Prepop Neodada

• Rauschenberg and Johns studied at the

innovative Black mountain College in
North Carolina with the musician John
Cage (4'33").
 John Cage
• John Cage's most famous musical composition
is called 4'33".
• It consists of the pianist going to the piano, and
not hitting any keys for four minutes and thirty-
three seconds. (He uses a stopwatch to time
this.)
• The entire piece consists of silences -- silences
of different lengths, they say.
• What you hear when you listen to 4'33" is a
matter of chance.
Robert Rauschenberg
Neodada
Erased de Kooning, 1953
• de Kooning painted a woman
series with large, slashing
brushstrokes which are
deliberately crude, frantic, and
violent.
• The emphasis is on the act of
painting/mark making.
• De Kooning
• Woman with
Bicycle
• 1952-53
• Abstract
Expressionism
Combine Painting/ Assemblage
• A technique in which art works are made by
fastening objects from the real world to abstract
painted canvases.
• Found object -
Throw away goods of
consumer society
which artists
incorporate directly
into their work.
Bed, 1955
“Painting relates to both
art and life… I try to act
in the gap between the
two. A pair of socks is
no less suitable to
make a painting with
than wood, nails,
turpentine, oil, and
fabric.”
R. Rauschenberg
 Bed, 1955

• Combine painting /
assemblage –
Technique in which art
works are made by fastening
objects from the real world to
abstract painted canvases.
R. Rauschenberg, Coca Cola Plan, 1958
• Junk is art waiting to be discovered.
• "sport of making something I haven't
seen before. If I know what I'm going to
do, I don't do it."
• bottles are discards , part of the debris
of the urban landscape
• suggests the abundance and
wastefulness of runaway
consumerism
• art reflects society
• bottles are made Godlike on an alter
like niche, with angelic wings, above a
globe
• not far from the brand name soft drinks
current status in the world market
• Monograms - initials - drawn with letters interwoven - like goat through tire
• Free association of different elements Stuffed angora goat, rubber tire, a
canvas, paint, signs
• blurs the lines between art and life, also painting, & sculpture
• Goat on floor canvas ( Pollock), like raft as if a survivor of nature in flood
of throw away culture.
• Pollock in his
studio “floor
painting.”
 Abstract
Expressionism
• Abstract Expressionism – A movement which
is abstract (emphasizing shape, colour, and line,
with little recognizable subject matter) and
expressive (stressing emotion and individual
feeling).
• Action Painting – The painting is a record of the
process of the pictures creation, reflecting the whole of
the artist’s physical and mental being.
• The viewer is meant to be aware of the process; it is
important to imagine the artist in the act of creation.
Lavender Mist
• Pollock,

Lavender Mist
(detail)
Pollock
1950
“ A painting is more like the real world when it is
made out of the real world.”
R. Rauschenberg
• Title - to react, be retrospective, or
operate in a backward direction.
• JFK already dead - Rauschenberg
wrote him just before, sending
artwork as gift.
• Captures Kennedy's charisma -
TV's first political superstar -
reflects the mass media's ability
to make icons.
• Uses found images from the TV.
and elsewhere.
• Montage, or quilt of images
combined with expressive brush
work.
• (Oil and silk-screen on canvas)
• The subject involves a glut of
messages and images
• " I was bombarded with TV sets
and magazines, by the refuse, by
the excesses of the world... I
thought that if I could paint or
make an honest work , it should
incorporate all of these elements,
which were and are a reality."
• Relates to the way images are
seen, channel changing,
translated into a still image
• placed side by side, and still , the
relationships seem more chaotic &
surreal.
• Red patch - stroboscopic photo of
Duchamp's Nude Descending
Staircase from Life Magazine.
Jasper Johns
 Encaustic
• A method of painting with pigment (colour)
dissolved in hot wax.
• Detail of Flag (1954-55). This image
illustrates Johns' early technique of
painting with thick, dripping encaustic
over a collage made from found
materials such as newspaper.
• Something so well known it is not well seen
• Design already there, allowing him to work on other
levels ( the painted surface)
• Develop a new surface, like a skin, with encaustic
• Symbol made abstract through act of painting.
• Begs questions: Is it a flag? Is it a painting of a flag? Both? Is it art?
• Provocative - gives viewer cause to reflect - tests imaginative capacity of
the viewer
• Flag traditionally shown in action, symbol of nationalism, identity, and power
here its flat
• Transforms an object highly resistant to aesthetic consideration.
 White Flag, 1955

“There are things that are seen and

not looked at. I want the viewer to
examine the all too familiar image.”
J. Johns
Target with 4 Faces
1955
• Familiar symbol used as
design within which the
artist can use paint freely
• Target? Art?
• Painted target
automatically negates use
of real one (but could
serve the purpose)
• Function displaced - Dada
• Marksmen focus on bulls
eye; here the rings are
treated with equal
importance as part of an
overall composition.
Paradox
• Target is a sign/ symbol
transformed through paint
into art
• Faces are sculpture
transformed through
repetition into a symbol
"face or person"
Numbers in
Colors
1958-59
• Familiar symbols are
used as grid/matrix to
improvise within
• The effect is of texture
& pattern
• The quantitative
becomes qualitative
0 through 9,
1961
Painting With Two Balls
1960
• Direct attack on Abstract
expressionism.
• Abs. Exp. artists were
aggressively asserting in
spontaneous brushwork
expressions of inner states of
mind etc.
• Abstract Expressionist
“painting from the hip"
asserted a macho image
• John's painting is a literal
satire of this activity.
• He splits the surface,
revealing empty space held
apart with two wooden balls .
Driver,1963
Field Painting,
1964