Understanding terminology that describes twentieth and twenty-first-century 2D art - AP Art History

The abstract expressionists were a group of artists in post-World War II New York City who created large canvases of abstract forms with a focus on emotional elements. The artists actually used a variety of styles and approaches, from Jackson Pollack's drip paintings to the figural shapes of Willem de Kooning and Paul Klee and the color forms of Clyfford Still and Mark Rothko. The use of abstract painting was a profound departure in American art, in particular from the significant realism of artists such as Edward Hopper.

Roy Lichtenstein became famous in the 1960s through a series of large canvasses that were directly copied from comic books. Using comic book images as inspiration, Lichtenstein also applied a technique known as Ben-Day Dots, the stenciling of small dots that colored comic books in the era. Lichtenstein would continue to use the technique in his later career, when he was no longer directly adapting images from comic books.

Marcel Duchamp was a member of the global Dada movement, a school of artists from Zurich, Paris, Cologne, Berlin, and New York between 1916 and 1925. Kahlo, Ernst, and Miró were all members of the Surrealist movement, which occurred during the same era and employed a mixture of psychoanalysis, mysticism, and symbolism to reveal unconscious thoughts.

"Provenance" is exclusive to art, whereas "ancestry" applies to people and "record" is less specific; provenance is essential to prove the legitimacy and authenticity of both modern and older paintings. (This question is not limited to the scope of twentieth and twenty-first century art, but has arguably become more important in this period.)

Art Nouveau was an art style that surged to popularity in Europe and the US during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its forms and figures could be described as natural, organic, or flowing. Its general style was a very different from the bold, geometrical shapes of its successor, the Art Deco style.

Surrealism was inspired by the work of pioneering psychologists like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, and used odd, dreamlike imagery in realistic lines and shapes. Its most famous figure was Salvador Dalí, who was the archetypical surrealist. Dali's painting often featured familiar images juxtaposed with strange objects in barren and off-putting landscapes.

A collage is constructed not as one image, but by compiling a variety of images into one larger piece. This can be done for a variety of reasons, including ironic juxtaposition, social commentary, or refreshing traditional imagery. Collages became more widely used in the twentieth century as various forms of media were brought into widespread use.

Jackson Pollack began his career as an expressionist painter, using representative shapes and traditional methods. Beginning in the late 40s, however, Pollack began using the technique of "drip painting," which involved laying the canvas on the floor and splattering liquid paint on it from above. This produced paintings that were extremely abstract, but vivid and emotional, which garnered Pollack worldwide acclaim.

The technique of screen printing involves taking a stamp, covering it with cotton mesh, and inking the stamp onto a canvas to produce an exact image from the stamp. The technique, first developed in the early twentieth century, allows an artist to reproduce the same image repetitively on different pieces of art. This ability was used by Pop Artists like Andy Warhol to create similar images onto canvases which he then painted in a variety of colors to make similar, yet highly diverse, series of images.

Cubism, the style of art both these paintings fall under, sought to reimagine and redefine art by exploring geometric shapes and mathematical concepts. In order to reimagine the very concept of painting, cubists approached traditional styles of art in new ways. Each of these paintings is a portrait, deconstructed. The painting on the left is of a poet, (Le Poéte) by Pablo Picasso. The painting on the right is a portrait of Picasso by Juan Gris.

Figure 1: Le Poéte by Pablo Picasso (1911)

Figure 2: Portrait of Pablo Picasso by Juan Gris (1912)

A color photographic negative is still black and white, and the color is only brought to the photograph in the development process. Layers of red, green, and blue all filter into particular shades of gray to determine color in traditional color photography. Thus, a photographer can imbue the photo in slightly different ways by developing a photograph in a particular manner.

Chuck Close's painting method begins with photographs, typically portraits, which he then copies onto huge, wall-size canvases. Close's intial works in the late 1960s and 1970s were extremely realistic, looking like photographs from across a room. As Close kept changing his method, he still worked from photographs, but would add more abstract painting methods to produce his images.

Drip painting is most closely associated with the twentieth-century American painter Jackson Pollock, whose signature works involved Pollock splattering, splashing, and slowly dripping paint directly onto canvasses that were laid on the ground. The technique was used almost contemporaneously by the artist Janet Sobel, and has been consistently used by a small cadre of artists from the 1950s to the present.

Ansel Adams is well known for two related things: his sweeping black and white photographs of the American West and his many books and classes teaching photography. Most significant in relation to the latter is his development of the "Zone System." The Zone System set down specific parameters to achieve the optimal light, focus, and composition in the development of the film.

The Marilyn Diptych was created shortly after Marilyn Monroe's death in 1962. In order to create the work, Andy Warhol used only one publicity still of the actress, and repeated the image fifty times. Warhol used silk-screening, a process where a wooden stencil pushes ink-covered mesh onto a medium, to repeat the image. The left side of the diptych is painted over in bright, pastel colors, while the right side features only black and white images of the actress.

The "Ashcan School" referred to a loosely connected group of artists in the early twentieth century in Philadelphia and New York. John Sloan, Everett Henri, and George Luks were among the prominent artists associated with the movement. The movement, while fairly loosely associated, was largely united through a devotion to presenting scenes of urban life in a gritty, realistic manner.

The main subject of the painting is placed in front of a series of canvases, indicating the painting's setting is in an artist's studio. Being placed somewhat easily into such a setting indicates that the subject is an artist, with the exact nature of those canvases looking like the artist's work, indicating a self-portrait. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner frequently returned to self-portraits throughout his career, often with female models placed with him.

Image is in the public domain, accessed through Wikipedia Media Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kirchner\_-\_Selbstbildnis\_als\_Soldat.jpg

Silkscreen printing is an old form of printing, but received a boost in the mid-twentieth century when advances in more quickly placing ink onto a canvas became possible. The artist who most enthusiastically adopted the method was Andy Warhol. Silkscreen printing allowed Warhol to quickly copy multiple images in different, usually bright, colors on one canvas. This very effect is captured by the dozens of images of Marilyn Monroe that Warhol printed in his Marilyn Diptych of 1962.

Cubism is typically involves an abstract representation of a subject into various geometric shapes, each from a different perspective.

Image is in the public domain, accessed through Wikipedia Media Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1913\_Popova\_Das\_Modell\_anagoria.JPG