Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being

by Fineberg, Jonathan

• ISBN13: 9780130858436
• ISBN10: 0130858439
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-01-01
• Publisher: Pearson College Div

Summary

This comprehensive and authoritative book illustrates art from the 1940's and stresses theindividuality of the artists in relation to their political, social, and cultural contexts. The book focuses onthe meaning of the major works and innovations. It features nearly 600 illustrations (approximately half in color) representing art since 1940, both in Europe and America. It explores the full range of periods, artists, and movements: New York in the Forties; Calder, Hofmann, Gorky, Motherwell, De Kooning; Existentialism (Pollock, Newman, Rothko, David Smith); The New European Masters of the Late Forties (Dubuffet, Giacometti, Bacon), plus so much more. For anyone interested in Postwar Art.

Author Biography

Jonathan Fineberg has taught at Yale, Harvard, and Columbia Universities.

Table of Contents

Foreword to the Second Edition	10	(1)
Acknowledgments	11	(2)
Preface	13	(1)
Introduction	14	(6)
Approaching Art as a Mode of Thought	14	(2)
The Concept of the Avant-Garde	16	(2)
The Critical Point of View of this Book	18	(2)
New York in the Forties	20	(22)
New York Becomes the Center	20	(11)
Surrealism	20	(4)
American Pragmatism and Social Relevance	24	(2)
The Depression and the Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.)	26	(2)
The Availability of European Modernism	28	(2)
The Europeans in New York	30	(1)
The Sense of a New Movement in New York	31	(11)
Commonalities and Differences Among the Artists of the New York School	32	(2)
Automatism and Action in the Art of the New York School	34	(1)
Action and Existentialism	35	(3)
Clyfford Still	38	(1)
Adolph Gottlieb	38	(1)
Franz Kline	39	(1)
Friends in and around the New York School	39	(3)
A Dialog with Europe	42	(44)
Alexander Calder	42	(10)
Calder's Early Life and Themes	42	(3)
Calder in Paris	45	(1)
Cosmic Imagery and the Mobiles	46	(6)
Hans Hofmann	52	(7)
Stylistic Lessons from Europe	52	(2)
Hofmann's Art Theory	54	(1)
Hofmann's Painting	55	(4)
Arshile Gorky	59	(8)
Gorky's Life (Real and Imagined)	59	(2)
The Development of Gorky's Style	61	(4)
Gorky's Late Works	65	(2)
Robert Motherwell	67	(7)
Intellectual Affinities with the European Moderns	68	(1)
Recurring Themes in Motherwell's Work	69	(1)
Teaching, Writing, and Editing in Motherwell's Early Career	69	(1)
Motherwell's Painting	70	(4)
Willem de Kooning	74	(12)
De Kooning's Training and Early Career	76	(1)
The Dissolution of Anatomy into Abstraction	77	(3)
The Anatomical Forms Dissolve into Brushstrokes	80	(4)
De Kooning's Abstractions of the Fifties	84	(1)
The ``Women'' of the Sixties and the Late Works	84	(2)
Existentialism Comes to the Fore	86	(42)
Jackson Pollock	86	(12)
Pollock's Early Life and Influences	86	(3)
Pollock's Breakthrough of the Early Forties	89	(1)
Pollock's Transition to a Pure Gestural Style	90	(2)
The Dripped and Poured Canvases	92	(5)
Pollock in the Fifties	97	(1)
Barnett Newman	98	(8)
The Revelation of Newman's Onement I	100	(2)
The Paintings of the Late Forties	102	(1)
Vir Heroicus Sublimis and Other Works of the Fifties	103	(3)
The ``Stations of the Cross''	106	(1)
Mark Rothko	106	(9)
Rothko's Formative Years	107	(1)
Turning to Classical Myth	108	(1)
Surrealism, Psychoanalysis, and ``the Spirit of Myth''	109	(2)
``Heroifying'' the Ineffable	111	(2)
The Murals and Other Late Work	113	(2)
David Smith and the Sculpture of the New York School	115	(13)
Smith's Initiation into the Art World	116	(2)
The Aesthetic of Machines and the Unconcious	118	(3)
The Pictograms and Hudson River Landscape	121	(1)
An Existential Encounter with the Materials at Hand	121	(1)
Career Success and Personal Sacrifices	122	(1)
The Figural Presence and the Work of the Last Decade	123	(5)
The New European Masters of the Late Forties	128	(20)
Jean Dubuffet and Postwar Paris	128	(10)
Dubuffet's Painting of the Forties	131	(1)
Dubuffet's Philosophical Premises	132	(3)
A Focus on Matter in the Fifties	135	(2)
A Grand Style of Entropy	137	(1)
The Existentialist Figuration of Alberto Giacometti	138	(4)
Francis Bacon	142	(6)
Some International Tendencies of the Fifties	148	(24)
Purified Abstraction	148	(12)
An Encounter with the Physicality of the Materials in Europe	148	(5)
A Material Reading of Action Painting in New York	153	(1)
Greenberg's Definition of Modernism	154	(1)
The Greenberg School	154	(2)
Formalist Painting	156	(4)
``New Images of Man'' in Europe and America	160	(12)
The Cobra	160	(2)
The Figurative Revival of the Fifties	162	(7)
Figurative Painting in the Bay Area	169	(1)
Existential Imagist Art in Chicago	170	(2)
The Beat Generation: The Fifties in America	172	(50)
``A Coney Island of the Mind''	172	(5)
John Cage	174	(1)
Merce Cunningham	175	(1)
The Cage ``Event'' of 1952	176	(1)
Gutai	176	(1)
Robert Rauschenberg	177	(11)
The Self as a Mirror of Life	177	(1)
Rauschenberg's Early Career	178	(3)
The Combine Paintings	181	(2)
The Drawings for Dante's Inferno	183	(1)
The End of the Combines	183	(1)
The Silkscreen Paintings	184	(3)
Performance and the Prints of the Later Sixties	187	(1)
Appropriating the Real: Junk Sculpture and Happenings	188	(9)
Junk	188	(1)
The Genesis of the Happenings	188	(5)
The Judson Dance Theater	193	(1)
Fluxus	193	(1)
Walk-in Paintings	193	(4)
Claes Oldenburg	197	(9)
The ``Cold Existentialism'' of the ``Ray Gun'' and The Street	197	(1)
The Store Days	198	(1)
Soft Sculpture	199	(3)
Proposals for Monuments	202	(1)
Realizing Monuments and Architectural Scale	203	(3)
Jasper Johns	206	(16)
``Nature'' Is How We Describe It	206	(1)
Painting as a Discourse on Language	206	(2)
An Aesthetic of ``Found'' Expression	208	(1)
Emotion and Distance	209	(1)
Incorporating Objects: What One Sees and What One Knows	209	(1)
The Paintings of 1959	210	(3)
The New Emotional Tone of the Early Sixties	213	(1)
Explorations of Linguistic Philosophy	213	(2)
Diver of 1962	215	(1)
Periscope (Hart Crane)	216	(1)
The Perceptual Complexity of Looking	217	(1)
The Hatch Mark Paintings	217	(3)
Dropping the Reserve	220	(2)
The European Vanguard of the Later Fifties	222	(22)
Nouveau Realisme	222	(9)
Yves Klein's Romanticism	222	(2)
Le Vide	224	(1)
The ``Living Brush''	224	(2)
Seeking Immateriality	226	(2)
Klein's Demise	228	(2)
The Nouveaux Realistes	230	(1)
Joseph Beuys	231	(6)
Revealing the Animism in Nature	232	(1)
The Artist as Shaman	233	(1)
Art as the Creative Life of the Mind	234	(3)
British Pop: From the Independent Group to David Hockney	237	(7)
Key Figures of the Independent Group	237	(1)
The Exhibitions	237	(2)
Paolozzi and Hamilton as Artistis	239	(1)
Reintegrating Popular Imagery into High Art	240	(1)
David Hockney	241	(3)
The Landscape of Signs: American Pop Art 1960 to 1965	244	(50)
The Electronic Consciousness and New York Pop	244	(6)
A Turning Point in Theory	244	(2)
Events that Shaped the Popular Consciousness	246	(1)
Collaging Reality on Pop Art's Neutral Screen of Images	246	(4)
Andy Warhol	250	(9)
Warhol's Background	251	(1)
Selecting Non-Selectivity	251	(2)
Eliminating the Artist's Touch	253	(1)
A Terrifying Emptiness	253	(3)
The Factory Scene	256	(1)
Business Art and the ``Shadows'' that Linger Behind It	257	(2)
Roy Lichtenstein	259	(2)
James Rosenquist	261	(6)
H.C. Westermann, Peter Saul, and the Hairy Who	267	(10)
H.C. Westermann	267	(3)
Peter Saul	270	(2)
The Hairy Who	272	(5)
West Coast Pop	277	(9)
Funk Art	277	(3)
Peter Voulkos	280	(1)
The Politicized Cultural Climate of the Sixties	281	(1)
William Wiley	281	(2)
Ed Kienholz	283	(1)
L.A. Pop	283	(3)
Robert Arneson	286	(8)
Arneson's Break with Conventional Ceramics	286	(1)
The Toilets	287	(1)
A Technical Breakthrough	287	(2)
Objects of the Mid Sixties	289	(1)
The Self-Portraits	289	(2)
Discovering a Political Voice	291	(1)
Introspection via Pollock	291	(3)
In the Nature of Materials: The Later Sixties	294	(44)
Back to First Principles-Minimal Art	294	(17)
Frank Stella	297	(2)
Donald Judd	299	(1)
Tony Smith	300	(1)
Carl Andre	301	(2)
Dan Flavin	303	(1)
Robert Morris	304	(2)
Sol LeWitt	306	(1)
The Los Angeles Light and Space Movement	307	(2)
Object/Concept/Illusion in Painting	309	(1)
A Focus on Surface Handling in Painting	310	(1)
Eva Hesse and Investigations of Materials and Process	311	(5)
Eva Hesse	312	(1)
The Direct Sensuality of Fiberglass and Latex	313	(3)
Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra	316	(7)
Bruce Nauman	316	(2)
Richard Tuttle and Richard Serra	318	(5)
Artists Working in the Landscape	323	(9)
Michael Heizer	323	(3)
Walter De Maria	326	(1)
Robert Smithson	327	(4)
An Accidental Rubric	331	(1)
Arte Povera, and a Persevering Rapport with Nature in Europe	332	(6)
Politics and Postmodernism: The Transition to the Seventies	338	(38)
Re-Radicalizing the Avant-Garde	338	(18)
The Critical Atmosphere of the Late Sixties	338	(2)
Language and Measure	340	(2)
Art from Nature	342	(4)
Vito Acconci: Defining a Conceptual Oeuvre	346	(1)
Body Art	347	(2)
Ana Mendieta	349	(1)
Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica	349	(2)
Performance Art	351	(1)
Nam June Paik's Electronic Nature	352	(2)
Direct Political Comment	354	(1)
Marcel Broodthaers	354	(2)
Situationism	356	(1)
The Potential for Broader Political Action	356	(1)
Christo and Jeanne-Claude	356	(9)
Art in the Theater of Real Events	356	(4)
The Shift to an Architectural Scale	360	(3)
The Logistics of the Projects	363	(1)
The Surrounded Islands	363	(1)
Christo and Jeanne-Claude in the Nineties	364	(1)
Postmodernism	365	(11)
Sigmar Polke	365	(6)
Gerhard Richter	371	(3)
John Baldessari	374	(2)
Surviving the Corporate Culture of the Seventies	376	(38)
A New Pluralism	376	(18)
Art and Feminism	381	(3)
Photography in the Mainstream	384	(1)
A Dazzling Photorealism	384	(3)
Entering the Real Space	387	(2)
Public Sites	389	(3)
Appropriated Sites: Charles Simonds	392	(1)
Gordon Matta-Clark's Site Critiques	392	(1)
The Complexity That Is Culture	393	(1)
Romare Bearden	394	(4)
Bearden's Collages of the Sixties	395	(3)
Alice Aycock	398	(7)
Metaphor Replaces Physicality in Aycock's Work of the Eighties	401	(4)
Philip Guston's Late Style	405	(9)
Guston's Early Career	405	(3)
Guston's Action Paintings of the Fifties	408	(1)
The Reemergence of the Figure	408	(6)
Painting at the End of the Seventies	414	(30)
New Expressionist Painting in Europe	414	(14)
Jorg Immendorff's Political Analysis of Painting	416	(1)
Grappling with Identity	417	(1)
Georg Baselitz and A.R. Penck	418	(2)
Anslem Kiefer	420	(4)
Italian Neo-Expressionism	424	(1)
Francesco Clemente	425	(1)
The Internationalization of Neo-Expressionism	426	(2)
The Peculiar Case of the Russians	428	(5)
Ilya Kabakov	430	(3)
New Imagist Painting and Sculpture	433	(11)
Elizabeth Murray	439	(1)
The Origins of Murray's Style	440	(1)
Pursuing the Logic of the Shaped Canvas	440	(4)
The Eighties	444	(34)
A Fresh Look at Abstraction	444	(4)
American Neo-Expressionism	448	(15)
Jonathan Borofsky	452	(2)
Graffiti Art	454	(1)
Keith Haring	455	(2)
The East Village Scene of the Eighties	457	(1)
Jean-Michel Basquiat	457	(2)
David Wojnarowicz	459	(4)
Post-Modern Installation	463	(3)
Ann Hamilton	464	(2)
Appropriation	466	(12)
Cindy Sherman	470	(1)
The Aesthetic of Consumerism	471	(3)
Political Appropriation	474	(4)
New Tendencies of the Nineties	478	(26)
Return to the Body	478	(4)
Transgressing Body Boundaries	482	(2)
The Academy of the Avant Garde	484	(1)
Cultural Identity	484	(4)
New Uses of the Camera	488	(2)
Art as Controversy	490	(3)
Fashion	493	(3)
Slippage: Pop Culture and Romantic Nature	496	(3)
Postmodern Conceptualism	499	(1)
Constructing the Postmodern Self	500	(4)
To Say the Things That Are One's Own	504	(2)
Bibliography	506	(6)
Notes	512	(11)
Index	523