Walter Hopps Iconic Curator (original) (raw)

ARTH 231: Twentieth-Century Art in the United States

This course presents an array of flashpoints in the history of the art and thought of artists working in the United States as they shaped notions of artistic purpose, power, and identity from 1889 to 1989. Along the way we will consider a wide range of artistic and visual media, including painting, sculpture, dance, photography, film, video, and the graphic arts. Always we will explore the ever adaptive and catalytic work of art and artists as they engaged with, responded to, and worked to revise the wider political and social conditions of their contemporary moment. Learning Objectives • Entry into the history, art, media, and culture of the United States in the twentieth-century, including attending considerations of identity, nation, race, class, gender, and sexuality. • Cultivation of visual literacy; interdisciplinary engagement with recent and past approaches to modern and contemporary art history and visual culture. • Development of skills in critical and constructive reading and thinking; respectful interpersonal dialogue; and oral and written communication.

Marcel Duchamp: Paradoxical Promoter of His Art in the United States (1942–1960)

Networking Surrealism in the USA Agents, Artists, and the Market , 2019

Comment Marcel Duchamp a-t-il finalement cédé aux sirènes de la muséification ? Après avoir rejeté les propositions d’expositions et les hommages, retenu ses promoteurs, il a finalement accepté que son œuvre entre dans le marché de l’art aux Etats-Unis, fasse l’objet d’une salle monographique au musée de Philadelphie (1954) et enfin, il a collaboré étroitement à sa première biographie, écrite par Robert Lebel (1959). La correspondance de Marcel Duchamp avec Henri-Pierre Roché permet de dater et de renseigner le moment précis (automne 1945) où l’artiste commence à se laisser prendre au jeu de la mise en valeur de son œuvre, tandis qu’il est installé aux Etats-Unis depuis 1942. On y retrouve les noms de ceux qui jouent un rôle actif dans la promotion de son œuvre aux Etats-Unis: James Johnson Sweeney, directeur du MoMA puis du musée Guggenheim ; Sidney Janis, galeriste new-yorkais ; le couple Walter et Louise Arensberg, principaux collectionneurs de l’œuvre de Duchamp qu’ils lègueront au musée de Philadelphie; la collectionneuse et mécène Katherine Dreier, avec laquelle il avait déjà co-fondé la Société Anonyme en 1920 et dans une moindre mesure, le galeriste californien William Copley et les artistes Hans Richter, Maria Martins et Isabelle Waldberg. C’est avec beaucoup de discernement que Marcel Duchamp a choisi ses promoteurs et contribué à sa renommée outre atlantique, bien conscient que la rareté crée la valeur.

A People's Art History of the United States: 250 Years of Activist Art and Artists Working in Social Justice Movements

A New Press People’s History Howard Zinn, Series Editor When artists join social movements, they become agitators in the best sense of the word, and their art becomes less about the individual and more about the common vision and aspirations of many. Their art challenges power and becomes part of a culture of resistance. —FROM A PEOPLE’S ART HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES Most people outside of the art world view art as something that is foreign to their experiences and everyday lives. In a brilliant new edition to The New Press People’s History series, A People’s Art History of the United States places art history squarely in the rough-and-tumble of politics, social struggles, and the fight for justice from the colonial era through the present day. In doing so, it presents a provocative and fascinating alternative art history that shows us how activist art often emerges from the streets and social movements – and communities that produced these movements – and exists far beyond the confines of traditional art institutions. Combining historical sweep with detailed examinations of individual artists and their work, author and artist Nicolas Lampert offers a groundbreaking history of radical art. With over two hundred images, A People’s Art History of the United States offers a politically charged narrative that spans the conquest of the Americas, the American Revolution, slavery and abolition, feminism, the civil rights movements, and the contemporary antiwar movement, among others. Through dramatic retellings of important historical events, readers will be introduced to key works of American radical art, including the graphic agitation of the abolitionist movement, photographs of the Lower East Side housing conditions, the Haymarket monument controversy, the WPA-Federal Art Project, Gran Fury and ACT UP NYC, the Yes Men, and more. A People’s Art History of the United States is nothing less than a vital alternative education for anyone interested in the powerful role that visual culture plays in our society – and in the ongoing culture of resistance. Pub Date: November 5, 2013 Format: hardcover / e-book Trim: 7 1/2 x 9 1/4, 366 pages ISBN: 978-1-59558-324-6 (hardback) 978-1-59558-931-6 (e-book) 200-plus black-and-white images People’s Art History of the US: Table of Contents Series forward by Howard Zinn Introduction Acknowledgments 1. Parallel Paths on the Same River 2. Visualizing a Partial Revolution 3. Liberation Graphics 4. Abolitionism as Autonomy, Activism, and Entertainment 5. The Battleground Over Public Memory 6. Photographing the Past During the Present 7. Jacob A. Riis’s Image Problem 8. Haymarket: An Embattled History of Static Monuments and Public Interventions 9. Blurring the Boundaries Between Art and Life 10. The Masses on Trial 11. Banners Designed to Break a President 12. The Lynching Crisis 13. Become the Media, circa 1930 14. Government Funded Art: The Boom and Bust Years for Public Art 15. Artists Organize 16. Artists Against War and Fascism 17. Resistance or Loyalty: The Visual Politics of Miné Okubo 18. Come Let Us Build a New World Together 19. Party Artist: Emory Douglas and the Black Panther Party 20. Protesting the Museum Industrial Complex 21. “The Living, Breathing Embodiment of a Culture Transformed” 22. Public Rituals, Media Performances, and Citywide Interventions 23. No Apologies: Asco, Performance Art, and the Chicano Civil Rights Movement 24. Art is Not Enough 25. Anti-Nuclear Street Art 26. Living Water: Sustainability Through Collaboration 27. Art Defends Art 28. Bringing the War Home 29. Impersonating Utopia and Dystopia

Opening the Borders of "American Art

American Art, 1998

Katherine E. Manthorne American Art: National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution-these are the first words that we encounter on the journal's cover. They announce a historic agenda that extends nationwide and embraces the potential participation of an immense body of readers and contributors. Such an ambitious mission raises a number of questions, two of which demand immediate attention. The first surrounds the use of the term American. So far, it has been used in these pages as a shorthand notation to refer almost exclusively to the United States, a single country of fifty states. This traditional focus often complicates efforts to address the rich art of our fellow inhabitants in the Americas. Notwithstanding this problematic concern, ongoing sociopolitical debates have reinforced our awareness of the need to account for the multiplicity of voices within the United States of America.' Yet while scholars debate the validity of the melting pot as a legitimate schema for national developments, the popular tendency has been to retain that myth. So whose story, whose art history, then, do we tell? In this climate of multicultural awareness, it is all too common to promise ever-widening representation. Since its inception, American Art has played an active role in the rethinking of the discipline on issues of race and gender and of folk art and crafts production. We can do even better in questioning the politics of art, with its unwritten edicts for inclusion and exclusion. But it requires the participation of all to redress the balances and ensure that this journal's content speaks to our shared concerns. The second point centers on the concept of art and brings us to the heart of the current controversy over elitism versus democracy in the arts. One side might be represented by the recent National Endowment for the Arts report entitled "American Canvas," which accused the arts of the "sin" of elitism. The other side finds its most prominent spokesperson in Metropolitan Museum of Art director Philippe de Montebello, who in turn has resoundingly asserted elitism as a virtue rather than a vice. Where in relation to these two endpoints should American Art situate itself? To stake its claim, we need to pay attention to what has been called the "ideology of democracy." In this world view, not only are all men and women created equal, but so too are all cultures and their artifacts.2 This democratizing tendency has been affirmed by much of the new art history and the newer move toward the study of visual culture as an alternative to more circumscribed definitions of artistic production. To date American Art has subscribed to this principle, publishing essays on the art of Winslow Homer or Jackson Pollock alongside those on Elvis Presley's Graceland and a nodding-head pink flamingo. The journal's