Monday, November 7, 2011

Rebel Yell: The Wild Seventies

Art is particularly well-suited for expressing rebellious notions. Which of the artists from today's presentations seem to use their work to rebel against something/someone/some time period and what/who/when are they rebelling against?
Due Wednesday, November 9th at 12 noon. Sharp! 

12 comments:

  1. Jorg Immendorff was all about the rebellion. As was brought up in the presentation I was in the other day, he first rebelled against painting as a whole, as was shown in his splashing the phrase "Hört auf zu malen!" or "Stop painting!" across one of his canvases. He later returned to painting but rebelled against the movement of abstract expressionism and minimalism/formalism that had been prevalent in the current world of painting during that time period. He brought back the figure and infused his artwork with intense political opinions. Jorg Immendorff committed to recording political events into his works. He rebelled against the current political situation and expressed the divide between East and West Germany.

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  2. Philip Guston definitely expresses rebellious notions through his artwork/methods. First Guston had a role in reconnecting painting to art. He rebelled by leaping into a figurative style at the end of the sixties. The book states that “ For Guston and other artists from the expressionist generation, painting made concrete one’s thoughts about the most important questions of ethics and identity;” he brought back painting and it was no longer dead. His artworks were inspired by events going on throughout history: He painted depictions of the Ku Klux Klansmen, which caused much controversy and was targeted by Klansmen and American Legionnaires. He had an interest in Picasso and Cubism, action painting- the idea that painting concerns “touch” more than “gesture, and once again reacted to a time period, specifically 1967 Woodstock and the protests against war in Vietnam. He was outraged from what he saw on television i.e assassinations of leaders, government violence, the war- and “ the rebellion of his youth came back” inspiring him to paint blocky-cartoon images of shows, buildings, clocks, and books which later revealed hooded figures of himself( self portraits.) His aesthetic shifted from an inner rebellion that was influenced by events that were happening around him.

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  3. A large number of the artists from the presentations were trying to rebel against something whether it be the art that came before them or the issues facing society at the time. While Philip Guston was rebelling against minimalism, Joyce Kozloff was rebelling against pattern and decoration as being considered low art or inferior “women’s work.” In a different way, Gordon Matt-Clark rebelled against the growing gap between poor and rich by literally tearing a house in too, physically showing the split created by capitalism. My favorite rebel is Nancy Spero who used anatomy as a method of standing up against the Vietnam War. She transformed the body into a political site acting as a metaphor for the anguish war causes. I think The Bomb is a simple yet beautiful way of expressing her feelings. Her gestural marks vent her frustration while the emanating figures emphasize her point.

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  4. Carolee Schneeman was definitely a rebellious artist. Her performances were very controversial because most of them involved provocative acts and the nude female body. She was rebelling against past female gender norms. Her work made it clear that these were incorrect and her work made people see women in a new light.
    Judy Chicago's work also reballed against past female gender norms. The Dinner Party comments on women's achievements. These achievements symbolize that women should be valued and the male dominated society should cease to exist. These 70s artists that rebelled against female gender norms helped to abolish them and gain respect for women.

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  5. Carolee Schneeman’s work certainly stands out as a powerful rebellion against female objectification in society. Her work unabashedly displayed the female body, oftentimes her own, in scenes of forward sexuality. Her performance piece, Interior Scroll, directly challenged gender roles and the notion of “woman’s work”. Schneeman’s use of nudity and her own body as part of the piece defied the modesty and decorum with which females were supposed to act. Schneeman’s work was controversial, but it allowed her to take control of the female form and steer it away from the objectification of the male gaze

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  6. I believe that in general the 70's were a pretty rebellious time period. Most of the artist we saw in the presentations were rebelling against something. Whether that was for their rights as women, either to old fashioned empty from content art, or to the war in Vietnam. Specifically, Nancy Spero made a whole series about the war, and through the use of the human anatomy, she created images of the war, and positioned herself against it. Another woman artist, by the name Carolee Schneemann, was emphasizing the differences of the female femininity and the male masculinity, through her shocking performances. Finally, Joyce Kozloff who was a decorator, was rebelling against the minimalist style which was the previous movement, and instead of a subtractive process, was implementing an additive one.

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  7. Instantly after reading this blog prompt I began thinking about Elizabeth Murry and her shaped canvases. She might not have had heavy conceptualized pieces made to rebel against the government or white male society, but she rebelled against the conventions of art. She invented a style all of her own, focusing on abstraction to create an emotional response to the breaking apart and reconfiguring of not only the brightly colored shapes on her canvases, but the canvases themselves. She rebels against the conventional rectangular cage of canvas painting by creating her own uniquely shaped, overlapping canvases. She also rebelled against the normal protocol of artists just by being an emerging female artist in the 1970s.

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  8. Art is particularly well-suited for expressing rebellious notions. Which of the artists from today's presentations seem to use their work to rebel against something/someone/some time period and what/who/when are they rebelling against?

    Jorg Immendorf is using art to express rebellion. He rebelled against the idea that painting was died with his work that said "stop painting" across it. He also created political commentary on the state germany was is using detail and symbols to draw his viewer in.

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  9. Nancy Sparrow was a feminist artist at the time. She started using her body as a political statement instead of just a social one. Instead of just rebelling against social constraints for women as many of the feminist artists at the time did and still do, she used her body as a rebellion against political constraints as well. She was shocked by the Vietnam war and how the US was sending young men overseas to fight. She used her body to create artwork that made a statement against the Vietnam war.

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  10. Art is particularly well-suited for expressing rebellious notions. Which of the artists from today's presentations seem to use their work to rebel against something/someone/some time period and what/who/when are they rebelling against?

    Philip Guston believed that painting was an arena for passionate topics. He was a strong leftist in politics so he was constantly painting scenes of the KKK depicting the unjust inequality and lunacy of segregation. He was also interested in commenting on how the images of the holocaust made him feel, packing his paintings tight with imagery and symbols to create a suffocating feeling. He typically rebels against the large majority; drawing attention to the mistreatment of minorities. He uses his paintings as a figurative form of communication of radical changes he wanted to see in the world.

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  11. I found thAt a major social change That was taking place in the 70's was feminism. Using different techniques each female artist was able to voice their oppinions as they never had been able to before.Nancy spero used her her body in performance art as a political commentary. Judy Chicago also used the body as a political statement on feminism when, with the help of other female artist she created art helping to celebrate women and their sexuality.

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  12. Carolee Schneemann is one of the most rebellious artists in the seventies. Her performance piece, Internal Scroll explores the female body in a very different way. Schneemann use her body to rebel against the patriarchal society, in which a female body is seen as a sexual object. It challenges the tradition where female form was often stylized, by using her own body to show the female body in it most raw and natural form. The work also challenges the rule of appropriate subject matter. Her work shows that a female artist can tackle on a more controversial and provocative subject matter like their male counterparts. The piece also addressed a significant part of the feminist writings in the seventies, which deals with the “woman’s work and the imposition of predetermined criteria of quality, rather than standards developed in appropriate relation to the intentions of the work”.

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