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Prepop Neodada. Rauschenberg and Johns studied at the innovative Black mountain College in North Carolina with the musician John Cage (4'33"). John Cage. John Cage's most famous musical composition is called 4'33" .
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Prepop Neodada • Rauschenberg and Johns studied at the innovative Black mountain College in North Carolina with the musician John Cage (4'33").
John Cage • John Cage's most famous musical composition is called 4'33". • It consists of the pianist going to the piano, and not hitting any keys for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. (He uses a stopwatch to time this.) • The entire piece consists of silences -- silences of different lengths, they say. • What you hear when you listen to 4'33" is a matter of chance.
de Kooning painted a woman series with large, slashing brushstrokes which are deliberately crude, frantic, and violent. • The emphasis is on the act of painting/mark making.
De Kooning Woman with Bicycle 1952-53 Abstract Expressionism
Combine Painting/ Assemblage • A technique in which art works are made by fastening objects from the real world to abstract painted canvases.
Found object - Throw away goods of consumer society which artists incorporate directly into their work.
“Painting relates to both art and life… I try to act in the gap between the two. A pair of socks is no less suitable to make a painting with than wood, nails, turpentine, oil, and fabric.” R. Rauschenberg Bed, 1955
Combine painting / assemblage – Technique in which art works are made by fastening objects from the real world to abstract painted canvases. Bed, 1955
Junk is art waiting to be discovered. • "sport of making something I haven't seen before. If I know what I'm going to do, I don't do it." • bottles are discards , part of the debris of the urban landscape • suggests the abundance and wastefulness of runawayconsumerism • art reflects society • bottles are made Godlike on an alter like niche, with angelic wings, above a globe • not far from the brand name soft drinks current status in the world market
Monograms - initials - drawn with letters interwoven - like goat through tire • Free association of different elements Stuffed angora goat, rubber tire, a canvas, paint, signs • blurs the lines between art and life, also painting, & sculpture • Goat on floor canvas ( Pollock), like raft as if a survivor of nature in flood of throw away culture.
Abstract Expressionism • Abstract Expressionism – A movement which is abstract (emphasizing shape, colour, and line, with little recognizable subject matter) and expressive (stressing emotion and individual feeling). • Action Painting – The painting is a record of the process of the pictures creation, reflecting the whole of the artist’s physical and mental being. • The viewer is meant to be aware of the process; it is important to imagine the artist in the act of creation.
Lavender Mist • Pollock, Lavender Mist (detail) Pollock 1950
“ A painting is more like the real world when it is made out of the real world.” R. Rauschenberg
Title - to react, be retrospective, or operate in a backward direction. • JFK already dead - Rauschenberg wrote him just before, sending artwork as gift. • Captures Kennedy's charisma - TV's first political superstar - reflects the mass media's ability to make icons. • Uses found images from the TV. and elsewhere. • Montage, or quilt of images combined with expressive brush work. • (Oil and silk-screen on canvas)
The subject involves a glut of messages and images • " I was bombarded with TV sets and magazines, by the refuse, by the excesses of the world... I thought that if I could paint or make an honest work , it should incorporate all of these elements, which were and are a reality." • Relates to the way images are seen, channel changing, translated into a still image • placed side by side, and still , the relationships seem more chaotic & surreal. • Red patch - stroboscopic photo of Duchamp's Nude Descending Staircase from Life Magazine.
Encaustic • A method of painting with pigment (colour) dissolved in hot wax.
Detail of Flag (1954-55). This image illustrates Johns' early technique of painting with thick, dripping encaustic over a collage made from found materials such as newspaper.
Something so well known it is not well seen • Design already there, allowing him to work on other levels ( the painted surface) • Develop a new surface, like a skin, with encaustic • Symbol made abstract through act of painting.
Begs questions: Is it a flag? Is it a painting of a flag? Both? Is it art? • Provocative - gives viewer cause to reflect - tests imaginative capacity of the viewer • Flag traditionally shown in action, symbol of nationalism, identity, and power here its flat • Transforms an object highly resistant to aesthetic consideration.
White Flag, 1955 “There are things that are seen and not looked at. I want the viewer to examine the all too familiar image.” J. Johns
Familiar symbol used as design within which the artist can use paint freely • Target? Art? • Painted target automatically negates use of real one (but could serve the purpose) • Function displaced - Dada
Marksmen focus on bulls eye; here the rings are treated with equal importance as part of an overall composition. Paradox • Target is a sign/ symbol transformed through paint into art • Faces are sculpture transformed through repetition into a symbol "face or person"
Numbers in Colors 1958-59
Familiar symbols are used as grid/matrix to improvise within • The effect is of texture & pattern • The quantitative becomes qualitative
Direct attack on Abstract expressionism. • Abs. Exp. artists were aggressively asserting in spontaneous brushwork expressions of inner states of mind etc.
Abstract Expressionist “painting from the hip" asserted a macho image • John's painting is a literal satire of this activity. • He splits the surface, revealing empty space held apart with two wooden balls .
