History sticks to your feet

Pop Art

I have always been fascinated but Andy Warhol, but turned off by how well known he is and his most famous works.

However, after learning more details about him in Art History, I have a deeper appreciation for the work he made, his ideas, his processes, and the evolution of Pop Art.

Andy Warhol, Oxidation painting, 1978, copper metallic paint and Urine on canvas

(close-up)

I have always been fascinated by decay and chemical reactions, as well as the color palette of shiny coppers and crusty turquoise. Thus, I instantly fell in love with this painting. I also liked the human quality that these had that Warhol’s other works conscientious lack. Yet despite the direct human interaction, it still feels somewhat separate from us because of its chemical reaction.

It reminded me of a photographer I absolutely love, David Maisel.

He took these photographs of found copper canisters containing the remains of asylum patient. Time has eroded and oxidized the outsides into beautiful colors and crystallized patterns.

http://davidmaisel.com/works/lod.asp

Although the reading annoyed me to an extent, it proved the point home that Warhol has truly put on this facade and his fame give him the power to give other people fame. He repeats images to devalue them and in turn, by him just touching them, he brings value and meaning back in. He turns things to diamond dust.

Andy Warhol, Diamond Dust Shoes, 1980

Action Painting and the Abstract Expressionists

I’m going to start with the most powerful Abstract Expressionist paintings that I’ve seen in person.

 Jackson Pollock,   Number 1, 1950 Lavender Mist, c. 1950

As I wandered around the National Gallery with my father who is completely unaffected by the art world, I saw the huge Lavender Mist from across the room. A group of kinder gardeners were sitting around it as a woman tried to win over their appreciation for Jackson Pollock. I stood humbled by the size and the layers of the painting. It truly felt like a piece of him. This was no crafty splatter paint project. This was a whiskey drinking, Marlboro smoking, man’s guts on the canvas. It was thick with time, and begged me to touch it. It is a piece that is only powerful when seen in person. When you can see how the tar mixes with the latex and how shards of sand and glass lick the surface. How it is no Mellow Mushroom bathroom floor.

Franz Kline, Orange Outline, 1955

Will Taylor has always brought up Franz Kline when we are creating abstract compositions. I never really was captivated by the glossy pictures he showed us of his work. However, when I was in the Raleigh Museum of Art I stumbled upon this piece. Suddenly my boredom with Kline’s geometric, black and white shapes vanished. I could see the layers and layers of time. The vibrant paint underneath, whispering from the application of white on top, aggravating the thick, expressive black lines. Although small, this painting had a presence of its own. I could see his touch on the surface.

No. 1 (Black Form Paintings) - Mark Rothko (1960s)

In the National Gallery I walked up to the very highest floor and was enslaved by these paintings. They were in a room rich with skylights and you could hear the whisper of music throughout the space. However, the paintings were what commanded the space. Their presence loomed over me. But it was a warm and complex looming. It wasn’t dark and scary, it was almost spiritual. After only seeing Rothko’s colorful work I was absorbed into the black. The subtle way some blacks sat more blue, and some gleamed red like sharpie ink. Some were matte and others glossy. They weren’t just black either. They suggested work. They whispered that they contained more color underneath, color that you could no longer unlock. Just as Rothko’s content. No image could describe this feeling.

Rauschenberg, Brace, c. 1962

In the VA department, especially in Pam Griffin’s class Rauchenberg is God. We have had projects where we were essentially asked to paint a Rauchenberg painting. So my feelings toward him have always been a little resentful. However, when I saw his work for the first time in person in the National gallery my thoughts changed. They were larger than I expected and suggested much more work and time and labor. I had always thought he used paper images as the black and white photos in his paintings, but in fact they are screen prints. This to be is the hands of Pop and Abstract Expressionism holding, taking images and repeating them without touch, and then adding action, expressive marks, content, meaning back in. Breathing life into the lifeless.

The power of art video made me appreciate Rothko even more. Seeing his struggles to preserve meaning a truth in art and rejecting the material world spoke to me. Although I found the actor who played him a bit cheesy and distracting, the shots without him speaking were powerful and beautiful. They seemed very intimate and showed an accurate depiction of an artist alone in their studio. Simon Schama always speaks so passionately about art work and makes us feel the passion one way or the other.

Surrealism

The world’s favorite mustache. (poor Velazquez, his mustache is way bigger than yours.) And the world’s most famous surrealist, Salvador Dali.

SURREALISM, noun, masc., Pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express, either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations.

Salvador Dali, Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate One Second Before Waking Up, 1944

In the arousal of sleep a woman lays open to attack horizontally across the plane. Hovering above her open body is an arch of predators. Despite their curling rage as they leap for the attack, they are formed in a graceful arch, quite more peaceful than a direct, angular diagonal. This arch contradicts their motive, ensuring the dream state. An elephant upon stick legs passes blindly behind the violent scene of attack. Seemingly determined and detached from the action. The sky is blushing with the morning, another sign against the violence. It seems as soon as the prick touches the ivory nude, reality will blow the smoke away from the surreal scene.

René Magritte, The Key of Dreams, 1930

André Masson. Automatic Drawing. (1924)

Duchamp, Nude Descending Staircase, No. 2, 1912,

“Nudes do not descend staircases.”

Nude Descending a Staircase

Toe upon toe, a snowing flesh,

A gold of lemon, root and rind,

She sifts in sunlight down the stairs

With nothing on. Nor on her mind.

We spy beneath the banister

A constant thresh of thigh on thigh—

Her lips imprint the swinging air

That parts to let her parts go by.

One woman waterfall, she wears

Her slow descent like a long cape

And pausing, on the final stair,

Collects her motions into shape.

X.J. Kennedy