Art and politics By: Edie Howell

QUIZZZZZZZZZZ Match the following works to the correct artist: 1. The Portable War Memorial            A. Martha Rosler 2. Red Stripe Kitchen                           B. Sol Lewitt 3. American Peoples Series                  C. Hans Haake 4. News                                              D. Edward Kienholz 5. Wall Drawing                                  E. Faith Ringold 

Edward kienholz, the portable war memorial Kienholz's early art work was made up of materials he found on the streets of Los Angeles.  Later he began to do tableau art.  It focused on a scene or grouping from real life.   Kienholz constructed The Portable War Memorial in 1968.  The art took up the size of an entire art gallery.  It was unique because he constructed it while a war was going on.  His purpose was to give the American a picture that would remind them that while a war was going on they were able to be at home safe, eating hotdogs and drinking cokes.  His purpose was to remind the people of the reality of war.

Martha Rosler, Red Stripe Kitchen Rosler was an activist for feminist and antiwar movements.  She began making photomontages.  This was the art of using magazines and newspapers and rearranging pieces of them into new works.  She did this to represent women as mainstream media did.  She wanted to show the social criticism against women.   In 1967 Rosler began a series titled "House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home."  The photomontage depicted a beautiful home and in the background there are soldiers.  The point was how Americans can live at peace in American homes but abroad soliders are in the homes of others.  Rosler published her controversial photomontages in underground newspapers.  She was convinced the war was brutal and unjust.  

Faith Ringgold, American Peoples Series #20: Die, 1967 Ringgold painted a series of 20 paintings.  Each work showed a confrontation between white and black Americans.  Later she painted on unstretched canvas called thangkas, then to quilted fabric.  She is best known for the art form that she created.  In it she arranged fabric fragments around the edges of unstretched paintings.  She added stories around the edges.     Ringgold was an activist.  She led demonstrations against the exclusion of women and people of color from art exhibits in the seventy's.   One of her final works was #20 Die:  In this painting Ringgold shows a race riot like the one that actually took place in 1967.  She has recently been recognized in the National Museum of Women in the Arts.  Her work has helped the art of Black Americans to be recognized.  

Ad Reinhardt, Abstract Painting 1960-61 Early in his career Reinhardt painted with three or four colors.  These colors were in biomorphic forms and in harmonious arrangements.  Later he was influenced by jazz music which caused him to move to brighter, louder colors.  He did continue to use only abstract art.  He began to pursue monochromatic abstraction around 1953.  He wanted to create an art that could stand alone and was not in response to its surroundings.  

Donald judd, untitled (stack), 1967   Donald Judd created abstract works based on landscapes and then shifted toward a more geometric abstraction.  He created in 1961a relief painting that had curved top and bottom edges, extending the painting out into space and away from the wall. By 1962, he abandoned painting all together and began making three-dimensional, geometric objects either hung on the wall or placed on the floor. He is almost as well known for the spaces he created for his work as for the works themselves.     Untitled (Stack) consists of twelve units, each of which measures nine by forty by thirty-one inches, installed on a wall vertically with nine inches of space separating each unit. It resembles a sequence of thick shelves that extend upward to the ceiling at even intervals. Judd draws his wok out of three dimensions and subordinates his objects to the demands of architecture. The viewer considers his or her body in space in relation to the object.

Sol lewitt, wall drawing 1, 1968   LeWitt's anti-subjective approach to art-making contrasted sharply with that of most Abstract Expressionist painters, who saw the canvas as an arena for the exploration of ethnical, spiritual, and existential concerns that were both personal and universal. LeWitt began making what he called "modular structures". Their pristine whiteness made them appear abstract. His structures had been based on predetermined elements that could be arranged and re-arranged to create a variety of works; his wall drawing operated on a similar principle, carried out according to rules the artist defined in advance. His desire was to bridge the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and architecture.

Joseph kosuth, one and three chairs, 1965   Kosuth developed a cerebral, philosophical approach to art-making, which he deepened through a more rigorous study of anthropology and philosophy. He cites Ad Reinhart's writings as an important precedent for his own, finding resonance with Reinhart's conviction that "art is art-as-art and everything else is everything else.   One of Kosuth's works was the "One and Three Chairs". It consisted of a wooden folding chair, a mounted photo of a chair, and a mounted photograph of the definition of chair. This posed many questions. The everyday chair becomes a different kind of object simply by being entered by the artist into a specific context , namely the art exhibition. Joseph kosuth, one and three chairs, 1965

Ed ruscha, every building on the sunset strip, 1966   Ruscha made Pop-style paintings that feature a single word executed in a cartoonish style against a fairly minimal background. He saw these paintings as transformative. He also made paintings of gas stations reduced to their bare geometric state and depicted at an exaggerated angle reminiscent of Hollywood films, in which buildings were shot from below to make them look imposing and strange.   Though Ruscha has perhaps ironically denied the influence of L.A. on his work "Every Building on the Sunset Strip" fully engages L.A.'s culture. Ed ruscha, every building on the sunset strip, 1966

Hans haake, news, 1969   Haake actively resists being photographed and has given few interviews , believing, as a true Conceptualist, that his work should stand on its own, and that he, as an artist, should not be an object of interest. Some of his early works also borrowed from minimalism.   Haake's 1969 work "News" originally consisted of a teleprinter connected to a live feed of political and economic news transmitted from wire services commonly employed by newsrooms around the world. Haake aimed to bring the outside world directly into the gallery through a constantly spooling machine that recorded events as they happened. What Haake was formulating out of his reflections on Minimal and Conceptual art would eventually develop into a robust genre of artistic practice that has been labeled "institutional critique."