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Abstract Expressionism: The Making of a Heroic Art

Abstract Expressionism: The Making of a Heroic Art

OUTLINE FOR DISCUSSION

1. Class Participation!!
   1. Word Association – write down what gender you typically think of with the following words
      1. i.      “L.K.”
      2. ii.      “Nude”
      3. iii.      “Heroic”
   2. Discuss what everyone wrote and why they wrote it
   3. L.K. – genderless purposefully (to be discussed later)
   4. Nude – female
   5. Heroic – male
      1. i.      The calling of Abstract Expressionism as a “heroic” art leaves little room for a woman’s place.

1. Clement Greenberg’s “American-Type Painting”
   1. Greenberg says that Abstract Expressionism is progressive – but for art’s sake, not for society (women have no place there)
   2. Language
      1. i.      Look at the language he uses to describe Pollock’s art
         1. We will compare this language to how Krasner’s art is described later in the discussion
      2. ii.      Does Greenberg leave any room for women to have a role in Abstract Expressionism?
      3. iii.      Are women able to have a role in art, specifically the Abs-Exp?
      4. iv.      How would Greenberg have reacted if a woman painted in the Abstract Expressionist style?

1. Harold Rosenberg’s “The American Action Painters”
   1. Rosenberg gives his own interpretation of what Abstract Expressionism is, specifically that it focuses on the action of painting as opposed to the previous focus on the sketch and product of a work.
   2. Language: Does it allow for female art?

1. Anne M. Wagner’s “Lee Krasner as L.K.”
   1. Initials and Names: Are they gendered?
      1. i.      L.K. is purposefully androgynous
      2. ii.      She refused to sign many of her works – in fact, it is mentioned that Pollock signed some of them for her.  Why?
      3. iii.      She chose to go by Lee instead of Leonore, again choosing a more ambiguous name for herself.
         1. Compare to Nochlin’s example of Meret Oppenheim, a distinctly androgynous name
   2. Krasner vs. Pollock
      1. i.      She destroyed many of her works that resembled his style.  Why do you think she did this?
      2. ii.      During their marriage, Krasner’s lack of self-identified art was an effort to establish herself artistically as related to Jackson Pollock in a non-gendered way.
      3. iii.      Her art is typically more masculine, a conscious decision to separate herself from feminists/women artists as well defining herself individually than with Pollock.
         1. Why would she choose a masculine style of painting?
      4. iv.      La donnesco mano: the female hand
         1. Krasner lacks any kind of feminity in her art – and the paintings that contained any delicate style were later destroyed by the artist.
         2. She removed any kind of gender out of her art.
         3. Page 429
      5. v.      Her art is described as “quiet” and “harmonious” – an “understated presence”
         1. Pollock’s art is viewed as aggressive, violent, etc.
            1. How does this separate her from Pollock?
            2. How does this further separate her from women’s art?
            3. How does it simultaneously bring her closer to women’s art?
      6. vi.      Pollock’s art, as described by Greenberg: “allusive and altogether original vocabulary of Baroque shapes with which he twisted Cubist space to make it speak with his own vehemence.”
   3. Krasner as a wife
      1. i.      Why would Krasner give up her art for Pollock?
         1. Was it a decision she made willingly or because she is a woman and therefore subservient?
         2. Judith Leyster’s art took a back seat to her husband’s more prolific art (Jan Miense Molenaer)
      2. ii.      The irony of Krasner as a housewife – seeing herself as “Mrs. Jackson Pollock” instead of “Lee Krasner”
         1. Making jelly on a Saturday morning instead of painting (refer back to article)
   4. Krasner after Pollock’s death
      1. i.      How do you think she reacted to articles describing her art after Pollock’s death?
         1. “found her own voice”
         2. came “out of the shadows”
   5. Krasner as a woman
      1. i.      She refused to associate herself with feminism or any kind of femininity.  Why would she make that choice?

1. How does gender play into Krasner’s art?

1. Abstract Expressionism is inherently a man’s style – the aggression flowing through Pollock’s art, as an example.
   1. Can it even be recreated with a feminine hand?
   2. Does gender need to be taken out completely for this style?

1. Abstract Expressionism is typically the “boys’ club” – there was no room for any female artists.
   1. If Krasner hadn’t put her work on hold for Pollock, had she actually focused on her own style, would she have been accepted into the club?  Or would she have been rejected?
   2. Would she have been accepted because she removed gender from her art?
   3. If there was gender in her art, if the “female hand” was seen, would she still have been accepted?

This is amazing!

My older sister was also an art history major in college and she emailed me this link a couple days ago.  I thought you all might like it as well if you haven’t seen it yet – it’s really amazing!  I always like when artists use innovative mediums for their art – even something as simple as sand can be taken to a new level.  Enjoy!

http://www.popeater.com/2009/08/28/ukrainian-talent-winner/?icid=main|htmlws-main|dl2|link4|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.popeater.com%2F2009%2F08%2F28%2Fukrainian-talent-winner%2F

Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party” Paper Proposal

I am proud to say I am an avid feminist.  That having been said, I naturally gravitated toward the feminist movement when deciding what I would write my paper on this semester.  Judy Chicago is my heroine, a woman who broke boundaries with her feminist attitudes and set fires in the chairs of her superiors for questioning the norms.

Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party” is the iconic symbol of the 1970s feminist movement, a celebration of female empowerment and sexuality. It is a cultivation of thousands of years of female achievement that has largely been ignored, in an effort to praise women in a way that our patriarchal society has brushed over because of their gender.  The grand scale of the work, in addition to the numerous people that worked with Chicago on the piece, solidifies its place in the feminist revolution as a symbol of the hard work and accomplishments of women throughout time.  The sexual imagery present, from the triangularly shaped table symbolizing the uterus to the vaginal imagery painted on top of the dinner plates, is both empowering for a viewer to experience and for Chicago herself, as she writes:

I tried to create an active vaginal or vulval form to represent my sense of my own identity and sexuality. …It took me years to create images that could convey the idea that the female body experience is as active and as central to what it means to be human as is that of the male, and, in fact, can be explored aesthetically as one pathway to an understanding of the universal.  Long before I began The Dinner Party, I had been struggling to anthropomorphize the vulval form, transforming it into numerous motifs suggesting flower, cave, flesh, or landscape.  When fused with the butterfly formation, this image became a metaphor for an assertive female identity as well as the visual base for many of the transmuting forms on the plates.[1]

Chicago uses vaginal imagery as a means of exploring her own sexuality and identity, something I will explore in my term paper.  Female genitalia symbology in art history was ubiquitous during this decade, and I intend on discussing why that is.  I will give a brief overview of Chicago’s earlier accomplishments, and focus primarily on the history behind the project, how it evolved, and who was involved with Chicago’s workshop.  I will also discuss the criteria Chicago enlisted when choosing what women to feature throughout history, and her reasoning behind the decision to stop with women after WWII.  Chicago chose mostly white females, largely ignoring a variety of other racially diverse women that should or should have been included.  The argument can be made: is art history for white females only?  How does the feminist art history movement apply to the other feminist movements occurring in the 1970s?  I would like to address this issue, researching it further to develop an opinion and see how it can fit into my argument.

Isabella Stewart Gardner

Her motto was “C’est mon plaisir,” which translates to “it’s my pleasure.”

Isabella Stewart Gardner was all about life’s pleasures, from a young age when she was first introduced to the arts of antiquity and the Renaissance to her eccentric collection of art that eventually became the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum at Fenway Court in Boston.  Born on April 14, 1840 in New York City, she spent time growing up in Paris, where she was first introduced to art.  She married her husband, John Lowell Gardner, in 1860.  Isabella was a delicate woman, frail yet beautiful, who was known for charming those around her with her free spirit and her independence.  She was a friend to many artists, musicians, and society members and furthered the career of many young creative folk around her.  After the death of her husband in 1898, Isabella begun the process of constructing a museum to house all of the art she had collected for the past couple of years.  She approved every last detail of the museum, working closely with the architects, builders, workers, to ensure that all the aesthetics met her approval.  After the construction was complete, Isabella’s private residence was on the fourth floor of the building.  Her collection ranges from all periods and cultures, with pieces dating back to the Graeco-Roman era and the Early Renaissance and other works by artists that Isabella herself was friends with.  There are paintings by John Singer Sargent, a close friend of Isabella’s, and Henri Matisse, as well as the likes of Paul Manship, Sandro Botticelli, James McNeill Whistler, and even art from the Middle East and China.  With a collection as eccentric as her own personality, Isabella was a source of inspiration to everyone, as the painter Denman Ross wrote in honor of her birthday in 1911:

“There is no one of the Fine Arts in which you have not taken serious interestl no one of them to which you have not given a generous patronage.  We have seen your devotion to the arts of Dancing and Music, to the Drama and to Literature.  As for the arts of Sculpture and Painting you have illustrated them in a Collection of masterpieces which is known all over the world.  You have built this beautiful house, yourself the Architect, and have filled it full of Treasures.  You are, not only the lover of Art, and the Collector, but the Artist, having built the house and having arranged all the objects which it contains in the order and unity of a single idea – an idea in which you have expressed your whole life with all its many and varied interests.”

Monographs, continued

Comparing the differences between the introductions of two monographs about the 17th-century Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi shows the varying approaches that the authors take in their writing.

Two quotes from Mary Garrard’s monograph:

“It is my purpose in this book to give her expressive originality at lest some of the full art historical consideration that it deserves but has yet to receive.”

“The conclusion is, I think, inescapable: Artemisia Gentileschi has been neglected because she was female.”

A quote from R. Ward Bissell’s monograph:

“Since Garrard’s stimulating volume remains the central presentation of a feminist understanding of Gentileschi, and since it has been so influential on thinking about the artist, the various challenges which I raise might be taken as a critique of feminist art criticism per se or perhaps an implied questioning of the particular orientation, among the several, which Garrard’s feminist criticism assumes.  My approach is not to be construed in either way, nor is the purpose of my book to be considered a critique of Garrard.  When I take exception to certain feminist interpretations of Gentileschi’s art by Garrard and others, it is because I find them problematic with reference to the particular matters at hand.”

What I think is so interesting about Bissell’s introduction is that he states he is not attacking the feminist approach, but merely providing another approach to looking at Gentileschi’s art.  Garrard was the first to publish a monograph about Gentileschi in 1989, and after it was studied by scholars for ten years, Bissell’s monograph was able to provide a refreshing take on Gentileschi.  His monograph also included the first catalogue raisonne of Gentileschi’s works,a comprehensive collection that is both meticulous and supremely written.  His “flexible methodology,” as he describes it, makes his monograph a much more technically focused piece of work that focuses on the span of Gentileschi’s work throughout her entire lifetime as well as myths and misunderstandings that surrounded the artist and her work.  Both monographs provide detailed writing on the artist and are ideal for a scholar looking to read in-depth writings about Artemisia Gentileschi so that they are able to fully immerse themselves in both her life and her artwork.

Why art history?

To ask me why I study art history is similar to asking me why I sleep at night or why I drink water.  It is a way of life, a way of survival.  It is something that feels natural to me.  I am at my happiest when I am surrounded by art.  The feeling of losing yourself in a painting, completely immersed in the swirls of color and following the directions of the brushstrokes, is unlike any other in this world.  It brings peace in the world of chaos in which we live.  People are constantly on the movie and tend to forget what it is like to simply stand, breathe, and relax.  The distraction of cell phones, iPods, text messaging, what have you – these things can be forgotten when you are in the quiet rooms of an art museum, where you can allow yourself to be taken away to an entirely different world of color and forms.

My older sister, an artist and fellow art history major, first introduced me the world of art at a very young age, and with her instruction I was able to appreciate art when she took me with her to art galleries and museums.  This was always a field that interested me and to this day no other subject has ever been able to capture my interest the way art can.  Math, science – these things I struggle with.  But to look at a painting for hours and still find ways to be captivated by it?  That is my true passion.  I toyed with the idea of a double major of art history and theatre, but early on I chose to focus the entirety of my attention on art history.  I am still undecided about what career path I want to choose and have yet to make up my mind about whether or not that path will include art history.

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