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Teachers’
Guide
Postwar:
Art Between the
Pacific and the
Atlantic, 1945 — 1965
Haus der Kunst
14.10.16 — 26.03.17
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Contents
Didactic Advice 3
Introduction
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Exhibition Overview
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Section 1: Aftermath: Zero Hour and the Atomic Era
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Section 2: Form Matters / Material
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Section 3: New Images of Man
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Section 4: Realisms
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Section 5: Concrete Art 45
Section 6: Cosmopolitan Modernisms
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Section 7: Nations Seeking Form
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Section 8: Networks, Media & Communication
62
This Teachers’ Guide has been produced to support the
exhibition Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic
1945 - 1965, on view at Haus der Kunst, Munich, from 14 October
2016 until 26 March 2017.
All texts are copyright © 2016 Haus der Kunst, Munich.
All rights reserved. Images are copyrighted by their owners
or their makers. Please contact Haus der Kunst.
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Didactic Advice
This Learning Guide has been produced to support the exhibition Postwar: Art
Between the Pacific and the Atlantic 1945 — 65, on view at Haus der Kunst from
14 October 2016 until 26 March 2017. It is divided into eight thematic sections, and is created to assist teachers in discussing the formal, conceptual,
and socio-political themes that will be encountered in the course of the
show.
This booklet is therefore designed to be used both within the exhibition
and as a point-of-reference for subsequent discussion in the classroom. Each
section of the Learning Guide begins with a short introduction, then focuses
on a few selected artworks that serve as entry-points into wider issues addressed in the exhibition. The texts point out relationships between different themes and styles, list related artworks in the exhibition, and give
a glossary of terms, all of which can become catalysts for further discussion within your group.
These introductory elements can serve either as guidelines for self-study
or can allow groups of participants to engage with the themes and styles evident in the artwork.
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Introduction
The exhibition
The postwar period-especially the two decades following World War IIwas the result of a chaotic, dynamic process of global transformation, with
changes in the constitution of the nation-state and national borders; shifts
in political sovereignty and human rights through decolonization; the reconstruction of destroyed and damaged cities; acceleration of communication during the space age; the migration of massive numbers of people that
transformed cities; and the circulation of ideas through new communication
channels and networks, especially with the advent of new media technologies
which relayed news and information at unprecedented speed.
With the defeat of Germany in Europe and Japan in Asia in 1945, the end of
World War II marked a turning point in global history. The ferocious battles
of the war fought across cities, nations, and continents led to whole cities
and countries being destroyed, tens of millions of people laughtered, millions of refugees, with many more made stateless, and the militarization of
everyday life. All of this was compounded by the horror following the dropping of the first atomic bombs and the revelations of the vast network of
concentration camps by the Nazi regime. However, postwar is also much more
than the end of the World War II and the rebuilding of Europe and Japan; it
was notably a period that questioned Europe’s moral and political legitimacy
in relation to its colonial empires.
In the field of art, the postwar period witnessed a shift away from the dominance of Western European art capitals and the rising prominence of US art,
popular culture, and mass media. Furthermore, in line with the Cold War division of Eastern and Western Blocs, artistic practice itself was apparently
divided between capitalist and communist camps; simplified as a competition
between “abstraction” and “socialist realism.”
When viewed from the perspective of global developments, however, this
division of the world into “East” and “West” is far too simplistic and conceals the myriad of decolonization struggles, independence movements, and
anti-colonial resistances that took place all over the world, but especially
in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. These emerging and increasingly independent nation-states sought out quite different orientations and partnerships-developing the idea of pan-African, pan-Arabic and non-aligned alliances. Similarly, artistic practice within many of these countries did not
simply mimic Western/European or Eastern/Socialist styles, but instead drew
upon a range of local, regional, and international contexts to create other
types of modernism.
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Following the two sweeping lines of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans which
encompass and connect Europe, Asia, Africa, the Mediterranean, North and
South America, as well as the Pacific Rim - the exhibition Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and Atlantic, 1945-1965 seeks to trace the myriad types of
modern art practices that emerged globally during the first twenty years
after the war. This exhibition does so by probing differing concepts of “modernism,” such as abstraction, realism, figuration, and representation. Much
like the complex movements of these two oceans, the exhibition itself hopes
to demonstrate how the development of modern art similarly straddles continents, political structures, economic patterns, and institutional frameworks.
As a result, the following questions emerge:
What would a global history of modernism look like? How do political and
cultural influence art’s production and reception? And how did artists,
critics, andintellectuals negotiate, resist, or even subvert these political and cultural ideologies? What was the impact of artistic and intellectual migrations from the former colonial peripheries to such major Western
cities as Paris, London, Berlin, and New York? How then did the circulation
of art and ideas - in the form of traveling exhibitions, printed magazines
and journals, as well as new forms of media such as television - shape global
perceptions of modern art?
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Exhibition Overview
© Kuehn Malvezzi GmbH
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Section 1:
Aftermaths.
Zero Hour and the
Atomic Aera
a) Zero Hour
The exhibition begins with reflections on the aftermath of the war in Germany and Japan, and explores the effect on artists of the imagery of the
concentration camps and atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On
the one hand, the Holocaust, due to its scale and barbarity was seen by many
as beyond representation, while on the other hand the image of the mushroom
cloud hovering over the epicenter of an atomic blast resonated around the
world as a new iconic image of mass destruction. These images, or lack of
them, serve as introductions to many of the artistic concerns of the next
two decades. First of all, images of concentration camps ended once and for
all Europe’s claim of being the center of humanism and moral universalism,
which in turn resulted in an escalation of the pre-war liberation and independence struggles in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere. In
countries such as the defeated Germany-but also in former imperial capitals
of Great Britain and France-this moment signaled a turning point in their
history, setting the clock back, to begin at “Zero Hour.”
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> Key Work
Joseph Beuys
Hirschdenkmäler (Monuments to the Stag), 1949-58
Monuments to the Stag represents Joseph Beuys’s very personal attempt to come
to terms with the horrors of World War II.In particular, this work is a response to the trauma of the preceding decade, in which German mythology and
folklore was perverted in the name of supporting a violent and racist ideology. For this reason, Beuys deployed myth in order to confront this perversion, delving into ancient German culture in order to locate traits and
characters in a new mythology for the postwar era. In this regard, the figure
of the stag was of special significance to the artist: it is an animal, Beuys
wrote, that “appears in times of distress” and who, via the perpetual shedding and regrowth of its antlers, acts as a potent symbol of rebirth and renewal. In this work the stag is represented by the bottle-shaped plank that
rests on four massive wooden “legs”, while overlooking the whole scene is a
representation of the artist (the block of earth and metal atop a sculptor’s
modeling base), as well as various Urtiere (primordial animals), the clay
forms scattered throughout the space.
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> Other works in the exhibition that explore this theme
Alina Szapocznikow
Hand. Monument to the Heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto II, 1957
While Beuys’s work contemplates the aftermath of the war from the position of
a defeated Germany, the art of Alina Szapocznikow speaks to the horrors of
directly experiencing the full brunt of German aggression: the artist was a
teenager during the German occupation of Poland, and her family was sent to
various ghettos and concentration camps throughout the war. As a result of
this experience, Szapocznikow began exploring the concept of the distorted and fragmented body in her work. In Hand: Monument to the Heroes of the
Warsaw Ghetto II, for example, a massive, grasping hand reaches out from a
wiry plinth; suggesting the last cry for help by a tormented victim. Made in
response to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1953, the despairing hand stands
a universal signal for the artist’s experiences in the various ghettos and
camps during the World War II.
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Andrzej Wróblewski
Execution with Gestapo Man, 1948
In contrast to Szapocznikow’s focus on the victims and heroes of the struggles, Andrzej Wróblewski’s haunting Execution with a Gestapo Man (1948)
presents the viewer with the vantage point of the executioner, who is depicted from the back, his head cropped at the upper edge of the canvas. However,
rather than depicting the execution literally, Wróblewski instead recasts
the scene as a hallucinatory nightmare, with the victim’s warped, bisected
body hovering in an indeterminate space in front of the viewer. In so doing, the figure no longer represents a literal person in a definite time and
place, but instead acts as symbol for the horrifying universality of this
act; something which would be repeated again and again throughout Europe
during the aftermath of the war.
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Gerhard Richter
Bomber, 1963
Like Wróblewski and Szapocznikow, in his painting Bomber (1963) Gerhard
Richter attempts to remove the specifics of time and place and instead
speaks to the universal horror of war. Rather than referring to an event experienced by the artist-such as the devastating aerial fire-bombings of his
hometown of Dresden, which caused countless deaths and left the city in ruins-Richter’s painting is derived from an image in a newspaper article about
the war. Although still somewhat true to the news photograph, the artist has
also blurred out and manipulated certain details, such as distinctive characters or decals on the bombers, resulting in the impression of an out-offocus snapshot. As a result, the main focus of Richter’s painting is now the
dynamic speed of the bombs falling in the open sky; placing the terror of the
event on a universal scale, because it is unclear who is bombing whom.
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Frank Stella,
Arbeit Macht Frei, 1958
Frank Stella goes even further in displaying the horrors of war in an abstract, distanced manner than the artists discussed above. In contrast to
the title Arbeit Macht Frei (Work sets you free), which quotes the sign mounted over the entrance to several Nazi concentration camps, Stella’s painting
instead appears cool and impersonal, comprising solely a recurring pattern
of rectangles that extend outward to the edges of the canvas. Because the
painting rejects any literal depictions, the crude irony of the Nazi slogan
and the ultimately senseless genocide take on a non-iconic form. In this case
Stella’s well-known quote of “what you see, is what you see!” can be read here
as “what you see is what you are able to see”: he has rejected literal representation of the Holocaust because, to an uninvolved outsider, the injustice
applied to Jews can only ever remain ungraspable.
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> Useful Terms
Memory
One of the key ideas in contemporary history is the manner in which memories
of a particular event later give it mythical proportions. Within the context
of the postwar period, one’s memory of an event became a crucial component in
subsequent efforts at reconciliation/reparation; as well as with the debates
surrounding how events such as the Holocaust or the various wartime occupations/invasions were to be memorialized.
Witness
A witness is someone who directly experiences an event and thus possesses
relevant knowledge about how the action unfolded. Despite being present,
a witness’s testimony can only ever be partial, and is thus dependent upon
that person’s involvement within, or proximity to, a given event.
Holocaust
The Holocaust refers to the genocide of the Jewish people by the Nazi regime
between 1941 and 1945.
Fragment
A fragment is a partial section of an object or an experience that is broken
or separated from the whole. Within the context of postwar art, a fragment
can refer to the partial or disharmonious nature with which the experience
of the war is reinscribed in the works of artists for whom the trauma of the
event and its aftermath went beyond mere representation.
Zero Hour/“Stunde Null”
In Germany, Stunde Null refers to the moment in which the country began the
slow process of rebuilding after the war ended in Europe. More controversially, the phrase also implies that the past is over and, by extension, that
all past debts have been settled-which, ironically, suggests that it is unnecessary for a person to come to terms with acts committed in the past.
> For Discussion
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Memory and forgetting, “Stunde Null” in Germany
Why do artists choose to refer to horrific events in ways that remove
details or literal depictions? How does “abstracting” an event affect
one’s understanding of it, particularly for those who were not direct wit
nesses to the event?
Memorials to the horrors of World War II are prevalent throughout the
world – what are the different ways that artists have chosen to
memorialize these horrific events? Which are the most successful at rep
resenting the un-representable?
How do the memories of the war – and their representation via art – change from nation to nation; from perpetrators to victims?
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b) The Atomic Era
The colossal power of the bombs that were dropped on the Japanese cities of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki signaled not only the conclusion of World War II, but
also initiated both the promise and the apocalyptic potential of the atomic
age. Ushering in an era of US military and cultural dominance, the dropping
of the bombs simultaneously resulted in the emergence of the Cold War between Eastern and Western powers and an arms race between the USA and USSR
that, on several occasions, brought civilization perilously close to an
atomic war that would have annihilated every living creature on the planet.
Conversely, the image of the bomb and the threat that it posed also helped to
create awareness of the globe as a single, interconnected entity-a fact that
was vividly illustrated during the so-called space race when, for the first
time, satellite views of the Earth reinforced the sense of global interconnectedness. Moreover, for the first time during the postwar era, atomic power began to be used as an energy source, providing both an apparently
infinite source of clean power and, at the same time, increasing fears of
nuclear catastrophe.
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> Key Work
Yōsuke Yamahata
Nagasaki Journey, 1945
The photographic series “Nagasaki Journey” (comprising over one hundred images) is a rare record of the immediate aftermath of the atomic bomb that was
dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Taken only twenty-four hours after the
blast, these photographs form a powerful account of the scale of the tragedy.
Military photographer Yōsuke Yamahata was sent to the city to document the
scene for potential propaganda purposes by the government of Japan. Instead,
the images remained largely unpublished until the end of “Occupation Press
Code,” a US ban on discussion and publication of the bomb’s impact.
The nineteen images in this selection from “Nagasaki Journey” (1945) document the photographer’s travels across the city in ruins, tracing the bomb’s
impact on people, buildings, and landscape. The stark beauty of individual
images, such as the silhouette of the bridge and tree against a backdrop of
smoke, contrasts jarringly with the images of pain, suffering, and death.
Most overwhelming, however, is the unremitting bleakness of the scene,
which presents an unfolding scale of horror seen through Yamahata’s eyes. In
contrast to the iconic mushroom cloud, these images of the bomb’s effects are
painfully human in scale.
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> Other works in the exhibition that explore this theme
Karel Appel
Hiroshima Child, 1958
In contrast to the photographs taken by Yōsuke Yamahata, Karel Appel’s Hiroshima Child (1958) is a more expressive evocation of the horrors of an atomic blast, characterized by the energy and intensity with which the artist
applied the paint. The thick impasto of black, white, and red suggests both
human limbs and fumes of smoke and fire. This apocalyptic scene speaks of
the unknowable horror experienced by the victims of the first of two nuclear
strikes on Japan by the United States. Patches of yellow and white represent
the deadly impact and engulf the figure of the mother, who is tossed into the
air, unable to hold onto the child in her arms.
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Norman Lewis
Every Atom Glows: Electrons in Luminous Vibration, 1951
In contrast to the horror of Yōsuke Yamahata’s photographs or Karel Appel’s
painting, Norman Lewis’s Every Atom Glows (1951) is a more ambiguous image.
The black-and-white painting flickers with an energy that could be seen simultaneously as a force of power or an image of destruction. Like many other
artists of his time, Lewis was struggling to make sense of new advances in
nuclear technology. While the Cold War threat of nuclear destruction was ever-present (just as this image recalls the burnt husks of buildings visible
in some of Yamahata’s photographs), so too were advances in understanding the
atom as both the foundational element of all life on Earth and as a potential
source of unlimited, clean energy.
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Roy Lichtenstein,
Atomic Burst, 1965
Beyond the idea of atomic power and the horrors of Nagasaki is Roy Lichtenstein’s Atomic Burst (1965), which depicts the iconic mushroom-shaped cloud
surrounded by the artist’s characteristic Ben-Day dot patterning. In this
way, Lichtenstein uses the visual language of popular entertainment to depict an iconic symbol of death and destruction, portraying the rising cloud
as a cartoonish explosion. Here, one gets a true sense of the distance that
exists between Yamahata’s photographs-taken on-site on the very day after
the event-and Lichtenstein’s rendering of the event twenty years later in
New York City. As his fellow pop artist Robert Indiana noted, “Pop is dropping the bomb. It’s the American dream, optimistic, generous and naïve.”
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Henry Moore
Atom Piece (Working Model for Nuclear Energy), 1964-65
Moore’s large-scale commemorative sculpture Nuclear Energy (1964–66) was unveiled at the very site where, in 1942, scientists at the University of Chicago achieved the first controlled nuclear chain reaction. With a dome that
seems to pull away from its base, the artist’s scale model Atom Piece (196465) evokes the splitting of an atom, the extreme power of the nuclear chain
reaction, and the resulting mushroom-shaped cloud. Despite the fact that
this sculpture was produced at the very spot where the euphoric optimism of
the nuclear age was first experienced, it nevertheless reminds viewers of
the destructive power of the atomic bomb, with the top of the “blast” eerily
recalling the shape of a human skull.
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Useful Terms
The Nuclear Age
Denotes the period of history that immediately followed the dropping of the
atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. This event led to a
profound change of thinking in regard to both the beneficial and apocalyptic
potential of nuclear power, as witnessed by the profusion of nuclear power
stations that were built in the decades after World War II, as well as the numerous armed stand-offs and conflicts in which humanity stood at the precipice of total atomic annihilation.
Cold War
Unlike a “hot war,” in which armies of different nations fight on the battlefield, a “cold war” denotes a state of perpetual tension where all parties
attempt to abstain from provoking the other into an actual armed conflict.
In the history of postwar politics, the term “Cold War” usually refers to the
period of sustained military tension from about 1947 to 1991, between the
Western Bloc (the United States, Western European countries, and their allies) and the Eastern Bloc (the Soviet Union and its allies).
Disarmament
Refers to the act of reducing, limiting, or abolishing weapons, particularly
nuclear weapons or other such devices that cause destruction on an immense
scale. In view of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the subsequent
Cold War, the term “disarmament” referred to the campaign of groups who rallied for the unconditional cessation of nuclear weapons stockpiles in both
the West and the Soviet Union.
Ground Zero
Designates the closest point directly on (or below) a detonation or other
major destructive force. First used to describe the Japanese bombing of the
U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. Later, the term
“ground zero” came to denote the site directly below the nuclear bomb that
was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. More recently, the phrase
“ground zero” has been used to describe the site of the destroyed World Trade
Center towers in New York City, but it can also be used to describe someone
being at the very center of an event.
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> For Discussion
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Photography as documentation. The “truth” of the photograph in
comparison to the painted image. The difference between photographic
documentation then and now (film vs. digital)
The Image of the Bomb. The difference between the depiction of the bomb
itself and its aftermath. The sense of immediacy (the moment after the
blasts/the place where it exploded, compared to twenty years later/in a
different country); the way that popular culture appropriates such images
and transforms them into something else.
The pros and cons of nuclear power. Atomic power has both positive and negative associations (especially in the context of Germany and the
Energiewende). On the one hand, it is clean and apparently limitless; on
the other, it is potentially destructive.
Memory and forgetting, “Stunde Null” in Germany
The Cold War and Nuclear Disarmament
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Section 2:
Form matters
Gesture and Action
In contrast to literally depicting an object or a scene, during the postwar
period many artists began to examine the actual process of artmaking by
exploring the use of different methods and materials. With different experimental ideas in mind-including Art Informel, Abstract Expressionism, and
Gutai-the artists whose works are featured in this section found different
and local meanings in the materials they used and in the way they created their work. Although such works were initially considered emblematic of
nationalist characteristics such as the “American values” of individual
freedom and democracy, many of the works in this section draw upon ideas and
materials that are transnational in character. They are works by artists who
immigrated to the US from Europe, and reflect the international atmosphere
of exhibitions and publications that were available in cities as diverse as
Paris, London, or Osaka. In place of the rigid geometry and flat colors that
typified many pre-war art movements, all of these works demonstrate an interest in gestures, raw materials, and chance compositions. Artists who followed this new approach would attach nontraditional materials directly onto
the canvas-or in some cases tore, pierced, or cut holes into it-resulting in
surfaces that are rough and uneven. Others experimented with more direct
ways of applying paint; dismissing the use of the brush and transforming the
act of painting into a full-body performance that included dripping, splattering, or even using their hands, feet, or even shooting at the canvas with
a gun. Through these diverse methods, they emphasized the fact that art is a
time-based phenomenon; an act that takes place at a specific time, one that
uses materials that will perhaps change and eventually disappear altogether.
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> Key Work
Lee Krasner
The Seasons, 1957
This painting is part of Krasner’s “Earth Green” series, a series of large
canvases that she began in 1956 after the death of her husband, the Abstract
Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock. In The Seasons (1957), rounded forms,
curving lines, drops of paint, and a lush palette of pinks and greens jostle for the viewer’s attention. Many people say they see plant-like forms,
flowers, fruit, eggs, and other recognizable, figurative elements in this
work, all of which suggest cycles of birth and growth. To make this painting,
Krasner combined automatic drawing-creating lines on the canvas without
thinking about what is being created-with more deliberate painting techniques, resulting in a work that is both a document of a performance and a
thought-provoking work of art. This painting is so large that it quite literally engulfs the viewer, lending a sense of complete immersion in a fanciful
abstract landscape. Similarly, Krasner herself once said: “Painting is not
separate from life, it is one. It is like asking-do I want to live? My answer
is yes-and I paint.”
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> Other works in the exhibition that explore this theme
Ibrahim El-Salahi
The Prayer, 1960
Unlike the grand scale of Lee Krasner’s work, Ibrahim El-Salahi’s The Prayer
is much smaller and more intimate. Judging from the title, one gets the impression of viewing a deeply personal work, whose size and orientation could
be said to suggest a book, such as the Qur’an. Like many artists of his generation, El-Salahi struggled to find a balance between regional and international influences for his work, eventually finding his niche by integrating his formal Western training with the sinuous line derived from Arabic
calligraphy. The Prayer thus explores the graphic qualities of written
language, taking a verse from the Qur’an as its subject: “Pray do not change
our hearts having shown us the light, and have mercy on us, giver of all.” In
addition to this verse, El-Salahi has also interspersed the script with a
variety of traditional folk art patterns from his homeland, the Sudan, while
at the same time evoking the “universal language” that is said to be at the
heart of abstract art.
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Kazuo Shiraga
Work II, 1958
While both Lee Krasner and Ibrahim El-Salahi used brushes and pens to create
their works, Kazuo Shiraga and other artists were experimenting with different means of applying paint to canvas. He often produced paintings such
as Work II as part of a performance, using his bare feet to sweep across the
paint and smear it over the paper. In this way, Kazuo Shiraga also abandoned
the traditional idea of a painting being all about what one sees, because in
his work the finished painting is as much a record of the artist in the act of
creating the work as it is a static depiction of something. With its swirling imagery, blood-red splatters, and thick whirls of violent hues, Work II
glorifies the physicality of creation, namely the movements of the artist’s
body to make the painting.
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Niki de Saint Phalle
Grand Tir - Séance de la Galerie J, 1961
Instead of directly engaging with the surface of a painting, Niki de Saint
Phalle took a more distanced and somewhat random approach. With her series of “Shooting Paintings” (Tirs), she would shoot a rifle at a series of
white-plastered panels that had paint-filled plastic bags embedded beneath
their surfaces. When shot at, the paint-filled bags would “bleed” color,
splattering, spraying, and dripping paint over the uneven surface. The artist would often ask audience members to fire the rifle at the works, turning
these “Shooting Paintings” into documents of performances. Saint Phalle
wanted to draw the viewer’s attention to both the surface of the work, and to
the objects hidden beneath it, giving her “Tirs” the qualities of both painting and sculpture.
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> Useful Terms
Formalism
An approach to art that places the analysis of form and style over figurative
or iconographic elements. Emphasizing elements such as color, line, shape,
texture, and application, formalism in the postwar period is most associated with the writings of the American art critic Clement Greenberg.
Abstraction
Within the visual arts, abstraction refers to art that abandons representation. This abandonment can be partial-such as a work in which there are
still perceptible semblances to objects and figures (Picasso)-to more extreme examples where the work of art bears absolutely no reference to any
physical being or object. The advantage of this form of abstraction is that
the artist is able to focus on the physical and material properties of the
medium, rather than attempting to manipulate it in a manner that references
an object or figure.
Informel
Art informel is a French term that describes a number of approaches that artists took to abstract painting in the 1940s and 1950s. All of them involved
improvisation and highly gestural techniques. The French critic Michel
Tapié first used the phrase art informel in his book Un Art Autre (1952), to
describe types of art that were based on informal, nontraditional painting
processes and were often made using broad gestures of the brush.
Gestural
This term describes the application of paint in free, sweeping gestures.
The main idea was that the artist would physically act out his or her inner
impulses, and that their emotions or states of mind would be apparent in the
resulting paint marks.
Action Painting
The term “action painting” is applied to artworks first made in the 1940s and
afterward that emphasized the physical act of painting as an essential part
of the finished work. Artists who used this process would pour, splash, drip,
or use gestural brushstrokes to apply paint onto the canvas rather than
paint it on carefully or deliberately.
> For Discussion
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The artwork as a documentation of a performance
The different ways in which artworks can be created (pouring, using feet,
shooting a gun, etc.)
Abstraction as “free” painting
Art history/formalism as a “progression” of styles
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Flatness
Ritual/Symbolism
b)Material
Another common interest amongst artists of the postwar period is a concern
with what is termed a “materialist” approach to art-making; taking the materials of both the studio and the everyday world as the subject matter of the
work. In contrast to to earlier European artists, this materialist approach
rejected geometric abstraction and the utopian aspirations that were associated with rationality and science, in favor of raw materials, chance, and
physical laws. The works produced by artists interested in materiality are
therefore characterized by surfaces that are tactile, rough, and uneven,
with techniques such as collage and assemblage often employed in the creation of objects that recall sculpture and reliefs, as much as they do painting. In their investigations into the particularities of certain materials,
some artists even sought to invoke the degeneration of matter and materials; resulting in works which appear as if they are about to break-down or
disintegrate before the viewers’ eyes. This final grouping of works, often
created by artists in postwar Europe, point toward the traumatic events and
lingering ruins that constituted the cities in which they were living and
working.
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> Key Work
Marta Minujín
My Mattress, 1962
Marta Minujín used ready-made and found materials to experiment with the
construction and destruction of an object. In addition to assembling and
rearranging the materials she used in her artwork, she would sometimes
violently destroy them with an axe or by fire. For Minujín, an object was an
evolving thing, constantly in the process of accumulation and decay. The
meaning of an object therefore resided in the moment it was first encountered, rather than being eternally embedded within it.
My Mattress is part of a series of works that the artist made after returning
to her home city of Buenos Aires from Paris in 1962. At this point she created a cardboard construction later explaining that the work referenced the
strife between two factions of the Argentinian army-the colorados (reds) and
the azules (blues)-who were then fighting for control of the government. The
soft, dilapidated mattress-taken from her bed at home and painted blue-contrasts symbolizing the clash between public and personal sides during a
time of extreme political tension.
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> Other works in the exhibition that explore this theme
Antonio Berni
La pampa tormentosa, 1963
[The Stormy Pampas]
Like the work of Marta Minujín, that of Antonio Berni reflects life in a
large, chaotic city such as Buenos Aires and the materials that the artist would have found in the urban refuse. However, unlike Marta Minujín’s
more abstract musings, Berni’s La pampa tormentosa (1963) is a monumental
“anti-homage” to Argentina’s famous pampas, or prairies, overwhelming the
viewer in a landscape of scraps and garbage. Within this work, one can see
a crocodile chasing its prey across the post-apocalyptic scene, the Statue of Liberty in a garbage dump, and an empty city lying abandoned in the
lower right corner. Although the scene is chaotic and somewhat threatening-the crocodile’s hunt suggests the everyday threat of violence faced by
city-dwellers-the bright colors used in the composition nevertheless suggest that, even in the midst of obliteration, life in the city continues to
thrive.
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Alberto Burri
Sacco e oro, 1953
[Sackcloth and Gold]
Whereas Marta Minujín and Antonio Berni used the refuse of cities to create
their works, Alberto Burri first encountered the old burlap sacks that would
become a staple of his postwar art while spending time at a prisoner-of-war
camp in the United States during World War II. Burlap, both cheap and durable, was used for tents, sacks, sandbags, and camouflage netting. Burri
thought that the texture and weave of these sacks made them a convenient
substitute for canvas, and he brought several of them with him upon his return to Italy. When hung as wall reliefs, the so-called Sacchi (sacks) represent sorry versions of their formerly sturdy selves, sagging and peeling
away from the surface to which they had been attached. Burri would emphasize
the abject nature of these repurposed sacks by including any holes, stains,
and unraveling seams in the final composition, further highlighting their
worn-out condition by adding golf leaf to certain patches. Cut, torn, and
hanging limply on the wall, the Sacchi were often believed to reference Italy’s recent war trauma, and to reflect the crisis of painting that engulfed
the country during the postwar period.
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> Useful Terms
Material/Materiality
The quality of being composed of physical matter, or the exploration of said
matter. On the one hand, material is defined as “things that are physical,”
which emphasizes the tangible aspect of things; on the other hand, in various non-physical applications, “material” means “something that can be
worked up or elaborated, or of which anything is composed.”
Medium
Refers to either a type of art (as in painting, sculpture, film, etc.), or
the materials used in creating a work.
Assemblage
Art that is made by assembling disparate elements that are either scavenged
by the artist, or bought for that purpose. In the 1950s and ’60s, many artists
made works that used a combination of throwaway natural and everyday materials in order to challenge and disrupt the values of the commercialized art
gallery system of that time.
Arte Povera
An Italian phrase that literally translates as “poor art” and refers to the
exploration of a range of materials beyond traditional paint, bronze, marble, etc. Materials used by Arte Povera artists included soil, rags, and
twigs in an assemblage of various textures and surfaces.
> For Discussion
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The use of everyday materials in the creation of artworks
Why are some materials used in artworks more valuable than others?
Why do people value, for example, a painting over a drawing?
Focusing on the manner in which materials change over time
Recycling and art; recycling as art
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Section 3:
New Images of Man
One of the most significant consequences of the destruction resulting from
World War II was that it demonstrated the profound failure of Western civilization. As a result, artists began to question the nature of humankind and
the crippling effects that the modern world, technology, and totalitarianism had on the individual. The figures painted by many of these artists often
appear battered and tortured.
By contrast, artists from former colonial countries sought to insert their
own history and struggles into a figurative art tradition that had, up until
then, focused on the European ideal of the human body. Instead, these artists depicted their human subjects by combining their own local or regional
artistic traditions and visual vocabularies with modern techniques and handling. Often combining elements of both figuration and abstraction, these
artists painted people at work and at play in order to develop a form of modernism based on distinctly localized imagery and traditions.
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> Key Work
Pablo Picasso
Massacre in Korea, 1951
Although the title of this work refers to the outbreak of the Korean War in
1950, it is extremely difficult to detect anything quintessentially “Korean”
in the composition. For example, the conflict depicted here lacks a specific place and time. The aggressors’ armor covers many eras, from the medieval
figure on the right-hand side of the group to the almost robotic masks and
guns of the figures on the left. And in fact, nothing in the background suggests that the field upon which this massacre takes place is actually Korea.
Instead, the solitary ruin on the hill suggests a European structure than
anything seen in East Asia, as a tiny tank scales the peak on the left in the
distance.
Most disturbing of all, however, is the manner in which these cyborgs indiscriminately shoot at the naked women and children. This cold-hearted act,
along with the ambiguous setting, suggests that this massacre refers more
broadly to the liberation struggles that were occurring in the French colonies at that time. Known colloquially as La plus grande France (“greater
France”), all of these former territories were commonly perceived as feminine due to their lack of industrialization, the size, skin color and dress
of their inhabitants, as well as to the gendered terms of the French language
itself. Massacre in Korea can thus be read as the disgust Picasso felt the
continuing massacres that were occurring throughout the world; massacres
that were being perpetuated by the supposedly “civilized” West in the shadows of the horrors of World War II.
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> Other works in the exhibition that explore this theme
Maqbool Fida Husain
Man, 1951
Although Picasso’s painting is very much in keeping with the history of European modernism, the work of M. F. Husain bears only a passing resemblance to
the history of postwar modernism. Husain was a leading member of the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group, which aimed to develop a distinctly Indian
avant-garde that, although based on European modernism, would be distinctly internationalist in its outlook. In this work, for example, Husain uses
icons of Indian imagery to reflect the jubilance and uncertainty of the
newly independent India, including masked dancing folk figures, naked female bodies, and the image of the sacred cow. Aside from black, the painting
is mostly executed in the colors of the Indian national flag: saffron, white,
and green. Sitting crouched in contemplation, the heroic form of the central
figure, who appears to hold a painting of two nude women, can be seen to represent the artist himself. The rectangular forms scattered throughout the
painting suggest canvases in an artist’s studio.
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On Kawara,
Thinking Man, 1952
A similarly contemplative figure graces On Kawara’s painting-although this
one is far more shocking than M. F. Husain’s Man. Although no overt physical
torture or pain is evident, one can detect a psychological trauma that is no
less severe. Standing within a claustrophobically tight space, the figure of
Thinking appears utterly paralyzed with fear. His gaunt, naked, and distorted body holds him transfixed to the spot. As one of a series of works that
On Kawara painted in Japan before he moved to the United States, the figure
of Thinking can be seen as a manifestation of the trauma experienced by the
Japanese people in the years following the country’s defeat at the end of
World War II.
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Jean Dubuffet
La dame au Pompon (The Lady with the Pompon), 1946
Grotesque, misshapen, and traumatized bodies grace the canvases of Jean
Dubuffet. Works such as La Dame au Pompon, for example, can be seen as an inversion of the conventions of beauty, artistic skill, and classical refinement that are the hallmarks of European figurative painting. By contrast,
La Dame au Pompon is a crudely drawn figure of a nude woman, inscribed into a
thick, impastoed ground. The color and texture suggest mud or grime. Dubuffet called his works in this series “Hautes Pâtes” (thick impastoes): applying a paste of oil paint, cement, plaster, sand, and gravel in order to create
a raised, relief-like ground, then using either a palette knife or the handle
of his paintbrush to outline the figure’s contours. In this regard, the rough
outlines of La Dame au Pompon recall the hastily-scrawled figures of the
graffiti that graced the walls of Paris, rather than the idealized bodies
that hung on the walls of the
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> Useful Terms
Humanism
A philosophy that assumes the basic goodness of human beings, and is based
on the belief that reason, rather than religion, is the means to resolve
problems or challenges. Humanism rejects the belief in supernatural forces and stresses instead an individual’s dignity and worth and capacity for
self-realization through reason.
Existentialism
Like Humanism, existentialism is a branch of philosophy that focuses on an
individual’s existence. However, in contrast to the Humanism – which places
the individual and their actions at the center of their universe – existentialism instead examines the relationship between the individual and the
apparent limitless of the universe. Most importantly, existentialism asks
how one is expected to assume responsibility for acts of “free will”, when we
do not know for certain whether an action is right or wrong.
Figurative/figuration
Describes any form of modern art that retains strong references to the real
world and to the human figure, despite whether those references are proportionately realistic or distorted.
Abjection
Abjection means “the state of being cast off,”, while in today’s context it
also denotes degradation, baseness, and meanness of spirit. Abjection inherently disturbs the concepts of conventional identity and culture, because
it represents the horror one feels when confronted with the breakdown of the
distinction between the self and the other.
Other
“The Other” is understood as that which is dissimilar to, and opposite of,
the self, an individual, or a group of people. In common usage, the self is
seen as the “center” of all thoughts and actions, while the “other” constitutes all that is located outside of this center.
Subjectivity/Subjectivization
refers to how a person’s judgment is shaped by personal opinions and feelings
instead of by outside influences. In contrast to objectivity, subjectivity
refers to properties or conditions of the mind as distinguished from general
or universal experience.
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> For Discussion
• How to depict the figure in light of the horror of the World War II and the
Atomic Bomb. The Existential crisis of both humankind and of art.
• New types of figuration/representation-the figure as representing/
the embodiment of a particular concern. The non-Western figure
and art history.
• Humanism versus existentialism – which is more appropriate for
contemporary society? Can an action or an idea really be seen as
purely “right” or “wrong”, or are there always two sides to every story?
• Conversely, can we really view ideas such as “reason” as purely
subjective and open to interpretation, or does it still have a universal significance?
• The abject/suffering body; the body as carrier of meaning/representation
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Section 4:
Realisms
The Cold War did not just divide the world into Eastern and Western political
and military blocs, but also divided officially approved art into “liberal”
abstraction and “socialist” realism. Realism, considered the official art
style of the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and much of Eastern and Central Europe, was perceived to be everything that the “democratic” West was not: restrictive, propagandistic, and stylistically uniform.
However, as many paintings in this section of the exhibition demonstrate,
socialist realism was never one singular “style” but allowed for a great
deal of variation and local references. In countries all over the world,
artists drew upon the traditions of surrealism and other pre-war modernist
movements to create works that, although sometimes depicting “officially
sanctioned” subjects, were nevertheless extremely varied in their cultural
references and motifs.
Furthermore, realism was not necessarily confined to artists working in
socialist countries: many artists in Western Europe, Central America, North
Africa, and Asia would use realistic imagery and icons from their own rich
histories to create works that they hoped would speak directly to the people.
Even some artists in the United States attempted to depict contemporary
themes in a realistic manner, and in the process questioned and critiqued
conventional ideas.
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> Key Work
Li Xiushi
Morning, 1961
Andrew Wyeth’s dreamy rural scene stands in stark contrast to the riders depicted in Li Xiushi’s Morning, who pedal furiously through Tiananmen Square,
bathed in sunlight. In the background is the Monument to the People’s Heroes,
and behind it the Great Hall of the People, home to the National People’s
Congress. Intriguingly, however, Li Xiushi did not also depict the Tiananmen
gate-where Mao Zedong proclaimed the birth of Communist China-but instead
acknowledged its political significance through the people in the foreground, who are all purposefully heading toward it. Although this painting
represents a new image of the people as a collective within socialist China,
the scene deliberately includes people of different ages and genders; demonstrating individual diversity within the collective.
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> Other works in the exhibition that explore this theme
Wojciech Fangor
Postaci (Figures), 1950
Rather than strictly adhering to a socialist realist style, the work of
Wojciech Fangor appears to mock the rigid divisions between “Western” and
“Eastern” art. In a work such as Postaci for example, the artist has depicted
a slender, sophisticated woman, who appears to embody the frivolous cosmopolitanism so often associated with the West: in addition to her fashionable
accessories, red lips, and manicured fingernails, her dress is literally emblazoned with symbols of Western contact, airmail envelopes, and the words
“London,” “Miami,” “Wall Street,” and “Coca Cola.” By contrast, the stereotypically Eastern working-class couple on the right glance suspiciously
at their bourgeois counterpart. Sturdy and muscular, wearing overalls and
clutching shovels, they appear to represent the hard work and commitment to
the cause that is evidently lacking in the frivolous figure on the left. This
contrast of cultures is further emphasized by the dichotomy that the artist
creates between the two female figures in particular, representing the idea
that communism has in fact liberated women, elevating them to the status of
workers equal to men.
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Andrew Wyeth,
Young America, 1950
Idealized figures were also depicted by realist artists living in the West,
such as the subjects who populate the paintings of Andrew Wyeth. In a work
such as Young America, for example, Wyeth depicts a young boy, free to roam
country roads on his bicycle in a glorification of rural American life that,by the 1950s- was already a nostalgic vision of the past. Furthermore, while
artists in New York City were wholeheartedly embracing abstraction and experimenting with new synthetic paints, Wyeth deliberately used the technically demanding, outmoded medium of egg tempera and a subdued, moody palette
to render an idealized scene that is completely removed from daily life. This
is further reinforced by the colorful streamers that fly from the bicycle’s
handlebars, infusing the scene’s quiet atmosphere with a longing for the
idealized, forgotten world through which the young boy rides.
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> Useful Terms
Propaganda
Taken from the neutral verb “to propagate”, propaganda is nowadays viewed
in a negative manner and is employed when referring to either written or
depicted works that are distributed with the aim of prompting a particular
position or ideology.
Realism
A 19th century artistic movement that is commonly depicts everyday life and
people in a naturalistic manner, with a particular focus on the middle- and
working-classes. In the twentieth century, the term became more general, and
is applied to any work that shares a degree of resemblance with its subject
matter.
Nationalism
In general, nationalism refers to the sense of pride or loyalty that one
feels about their country. However, nationalism can also have negative connotations, such as when national pride is merges into a sense of superiority
over other nations. In postcolonial countries, nationalism also referred to
the desire to form a separate and independent nation of their own.
Socialism
A political and economic theory in which all of the means of production and
distribution (factories, farms, utilities etc.) are not owned and run by individuals or corporations, but by the government.
Works Progress Administration (WPA)
Launched during the Great Depression in the 1930s, the WPA sought to provide
jobs for unemployed artists, by commissioning them to create and stage works
and performances. In total, almost two million people were given work by the
WPA during this period.
> For Discussion
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Realism as representing one’s aspirations, rather than objective reality
Realism is commonly seen as an ideal model for politics/propaganda
because of its likeness to everyday people and events (even though it
commonly distorts them), but what about abstraction? How could this be
used for the purposes of propaganda?
Nationalism/Socialism as expressed through realist works-the difference
between (and among) socialist realism and other realisms
Public artworks and commissions – do they serve different purposes (or
are they read differently) to works that are made to be seen in a museum or
gallery? Why do we have “public art”?
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Section 5:
Concrete Art
Although a lot of the international abstract style that dominated the postwar period was gestural, pre-war geometric abstraction also persisted in
other parts of the world, but with quite different aims. Combining local
and European traditions, “concrete” and “neo-concrete” art was especially
popular in many Latin American countries, which in turn gained international exposure at new events such as the São Paulo Biennial. Unlike the utopian
aims of older forms of geometric abstraction however, neo-concrete art in
particular sought to actively engage the individual viewer as a participant in the art-making process, thereby expanding the definition of the art
object beyond painting and sculpture. Neo-concrete art soon found parallels
with the work of artists in other parts of the world; not only those working
in so-called minimalist painting and sculpture, but also those who chose to
engage with the space of the gallery (or the everyday world) by means of works
that were either both sculptural and painterly, or by producing limited-edition artist’s books and graphic arts multiples that challenged the notion of
the exclusive/singular art object.
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> Key Work
Julije Knifer
Meander in the Corner, 1961
In 1959, Julije Knifer arrived at the basic compositional format that he
would use exclusively for the rest of his life: a minimal “meander” motif
in black on a white background, or vice versa. Knifer conceived of the meander as a form of “anti-painting”: an insistently monotonous and unoriginal
motif that would become increasingly meaningless through its endless repetition. In the work Meander in the Corner, Knifer allowed the meander to
escape the boundaries of the canvas and to invade the surrounding space. The
black meander pattern continues uninterrupted across the work’s two panels,
which are installed to form a right angle in the corner of the gallery wall.
By emphasizing the interaction between the meander and the corner, Knifer
established that this was not merely the representation of a motif but also a
concrete object in itself that, although potentially infinitely repeatable,
carries no inherent symbolism or significance.
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> Other works in the exhibition that explore this theme
Lygia Clark
Contra Releva (Counter Relief), 1959
As opposed to Julije Knifer’s “concrete” motif, Lygia Clark’s work is an example of what was known as “neo-concrete” art. Convinced that concrete art
lacked creativity and relied too heavily on mechanical processes, artists
such as Clark instead sought to integrate the art object into everyday life,
creating interactive works that projected from the wall or were hung from the
ceiling. Contra Releva (1959), for example, demonstrates Clark’s interest in
geometric planes, as well as her increasing aggression toward the limits of
the painted canvas. With this work, she moves the work progressively outward
into the surrounding space, rejecting the flatness of traditional concrete
painting and treading a fine line between painting and relief. The materials she used in this work-industrial paint and wood-also relate to the many
construction projects being carried out in cities across Brazil in the 1950s
and ’60s, which places this work within a specific social and cultural timeframe.
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Ellsworth Kelly
Red Yellow Blue White, 1952
While both Julije Knifer and Lygia Clark’s works were intentionally monochromatic, Ellsworth Kelly experimented with different approaches to color
and composition. Rather than rejecting the grid as the basis for his composition, Kelly embraced it, seeing it as a means of eliminating both expressive,
individualized brushwork and any suggestion of depth. However, while his
work appears abstract, Kelly often took inspiration from observed phenomena, using geometric abstraction as a means of capturing his own personal
perceptions. In Red Yellow Blue White, for example, Kelly explores “readymade” color, but on a larger scale. Adopting the mural format that preoccupied him throughout his career, Kelly devised this work with five vertical
panels, each comprising five squares of fabric dyed in the three primary
colors and white. By deliberately placing each of the panels at a specific
distance from the other Kelly, like Knifer, integrated the wall itself into
the work.
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> Useful Terms
Relief
A wall-mounted sculpture in which the three-dimensional elements of the object are raised and project outward from its flat base.
Ready-made – A work of art that is made from an existing object, or collection
of objects, that the artist has had no hand in manufacturing
Concrete/Neo-Concrete
Concrete art is abstract art that is entirely free of reference to reality
and has no symbolic meaning. By contrast, “neo-concrete” art is also abstract, but calls for a greater sensuality, color, and poetic sensibility
than concrete art.
Geometric Abstraction
A form of abstract art that comprises mostly hard-edge, primary geometric
shapes (circles, squares, triangles, etc.) and flat color. Like much abstract
art, geometric abstraction has little or no reference to external visual
reality.
Modularity / Seriality
In art, modularity or seriality refers to the use of a single component or
shape being repeated in a regimented pattern that, in theory, could go on
forever. In such a way, any element within a modular/serial work could be
replaced by any other, without the perception or meaning of the work being
altered.
Utopia
implies an imaginary place where every part of life is perfect. By its very
definition, utopia cannot exist, but instead refers to an unachievable ideal.
> For Discussion
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Concrete art, as opposed to abstraction.
The difference between
Concrete/Neo-Concrete artworks/practices
Geometric Abstraction as Utopian and/or functional
Modularity/serial production and art
Abstract art and the everyday environment/modern cities/spaces
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Section 6:
Cosmopolitan
Modernisms
The destruction and political shifts resulting from World War II resulted in
what may have been one of the largest and most extensive cultural and artistic migrations of all time. Whole populations were moving from one place to
another, between continents, countries, and cities, forming dispersed lines
of displacement, migration, exile, affinities, settlements. Because of this
mass migration, the idea of cosmopolitanism-literally, of being a “citizen
of the world”-began to increasingly impact the work of artists who were both
traveling and relocating in unprecedented numbers after the war’s end.
Artists became cosmopolitan due to various circumstances: as citizens of
colonies and former colonies who studied art both formally and informally in
the West, or as refugees fleeing oppression and racism, who left their native
countries to find safety elsewhere. Related situations of diaspora and the
various colonial legacies and Cold War–era funding that promoted cultural
exchange sent artists all over the world to study and participate in centers for modern art production and to market their works. While on the move,
artists combined international-style abstraction with indigenous, traditional, or local imagery to fuse new aesthetic theories and formal concepts.
Particularly widespread was a kind of gestural mark-making that has been
called “calligraphic abstraction,” which alluded to both spoken language
and written script.
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> Key Work
Francis Newton Souza
Degenerates, 1957
The work of Francis Newton Souza is a notable example of the type of modern art created by a cosmopolitan artist. Born to Roman Catholic parents in
rural British India, Souza recalled a childhood fascination with the religious stories of tortured saints and holy people, such as Saint Sebastian
and Christ on the cross. Alternately referred to as the “angry young man” of
Indian art and the “Indian Picasso,” Souza projected a Gothic quality into
his paintings, such as Degenerates. This work vividly conveys the artist’s
angst and anger, which he expressed through his use of heavy black outlines
and aggressive strokes of paint and crosshatching. One of the three male
figures of Degenerates has the shafts of three arrows protruding from his
neck, an apparent reference to the martyred Saint Sebastain. Like the wideeyed stares of the subjects’ eyes in this painting, the arrow symbol occurs
often in Souza’s work.
The cosmopolitan aspect of this work is evident in the figures themselves:
for while the three male figures, each wearing a business suit, could be
considered Indians mimicking Western attire, they could just as easily be
Englishmen. Considering the title of this painting, the two women, one of
them nude, may represent prostitutes who are propositioning and the men. The
red-headed girl in the foreground wears her hair in pigtails, suggesting innocence; her bearing and composure recall that of a classical Greek or Roman
statue but she may also represent a Hindu or Buddhist deity.
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> Other works in the exhibition that explore this theme
Siah Armajani
Shirt #1, 1958
Cosmopolitan artists were not simply interested in figurative work-indeed,
some of the most engaging work produced by these global citizens experimented with multiple local and global signs, such as the calligraphic nature of
language and writing. Siah Armajani’s Shirt #1 (1958), for example, is covered with hand-inscribed Sufi texts by the fourteenth century Persian poet
Hafiz, as well as excerpts from folk tales and spiritual writings. Motivated
by his observation of scribes and spell-makers in his home city of Tehran,
Iran, Armajani invokes the power of spiritual verses by writing them onto
the lining of a suit jacket that once belonged to his father. Because the
lining is detached from the jacket itself, it is unclear whether the jacket
was cut according to local Iranian style or to Western style. It is important to note, however, regardless of the origin of the fabric, that the writings themselves are not abstracted. Although Armajani flips and turns lines
of text in order to inscribe them onto different parts of the lining, they
remain readable, especially to those familiar with Persian script and language. As a result, this work is both a provocative combination of text and
ready-made object and a protective talisman produced from the clothing of a
specific wearer-Armajani’s father-to whom the object somehow still seems
connected.
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Mark Tobey
Towards the Whites, 1957
Many cosmopolitan artists were not only those who left their home countries
in order to live and study in the West. Many Western artists took the inverse
trip and traveled throughout the world in search of inspiration. One such
artist was Mark Tobey, who traveled to China and Japan, where he spent time
in a Zen monastery and witnessed monks writing calligraphy and painting
with sumi ink. Tobey described the East as the place where he got his “calligraphic impulse” and also his desire to paint “the frenetic rhythms of the
modern city, the interweaving of lights and streams of people who are entangled in the meshes of this net.” He captured both calligraphy and his impressions of urban life in Towards the Whites (1957), using his “white writing”
technique to paint white lines alongside bright reds, ochres, and vibrant
yellows that seem to wriggle across the deep, dark void of the background.
The lines appear to become more entangled in the center of the composition
and to unravel along the edges. For Tobey, these calligraphic lines carried
spiritual implications, which might suggest that Towards the Whites represents the embrace of a universal humanity.
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> Useful Terms
Cosmopolitanism
Derived from the Greek kosmos politēs, citizen of the world, the cosmopolitan
person believes that all human beings belong to a single community, based on
a shared idea of morality. Ideally, a cosmopolitan community would consist
of individuals from various locations entering into relationships of mutual
respect, despite their differing beliefs.
Diaspora
Diapora commonly refers to the dispersion and wanderings of people who have
been forced from their homeland. Famous examples of a diaspora would be the
expulsion of the Jews from Judea, or the forced removal of people from African countries during the era of the slave trade. Nowadays diaspora refers to
any large group of people who are unable to return to their homeland.
Pan-Africanism/Pan-Arabism
The principle or advocacy of political alliance or union of states based either within the African continent or across the Arab world. These ideas were
particularly popular during the Cold War, when much of the world was divided
into Eastern and Western blocs, because it allowed nations outside of these
two factions to form their own internal alliances.
Migration
In short, migration denotes movement of a person – or a group of people – from
one location to another. Either undertaken voluntarily-by people looking
for a better life in a new country-or by necessity – such as when mass migrations of people occur during a civil war or other natural/manmade disaster –
migrations is commonly seen to constitute a long-term movement, rather than
a temporary one.
Exile
The state of being sent away from one’s own land, being refused the right of
return, and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return. It
is common to distinguish between internal exile (such as forced resettlement within a given country) and external exile, which involves being expelled to another country.
Partition
The division of land into portions or shares. Partition can either occur at
the level of nations – such as the division of Germany into four “occupied
zones” (later succeeded by the partition of the country into East and West
Germany), or the break-up of British India into the new states of Pakistan
and India – or take place within a country, as in and the partition of Berlin
via the Berlin Wall, or the division of modern Jerusalem as part of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine.
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Decolonization
The withdrawal of colonial rule, resulting in the colonizing nation giving
up its domination over its dependent territories and allowing the formerly
colonized country or countries to be politically and/or economically independent. Decolonization is either the result of an independence movement
by the colonized population, or is voluntarily undertaken by the colonial
power.
> For Discussion
• Internationalism/Cosmopolitanism, rather than “national”
styles/characteristics
• Diasporas and Migration; Placeless-ness
• The encounter with “Other” cultures and the way this
informs/shapes “local” culture
• Transnational movements/connections: Pan-Africanism/Pan-Arabism
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Section 7:
Nations Seeking
Form
Nationalism, a key word during the postwar period, generated considerable
discussion about the manner in which political, cultural, and social identities are formed. However, given the often shocking history of nationalism in
the twentieth century-especially its misuses and abuses in places like Germany and Japan during the World War II-the word “nationalism” was much contested and debated after the war, and the term itself was used to a variety
of ends. For example, while artists in the U.S. and Europe often declined to
align themselves with their national governments-which they saw as corrupt
and militaristic-nationalism had a very different meaning for artists in
countries that had newly struggled for and won independence. In Iraq, Cuba,
China, India and Pakistan, Israel, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines,
Nigeria, Senegal, and South Africa, nationalism formed the basis for creating new cultural forms that articulated and represented their new national
identities. In other locations, there were heated debates between those who
wanted to discard all past cultural traditions in an attempt to become both
independent and modern, and those who saw indigenous identity as an important part of national identity. In Southeast Asia, the choice was framed in
terms of East versus West, with “the West” representing Europe, while and
“the East” stood for indigenous knowledge and non-Western identity.
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> Key Work
Robert Indiana
The Confederacy Alabama, 1965
Questions pertaining to nationalism and national identity were not simply
confined to former colonies. Indeed, they were at the very heart of debates
in apparently stable nations such as the United States. Robert Indiana’s The
Confederacy Alabama (1965), is one in a series of four paintings, each dedicated to a former state in the pro-slavery secessionist Confederacy during
the American Civil War. This painting is particularly critical of the Confederate states, where violence against African Americans later became especially visible during the civil rights movement. This painting comprises
a series of four concentric rings around a circle, suggesting a target. In
the center, a colorful map of Alabama is pocked with red stars symbolizing
violence toward African Americans and civil rights activists. The wry aphorism, “JUST AS IN THE ANATOMY OF MAN / EVERY NATION MUST HAVE ITS HIND PART”-a
phrase that the artist himself invented-circles humorously around the pink
silhouette of the state of Alabama. In 1965, when this work was created, civil rights activist Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, an event that was brutally suppressed by state and local
authorities before finally succeeding under the protection of the National
Guard. The word “SELMA,” rendered here in red, replaces the capital city on a
traditional map, emphasizing not the state’s official history, but instead
representing the reality of systemic violence and oppression that took place
there.
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> Other works in the exhibition that explore this theme
Mawalan Marika
Sydney from the Air, 1963
Australia was another place where notions of one’s inclusion and exclusion
within a given nation were heated in the years following the World War II.
In the relationship between that nation’s indigenous peoples and the colonial-settler population, one particularly contentious issue was the concept
of land and property. Mawalan Marika attempted to reconcile this concept in
his bark painting Sydney from the Air, in which he depicts his impression of
an airplane journey from his home in Yirrkala, in Arnhem Land, to Sydney,
Australia’s most populous city. Rather than creating a traditional map of
the landscape, however, Mawalan instead used a concept of space particular
to the Rirratjiŋu people. He depicted various geological features, such as
rivers and mountains, as a series of brown rectangles. Then he illustrated
their connections and linkages by means of carefully composed cross-hatchings, recalling the designs painted on the body during Yolŋu ceremonies. By
contrast, the city of Sydney is suggested by the jagged outline along the
right side of the work, depicting both the famous harbor and Botany Bay.
Sydney from the Air can thus be seen as a commentary on the concept of understanding and ownership of the land, suggesting that two “nations” can in
fact coexist side by side.
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Ismail Shammout
Beginning of the Tragedy, 1953
Another area where conflicting claims to land and property has proved to be
chronic and traumatic is in the State of Israel, which was created in 1948
from portions of Palestine. Many paintings by Ismail Shammout depict the
Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe), the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of
Arabs from Palestine after the declaration of the Israeli state. In the early
1950s, Shammout’s iconic paintings of Palestinian refugees transformed the
visceral memories of 1948 into a national rallying point and a demand for
international attention.
The provocative title Beginning of the Tragedy lends meaning to the scene
depicted, while the bold brushstrokes heighten the drama, showing masses
of people marching across a harsh landscape. The work represents the first
stages of the exodus where men, women, and children carry their meager
belongings into an unknown future. In the lower right-hand corner, an empty pail has been upended, foreshadowing the thirst to come. This scenario,
fraught with displacement and doubt, still resonates today with new diasporic crises.
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Ruth Schloss
In the Ma’abarah (New Immigrants’ Camp), 1953
In contrast to Ismail Shammout’s harrowing scene of exodus, other artists
who moved to the newly-created State of Israel depict the hopes those who may
at last be able to find some peace and stability after the trauma of the Holocaust of World War II and the diaspora that forced them to seek refuge in other countries. Before the war began, young Ruth Schloss moved from Nuremburg
to Kfar Shmaryahu, which would later become part of the State of Israel. Following World War II and the creation of the new Jewish homeland, tent camps
like the ma’abarah represented in this painting were established to accommodate hundreds of thousands of refugees and new immigrants. With its low,
hot sun and the sweeping lines of tents and light poles, Schloss’s painting
In the Ma’abarah (New Immigrants’ Camp) (1953) illustrates the camps’ crowded conditions. In the foreground, a large tent and a jumble of forms create
a claustrophobic, almost oppressive effect that prevents the viewer’s eye
from freely exploring the camp landscape. By taking a high vantage point,
however, Schloss ensured that the viewer can see far into the distance. Interrupting the otherwise burnt and muddy palette, a rectangular area in the
middle of the canvas seems to glow with an unnatural light. Here, among the
three figures walking through the light, are a mother and child-a poignant
reference to the themes of hope and of new beginnings that characterized the
work of Israeli artists in the postwar period.
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> Useful Terms
Nationhood
The state of being a nation, or the feeling of a group of people united by a
common language, customs, or culture.
Citizenship
The status of a person recognized by law as being a member of a nation or
state. A person who does not have citizenship in any state is said to be
stateless.
Imagined Communities
A concept, first used in 1983 by the political scientist Benedict Anderson, to describe those who share a sense of community but do not live
among one another or see each other face-to-face. Anderson particularly
applied this concept to the notion of national identity, arguing that
the bound shared by a nation’s citizens is the feeling of belonging together, rather than any form of actual common bond.
Suffrage
the right to vote in an election. During the postwar period, many minority
groups were denied this right, despite their status as citizens of a nation.
Non-Aligned Movement
The group of states that preferred political neutrality and were not formally aligned with either the Eastern or Western bloc during the Cold War.
Independence
The condition of a nation, country, or state in which its citizens are able to
exercise self-government and sovereignty over their territory, their possessions, and their personal lives.
Colonialism
The act of controlling a territory, nation or people (the “colonized”) by an
external power, usually another nation (the “colonizer”). Formally, colonizing nations viewed their occupation of another nation in terms of a “civilizing mission”, rather than as an invasion of a sovereign state.
> For Discussion
• Differing concepts of Nationhood; Citizenship
(inclusion/exclusion);
Imagined Communities (national and transnational);
Suffrage/participation
• West, East and Non-Aligned Movements; Continental connections
• Transition from Colonial to Postcolonial societies-remnants
and enduring traces (cartographies)
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Section 8:
Networks, Media
& Communication
The final theme addressed in the Postwar exhibition is the development of
new networks and the expanded sense of place that resulted from the many
new technological improvements made during the war. In the postwar period,
there were rapid advancements in the movement, circulation, distribution,
and communication of ideas. Although World War II was basically a destructive exercise, the struggle to win led both sides to develop new synthetic
materials; improvements in photography, film, radio, and television; modern
home conveniences; medicines and health care; and improved land, sea, and
air travel. In addition to better, far-reaching telecommunications-bringing information and new ideas to more people in more places around the worldthose advancements also led to new theories such as cybernetics (computerized controls) and the beginnings of machine-made art and, eventually, to
computer-generated and digital art. Many artists wanted to make connections
across national boundaries and, as a result, international exhibitions and
groups were formed. Other artists, intrigued by new technologies and ever-changing popular culture, integrated transistors, robots, and commercial
art into their work, while still others experimented with the new medium
of broadcast television, which gave them the potential to communicate with
audiences far beyond the closed unit of the museum or gallery. All of these
artists sought an art form suitable for a world that was beginning to feel
like a single, integrated system or organism, taking the first steps toward
globalization that would occur later in the twentieth century, by way of the
Internet.
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> Key Work
León Ferrari
La civilización occidental y cristiana
(Western Christian Civilization), 1965
Other innovative artists chose instead to highlight the nefarious connection between technological innovation and military weaponry, which is
especially suspect when such technology would be used to murderous ends by
one apparently civilized nation against another. For León Ferrari, whose
father was a fresco painter for the Catholic Church, the apparent contradictions in Christian belief were all too clear: from an early age he struggled
to comprehend the concept of what he referred to as “just cruelty,” namely
the harsh episodes of punishment that recur throughout the Holy Scriptures
such as the Great Flood, the fires of Sodom, the Last Judgment, and, indeed,
hell. Because Ferrari believed that this brutal side of Christianity was
the root cause of military aggression throughout modern history, he placed
this idea at the core of his iconoclastic body of work. In La civilización
occidental y cristiana. Ferrari attached a figure of the crucified Christ to
a scale model of a United States fighter jet. Ferrari’s suffering Christ no
longer symbolizes the promise of eternal life, but acts instead as a harbinger of imminent death at the hands of military superpowers, a prospect that
was globally feasible when this sculpture was made, at the height of the Cold
War.
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> Other works in the exhibition that explore this theme
Tanaka Atsuko
Electric Dress, 1956
After the war, innovations in technology and communications occurred
throughout the world, particularly in countries such as Japan. Tanaka Atsuko, one of the foremost artists to investigate the potential of these innovations, became famous for her experimental works, especially her wearable
sculpture, Electric Dress (1956). In many ways, this work was a radical response to her government’s-officially approved figurative style and accepted
materials for modern Japanese art. She boldly disregarded the status quo and
instead embraced technology in her art. Although Tanaka was associated with
the Gutai group of abstract artists, she disregarded the gestural physicality of their work (as seen in Kazuo Shiraga’s Work II, section 3), and instead
began to investigate the use of of lights and bells in her performative
actions. The almost 200 colorfully painted light bulbs of the kimono-like
Electric Dress blink on and off every two and a half minutes, creating a
flashing performance of moving light that represents systems pulsing inside the human body. In this way, Electric Dress bypasses conventional ideas
about the artist as a maker and instead involves the viewer in the act of
witnessing this pulsating display. Moreover, although the artist designed
this sculpture to be worn as a performance piece, in this case her body is almost completely concealed under the dress, so that the viewers’ is drawn to
the dress, rather than to the artist inside it.
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Uzo Egonu
Man Stealing a Shoe for His Wife, 1965
Uzo Egonu also used references from popular culture to expose the struggles faced by immigrant populations. Man Stealing a Shoe for His Wife (1965),
for example, references many concepts from his education in England and
his multicultural upbringing to create a sophisticated collage that mixes
mass-produced symbols of luxury with hand-painted patterns and images. The
graphic lines of silhouetted figures stand in contrast to ornamental patterns from fashion advertisements and glossy magazine covers. When compared
to the high-resolution sheen of these commercial images, the painted areas look almost archaic or primitive. Two worlds collide as the silhouetted
figure on the left makes contact with the posh designer heel-the moment of
the theft-contrasting the idea of the primitive and the modern. Even as many
artists of the postwar era recognized increased global interconnectivity,
Egonu reveals the persistence of us-them race relations in many Western cities.
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> Useful Terms
New Media
The means of mass communication, generally using technologies that have
characteristics of being part of a network and are interactive.
Communication
Meaning “to share”, communication is the sharing or sending of information
through speech, writing, or by technology, such as telephone, television,
radio, or the Internet. .
Popular Culture
The set of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, images, and the like that reflect
the interests and commodities of the majority of people (that is, “the masses”) in a given culture. In the postwar context, popular culture was used to
refer especially to Western culture; particularly that of the United States.
“The Medium is the Message”
A phrase first used by media expert Marshall McLuhan in 1964 to describe
the interconnectedness between the medium used to deliver a message (television, newspaper, etc.) and the message itself. In other words, the chosen
medium determines how a message will be understood.
> For Discussion
•
•
•
•
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New Media (“the Media is the Message”)
Communication and concepts/complications of place/time
Popular Culture and (the circulation of) popular imagery
The ways in which “the other” is represented by popular culture
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This Teachers‘ Guide is published
on the occassion of the exhibition
“Postwar. Art between Pacific
and Atlantic, 1945 - 1965”.
Publisher: Haus der Kunst, Munich
Concept: Damian Lentini
Editing: Sabine Brantl
All texts are copyright © Haus der Kunst, Munich.
Images are copyrighted by their owners or their makers.
Please contact Haus der Kunst.
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