SHGC Pop Art - Part 3

Land's End ,1979

Two Flags Black, 1973 Silk screen,

Three Flags, 1958

☻ Each of the tiered flags is diminished in scale by about twenty-five percent from the one behind, and projects outward, directly contrary to standard pictorial perspective.

☻ The interplay of one complete and two partially visible flags serves to emphasize both design and dimension. Instead of pictorialising the flag, as he had in earlier paintings, in Three Flags, Johns transformed it into an object.

Robert Rauschenberg

☻ Generally not considered true pop artist – regarded as one of the most influential figures to move away from AB EX – once took a De Kooning drawing and rubbed it out – called it “Erased de Kooning”

☻ Interest in subjects from ordinary life – helped open the way for Pop art – used to walk around the block and pick up discarded consumer products ‘found objects’ from the street to use in his art.

☻ Mid 1950’s – began to incorporate 3D objects into what he called ‘combine paintings’ eg, Canyon 1959 and Monogram.

☻ Used found material to break away from illusionary space which had been retained by AB EX and to ‘act in the gap between art and life’

☻ His art has more to do with leaping the boundaries of art in the spirit of Dada than it has to do with Abstract Expressionist Art movement. He sought to expand the possibilities of his visual art beyond the traditional painting and assemblage.

☻ His works are 3D objects and painting to produce unsettling, controversial works, the significance of which was formulated largely by the spectator.

☻ In 1955, he coined the term "combine painting," which described a new format for his art. This included the incorporating of actual objects while allowing each object to retain its own identity.

☻ In his combine titled Bed , Rauschenberg used his own bed quilt stretched over a frame. He added a pillow and dribbled paint over it. Perhaps Rauschenberg's best-known combine is Monogram, which he began in 1955 and worked on for the next three years.

☻ It is a painting that lies on the floor with a stuffed Angora goat standing on it with an old rubber tire around its belly and paint applied to the face of goat and the base in the style of the Abstract Expressionists.

☻ In work like this, Rauschenberg explored relationships between painting and sculpture: he combined them, and over the years his paintings became increasingly three-dimensional.

Canyon 1959

Canyon

☻ Combine painting: Oil, pencil, paper, fabric, metal, cardboard box, printed paper, printed reproductions, photograph, wood, paint tube and mirror on canvas with oil on bald eagle, string and pillow.

☻ The eagle once belonged to Teddy Roosevelt.

☻ “The picture was no longer supposed to be beautiful but true – an accurate representation of equivalence of the artists interior sensation or experience.

Monogram

• Quote:

• “I don’t want a picture to look like something it isn’t. I want it to look like something it is. And I think a picture is more like the real world when it’s made out of the real world.”

• “A pair of socks is no less suitable to make a painting with than wood, nails, turpentine, oil, and fabric.”

☻ A combine – which challenged the ideas about what art was. Assemblage, using found objects from real life. These objects are identifiable and relate to the world.

☻ Unlike AB EX which had cosmic ideals – unidentifiable (abstraction)

☻ Features a stuffed goat with a rubber tyre around its middle, splashed paint in a action painting manner.

☻ Juxtaposition of traditional art (bottom), sculpture and found objects (tire), (goat)

☻ Viewer forced to weigh up each element of the combine to decide how it relates to the others.

☻ Nature (goat), culture (tire) and Art (bottom) linked together as a homogenous unit.

☻ Homogenous : of the same kind. Formed of parts. Uniform

☻ 1960’s – returned to working on flat surfaces. He began using the medium of silk screen (Warhol), (Photographic)

☻ Subject matter is from real life – found material – 2D

☻ Rich disorder challenges viewer to make sense of it. Artistic metaphor

☻ for the chaos and unpredictability of modern urban experience.

☻ Rauschenberg meant his work to be open to various readings, assembling materials that each viewer might interpret differently.

☻ Technique – not considered ‘high art’

☻ Depersonalised☻ Method was unconventional☻ Mechanised – which removes the artist from the process of producing a

work of art (little physical contact between artist and canvas)

☻ This contrasts with Jackson Pollock who was “in the painting”

Robert Rauschenberg, Tracer, 1963 (oil and

silkscreen on canvas,

Retroactive II

Robert Rauschenberg. First Landing Jump. 1961. Combine painting: cloth, metal, leather, electric fixture, cable, and oil paint on

composition board, with automobile tire and wood plank,

Untitled, 1979,

Robert Rauschenberg

Trophy II (for Teeny and Marcel Duchamp), 1960

Trophy II

☻(for Teeny and Marcel Duchamp) is a multi-paneled combine painting or assemblage created in honor of Marcel Duchamp and his wife, Teeny. Rauschenberg created five "trophies" dedicated to artists he admired: choreographer dancer Merce Cunningham, sculptor Jean Tinguely, composer John Cage, and painter Jasper Johns.

☻Although Rauschenberg would not want us to decode his work, it may be that the panel on the left represents Teeny (see the "T" and "Y") and the panel on the right represents Duchamp.

☻The aluminum on the right might refer to Duchamp's interest in painting on glass. The center panel may comment on how competitive American culture can be; notice the letters "W", "I", "N", a baseball game, and a moonscape. The latter is most likely a referral to the United States' "race" with the Soviet Union to explore space.

• Pilgrim1950mixed mediums with wooden chair, ca. 79 x 54 x 19 in.

Summer Rental No 2

Estate 1963

Charlene 1954

Lincoln 1958

Pegasus' First Visit to America in the Shade

of the Flatiron Building 1982

Gospel Yodel 1984

Clan Destiny 1995

Untitled 1990

Truce 2003

Eco Echo

Swim1990

Seminole Host

Pegasits1990

Narcissus

James Rosenquist

☻ Through shifts in scale and content, Rosenquist reformulated photographs and advertising imagery from popular magazines into a kaleidoscope of

compelling and enigmatic narratives on canvas.... ☻ Rosenquist's work has poignantly registered social and political

concerns and reflected upon the dynamics of modern capitalist culture - an ongoing critique that reached its first zenith with the monumental F-111 (1964-65).

☻ Superimposing images of consumer products, an underwater diver, a doll-faced child, and an atomic explosion along the fuselage of an F-111 bomber plane, the work illustrated the connection between America's booming postwar economy and what President Eisenhower characterized as the miltiary-industrial complex....

☻ Dr. Tessen von Heydebreck, a director of the bank, providing the following commentary in his sponsor's statement:

☻ "Rosenquist creates his work with paint that he mixes by hand and applies with a paintbrush. These techniques may be seen as antiquated or old-fashioned in the age of media art, but Rosenquist...continues to challenge In his audience with novel and remarkable imagery that remains on the vanguard. We believe Rosenquist's objective has been to create dynamic artworks, which, in intensity of color and size, spatially embrace and emotionally engage their audience. Yet, Rosenquist's artistic achievement fascinates beyond its formal brilliance, as his work reflects a critical interest in social and political issues the world over."

Gift Wrapped Doll #371997

I Love You with My Ford, 1961

F-111, 1964–65

Tumbleweed, 1963–66.

Industrial Cottage, 1977.

Welcome to the Water Planet, 1987.

The Swimmer in the Econo-mist (painting 3), 1997–98.

Hey! Let's Go for a Ride, 1961.

"Fahrenheit 1982,"

Large detail of "The Swimmer in

the Econo-Mist (Painting 1

Bedspring 1962

• One of the artist's most startling and memorable works is "Bedspring," a 36-inch square oil on canvas with painted twine and stretcher bars. Created in 1962, it is in the collection of the artist and is fascinating for the way the artist cropped out the woman's mouth and nose.

• It is almost terrifying because of the taut way in which the canvas is suspended within the frame by painted twine, and because of the perhaps concerned expression of the subject, but its sensuous colors and beautiful eye suggest it is an endearment rather than a dissection. It is in the collection of the artist.

President Elect

☻ President Elect...has a tripartite structure with, left to right, a close-up of John F. Kennedy's face, a woman's hands holding a slice of cake, and a portion of an automobile. As Rosenquist explains, 'The face was from Kennedy's campaign poster.

☻ “I was very interested at that time in people who advertised themselves. What did they put on an advertisement of themselves? So that was his face. And his promise was half a Chevrolet and a piece of stale cake.”

☻ Rosenquist, utilized various methods to incorporate "a collection of things into a composition in such a way that they make sense, even if it is sometimes in counterpoint to what the individual objects imply.

☻ One early method he used was to divide the pictorial spaces of a canvas symmetrically into four quadrants and quite arbitrarily, it would seem, put a different cropped image in each one....In other works , the elements may be set edge to edge or juxtaposed so that they seem to overlie or even mesh with each other; sometimes, the edges are serrated so that two layers interlock....