"Abstract Expressionism"
 They emphasize free, spontaneous, and
personal emotional expression, and they
exercise considerable freedom of
technique and execution to attain this
goal, with a particular emphasis laid on
the exploitation of the variable physical
character of paint to evoke expressive
qualities
 Political instability in Europe in the
1930s brought several leading
Surrealists to New York,
 the Abstract Expressionists were later
welcomed as the first authentically
American avant-garde.
 Their art was championed for being
emphatically American in spirit -
monumental in scale, romantic in mood,
and expressive of a rugged individual
freedom.
 Having matured as artists at a time when
America suffered economically and felt
culturally isolated and provincial,
 Few would maintain their earlier radical
political views, but many continued to
adopt the posture of outspoken avant-
gardists.
The piece is exemplary of Pollock's famous
"drip" works in which paint was poured,
splattered, and applied by the artist in an
extremely physical fashion from above to a
canvas which lay on the ground. This process of
expressing an internal emotional turbulence
through gesture, line, texture, and composition
represented a breakthrough for Pollock in his
career and helped put the New York School of
painters on the map. These paintings became the
impetus for critic Rosenberg's coining of the
term Action Painting. And this unlikely
combination of chance and control became
tantamount to Abstract Expressionism's
evolution
Contemporary example
Robert Slingsby -one of contemporary abstract
artist from South Africa
Optical Art / Op Art
 Op Art had its sources in Russian
Constructivism and in the Suprematism
of Malevich (1878–1935), in developing
a painting style that was all about the
spectator’s perception of abstract forms
and about the sensations and illusions
that these could provoke.
 ‘Op’ is a shortening of ‘optical’, and Op
Art aimed to explore the effects of
different kinds of retinal stimulation,
using closely spaced black-and-white or
coloured patterns.
 In line with other modern developments,
Op Art sought not to provide the illusion
of representation – one of painting’s
traditional roles – but to make the
viewer question their processes of
seeing.
Example:
Duo- 2 (1967)
By: Victor Vasarely
The contrasting warm and cool shades here
create the ambiguous illusion of three-
dimensional structures. Are they concave, or
convex? The illusion is so effective that we are
almost led to forget that it is a painted image,
and made to think it is a volumetric
construction. Although black and white
delivered perhaps the most memorable Op
images, color also intrigued many Op artists.
The scientific study of color had been central to
teaching at the Bauhaus, and Vasarely certainly
benefited from his education at what was often
called the "Budapest Bauhaus." Bauhaus
teachers such as Joseph Albers encouraged
students to think not of the associations or
symbolism of colors, which had so often been
important in art, but simply of the effects they
had on the eye.
Pop Art
 The imagery of Pop Art was derived
from commercial sources, the mass
media, and everyday life
 In contrast to Abstract
Expressionism—which viewed works of
art as revelations of the artist's inner,
unconscious mind—the Pop artists
strove for "objectivity" embodied by an
imagery of objects
President Elect (1960-61)
By: James Rosenquist
Like many Pop artists, Rosenquist was
fascinated by the popularization of political and
cultural figures in mass media. In his painting
President Elect, the artist depicts John F.
Kennedy's face amidst an amalgamation of
consumer items, including a yellow Chevrolet
and a piece of cake. Rosenquist created a collage
with the three elements cut from their original
mass media context, and then photo-realistically
recreated them on a monumental scale. As
Rosenquist explains, "The face was from
Kennedy's campaign poster. I was very
interested at that time in people who advertised
themselves. Why did they put up an
advertisement of themselves? So that was his
face. And his promise was half a Chevrolet and
a piece of stale cake." The large-scale work
exemplifies Rosenquist's technique of
combining discrete images through techniques
of blending, interlocking, and juxtaposition, as
well as his skill at including political and social
commentary using popular imagery.
Minimalism
 Like Op Art, the Minimal Art of the late
1950s and early 1960s
 It had in part evolved out of Abstract
Expressionism.
 In a statement of 1962 entitled ‘Art as
art’, Reinhardt claimed that the only aim
of abstraction could be to make art
‘purer and emptier, more absolute and
more exclusive’.
 Minimalism sought to eliminate all self-
expression from art, creating works that
were meaningful in their own right
without representing anything, and that
were conceived in the artist’s mind
rather than found in nature.
Die Fahne Hoch! (1959)
By: Frank Stella
Unquestionably a key monument in modern art,
this work, one of the series of Black Paintings
done by Frank Stella, is a bold counter-
movement against the eminent Abstract
Expressionist painters. It is a monochrome
rectangular painting on a heavy chassis
projecting from the wall into surrounding space
as if urging the viewer to move back.
Magnetized, the viewer is drawn closer seeking
to read the pattern of pinstripes on the surface.
These stripes are in fact the raw canvas revealed
between broad black stripes painted with few
visible brushstrokes. The painting is an
unframed, flat abstraction and would appear to
be meaningless except for its title: Die Fahne
Hoch! (Raise High the Flag!), the opening words
of the Nazi anthem. Stella has denied any
political connection, and one could possibly see
the title as a wave to Jasper Johns, whose
American flag paintings of 1954-55 were met
with praise by his critics, but also a general
public bewilderment.
Scholars have read the title as an example of
Minimalists' often-in-your-face aesthetics and
their refusal to make works that are visually
appealing, instead forcing the viewer to confront
works on a physical level as a way of disputing
the conventional relationship between the viewer
and the work of art in which the viewer simply
appreciates or admires the visual appeal of a
work.
Conceptualism?????
Conceptual Art was often austere and
unrelenting in its appearance and its attitude
towards artistic tradition, seen as ideologically
loaded and unacceptable. The movement began
to fade in the mid-1970s, when artists began to
take a renewed interest in painting’s materials
and subject matter. It had, however, brought to
the fore the use of irony, humour and
autobiographical content which would all be
taken up by new generations of artists.
SUMMARY OF CONCEPTUAL ART
Conceptual art is a movement that prizes ideas
over the formal or visual components of art
works. An amalgam of various tendencies
rather than a tightly cohesive movement,
Conceptualism took myriad forms, such as
performances, happenings, and ephemera.
From the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s
Conceptual artists produced works and writings
that completely rejected standard ideas of art.
Their chief claim - that the articulation of an
artistic idea suffices as a work of art - implied
that concerns such as aesthetics, expression,
skill and marketability were all irrelevant
standards by which art was usually judged. So
drastically simplified, it might seem to many
people that what passes for Conceptual art is
not in fact "art" at all, much as Jackson Pollock's
"drip" paintings, or Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes
(1964), seemed to contradict what previously
had passed for art. But it is important to
understand Conceptual art in a succession of
avant-garde movements (Cubism, Dada,
Abstract Expressionism, Pop, etc.) that
succeeded in self-consciously expanding the
boundaries of art. Conceptualists put
themselves at the extreme end of this avant-
garde tradition. In truth, it is irrelevant whether
this extremely intellectual kind of art matches
one's personal views of what art should be,
because the fact remains that Conceptual
artists successfully redefine the concept of a
work of art to the extent that their efforts are
widely accepted as art by collectors, gallerists,
and museum curators.
Imponderabilia (1977)
By: Marina Abramovic
For Imponderabilia, Marina Abramovic and her
longtime partner Ulay face each other,
completely nude, and flank the entrance of the
museum, obliging visitors to turn and squeeze
through the nude bodies to enter. While the
piece is obviously designed to draw immediate
attention to the performers' nudity, the real
concept at work is the exploration of the public's
reaction; to the nudity, the performers'
placement, and most importantly, the way in
which individual visitors choose to enter. Do
they appear demure or embarrassed while
entering? Do they opt to face Abramovic or
Ulay while passing through? Do they choose to
enter the museum at all? Abramovic and Ulay
carry out their concept in the most dispassionate
manner possible, thus leaving expression
(commonly considered an artistic aim) to the
visitors. The resulting photographs and video of
the performance act as something of a study in
human behavior when faced with something
truly strange, even stressful. Their work
demonstrates the kinship between what are
usually separated out as distinct trends -
Performance art and Conceptual art - but it also
distinguishes itself from much Conceptual art in
its constant reference to the body, to risk, and
the tension between the artists' clinical
disinterest and the potential for strong emotional
response to the work.
Photorealism
 The name Photorealism (also known as
Hyperrealism or Superrealism) was
coined in reference to those artists
whose work depended heavily on
photographs, which they often projected
onto canvas allowing images to be
replicated with precision and accuracy.
 The exactness was often aided further
by the use of an airbrush, which was
originally designed to retouch
photographs.
 The movement came about within the
same period and context as Conceptual
art, Pop art, and Minimalism and
expressed a strong interest in realism in
art, over that of idealism and
abstraction.
 To a degree not previously
accomplished, Photorealism complicates
the notion of realism by successfully
mixing together that which is real with
that which is unreal.
 Since the advent of photography in the
early-19th-century artists have used the
camera as a tool in picture making;
however, artists would never reveal in
paint their dependency on photographs
as to do so was seen as "cheating". In
contrast, Photorealists acknowledge the
modern world's mass production and
proliferation of photographs, and they
do not deny their dependence on
photographs. In fact, several artists
attempt to replicate the effects of
photography (getting away from the
natural vision of our eyes) such as
blurriness or multiple-viewpoints,
because they favor the aesthetic and
look. Therefore, while the resulting
image is realistic, it is simultaneously
one-stage away from reality by its
dependence on the reproduced image.
These works question traditional artistic
methods, as well as the differences
between reality and artificiality.
 Photorealists, along with some
practitioners of Pop art, reintroduced the
importance of process and deliberate
planning over that of improvisation and
automatism, into the making of art,
draftsmanship, and exacting brushwork.
In other words, the traditional
techniques of academic art are again of
great significance, and painstaking
craftsmanship is prized after decades of
the spontaneous, accidental, and
improvisational.
McDonalds Pickup (1970)
By: Ralph Goings
Here, the artist Ralph Goings has selected a
rather pedestrian view as his subject - a jeep,
McDonald's, and the American flag. Goings
paints these icons of the American highways
with great attention to detail, aided in large part
by using photographs. The artist has chosen to
remove such extraneous details as people and
detritus that would detract from the canvas's
subject matter. In this manner, Goings along
with other Photorealists has diversified the
traditional artistic genres maintained since the
17th century. He paints such banal subjects with
great care so that together with the artist we
consider what in fact comprises American
culture. In lieu of the great cathedrals of Europe
with their vaulted arches, America - he seems to
suggest - has these "golden" arches to herald its
cultural heritage
Installation Art
 Installation art is a term generally used
to describe artwork located in three-
dimensional interior space as the word
"install" means putting something inside
of something else.
 It is often site-specific - designed to
have a particular relationship, whether
temporary or permanent, with its spatial
environment on an architectural,
conceptual, or social level.
 It also creates a high level of intimacy
between itself and the viewer as it exists
not as a precious object to be merely
looked at but as a presence within the
overall context of its container whether
that is a building, museum, or
designated room.
 Artworks are meant to evoke a mood or
a feeling, and as such ask for a
commitment from the viewer. The
movement remains separate from its
similar forms such as Land art,
Intervention art, and Public art yet there
are often overlaps between them.
 The ideas behind a piece of Installation
art, and the responses it elicits, tend to
be more important than the quality of its
medium or technical merit. Artists
champion this genre for its potential to
transform the art world by surprising
audiences and engaging viewers in new
ways.
KEY IDEAS
 Installation art champions a shift in
focus from what art visually represents
to what it communicates. Installation
artists are less focused on presenting an
aesthetically pleasing object to viewers
as they are enfolding that viewer into an
environment or set of systems of their
own creation. Tweaking the subjective
perception of the viewer is the artist's
desired outcome. Pieces belonging to
this movement resonate with our own
human experiences - like us they exist
within, and are always in conversation
with, their lived environments.
 Installation artists are preoccupied with
making art a less isolated concept - by
installing work beyond the galleries and
museums and by using more utilitarian
components such as found objects,
industrial and everyday items,
commonplace materials, and
technologies of the populous. This
movement has broadened the scope of
what qualifies as artwork.
 Because Installation art is especially
difficult to collect and sell, this
movement pushes against the
commodification of art, thereby defying
the traditional mechanisms used to
determine the value of artworks.
 Attempts to sell installations have raised
questions about the process of
dismantling and reinstalling work that
was conceived for a particular location,
and how that might or might not
decrease the original meaning and value.
It has also provoked dialogue within the
art and archival communities about
 whether or not a temporary piece might
be reconstructed and sold in the guise of
its original, or whether a non-permanent
piece may be recreated ad infinitum to
perpetuate its existence.

Kara Walker - Exploring the History of Racism

An African-American installation and

conceptual artist, Kara Walker has been
exploring the history of the American South
with her wall-sized cut paper silhouettes.
Exploring and illustrating histories of racism,
these vignettes are drawn from various sources
such as historical novels or slave testimonials.
Using imagery of mammies, pickninnies,
sambos and other racial stereotypes, these
silhouettes present a powerful metaphor which
she describes as something that “says a lot with
very little information”. She invites the public to
explore the origins of racial inequality, but also
the vast social and economic inequalities that
persist in America. Relying on humor and
viewer interaction, her works are deeply
engaging.