ART HISTORY 4470 Abstract Expressionism: Sculpture
David Smith (1906-1965) •
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1929-30: moves to Washington, DC, then to NYC 1927-1932: enrolls at Art Students League • takes classes w/ American realist painter John Sloan and former pupil of Hans Hoffman 1929-30: • meets avant-garde painters Stuart Davis, Gorky, and de Kooning • experiments w/ painting, collage, and reliefs created in an abstract Surrealist style 1930s: works in mural and public sculpture dept’s of various US gov’t-sponsored public works art programs 1935: travels for first time to Europe • month in Paris • visits Athens, Crete, Naples, Malta, Marseilles and London • travels to Leningrad and Moscow for 21-day tour (sees great collection at Museum of Modern Western Art – e.g., works by Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse) 1938-39: • first one-man show of welded iron sculptures and drawings opens in NYC • exhibits arc-welded sculptures in group show at 1939 New York World’s Fair 1950-52: receives Guggenheim Fellowship • scale of his work expands dramatically • forms become more lyrical • content less narrative • initiates practice of making sustained series of works over many years, beginning w/ Agricola series (22 sculptures, 1951-1957) 1965: • appointed by LBJ to National Council on Arts • dies in automobile crash near Bennington, VT
Smith •
Hudson River Landscape (1951) –
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significance: transitional period • mature “drawing in space” style • shift from use of figurative symbols toward greater concentration on terms of sculpture itself • Hudson River culminates series as largest and most complex of Smith’s landscape works theme: landscape • from 1946 to 1951 Smith made a total of fifteen (15) sculptures titled Landscape; at least ten (10) other closely related pieces • genre (in history of painting) most concerned w/ transposition of 3-d space into the 2-d plane of painted surface aim: to approximate graphic effects in sculptural terms formal elements: spatial order • simulates picture plane • incorporates rectangular frame w/in which smaller sculptural elements interact composition: • dominant rectangular frame acts like a blank piece of paper or canvas • various objects lined up along oblong sculptural base suggest structures standing on distant horizon • steel rods, welded into curves and loops, serve as drawn lines motif: writing in 1947 for an exhibition catalogue • “I have never looked at a landscape without seeing other landscapes / I have never seen a landscape without visions of things I desire and despise / … a landscape is a still life of Chaldean history / it has faces I do not know / its mountains are always sobbing females / … it is the place I’ve traveled to and never found”
Smith
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Tanktotem III (1953) – –
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second series begun in 1952 aesthetic: “personages” • bold new aesthetic statement • encompasses much of Smith’s work during 1950s • dispenses w/ pedestals • creates sculptures that stand directly on floor • new emphasis on verticality • evoke associations w/ human figure • seem to cast watchful gaze upon their surroundings compare to Neolithic sculpture (c. 5000 BC) • abstract & mannered – absence of face – elongated neck – crisp, linear planes • figure geometrically configured • spatial order: convex & concave • corresponds to Jungian archetypes
(Left) Smith’s “Personage” (c. 1950 CE) vs. (center and right) Neolithic Fertility Goddess (c. 5000 BCE)
Smith •
Voltri XVII (1962) –
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patron: Italian government • invited Smith to make two sculptures for fourth Festival of Two Worlds • national Italian steel company, Italsider, gave him access to five abandoned welding factories near Genoa • chose one in small town of Voltri for his studio process: • assembled largely from found tools and scraps of steel • welded together more abstract metal fragments cast off during factory operations • did not paint or burnish the steel – retains rusty natural color – impression of considerable age forms: • preserved identity of found objects (e.g., tongs, work tables, and industrial carts) • “chopped clouds” – many of these elements left behind when shapes cut from steel sheets – irregular curves and abrupt angles, the artist called them
(Left) Smith’s Abstract Expressionist Voltri XVII (1962) vs. (right) Gonzalez’s Cubist Woman Combing Her Hair (1933)
Smith
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Zig VI (1964) – – – –
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‘Zig' series: contains some of Smith's most abstract sculptures form: retains slight figurative overtone composition: Baroque dynamism color: industrial paint • flat, unified hue • no indication of painterliness motif: mounted wheels • made it easier to handle and literally mobile • although wheels are fixed independent of traditional plinth or base
Smith •
Cubi XVII (1965) – – – – – –
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final series (began in 1961 but did not turn to in earnest until 1963) significance: establish entirely new way of engaging w/ sculptural space scale: monumental setting: outdoor material: stainless steel surface texture: burnished to achieve maximum reflectivity • employed process as early as 1957 • appear as overt brushstrokes • absorb light/color of surroundings aesthetic: ultimate source in Cubism • broke w/ several hallmarks of his career – eschews both thin linear forms and junkyard materials – favors prefabricated, highly polished cubic, cylindrical, and rectangular elements innovations: • simulates pictorial frames around open space • articulates delicate balance of masses • explores verticality to a new degree • relate to Minimalism’s regular, repeated forms & pure geometries
(Left) Smith’s Cubi X (1963); (right) Cubi XXVII (1964)
Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) •
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biography: French-American – parents owned antique tapestry gallery – childhood trauma father’s extramarital affair w/ governess – late 1930s: moved to NYC w/ American husband, Robert Goldwater training: – 1937-38: École du Louvre and École des Beaux-Arts • Léger saw her work and told her she was a sculptor, not a painter – 1938: Art Students League (NYC) career: Am. Abstract Artists Group (1954) – several contemporaries, including: Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, De Kooning, Rothko, and Pollock – Venice Biennale (1993) - USA significance: founder of “confessional” art themes: betrayal, anxiety, and loneliness aesthetic: abstract forms suggestive of human figure
Bourgeois
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Listening One (1947) – – – –
forms: abstract intellectual context: Jungian archetypes narrative: see Pollock’s Man & Woman composition: vertical orientation implies human beings • left male – height – phallic suggestions • right felmale – slender – pubis
(Left) Pollock’s Male and Female (1942) vs. (right) Bourgeois’ Listening One (1947)
Bourgeois
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Spiral Woman (1952) – –
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intellectual context: Jungian archetype form: anthropomorphic • spiral snake (Eden ?) • swelling abdomen pose: contrapposto composition: vertical orientation implies human beings color: monochromatic
Bourgeois
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Unconscious Landscape (1967) – – – –
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intellectual context: Freudian forms: abstract phallic composition: horizontal orientation spatial order: compact • versus Giacometti’s Existential arrangements surface texture: rough handling
(Left) Giacometti’s Piazza (c. 1950) vs. (right) Bourgeois’s Unconscious Landscape (1967)
Bourgeois
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Arch of Hysteria (1993) – – –
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theme: gender stereotypes subject matter: human pain form: appears to be female, yet male • no breasts • headless pose: contorted spatial order: positive & negative surface texture: smooth & polished
Bourgeois •
Maman (1999) – –
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motif: spider theme: weaving (relate to childhood) • linked to creation itself • classical references – three Fates wind, spin and cut thread of life – Homer’s Iliad Helen weaves her own destiny into her web in corner of her room – Homer’s Odyssey Penelope weaves cloth by day and un-picks cloth by night spatial order: Space does not exist in itself, it is just a metaphor for the structure of our existence.’