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Inspired by surrealist techniques, ABEX brought the spontaneous controlled chaos of action painting and meditative washes in color field painting to create emotionally expressive works defined by experiments with texture, color, shape form. The anxious self-censoring necessary amid McCarthyism constant violent civil rights violations define this era C. Greenburg declared the distinction between the artistic truth inherent to ABEX, and the banal kitsch common in American Regionalism.
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Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)
Jackson Pollock
Enamel on canvas
8 ft. 9 in. × 17 ft. 3 in.
The MET Pollock's iconic action paintings aligned with the artistic ideology connected to Carl Jung's philosophy of the subconscious was the true primordial self. In a controlled chaos technique, inspired in part by Mexican modern artist David Siqueiros, these thick lines of enamel were layered upon a canvas laid on the floor, removed literally and figuratively from the traditional methods of painting. -
As its name implies, the Neo-Dada movement takes cues from its European counterpart just some forty years earlier. Functioning to blue the boundaries between life and art, Neo-Dada works interogated the role of the every day object in our lives, juxtaposing expectations by elevating them to the status of art. Humor and irony replace the heroism and transcendence of AbEx. Interactive events called "Happenings" were hosted, encouraging audience participation and a destruction of norms.
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what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?
Richard Hamilton
Collage
10” x 10”
Kunsthalle Tubigen, Germany Pop Art’s beginnings were in Post-WWII Britain as the US enacting of the Marshall Plan in 1948 brought popular imagry from the media and advertising boom in the states. From the outside looking in, Hamilton used cutouts from American magazines to illustrate (and critique) the consumerist culture growing quickly across the Atlantic. Outside the window, blackface films. -
Pop art is visually identified by its elevation of every day images from pop culture to art culture, bright colors, and repurposing of branded products. While America benefited from the post-WWII boom in media, industry and advertising, countries in Europe were still rebuilding after the destruction. This distance informed the level of critique in the art created. Pop artists used collage, screen printing, scultpreu, and repetition to reflect a new culture growing amid rising civic tensions.
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Artist’s Shit
Piero Manzoni
Tin can, printed paper and excrement
18.9” x 25”
Tate Modern, London
Perhaps the most succinct critique of the cult of the artist-as-celebrity, Manzoni's can of shit is an organic ready-made; completely inverting expectations of the object-value to formal art. As Dada, this work challenges the level of trust between viewer and artist- are we to believe Manzoni meticulously measured his creations, or is the Schrödinger's cat mystery the true value of the work? -
Claes Oldenburg
Store
mixed media
Storefront / The Green Gallery
This work perfectly bridges the absurd Neo-Dada observations of post WWII consumerism to the classic Pop Art utilization of popular consumer images. In the satirical soft sculptural and paper machete expanse of the Store, the works are truly for sale like any other shop object. But this sale feels different than the formalities of gallery sales. The interactivity of this art repositions the traditional viewer into consumer. -
Rosalyn Drexler
Put it This Way
Acrylic o/c
127 x 102 cm
Hirshhorn Museum, DC Here Drexler uses a still from a film, a single moment of sudden violence s been extended infinitely in the freeze frame over sharp blue. The perspective angle from above creates a hierarchy of a suited man over a woman’s body post-slap. We see Pop in the use of bright primary colors, and the elevation of film into the context of the gallery.
This highlights the typicality of violence against women in popular media. -
Corita Kent
the juiciest tomato of all
Screenprint
29 x 36 in
Hammer Museum, Los Angelas Former Sister Corita Kent took Pop’s elevation of the every day image to the gallery wall even further- by lifting her materials up to the spiritual realm. In this repurposing of a label of of Del Monte tomatoes, Kent reproduces the product with screenprint, adding in her own subtext expanding on Mother Mary akin to the Del Monte tagline as “the juiciest of all" in a modernization of catholic imagery. -
Gaea
Lee Krasner
Oil on canvas
5' 9'' " x 10' 5 1/2"
MOMA
In this gigantic work artist Lee Krasner uses a fragmented and dynamic composition to capture a beautiful abstract work. The contrast of pink, maroon, cream, and a near black purple brings out the texture of the brush stroke. Krasner's study of art theory lent itself to her practice, as her work is rich with referential use of color (Fauvist Matisse) and shape (Picasso). Krasner explored themes of grief and nature in her works. -
Ed Kienholz
The State Hospital
Assorted Materials
Moderna Museet, Stockholm
This disturbing installation takes a more intentional stance than typical dada. Kienholz used assorted found materials, including medical, building this bunk bed occupied by two "patients", their bodies leaking red ribbons of blood, on soiled mattresses; An enhanced display of inhumane conditions. Ala Duchamp's Étant donnés, viewers of this work would have to gaze through the bars of the door to see what was inside. -
Sigmar Polke
Bunnies
59 x 39 inches
Acrylic o.c
Hirshhorn Museum, DC Eastern Europe's Capitalist Realism, took a critical stance in their Pop, utilizing similar reference material, but obscured. Polke's dots (similar to Ben-Day dots) screen printed to evoke the sense of printed media at a distance, but on closer inspection, abstraction in the detail. He contradicts the typical proximity to the Playboy readerwith a closer look resulting in abstracting the objectified women's faces. -
Untitled (Black on Gray)
Mark Rothko
Acrylic on canvas
80 1/8 x 69 1/8 inches
Guggenheim Museum, New York
This work, though somewhat outside of formal movement timeline, is a representational for of Rothko's iconic color field paintings. The color washes typically offer room for a viewer's meditative contemplation. Whether it is the void like black over a gray surface mirroring the isolation of the moon, or the knowledge of this being at the end of Rothko's life; this work radiates intensity. -
Martha Rosler Cold Meat I
10”×8”
Photomontage
Galerie Lelong Co., New York Rosler’s work stands at the threshold between Pop the FAM. Here she uses a refrigerator, the freezer open revealing slabs of meat inside. The door below shows a blood red nude abdomen. Rosler’s series Body Beautiful would juxtapose images of modern tech, industry, and war with photos from beauty publications to illustrate the destructive force of beauty expectations oppression and sexual objectification of women.