

• Artistic satire of modern warfare
• Joseph HellerCatch 22 Thomas PynchonGravitys
  Rainbow Stanley KubrickDr. Strangelove
• Global economy and Cold War
• Search for individual, social meaning in a
  shrinking world of mass-produced consumer goods
• Artist as voice of protest, hope
• Beat literature Ginsberg, Kerouac

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Existentialism

• Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
• the crowd is untruth
• Autonomous individual, self-examination
  Christian Existentialism
• Who am I? What am I doing here? Where am I
  going?
• Attacked organized state religion proposed leap
  of faith
• Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
• Moral relativism
• If you gaze for long into the abyss, the abyss
  gazes also into you
• Sartre (1905-1980)
• Implications of a world not rooted in religion
• Individual place, freedom, ethics

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Edward Hopper, Nighthawks (1942)
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Identity Politics since 1945

• Civil rights for minorities (1960s-present)
• Second-wave feminism (1970s-present)
• Gay and lesbian rights (1980s-present)
• Growing sense of cultural pluralism as Western
  nations become home to more and more people from
  different civilizations and as native peoples
  assert their rights

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Juane Quick-to-See Smith, Indian, Indio,
Indigenous (1992)
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Architecture

• The Modern and the Postmodern

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Le Corbusier, a European modernist architect a
house is a machine for living in. Le
Corbusier-haus, Berlin
How does this apartment house compare and
contrast with other architectures we have
studied Greek and Roman, Gothic, Renaissance,
Rococo, Neo-Classical?
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American modernist architecture

• Louis Sullivan (1856-1924)
• Form ever follows function

Wainwright Building, St. Louis1890-91 With terra
cotta tile organic decoration
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Mies van der Rohe, a European modernist and
admirer of Sullivan Less is More The
Seagrams Building, NYC
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American modernist architecture

• Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959)
• Function is accomplished through form
• Organic architecture
• Use of new materials ferroconcrete
• Flow of space vs. obstruction of space
• Private home, Fallingwater
• Guggenheim Museum (1957-1959)

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Frank Lloyd Wright organic architectureThe
Kauffman House outside Pittsburgh, aka
Fallingwater. How is this house organic?
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Frank Lloyd Wright Form Follows Function museum
goers walk down a spiral ramp inside, viewing art
on the walls in one continuous uninterrupted
stream. Democracy needs something basically
better than a box The Guggenheim Museum,
1957-59, New York City
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Atlantas Modernist High Museum how does form
follow function here?
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Midtown Atlanta Postmodernist Architecture.What
is modern looking about this skyline? What isnt?
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One Atlantic Center
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GLG Grand
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191 Peachtree Tower
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Frank Gehry, Postmodern Praguecomputer-aided
architecture
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End of Part I
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Exam Question 5

• Making reference to precise details of at least
  two specific works of contemporary (post-World
  War II) culture, describe how those works reflect
  the contemporary ages hopes and anxieties.
• Hint read page 595

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Peggy Guggenheim the Medici of Modern Art
Guggenheims Art of this Century gallery in NYC
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Pre-WWIIModern Art
Picassos Le Gourmet (1901) What other modern
artists does this resemble? (see, this guy can
really paint too!)
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Picassos cubist style
Portrait of Maya with a Doll (1938) How is
Picasso moving away from the conventions of past
art?
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Postwar Picasso
Musketeer (1968) Picasso has moved towards a
very colorful, almost cartoonish geometrical
abstraction. What elements of traditional realist
art remain here?
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Romare Bearden, American Cubist and collagist
Rocket (left) and Train (right)
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Pre-WWII Expressionism
Munch, Anxiety How is munch expressing the
interior state of anxiety in this painting?
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NewExpressionism
Francis Bacon Self Portrait
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NewExpressionism
Francis Bacon Head
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NewExpressionism
Francis Bacon Three Studies for Figures at the
Base of a Crucifixion (3)
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Art Since 1945Prodigious variety numerous styles

• International dilution of American art
• Refugee teachers, artists
• Peggy Guggenheim
• Patron of modern art

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Painting Since 1945Abstract Expressionism

• Color field paintings
• Color detached from imagery
• Artistic goals
• Break with other conventions of art
• Feeling, not seeing

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Jackson Pollock at work
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Pollock, The She Wolf What is being expressed
here?
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Pollock, Eyes in the Heat What is being
expressed here?
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Pollock, Number 1 (1948) Freewrite
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Adolph Gottlieb in front of his painting, Spray
1957
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Adolph Gottlieb,color field painting Icon
(1964)The abstract shapes and colors evoke
feelings and provoke assocationsFREEWRITE
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Robert Motherwell, Elegy for the Spanish Republic
n34, 1953-54
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Mark Rothko, Center Tryptich for Rothko Chapel,
1966, Houston. The panels of varying shades of
the same color are meant to be meditated upon,
much like Byzantine icons.
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Painting Since 1945The Return to Representation

• Consideration of the object painting the stuff
  of everyday life
• Jasper Johns (b. 1930)
• Robert Rauschenberg (b. 1925)
• John Cages Happenings
• Combine paintings
• Andy Warhol
• Pop Art, popular culture, consumerism

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Jasper Johns, Painted Bronze, 1960,
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Robert Rauschenberg, Monogram, 1955-59, oil and
collage on canvas, with stuffed goat and tire
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Andy Warhol makes art out of the supermarketCoke
Bottles and Campbells Soup Can
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Roy Lichtenstein, Blam!, 1962Making art out of
mass media and pop culture
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Photorealism.Chuck Close, Self Portrait
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Minimalism Ellsworth Kelly Grey Panels 2 1974
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Contemporary Sculptureis playful, serious,
creepy and wonderful

• Continuity Experimentation
• New materials, technical skills
• David Smith (1906 1965)
• Alexander Calder (1898 1976)
• Assemblage
• Disparate materials?Organic wholes
• Nevelson, Cornell, Segal, Kienholz

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David Smith, Cubi VII, 1964. 
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Alexander Calder, Three Up and Three Downat the
High Museum of Art, Atlanta 
What style is the building in the background?
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Louise Nevelson, Sky Cathedral (1958) 
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Joseph Cornell, two box works circa 1950 
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George Segal, Bus Riders
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Segal, The Diner (1964)
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Claes Oldenburg, Floor Burger, 1962, Canvas, foam
rubber, 52 x 84'
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Claes Oldenburg, Clothespin, 1976, cor-Ten and
stainless steel, Center Square, Philadelphia
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Edward Kleinholz, The State Hospital, 1966
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Christo and Jeanne Claude, Running Fence, 1972
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Christo and Jeanne Claude, The Gates, NYC 2006
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Nam June Paik, Megatron
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Nam June Paik, TV Buddah, 1974
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Nam June Paik, Nomad
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Maya Ying Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1982.
This view closes the circle of culture, as the
modern memorial is balanced by the Ancient
Egyptian-themed Washington Monument.
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The End