Late Twentieth Century Art

Historical art was associated with portraying events and places and veracity - being true to nature and events - enhanced paintings that were used in this role.  20th century artists broke with veracity.  At first they did this through exploring perceptual truth in abstraction rather than striving for representational truth.  Later in the twentieth century artists realized that people would buy new fictions and enjoyed combining “narratives” - philosophical, political and other tales - with art.

Perhaps the archetypal work of artistic fiction is Duchamp's “Fountain”.  Without a narrative it is just a urinal:

The late twentieth century artists are the children of Dadaism and many have taken the path of narrative art rather than purely visual art.

Pop Art

Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997)

Lichtenstein deserves a special place in the history of late twentieth century art because he unselfconsciously combined the narrative and graphic forms.  He was born an upper middle class New Yorker, served in the army from 1943-1946 and attended Ohio State University, obtaining a Master of Fine Arts in 1949.  He became an Art teacher.


Lichtenstein began painting in the style of graphic novels after his son pointed to a comic and said “I bet you can't paint as good as that, eh, Dad”. (The 1960s was the “Silver Age of Comic Books”).

The popularity of Lichtenstein's pictures depended largely on the popularity of DC and Marvel Comics amongst young, male adults.  They contained two narratives, firstly the text on the picture but more importantly the debate about whether they are “worthy”.  Can ephemera, “Pop Art”, be art? Etc...

The term “lowbrow art” has been used to describe the least “fine art” versions of pop art.

However, don't get lost in the “narrative”, enjoyable though it may be, the truth is about fashion and sales.

Andy Warhol (1928-1987)

Warhol started professional life as a commercial artist and worked on vinyl album covers. He created “The Factory”, a studio that operated between 1962 and 1984.

Warhol's great skill was to be fashionable, both moving with the Zeitgeist and creating it.  As part of this holistic approach to fashion he formed the rock band “Velvet Undergound”.

Warhol was the raw spirit of commercial America, happy to use socialism, being gay, drugs etc. if it created a fashionable narrative for sales.

Just Add Narrative to Taste!

Jack Vettriano (1951-)

Vettriano is a Scots artist who has extended the style of American Realism into a Pop format involving largely imaginary scenes. The net result is a romantic pop art.

He was born in Fife, became a student mining engineer then worked in a variety of jobs before devoting himself full time to art. He is the only revolutionary artist of the late 20th century, being widely rejected by the Establishment and offensive to postmodern tastes

Notice that his pictures have a need for an accompanying narrative and are romantic successors to Lichtenstein.

Had Vettriano used the simple device of placing the title on the painting in the style of a graphic novel he would have been understood.

Conceptual Art

By 1960 Modernist art had become increasingly concerned with visual perception, paintings becoming reduced to documents about illusions (Op-Art) or colour combinations. Some artists began to focus on concepts rather than percepts. Pop artists were also taking this path. The Art & Language Group, founded in Coventry, provided a focus for this new conceptual art. The  narrative was considered to be the most important part of an art work.  Many artists, such as Ed Ruscha produced paintings that were poster text and expected a justifying narrative to be created.

Pop & Conceptual Art becomes Post-Modernism

In the late 1970s in France  a group of philosophers founded the “International College of Philosophy” which was a secular version of “Council of Trent”.  They extolled “Postmodernism” in which every work is part of the narrative of the person who creates it, the narrative of society etc.  The group declared that no Meta-narratives such as religion or science truly exist and truth is relative.

Postmodernism is widely believed despite being a meta-narrative of narratives that holds itself to be false (ie: nonsense). Postmodernism is a secular religion for some of its adherents.

The essence of postmodernism is that it frees the artist from the truth.  Anything can be an artwork so long as it has a popular narrative.  Art can be fiction.
As narratives have grown in importance visual art now often incorporates multimedia to explain the narrative.


Brit Art

Brit Art is a short name for the art produced by "The Young British Artists" who were a group of graduates of Goldsmith's College between 1987 and 1990.

The group adopted the postmodern concept of art.  Their work was heavily dependent on narrative.

"The unicorn is a powerful symbol of good in early pagan mythology and is still associated with fairytales and the mystical landscapes of King Arthur in Britain and Cornwall. Hirst's exploration of this beautiful, but unreachable, beast will be a great opening to our exhibition."

"A consummate storyteller, Tracey Emin engages the viewer with her candid exploration of universal emotions. Well-known for her confessional art, Tracey Emin reveals intimate details from her life to engage the viewer with her expressions of universal emotions. Her ability to integrate her work and personal life enables Emin to establish an intimacy with the viewer. "

The Visual Arts Survive


The visual arts continued throughout the late twentieth century despite the assignment of gallery space to largely conceptual works.

David Hockney (1937- )

Hockney is perhaps the greatest British visual artist of the late 20th Century.

“It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work.”

He began his career as a Pop Artist and then moved towards naturalism.

Francis Bacon(1909-92) and Lucien Freud (1922-2011)

Francis Bacon began life as a wealthy dilettante and Lucian Freud was grandson of Sigmund Freud and also well heeled.

Both artists were friends and bisexual or gay. Both paint in an expressionist style.  Francis Bacon's paintings are the most expensive representational works produced in the past 50 years (Modernist Rothko and Pop Artist Warhol have fetched more at auction).

Neo Expressionism

Neo-Expressionism is representational art filtered through the artists' experience with an expressionist style.  It was located mainly in Germany and Italy.  Some important neo-expressionists were:  Georg Baselitz, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Robert Morris, Francesco Clemente, Jorg Immendorff

Other Late Twentieth Century Art Movements

Ignoring Installations, Sculptures, Happenings, Performances etc. there have been relatively few movements after 1975 devoted to the creation of pictures using pigment.  Some movements that may be of interest are:

Photorealism
Psychedelic Art
Graffiti Art


Photorealism

Psychedelic Art

James Jean: "Shrooms"

Graffiti Art

Dutch Genre Painting: The Koekkoek Family

Notes on the Lecture by Anne Dyson

A talk about Dutch paintings of the 19thC would be incomplete without including works by the Koekkoek family. Beyond being the largest numerically it is also a name with which some people will be familiar. Each member of the family adopted his own choice of subject, but as a general guide to a few of the well known members: Barend Cornelis specialised in landscapes both summer and winter, Hermanus painted seascapes and Marinus Adrianus painted landscapes. Willem chose to paint the cities and towns of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Haarlem.

The family spans several generations - see the family tree - and was very much a business, not just selling and exhibiting their work but contributing to and teaching in the Academies.


Willem Koekkoek 1838-1895


Willem was the son of HERMANUS Snr the third generation of the Koekkoek family to be highly accomplished painters.

The New Market in Amsterdam in Winter

Villagers on a Sunlit Street

Willem- my favourite, was a noted painter of town scenes, topographically accurate with contemporary accessories, not for him the historical view of Amsterdam. His paintings were in demand in the Netherlands and Gt Britain where a market for Dutch paintings had existed since the 17thC. With a growing middle class this demand grew throughout the 19th century providing a market for the Koekkoek family and prcies escalated yet further in the 20th century.

Dutch Street in Winter

A consummate painter of street scenes, it is those set in winter in which he excels. He shows the bustle and activities of everyday life. Stopping and talking, pulling sleds on snow covered streets, builders unloading carts etc.

A Winter Street

The brickwork and masonry of the buildings are perfectly shown, and he is also able to create an atmospheric work with a subtle and delicate quality of light. But a Romantic view, not all the buildings would be in such good repair or the streets so clean - horses leave their mark!

Morning Walk by a Dutch Canal

Figures on a Frozen Canal

Hermanus Koekkoek Senior 1815-1882

Hermanus was also born in Middleburg and he specialised in depicting the flat coastline of Holland in her contrasting moods of calm and storm.
He had a delicate touch which suited the detail and line of the marine crafts, the changes in the appearance of the sea as it enters the estuary and the fine work in the foreground of his compositions.

Vessels at Anchor in an Estuary

There were fifteen members of this family who painted but Hermanus was unique in that he painted entirely with his left hand.

View on the Scheldt

Hermanus could also be termed a Romantic, which can be seen in his calm estuary scenes with shipping and often with caracaturised figures in the foreground.  His paintings are very tranquil.

Calm Waters

Barges on a Canal

Barend Cornelis Koekkoek 1803-1862

Barend was a name to become synonymous with the term Dutch Romanticism. He was of the generation influenced by the Romanticism sweeping Europe and became identified with the Dutch Romantic style.

A panoramic summer landscape with travellers and a castle ruin in the distance

He was born in Middelburg, his father was the marine painter Jan Hermanus Koekkoek. He studied with his father and then at the Middelburg Academy also at the academy in Amsterdam. He married Elize who was also a painter and the daughter of an artist.

Skaters on a Waterway

He also set up an art academy and his brother Marinus Adrianus became one of his pupils. He travelled widely, his subjects the landscapes of Holland in winter and summer, panoramic and woodland scenes and views in Belgium and Germany. He was a very successful artist sought after by patrons all across Europe. He also exhibited widely.  He was one of the finest artists of his generation of the family.

The Ruined Castle

View of Cleves at Sunset

Winter Landscape