M11 Post

Periods in Art History 

Abstract Expressionism and Pop: Art of the 50's & 60's

The video starts off with first generation abstract expressionist artists such as: Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning. This movement was all about raw emotion. Artists moved away from European traditions by using abstraction to convey strong expressive content.

First Generation Abstract Expressionism 

Franz Kline's signature broad black brush strokes were used on a large scale. His powerful gestures across the canvas create evoke an immediate response. Willem de Kooning is known for his use of cross layering brushstrokes, and intensified colors. In his 1952 painting, Woman I, we again see broad brushstrokes used to showcase the expressiveness of de Kooning's fragmented figure of a woman.

Second Generation Abstract Expressionism 

Helen Frankenthaler, a second generation abstract expressionist, influenced a new generation of artists, the color field painters, when she revealed her painting titled Mountains and Sea. Frankenthaler developed a staining method that brought an airiness to the canvas with soft and pale colors. She poured turpentine thinned paint, a watery wash, onto raw canvas or fabric which allowed it to soak in.

Pop Art 

Jasper Johns painted Flag (1954) which went against everything the abstract expressionists, the dominant style at the time, were doing. Johns pushed to create a conscious new start. Pop art artists focused on elevating the everyday object, which at the time was aesthetically invisible, to high art. The emotion conveyed in the works of abstract expressionists was left behind.

Roy Lichtenstein's Girl with Hair Ribbon (1965) displays his signature style. He replicated Ben-Day dots, a dot patterning used in print, to achieve a mechanical look. Lichtenstein uses techniques from comic book artists. The woman's face is highly stylized, black outlines were used,  and large areas of the face were left blank or filled with the Ben-Day dots. He brought the mechanical reproduction look into the fine art world.

German Art 

Bauhaus School 

Architecture, sculpture, and painting were all merged under Walter Gropius's new school. The core objective was to unify all of the arts and in return reimagine the material world. The Bauhaus at Dessau has been described as the origins of modernism. 

August Sander

This photographer set out to make a systematic record of the German people. The reading states this was done to understand the evolving notions of identity. Sander's subjects look directly into his camera which allows him to capture the individuality of each person and their profession.

Yves Klein 

Germany went through a post war boom. In 1958 an enormous music theater was built in Gelsenkirchen. Yves Klein, a French conceptual artist, designed giant murals that were covered with sea sponges for the interior of the building. They were all painted in his trademark color, International Klein Blue. His vast expanses of blue and clean lines were designed to help Germans move on from the war and acted as a piece of art therapy.

My Opinion 

I picked these videos because I'm most interested in these movements. I love pop art in general and how abstract expressionism lead to the creation of that movement. I also the architecture created under the Bauhaus. The movement produced some interesting graphic design pieces as well.

The films give great information for each of the movements. These two videos went into detail about some of the major artists and why they created the work they did. The reading also gives more information behind the work of August Sander which helps better understand his goals stated in the video.