BEST AMERICAN ART

Art and Music in Early Modern Europe

2011-12-08T15:09:00.000-05:00

By Alexandra A. Jopp As Dutch-born historian Hendrik Willem Van Loon said, “The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress.”[1] Indeed, art can tell us with remarkable accuracy a great deal about lives and cultures, both our own and those in other parts of the world. It can illustrate the tides of

Modernism and Artistic Developments

2011-08-27T13:08:00.000-04:00

By Alexandra A. Jopp Modernism was the “cultural outcome of modernity, the social experience of living in the modern world.”[1] Many artists and critics, starting in the 1940s, abandoned traditional historicism and art forms in favor of a search for new standards, leading to an abundance of original writings, actions, reactions and artistic developments.When reflecting on

Topics in Western Art: Romanticism and Romantic Art: Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) (CONT.)

2011-06-28T19:33:00.000-04:00

By Alexandra Jopp Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) (CONT.) About the Artist The Independent: "Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) is the great painter of loss and longing. He painted Romantic landscapes – ruins, forests, mountains, oceans, nights. He said: "Close your bodily eye, so that you may see your picture first with your spiritual eye; then bring to the light of day that which you

Topics in Western Art: Romanticism and Romantic Art: Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840)

2011-06-28T19:27:00.000-04:00

By Alexandra Jopp Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), a major figure in the German Romantic movement, was born in Pomerania, studied in Copenhagen, and later settled in Dresden. Pomeranian landscapes are depicted in many of his works: the sandy beaches along the Baltic seashore, the meadows, the forests, and of course the sea. Friedrich was well known for his melancholy pictures, often times

NOTES ON VARIOUS ART MOVEMENTS SINCE THE MIDDLE OF THE 19th CENTURY.

2011-06-26T21:39:00.000-04:00

CONCEPTUAL ART Extreme phase of Modern Art in which ideas are presented in diagram or in description, rather than in conventional execution as a painting or sculpture. Term embracing various forms of art in which the idea for a work is considered more important than the finished product, if any. Conceptual art became a major, international phenomenon in the 1960’s

NOTES ON VARIOUS ART MOVEMENTS SINCE THE MIDDLE OF THE 19th CENTURY.

2011-06-26T21:34:00.000-04:00

ACTION PAINTING Sometimes used as an alternative term for Abstract Expressionism. In 1952, the critic Harold Rosenberg invented this term to emphasise the sheer physical activity involved in the creation of the large, spontaneously executed, abstract expressionist paintings like those of Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline among others. In this sort of work, the paint is dripped, splashed and

NOTES ON VARIOUS ART MOVEMENTS SINCE THE MIDDLE OF THE 19th CENTURY.

2011-06-26T13:25:00.002-04:00

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM Movement in Modern Art, especially painting, in which form and colour alone are the emotive forces, without recognisable reference to nature. Abstract Expressionism was the dominant school of painting in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, centred in New York, but practiced internationally. Rising out of the art of the 1940’s and even earlier in the work of Kandinsky,

NOTES ON VARIOUS ART MOVEMENTS SINCE THE MIDDLE OF THE 19th CENTURY.

2011-06-25T21:54:00.000-04:00

ABSTRACT ART / ABSTRACTION Generic, non-specific terms covering art that in various degrees departs drastically from the natural appearance of things. At its extreme, abstract art makes no reference whatsoever to nature, an aspect sometimes called ‘non-figurative’ or ‘non-objective’. An art form in which the essence of a subject is stated in a brief or simplified manner, with the emphasis on

NOTES ON VARIOUS ART MOVEMENTS SINCE THE MIDDLE OF THE 19th CENTURY.

2011-06-25T21:46:00.000-04:00

ART DECOA sleek, geometric, elegant style of decorative art, set against the world’s economic depression between the two world wars, in the 1920’s and 1930’s; and embracing painting, buildings, furniture, fashion, jewellery, sculpture, ceramics, interior design, vehicles, ships, graphics, etc. Notable examples are - the fashions of Paul Poiret, influenced by the Ballets

NOTES ON VARIOUS ART MOVEMENTS SINCE THE MIDDLE OF THE 19th CENTURY.

2011-06-25T21:35:00.000-04:00

SURREALISM A movement in Art and Literature originating in France and flourishing in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Characterised by a fascination with the bizarre, the incongruous and the irrational. It was conceived as a revolutionary mode of thought and action, a way of life rather than a set of stylistic attitudes, and in this, resembled Dadaism, its principal source. André

Real Space, Real Time: Environments, Happenings, and Fluxus Events

2011-06-25T20:25:00.000-04:00

Painter, printmaker, and occasional sculptor. The iconic abstract expressionist, he forged a singular style of great expressive power. Skeins of dripped, poured, and flung paint dominate his key all-over paintings of the late 1940s and early 1950s. "At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act- rather than a space in which to

Edward Hopper: Nighthawks, 1942- the loneliness of a large city

2011-06-25T19:30:00.000-04:00

Edward Hopper (1882–1967), Nighthawks, 1942, AIC Edward Hopper said that Nighthawks was inspired by a "restaurant on New York's Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet." The “empty triangular lot” where Greenwich meets 11th Street and Seventh Avenue, otherwise known as Mulry Square. But the image - with its carefully constructed composition and lack of narrative - has a timeless, universal

The Roots of Moscow Conceptual Art

2011-06-16T16:42:00.000-04:00

By Alexandra A Jopp The emergence of Conceptualism marked a critical moment in late twentieth century art. British philosopher Peter Osborne described the movement as “An art of ideas, which can be written, published, performed, fabricated, or which can simply remain inside your head – it is also an art of questions.” Since its arrival in the mid-1960s, it has challenged views about society,

Consumerism, Semiotics and the Landscape of Signs: Pop Art and Neo-Dada

2011-06-14T09:35:00.057-04:00

By Alexandra A Jopp When the Pop art movement emerged in New York 50 years ago, it immediately raised the question, what is Pop art? The most general explanation is that Pop art develops its imagery from popular and commercial culture. In the early 1960s, “by imitating the look of mass-produced images – from comic books, newspapers, and packaging design – Pop artists began to blur the lines

The Contingency of Form: Humble Materials, Perception and Process

2011-06-07T22:49:00.002-04:00

The Contingency of Form: Humble Materials, Perception and Process By Alexandra A Jopp The phenomenological basis of the beholder’s experience is a necessity in Minimal art. How the viewer perceives the relationships among the various parts of the work and how he or she sees the work in its entirety is crucial. The reappearance of forms in Minimal sculpture provides

Minimalism: Specific Objects and Experienced Variable

2011-06-05T21:16:00.031-04:00

By Alexandra A Jopp Analyses of the Minimalist artists Donald Judd and Robert Morris generally focus on their three-dimensional work. The aesthetics of both artists are based on the principles of geometrical abstraction, the placement of simple geometric forms in non-illusionistic space, combined into non-objective compositions. Morris and Judd doubted the value of the compositional norms of

Greenbergian Modernism II

2011-05-31T23:54:00.001-04:00

By Alexandra A. Jopp In the July-August 1940 issue of Partisan Review, the Marxist-Trotskyist intellectual journal, there appeared an essay on modern art by Clement Greenberg titled Towards a Newer Laocoon. The arguments in this essay, T.J. Clark writes, “stake out the ground for Greenberg’s later practice as a critic and set down the main lines of a theory and history of culture since 1850 –

Thoughts on Surrealism II

2011-05-29T13:18:00.002-04:00

By Alexandra A Jopp In the 1930s, Surrealism ceased being merely a Parisian phenomenon as political instability and impending war in Europe led members of the movement to travel overseas. Andre Breton, for example, moved to Latin America to promote French culture and continue his efforts to build the Surrealist movement internationally. While in Mexico, Breton and other members of his group

Thoughts on Surrealism

2011-05-29T13:17:00.000-04:00

By Alexandra A Jopp When the innovations of a movement become routine, artists, poets and writers look for new motifs and sources of inspiration. For instance, Picasso developed an interest in primitivism and colonialism after his 1907 visit to the Musee d’Ethnographie du Trocadero in Paris (now the Musee de l’Homme). As the artist wrote:The masks weren’t just like any

Clement Greenberg: Modernist Painting

2011-05-25T15:04:00.000-04:00

By Alexandra A Jopp “Would you like another Sir?” Glancing up as the ice melted away under the mellow heat as the summer afternoon sun slowly dissolved into evening, he smiled and gave a slight nod. “Please”. “Very good Sir, Crown Royal on the rocks” and the waiter went back inside, leaving him to continue his solitary contemplation. A nice restaurant, he thought, nice view, good service

CATHOLIC COFFEE

2010-05-18T14:54:00.003-04:00

AIC The Art Institute of Chicago AWCS American Water Color Society BAC Boston Art Club 90, BE Brooklyn Eagle BFAA Buffalo Fine Arts Academy CAM Cincinnati Art Museum CAMSL City Art Museum, Saint Louis; now the Saint Louis Art Museum CI Carnegie Institute, Pittsburg; now Carnegie Museum of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., DMA Detroit Museum of Art 1889 DRG Durand-Ruel

Surrealism in the USA

2010-04-11T23:32:00.000-04:00

By Alexandra A. Jopp In the United States, Surrealism moved from a political and literary movement toward one that focused more on visual style. European artists in America explored low and high perspectives, moving from the metropolitan modernity of New York City to the “fantastically shaped landscapes and cactus-shaped deserts” of Arizona (Tythacott 160). The

The East, the West, Delacroix and Picasso

2010-03-29T11:43:00.000-04:00

By Alexandra A Jopp The East has been very tempting to Western observers for centuries. It is an eternal enigma, an eternal “other,” unknown, exclusive and hidden from the eyes of Europeans under the black, silky veil of tokens and legends. It has typically been seen as a hot, restless, extremely emotional, vigorous, sometimes aggressive but invariably seductive and attractive world. Everything

Man Ray, An American in Paris - Ciel de Paris

2010-03-27T02:21:00.001-04:00

U.S. art vs. Europe

2010-03-25T16:41:00.000-04:00

For some Europeans, especially those in the cultural elite, Americans will always be déclassé. The United States, in their conception, is the land where great art goes to be homogenized, a place forever more rearguard than avant-garde. Or, as Oscar Wilde put it, “America is the only country to go from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.” It is little surprise, then, that

U.S. Artists and the Surrealist Movement

2010-03-18T12:18:00.001-04:00

Slide 2 .O {font-size:149%;} By Alexandra Jopp Paris was in a state of magical metamorphosis between the World Wars Ilse Bing, Eiffel Tower, 1934. Gelatin silver print Ilse Bing, Danseuse-Cancan, Moulin Rouge, Paris, 1931.Gelatin silver print In America

Stuart Davis (1892–1964)

2010-03-08T10:46:00.000-05:00

Stuart Davis, Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum.