The Return to Painting Continued: American Neoexpressionist

The Return to Painting Continued: American
Neoexpressionist Painting
focus on: -Julian Schnabel -David Salle -Eric Fischl
-Susan Rothenberg
Textbook: Chapter 8, pp. 222-251, 266-268
East Village Art Scene: Beginnings of Street Art and its
Commodification
focus on: -The Times Square Show -Jean-Michel
Basquiat -Keith Haring -art dealer Jeffrey Deitch
Textbook: Chapter 14, pp. 461-479
Commodity Art and Neogeo
focus on: -Baudrillard redux -Andy Warhol redux
-Jeff Koons
Textbook: Chapter 15, pp. 482-519
1980s, Art World and Art Market in New York City
The contemporary art world and all its component parts
as we know them today were established in the 80s.
Power nexus of:
Galleries
Museums
Art critics
Collectors,
and finally, the artists themselves, the Art
Stars/celebrities, comprised the network.
Expressionism: early 20th century
Modernist movement in the West
Early 20th
Century
German
Expressionism
Kirchner
formed The
Bridge group
Kandinsky formed The Blue Rider group
Abstract Expressionism:
Postwar Modernist
Movement in the West
Julian Schnabel, Portrait of God, 1980s, oil paint and
canvas, Neo-Expressionism, Postmodernism
Julian Schnabel, Vita, 1980s, oil paint, shattered plates on wood.
Neo-Expressionism, Postmodernism- painting movement inspired by earlier
expressionistic styles that gained popularity in early 80s; characterized by large, figurative works,
crudely and rapidly painted, often with objects imbedded in their surfaces, such as broken plates
or straw.
David Salle, Muscular Paper, 1980s, oil paint, polymer paint
and charcoal on canvas and fabric, Neo-Expressionism,
Postmodernism; painter known for his composite paintings juxtaposing
fragmented figures and environmental images, often using photographs from
romance and pornographic magazines as his source material.
David Salle, Gericault’s Arm, 1980s, acrylic paint on canvas,
Neo-Expressionism, Postmodernism
Eric Fischl, Bad Boy, 1980s, oil paint on canvas, NeoExpressionism, Postmodernism; known for his large canvases
depicting uncomfortably intimate scenes of middle-class suburban life and
sexuality depicted in a naturalistic style; his reliance on photography suggests a
debt to the earlier realist movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
Susan Rothenberg, Tattoo, 1970s, acrylic paint on canvas,
Neo-expressionism, Postmodernism; major series of large paintings with the
horse as the central image; themes resonate with history and metaphor; reacting against
intellectually-based Art, the style is characterized by a fusion of abstraction and figuration and
an emphasis on the creative process of manipulating images.
Susan Rothenberg, Blue Head, 1980s, acrylic on canvas
painting, Neo-Expressionism, Postmodernism; revived
expressionist personal painting styles whose subject matter is almost
representational; Minimalist meets figurative images of a face and a hand
East Village Art Scene: Beginnings of Street Art and its
Commodification
focus on: -The Times Square Show -Jean-Michel
Basquiat -Keith Haring -art dealer Jeffrey Deitch
Textbook: Chapter 14, pp. 461-479
Re: Art world hype and celebrity in the 80s
“There is certainly a perception that hype itself is
perhaps the most important new medium in the
corporate world as well as the art world. The process
of promotion, the selling, the culturalization of art
ideas and images has become an art form itself.”
-Jeffrey Deitch, art dealer
Deitchprojects.com
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Hollywood Africans, 1980s, oil on canvas,
Street art meets Neo-expressionism, Postmodernism
Link his painting with street art/graffiti art as much as with the
neo-expressionists; his work was primitive and neo, historical
and contemporary
The Times Square Show, 1980, Street art meets punk/do-ityourself aesthetic meets Neo-expressionism, organized by
Colab in an abandoned building; featured 100 artists “blurred the
boundaries between high and low culture, and between who is „qualified‟ to be an
artist, a musician-or both” (Michael Shore, 1980), both aesthetics based on
anarchic impulses and the trivialities of mass culture BUT the works themselves
were less radical (they often referenced art history) than the rhetoric about them
The Times Square Show brought graffiti artists/street artists
from the South Bronx into the art world- art scene initially took to
the crude drawing and flourescent colors because related to bad art/diy aesthetic
and to the history of primitivism in Western art
But Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Kenny Scharf, were the
only street inspired artists that that art world took to heart
Keith Haring, Untitled works, 1980s, Street art meets
Commodity art, Postmodernism- mass produced his repertory in
thousands of drawings, prints, paintings, sculptures, murals, t-shirts, buttons,
and banners; opened the Pop Shop
“Like a master rapper who can rhyme line after line in a never
ending cadence, Haring keeps unfolding his images with a
visual syncopation.”- Jeffrey Deitch, art dealer
Commodity Art- movement that emerged from the East
Village scene and coalesced in 1986 and challenged
Neoexpressionism‟s dominance in the art world;
Baudrillard, who believed that mass media had replaced
reality with web of images and simulacra, was their cult
figure. “Simulations had become more real than reality-or
„hyperreal‟- and had come to refer to nothing outside
themselves” (Sandler, p. 484).
Artists, exemplified by Jeff Koons, that went “shopping” for
already existing images in order to communicate a lust for
commodities!
Jeff Koons, New Hoover Convertible, 1980, Commodity Art,
Postmodernism
brand new vacuums stacked or paired, “state of being new,”
like “readymades” but communicated a lust for commodities
Jeff Koons, Rabbit, 1980s, part of Equilibrium sculptures,
Commodity art, Postmodernism
remades not readymades; all his work moving forward would
be fabricated (he could afford to fabricate because from 198085 he was a commodity broker on Wall Street- just as much
part of his body of artwork as his art objects!)
Hummel figure
Jeff Koons, Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1980s,
Commodity art, Postmodernism
Commentary on consumerism in art and the celebration
of banality; Koons was argued to be “the child of the
consumer society” and the heir of Warhol