American Figurative Art in the 1950s

Art 109A: Contemporary Art Westchester Community College Fall 2012 Dr. Melissa Hall

Modernist Orthodoxy From its inception the Museum of Modern Art favored abstraction

Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. Philip L. Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone, Architects, 1939. Robert Damora, Photographer, 1939 Image source: http://www.robertdamora.com/

Modernist Orthodoxy Figurative art had no role to play in the narrative of Modernist “progress”

Alfred Barr, Cubism and Abstract Art, Museum of Modern Art, 1936

Modernist Orthodoxy The Whitney Museum was more inclusive in its programs

It continued to exhibit figurative artists alongside abstractionists, refusing to impose a normative style

Whitney Museum of American Art at 10 West 8th Street, c. 1931 Image source: http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/BreakingGround/Works

Modernist Orthodoxy But with the success of Abstract Expressionism, figurative artists found themselves increasingly marginalized from the mainstream

Life Magazine, “Jackson Pollock: Is He the Greatest Living Painter in the United States?” 1949

Modernist Orthodoxy In mainstream art criticism, only abstract art was considered to be “advanced”

Jackson Pollock, Cathedral, 1947

Barnett Newman, Onement I, 1948

Figurative Artists in the 1950s Many American artists who were active in the 1930s and 1940s continued to pursue a figurative style

Ben Shahn, Scorn, 1952 Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

Gjon Mili, Ben Shahn, 1954 Image source: http://images.google.com/hosted/life/543c2fbc034fc083.html

Ben Shahn, Liberation, 1945 Museum of Modern Art

Figurative Artists in the 1950s Some of Hopper’s best works were done in the 1950’s-60s

Edward Hopper, Self Portrait, 1925-30 Whitney Museum of American Art

Edward Hopper, Morning Sun, 1952 Columbus Museum of Art

Edward Hopper, Office in a Small City, 1953 Metropolitan Museum

Figurative Artists in the 1950s Norman Rockwell continued to work well into the 1960s, and addressed contemporary social issues in several of his works

Norman Rockwell, Triple Self Portrait. Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, February 13, 1960. Norman Rockwell Museum

Norman Rockwell, The Problem we All Live With, 1964 Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Norman Rockwell, Southern Justice (Murder in Mississippi). Unpublished story illustration for Look, June 29, 1965. Norman Rockwell Estate.

Figurative Artists in the 1950s Andrew Wyeth was another figurative artist working at this time

Andrew Wyeth, Turkey Pond, 1944 Farnsworth Art Museum

Andrew Wyeth, Christina’s World, 1948 Museum of Modern Art

Figurative Artists in the 1950s Fairfield Porter remained largely unrecognized, in spite of his art world connections as a critic

Fairfield Porter, Self Portrait, 1972 Parrish Art Museum

Figurative Artists in the 1950s When Porter was given a retrospective at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1983 it was titled “Realist Painter in an Age of Abstraction” -- a title that captures the predicament of figurative artists at this time

Fairfield Porter, Katie and Anne, 1955 Hirshhorn Museum

Fairfield Porter, The Mirror, 1960 Nelson Atkins Museum

Figurative Artists in the 1950s Milton Avery was a close friend of Mark Rothko and an important influence on his work

Arnold Newman, Milton Avery, 1961 Image source: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/8649/Milton-Avery-photograph-by-Arnold-Newman-1961

Figurative Artists in the 1950s He continued to work abstractly, while retaining recognizable subject matter in his work

Milton Avery, White Rooster, 1947 Metropolitan Museum

Milton Avery, Sea Grasses and Blue Sea, 1958 Museum of Modern Art

Figurative Artists in the 1950s Larry Rivers is often associated with Beat poets such as Frank O’Hara, and was a precursor of the Pop movement of the 1960s

Larry Rivers, Self Portrait, 1953 Art Institute of Chicago

Figurative Artists in the 1950s He rebelled against the Modernist orthodoxy by challenging the taboo against subject matter

Larry Rivers, Self Portrait, 1953 Art Institute of Chicago

Figurative Artists in the 1950s His website proudly announces that the influential art critic Clement Greenberg though his work “stinks”

http://larryriversfoundation.org/home.html

Figurative Artists in the 1950s One of Rivers’ seminal works was Washington Crossing the Delaware

Larry Rivers, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1953 Museum of Modern Art

Figurative Artists in the 1950s It was a “history painting,” painted in a loose brushy style, with characters plagiarized from art history

Larry Rivers, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1953 Museum of Modern Art

Figurative Artists in the 1950s The picture was a parody of the overblown heroics of Emanuel Leutze’s famous painting in the Metropolitan Museum

Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, George Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851 Metropolitan Museum

Figurative Artists in the 1950s Rivers had chosen the most “backward” kind of painting he could think of -- patriotic history painting

Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, George Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851 Metropolitan Museum

Figurative Artists in the 1950s He combined this old fashioned “academic” subject matter with a loose, brushy style considered to be “advanced”

Larry Rivers, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1953 Museum of Modern Art

Figurative Artists in the 1950s By combining the overblown heroics of history painting with the mock-heroic style of Abstract Expressionism, Rivers was making fun of the grandiose claims of his contemporaries

Larry Rivers, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1953 Museum of Modern Art

Figurative Artists in the 1950s The response, as Rivers explains, was “the same reaction as when the Dadaists introduced a toilet seat as a piece of sculpture in a Dada show in Zurich. Except that the public wasn't upset - the painters were.”

Larry Rivers, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1953 Museum of Modern Art

Figurative Artists in the 1950s

“With the success of Washington Crossing the Delaware Rivers was, as he further describes in his autobiography, “branded a rebel against the rebellious abstract expressionists, which made me a reactionary.” http://larryriversfoundation.org/seminal_works.html

Larry Rivers, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1953 Museum of Modern Art

Figurative Artists in the 1950s Rivers did a number of figurative paintings that pushed boundaries by combining drawing and painting, realism and an abstract “gestural” style.

The commonplace subject matter, combined with the inexplicable nudity of the figures, made his work enigmatic

Larry Rivers, Bedroom, 1955 Museum of Fine Arts Boston

Figurative Artists in the 1950s One of his most shocking (and tender) paintings is his double portrait of his aging mother-in-law in the nude

Larry Rivers, Double Portrait of Berdie, 1955 Larry Rivers Foundation

Figurative Artists in the 1950s Rivers also did a number of works that anticipated Pop Art in their use of popular imagery drawn from advertising

Larry Rivers, Camel Quartet. Original color lithograph & screenprint, 1978-90 Image source: http://www.spaightwoodgalleries.com/Pages/POP_Art_2001.html

Larry Rivers, Little French Money II, 1962 Hirshhorn Museum

Figurative Artists in the 1950s In his Dutch Masters series, he copied the graphics on the lid of the Dutch Masters cigar case which featured a reproduction of Rembrandts famous painting of the Syndics of the Dutch Drapery Guild

Larry Rivers, Dutch Masters Cigars, 1982 Image source: http://www.newpaltz.edu/museum/exhibitions/readingobjects/fi/0000000f.htm

Figurative Artists in the 1950s Anticipating “appropriation art” in the 1980s-1990s, Rivers did many works that were copies of famous old master works.

Larry Rivers, I Like Ingres, 1962 Hirshhorn Museum

Figurative Artists in the 1950s One of his most controversial works was I Like Olympia in Blackface, which was a three dimensional tableau that parodied the implicit racism of Manet’s famous painting

Larry Rivers, I Like Olympia in Blackface, 1970 Centre Georges-Pompidou Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ganimede1984/5748797416/

Figurative Artists in the 1950s Alex Katz also anticipated Pop art with his figurative works that employ flat, cartoon-like drawing, and seem devoid of emotional affect

Alex Katz, Ada Ada, 1959 Grey Art Collection, NYU

Alex Katz, The Black Dress, 1960 Brandhorst Collection Image source: https://trufflehunting.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/life-imitates-art/

Figurative Artists in the 1950s In California a group of artists working in an updated figural style came to be known as the Bay Area Figurative School

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Image source: http://serc.carleton.edu/details/images/30962.html

Figurative Artists in the 1950s David Parks painted in a highly abstract mode that drew heavily on German Expressionism

David Parks, Two Bathers, 1958 SFMOMA

David Parks, Four Men, 1958 Whitney Museum

Figurative Artists in the 1950s Richard Diebenkorn also explored the fine line between realism and abstraction in figurative and landscape works

Richard Diebenkorn, Woman in Profile, 1958 SFMOMA

Richard Diebenkorn, Cityscape I (Landscape No. 1), 1963 SFMOMA

Figurative Artists in the 1950s In Chicago, Leon Golub belonged to a group called the “Monster Roster”

He drew on outsider art and the art of the insane to produce tortured images of men in a state of psychological crisis

Leon Golub, Dying Gaul, 1955 Artnet.com

Leon Golub, Fallen Warrior (Burnt Man), 1960 Artnet.com

Leon Golub, Gigantomachy III, 1966 Image source: http://web.me.com/dianethodos/Site/Leon_Golub.html

Leon Golub, Vietnam II, 1973 Tate Gallery Image source: http://robertopozuelo.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/leon-golub-mural.jpg

Figurative Artists in the 1950s In the 1980’s Golub was “rediscovered” with his series of large scale paintings depicting mercenaries

Leon Golub, Mercenaries IV, 1984 Saatchi Collection Artnet

Leon Golub, Interrogation II, 1981 Art Institute of Chicago

Leon Golub working on one his his mural-scaled mercenary paintings Image source: http://roberttracyphdart477677artsince1945.wordpress.com/2011/03/05/leon-golub-and-his-mercenaries-series/