Contextual Studies (Land Art)

Contextual Studies (Conceptualism)

Conceptual Art is an art form where the idea behind a piece of work is the most important part. The idea overrides aesthetics or formal technique. It often raises more questions than gives answers.

John Cage’s 4′33.

This is an early opening to conceptual art. This piece is about the silence and tension created when people are made to be quiet for even a short amount of time. I found myself when watching this how long it felt and you realise that it’s not often you are quiet. This piece is purely about idea as we are experiencing something negative. Althought the nothing is something. Doing nothing and just listening to quiet is a very interesting experience in itself.

Another work that is seemingly about nothing and an early conceptual piece is Robert Rauschenberg’s, ‘Erased de Kooning’. On appearance it looks like a dirty sheet of paper in a frame. To understand the piece you need to know it’s history and this is why it is conceptual. Erasing a drawing of you’re own is hard enough to do, getting over being precious about you’re work and things in general. We place such a high value on material things and it is hard to discard them. It is a very uncomfortable process. A drawing that you regard as you’re best would not be something easy to erase. For Rauschenberg and de Kooning to erase one of the most important artist’s of the times drawing meant they were breaking through being precious, realising the next drawing will be better and freeing themselves of worry about a piece.

Key themes in Conceptual art were demateralising art objects and questioning reality. Josepth Kosuth questioned reality with this installation, photographed here.

Contextual Studies (Abstract Expressionism)

Abstract Expressionism was a painting movement that centred around New York. It was inspired by Surrealist ideas of working with the subconscious mind. They Automatism of Paul Klee, taking the line for a walk and seeing what was produced purely by the subconscious. The artists involved worked in two different areas. Action painters such as Pollock and De Kooning used spontaneous fast marks on their canvases. The colour field painters such as Rothko and Newman created large flat images of simple compositions using a few colours. These works aimed to make people contemplate and meditate over them.

Lavender Mist 1950

Jackson Pollock’s paintings made energy and motion visible. These were created on the floor using paint straight from tins or with tools. The paint would splatter, drip and swirl on the canvas. It is pure action.

Black on Maroon 1958

Mark Rothko wanted to reduce painting to its essential. These paintings are not just purely visually appealing. The colour field painters wanted nothing to do with painting with no meaning. These large compositions were used so you would reflect and think. Some of these paintings were designed so that when light hit them they would change and refract the light. You could sometimes see yourself in them.

Contextual Studies (Cubism)

Cubism

Cubism was the art movement pioneered mainly by Picasso and Braque which used multiple view points in the same drawing/painting. Cezanne had an influence through his geometrical landscape paintings. These artists began to think about how the eye actually sees things. How a simple still life isn’t viewed in its entirety. The eye darts about and how people see things is different. They took into account the reality of how things are viewed and their work became abstract, like cubes. Although the work was analytical and concerned with being true and realistic.There were two stages of Cubism. Analytic dealing with natural forms reduced into basic geometrical shapes and Synthetic a simpler, flatter style which introduced collage.

Clarinet and Bottle of Rum on a Mantelpiece 1911

An example of Analytic Cubism using multiple view points.

Guitar Sheet Music and Glass 1912

An example of Synthetic Cubism uses sheet music, wallpaper and newspaper. It is a much simpler image built up through these different materials.

Cubism influenced many other movements. Collage and the idea of using real things in art influenced Surrealism and Dadaism. Using multiple angles had a heavy influence on Futurism.