Sherie Zhou

11-13-2013
Terms
Abstract Expressionism

Cubism
o Colorblocking
o Flatness
Surrealism
o Automatic drawing
o No reason, no aesthetics
o Taps into subconscious thoughts
Primitive people are thought to be closer to their subconscious
Existentialism
o Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre
o Existence precedes essence
o One can exert existence through action
Action is imperative
o Counter to Surrealism
Sublime
o Emmanuel Kant and Edmund Burke
o Expression of beauty and terror simultaneously
o Inconsequential nature of man and great power of nature
Abstract Expressionism
o Painterly Surrealism
o Flattened surface
o Autographic gestures
o Universal themes
Chromatic / Colorfield Painting Action Painting
o Rothko o Pollock
o Newman o Gorky
o Colorfield
Seeks to free color. Color is just color
Red =/= tomato or fire engine
Gestural/Action Painting
o Paintings as participatory activity
o All-over painting
In, on, with the painting
Pollock
o Mark Tobey, Jackson Pollock
New Classicism
o Nudes, contrapostto, natural landscape

Beat Generation
Beat
o Beaten down
o Beatific / beautitude holiness of everything, spiritual aspect
o 1
st
American counterculture: rebellious, non-conformist
o Immediacy, spontaneity, blurring lines between high/middle/low brow
Sherie Zhou
11-13-2013
o Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg
o Coded language
Assemblage artists/works
o Assembling found objects into 3D or 2D
o Rauschenberg, Dubuffet, Duchamp, Connor
Combine painting Rauschenberg specifically

Arte Informale et Arte Brute
Arte Informale / Arte Autre
o Paralleled Abstract Expressionism
o Form is less important than impulses of artist, non-rational
o Gestural, abstract, unformed, shapeless
o Non-traditional materials
o Signage
Alberto Burri
Decalcumania
o Ernst, Europe After the Rain II
o Element of chance, things that the artist cannot control
Arte Brute
o Primitive is authentic
o Logic and reason war, thus return to primitivism and subconscious
o Intentionally child-like naivet

Dada
Neo-Dada

Post-Painterly Abstraction
Two branches
o Pollock-ian continue action painting
o Post-Painterly Abstraction
Influenced by nature
Large-scale abstraction
Role of chance and actions that the artist cannot control
Medium specificity
o Clement Greenberg
Painting should strive to be become just painting
o Painting becomes more flat (Helen Frankenthaler)
Gestural painting, horizontal plane (Pollock-inspired)
o Veil painting (Morris Louis)
Hard edge painting
o Reinhardt, opposite of Frankenthaler
o Crisp sharp lines that the artist has full control over
Deductive structure
o Agnes Martin, Frank Stella
o Re-inscribe the frame of the canvas
o The canvas / medium dictates the art that result, artist has no control
Washington Color School
Sherie Zhou
11-13-2013
o Kenneth Noland
o Morris Louis
o Gene Davis
o Push-pull painting
Opticality
o Flatness, elemental shapes
o Kenneth Noland
One-shot painting
o Understandable at the first glance, instantaneous reception
o Illusion of depth is created by ones eye
o Kenneth Noland, Virginia Site

Fluxus Movement
Fluxus
Pop Art
Silk screening
Image transfer
Ben Day dots
Kitsch mass-consumed products
Conceptual Art
o The artist can make it (or not make it)
o The work can be prefabricated (or originally made)
o The work can be built (or not built)
Minimalism
o Dematerialization of art
o Deductive structure reinscribing
Frank Stella, Astoria
Earthworks
o Strenuous departure from art process
o Manipulating nature, artists are intervening in the landscape
o Creating works not likely to be commoditized
o Pushing outside the constraints of the gallery space
Post-Minimalism
Arte Povera
o Italian movement, nationalistic bent, recalls Italys agrarian history
Misinterpretation of American Minimalism as being pro-technology
o Strong emphasis of return to nature and inspiration from nature
o Use of lowly materials (i.e., concrete, wood) and organic materials
o Promotes art that exists outside the commoditized world of the art gallery
Thought that interest in commodities complicit in US economy complicit in US
political actions as well
Mami figure
Phrenology pseudoscientific study of relationship between skull anatomy and behavioral and
intellectual characteristics
o Geometric Abstraction reclaiming womens crafts and tasks (i.e., sewing, quilting)