Art Since 1940

This comprehensive and authoritative book illustrates art from the 1940's and stresses theindividualityof the artists in relation to their political, social, and cultural contexts.The book focuses onthe meaningof 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.

Jonathan Fineberg is Gutgsell Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois and a trustee of The Phillips Collection in Washington. He earned his B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, an M.A. from the Courtauld Institute in London, and studied psychoanalysis at the Boston and Western New England Institutes. He has taught at Yale, Harvard, and Columbia universities and among his awards are: the Pulitzer Fellowship in Critical Writing, the NEA Art Critic's Fellowship, and the College Art Association’s

Award for Distinguished Teaching in the History of Art. His other books include: Christo and Jeanne-Claude: On the Way to the Gates (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), The Innocent Eye: Children's Art and the Modern Artist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), Imagining America: Icons of 20th Century American Art (with John Carlin; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005; also a two-hour television special on PBS), and When We Were Young: New Perspectives on the Art of the Child (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).

Foreword to the Third Edition

Acknowledgments

Preface

 

1 Introduction

            Approaching Art as a Mode of Thought

            Modernism

            The Concept of the Avant-Garde

            Modernism’s Radical Individuality and Self-Critique

            Postmodernism

            An American Perspective/the Perspective of this Book

 

2 New York in the Forties

New York Becomes the Center

            Surrealism

            Wilfredo Lam

            Roberto Matta

            Joseph Cornell

            American Pragmatism and Social Relevance

            The Depression and the Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.)

            The Availability of European Modernism

            The Europeans in New York

The Sense of a New Movement in New York

            Commonalities and Differences Among the Artists of the New York School

            Automatism and Action in the Art of the New York School

            Action and Existentialism

            Clyfford Still

            Adolph Gottlieb

            Franz Kline

            Friends in and around the New York School

Alternative Narratives of the Forties

            Jacob Lawrence

            Hedda Sterne

            Louise Bourgeois

            Photography in the Era of the New York School

            Weegee and Lisette Model

            Aaron Siskind and the Chicago School

 

3 A Dialog with Europe

Alexander Calder

            Calder's Early Life and Themes

            Calder in Paris

            Cosmic Imagery and the Mobiles

Hans Hofmann

            Stylistic Lessons from Europe

            Hofmann's Art Theory

            Hofmann's Painting

Arshile Gorky

            Gorky's Life (Real and Imagined)

            The Development of Gorky's Style

            Gorky's Late Works

Robert Motherwell

            Intellectual Affinities with the European Moderns

            Recurring Themes in Motherwell's Work

            Teaching, Writing, and Editing in Motherwell's Early Career

            Motherwell's Painting

Willem de Kooning

            De Kooning's Training and Early Career

            The Dissolution of Anatomy into Abstraction

            The Anatomical Forms Dissolve into Brushstrokes

            De Kooning's Abstractions of the Fifties

            The "Women" of the Sixties and the Late Works

 

4 Existentialism Comes to the Fore

Jackson Pollock

            Pollock's Early Life and Influences

            Pollock's Breakthrough of the Early Forties

            Pollock's Transition to a Pure Gestural Style

            The Dripped and Poured Canvases

            Pollock in the Fifties

Barnett Newman

            The Revelation of Newman's Onement I

            The Paintings of the Late Forties

            Vir Heroicus Sublimis and Other Works of the Fifties

            The "Stations of the Cross"

Mark Rothko

            Rothko's Formative Years

            Turning to Classical Myth

            Surrealism, Psychoanalysis, and "the Spirit of Myth"

            "Heroifying" the Ineffable

            The Murals and Other Late Work

David Smith and the Sculpture of the New York School

            Smith's Initiation into the Art World

            The Aesthetic of Machines and the Unconscious

            The Pictograms and Hudson River Landscape

            An Existential Encounter with the Materials at Hand

            Career Success and Personal Sacrifices

            The Figural Presence and the Work of the Last Decade

 

5 The New European Masters of the Late Forties

Jean Dubuffet and Postwar Paris

            Dubuffet's Painting of the Forties

            Dubuffet's Philosophical Premises

            A Focus on Matter in the Fifties

            A Grand Style of Entropy

The Existentialist Figuration of Alberto Giacometti

Francis Bacon

 

6 Some International Tendencies of the Fifties

Purified Abstraction 1

            An Encounter with the Physicality of the Materials in Europe

            A Material Reading of Action Painting in New York

            Greenberg's Definition of Modernism

            The Greenberg School

            Formalist Painting

"New Images of Man" in Europe and America

            The Cobra

            The Figurative Revival of the Fifties

            Figurative Painting in the Bay Area

            Chicago’s Existential Imagist

 

7 The Beat Generation

"A Coney Island of the Mind"

            John Cage

            Merce Cunningham

            The Cage "Event" of 1952

Robert Rauschenberg

            The Self as a Mirror of Life

            Rauschenberg's Early Career

            The Combine Paintings

            The Drawings for Dante's Inferno

            The End of the Combines

            The Silkscreen Paintings

            Performance and the Prints of the Later Sixties

Real: Junk Assemblage and Happenings

Underground Film

            The Genesis of the Happenings

            The Judson Dance Theater

            Walk-in Paintings

Claes Oldenburg

            The "Cold Existentialism" of the "Ray Gun" and The Street

            The Store Days

            Soft Sculpture

            Proposals for Monuments

            Realizing Monuments and the Architectural Scale

Jasper Johns

            "Nature" Is How We Describe It

            Painting as a Discourse on Language

            An Aesthetic of "Found" Expression

            Emotion and Distance

            Incorporating Objects: What One Sees and What One Knows

            The Paintings of 1959

            The New Emotional Tone of the Early Sixties

            Explorations of Linguistic Philosophy

            Diver of 1962

            Periscope (Hart Crane)

            The Perceptual Complexity of Looking

            Dropping the Reserve

 

8 Asian and European Vanguards of the Later Fifties

Nouveau Réalisme

            Yves Klein's Romanticism

            Le Vide

            The "Living Brash"

            Seeking Immateriality

            Klein's Demise

            The Nouveaux Réalistes

Gutai

Fluxus

Joseph Beuys

            Revealing the Animism in Nature

            The Artist as Shaman

            Art as the Creative Life of the Mind

Nam June Paik’s Electronic “Nature”

Yoko Ono

 

9 The Landscape of Signs: American Pop Art

The Electronic Consciousness

            A Turning Point in Theory

British Pop: From the Independent Group to David Hockney

            Key Figures of the Independent Group

            The Exhibitions

            Paolozzi and Hamilton as Artists

            Popular Imagery into High Art

            David Hockney

            Collaging Reality on Pop Art's Neutral Screen of Images

Andy Warhol

            Warhol's Background

            Selecting Nonselectivity

            Eliminating the Artist's Touch

            A Terrifying Emptiness

            The Factory Scene

            Business Art and the "Shadows" that Linger Behind It

Roy Lichtenstein

James Rosenquist

Chicago and Points West

            H.C. Westermann

            Peter Saul

            The Hairy Who

West Coast Pop

            Funk Art

            Peter Voulkos

            The Politicized Cultural Climate of the Sixties

            William Wiley

            Ed Kienholz

            L.A. Pop

Robert Arneson

            Arneson's Break with Conventional Ceramics

            The Toilets

            A Technical Breakthrough

            Objects of the Mid-Sixties

            The Self-Portraits

            Discovering a Political Voice

            Introspection Via Pollock

 

10 In the Nature of Materials: The Later Sixties

Back to First Principles–Minimal Art

            Frank Stella

            Donald Judd

            Tony Smith

            Carl Andre

            Dan Flavin

            Robert Morris

            Sol Le Witt

            The Los Angeles Light and Space Movement

            Object/Concept/Illusion in Painting

            A Focus on Surface Handling in Painting

Eva Hesse and Investigations of Materials and Process

            Eva Hesse

            The Direct Sensuality of Fiberglass and Latex

Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra

            Bruce Nauman

            Richard Tuttle

            Richard Serra

Artists Working in the Landscape

            Michael Heizer

            Walter De Maria

            Robert Smiths

            An Accidental Rubric

Arte Povera, and a Persevering Rapport with Nature in Europe

 

11 Politics and Postmodernism

The Critical Atmosphere at the End of the Sixties

            Language and Measure

            Recasting Photography

            Art and Nature

            Vito Acconci: Defining a Conceptual Oeuvre

            Body Art

            Ana Mendieta

            Lygia Clark

            Hélio Oiticica

            Performance Art

            Political Comment

            Marcel Broodthaers

            Situationism

            The Potential for Broader Political Action

Christo and Jeanne-Claude

            Art in the Theater of Real Events

            The Shift to an Architectural Scale

            The Logistics of the Projects

            Surrounded Islands

            Christo and Jeanne-Claude in the Nineties and Beyond

Postmodernism

            Sigmar Polke

            Gerhard Richter

            John Baldessari

            Transition to the Seventies

 

12 Corporate Culture and its Enemies

A “New” Pluralism

Romare Bearden

            Bearden's Collages of the Sixties

            Identity, Corporate Culture, and Pluralism

            Art and Feminism

            A Dazzling Photorealism

            Everyday Places

            Appropriated Sites: Charles Simonds

            Gordon Matta-Clark's Site Critiques

Alice Aycock

            Aycock's Work of the Eighties

            Cultural Complexity

            Media as a Medium

Appropriation

            Cindy Sherman

 

13 Painting in the Seventies

Philip Guston's Late Style

            Guston's Early Career

            Guston's Action Paintings of the Fifties

            The Re-emergence of the Figure

New Expressionist Painting in Europe

            Jörg Immendorff's Political Analysis of Painting in the Seventies

            Identity on the Plane of Images

            Georg Baselitz and A.R. Penck

            Anselm Kiefer

            Italian Neo-Expressionism

            Francesco Clemente

New Image Painting

            Elizabeth Murray

            The Origins of Murray's Style

            Pursuing the Logic of the Shaped Canvas

            The Internationalization of Neo-Expressionism

American Neo-expressionism

 

14 The Eighties

Complexity Settles In

            A Fresh Look at Abstraction

            An Expressionism Beyond Medium: Jonathan Borofsky

            Graffiti Art

            Keith Haring

            The East Village Scene of the Eighties

            Jean-Michel Basquiat

            David Wojnarowicz

Eighties Installation

The Peculiar Case of the Russians

            Ilya Kabakov

            Kabakov in the West

The Aesthetic of Consumerism

            Political Appropriation

 

15 The Nineties

Keeping it Real

Return to the Body

            Ann Hamilton

            Transgressive Dislocations of the Body

            Matthew Barney

Fashion

Controversial Methods

Postmodern Conceptualism

Constructing the Postmodern Self

Louise Bourgeois

New Uses of the Camera

Video

Slippage: Fred Tomaselli

Roxy Paine’s Taxonomy

Cultural Identity

            Kerry James Marshall

The Comics

Global Culture and Local Meaning

China

 

16 A New Century, A Changed World

Violated Boundaries

Economies

            “©Murakami”: Branding the Self

            Conrad Bakker–Parsing the Fictions of Real Economies

            Andrea Fraser: Context and Self

Detached Subjectivity

            Identity and Shopping: Sang-ah Choi

            Dissolution, Dislocation, Displacement of Boundaries–An Autopsy on Identity

            An Alternative History

 

17 To Say the Things That Are One's Own

 

Bibliography

Notes

Index