4.651 Lecture 23: Return to Painting vs. Appropriation

MIT 4.651 ART SINCE 1940 LECTURE NOTES Week 13: 80'S POLITICAL ART AND POSTMODERNISM Lecture 23: Return to Painting vs. Appropriation decades discussed: 1980s-90s terms: Postmodernism, Appropriation, “Neo Geo” I. Postmodernism . . Goes behind and before “now” to return to other potential futures Returns: to painting, to the body, to “figurative” sculpture, to “expression,” to difference A) Women painters surge into view (painterly, personal, less photographic) 1. Jennifer Bartlett (trained by AbEx Tworkov, via Minimalism, to Painting) 2. Elizabeth Murray (trained in California, out of Minimalism to lush cartoons) 3. Katherine Porter (trained by AbEx Guston, semi-abstract signs) 4. Susan Rothenberg (horses: “portraiture without people”) B) Return of the repressed? The abject body in the 90s 1. Kiki Smith (daughter Tony Smith, infl.by her Catholicism) 2. Robert Gober (suburban homo-eroticism) II. Critical Postmodernism in the “image world” A) The impact of post-structuralism (anti-essentialist feminism) 1. Cindy Sherman 2. Barbara Kruger 3. Jenny Holzer B) Appropriation 1. Sherrie Levine, Mike Bidlo: questioning authorship 2. Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach: commodity fetishes C) Neo-Geo 1. Philip Taaffe: the wit in pattern and pastiche 2. Ross Blechner: emotion hiding in the field 3. Peter Halley: deconstructing power in abstraction selected image list on verso MIT 4.651 ART SINCE 1940 LECTURE NOTES SELECTED IMAGES (painting on canvas unless otherwise noted) Bartlett, At the Lake, Morning, 1979 Murray, Sentimental Education, 1982 Rothenberg,United States 1975 Smith (Kiki), Untitled (T he V irgin M ary), 1990 (paper mache) Go ber, Untitled 1989-90 (wax, cotton, leather, human hair, wood) Sherman, Untitled (Film Stills) 1978-82 (p hotograp hs; series) Sherman, Sex Pictures, 1992 (photograph) Kruger, Untitled (W e are b eing made spectacles of), 1980 Ho lzer, Truisms: “A buse of Po wer...” (offset posters, T-shirts, LED signs), 1979-86 Levine, After Walker Evans 1981 (pho tograph) Bidlo, Restaging “Anthropometry of the Blue Period,” 1980s, documentation of performance Ko ons, New H oovers or New Shelton Wet/Dry Double Decker, 1981, plexi case, fluorescent lights, appliances Steinb ach, Fantastic Arrangement, 198 5, appliances on custom shelf Taaffe, Concordia, 1985 Halley, Tw o Cells with Circulating Conduit, 1986