We have a few names to consider in American XXth century art. One movement has several names, the 'New York School' is one such term. If it had the same 'art' and was in Milwaukee, or Little Rock, it would not have been as prominent. It has intense defenders, and foes. It is in opposition to realism, this must be accepted without argument.
Jackson Pollock. Number 5. 1950. Cleveland.
This is oil spilled and dripped on canvas. If one would have pulled up the floor boards of a contemporary chicken coup, and fixed the accretions to prevent their dislodging, a similar composition would have appeared.
How would one know the orientation of the canvas? Is it meant to be horizontal? What difference would it be if it was rotated 180°? 90°? 270°? And if it is meant to be unconventional, why can it not be any other angle? Is art only at right angles? Or turn it facing the wall.
There is an odd point politically. This was in the cold war period. The socialists [soviets especially] had an approved style of formal, heroic realism presenting the achievements of the active individual. This 'American' art looked nothing like that. Of course, the socialist could look at this abstract expressionism as capitalist crap masquerading, in its death throes, as art. A patriotic triumphalism of the US over the USSR, and New York City over Paris, hyper-pretentious jingoists* hawking splattered works in tinted acrylics, and oils had success.
Norman Rockwell. The Connoisseur. 1962. Saturday Evening Post cover. Private collection.
The US had three generation of Wyeths, and Norman Rockwell. But this certain circle finds them déclassé. They were successful and popular, and they could draw. A painter must have the talent and ability to draw; if he cannot, he should try to get in an union apprenticeship so he can paint schoolroom, and grocery store walls.
Now, defenders of this art were upset with, and dismissive of 'Pop-artists', whose art was making images of comics, mundane objects [which could be labelled 'still lifes of a single object'], and celebrated commerciality. Advertising agencies did hire artists, why would not the occasional one think he should have the acclaim of a 'fine' artist?
Wayne Thiebaud painted cakes, ice cream cones, pies and gumball machines [he also did portraits, realistic]. People easily find his stuff pleasurable. There is a simple joy in much of pop-art. Some are miffed about Andy Warhol, who became lazier and lazier, and produced more and more, as the money rolled in. Raggedy Andy may have been, no was, crazy; but as compared to drippers, and color field abstractionists, at least one knew where cartographic north was on his canvas. With Hofman, Pollock, Rothko, Motherwell, Kline, u.s.w...upside down, or vertically high versus horizontally wide, can one really know? Some like conceptual art, kinetic art. Just put it on a turntable, and every ten minutes turn it 90°. On some of them just flip and show the reverse. And there are minimalists, who carve a niche of non-realism. They acknowledge geometry, but not much else.
In Cleveland, there is a world class art museum where one can make mental notes on a wide variety of art. In the basement, they keep cases of art, centuries old, and relatively crowded. One experiences sensory and object overload, the treasure chest overflows. The modern art upstairs, the paintings from 1500 to almost now are plentiful on the walls. In the new east wing, the contemporary rooms are less dense. You are encouraged to focus on fewer objects, unfortunately there is less content in those objects.
John Rogers Cox. Gray and Gold. 1942. Cleveland.
Sister Wendy Beckett featured this one on Public Television. The lady has discernment. Cox painted few compositions. He was from Terre Haute, Indiana. Cox was a regionalist, [Middle West] expressionistic realist bordering surrealism [cf. Thomas Hart Benton-Mo; Grant Wood-Iowa; John Steuart Currey-Kans]. The painting, supra, was exhibited at a war effort programme, a year after Pearl Harbor Day. Cleveland bought it right away; but it has not always been on display. Where it is displayed now, it is not in much commensurate company.
Now, this is interesting in several ways. It is a pleasing composition. Modernistically, it is geometric, limited in color, and devoid of people. There are troublesome clouds [wartime], the golden wealth of a mystery grain [it is too uniform in shade, too brilliant, some presume it corn (it is not maize), unharvested, it has characteristics of wheat] and a nod to the American idyll of its rural and agricultural heart [at its last, though then not realised, glory]. The more you look at it, the hypnotic tease becomes stronger. This is not pure realism, it is a mild surrealism. The power poles are filled with porcelain knobs, but there is no electric wire. There is barbed wire, on the fences across from the grain fields. The roads are very much like a Christian cross. There is a loneliness that is reminiscent of Edward Hopper.
There were other earlier XXth century realist movements: the Ash Can School. Cleveland has George Bellow's, Stag at Sharkeys in the 1916 building. Sr. Wendy talked about that one, too. During the Depression Franklin Roosevelt paid artists to paint, and many painted in a socially conscious style, urban and rural scenes of realism; often in post office and other public buildings. Very few pre-WWII American paintings are in the east wing. One is Reginald Marsh's, A Paramount Picture, 1934 [which is hanging next to the Cox]. They have his, Locomotives Watering, 1934; but not on display.
In room 225c [minimalist] there are a bunch of big canvasses with nothing on them, or rather, nothing to look at. Is this meant to be an isolation room? I have been told, that, a room with a portrait deters some theft. The face and eyes of a mere image of a person has an effect on a person. Art appeals to the senses. This room desensitises. [See last paragraph of this previous essay.]
________________________
*a chief critic had been a former communist; there is also an ethnic component
Jackson Pollock. Number 5. 1950. Cleveland.How would one know the orientation of the canvas? Is it meant to be horizontal? What difference would it be if it was rotated 180°? 90°? 270°? And if it is meant to be unconventional, why can it not be any other angle? Is art only at right angles? Or turn it facing the wall.
There is an odd point politically. This was in the cold war period. The socialists [soviets especially] had an approved style of formal, heroic realism presenting the achievements of the active individual. This 'American' art looked nothing like that. Of course, the socialist could look at this abstract expressionism as capitalist crap masquerading, in its death throes, as art. A patriotic triumphalism of the US over the USSR, and New York City over Paris, hyper-pretentious jingoists* hawking splattered works in tinted acrylics, and oils had success.
Norman Rockwell. The Connoisseur. 1962. Saturday Evening Post cover. Private collection.Now, defenders of this art were upset with, and dismissive of 'Pop-artists', whose art was making images of comics, mundane objects [which could be labelled 'still lifes of a single object'], and celebrated commerciality. Advertising agencies did hire artists, why would not the occasional one think he should have the acclaim of a 'fine' artist?
Wayne Thiebaud painted cakes, ice cream cones, pies and gumball machines [he also did portraits, realistic]. People easily find his stuff pleasurable. There is a simple joy in much of pop-art. Some are miffed about Andy Warhol, who became lazier and lazier, and produced more and more, as the money rolled in. Raggedy Andy may have been, no was, crazy; but as compared to drippers, and color field abstractionists, at least one knew where cartographic north was on his canvas. With Hofman, Pollock, Rothko, Motherwell, Kline, u.s.w...upside down, or vertically high versus horizontally wide, can one really know? Some like conceptual art, kinetic art. Just put it on a turntable, and every ten minutes turn it 90°. On some of them just flip and show the reverse. And there are minimalists, who carve a niche of non-realism. They acknowledge geometry, but not much else.
In Cleveland, there is a world class art museum where one can make mental notes on a wide variety of art. In the basement, they keep cases of art, centuries old, and relatively crowded. One experiences sensory and object overload, the treasure chest overflows. The modern art upstairs, the paintings from 1500 to almost now are plentiful on the walls. In the new east wing, the contemporary rooms are less dense. You are encouraged to focus on fewer objects, unfortunately there is less content in those objects.
John Rogers Cox. Gray and Gold. 1942. Cleveland.Now, this is interesting in several ways. It is a pleasing composition. Modernistically, it is geometric, limited in color, and devoid of people. There are troublesome clouds [wartime], the golden wealth of a mystery grain [it is too uniform in shade, too brilliant, some presume it corn (it is not maize), unharvested, it has characteristics of wheat] and a nod to the American idyll of its rural and agricultural heart [at its last, though then not realised, glory]. The more you look at it, the hypnotic tease becomes stronger. This is not pure realism, it is a mild surrealism. The power poles are filled with porcelain knobs, but there is no electric wire. There is barbed wire, on the fences across from the grain fields. The roads are very much like a Christian cross. There is a loneliness that is reminiscent of Edward Hopper.
There were other earlier XXth century realist movements: the Ash Can School. Cleveland has George Bellow's, Stag at Sharkeys in the 1916 building. Sr. Wendy talked about that one, too. During the Depression Franklin Roosevelt paid artists to paint, and many painted in a socially conscious style, urban and rural scenes of realism; often in post office and other public buildings. Very few pre-WWII American paintings are in the east wing. One is Reginald Marsh's, A Paramount Picture, 1934 [which is hanging next to the Cox]. They have his, Locomotives Watering, 1934; but not on display.
In room 225c [minimalist] there are a bunch of big canvasses with nothing on them, or rather, nothing to look at. Is this meant to be an isolation room? I have been told, that, a room with a portrait deters some theft. The face and eyes of a mere image of a person has an effect on a person. Art appeals to the senses. This room desensitises. [See last paragraph of this previous essay.]
________________________
*a chief critic had been a former communist; there is also an ethnic component
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