Text j. Op Art and Further Developments

Op Art is a style of abstract painting that made use of optical illusions and other striking visual effects. Emerging in the United States in the mid-1960s, op art generally took the form of brightly colored, tightly patterned geometric abstractions that greatly influenced fashion, commercial design, and other aspects of the popular culture of the era.

A chief inspiration for op art was German American artist Josef Albers, in particular his Homage to the Square. In this series, produced over 25 years, Albers painted squares nested inside one another to study the effects of variations in color, size, and placement. But Albers, a veteran of the avant-garde Bauhaus school of art and design in Germany that operated from 1919 to 1933, stood for the artistic values of an older generation. The younger painters who pioneered op art promoted livelier, more eye-catching uses of color and pattern. Many early works of British artist Bridget Riley, for instance, involved curving parallel lines that seemed to undulate in waves across the painting’s surface. Hungarian-born artist Victor Vasarély, considered one of the founders of op art, used warped geometric forms to create powerful spatial illusions, including dizzying descents into the “depths” of the painting.

A 1965 exhibition called The Responsive Eye, which was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, helped consolidate the op art movement. But because of these artists’ allegiances to other movements with widely divergent philosophies, op art flourished only briefly; also, many artists resisted op art because they saw it as overly commercial and dependent on visual gimmicks. Its advocates, however, emphasized op art’s pioneering exploration of the mechanisms of perception and how these mechanisms can influence – and distort – our picture of the world. “We know how hard it is to distinguish between seeing, thinking, feeling, and remembering”, curator William Seitz wrote in the exhibition’s catalogue essay. It was the intent of The Responsive Eye, he explained, “to dramatize the power of static forms and colors to stimulate dynamic psychological responses”.

After a long absence, the techniques of op art were revived in the 1980s by a small circle of abstract painters who were sometimes labeled NeoGeo for their new take on geometric abstraction. Among the best-known painters of the group were Americans Peter Halley, Peter Schuyff, and Philip Taaffe.

In the wake of the Neo-Dada movement with its happenings and performances, many artists had left their studios to produce either transitory Land Art in the countryside, or to pursue “individual mythologies” with different materials. Photography or the new media of video and computers stimulated artists to innovative, experimental art forms, for example, the New Realism and Photorealism.

Another group, the Minimalists, dissociating themselves from the shrillness of Pop Art, constructed sober spatial installations with geometrical bodies. Even more sparse than these expressive forms, which were already reduced to a minimum, was the work of the Conceptual Artists, who just gave the audience their ideas for an art work in writing. In many instances the work itself was not even made. The mere idea was held to be art. “This is a portrait if I say so”, Rauschenberg once proclaimed. In the attempt to involve the viewer as far as possible in the production process, art became increasingly intellectualized. This process had accompanied the artistic development of the 20^th century as a whole. Now “viewer participation” had progressed to the point where the second link of the chain “artist-artwork-viewer” was removed: the artwork that was perceptible to the senses had served its purpose. From now on it existed only in the viewer’s imagination. Art dissolved, so to speak, in the extended concept of art. Integrated within reality in this way, it necessarily lost any chance of having any effect on it. Thus it had also lost its function as a bearer of utopias, alternative designs for a better world.

In the early 80s, this sobering experience aroused a real hunger for the great illusion, the appearance of pictures. Painting returned. Freed from any social and political ambitions, freed from the attempt to harmonize art and life, art could now be unburdened art once again: the beautiful illusion, the “fiction” which the viewer can consider with disinterested pleasure, was resurrected.

After the cool calculation of Minimalism, painting was, inevitably perhaps, going to find its antithesis in a rough and raw style that expressed extremes of violent emotion. Neo-Expressionism developed in the late 1970s and flourished in the 1980s particularly in the USA, Germany and Italy, through artists such as Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, Julian Schnabel, Phillip Guston and Francesco Clemente.

Meanwhile, in Britain, two of the most important post-war painters, Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, returned to the body to make expressive paintings that dealt with human existence, identity and sexuality. Other British artists, including Paula Rego and Howard Hodgkin, took real and imagined stories as their starting points to make narrative paintings which, whether abstract or figurative, explored emotional experiences and specific memories.

As we move further forward into the 21^st century, no one style of painting dominates; instead there is a vast array of styles which co-exist. Painting, although often pronounced dead, continues to move viewers as much as it ever did. The postmodernist era has given painters the freedom to determine their choice of subject matter and the manner in which they choose to paint it.

Postmodernism also means that artists borrow wholesale from previous styles, now that the idea of originality and authenticity is moribund; it is precisely such ambiguity and doubt that are recognized as being at the core of things. Marlene Dumas, Luc Tuymans, Gerhard Richter, John Bellany, Peter Howson and Steven Campbell belong to this new generation of painters. It seems almost churlish to highlight just a few of the artists currently working, but it is the case that the contemporary artists have created a distinct, new style of painting, its spirit of uncertainty and unease seems to mirror aspects of our insecure times.

 PRACTICE

 Comprehension Check

Activity 1. Scan the texts about the most important movements and trends in the art of painting of the 20^th century and complete the profile of each trend:

The most important dates in the history of the movement / trend

The most famous and influential artists that belong to the movement / trend

The most famous and spectacular works of art

Epithets and terms to characterize the peculiarities of the artists’ style and manner of painting

Phonetic transcription of the most important proper nouns

Activity 2. How carefully have you read the texts? Answer the questions and provide your commentaries if necessary:

1. What can you say about the historical background against which the art of painting of the 20^th century developed and took various forms?

2. What was the dominant means of expression and communication for the Fauvists? What was Matisse’s understanding of the painting itself? What are the most vivid innovations fostered by the artists of that group? Don't forget to give examples from the text.

3. How did the Cubists treat reality? Will you mention the core elements of their technique? What did the Cubists do to undermine the illusion of space? Don't forget to provide your ideas with illustrations from the text.

4. What were the Expressionists mostly concerned with? What are the names of their major artists?

5. Who were the principles of Futurism originated by? What is typical of Futurist manner of painting? Don't forget to give examples from the text.

6. Why did the Dadaists intend to ridicule the culture of their time? Where did they prefer to gather for their unusual “happenings”? What are the names of their most outstanding painters?

7. How did Sigmund Freud influence the Surrealists? Dwell on the characteristics and technical peculiarities of their painting. What did they want to represent in their works of art? Why were they fascinated with mythology? Name their major techniques.

8. Where and when did Abstract Art start? What does the term ‘abstract’ mean? What significant innovations were facilitated by the representatives of this movement? Name the most important branches of Abstract Art.

9. Why did Pop Art begin as a reaction against all forms of abstraction? What are the links between Pop Art and mass culture? Comment on the peculiarities of its artistic manner. Don't forget to give examples from the text.

10. What was the name of the exhibition that helped to consolidate the Op Art movement?

11. Dwell on the tendencies in art development in the postmodernist era.

Activity 3. Here are the descriptions of some famous works of art created by the artists of the period. Match them to the titles given below:

1. Nothing but a blown-up comic-strip? Nothing but a pretty blonde thinking about her boyfriend? This painting tells us a lot about the standardization of experience by a commercialized pictorial language, which is now no longer possible to escape in everyday city life. But beyond that, the painter demonstrates a virtuoso command of the composition of screen dots and contoured areas. Derived from mass production technology, these processes provided new means of expression for painting. The artist’s reaction to the overpowering flood of images of banal culture created a paradox: he developed a distinctive personal style, and the message of his pictures has grown out of the negation of the artistic authorship.

2. In controlled action, and yet governed by chance like in an automatic process, this painter covers the canvas with colour patterns. The absolute picture surface is emphasized by the absence of a planned distribution of pictorial weight and pre-composed harmonious relationships. Yet his painting retains the possibility of evoking figurative shapes and illusionistic space. For in the black net which is neither completely chaotic nor presents a repeatable pattern, the viewer can find his own spatial figures, he can make individual constellations come forward or recede. These possibilities are not prescribed and have to be brought to the painting by the viewer himself. This artist’s painting was an action, a real act, however trance-like. The painter himself could never predict what the final product would look like.

3. This artist undertook an analysis of reality. The alienation of the objective world opens up access to deeper levels of consciousness, to a reality behind the visible reality. But he did not wish to call forth those familiar things repressed into the unconscious with visionary, traumatic pictorial worlds, but to reveal the strange in the familiar. This famous painting only ceases to be irritating at the second glance: over a nocturnal landscape, and a house with its lights on, there beams a bright summer sky. Day and night are so plausibly connected that the contradiction has the appearance of authenticity. While the painting puts forward a curious claim, it makes the viewer ask why reality is as it is, and not different.

4. Set near a bridge the painting shows a man in terror or at least distress, covering his ears, as two individuals are seen walking away. In this world famous painting the motif’s expressive power is heightened by the colours and forms used. The ground disappears from under one’s feet, and the echo of the human being’s silent shouting has set heaven and earth vibrating. Like many painters of his time, this very artist wanted to depict “modern inner life” in a world torn apart. His haunting pictures take as their theme human despair and fear, love and disease, jealousy and death. The painter, whose own psychological condition was somewhat unstable, used this picture as a vehicle to express the inner anguish of humankind. This is conveyed in his hasty brushstrokes and his colouring, with morbid, subdued tones merging into bright, glowing colours seemingly without transition.

5. This scandalous work was a porcelain urinal, which was signed “R. Mutt”. Submitted for the exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in 1917, it was rejected by the committee, even though the rules stated that all works would be accepted from artists who paid the fee. It was displayed and photographed at Alfred Stieglitz’s studio, and the photo was published in The Blind Man, but the original has been lost. The work is regarded by some art historians and theorists of the avant-garde as a major landmark in 20^th century art. Replicas commissioned by the painter himself in the 1960s are now on display in a number of different museums.

6. This work of art was made in the Hôtel Régina at Nice. The artist was prevented from painting by ill health but, although confined to bed, he produced a number of works known as gouaches découpées. He had at his disposal sheets of paper painted in gouache by assistants. A background of white paper – of the dimensions indicated by the artist – was put on the wall and the assistant pinned onto it the pieces of gouached paper which the painter passed to him indicating exactly where they should be placed. The concentric pattern formed by the coloured shapes in the centre of the work echoes the spiral pattern found in the object's shell. When the author decided that his composition was finished, it was lightly stuck to the background. When later on it was sent to Lefebvre-Foinet [in Paris] to be pasted down, before anything was moved, an extremely precise tracing was made to ensure that no changes were made in the composition, not even by so much as a millimeter.

1. Surrealism: Renѐ Magritte’s The Realm of Light

2. Pop Art: Roy Lichtenstein’s M-Maybe (A Girl’s Picture)

3. Expressionism: Edward Munch’s The Scream

4. Fauvism: Henri Matisse’s The Snail

5. Abstract Expressionism: Jackson Pollock’s Number 32

6. Dadaism: Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain

 Language Focus: Vocabulary

Activity 1. Match the words underlined in the texts to their synonyms or synonymous expressions:

pejorative translate intersect halt astringent plethora lithe spin estrangement banish antecedent impetus array churlish

divide, cross severe, harsh, strong and bitter impulse, stimulus, motivation rotation, turn, twirl impolite, ill-mannered, surly supple, agile, graceful derogatory, depreciatory separation, rupture, hostility drive out, eject, oust, deport stop, finish, put an end to over-abundance, profusion transfer, render precursor, forerunner collection, selection, assortment

Activity 2. Match the words underlined in the texts to their dictionary definitions:

drastic ambiguity void convex representational renunciation bestowal retina epitome jab inanity pandemonium tap into pivotal eradicate garish gimmick sparse moribund

empty or without something that is usually present existing in small amounts, or very spread out; thinly scattered something that is not clear because it has more than one possible meaning to get rid of something completely, especially something bad the act of giving valuable property or an important right or honour to someone or something having a strong or violent effect a trick or device that is intended to impress and interest you but is really not useful at all a very noisy and confused situation, especially one caused by a lot of angry or excited people a statement in which you formally say that you do not believe in something or support something very bright and colourful in an ugly and tasteless way the state of being completely stupid, silly, or lacking sense a rough poke, a hard straight push; a short quick hit with a closed hand showing things as they really are no longer effective and not likely to continue for much longer; in a dying state the best possible example of a particular type of person or thing extremely important and affecting how something develops curving outwards, rather than being flat or curving inwards to use someone’s ability or a supply of information and get some benefit from it the part at the back of your eye that sends light signals to the brain, where they are changed into images

Activity 3. Rearrange the text given below. Make sure you read through the completed text to check that the order of the paragraphs makes sense. Add new words which may come in handy when speaking about painting as a supplement to your vocabulary list:

1. With Campbell’s Soup Can (Tomato) Andy Warhol takes as his subject a ubiquitous staple food found in millions of American homes and turns it into high art. With the unique candor he displayed in the best of his early Pop art works he appropriates the curved lines and iconic graphic imagery of a tin of canned soup and re-examines them in the context of their pure visual qualities.

2. Although artists had drawn on popular culture throughout the 20th century, Pop art marked an important new stage in the breakdown between high and low art forms. Warhol's paintings from the early 1960s were important in pioneering these developments, but it is arguable that the diverse activities of his later years were just as influential in expanding the implications of Pop art into other spheres, and further eroding the borders between the worlds of high art and popular culture.

3. Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans transformed him into an overnight sensation when they were first exhibited in Los Angeles in 1962. It was his first one-person exhibition organized by Irving Blum, the legendary and visionary director of the Ferus Gallery. The exhibition featured thirty-two “portraits” of soup cans, each identical except for the flavor inscribed on their labels. These revolutionary paintings were displayed on a small narrow shelf that ran along the wall of the gallery in a way that suggested not only a gallery rail but also the long shelves in a grocery store. With these works, Warhol took on the tradition of still life painting, declaring a familiar household brand of packaged food a legitimate subject in the age of Post-War economic recovery.

4. Critics have traditionally seen Warhol’s career as going into decline in 1968, after he was shot by Valerie Solanas. Valuing his early paintings above all, they have ignored the activities that absorbed his attention in later years – films, parties, collecting, publishing, and painting commissioned portraits. Yet some have begun to think that all these ventures make up Warhol's most important legacy because they prefigure the diverse interests, activities, and interventions that occupy artists today.

5. Warhol's early commercial illustration has recently been acclaimed as the arena in which he first learned to manipulate popular tastes. His drawings were often comic, decorative, and whimsical, and their tone is entirely different from the cold and impersonal mood of his Pop art.

6. Much debate still surrounds the iconic screen printed images with which Warhol established his reputation as a Pop artist in the early 1960s. Some view his Death and Disaster series, and his Marilyn pictures, as frank expressions of his sorrow at public events. Others view them as some of the first expressions of “compassion fatigue” – the way the public loses the ability to sympathize with events from which they feel removed. Still others think of his pictures as screens – placed between us and horrifying events – which attempt to register and process shock.

7. Although Warhol would continue to create paintings intermittently throughout his career, in 1965 he officially retired from the medium to concentrate on making experimental films. Despite years of neglect, these films have recently attracted widespread interest, and Warhol is now seen as one of the most important filmmakers of the period.

Activity 4. Read the texts below and complete them using the words from the boxes:

relevant glossy supreme turning push coined curator revision kindergarten heavily figural convention

The Black Square

The Black Square of Kazimir Malevich is one of the most famous creations of Russian art in the last century. The first Black Square was painted in 1915 to become the …¹… point in the development of Russian avant-garde. Many art history students have proclaimed, “Why is that art? I could have done that in …² …!” My response usually has something to do with being in the right place at the right time and having something …³… to say about tradition, which ultimately leads to its overthrow.

Kazimir Malevich …⁴… the term “suprematism” in 1915 to refer to his new vision for painting as being …⁵… in relation to painting of the past – that is of “the Academy”. To be an academic painter meant espousing, among other things, a method of looking to the world around oneself for inspiration/imitation and having to rely …⁶… on figural compositions. Instead, Malevich reduced his compositions to shape and color, or in his words “zero form” that lacked …⁷… . Malevich recognized his indebtedness to but made a strong …⁸… for artists and for the Academy to “renounce the inquisition of nature”. Basically, look at most large to medium scale …⁹… paintings (ones with lots of people/figures) between 1400 – 1900 and you’ll notice a tendency toward subjects from the Bible, Classical history/myth, and recent history, as well as a penchant for “well-licked”, that is …¹⁰… and precisely painted, surfaces. In short, you’ll encounter an art that attempts to recreate the three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional surface. To mirror the natural world in this way was, to Malevich, outdated and in need of change, …¹¹… , and revolution. I heard one …¹²… describe his aim as “creating a new art for a new people” (having ultimately taken off after the Russian Revolution of 1917).

hallucinatory consistent frustration interpretation irrational phenomena entirely reflection sprang daffodil