Early International Art (Dada, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Super Realism and Op

Art/Minimalism) - From Dada up to, but excluding Conceptual Art of c. 1970’s.

Please note that these summaries must be used in conjunction with the Visual Arts handbook Gr.11 (pages 172 –
179, 181 – 190, 192 – 196, 208 – 228, 230 – 242 (excluding Neo-Expressionism).

Artists and artworks:

Dada: Jean Arp – Collage Arranged According to the Laws of Chance (1916-1917)

Man Ray – Indestructible Object (or Object to be Destroyed) 1923 (the existing 1964 version is
a replica of the one made in 1923)
Man ray is actually considered a Surrealist artist but the aforementioned artwork is a strong
example and the only one of his really, that is considered a Dada piece. Make sure you
indicate that you know this if you consider writing about this piece.

Marcel Duchamp – Fountain (1917)

- L.H.O.O.Q (1919)

Surrealism: Salvador Dali – The Persistence of Memory (1931)

- Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937)

- Lobster Telephone (1936)

Rene’ Magrittte – The Betrayal/ Treachery of Images (1928)

- Time Transfixed (1938)

Frida Kahlo – The Two Fridas (1939)

- What the Water Gave Me (1938) (people refer to this artwork as Naïve Art)

Abstract Expressionism: Jackson Pollock – Lavender Mist (1950) (also entitled Number 1)

- Number 11 also known as Blue Poles, 1952

Willem de Kooning - Woman and Bicycle, (1952-53)

Mark Rothko - No. 61 (1951)

Pop Art: Andy Warhol - Marilyn Diptych (1962)

- Campbell's Soup Cans (1962)

Roy Lichtenstein - Whaam! (1963)

- Drowning Girl (1963)

Richard Hamilton – What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? (1956)

Super Realism / Photorealism/ Hyperrealism: Chuck Close - Big Self-Portrait (1967-68)

- Mark (1978-1979)

Richard Estes – Telephone Booths (1968)

- 560 (1972)

[If you want to view Estes’ work, go to http://www.moderndesign.org/2010/05/art-by-richard-estes.html. It is

magnificent in colour.]
All notes compiled by Ms Karlien Erasmus – updated April 2020
In addition to the previous movements, choose either Minimal Art or Op Art to add to your list of Dada,
Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art and Super Realism. They never ask it, but it’s better to be
prepared.

Op Art: Bridget Riley – Aubade (Dawn) (1975) (see attachment p.926 and first paragraph on p.927)

- Movement in Squares (1961)

Minimal Art: Donald Judd – Untitled (1967) (Green lacquer on galvanized iron) (see attachment
p.926)

Eva Hesse – Laocoon (1966) (see colour attachment p.930)

The following links were used in addition to other sources to compile your summaries:

www.theartstory.org

www.visual-arts-cork.com

http://www.ducksters.com/history/art/pop_art.php

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_art

All notes compiled by Ms Karlien Erasmus – updated April 2020

DADA

- Dada = artistic and literary movement that began in 1916 in Zurich, Switzerland.
- Context: It arose as a reaction to World War I, and the nationalism, and rationalism, which many
thought had brought war about.
- Dada emerged amid the brutality of World War I (1914–18)—a conflict that claimed the lives of eight
million military personnel and an estimated equal number of civilians. This unprecedented loss of human
life was a result of trench warfare and technological advances in weaponry, communications, and
transportation systems.
- For the disillusioned artists of the Dada movement, the war merely confirmed the degradation of social
structures that led to such violence: corrupt and nationalist politics, repressive social values, and
unquestioning conformity of culture and thought.
- Dadaists were always opposed to authoritarianism, and to any form of group leadership or guiding
ideology.
- Anti-reason, anti-war, anti-establishment, anti-art.
- For Dada artists, the aesthetic of their work was considered secondary to the ideas it conveyed. “For us,
art is not an end in itself,” wrote Dada poet Hugo Ball, “but it is an opportunity for the true perception
and criticism of the times we live in.”
- Influenced by ideas and innovations from - Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, and Expressionism.
- Influences: Futurist and Expressionist concerns with technological advancement, yet artists like Jean
(Hans) Arp also introduced a preoccupation with chance and other painterly conventions.
- Its output was wildly diverse, ranging from performance art to poetry, photography, sculpture, painting
and collage.
- Questioned the very principle of aesthetics and what Art ought to be.
- Challenged traditional Art conventions and methods, because Art up to now had too been a product of
establishment.
- Dada's aesthetic, marked by its mockery of materialistic and nationalistic attitudes, proved a powerful
influence on artists in many cities, including Berlin, Hanover, Paris, New York and Cologne, all of which
generated their own groups.
- So intent were members of Dada on opposing all the norms of bourgeois culture that the group was
barely in favor of itself: "Dada is anti-Dada," they often cried.
- Dada art varies so widely that it is hard to speak of a coherent style.
(Only if you had studied this artwork by Duchamp): One of his most important pieces, The Large Glass or Bride Stripped Bare by her
Bachelors, Even, was begun in New York in 1915 (and completed in 1923) and is considered to be a major Dada milestone for its depiction
of a strange, erotic drama using abstract, mechanical forms. Duchamp's disdain for bourgeois convention was shared by all members of
Dada. Though he was not a Surrealist, he helped to curate exhibitions in New York that showcased both Dada and Surrealist works.

All notes compiled by Ms Karlien Erasmus – updated April 2020

SURREALISM

"Although the dream is a very strange phenomenon and an inexplicable mystery, far more inexplicable
is the mystery and aspect our minds confer on certain objects and aspects of life."

- The Surrealist movement was founded in Paris by a small group of writers and artists who sought to
channel the unconscious as a means to unlock the power of the imagination.
- Surrealism grew out of the Dada movement, which was also in rebellion against middle-class
complacency. Surrealism shared much of the anti-rationalism of Dada, the movement out of which it
grew.
- Hated rationalism and literary realism.
- Powerfully influenced by psychoanalysis and the dream state.
- The work of Sigmund Freud was profoundly influential for Surrealists, particularly his book, The
Interpretation of Dreams (1899). Freud legitimized the importance of dreams and the unconscious as
valid revelations of human emotion and desires; his exposure of the complex and repressed inner worlds
of sexuality, desire, and violence provided a theoretical basis for much of Surrealism.
- Surrealists believed the conscious mind repressed the power of the imagination.
- They used art as a reprieve from violent political situations and to address the unease they felt about the
world's uncertainties. By employing fantasy and dream imagery, artists generated creative works in a
variety of media that exposed their inner minds in eccentric, symbolic ways, uncovering anxieties and
treating them analytically through visual means.
- They hoped that the psyche had the power to reveal the contradictions in the everyday world and spur
on revolution.
- André Breton defined Surrealism as "psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to
express - verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner - the actual functioning of
thought." What Breton is proposing is that artists bypass reason and rationality by accessing their
unconscious mind. In practice, these techniques became known as automatism or automatic writing,
which allowed artists to forgo conscious thought and embrace chance when creating art.
- Several Surrealists also relied heavily on automatism or automatic writing as a way to tap into the
unconscious mind.
- Hyperrealism and automatism were not mutually exclusive. Joan Miro and Salvador Dali, for example,
often used both methods in one work. In either case, however the subject matter was arrived at or
depicted, it was always bizarre - meant to disturb and baffle.
- Latter stages of Surrealism: Following the war, the group's ideas were challenged by the rise of
Existentialism, which, while also celebrating individualism, was more rationally based than Surrealism.
Abstract Expressionists incorporated Surrealist ideas and usurped their dominance by pioneering new
techniques for representing the unconscious.
About Salvador Dali’s work and intentions: He developed the paranoid-critical method, which involved
systematic irrational thought and self-induced paranoia as a way to access his unconscious. He referred to
the resulting works as "hand-painted dream photographs" because of their realism coupled with their eerie
dream quality. The narrative of this work stems from Dalí's anxieties.

All notes compiled by Ms Karlien Erasmus – updated April 2020

 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

"When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a
consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to
make art that goes beyond the limitations."

Sol LeWitt (LeWitt was a Minimalist and Conceptual artist)

- 1940’S/1950’S, America mainly.

- Context: Great Depression.
- It was somehow meant to encompass not only the work of painters who filled their canvases with
fields of color and abstract forms, but also those who attacked their canvases with a vigorous
gestural expressionism.
- A E artists were committed to an expressive art of profound emotion and universal themes.
- How does Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism connect? : Political instability in Europe in the
1930s brought several leading Surrealists to New York, and many of the Abstract Expressionists were
profoundly influenced by the style and by its focus on the unconscious. It encouraged their interest
in myth and archetypal symbols and it shaped their understanding of painting itself as a struggle
between self-expression and the chaos of the unconscious.
- Mostly shaped by the legacy of Surrealism, a movement that they translated into a new style fitted
to the post-war mood of anxiety and trauma.
- Commitment to an Art based on personal experience.
- Art: monumental in scale, romantic in mood, and expressive of a rugged individual freedom –
typically avant-garde American.
- Art was elevated to a language of its own, something that exists in its own right, beyond reason
associated with the written language or figurative art…
Figurative (tradition) vs abstract (A E)
Language (system) vs abstract expression (A E)
Objectivity (convention) vs subjectivity and expression (A E)

Interesting information if you are writing about the dreaded Lavender Mist:

Number 1 (Lavender Mist) (1950)

Artist: Jackson Pollock

One of thirty-two paintings in Pollock's 1950 solo exhibition at Betty Parson's New York gallery, Number 1
(Lavender Mist) was the only painting that sold. Despite critical praise and media attention, the artist did not
garner sales of his famous drip paintings until later in his career. Pollock titled several paintings Number 1, and
coded them with alternate titles. Thus, Number 1 (1949) and One, Number Thirty One, are closely related but
upon close viewing differ slightly. Number 1 (Lavender Mist) exemplifies gestural abstraction, in which paint was
poured or applied with extreme physicality to reflect the artist's inner mind. The color is expressive, while space
is created through alternative layers and drips of opaque paint, creating a textured canvas surface that is nearly
dizzying.

Oil on canvas - National Gallery, Washington DC

All notes compiled by Ms Karlien Erasmus – updated April 2020

POP ART

"Pop is everything art hasn't been for the last two decades. It's basically a U-turn back to a
representational visual communication, moving at a break-away speed...Pop is a re-
enlistment in the world...It is the American Dream, optimistic, generous and
naïve."

- Pop Art began in the 1950s, but became very popular in the 1960s. It started in the United Kingdom,
but became a true art movement in New York City.
- Pop Art is art made from commercial items and cultural icons such as product labels,
advertisements, and movie stars.
- Content was drawn from mass media and popular culture. Pop Art embraced consumerism,
especially visual consumerism and Popular Culture.
- Art as commodity. Art celebrating commodification…;
- Pop artists seemingly embraced the post-WWII manufacturing and media boom. Some critics have
cited the Pop art choice of imagery as an enthusiastic endorsement of the capitalist market and the
goods it circulated, while others have noted an element of cultural critique in the Pop artists'
elevation of the everyday to high art: tying the commodity status of the goods represented to the
status of the art object itself, emphasizing art's place as, at base, a commodity.
- In a way, Pop Art was a reaction to the seriousness of Abstract Expressionist Art.
- Non-representation (non-figurative art) vs representation & depiction of the object (figurative art).
- It could be argued that the Abstract Expressionists searched for trauma in the soul, while Pop artists
searched for traces of the same trauma in the mediated world of advertising, cartoons, and popular
imagery at large. But it is perhaps more precise to say that Pop artists were the first to recognize
that there is no unmediated access to anything, be it the soul, the natural world, or the built
environment. Pop artists believed everything is inter-connected, and therefore sought to make
those connections literal in their artwork.
- More importantly, Pop Art was a reaction to war. War deprived the consumer.
- Pop Art uses images and icons that are popular in the modern world. This includes famous
celebrities like movie stars and rock stars, commercial items like soup cans and soft drinks, comic
books, and any other items that are popular in the commercial world.
- Repetition of images meant that the image was emphasized/highlighted.
- The subject matter became far from traditional "high art" themes of morality, mythology, and classic
history; rather, Pop artists celebrated commonplace objects and people of everyday life, in this way
seeking to elevate popular culture to the level of fine art.
- By creating paintings or sculptures of mass culture objects and media stars, the Pop art movement
aimed to blur the boundaries between "high" art and "low" culture. The concept that there is no
hierarchy of culture and that art may borrow from any source has been one of the most influential
characteristics of Pop art.
- Some people say that Pop Art is poking fun at traditional art and is most closely related to the
nonsense art of Dadaism.
- Pop Art artists wanted to make art for the masses. They felt that earlier art was elitist.

All notes compiled by Ms Karlien Erasmus – updated April 2020

SUPER-REALISM

"I always wanted to draw realistically. For me art is a continuous discovery into reality, an exploration
of visual data which has been going on for centuries, each artist contributing to the next generation's
advancement. I wanted to go a step further and extend the boundaries. I also believe people have a deep
need to understand their world and that art clarifies reality for them." - Audrey Flack (the only real
recognisable female figure in this movement)

- The name Photorealism (also known as Hyperrealism or Superrealism) was coined in reference to
those artists whose work depended heavily on photographs, which they often projected onto canvas
allowing images to be replicated with precision and accuracy.
- The exactness was often aided further by the use of an airbrush, which was originally designed to
retouch photographs.
- The movement came about within the same period and context as Conceptual art, Pop Art, and
Minimalism and expressed a strong interest in realism in art, over that of idealism and abstraction.
- Attempts to position art within the sphere of mass media.
- Work in the Age of mechanical reproduction.
- To a degree not previously accomplished, Photorealism complicates the notion of realism by
successfully mixing together that which is real with that which is unreal; while the image on the
canvas is recognizable and carefully defined to suggest that it is accurate, the artists based their
work upon photographs rather than direct observation. Therefore, their canvases remain distanced
from reality factually and metaphorically.
- Since the advent of photography in the early 19th-century artists have used the camera as a tool in
picture making; however, artists would never reveal in paint their dependency on photographs as to
do so was seen as "cheating". In contrast, Photorealists acknowledge the modern world's mass
production and proliferation of photographs, and they do not deny their dependence on
photographs. In fact, several artists attempt to ape the affects that photography, rather than the
vision of the eye, such as blurriness, multiple-viewpoints, because they favor the aesthetic and look.
Therefore, while the resulting image is realistic, it is simultaneously one-stage away from reality by
its dependence on the reproduced image. These works question traditional artistic methods, as well
as the differences between reality and artificiality.
- Photorealists, along with some practitioners of Pop art, reintroduced the importance of process and
deliberate planning over that of improvisation and automatism, into the making of art,
draftsmanship, and exacting brushwork. In other words, the traditional techniques of academic art
are again of great significance, and painstaking craftsmanship is prized after decades of the
spontaneous, accidental, and improvisational.

All notes compiled by Ms Karlien Erasmus – updated April 2020

 either

MINIMALISM

- Minimalism emerged in New York in the early 1960s among artists who were self-consciously
renouncing recent art they thought had become stale and academic.
- A wave of new influences and rediscovered styles led younger artists to question conventional
boundaries between various media.
- Abstract Expressionism vs Minimalism ; Excess vs aesthetic simplicity.
- Minimalists sought to break down traditional notions of Art.
- Painters and sculptors avoided overt symbolism and emotional content, but instead called attention
to the materiality of the works.
- Minimalists distanced themselves from the Abstract Expressionists by removing suggestions of
biography from their art or, indeed, metaphors of any kind. This denial of expression coupled with
an interest in making objects that avoided the appearance of fine art led to the creation of sleek,
geometric works that purposefully and radically avoid conventional aesthetic appeal.
- Constructivism. The Constructivist approach led to the use of modular fabrication and industrial
materials in preference to the craft techniques of traditional sculpture.
- The readymades of Marcel Duchamp were also inspirational examples of the employment of
prefabricated materials. Based on these sources, Minimalists created works that resembled factory-
built commodities and upended traditional definitions of art whose meaning was tied to a narrative
or to the artist.
- Often repeated geometric forms together with the emphasis placed on the physical space occupied
by the artwork led to some works that forced the viewer to confront the arrangement and scale of
the forms.
- Viewers also were led to experience qualities of weight, height, gravity, agility or even the
or appearance of light as a material presence. They were often faced with artworks that demanded a
physical as well as a visual response.
OP ART

- Op Art, also known as optical art, is a style of visual art that makes use of optical illusions.
- Op Art works are abstract, with many of the better known pieces made in black and white.
- Op Art (a term coined in 1964 by Time magazine) is a form of abstract art (specifically non-objective
art) which relies on optical illusions in order to fool the eye of the viewer.
- A form of kinetic art, it relates to geometric designs that create feelings of movement or vibration.
- Influences: kinetic artist Victor Vasarely (1908-97), and Abstract Expressionism.
- The patterns, shapes and colours used in these pictures are typically selected for their illusional
qualities, rather than for their substantive or emotional content.
- Op artists use both positive and negative spaces to create the desired illusions.
- Op art exploits the functional relationship between the eye's retina (the organ that "sees" patterns)
and the brain (the organ that interprets patterns). Certain patterns cause confusion between these
two organs, resulting in the perception of irrational optical effects.
- All traditional painting is based upon the "illusion" of depth and perspective: Op-Art merely
broadens its inherently illusionary nature by interfering with the rules governing optical perception,
thereby challenging the very perception and functioning of Art.

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All notes compiled by Ms Karlien Erasmus – updated April 2020