Slide 1:
Center of the Art world moves from Paris to New York
Lenin is hidden in – 2 icons of the 20th Centruy is blended together
Cult of leader with iconic style of Pollock
Struggle between style and image
Intensity of communis sympathies is important in USA – Pollock himself was a Communist
The works of these artists would become Capitalist from Socialist
This work stages the polarisation of American Abstract Style and Communism in the Soviet Union
Slide 2:
As in Europe through the 1930s there were leftist sympathies - Depression
During the Depression, numerous welfare programs and unions were instituted to get the country back on its feet and to make individuals feel important
Roosevelt - New Deal - W.P.A (Works Progress Admin) Govt funded program that got people o work on public projects
Motto of all working togteher and getting paid as equitably as possible - also had an arts program
Artists would be hired to do public art projects - to make communities feel united - composed of varied styles
Projects for art that was beyond the visual - even extending to writing grants
Governt funded arts as a way to cohesively rebuild society
Over 5000 artists in USA
Slide 3:
Application process to WPA - evaluated by panel of peers
Needed to demonstrate financial need for entry
Recieved assignments based on skills ($25 - 35 a week)
Would wait in a line-up o get paychecks - converstaions between artists happened here
Pollock, Rothco - socialist government supported art program of public works
MAde murals that were large scale and propagandastic in nature
Diego Rivera is one of the influential figures to these artists - came from a communist mexican muralist background
This is the kind of work they were interested in
Frescos inside Detroit Museum of Art
Called "Detroit Industry" - Home of Chrysler
important to economy, equality and freedom, to the American pride
Idea that workers were paid well
Alongside that are images of mythic figures
Slide 4:
Other side of the room
Sense of the monumentality of seasons - kind of timelessness (mythic figures)
Celebration of work and building and workers
The art museum was founded by capital from the car industry
Though they work for Capitalists - workers feel a communist blend
The idea that people can work together - blend abstraction and realism - blend capitalis mand socialism is thinkable
Context of USSR: Stalin has a socialist realism decree (1934) to idealize and empower workers and is legible
is contrast to moments in mdoern art where artists want to make work that is difficult to decipher
The USA does not have this decree - but WPA does want to make public work that is legible that adheres to the national program
Through the 1930s there was the creation of the Popular Front
USA, EU and some USSR worked together against Fascism - let to unify Left and critical individuals from these countries
Increased USA sympathies with Communists
Intended to overlook differences in order to confront a common enemy
Regionalism and Nationalistic Art was prominent
Some Isolationist work existed - celebrated N. American values
Tried to build up images around the American Dream - to a combination of freedom and individualism as a basis for liberal democracy
Unique american way of life - give people a sense of place and pride - for ordinary people
Slide 5:
Farm Security Administration (Hired people to document life in the dust bowl)
Published and circulated in Life
Created an archive to let city people to understand life in the ocuntry
Parallels to strategy in the USSR
Gritty pohtograph - feel the humanity of these people
Not in a sypathetic - but empathic way
Sense of pride - under duress - but captured the resolve of the faces
Slide 6:
most famous photographs of the 20th Century
Migrant Mother - pulls on heart strings
sophisticated image
crop - furrowed brow
look in her eye - looking for dignity in duress
Slide 7:
Looking for Dignity in Duress
Slide 8:
Already by the late 1930s Regionalism and Popukar Front were critically attacked
People started to say this regionalism is artistically regressive - too Socialist Realist - close to Fascist aesthetic
Popular Front : Disillusionment with Socialism - intensity of Stalin's tenets (purging of intellectuals, socialist realism)
USA finds Stalin close to Fascism
Lynchpin of the socialist disillusionment is the Nazi-Soviet pact in 1939 despite initiating the Popular Front
kind of a peace treaty - though neither party meant it - strategic plan
Against what USA and EU wanted to believe about the progress that can be ,made by communism
1939 - SU invades Finland - demonstrates that Stalin is extremely imperialist, expansionist and authoritarianism
Backlash against the Soviets, moment in which there is a change of seasons (so to speak)
Autumn Rhythm by Pollock - becomes the American style of painting over all else - illustrates ideas bound up with freedom and liberation
Greenberg 1939 - writes Avant Garde Kitsch - was formerly a supporter of PF - rejects partisam politics altogether - rejects realism
Calls it "simple and banal" and "for the masses"
Equates kitsch with mass culture. What does kitsch mean? mass-produced popular culture, decoration, not engaged in the discourse of high art - Art should be difficult - as far away as can be from commercial culture
Lot of paradoxes in his argument - Artists have socialist leanings, become disillusioned and grapple with this struggle. Question the kind of art people mean - sounds like an anti-socialist position. However, Greenberg also saw it as being anti-capitalist because of its rejection of kitsch. Mass culture is responsible for the deterioration of 'real' art. Kitsch could be a way of suppressing individual freedom - against american way of life
Art should not have an agenda other than its own intrinsic values - carve out a space for itself on its own terms - back to autonomy
His writing was important to the work being bought and shown and circulated in international exhibitions
Calls for the development of a new American Avant-Garde that is elite - specialized and preserve the best of culture amidst the ideological confusion
Considered it a critical strategy by which ambitious work can escape the political
Mark his socialist beleifs - protect art until socialsim "arrives"
Development of the Neo-Avant-Garde : it is a see-saw that goes back and forth between autonomy and engagement
His concerns found resonance in post-war conditions - Fascism collapses, Communist rises
Shaped by ideological tensions
1945 - Treaty of Yalka - Soviets give quite a bit of territory to the USA - have a crucial role in the defeat of Axial powers
USSR is much more depleted as a coutry -
Being separate, USA develops their coutnry unlike Europe
USA has developed the Atomic Bomb - gives a clear ascendancy to the USA
USA rejects Soviet Alliance - msitrust between 2 countries
USA gives arms back to sectors in Germany - considered ultimate betrayal by Stalin
Beginning of Cold War - USA felt powerful and resentful - saw Soviets as imperialist
Communism and Soviet Union become the enemy and the example of the enemy that will infiltrate and destroy democracy and freedom - polarization
1947 onwards - Truman elected - every single POTUS has become a champion of freedom and democracy
Communist Revolution in China increases paranoia of the USA
1950 Anti-Communism is the offical policy of the USA
CIA is formed and are the gate-keepers of anti-communism and to oversee members of NATO
Marshall plan (1947) - aid program where devastated countries are given American money to rebuild as long as the overseers are American - moment where the USA is able to establish themselves poltiically under the guise of aid-giving
1950 Joe McCarthy makes an important address to Congress - Anti-Communism. Beginning of See Something, Say Something.
Reporting of neighbours - seem like they must be spies - intesne times
Belief in a dominant theory of communism
There are a whole series of hearings of Un-American activities
This is the context in which Abstract Experessionism develops
Slide 9:
Borrow from older styles of European art - similar to these movements
Expressive paitn application, gestural use of paint
Movement of lines - connection to surrealism
Pollock is interested in Surrealist automotism
title is important
Slide 10:
Movement towards abstraction
playing with picture plane - foreground and background is indistinguisnhable
Acceptance of this is shaped by Greenberg and Rosenberg
sCarve out the 2 dominant modes of looking at this work
Greenberg focuses on formal and technical innovations of the work *(movement towards flatness, all-over composition that may go on forever, painterliness )
Rosenberg: Emphasized existential drama of the work
Both agreed that America was the new center of culture
This kind of work was seen as an escape from not having to confront beliefs head on because it is a time of anti-Leftist thought
At the Same time they were appalled by many American thing - how capitalism and mass culture were taking over everyday life - but Un-American to Admit this
Horror and fear of nuclear war - profound and wide-spread
Pollocks attempt to think about - in a hidden way - the hidden gulit, fear of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Knowledge of horrific things that the USA had done
Wanting to make innovative work - technologically and formally creative - getting rid of representation altogether
Greenberg insists that Abstract expressionism is mroe an individualistic expression of anxiety
Slide 11:
Many works grappled with the crisis of the being a free individual
Being a free individual is anxious - freedom itself is an ethical quarrel as only you are responsible
Weight of accountability is heavy when you have total freedom
Feelings of alienation is prevalent at the time
Reminds you of Surrealism - expressed his anixiety
Created a personal myth - tied to his own biography and his own life
Saw himself as an individual outside everyday society - could not escape a sense of melancholy
Many personal tragedy
Slide 12:
Titles - reflect conflict
Biographical account of his artwork is not his entire thought
Slide 13:
Resenberg would argue that biography is the crux of understanding art
Completely abstract - not jsut in content - but also in title -
Allusion to 'The Tempest' - about the tragedy of loss in that play
Think of the piece as the ocean - complex, distress, profound
One of the first drip-painting
1947 marks a change in his career
Takes canvas - throws it on the ground - loose canvas (action paining)
Uses sticks dipped in commercial, industrial paint and drips it on canvas
Expression of Pollocks existential angst
Slide 14:
Scale of Canvas is important - large pieces
Work that was done on a large scale (murals) was usually meant to indoctrinate people
His interest in surrealist automatism is apparent - lines
Interested in dreams and thinking about the experience of life
Seeks Jungian psycho-analysis
Jung emphasized indivudalsim and self-knowledge by wrestling with introverted and extroverted layers
See expression of that in way the work is done
First people to develop art-therapy
Freud says "there is no such thing as an accident"
Everything we do just needs to be deciphered to understand our actions
Pollock "I deny the accident" different to Duchamp's "indifference"
States he is in complete control - total mastery of the art - argues that his art is purposeful
Spontaneity, Expression - see art as a kind of heroic, existential struggle with the creative act
Slide 15:
de Kooning - Reference ambiguous and mythological way
Never gave up traditional methods of painting
Slide 16:
Never as abstract as Pollock - continues gesturing in early '50s
Described by Rosenberg as "action painting"
Last one sold for $137.5 million (2nd most expensive painting ever sold)
Slide 17:
JP's wife - turbulent relationship
Was influential on him - interested in similar things as him
Her canvases get smaller as his get bigger
