1.
Art criticism
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Art criticism is the discussion or evaluation of visual art. Art critics usually criticise art in the context of aesthetics or the theory of beauty, a goal of art criticism is the pursuit of a rational basis for art appreciation but it is questionable whether such criticism can transcend prevailing socio-political circumstances. The variety of movements has resulted in a division of art criticism into different disciplines which may each use different criteria for their judgements. The most common division in the field of criticism is between historical criticism and evaluation, a form of art history, and contemporary criticism of work by living artists. Despite perceptions that art criticism is a lower risk activity than making art. Critics of the past are often ridiculed for either favouring artists now derided or dismissing artists now venerated. Some art movements themselves were named disparagingly by critics, with the later adopted as a sort of badge of honour by the artists of the style. Artists have often had a relationship with their critics. Artists usually need positive opinions from critics for their work to be viewed and purchased, unfortunately for the artists, Art is an important part of being human and can be found through all aspects of our lives, regardless of the culture or times. There are many different variables that determine ones judgment of art such as aesthetics, Art can be objective or subjective based on personal preference toward aesthetics and form. It can be based on the elements and principle of design, Art is a basic human instinct with a diverse range of form and expression. Art can stand-alone with a judgment or can be viewed with a deeper more educated knowledge. Aesthetic, pragmatic, expressive, formalist, relativist, processional, imitation, ritual, cognition, mimetic and postmodern theories are some of many theories to criticize, Art criticism has many and often numerous subjective viewpoints which are nearly as varied as there are people practising it. It is difficult to come by a stable definition than the activity being related to the discussion and interpretation of art. Depending on who is writing on the subject, art criticism itself may be obviated as a goal or it may include art history within its framework. Regardless of definitional problems, art criticism can refer to the history of the craft in its essays, according to art historian R. Siva Kumar, The borders between art history and art criticism. Are no more as firmly drawn as they used to be. It perhaps began with art historians taking interest in modern art, Art criticism includes a descriptive aspect, where the work of art is sufficiently translated into words so as to allow a case to be made
2.
Manhattan
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Manhattan is the most densely populated borough of New York City, its economic and administrative center, and the citys historical birthplace. The borough is coextensive with New York County, founded on November 1,1683, Manhattan is often described as the cultural and financial capital of the world and hosts the United Nations Headquarters. Many multinational media conglomerates are based in the borough and it is historically documented to have been purchased by Dutch colonists from Native Americans in 1626 for 60 guilders which equals US$1062 today. New York County is the United States second-smallest county by land area, on business days, the influx of commuters increases that number to over 3.9 million, or more than 170,000 people per square mile. Manhattan has the third-largest population of New York Citys five boroughs, after Brooklyn and Queens, the City of New York was founded at the southern tip of Manhattan, and the borough houses New York City Hall, the seat of the citys government. The name Manhattan derives from the word Manna-hata, as written in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, a 1610 map depicts the name as Manna-hata, twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River. The word Manhattan has been translated as island of hills from the Lenape language. The United States Postal Service prefers that mail addressed to Manhattan use New York, NY rather than Manhattan, the area that is now Manhattan was long inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans. In 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano – sailing in service of King Francis I of France – was the first European to visit the area that would become New York City. It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, a permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624 with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was started on the citadel of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam, the 1625 establishment of Fort Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan Island is recognized as the birth of New York City. In 1846, New York historian John Romeyn Brodhead converted the figure of Fl 60 to US$23, variable-rate myth being a contradiction in terms, the purchase price remains forever frozen at twenty-four dollars, as Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace remarked in their history of New York. Sixty guilders in 1626 was valued at approximately $1,000 in 2006, based on the price of silver, Straight Dope author Cecil Adams calculated an equivalent of $72 in 1992. In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director General of the colony, New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2,1653. In 1664, the English conquered New Netherland and renamed it New York after the English Duke of York and Albany, the Dutch Republic regained it in August 1673 with a fleet of 21 ships, renaming the city New Orange. Manhattan was at the heart of the New York Campaign, a series of battles in the early American Revolutionary War. The Continental Army was forced to abandon Manhattan after the Battle of Fort Washington on November 16,1776. The city, greatly damaged by the Great Fire of New York during the campaign, became the British political, British occupation lasted until November 25,1783, when George Washington returned to Manhattan, as the last British forces left the city
3.
Willem de Kooning
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Willem de Kooning was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and moved to New York in 1927. Willem de Kooning was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on April 24,1904 and his parents, Leendert de Kooning and Cornelia Nobel, were divorced in 1907, and de Kooning lived first with his father and then with his mother. He left school in 1916 and became an apprentice in a firm of commercial artists, until 1924 he attended evening classes at the Academie van Beeldende Kunsten en Technische Wetenschappen, now the Willem de Kooning Academie. In 1926 de Kooning travelled to the United States as a stowaway on the Shelley, a British freighter bound for Argentina and he stayed at the Dutch Seamens Home in Hoboken, New Jersey, and found work as a house-painter. In 1927 he moved to Manhattan, where he had a studio on West Forty-fourth Street and he supported himself with jobs in carpentry, house-painting and commercial art. De Kooning began painting in his time and in 1928 he joined the art colony at Woodstock. He also began to some of the modernist artists active in Manhattan. None of them were executed, but a sketch for one was included in New Horizons in American Art at the Museum of Modern Art, De Kooning met his wife, Elaine Fried, at the American Artists School in New York. She was 14 years his junior, thus was to begin a lifelong partnership affected by alcoholism, lack of money, love affairs, quarrels and separations. They were married on December 9,1943, at this time, de Koonings work borrowed strongly from Gorkys surrealist imagery and was influenced by Picasso. This only changed when de Kooning met the younger painter Franz Kline, Kline died young and he was one of de Koonings closest artist friends. Klines influence is evident in de Koonings calligraphic black images of this period, in the late 1950s, de Koonings work shifted away from the figurative work of the women and began to display an interest in more abstract, less representational imagery. He became a US citizen in 1961 and moved to East Hampton in 1963 and this became his primary residence and he remained there until the end of his life. On Long Island de Kooning, in addition to his painting, inspired in part by the work of Henry Moore, de Kooning created highly abstracted figurative sculpture very reminicent of his figurative paintings. It was revealed toward the end of his life that de Kooning began losing his memory in the late 1980s and had been suffering from Alzheimers disease for some time. This revelation has initiated considerable debate among scholars and critics about how responsible de Kooning was for the creation of his late work, succumbing to the progress of his disease, William de Kooning painted his final works in 1991. He passed away in 1997 at the age of 92, upon death William de Kooning was cremated. His final place of rest is publicly unknown, De Koonings paintings of the 1930s and early 1940s are abstract still-lifes characterised by geometric or biomorphic shapes and strong colours
4.
Philip Guston
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Philip Guston, born Phillip Goldstein, was a painter and printmaker in the New York School, an art movement that included many abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. He is known to the world for his paintings of an existential. Born in 1913 in Montreal, Guston moved with his family to Los Angeles as a child and his Ukrainian Jewish parents had escaped persecution when they moved to Canada from Odessa, Ukraine. Guston and his family were aware of the regular Ku Klux Klan activities against Jews, blacks, in 1923, possibly owing to persecution or the difficulty in securing income, his father hanged himself in the shed, and the young Guston found the body. Gustons early art was figurative and representational and his mother supported his artistic inclinations and he often made drawings in an environment of his choosing, a small closet, lit by a hanging bulb. Guston then began painting at the age of 14 when, in 1927, both he and Jackson Pollock studied under Frederick John de St. Vrain Schwankovsky and were introduced to European modern art, Eastern philosophy, theosophy and mystic literature. During high school, Guston and Jackson Pollock published a paper opposing the high schools emphasis on sports over art and their criticism led to both being expelled, but Pollock eventually returned and graduated. Apart from his school education and a one-year scholarship at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. At the Otis Art Institute, Guston felt unfulfilled by the approach which limited him to drawing from plaster casts instead of the live model. Before leaving the school, Guston spent a night in the studio making drawings of the figurative plasters scattered all over the floor and this mural was then defaced by local police forces, known as as Red Squads. The subsequent court ruling found no fault on the part of L. A. police and this marks just one instance of political corruption witnessed by Guston, a theme which he would return to paint in his late style. A two-page review in Time magazine quoted Siqueiross description of them, in Mexico he also met and spent time with Frida Kahlo and husband Diego Rivera. In 1934-35, Guston and Kadish completed a mural that remains to day at City of Hope Medical Center. In September 1935 he moved to New York where he worked as an artist in the WPA program, in 1937 he married artist and poet, Musa McKim, whom he first met at Otis, and they collaborated on several WPA murals. During this period his work included strong references to Renaissance painters such as Piero della Francesca, Paolo Uccello, Masaccio and he was also influenced by American Regionalists and Mexican mural painters. In 1938 he painted a post office mural in the US post office in Commerce, Georgia, entitled Early Mail Service, italian painter Giorgio de Chirico was a powerful and enduring influence, who Guston acknowledged throughout his career. Gustons daughter, Musa Mayer, recalled how the artist kept a De Chirico monograph in his studio in her book Night Studio, A memoir of Philip Guston, and he would often refer to it. Gustons first foray into teaching was as an artist-in-residence at the School of Art and Art History at the University of Iowa from 1941 to 1945 and he completed a mural there for the Social Security building in Washington, D. C. before turning to easel painting
5.
Lee Krasner
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Lenore Lee Krassner was an American abstract expressionist painter in the second half of the 20th century. She is one of the few artists to have had a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art. Krasner was born as Lena Krassner on October 27,1908 in Brooklyn, Krasner was the daughter of Chane and Joseph Krasner. Her parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants, from Shpykiv, a Jewish community in what is now Ukraine and her parents fled to the United States to escape anti-Semitism and the Russo-Japanese War. Her mother Chane changed her name to Anna once she arrived in America, Lee was the fourth of five children, including her sister, Ruth, and the first who was born in America. She was the one of her siblings to be born in the United States. From an early age, Krasner knew she wanted to pursue art as a career, Krasners career as an artist began when she was a teenager. She specifically sought out enrollment at Washington Irving High School for Girls since they offered an art major, after graduating from high school, she attended the Womens Art School of Cooper Union on a scholarship. Here, she completed the work required for a teaching certificate in art. Krasner pursued yet more art education at the illustrious National Academy of Design, by 1928, she enrolled in the National Academy of Design. By attending an art school, Krasner was able to gain an extensive. She also became skilled in portraying anatomically correct figures. There are relatively few works survive from this time period apart from a few self-portraits. One of the images that still exists from time period is her Self Portrait painted in 1930. She submitted it to the National Academy in order to enroll in a certain class, in it, she depicts herself with a defiant expression surrounded by nature. She also briefly enrolled in the Art Students League of New York in 1928, here, she took a class led by George Bridgman who emphasized the human form. Krasner was highly influenced by the opening of the Museum of Modern Art in 1929 and she was very affected by post-impressionism and grew critical of the academic notions of style she had learned at the National Academy. In the 1930s, she began studying art through learning the components of composition, technique
6.
Costantino Nivola
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Costantino Nivola was an Italian sculptor. The Museo Nivola in Orani, Sardinia, hosts the largest collection of his works, Nivola was born and grew up in Orani, a small village in Sardinia. As a young adolescent, he worked as a stonemason in the local building industry. His first official exhibitions are recorded in this period, among many works, notably he produced some xylography, Nivola started then frequenting France, establishing contacts with artists from other countries. Supposedly here he first met his wife, Ruth Guggenheim. S. A, here, in 1940 he became the artistic director for Interiors and Progressive Architecture. In time he became a friend of Le Corbusier and not without his influences and reflections. Nivola then provided works for Olivetti showroom in New York, Mutual Hartford Insurance Company, Harvard University, McCormick Plaza Exposition Center and Yale University. In 1954 Nivola became a professor and the director of the Design Workshop at the Harvard University and his academical work increased with other teachings, like in Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Den Haag, Netherlands. In 1972 the American Academy of Arts and Letters admitted Nivola as its first non-American member, in 1978 the University of California, Berkeley gave him a chair at its Art Department. He died of an attack in Southampton Hospital on Long Island, New York. Nivolas sand casting has been described as a bas-relief sculpture in concrete. Landscape architect Michael Gotkin recently said that Nivola had taken the traditional mediterranean essence of the ancient graffiti, others suggested that his work expresses a seamless integration of sculpture and architecture. He produced murals and reliefs for a variety of architects including Eero Saarinen, Percival Goodman, Antonin Raymond, Bernard Rudofsky, Richard G. Stein, Carl Stein and he was the grandfather of actor Alessandro Nivola and father of the acclaimed childrens book author Claire Nivola. Article in Metropolis, Nivola on Nivola Article in The Janesville Gazette, June 4,2012, fred Licht, Antonello Satta, Richard Ingersoll, Giorgio Dettori, Nivola, sculture Book, Italian,1. Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, P.18, p.38, p. 266-269. Percorsi del moderno, ed. by R. Cassanelli, U, collu and O. Selvafolta, Milano-Cagliari 2003
7.
Robert Rauschenberg
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Milton Ernest Robert Rauschenberg was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combines of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials, Rauschenberg was both a painter and a sculptor and the Combines are a combination of both, but he also worked with photography, printmaking, papermaking, and performance. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1993 and he became the recipient of the Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts in 1995 in recognition of his more than 40 years of fruitful artmaking. Rauschenberg lived and worked in New York City as well as on Captiva Island, Rauschenberg was born as Milton Ernest Rauschenberg in Port Arthur, Texas, the son of Dora Carolina and Ernest R. Rauschenberg. His father was of German and Cherokee ancestry and his mother of Anglo-Saxon descent, at 16, Rauschenberg was admitted to the University of Texas where he began studying pharmacy. He was drafted into the United States Navy in 1943, based in California, he served as a mental hospital technician until his discharge in 1945. Rauschenberg subsequently studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and the Académie Julian in Paris, France, in 1948 Rauschenberg and Weil decided to attend Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Josef Albers, a founder of the Bauhaus, became Rauschenbergs painting instructor at Black Mountain, Albers preliminary courses relied on strict discipline that did not allow for any uninfluenced experimentation. Rauschenberg described Albers as influencing him to do exactly the reverse of what he was being taught, from 1949 to 1952 Rauschenberg studied with Vaclav Vytlacil and Morris Kantor at the Art Students League of New York, where he met fellow artists Knox Martin and Cy Twombly. Rauschenberg married Susan Weil in the summer of 1950 at the Weil family home in Outer Island and their only child, Christopher, was born July 16,1951. The two separated in June 1952 and divorced in 1953, according to a 1987 oral history by the composer Morton Feldman, after the end of his marriage, Rauschenberg had romantic relationships with fellow artists Cy Twombly and Jasper Johns. An article by Jonathan D. Katz states that Rauschenbergs affair with Twombly began during his marriage to Susan Weil, Rauschenberg died on May 12,2008, on Captiva Island, Florida. He died of heart failure after a decision to go off life support. Rauschenberg is survived by his partner of 25 years, artist Darryl Pottorf, Rauschenberg is also survived by his son, photographer Christopher Rauschenberg, and his sister, Janet Begneaud. Rauschenbergs approach was sometimes called Neo Dadaist, a label he shared with the painter Jasper Johns, at the same time, Johns paintings of numerals, flags, and the like, were reprising Duchamps message of the role of the observer in creating arts meaning. Alternatively, in 1961, Rauschenberg took a step in what could be considered the direction by championing the role of creator in creating arts meaning. Rauschenberg was invited to participate in an exhibition at the Galerie Iris Clert, Rauschenbergs submission consisted of a telegram sent to the gallery declaring This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so. From the fall of 1952 to the spring of 1953 Rauschenberg traveled through Europe and North Africa with his fellow artist, in Morocco, he created collages and boxes out of trash
8.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
9.
Jackson Pollock
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Paul Jackson Pollock, known professionally as Jackson Pollock, was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was well known for his style of drip painting. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety, he was a major artist of his generation, regarded as reclusive, he had a volatile personality, and struggled with alcoholism for most of his life. In 1945, he married the artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his career, Pollock died at the age of 44 in an alcohol-related single-car accident when he was driving. In December 1956, four months after his death, Pollock was given a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. A larger, more comprehensive exhibition of his work was held there in 1967, in 1998 and 1999, his work was honored with large-scale retrospective exhibitions at MoMA and at The Tate in London. Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming, in 1912, the youngest of five sons and his parents, Stella May and LeRoy Pollock, were born and grew up in Tingley, Iowa and were educated at Tingley High School. Pollocks mother is interred at Tingley Cemetery, Ringgold County, Iowa and his father had been born with the surname McCoy, but took the surname of his adoptive parents, neighbors who adopted him after his own parents had died within a year of each other. Stella and LeRoy Pollock were Presbyterian, they were of Irish and Scots-Irish descent, LeRoy Pollock was a farmer and later a land surveyor for the government, moving for different jobs. Stella, proud of her familys heritage as weavers, made, in November 1912, Stella took her sons to San Diego, Jackson was just 10 months old and would never return to Cody. He subsequently grew up in Arizona and Chico, California, while living in Echo Park, California, he enrolled at Los Angeles Manual Arts High School, from which he was expelled. He had already been expelled in 1928 from another high school, during his early life, Pollock explored Native American culture while on surveying trips with his father. In 1930, following his older brother Charles Pollock, he moved to New York City, bentons rural American subject matter had little influence on Pollocks work, but his rhythmic use of paint and his fierce independence were more lasting. In the early 1930s, Pollock spent a summer touring the Western United States together with Glen Rounds, an art student. Pollock was introduced to the use of paint in 1936 at an experimental workshop in New York City by the Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. He later used paint pouring as one of techniques on canvases of the early 1940s, such as Male and Female. After his move to Springs, he began painting with his canvases laid out on the studio floor, from 1938 to 1942 Pollock worked for the WPA Federal Art Project. Henderson engaged him through his art, encouraging Pollock to make drawings, jungian concepts and archetypes were expressed in his paintings
