European Post-World War Two Figuration

Nazi (Axis) Blitzkrieg of London, beginning in 1941, inaugurating the ceaseless bombing of civilian populations throughout the war by both sides

After the Battle of Berlin, a Soviet soldier hoists a make shift USSR flag over the ruins of Berlin. This was last battle of World War II in Europe.

Dresden, Germany in September 1945, after the February incendiary (fire) bombings by British & American air forces. Annihilated city and 25,000 deaths

American hydrogen bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, August 6, 1945

Aftermath of Hiroshima bomb – estimated 170,000 deaths

The total estimated human loss of life caused by World War II was roughly 72 million people. The civilian toll was around 47 million. The Allies lost about 61 million people, and the Axis lost 11 million.

Post-colonialismis one of the most important

historical contexts for global culture

Decolonization of Europe’s world empires occurred after World War II.

The Algerian War of Independence from France (1954 -1962), one of many such ant-colonial wars for national identity.

De-colonization characterized the post-modern period.

Bomb blast, Algiers, 1957Poster for film about the AlgerianWar of Independence from France.

Jean-Paul SartreSimone de Beauvoir1938 Paris

European Postwar Existentialism

1949 – a foundingfeminist text rooted in Existentialism’s questionsabout the nature of Being. “One is not born a woman, one becomes one.” (De Beauvoir)

1943

Jean Fautrier (French, 1898-1964) Art Informel, tachisme, Head of a Hostage, 20," oïl on panel, 1944, one of over thirty “hostage” paintings and sculptures made during the occupation of Paris that allude to the Nazi atrocities Fautrier is said to have witnessed there.

“These paintings addressed the most important issue of their time, epitomizing a 'new human resolve' against the horrors of war."

- Jean Fautrier

Jean Fautrier, Large Tragic Head, bronze, 15 in. high1943, Tate MA, London

Germaine Richier (French, 1904-1959) Crucified Christ, 1950, Notre-Dame de Tour Grâce d'Assy, France. Post-humanist? (below right) Compare Richier’s teacher, Emile-Antoine Bourdelle, Hercules, 1909. What became of the heroic human body in Western art in the hands of the WWII generation? Post Humanism

(left) Poseidon, Greek, c. 575 BC, bronze, found in the Aegean Sea in 1926: gods as men. The classical Poseidon was a source for Giacometti.(right) Giacometti, Man Pointing, 1947, bronze, 70 inches high, Existential man: “thrown naked into the void” (Heidegger, German WWII-era existential philosopher).

Sacramento’s Poseidon

February 3, 2010, Striding Man I, bronze, 72” high, (1961, 2nd of six numbered editions plus four artist

proofs) by Alberto Giacometti sold for $104,327,006.

Francis Bacon, Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, 1944, oil and pastel on canvas, triptych on wood fiberboard, each 37 x 29 inches. The crucifixion was for Bacon a symbol of humanity’s sadism. (right) Picasso, On the Beach (La Baignade) 1937. Picasso was a crucial source and encouraged Bacon.

Francis Bacon, Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 5 x 4 ft, 1953; (right top) source: Velazquez, Pope Innocent X, 1650; (right below) a still from Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 film, The Battleship Potemkin, Odessa steps sequence

Sotheby’s May 14, 2008, a 1976 Francis Bacon painting sells for $86,281,000

Pop Art

POP ART BEGAN IN LONDON(left) Francis Bacon (British, 1909-1992), Head Surrounded by Sides of Beef, 1954, British Existential Figuration; (right) Eduardo Paolozzi (British, 1924-2005), Real Gold, collage, 14 x 19 in., 1950, British Pop

Richard Hamilton (British,1922-2011) Just What is it That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing? Collage (photomontage), 10 x 9”, 1956, KunsthalleTübingen, Tubingen, Germany. British Pop

1964

Hamilton defined Pop Art in a letter dated January 16, 1957: "Pop Art is: popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business."

Jasper Johns (US, b. 1930), Three Flags, encaustic on canvas, 2’7” x 3’10”, 1958, Proto-Pop, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987), Bonwit Teller window installation, NY, April 1961; (left) Dick Tracy, 1960, casein and crayon, 48” high; (below left) Before & After, 1961

casein and pencil on canvas, 54 x 69 7/8",

Andy Warhol, 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1962, acrylic on canvas, screened with hand painted details, 20x16 in. ea (lower right) Ferus Gallery installation, Los Angeles,1962: Warhol’s first gallery show. Five canvases sold for $100 each in 1962, but Irving Blum, co-owner of Ferus, bought them back to keep the set intact and later donated them to MoMA NYC

http://www.moma.org/audio_file/audio_file/1110/OE_24_CampbellSoupCans_edit.mp3

Jasper Johns (American, b.1930), Painted Bronze, hand painted cast bronze, 1960, Proto-Pop (Neo-Dada)(right) Warhol, Campbell Soup Can, 1968, screened acrylic on canvas, Pop Art

Andy Warhol and Gerard Malanga (1967) silk-screening in the Factory, located on the fifth floor at 231 East 47th Street in Midtown Manhattan. The Factory moved to 33 Union Square West in 1967. Warhol used silkscreen from 1962 on.

(right) Warholstars group portrait by Gerard Malanga, 1968(?); (left) film still and poster for Warhol's film Exploding Plastic Inevitable, 1966, with the Velvet Underground. The Andy Warhol Museum owns 273 Warhol films and almost 4,000 videotapes.

“If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am… There’s nothing behind it.” - Andy Warhol

Warhol, (left) Gold Marilyn Monroe, 1962, acrylic, silkscreen and oil on canvas; (right) Marilyn, 1962. Series followed Monroe’s (probable) suicide in August 1962.

Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych, 1962, acrylic silkscreen on canvas

Andy Warhol, 210 Coca-Cola bottles, 1962, Silkscreen, ink & synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 6’10” x 8’9”

(left) Roy Lichtenstein, Hopeless, 1963, oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 3’8” square(right) Tony Abruzzo, a panel from comic book “Run For Love!” in Secret Hearts, no. 83, 1962, DC Comics

Rosenquist,(left) right & left halves of F-111, installation, oil on canvas and aluminum, 23 sections, 10 x 86 feet, 1964-5, The Museum of Modern Art, NY

Wayne Thiebaud (US, b. 1920), Five Hot Dogs, 1961, o/c, 18 x 24 in, Whitney MAA Thiebaud earned a BA degree from Sacramento State College in 1941 an M.A. degree in 1952.

Wayne Thiebaud, Cakes, 1963

Robert Rauschenberg, Canyon, 1959, 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, 6’10” x 5’10’, assemblage. Neo-Dada

Detail

Edward Kienholz (US, 1927-1994), Back Seat Dodge ’38 (two views), 1964, tableau with truncated Dodge and mixed materials (plaster casts, beer bottles, chicken wire, artificial grass, etc.) Los Angeles Funk

Claes Oldenburg, The Store, Dec. 1, 1961 - Jan. 31, 1962, Ray Gun Mfg. Co., 107 East Second Street, New York. Roast Beef, 1961, inside studio/store (with artist), view looking out, poster, Green Gallery sponsor.

“I am for an art that is political-erotic-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.”

Claes Oldenburg, Soft Toilet, 1966; Dormeyer Mixer,1965, Pop or Neo-Dada

Claes Oldenburg, Giant Lipstick, erect (left) and limp (center), Yale University, 1969. Anti-Vietnam war

Robert Arneson, Typewriter, 1966, glazed ceramic, around 6 x 11 x 12,” UC Berkeley Art Museum. Funk Art

Robert Arneson, John with Art, 1964, glazed ceramic with polychorme epoxy, life size, Seattle Art Museum

Niki de Saint-Phalle, Hon ("She" in Swedish), 1966. 6 ton colossus (82'/20'/30'). With Jean Tinguely and Per Olaf Ultvedt as a temporary installation at the Moderne Museet, Stockholm. One of a series of “Nana” sculptures

The Carnivalesque

Betye Saar, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, mixed-media assemblage, 1972