United States Arts and Architecture From the 20th Century to the Beginning of the 21st Century

The vanguard movements. The surrealist current represents a constant in American painting (from AB Davies to P. Blume, OL Guglielmi, C. Burchfield, A. Dove). In New York an important turning point was marked by the exhibition of the group of Eight American painters (R. Henri, J. Sloan, WJ Glackens, E. Lawson, M. Prendergast, GB Luks, E. Shinn, Davies) in 1908, from the exhibitions European avant-garde art organized by A. Stieglitz and the Armory Show. The Eight group, which broke up almost immediately, had the merit of introducing the influence of the new European currents into the American pictorial tradition, and affirmed a progressive social liberalism even in a reactionary style; the American modernists, although conventional in their subjects, were averse to the realistic stylistic tradition. ● J. Stella and M. Weber were the main exponents of the Futurist movement in the USA, around 1913 M. Russel and S. MacDonald-Wright started research on synchromism, while the presence of M. Duchamp, in New York from 1915, and by F. Picabia catalyzed the experiences of American Dadaism, of which Man-Ray was the most significant exponent. 2.2 Realism. In the third and fourth decade of the century, realism prevailed on the American art scene (precisionists; regionalists; American scene painters). The simplification of forms and a repertoire of images linked to industrial civilization characterized the works of C. Demuth, P. Dickinson, C. Sheeler, G. O’Keeffe; J. Marin expressed himself in a semi-abstract expressionism. The economic crisis of the years around 1930 coincided with the affirmation of a realism which, referring to American traditions, took into consideration, in addition to urban and industrial scenarios, those of the countryside and small towns (TH Benton, JS Curry, G. Wood). W. Gropper, B. Shahn, P. Evergood, J. Levine and others, with expressionist distortions, represented a crude social criticism. E. Hopperinfused a still atmosphere to his interior and urban views; Burchfield proposed the suburbs in ghostly forms. ● Until about 1930, sculpture remained linked to academic ways; however, the works of W. Zorach and G. Lachaise, R. Laurent, E. Nadelmann, J. Flannagan, J. Storr emerge for the attention to the expressiveness of the material, for the simplified monumentality of the forms. It should be remembered the only experiment of state patronage, the Public work of art project (1933) which in 1935 resulted in the WPA (➔ # 10132;). 2.3 Trends in architecture. The industrial development and the important technological innovations that at the end of the nineteenth century had led to the great experience of the Chicago School (➔ Jenney, William le Baron) fundamentally marked the subsequent evolution of American architecture, which nevertheless remained permeated with a formal eclecticism. In response to the increase in the value of urban areas, the architectural typology of the skyscraper began to impose itself: the period saw the reaffirmation of the checkerboard layout as an urban solution, a choice already implemented in New York and New Orleans. This theme of the very high-density urban center was accompanied by that of residential construction, often resolved, in continuity with tradition, in the single-family villa isolated in the lot, a denial of any concept of urban aggregate; particularly pronounced gap in the cities of the West (Los Angeles). The suburban phenomenon traces this gap, taking the form of the sum of single-family houses side by side, in the poorest cases without even the alibi of the greenery around them. ● The design studios of cities, with great participation and organized like a small production industry, were accompanied by the more autonomous research effort of studies such as that of FL Wright, who brought a rich and original baggage of alternative propositions to the American debate current solutions. In 1932 the exhibition International Style (➔ # 10132;) contributed to spreading the principles of the so-called modern European movement which, already introduced by W. Lescaze, had particular confirmation with the exodus to the USA after 1933 of some great German architects ( W. Gropius, L. Mies van der Rohe, M. Breuer, E. Mendelson etc.). 2.4 Abstract art, pop art, expressionism and anti-expressionism. After the closure of the Bauhaus by the Nazis, some of its most famous teachers ( J. Albers, L. Moholy-Nagy etc.) emigrated to the USA and other artists (M. Beckmann, P. Mondrian, F. Léger, M. Ernst etc.) took refuge there at the outbreak of the Second World War. This factor resulted in the extraordinary vitality of abstract art in the USA until the end of the 1950s (A. Gorky, J. Pollock, W. de Kooning, M. Rothko, M. Tobey, R. Motherwell, W. Baziotes etc.). As a consequence and in reaction to abstract expressionism (➔ action painting ; S. Francis, W. de Kooning, RB Motherwell), pop art (➔ pop), on the basis of which, and of the previous avant-gardes, the limit between the arts is gradually canceled: together with assemblage and combine paintings, the concept of environment is introduced, which involves the environment in the work itself. The works of G. Segal or E. Kienholtz and, later, the minimalist experiences of R. Serra or D. Judd fit into this context. The major representatives of pop art are R. Rauschenberg, C. Oldenburg, J. Johns. With A. Kaprow, Oldenburg, R. Whitman and others, J. Dine was one of the pioneers of ephemeral events (happenings). Pop art had its dramatic debut in 1962 with an exhibition of works by R. Lichtenstein, J. Rosenquist, A. Warhol, T. Wesselmann and R. Indiana. ● The search for subjects and commonplaces characteristic of pop art then gave rise to a kind of new realism (hyperrealism or photorealism) which sought the illusionistic reproduction of reality (M. Morley, A. Leslie, C. Close, JC Clarke). ● Even in the non-figurative art there was a reaction to abstract expressionism. Already in the 1950s, research by artists such as Rothko, Still, Newman had characteristics (unitary images, symmetrical shapes, large fields of flat color) that were decidedly contrasting with action painting. In the early 1960s this research was continued by younger artists (E. Kelly, F. Stella, M. Louis, K. Noland, A. Held). Non-figurative ‘anti-expressionist’ painting has found further definitions: color field paintings (H. Frankenthaler, K. Noland and J. Olitski); hard-edge painting (Kelly, LP Smith, Held, Stella); shaped canvas (C. Hinman, P. Feeley and also Stella); monochromatic painting (R. Ryman and R. Mangold, which are linked to the researches of A. Reinhardt). ● Based on the dynamics of perception and on optical illusion is the optical art, for which the research of J. Albers was fundamental. Systemic painting and minimal art, combining illusionism, of which optical art played a paradoxical game, with essential structural elements (A. Martin, J. Baer, W. Insley, D. Bannard, R. Bladen, R. Morris, D. Judd, C. Andre, S. LeWitt, D. Flavin, R. Smithson etc.), fall within the broader scope of conceptual art. ● In the field of sculpture, in addition to A. Calder, one of the great masters of modern art, to L. Nevelson, L. Bourgeois and the complex personality of D. Smith, there are experiences that can be generically inserted in abstract expressionism (T. Roszac, I. Lassaw etc.), in pop art (Segal, Kienholtz, J. Chamberlain) or in hyperrealism (D. Hanson, J. De Andrea). ● The gradual transformation of the artist’s intervention is carried out by conceptual art, operating in the environment (➔ land art) or transforming the artistic product from a physical object into a mental image, by means of photographs, video recordings, documents, definitions, formulas (J. Kosuth, D. Huebler). Along the same lines the experiences of computer art or programmed art (P. Citron, J. Whitney, AM Noll), of electric art, which works with artificial light (Chryssa, S. Antonakos, B. Nauman). ● At the end of the 1970s, as in Europe, a return to figurative expression took shape, linked in part to the expressionist tradition, in part to street art (murals and graffiti). Among the most active artists: D. Salle, R. Longo, K. Haring, J. Borofsky, J. Schnabel, JM Basquiat. 2.5 Contemporary trend lines. In the last two decades of the 20th century. some of the protagonists of abstract expressionism, pop art and funk art (➔ # 10132;) continued to establish themselves with renewed inventiveness, while between the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. conceptual research is once again establishing itself, and photography, film and video, advanced technologies and net art take on a leading role. An attempt emerges to redefine the role of art in relation to a reality dominated by mass communication and electronic information, or in relation to issues of political and social commitment. The values ​​linked to applied art and traditionally feminine works (ceramics, weaving, embroidery, etc.), exponents of the pattern and decoration movement (J. Kozloff, M. Schapiro) recover ; the sculptors L. Benglis, M. Kelly, A. Mendieta, A. Saar tackle the issues of the condition of women with a conceptual approach. New expressive research experimented with J. Holzer (light and sound installations, use of the telematic network), B. Kruger, C. Sherman, C. Opie. In the field of video art, alongside established artists such as NJ Paik and B. Viola, M. Kelley, T. Oursler, J. Crandall, D. Thater emerge among others. Numerous artists experimenting with the use of the Internet (M. America, L. Baldwin, B. Benjamin, K. Goldberg, A. Weintraub etc.). In painting and sculpture artists such as J. Shapiro, P. Halley, L. Pittman, J. Koons, A. Aycock assert themselves; in the installation A. Hamilton; J. Turrell works with light on environmental works; J. Baldessari, D. Graham, E. Ruscha, J. Borofsky pursue the integration between sculpture, installation, performance, photography. ● In the architectural field, from the second post-war period, despite the creation of products of a high formal level, the great creative drive given by European architects seems to have frozen. At the same time, interventions in the urban fabric are recorded on such a complex scale as to presuppose large studies animated by coordinated planning, with staff of technicians and operators called to solve the organizational problems raised by large construction companies: to these large studies, SOM, TAC etc.., we owe much of the current face of American cities. The overcoming of rationalist models or rigid stereometries derived from the lesson of Mies van der Rohe, K. Wachsmann, in which the concept of standard and seriality frees itself from a mere principle of economic productivism. The morphological rigor of the International Style is challenged when P. Johnson (1958) elaborates the first version of the project for the Lincoln Center. Similarly, the manner of Mies van Der Rohe finds a more complex spatial and chromatic experience in E. Saarinen ‘s General Motors building (1956, Warren, Michigan). But the clearest alternative is with the work of L. Kahn; next to him, in the absolute priority granted to the structural element, we must remember P. Rudolph. In the line of research oriented towards an architectural renaissance, the following should be mentioned: IM Pei, E. Mitchell and R. Giurgola, V. Lundy, J. Johansen, K. Roche, B. Goldberg, C. Pelli, CF Murphy. A line of intellectual critics in which the contradictions of reality are assumed as a fact, ironic or tragic, is represented by R. Venturi, C. Moore, D. Lyndon, J. Esherick, M. Graves, J. Hejduk, P. Eisenman, R. Meier, C. Gwathmey. Alongside impressive interventions in size such as super-skyscrapers and civic and commercial centers (Twin Towers of the World trade center in New York, 1972, by M. Yamasaki, destroyed in the 2001 attack; John Hancock, 1970, and Sears Tower, 1974, of SOM, in Chicago; John Hancock of Boston, 1976, by IM Pei; Wacker Drive building in Chicago, 1983, by Kohn, Pedersen, Fox; World financial center in New York, 1981-87, by Pelli), some interesting solutions in the residential sector should be remembered (Twin parks North-East, Bronx, 1969-72, by R. Meier, or Battery park city, 1979-93, general plan of Cooper Eckstut Associated, in New York), as well as in the construction or expansion of important museums and university complexes: in Washington, Hirshhorn Museum of SOM (1974); National air and space museum, by Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum (1976); new wing of the National Gallery, by Pei (1978); High Museum in Atlanta (1983) and Getty Center in Los Angeles (1984-96) by Meier etc. At the end of the 20th century, the architecture presents a coexistence of styles inherited from the neo-modernist veins and the post-modern neoclassicisms of the 1980s; however, prominent personalities active independently, above the stylistic classifications, have been maturing, able to export their own vision of architecture even outside the American continent and able to indicate new directions of research, such as R. Venturi, FO Gehry, Meier, P. Eisenman, S. Holl, EO Moss, T. Mayne, A. Predock and M. Rotondi. The real design multinationals, the aforementioned SOM, Hellmuth Obata & Kassabaum (HOK), Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF), Murphy & Jahn, Fox & Fowle, Ellerbe Beckett Associates, have increasingly extended their scope, especially in the Far East and Central Europe. Academic institutions such as Harvard University in Cambridge, Columbia University in New York and SCI-Arc in Los Angeles have become the main driving forces of an avant-garde architectural ideology. Among the most innovative architects, who established themselves between the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, the following should also be mentioned: W. Bruder, active mainly in Arizona and Wyoming; Tod Williams & Billie Tsien, refined interpreters of ‘neomodernism’; H. Smith-Miller & L. Hawkinson. Hani Rashid & Lise Anne Couture (Asymptote) and G. Lynn are among the designers, active in the main US universities,

United States Arts and Architecture From the 20th Century to the Beginning of the 21st Century

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