Video One - Uncertainty: Modernity and Art
My personal art aesthetic is anchored in realism and rich color, in particular I am obsessed with capturing the portrait of an individual. Since I have a BFA in Art History, I do, however, have a sincere appreciation for Modern Art. The more I learn about Modern Art and the many "isms" that fall under this category, the better I can comprehend what many artists in the 20th century were trying to achieve. To add to my understanding, I chose to watch Uncertainty: Modernity and Art.
The ancient Greeks lived their lives according to the words "know thyself". They were intent on becoming, and representing in their art, architecture and writings, an 'idealized man'. Fast forward to the 19th century, the western world was experiencing the 'Industrial Revolution'. In the words of the documentary's narrator, Matthew Collings, "...something 'broke' in art and can't be remade". This brings up the query, what will the future see when they look back?
One of the foundations of art in the modern world is its complete break with work from the past. In the beginning, artists such as Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee and Piet Mondrian were interested in speed, efficiency, and mass production, they wanted to create unpredictable shapes and alter reality. Although not mentioned in the video, it is also my understanding that photography, with its ability to capture the real world, pushed artists to go beyond reality and create a new kind of art.
The experiments of the art world were interrupted and reviled by Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany. Hitler wanted to return to classicism in art, and preferred the grotesquely muscled 'super-hero' figure sculptures of Teutonic men, paintings of the perfect German nuclear family and of the perfection of Aryan womanhood. He (Hitler) even created a Degenerate Art Exhibit, which he proclaimed to be art and artists who were 'sick' and needed to be eradicated. This exhibit included many Modern Art works, creations which the German people were asked to condemn.
Later in the 20th century popular artists included Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollack, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning. Their art, while seemingly 'simple' was very well thought-out, they wanted to capture the 'mystery of existence' and their work was 'emotionally heavy'. Pop Art of the 1960's was all about consumerism, a time when money was valued above all else for the objects that it could buy. Andy Warhol was one of the most popular artist of this time. Warhol created huge silk-screened portraits of pop icons, including Elvis Presley. Where once upon a time Jesus Christ was the man we revered and painted, singer Elvis Presley was our new idol.
The video was an excellent synapses of Modern Art, in about an hour almost one hundred years of the art world were touched upon, and I saw many art works which I have never seen before.
Video One - Andy Warhol: Images of an Image
I felt as though the Andy Warhol video was the perfect segue from the previous video about Modern Art. I went to school in the 1980's and was familiar with Andy Warhol, who didn't pass away until 1987. The Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY, which is a 15 minute drive for me, owns Andy Warhol's 100 Cans, 1962. casein, spray paint and pencil on cotton support: 72" x 52". I have stood before this work many times, and have always had questions. Why Campbell's soup cans? Why 100? How is this, silk-screen on canvas, art?
Warhol began his career as a successful commercial artist. It was in 1960's, at the height of 'mass commercialism', that he began to experiment with art, his favorite vehicle being silk-screening. As a collector of movie posters and movie magazines, he was fascinated with the famous faces of pop-culture. He would take photographs of famous personalities such as Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe and Jackie O and create many different silk-screened images of them, turning them into modern-day Mona Lisa's.
He embraced silk-screening for several reasons. He wanted to be richer and richer, and with silk-screens, he could create many images very quickly. Warhol didn't even need to have a hand in the silk-screening process, his assistants or anyone could reproduce the silk-screen, he merely had to come up with the initial idea. He actually removed the artist form the art, thereby depersonalizing art.
Andy Warhol was extremely narcissistic and made many self-portraits. He also had a macabre fascination with death, and was fixated upon plane crashes, car accidents, electric chairs, suicides and human skulls. This video was so informative, Warhol's images of repetitive perfection are in reality imperfect; each silk-screened image is slightly different. The process of creating an actual silk-screen virtually strips away the flesh of his idols, and he replaced it with color. I found that despite my early impression of Warhol and his art as 'shallow', there is actually quite a lot of depth and forethought in his artistic process.
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