Crisis in Art: representation,

realism, originality
20th century part 2 to the 21st
Flaudette May V. Datuin
• The crisis in the subject and subject
matter
• The disintegration of form
• The disappearance of the figure
The Human form
Auguste Rodin
The Kiss
Durer

Tamara de Lempicka
Klimt

Human form
starts to
fragment
 Reduction and
simplification of the
human form

Constantin Brancusi
 Reduction and
simplification of the
human form

Napoleon Abueva
Mother and Child
Brancusi/Masterful Bird
Henry Moore
Recumbent Figure
Juan Gris
Portrait of Picasso
Duchamp
Nude Descending a Staircase
 Picasso
Demoiselle
D’Avignon
 crisis of the subject

Munch/The Scream
Ivan Albright/Into The
World Come a Soul
Called Ida
Gauguin
Where Are We? Where did we come from? Where are we going?
Giacometti
Man Pointing
Man Striding
And Job Was Also Man
Martino Abellana

Formal innovations
Engagement with
social realities

(Photo from Cebu online website)

Challenges to Realism (Mimesis)

Subject matter
form
Disintegration of form

impressionism
 Optical
figurative

Cubism, impressionism: analytical,

scientific
Expressionism: “emotional”
Surrealism, social realism
Modernism in the context of
modernity
 Braque

Synthetic cubism

Analytic cubism
Balla/Automobile
Futurist
movement
Disappearance of the Figure
 formal self-consciousness

Edades

Lao Lianben
Ang Kiukok
Flatness
Acknowledgment of the material
HR Ocampo/
Homage to
Tandang Sora
Figurative
abstraction
 Reduction and
simplification of the
human form

Napoleon Abueva
Mother and Child
Severini/Armored Train
Futurist
Joya/High Noon
Klee/Sound
Kyong Lee
 Wassily Kandinsky
Abstract Art
Still figurative but
shapes are free and
the colors are
exuberant

geometric

Kandinsky
 Kandinsky
• Concerning the Spiritual in Art
• Transcend the material world towards the
realm of the spirit
• Physical appearances are illusory
De Stijl group leader
Geometric
ideas and concepts rather
than what we SEE
Mathematical, precise
Simplest forms, primary
colors

GEOMTRIC
ABSTRACTION
Piet Mondrian/Broadway Boogie Woogie
Russian Suprematists: Malevich
Not about something
else out there but about
itself

“pure painting” freed from

any allusions to the external
world

White on White
Non-objective, non-figurative
Calculating,
Detached
Color field
Geometric
Entirely non-figurative

Rothko
 Bridget Riley: Op art

Analysis of color
Scientific
Optical but about itself
Riley/Reconnaisance
Vasareley
Du Jie
Chinese maximalist
Constructivists: Gabo
Gabo/Construction
Space with
Crystalline Center
Gabo/Linear Construction
No. 2
Moholy-
Nagy/Light
Space
Modulator
Tatlin/Monument to the
third international
Smithson/Spiral Getty
Calder: Mobile
 Kline
Expressionist, calligraphic, line-based
Expressionist, free shapes and color-
based

Gorky/One Year: the Milkweed

Jackson Pollock: Action painting
 Jackson Pollock

Expressionist
Surreal
Inspired by theories on the
unconscious
 Abstract art
• Abandoned the figure altogether: non-
objective, non-figurative
• Emphasis on idea/essence instead of what
the eye sees: non-optical except for op art
• Not about “something” out there but about
ITSELF: formal self-consciousness which
began in cubism and impressionism
Architecture and interiors

Bauhaus
International Style

Mies Van der Rohe

Frank Lloyd
Wright/Falling
Water
 Le Corbusier

Ronchamp Church
Walter Gropius
Niemeyer

Cathedral de Brasilia
Saarinen/TWA building
 Art Deco
1925: dominant style in the decorative arts
Prettified the severe style of the bauhaus
Kitsch/junk until the 60s when it became
popular
Jacques Emile Ruhlman
Ruhlman
 William Van
Alen: Chrysler
Bldg
Challenges to Realism

Subject matter
form
 architecture
• Geometric, severe, minimalist
• Form follows function
• Industrial material: reinforced concrete
• “International” style
• Bauhaus, constructivist
• Abstraction having “relevance” to daily life
Modernism

Art for art’s sake

Daily life
Philippine architectural samples
Looks new LOL:
1973 Do these buildings still exist?:
new LOL:
Crisis in Art

Definition
 Conceptual art
• Emphasis on the idea rather than the object

Duchamp
The Fountain
 Body Art, Fluxus,
Dada

Yves Klein

Malevich

• Reaction against Minimalism

• Precedents include Duchamp, Dada, and actions of
Yves Klein, among others
Art and artist

• Master/genius
• white, male, dead
• name
• biography
• how much was it
sold?
• WHO has it?
Conceptual
 Ma Liuming

Warhol
 Crisis in Art

The artist as genius

Art as original and
unique:masterpiece
Crisis in subject and subject matter
 Kant
• The first property of art is originality
• originality must be exemplary
• art is not governed by rules nor science
• a genius is BORN with an inspiration to
create
• beyond the dictates of culture
Romantic notion of artist
madness
Originality questioned

Appropriation
Bricolage
pastiche
appropriation

• Act of borrowing, stealing or taking over

others’ meanings to one’s own end
• Oppositional production and reading
Crisis in Art

representation
 This is not a pipe
• But a representation of a pipe
• a painting rather than a
material object
• signals us about the complex
relationship between word,
image, referent (pipe)
What is “real?”

Magritte
The Human
Condition
Pop Art: Warhol

Who is the “real” Marilyn

Image
Problematizing the process of
representation itself
 sign

• Something that stands for something other

than itself
• easily recognizable
• shared
• learned
Image of an image
komiks to painting
Single deep
meanings?
Artist’s vision?
 Simulacrum/simulation
• Baudrillard: sign that does
not clearly have a real-life
counterpart, but difficult
to distinguish from the
real.
• Fake world, e.g. theme
parks, shopping malls
• Copies and realities get
blurred
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
Lyra Garcellano
I am a Filipino born, raised and living in the Philippines
I am not backward, barbaric or warlike.
My house is not open to all.
I don’t readily open my doors to strangers.
I am not always hospitable.
I am kind and respectful and I expect the same treatment from others.
I am not rich.
I don’t work hard to earn a living. It is my right to be paid my dues.
Doing domestic chores, manual labor, and working as a babysitter
In a foreign land aren’t the only things I am cut out to do.
Whenever/If ever I save money I like to travel, to see the world
And learn about new cultures.
I didn’t apply for and get my visa to the United States with the intention of
going there to land me an American citizen.
I have no intention of being an illegal alien in the US.
I like to travel, that’s it.
I don’t wash my clothes in the river.
Neither do I live in a tree.
I am not a Catholic. I am not Protestant, Born Again, Opus Dei, El Shaddai
or Muslim.
I do not belong the organized religion
I firmly believe in religious freedom and tolerance. I am not evil.
I do not eat dogs.
In fact I do not eat meat
I am a vegetarian because I don’t have a
taste for killing.
I am not adept at handling a balisong or
inclined to dance the tinikling and I don’t
have a penchant for singing
I don’t know everything but I am not
ignorant, naïve or uninformed.
I read books. I study. I analyze issues.
I am not pliant, meek or docile
Finally,
My country may be economically poor,
but I don’t like being called provincial, or
referred to as an exotic being from the
islands and a third world citizen.

And I suppose, neither do you.

Lyra returns the GAZE

Related Terms:
virtual
hyperreal
 Hyperreal
• Coined by Jean Baudrillard
• Codes of reality are used to simulate reality
where there is no referent in the real world
• Simulation of the real using naturalistic
effects to emphasize “realness”
Claes Oldenburg

Warhol
Bricolage
Documented and performed

Cindy Sherman
Documented
Whose work?
Artist Ma Liuming
Photographer
Xing Danwen
 virtual
• Concrete phenomena that seem to exist but
in no tangible or physical way
• Can be analog or digital but have no
referent to the real world
• electronically constituted spaces such as
Internet, world wide web, games, chat
rooms, shopping carts, virtual communities
 A Body that
Escapes physical individuality

A BODY THAT QUIVERS AND

OSCILLATES TO THE EBB AND FLOW OF NET
ACTIVITY.
A body that manifests the statistical and collective data flow…
responds not to its internal nervous system but
to the external stimulation of globally
connected computer networks
Stelarc
 cyborg

Cyborgs – dependence upon and integral relationship to

technology
Actual cyborgs – pacemakers, prosthetics
Harraway: theorized on the cyborg as a means to consider the
relationship of human subjects to technology, and the subjectivity
of late capitalism, biomedicine and computer technology
 Limits being tested

The Obsolete Body