BEST AMERICAN ART by Alexandra Jopp

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 social and political change, the strengths and weaknesses of new trends, and the flaws and crimes of oppressive regimes. American artists in the 1960s had the good fortune to be working in a free environment that allowed them the opportunity to change the nature of the creative process. Their revised fields of vision explored the ways in which artists changed the core of formalist aesthetics, which resulted in changes of perception, as well as, to quote Morris, an “attempt to contradict one’s taste.” Morris further remarks in Notes on Sculpture IV that “changes in form can be thought of as a vertical sc...

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 how Modernism influenced art in the 1960s, it is important to note the role of American art critic and formalist Clement Greenberg, who had great influence as an arbiter of artistic quality, taste and value. His “Greenbergian Modernism” linked “high modern” art with artists who worked to refine a medium-specific approach to their work, and he preferred, above all, painterly Abstract Expressionism, especially Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. For Greenberg, the highest form of art was that which concerned itself so strictly with its medium and essential materials that the work was about the medium and noth...

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 have seen in darkness, so that it may react on others from the outside inwards." He composes scenes in mystic symmetry. He obscures things in mist or distance. He puts a mute element bang in the middle – a back-turned figure, a rugged cross. And the imagination rushes in." Religion Friedrich’s introspection paralleled his religious convictions and inspired him to paint nature scene combined with mysticism. Friedrich was once quoted as “the spirit of the world which is God reveals itself visibly and completely in nature…” (Siegel 35). The spiritual elements often make con...

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 depicting solitude and contemplation. His striking imagery, radical sense of design and understanding the nature and its variety of moods have made his art far beyond our comprehension. It seems Friedrich wished to convey a sense of mystery and enigma. Friedrich was indeed enigmatic and seemed to delve into the human spirit and the sub-conscious of the human being. His desire was to couple man with nature and show the symbiotic relationship between the two. Rewald supports this notion by asserting that Friedrich was: One of the European artists who created a new awareness of nature and made lan...

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 although its manifestations had been very diverse; Photos, Texts, Maps Diagrams, Sound Cassettes and Videos, etc. had been used as communication media. Most conceptual artists deliberately rendered their productions visually uninteresting in order to divert attention to the idea they express. Exponents and admirers of Conceptual art see it as posing questions about the nature of art and provocatively expanded its boundaries. To the general public, and to modern critics, it usually seems pretentious and hollow. Some names connected with this wave are: Joseph Kosuth, Daniel Buren, Ed Ruscha and Robert Barry, who...

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 poured over the canvas, which is often laid on the floor rather than placed upright.  Occasionally buckets of paint were literally hurled at the canvasses, letting a completely random result stand for fine art.  JACKSON POLLOCK   Convergence, 1952 FRANZ KLINE   New York, 1953 Free Form, 1946 Jackson Pollock  (American, 1912-1956) One: Number 31, 1950 Jackson Pollock  (American, 1912-1956) NAÏVE OR PRIMITIVE ART Originally used to describe the work of untrained artists who, nevertheless, had some innate ability. Some artist...