미국미술, 그 참신한 카타르시스

[휘트니미술관 컬렉션-이것이 미국 미술이다展] 덕수궁미술관에서 2011.06.11–09.25까지 
The Masterpieces of Everyday Life from the Whitney Museum of American Art 
[오마이뉴스관련기사] '위대한 미국 누드, 그 신선한 카타르시스 http://t.co/Obvmv57 
부제 - "미국대통령은 실체 없는 빈껍데기일 뿐" 

Jasper Johns, Map, 1961

조지아 오키프(Georgia O'Keeffe 1887-1986) I Blue and Green Music 1921 Photo source : Wikipedia 

미국 현대미술의 독보적 존재, 매혹의 화가인 조지아 오키프, 그의 꽃에 대한 창조적 재해석으로 미국을 대표하는 작가가 되었다. 여기서 꽃은 여성의 성기를 은유하는 것으로 여성의 정체성에 대한 넘치는 자신감의 상징이라고 할 수 있다. 그러기에 그가 싸운 대상은 세상 혹은 남자가 아니라 바로 자기자신이었다. 

이런 호연지기는 결국 무명시절 꽃을 크게 그리는 계기가 되었고 그게 대성공을 거두었다. 거대해진 꽃은 평범한 자연상태에서 벗어나 특별한 의미를 갖는 꽃으로 변했다. 관객은 실제보다 확대된 꽃을 보면서 시적이고 감각적이고 에로틱한 면을 다시 보게 된다. 꽃와 여자에 대한 외경심을 키운다. - 그림 읽은 CEO 중 일부 - 

Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) was an American artist. Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe first came to the attention of the New York art community in 1916, several decades after women had gained access to art training in America’s colleges and universities, and before any of its women artists were well known or highly celebrated. Within a decade, she had distinguished herself as one of America's most important modern artists, a position she maintained throughout her life. As a result, O’Keeffe not only carved out a significant place for women painters in an area of the American art community that had been exclusive to and is still dominated by men, but also she had become one of America’s most celebrated cultural icons well before her death at age 98 in 1986. 

Georgia O'Keeffe Photo source : Wikipedia 

Her abstract imagery of the 1910s and early 1920s is among the most innovative of any work produced in the period by American artists. She revolutionized the tradition of flower painting in the 1920s by making large-format paintings of enlarged blossoms, presenting them close up as if seen through a magnifying lens. And her depictions of New York buildings, most of which date from the same decade, have been recognized as among the most compelling of any paintings of the modern city. Beginning in 1929, when she first began working part of the year in Northern New Mexico—which she made her permanent home in 1949—O’Keeffe depicted subjects specific to that area. Through paintings of its unique landscape configurations, adobe churches, cultural objects, and the bones and rocks she collected from the desert floor, she ultimately laid claim to this area of the American Southwest, which earlier had been celebrated primarily by male artists; the area around where she worked and lived has become known as “O’Keeffe Country." 

'이것이 미국미술이다'전이 열리는 덕수궁미술관 

The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea will present The American Art; Masterpieces of Everyday Life from the Whitney Museum of American Art, at the National Art Museum, Deoksugung from June 11th to September 25th, 2011. The Whitney Museum of American Art is one of New York's four prestigious museums, and this is the first occasion to exhibit the Whitney Museum Collection in Asia. 

The exhibition The American Art brings together 87 works based on the theme 'the Object', which were created by 47 distinguished contemporary artists, such as Man Ray - one of the most influential New York Dadaist of the 20th century - Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, Dan Flavin, and lastly, Jeff Koons. 

Marisol Escobar(1930-) I 'Women and dog' 나무 석고 합성 폴리머 박재된 강아지 머리 혼합 1964 

The Whitney Museum of American Art, true to its name, is reputed to have been dedicated to supporting American art and artists, which is the museum's primary concern. This is differentiated from the Museum of Modern Art, New York(MoMA) that represents international art. In the spirit of engaging a broad audience, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea aims to organize the exhibitions in collaboration with major international museums by featuring their art collections. It will provide the audience with the opportunity to experience the outstanding international contemporary art per se. In turn, the audience will be able to appreciate Korean contemporary art from a more wide and comprehensive perspective. 

리차드 에스테스(Richard Estes) I 사탕가게 121*174cm 1969 

In conjunction with the exhibition, the museum will organize various education programs and cultural events. The gallery talk with docent will be prepared to assist the general audience to better understand the exhibited works, and the exhibition guide by the museum docents will be run everyday: three times during the week, four times at weekend, English talk for foreigners at 3pm and the special talk for kids will be run twice. On June 11th 2011, at 2pm, a presentation on "Whitney Museum of American Art and its Collection" is scheduled at the AV room of the National Art Museum, Deoksugung. As part of the program in connection with the show, the museum is planning to organize the international conference inviting the renowned art historian Dr. Cécile Whiting as the keynote speaker under the theme of 'Globalization and the Object Art'. She is the 2009 Eldredge award winner for her excellent research on "Pop L.A: Art & the City in the 1960s". At the same time, there will be pop music performances and a jazz concert, livening up the ambience of the museum. 

존 슬론(John Sloan 1871-1951) Backyards, Greenwich Village 

Furthermore, as part of museum's ongoing effort to widen the museum-visiting audience and reach out to those who are excluded from the cultural participation, the museum will invite about 5,000 multi-cultural families, foreign workers, underprivileged kids, as well as the physically-challenged. They will be given free entrance to the exhibition, assisted by the special guides program. 

휘트니미술관 설립자 거트루드 밴더빌트 휘트니 여사 

미국 뉴욕 휘트니미술관의 소장품으로 소개하는 미국미술전 6월11일부터 덕수궁미술관에서 열린다. 휘트니미술관은 뉴욕현대미술관(MoMA)과 메트로폴리탄미술관, 구겐하임미술관 등과 4대미술관에 속한다. 설립자는 뉴욕의 부유한 컬렉터였던 거트루드 밴더빌트 휘트니 여사다. 그는 메트로폴리탄 미술관에 컬렉션기증을 제의했다가 거절당하자 아예 1931년 직접 미술관을 설립한다 

톰 웨셀만(Tom Wesselmann) I '위대한 미국 누드 #57(Great American Nude, #57)' 합성 보드에 합성 폴리머와 종이 콜라주, 121.9*165.1cm 1964 

This is the first occasion to exhibit the Collection of Whitney Museum, one of the four major museums of New York, in Asia. - The exhibition will present 87 artworks by 47 eminent artists, from Man Ray to Jeff Koons. - The works on view represent the quintessential part of American contemporary art : New York Dada, Neo-Dada, Pop Art, Conceptual Art, Hyperrealism, and Postmodernism. - The exhibition, as part of the Art of the World series that is specially organized by National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, will provide an opportunity to observe American society and culture via American contemporary art. Curator Talk for the exhibition on 17th June 2pm. 

로버트 라우센버그(Robert Rauschenberg) I '푸른 독수리(Blue Eagle)' 캔버스에 유화, 흑연, 인쇄물, 면티 

[Artistic contribution] Rauschenberg's approach was sometimes called "Neo Dadaist," a label he shared with the painter Jasper Johns. Rauschenberg's was quoted as saying that he wanted to work "in the gap between art and life" suggesting he questioned the distinction between art objects and everyday objects, reminiscent of the issues raised by the "Fountain," by Dada pioneer, Marcel Duchamp. At the same time, Johns' paintings of numerals, flags, and the like, were reprising Duchamp's message of the role of the observer in creating art's meaning. 

Robert Rauschenberg's untitled 'combine', 1963. Oil, silkscreened ink, metal, and plastic on canvas, 82 x 48 in.. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Photo source : Wikipedia 

Alternatively, in 1961, Rauschenberg took a step in what could be considered the opposite direction by championing the role of creator in creating art's meaning. Rauschenberg was invited to participate in an exhibition at the Galerie Iris Clert, where artists were to create and display a portrait of the owner, Iris Clert. Rauschenberg's submission consisted of a telegram sent to the gallery declaring "This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so." 

Robert Rauschenberg Riding Bikes, 1998 Berlin Photo source : Wikipedia 

Robert Rauschenberg, Riding Bikes, Berlin, Germany, 1998. By 1962, Rauschenberg's paintings were beginning to incorporate not only found objects but found images as well - photographs transferred to the canvas by means of the silkscreen process. Previously used only in commercial applications, silkscreen allowed Rauschenberg to address the multiple reproducibility of images, and the consequent flattening of experience that implies. In this respect, his work is contemporaneous with that of Andy Warhol, and both Rauschenberg and Johns are frequently cited as important forerunners of American Pop Art 

재스퍼 존스(Jasper Johns) I '스튜디오(Studio)' 오브제가 있는 캔버스에 유채 224.8*369.6cm 1964 

Abstract Expressionist figures like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning ascribed to the concept of a macho "artist hero," and their paintings are indexical in that they stand effectively as a signature on canvas. In contrast, Neo-Dadaists like Johns and Rauschenberg seemed preoccupied with a lessening of the reliance of their art on indexical qualities, seeking instead to create meaning solely through the use of conventional symbols. Some have interpreted this as a rejection of the hallowed individualism of the Abstract Expressionists. Their works also imply symbols existing outside of any referential context. Johns' Flag, for instance, is primarily a visual object, divorced from its symbolic connotations and reduced to something in-itself. 

[Neo-Dada] is a label applied primarily to audio and visual art that has similarities in method or intent to earlier Dada artwork. It is the foundation of Fluxus, Pop Art and Nouveau réalisme.[1] Neo-Dada is exemplified by its use of modern materials, popular imagery, and absurdist contrast. It also patently denies traditional concepts of aesthetics. The term was popularized by Barbara Rose in the 1960s and refers primarily, although not exclusively, to a group of artwork created in that and the preceding decade. Artists linked with the term include Genpei Akasegawa, John Chamberlain, Jim Dine, Kommissar Hjuler, Jasper Johns, Yves Klein, George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Ushio Shinohara, and Robert Rauschenberg.

Jasper Johns, Map, 1961. Museum of Modern Art New York City. Flags, maps, targets, stenciled words and numbers were themes used by Johns in the 1960s. Photo source : Wikipedia 

[His Life] Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent his early life in Allendale, South Carolina with his paternal grandparents after his parents' marriage failed. He then spent a year living with his mother in Columbia, South Carolina and thereafter he spent several years living with his aunt Gladys in Lake Murray, South Carolina, twenty-two miles from Columbia. He completed high school in Sumter, South Carolina, where he once again lived with his mother. Recounting this period in his life, he says, "In the place where I was a child, there were no artists and there was no art, so I really didn't know what that meant. I think I thought it meant that I would be in a situation different than the one that I was in." He began drawing when he was three and has continued doing art ever since. 

<Photo source> http://www.hereandthere.com/Anne/jasper_johns.htm 

Johns studied at the University of South Carolina from 1947 to 1948, a total of three semesters. He then moved to New York City and studied briefly at the Parsons School of Design in 1949. In 1952 and 1953 he was stationed in Sendai, Japan during the Korean War. 

In 1954, after returning to New York, Johns met Robert Rauschenberg and they became long term lovers. In the same period he was strongly influenced by the gay couple Merce Cunningham (a choreographer) and John Cage (a composer). Working together they explored the contemporary art scene, and began developing their ideas on art. In 1958, gallery owner Leo Castelli discovered Johns while visiting Rauschenberg's studio.[3] Castelli gave him his first solo show. It was here that Alfred Barr, the founding director of New York's Museum of Modern Art, purchased four works from his exhibition. In 1963, Johns and Cage founded Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, now known as Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York City. Johns currently lives in Sharon, Connecticut and the Island of Saint Martin.[9] He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984. 

On February 15, 2011 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, becoming the first painter or sculptor to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom since Alexander Calder in 1977.

로이 리히텐슈타인 I '금붕어어항'(중앙) 1977. '크리스탈 그릇이 있는 정물'(오른쪽) 1973 

<사진출처> http://www.gagosian.com/artists/roy-lichtenstein/ 

로이 리히텐슈타인 (Roy Lichtenstein, 1923년 10월 27일~1997년 9월 29일)은 미국의 대표적인 팝 아트 미술가이다. 만화의 장면을 캔버스로 옮긴 작품으로 유명하다. 앤디 워홀 등과 함께 팝 아트의 대표적인 화가로 신문 연재의 통속인 만화를 캔버스로 확대해 그린 작품군으로 유명하다. 만화가 가지는 단순하지만 강렬한 선, 단순화 된 색채 등의 표현력을 유채로 표현했다. - 위키피디아

Photo source : Wikipedia 

Roy Lichtenstein (October 27, 1923 – September 29, 1997) was a prominent American pop artist. During the 1960s his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City and along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and others he became a leading figure in the new art movement. His work defined the basic premise of pop art better than any other through parody. Favoring the old-fashioned comic strip as subject matter, Lichtenstein produced hard-edged, precise compositions that documented while it parodied often in a tongue-in-cheek humorous manner. His work was heavily influenced by both popular advertising and the comic book style. He himself described Pop Art as, "not 'American' painting but actually industrial painting" 

만 레이(Man Ray 1890-1976) I '행운(La Fortune)' 캔버스에 유화 1938 

Ray teamed up with Duchamp to publish the one issue of New York Dada in 1920. Man Ray expressed that "dada’s experimentation was no match for the wild and chaotic streets of New York, and he wrote "Dada cannot live in New York. All New York is dada, and will not tolerate a rival" Man Ray moved to Paris in 1921. Man Ray met his first wife, the Belgian poet Adon Lacroix, in 1913 in New York. They married in 1914, separated in 1919, and were formally divorced in 1937 

Man Ray 1932. Photo source : Wikipedia 

Man Ray (August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976), born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. Best known in the art world for his avant-garde photography, Man Ray produced major works in a variety of media and considered himself a painter above all. He was also a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. He is noted for his photograms, which he renamed "rayographs" after himself. 

While appreciation for Man Ray's work beyond his fashion and portrait photography was slow in coming during his lifetime, especially in his native United States, his reputation has grown steadily in the decades since. 

In 1999, ARTnews magazine named him one of the 25 most influential artists of the 20th century, citing his groundbreaking photography as well as "his explorations of film, painting, sculpture, collage, assemblage, and prototypes of what would eventually be called performance art and conceptual art" and saying "Man Ray offered artists in all media an example of a creative intelligence that, in its 'pursuit of pleasure and liberty,'"Man Ray's stated guiding principles—"unlocked every door it came to and walked freely where it would" 

A. Warhol I 'Diamond Dust Shoes' 1980 

Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987), known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author, and member of highly diverse social circles that included Bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons. 

Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. He coined the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame." In his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, The Andy Warhol Museum exists in memory of his life and artwork. 

The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is US$100 million for a 1963 canvas titled Eight Elvises. The private transaction was reported in a 2009 article in The Economist, which described Warhol as the "bellwether of the art market." $100 million is a benchmark price that only Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-August Renoir, Gustav Klimt and Willem de Kooning have achieved. 

James McNeill Whistler Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother (1871) popularly known as Whistler's Mother, Musée d'Orsay, Paris Photo source : Wikipedia 

[Other Modern American Movements] Main articles: Pop Art, Hard-edge painting, Happenings, Fluxus, Chicago Imagists, Postminimal, Neo-expressionism, and Conceptual Art 

Nighthawks (1942) by Edward Hopper is one of his best known works, Art Institute of ChicagoMembers of the next artistic generation favored a different form of abstraction: works of mixed media. Among them were Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) and Jasper Johns (1930- ), who used photos, newsprint, and discarded objects in their compositions. Pop artists, such as Andy Warhol (1930–1987), Larry Rivers (1923–2002), and Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997), reproduced, with satiric care, everyday objects and images of American popular culture—Coca-Cola bottles, soup cans, comic strips. Realism has also been popular in the United States, despite modernist tendencies, such as the city scenes by Edward Hopper and the illustrations of Norman Rockwell. In certain places, for example Chicago, Abstract Expressionism never caught on; in Chicago, the dominant art style was grotesque, symbolic realism, as exemplified by the Chicago Imagists Cosmo Campoli (1923–1997), Jim Nutt (1938- ), Ed Paschke (1939–2004), and Nancy Spero (1926–2009). 

Sculpture by Richard Serra in Terminal 1 Pier F at YYZ Toronto. The piece is over 12 metres long 

Richard Serra (born November 2, 1939) is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement 

[Notable figures] A few American artists of note include: Ansel Adams, John James Audubon, Thomas Hart Benton, Albert Bierstadt, Alexander Calder, Mary Cassatt, Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, Edward S. Curtis, Richard Diebenkorn, Thomas Eakins, Jules Feiffer, Helen Frankenthaler, Arshile Gorky, Marsden Hartley, Al Hirschfeld, Hans Hofmann, Winslow Homer, Georgia O'Keeffe, Lee Krasner, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Dorothea Lange, Roy Lichtenstein, Morris Louis, John Marin, Agnes Martin, Jackson Pollock, Man Ray, Robert Rauschenberg, Frederic Remington, Norman Rockwell, Mark Rothko, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Cindy Sherman, David Smith, Frank Stella, Gilbert Stuart, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Andy Warhol, Frank Lloyd Wright, Andrew Wyeth, N.C. Wyeth, Richard Serra. 

프랭크 스텔라 Frank Stella 인도의 황후 Empress of India 1965. Metallic powder in polymer emulsion paint on canvas 195.6×548.6cm. Gift of Newhouse, Jr. © 2011 Frank Stella Artists Rights Society New York 

Frank Philip Stella (born May 12, 1936) is an American painter and printmaker. He is a significant figure in minimalism, post-painterly abstraction, patterns and offset lithography. He was born in Malden, Massachusetts. He studied painting at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts and later studied history at Princeton University. 

He became influenced by the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline. However, upon moving to New York City around the late 1950s, he reacted against the expressive use of paint by most painters of that movement, instead finding himself drawn towards the "flatter" surfaces of Barnett Newman's work and the "target" paintings of Jasper Johns. 

He began to produce works which emphasized the picture-as-object, rather than the picture as a representation of something, be it something in the physical world, or something in the artist's emotional world. Around this time he said that a picture was "a flat surface with paint on it - nothing more". This was a departure from the technique of creating a painting by first making a sketch. Many of the works are created by simply using the path of the brush stroke, very often using common house paint. 

그린버그(Clement Greenberg)가 주장하는 현대회화의 향방은 평면성(flatness)과 평면성의 한계이며 이 두 가지 조건만으로도 회화로 인식되어지기에 충분하다고 본 것이다. 스텔라 같은 작가의 경우 이 두 가지 조건을 만족시키면서도 기존의 캔버스의 형태(사각형)의 고정관념에 얽매이지 않고 변형캔버스를 사용하여 사각형의 틀이 갖는 관념적 시각의 장을 넘어서 사물적인 오브제로서의 캔버스의 형태를 드러낸 것이다. 

"많은 사람들은 내 그림에서 어떤 숨겨진 의미를 발견하려고 애를 쓰지만 나의 그림은 그 자체가 의미일 뿐이다. 당신이 보는 것이 보는 것이다" - 프랭크 스텔라 

[미국 추상주의 화가 '사이 톰블리' 로마서 별세] http://t.co/tUcV2id 

Cy Twombly I 'Untitled' Oil and crayon on canvas,198.1×261.6 cm 1969.. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from Mr. and Mrs. Rudolph B. Schulhof  69.29 © Cy Twombly 

Cy Twombly, Jr. (April 25, 1928–July 5, 2011) was an American artist well known for his large-scale, freely scribbled, calligraphic-style graffiti paintings, on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors. He exhibited his paintings worldwide. 

Twombly's paintings blur the line between drawing and painting. Many of his best-known paintings of the late 1960s are reminiscent of a school blackboard on which someone has practiced cursive 'e's. His paintings of the late 1950s, early 1960s might be reminiscent of long term accumulation of bathroom graffiti. Twombly had at this point discarded painting figurative, representational subject-matter, citing the line or smudge — each mark with its own history — as its proper subject. 

Later, many of his paintings and works on paper moved into "romantic symbolism", and their titles can be interpreted visually through shapes and forms and words. Twombly often quoted the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, as well as many classical myths and allegories in his works. Examples of this are his Apollo and The Artist and a series of eight drawings consisting solely of inscriptions of the word 'VIRGIL'. In a 1994 retrospective of Twombly's work, the curator described it as "influential among artists, discomfiting to many critics and truculently difficult not just for a broad public, but for sophisticated initiates of postwar art as well"