Transcription
Hello, best students. For today, a peacock dog about the visual arts after 1950, and especially in America. Let's, I hope you've gone through the PowerPoint. Occasionally, the information, and I won't read everything aloud because it's very annoying for you, so try to stick with the point a bit. When you look at the histories of what happened, say, in America from 1915 onwards, it's such that many artists in Europe actually left. Europe, of course, is after the First and Second World Wars, and a time when art was not interesting. Some even banned modern artists from working at all, so you actually see a flight to America with artists. Willem de Kooning, a Dutchman, went there and made very different art than the European artists were doing. You could say there's a big difference between European art and American art, that American art is really very big. In Europe, artists always paint on a canvas, the canvas stands on an easel, and that's only to a limited extent. Well, in America, it's a whole different world. You've also heard of Sigmund Freud. He, in the culture of the modern era, Freud actually makes you a bit aware of what you were experiencing in your subconscious, fears, dreams, and such things. And certainly for later artists, feeling and the subconscious play a very big role. It all takes place in New York. The rest of America isn't really involved. In Europe, after World War II, it's actually a bit of a mess, so New York becomes the center for the visual arts. That's where movements like Abstract Expressionism emerged, and I'm going to tell you a bit about that. Well, there are different Abstract Expressionist artists, like Jackson Pollock. Jackson Pollock didn't live very long; he died of AIDS. That's a shame because he was a great artist, very innovative. What he mainly did was create large artworks, but not on a canvas on an easel, but he laid the canvas on the floor. He didn't paint with a brush but dripped the paint onto the canvas, and then you get this web of lines and shapes and colors, and that was an incredibly new way of working at the time. Well, you also see here how he gets to work, as it were, he dances around the canvas. Sometimes he even stands in the middle, and when the canvas is finished, he only then determines its size. Well, his dripping, as it were, is known worldwide. Willem de Kooning, originally a Dutch artist, also became incredibly famous and earned a lot of money in New York. And what he does is create abstract paintings, but in a very intuitive way. You can view it on the website; it gives a good impression of what he's doing. And we actually know this abstraction from modern art, but the formats he works on, he doesn't do action painting. Here's another example, you see a bit of it, incredibly large. The size is visible of the action painting. Here are some characteristics listed: abstract paintings, large color contrasts, lines of paint that jump across each other, as it were. They are actually more like scrolls and streaks of paint, and it's all very direct, meaning without thinking, without studies, very large. Well, the Color Field painters, Color Field painting. These are artists who don't work with dripping paint and lines like Jackson Pollock, but they work with color fields, and what they found important was that color does something to you. Well, you can probably imagine if you paint your room entirely red, inside and out, it has a huge impact on you. When you're in that room, color works on your emotions, and that's something these artists want to evoke. Well, in a PowerPoint like this, a picture is worthless because it says nothing. These artworks are large. I still remember being in Cologne and seeing an exhibition of Rothko, and that was a long time ago, and I was enormously impressed because when you stand in front of such a gigantic artwork, you have the feeling you can walk into it. Those color fields are layered over each other, which gives a very special experience. So, you really have to see these kinds of artworks live and not through a PowerPoint, because that doesn't convey anything at all. Well, here are a few more examples. It's about emotion, it's about emotion, large color fields. Barnett Newman on the left, he uses the drips. That's how he does it. He just cuts off a color field, and then you have very sharp lines. And their work is almost a bit spiritual. He is also of Jewish origin, and sometimes you can meditate in front of such a painting. Here's another large one of his, as it were, but again, enormous size. You have to see this live. Well, every artwork tells a story, a fixed story. It's an artwork called "Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue?" Then you think, where is yellow? Yellow is here, a very small edge. This painting is too wide, gigantically large. A very large color field. Well, a visitor in the museum destroyed that artwork. He became so obsessed with the color red and its impact that he tore the entire painting to shreds, and that is, of course, incredibly sad. How do you even restore such an artwork? Well, the restorer who did that made a mess of it because he thought, "Now it's ready," and he painted over the red paint with a roller, thinking it was done. So, this artwork is actually lost forever, which is a great shame. More concrete characteristics listed: large format, color fields, broad brushstrokes. It's about emotion, the emotion of color on such a background. That is very new compared to what is happening in Europe. Just a quick look at the large painting by Josef Albers, "Red, Yellow, and Blue," and a bit of Rothko on the right. The movement that is a reaction to this is the Pop Art movement. Pop Art is the exact opposite of Abstract Expressionism. Pop Art is about realistic images, about painting things you see around you, things that have to do with the society of that time, yes, America. Well, it started a bit with Richard Hamilton, who made a collage and glued it all over with characteristics of modern society at the time. Very nationalistic. He has a tape recorder in the foreground. You see a can of ham, which is shown here, for example. You see a woman depicted in magazines. You see an expression of a vacuum cleaner with an enormously long hose, which was a huge improvement at the time for women in the household. And yes, everything you see here is about the consumer society. Well, American products are very sought after. There has always been a lot of attention for design and advertising in America, wanting to sell as much as possible. You want to earn a lot of money. It's still current today. And all those American products inspire artists because they think, "Why should I paint all sorts of other things? I can just paint what I encountered in the supermarket." And that captures the imagination enormously. So, here, cans of soup, for example, are cast in bronze, and it becomes a new artwork. Well, how does Pop Art actually arise? It's a reaction to the outcome of Abstract Expressionism. Pop Art is a feeling of, "I just need to make something that many people like." And it's also a reaction to the consumer society, showing that it's a very important item in American society. Well, what can you use from the consumer society? All sorts of things: advertisements in newspapers, consumer goods, household appliances. Stars are also depicted here. Marilyn Monroe, for example, is often portrayed. She is a characteristic of Pop Art. Characteristics of Pop Art listed: it's mainly about the consumer society, it must be recognizable, sometimes you can laugh at it, so it's not meant to be taken too seriously. The way advertising is presented in magazines is very similar to the way artworks are designed, and vice versa. So, they go together a bit. Well, some artists don't create the artwork themselves; they have it made. Andy Warhol had a great effect. He had others make what he conceived. Some things are not always for eternity. And yes, you actually see in all these artworks how diverse Pop Art is. Andy Warhol is one of the great Pop Art artists. And you see Elvis Presley portrayed here, and Marilyn Monroe. But he also made an artwork that looks like a package of wet wipes. Wet wipes, now, soap wipes that you can use to clean contact lenses. And then you think, "But what is art then?" It becomes so everyday that you have the feeling that when something becomes very everyday, it's actually made into art. Some artists also create enormous sculptures, like this shovel in the garden, meters high, sculptures of hamburgers that are enlarged, and also pieces from comic strips and magazines. Roy Lichtenstein is particularly good at this. It's not that he copies them, but he creates an artwork where the magazine serves as a comic strip, very busy, with speech bubbles and small dots, which he called pixels at the time. So, if you look closely at these kinds of things, these color fields, you see that they are all small dots. Well, this is a bit about what happened before 1970, roughly. So, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. If you look at what came after, it's a big mix of styles. You lose track a bit. I'll show you a few things. Postmodernism is everything that comes after Pop Art, you could say. And a number of artists became famous: Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Julian Schnabel. And it's not that one thing happens; incredibly diverse things happen. You have to look at the art. I'll show you five beautiful examples. Well, that's Postmodern art from around 1970-1980. And the feeling arises that art is not something that is only for people who understand it. You have high art, think of a work by Picasso, who made Cubist artworks that not everyone understands. You only understand it if you know something about Cubism, and that means you only have a small audience that understands your artworks. Well, in Postmodern art, everyone should find the art interesting; everyone should be able to understand it. You are allowed to incorporate objects from the past and use them again. And that's a completely different way of looking at art. A few examples: Jeff Koons, for example, who here, a balloon dog, placed it as a large artwork, made a sculpture of Michael Jackson with his monkey Bubbles, completely enlarged, drawing examples from Disney culture. And he makes these artworks himself; he conceives them and lets others make them. So, a new way of thinking. Robert Rauschenberg, a Dutch artist, does something similar. He makes replicas of paintings, so perhaps he creates Rembrandt's "The Night Watch," and here, for example, and actually a very strong idea that originality is not important at all because everything has already been done a bit. Keith Haring, one of the first graffiti artists, you could say. He made drawings in the New York subway stations that hung there for a while in the early phase and were then removed. And you see that he has also developed his own style, which is very stylized with small characters, you could say, that say quite a lot in their simplicity. Take Damien Hirst, very provocative art. This is an artist who is enormously sponsored by a rich industrialist. He creates artworks that often deal with life and death. And this skull, worth about 5 million euros, is completely covered with real diamonds, which is also quite provocative art. Well, we'll continue with this in HAVO 5, but perhaps with this explanation from me, you'll have a bit of a handle to understand this PowerPoint. We'll see each other again soon.