Something Old, Something New Michael Lobel
Jan 16, 2015
Something Old, Something NewMichael Lobel
It all started with Rauschenberg in the 50’s
• The incorporation of mechanically printed, often popular images into works of fine art, particularly paintings.
• A postmodern shift• The artist is concerned with techniques of
reproduction ( and not production).
Rauschenberg
Mechanical repro vs the unique creative actForget: signature style, now photographic art or
mark making; cult of the individual• A low tech regression using photography not
to refine painting but to emphasize qualities of awkwardness/ historical anachronism
• Neo-dada- reassembling and arranging not creating
Rauschenberg
• With Cage- inking the tires of a car and printing on paper; collaborative and automatic
• Combines scraps of everyday materials from newspapers to printed fabrics etc
• 1958 photo transfers: imbedding the image on the surface- images from Sports Illustrated or Life Magazine
• 34 Cantos of Dante’s Divine Comedy: Inferno
Rauschenberg, Mint, 1974
Rauschenberg
• Rubbing or frottage technique creates a gesture. …gives a relationship with other abstract expressionists like Motherwell and Kline.
• Likes the old, discarded things, a quilt, rusted metal, colors of transfer drawings are faded,
• Shuttle between past and present in imagery
Warhol
• 60’s: photography and painting come together, the photo silkscreen
• Reproduce popular imagery through a commercial technique
• Change in scale; light tones drop out; repetition of the image by using the screen again, and again
• The celebrity as an icon; relationship between celeb and politics
Andy Warhol, Jackie, 1964, acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen
Warhol
• Imperfection• Irresolution• Awkwardness• The desire to be a machine• Undermines machine-made: efficiency,
streamlined, alignment
Rosenquist
• Former billboard painter• Fragmentary images from print
advertisements• Pop art consumer goods....the quasi
photomechanical techniques in a fine art context
• Outmoded Life Magazine images,; grisaille techniques
Artschwager and Morely
• Gridding the found photograph; painting each square , indifferent to the whole
• A: painting on celotex a building material-rough, textured surface which visually enlarges the surface support
• Banal, anti-expressive