I am taking a leap backwards to catch up to weeks I did not have a precis in but had to take notes and read the articles nonetheless. I will readily admit that almost all of the readings we have done have felt like they flew right over my head. I have tried my hardest to understand and connect the dots but I always feel a tiny bit behind. I will try harder and take better notes when I am reading. Discussing them in class really does help me understand all the dense material we read.
For Week Two we had articles over modernism. We had readings by Harrison, Kant, Foucault, Greenberg, Pippin, and Habermas. Being my first week, I read them and felt a bit overwhelmed with the level of reading and the degree of writing in these articles. I did have some previous knowledge of Greenberg so it helped a little bit. I mostly made notes in the margins of my printed notes and highlighted parts I found to be important. I discovered quickly that while it was more easily read, it was harder to find what I wanted to read about to follow along in class without separate notes. This point on I did better and wrote notes as I read online.
MODERNISM
- Thomas Hart Benton on the cover of Time, December 24, 1934
- Start papers with a quote from Foucault
- Artists will pick and choose from the writings of art historians
- part of the dialogue artists have to use.
- Hegel is the way we teach art history, how we teach art history. Move in a linear motion to something "greater". Linear model of understanding progress in art
- degree in English (literature) . Grew up in New York. Worldly New York Jew. Being Jewish during WWII. wrote Kitsch when around 28-29. Very left leaning, mysoginyst.
- After Romanticism the world keeps moving WEST
- Italy: West to Paris: THEN WWII: West then to New York
- lots of Europeans came over to America, NY
- Cultural influx
- NY Steals the idea of Modern Art (1945 American art even considered)
- Separates Avant-garde and Kitsch by the distinction between intellectual/ wealthy art from the newly coming art of the newly wealthy and earning money
- high art considered abstract
- mention sentimental, "precious moments," kitschy
- focus on the medium, flatness, etc
- politics: propaganda, Mussolini, Hitler.
- political regime are now patrons: Catholic Church, etc, war, hitler
- Avant-garde: superior consciousness of history. keep culture moving
- Front Guard: term of military
- not useful to those in power because it is innocent, pg. 20
- "high art." People no longer have time to learn the language, the history behind high art to enjoy it or communicate it to the 'common people'
- people of the working class do not have time to busy themselves with high art
- despite the attempt at teaching, the masses go to entertainment culture
- Kitsch: easy to absorb that type of feeling into propaganda
- Nazi Germany, etc
- kitschy art became a weapon too easily,
- why Greenberg was so afraid of it, as a Jew
- does not see it necessary
- kitsch would not be possible with mass production, industrialism
- kitsch, destroying folk culture
- become the first universal culture
- "native cultures" being corrupted
- before globalization had the chance to corrupt, that is why is upset. Placing getting kitschy art in the most remote places, folk culture being oventaken by industrialization
- folk is more an interpretation of handmade and local, while kitsch is trying to replace it with art with a sense of control
- (IMAGES IN SLIDE SHOW)
- Hart Benton, Arts of the West, 1932
- images help in rebuilding of American, New Deal
- post-war modernism?
- teacher of Pollock
- Pollock, Auntumn Rhythm: Num. 30, 1950
- said he wanted to go in reverse of his teacher's style
- Greenberg liked him: flatness, purity, only comparable to itself, to painting, no illusionistic, something you get all at once
- Hans Namuth Photographs of Jackson Pollock, 1950
- Harold Rosenberg/Clement Greenberg
- Rosenberg said art is in the action, but Greenberg did not agree because it was like theatre
- Mark Rothko, Yellow Band, (1903-70)
- went from Gestural to color field
- also approved by Greenberg
- opticallity of you, you get it all at once
- Barnett Numan
- thrived under Greenberg because he would go into their studios and give them ways to paint their art
- american gov used kitschy posters to promote freedom, also send paintings of abstract paintings abroad into Europe, places that were occupied
- after war, and in Soviet Union, sent abstract art into gallery shows next to local kitschy local gov art to show what you can do in a free nation
- Normal Rockwell
- Regionalist, Greenberg though were backawter and not approved of
- Only thought of white males in his appropriate and praise of art. Not inluding women, colored people, etc
- Jackson Pollock, Blue Poles, Number 11, 1952
- Helen Frankenthaler, Mountain
- Morris Louis
- Kenneth Noland, Turnsole
- Jules Olitski
- spray paint to make his optical paintings
- Robert Motherwell
- worked at Black Mountain College
TOWARDS A NEWER LAOCOON
- Why did we move to abstraction and why it has to become pure
- Jean-Leon Gerome, what was wrong with art
- painting suffered the most under the Romantics. Death of painting
- our eyes are supposed to have the ability have an all over, take into account of the entire plane of the canvas. Immediate
- literature painting not good because it makes you linger and then makes you think of something other than the painting itself. does not satisfy a self-criticality
- there could never remain a pure abstraction because now we think of what Greenberg said about flatness and no longer are just obseving the painting itself. So his own ideals are no longer relevant
- very powerful legacy, Greenberg
- Baudelaire and Manet go hand in hand, friends
- Courbet has representation in his painting but on the canvas destroys it so you just focus on the paintings
- Vibration of painting as the opticality that you get the entire painting at once
- Manet achieves flatness
- puts opposition in colors,
- no modeling, creates flatness
- takes historical subject matter, Olympia vs Venus of Urbino
- held at bay by her glance, representation to reinfornce flatness, a prostitute,
- Olympia, typical name of prostitute at his time
- Modernity
- Modern is also like contemporary
- Modernization like industrialization
- Modernism, movement in various fields: music, literature, art
- Modernity: the condition to be modern in a specific time
- David first modernist in lots of ways
- Modernism is a social and a formal problem
- Paris post revolution, mass production, prositutes on the streets, new social phenomena (women on streets w/o companions, voyeuristic Paris, Prostitutes wear same clothing as upper class lady) Social codes of class kept upper from lower but now a growing middle class
- "Luncheon on the Grass", scene we will not be a part of, flat paper doll of the prostitute, no room for mistinterpretation.
- Baudelaire: modernity does not exist in real life and only produced in "art" in representations.
- to be a Modern Person, is to understand ones own construction. You produce yourself. You are not happening, you are making yourself as a product.
- art inseperable from morality and utility
- Epoch, big period, era
- Baudelaire enjoyed Manet because he took up the portraits and images of people, the lies of social class enabled by industrialization
- Courbet, country side middle class land owners, lower class move to city to try and find work
- funerals and burials become a place of class because lower class individuals could not pay for tickets to go to pay respects and if they could afford the ticket, they could not afford to be off of work
- Recall flatness by classical sculpture but use line. Use off black box to limit paintings as an illusion
- Modernism allows for this to exist
MODERNIST PAINTING: Greenberg
- we get to purity because art has to justify itself
- optical illusion, using representation in subject matter, seen into but not seen as a window, no moving into the space but can see into it optically all at once
WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT? Kant
- enlightenment is courage to think for oneself with a bit of obediance
- Praise Frederick II of Prussia for his tolerance of religion and arts, etc. Progressive leader
- Kant tries to pat Fred on the back while showing other leaders how to be great with a little bit of pushing
- Enlightenment (capital E) is scientific and religious of the time. Politically important, during American and French Revolution. Final break from feudalism
- enlightenment (lower case e) is Kant's idea. Think for oneself, etc. Exercising things the Enlightenment promoted. Broadening ones mind.
- tied to observation as the way to learn about the world and yourself
- abandon religion in favor of science. Scientific method. When modern science comes into play. Through experience and observation.
- can grow through experience and become different, smarter.
- not fixed to your social statement
- Rousseau, John Locke, etc
- focuses on religion because Fred II is Protestant and big fan of religious freedom
- very Critical of Catholic Church during Enlightenment because of the power it held in many kingdoms, religion is nothing without faith
- Privately, you are a cog in a machine and must stick with certain rules of what is expected of you
- Publically you are allowed to speak your mind on whatever you desire
- only allowed that type of speech because of a democratic system
- Enlightenment is seen as betterment in present day. Experience.
- you have a theory and then argue it and prove a point, etc
- We are a work in progress. Calls to arms
- WHY DOES GREENBERG GO TO KANT?
- universality, universal truth
- examination of the self
- always history and constemporary
- how they appear and how they really are
- think critically, modernity is the moment when the self is critical
- Foucault says that the main questions to ask ourselves in enlightenment is how do we come to know ourselves, how do we fit it the social sphere? how do we react to our own actions?
HABERMAS
- marks the moment of modernity as a self critical one but ebings to mark philosphy as a self critical and self reflexive thing.
- one would exercise (in foucaults words) an etemology, engaged in the contemporary moment you are in and understand the historical moments that are produced through the structures of which you understand yourself.
- idenity producecd through fields of knowledge, in the widest sense
- science, math, language
- problems with foucaults reading of kant is his writings on power
- doesnt seem to apply his own analysis of Kant and rather takes Kant at his word and doesn't acknowledge that Kant comes from a certain historical moment.
- Kant doesnt deal with power, Fred is just a pawn in system of power, give and take, no middle class, no one to rise up and rebel
- wouldn't appeal to middle class person working in factory, etc
- how can you explode something when you are part of the result of it?
WHAT WAS ABSTRACT ART? Pippin
- brings together all the strains, dealing with self, paintings, modernity, etc
- gradual dematerialization of understand
- towards greater abstraction. painting ends with romanticism, the arts will go on and end in poetry
- connect the self through is concept of the spirit (god, gheistheim, divine)
- divine is errative humanism, manifests itself in self criticism, critical thought
- Hegel anticipates abtraction, flat painting, has inadequetly addressed
- beauty and pleasure to education, self-consciousness
- meaning making becomes about art making, the self actualized through art becomes art is the most self reflexive. anticipates abstraction
- nature is not human, not divine but illusion
- the eye sees without the mind, with the theory behind it, Greenberg Modernism. Move later
- social self is tied to art, rooted is philosphical discourse
- Cant go from Kant to Greenberg, much in between and he leaves out a lot.
- we are not beyond modernism, footnote 31
- modernity bigger project, misreading to see them as responses as formal problems in paint as they are tied to social issues, historical, religious and basica philosophical problems of being.
Modernity is an on-going project
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