Lecture 24:

Art after and against Abstract

Expressionism:
Pop, Minimalism,
Conceptualism, Performance
 Motorola Television, 1950. featuring William
A boy watched TV in an appliance Boyd as the titular lead character of
store window in 1948. Hopalong Cassidy, 1949 - 1952
The first transmission with six monitors to Europe of A “Three-Eyed TV Monster” created by Puerto Rican
television programs from America via the Telstar satellite. Engineer Ulises Armand Sanabria permitted simultaneous
23rd July 1962. two- and three-screen viewing of all contemporary US
Broadcasters; ABC, CBS and NBC, 1961.
British Pop (1947 – 1969)
During World War II, a
good deal of
infrastructure and
housing in London,
capital of the British
Empire, was damaged or
destroyed by a German
bombing campaign
called the “Blitz” from
1940 – 1941.

After the war, the British Empire was left relatively

impoverished with many of territories it had previously
colonized in Asia and Africa pushing for independence or
devolution of ties to the Empire.

American consumer culture, popularized during the war

by American soldiers and corporations operating in
Britain, became a dominant influence in post-war British
society.

The fantasy of the United States, glimpsed through the

rose-tinted lens of American visual media, became a
source of inspiration for British artist and authors.

For these individuals, America seemed vigorous,

wealthy, and appealingly timeless while British culture
seemed increasingly weighed down by austerity
Ads cover buildings at Piccadilly Circus roundabout in London, late 1940s measures imposed after the war and the accumulation
or early 1950s. of earned grievances and outmoded customs over the
long history of the Empire.
 Paolozzi (1924-2005) was an Italian-Scottish artist whose migrant parents
ran an ice-cream shop in Edinburgh.

In June 1940, Italy declared war on the UK and Paolozzi was interned
(along with most other Italian men in Britain). The next month his father,
grandfather, and uncle, who were also imprisoned for their national
origin were killed when the ship carrying them to Canada was sunk by a
U-Boat.

After the war, Paolizzi Studied in Paris where he encountered many of

the surviving members of the modernist movements of Cubism, Dada,
and Surrealism.

The collage is made using clippings from magazines given to Paolozzi by

ex-servicemen from the US or acquired from shops in London

The title of the collage is derived from the cover of an issue of

Intimate Confessions magazine; an erotic publication of the
“confessional” genre of writing that developed during WWII. The woman
on the cover may symbolically represent “Britania” – the personification
of the United Kingdom.

Paulozzi combined pasted images of a generic pistol (the design draws

on multiple late-19th/early-20th century automatic pistol designs)
emitting the word "pop" cut from the packaging of a toy, with clippings
of a slice of cherry pie, and a "Real Gold" logo from a brand of California
lemon juice.

Beneath this are an image of a WWII Era Lockheed Hudson or Ventura

bomber, and part of a Coca-Cola advertisement.

*Eduardo Paolozzi. I was a Rich Man's One of ten images from Paolozzi's "BUNK!" series, (1941-1952) from
Plaything, 1947, collage. Henry Ford - "History is more or less bunk … We want to live in the
present …"
 Richard Hamilton, c. 1955

Richard Hamilton
Richard Hamilton, Self-Portrait, 1951 1922-2011
 The two human figures in the image are a
metaphorical “adam and eve” in a modern Eden.

The objects filling their home are symbolic of the

post-war British landscape of media and
consumer material culture.
Hamilton started creating art as a
technical draughtsman at an
electronics firm prior to art school so the
emphasis on electronics makes
sense.

Like the objects filling the allegorical space

around them, their eroticized bodies are
presented as another commodity for
consumption.

Other objects reference the contemporary

obsession with space – the ceiling is a photo of
Earth taken from orbit.

Produced as the cover design for the exhibition

*Richard Hamilton, Just What is It That Makes catalogue of This is Tomorrow (1956), an
Today’s Homes So Different, so Appealing?, immersive, collaboratively produced installation
of art and design conceived by a collective called
1956, collage. The Independent Group.
 Unlike the modern objects in the image, the theatre outside the
window is clipped from a 1927 photograph of Warners’ Theatre
in New York. ( see, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.)

Al Jonson, the performer advertised on the theatre, was famous

for acts performed in blackface like “The Jazz Singer,” the first
film with a synchronized dialogue track.
Richard Hamilton, Detail from Just
What is It That Makes Today’s Hamilton was an affirmed member of international leftist and
anti-colonial groups. His inclusion of this image, strategically cut
Homes So Different, so Appealing?, to hide the face of Al Jonson, may have been intended as a
1956, collage. reference to the status of racism as a thinly veiled part of the
cultural substrate of contemporary consumer society.
 Richard Hamilton, John McHale, and John Voelckerr, Fun House, 1956
(recreated in 1987), wood, metal and other materials. Poster for the film Forbidden Planet, 1956

• Installation art created for the 1956 exhibition "This is Tomorrow" in the
Whitechapel neighborhood of London.
• A “Fun House” room with walls covered in references to contemporary popular
culture and a single quote from high art (Van Gogh’s Sunflowers)
• Interior spaces appear to extend like hallways into illusionistic space.
• The installation includes both actual material culture and recreations of consumer
objects like a large three-dimensional sculpture of a bottle of Guinness Beer.
This is modern art to entertain people, modern art as a game
people will want to play. The sense of involvement and fun
carries through in the press clippings; journalists were most
taken by the fact that the show was opened by Robby the Robot,
star of the sci-fi movie Forbidden Planet and easier to book than Souvenir Miniature Guinness
Marilyn Monroe. Bottle, before 1955
 This is POP!
1957, Hamilton listed the characteristics of Pop Art, “Pop Art is: Popular
(designed for a mass audience), Transient (short-term solution), Expendable
(easily forgotten), Low cost, Mass produced, Young (aimed at youth), Witty,
Sexy, Gimmicky, Glamorous, Big business.”

Bold colors
Pop art is known for its use of vibrant, contrasting colors, often primary colors like red, blue, and yellow.

Depictions of Everyday subjects and celebrities.

Pop art often depicts everyday objects, consumer products, and “familiar” faces.

Repetition
Pop art frequently repeats images and objects to emphasize the influence of mass production.

Appropriation, collage, printing

Pop artists often incorporate images from popular media and advertisements into their work, sometimes using collage
techniques or various forms of automatic image production.

Irony and satire

Pop art often uses humor and wit to comment on consumerism, mass media, and popular culture.

Simplified imagery
Pop art often uses strong outlines and bold shapes to create easily-identifiable easily-reproducible subjects.
Times Square in the late 1960s.
 Lichtenstein took the image for Girl with Ball
straight from an advertisement for a hotel in
Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains.

In pirating it, however, he transformed the

photographic image, using a painter's version of
the techniques of commercial printers.

The resulting simplification of the figure’s

mouth makes it appear more doll-like than
female; any sex appeal she had has become
plastic.
Roy Lichtenstein, Girl with Ball, 1961,
oil on canvas.
*Roy Lichtenstein, Whaam!, 1963, acrylic and oil on canvas.
The Ben Day process is a printing and
photoengraving technique for producing
areas of gray or (with four-color printing)
various colors by using fine overlapping patter
of transparent and/or opaque ink on the
paper. It was developed in 1879 by illustrator
and printer Benjamin Henry Day Jr.
Roy Lichtenstein, Whaam!, 1963, acrylic and oil
on canvas.

Panel from DC Comics' All-American Men of

Cover, All-American Men of War No. 89 (Feb. 1962)
War No. 89 (Feb. 1962)
 Inspired by Charlton Comics'
Strange Suspense Stories "The
Painting" #72 (October 1964) by
Dick Giordano.

The theme is “art” as a subject, but rather than

reproduce existing works by Cezannae,
Mondrian, Picasso, etc. as he had started doing
in 1962, Lichtenstein depicted the gestural
brushstrokes of such paintings as a subject.

The series is considered a satire or parody.

*Roy Lichtenstein, The Brushstroke. 1965,
Intended to superficially resemble the gestural
Screenprint on paper painting style of abstract expressionism but
differ by being deliberately crafted to appear
mechanically reproduced.`
 Andrew Warhola Jr.
Andy Warhol
1928-1987

Andy Warhol, Self Portrait, 1966

Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, 1963

“I used to have the same lunch every day, for twenty

years, I guess, the same thing over and over again.”
Andy Warhol,
Untitled from A la
recherche de shoe
perdu, c. 1954

Andy Warhol,
Vogue, page 24, Andy Warhol, Cover from 25
September 15, Cats Named Sam, c. 1954,
1957. Offset lithograph
“I don’t want to be essentially the same—I want to be exactly the same. Because
the more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away, and
the better and emptier you feel.”
—Warhol, POPism, 1980

“Someone said Brecht wanted everyone to think alike. I want everyone to think
alike. But Brecht wanted to do it through Communism . . . It’s happening here all
by itself . . . Everybody looks and acts alike . . .
I think everybody should be a machine . . .
The reason I’m painting this way is that I want to be a machine, and I feel that
whatever I do and do machine-like is what I want to do. . . .
—Warhol and Gene Swenson, interview, 1963.

“Business art is the step that comes after Art.”

—Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again).
 At Warhol’s studio The Factory
(actually a series of three places), he
cultivated a following of less known
Andy Warhol, Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1962, Acrylic artists and celebrities who helped
with metallic enamel paint on canvas, 32 panels create or model for work.

It is debated as to whether the at-

times exploitative nature of Warhols
relationship with these figures was
itself part of the performance of the
character of “Andy Warhol”
*Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych, 1962, Pop art, Oil, acrylic, and silkscreen on
enamel on canvas; two panels.
 Andy Warhol, Orange Car Crash Fourteen
Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych, 1962, Pop art, Times, 1963, Silkscreen ink on synthetic
Oil, acrylic, and silkscreen on enamel on polymer paint on two canvases, 8' 9 7/8" x
canvas; two panels, each 80 7/8 x 57” 13' 8 1/8"

Q: When did you start with the ‘Death’ series?

A: I guess it was the big plane crash picture, the front of the newspaper: 129 DIE. I
was also painting Marilyns. I realized that everything I was doing must have been
Death.” (Swenson interview)
 Alberto Korda,
Guerillero
Heroico, 1960.

Taken at the
Memorial for the
expliosion of the
La Coubre

Jim Fitzpatrick, Che “Andy Warhol” (Gerard Malanga),

Guevara, 1967 - Che Guevara, 1968, screenprint.
1968, screenprint.

Made after the Man truly achieves his full human condition when
execution of he produces without being compelled by the
physical necessity of selling himself as a
Guevara in Bolivia, commodity.
1967 — Che Guevara, Man and Socialism in Cuba
 Andy Warhol Guest-Stars on The Love Boat (1977-1986), 1985

Actress [Valerie Solanas]

Shoots Andy Warhol, Daily
News on June 4, 1968
“There are two distinct terms: the
Minimalism:
known constant and the
experienced variable.” • Impersonal (Self-Erasure)
—Robert Morris • Non-Referential
• Non-anthropomorphic
• Mass-production materials
• Standardization
• Repetition and Modularity
• Gestalt Forms
• Not painting or sculpture
• Literal and non-illusionistic
• Displayed directly on
floor/ground/wall
• Universal accessibility
• No part-to-whole hierarchy
Robert Morris, Untitled (L-Beams), or easy reducibility
1965
 Frank Stella
1936 - 2024

Frank Stella working on an image from his “Black Paintings”, c.1959

 Minimalism

Frank Stella, Die Fahne Hoch!, *Frank Stella, Avicenna, 1960,

1959, Enamel on canvas, 121 Aluminum paint on canvas, 72” x 72”
5/8 x 72 13/16”

“What you see is what you see” —Frank Stella

 Donald Judd
1928 - 1994

Donald Judd with one of his works, 1966

The new three-dimensional work doesn't constitute a movement,
school or style. . . The main thing wrong with painting is that it is a
rectangular plane placed flat against the wall. A rectangle is a shape
itself; it is obviously the whole shape; it determines and limits the
arrangement of whatever is on or inside of it. … The parts are few and
so subordinate to the unity as not to be parts in an ordinary sense. . .
The work of Johns and Rauschenberg and assemblage … are
preliminaries. … Three dimensions are real space. That gets rid of the
problem of illusionism … which is riddance of one of the salient and
most objectionable relics of European art. .. A work needs only to be
interesting. … The thing as a whole, its quality as a whole, is what is
interesting. … Almost nothing has been done with industrial techniques
… Art could be mass-produced …Three-dimensional work usually
doesn't involve ordinary anthropomorphic imagery … [A]ll of the parts
and the whole shape are coextensive.

Donald Judd, “Specific Objects,” 1965

• Judd once wrote, “The main virtue of
geometric shapes is that they aren't “Stacks”
organic, as all art otherwise is.” (vertical)
• Untitled is made of rectangular metal
boxes: a simple geometric form the artist
favored because he felt it carried no “progressions”
symbolic meaning.
(horizontal on
• The spaces between the units are equal to wall)
each unit’s height.

• Depending on the height of the ceiling

where the work is displayed, the number of “boxes” (on
units may be adjusted. floor)
• By using a predetermined system, Judd
circumvented the spontaneous decisions
artists often face during the art-making
process. *Donald Judd,
• He used new industrial materials and Untitled, 1969,
fabrication processes—in this case, Minimalism,
galvanized iron and green lacquer paint
typically used in auto body shops—and had
Galvanized iron and
the work welded at a sheet-metal shop. Plexiglas, overall 120
x 27⅛ x 24".
 Eva Hesse
1936 - 1970
 Post-Minimalism
Post-minimalist art is
characterized by an
emphasis on process
and concept over the
finished object, the
use of chance
methods, and the use
of nontraditional
materials.

Some post-minimalist
artists shared
minimalism's interest
in abstract,
anonymous objects,
while others reacted
Eva Hesse, No Title, 1969–1970, Postminimalism, against minimalism's
impersonality with art
Latex over rope, string, and wire; two strands.
that revealed the
hand of the maker.
Conceptual Art: The Dematerialization of Art

For Weiner, words, as

meaning, were considered
more relevant than the
object.

Interpretation of the art, but

more importantly the words
that prompted the creation
of the art were entrusted to
the viewer.

Lawrence Weiner, A Square Removal from a Rug in Use, 1969

Solomon “Sol” LeWitt
1928 - 2007
 *Sol LeWitt, Serial Project, I (ABCD), 1966
“The aim of the artist would not be to
Serial Project, I (ABCD) combined and instruct the viewer but to give him
recombined open and closed enameled information. Whether the viewer
aluminum squares, cubes, and extensions of understands this information is incidental
these shapes, on a grid that rests on the floor. to the artist; he cannot foresee the
understanding of all his viewers. He would
follow his predetermined premise to its
The sculpture is designed to express its own
conclusion avoiding subjectivity. Chance,
system of construction, giving viewers all the taste, or unconsciously remembered forms
information they need to unravel its aesthetic would play no part in the outcome. The
logic. serial artist does not attempt to produce a
beautiful or mysterious object but functions
“Sentences on Conceptual Art,” Sol LeWitt, 1969

7. The artist's will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea

to completion. . .
10. Ideas can be works of art; they are in a chain of development
that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made
physical.
15. Since no form is intrinsically superior to another, the artist may
use any form, from an expression of words (written or spoken) to
physical reality, equally.
27. The concept of a work of art may involve the matter of the
piece or the process in which it is made.
28. Once the idea of the piece is established in the artist's mind
and the final form is decided, the process is carried out blindly. . .
René Magritte, The
Treachery of Images,
1929, Oil on canvas. Marcel
Duchamp,
Fountain, 1917
Joseph Kosuth, One and Three
Chairs, 1965. Wooden folding chair,
photograph of chair, and photo
enlargement of dictionary definition
of chair.
“The ‘value’ of particular artists after Duchamp can be weighed according to
how much they questioned the nature of art. . . . Artists question the nature of
art by presenting new propositions as to art’s nature.” Joseph Kosuth, “Art after
Philosophy” (1969)
 Happenings, Performance, Fluxus
“Pollock . . . Left us at the point where we must be preoccupied with and
even dazzled by the space and objects of our everyday life, either our
bodies, cloths, rooms, or, if need be, the vastness of Forty-second Street.
Not satisfied with the suggestion through paint of our other senses, we
shall utilize specific instances of sight, sound, movements, people, odors,
touch. Objects of every sort are the materials for the new art. [The new
generation of] bold creators . . . Will disclose entirely unheard-of
happenings and events . . . An odor of crushed strawberries, a letter from
a friend, or a billboard selling Drano; three taps on the door, a scratch, a
sigh, or a voice lecturing endlessly, a blinding staccato flash, a bowler hat
—all will become materials for this new concrete art.”
—Allan Kaprow, “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock” (1958)

Allan Kaprow, “Women licking jam

off a car” from Household, 1964
Allan Kaprow, Prompt for “Women licking jam off a car” from Household, 1964
 ...purge the world of bourgeois sickness, 'intellectual', professional & commercialized culture ...
PROMOTE A REVOLUTIONARY FLOOD AND TIDE IN ART, ... promote NON ART REALITY to be
grasped by all peoples, not only critics, dilettantes and professionals ... FUSE the cadres of
cultural, social & political revolutionaries into united front & action.
1963, Maciunas’ Fluxus Manifesto

George Maciunas, Artists, architect, gallerist, co-founder and

organizer of Fluxus

Operating globally in the 1960s, Fluxus was an interdisciplinary and

experimental approach to art that emphasized blending different artistic
media and breaking down traditional boundaries between art and everyday
life through public art actions, humor, and critique of the world of High Art.
 Ono’s score for Cut Piece:

“Cut Piece First version for

single performer:
Performer sits on stage with
a pair of scissors in front of
him. It is announced that
members of the audience
may come on stage—one at
a time—to cut a small piece
of the performer’s clothing to
Yoko Ono, Cut Piece, 1965, performance. take with them.
Performer remains
motionless throughout the
piece.
Piece ends at the
performer’s option.”
“[T]he author’s ego is contained in traditional works. It
means to thrust ego upon the audience.
I have always wanted to produce work without such ego by
standing at a spiritual state of perfect selflessness…

My feelings were, to not thrust the thing I chose upon

others, and no matter what it is, please take away the part
you like, and please take the part you like with you by
cutting it off.”

Yoko Ono, Tada No Atashi, 1986

Yoko Ono, Cut Piece, 1965, performance at Carnegie Hall.
 Grapefruit, First
Edition, 1964

Yoko Ono, pages from Grapefruit, 1964