The Visual Arts at Mid-Century

Photography

Ansel Adams The Zone System – divides the range of tones into ten zones ranging from Zone 0 (pure black) to Zone IX (pure white) Assists in printing black and white photos to emphasize detail

Ansel Adams

Painting

Pablo Picasso Guernica 1937, Oil on Canvas

Jackson Pollock American Action Paintings “The modern painter cannot express his age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture. Each age finds its own technique.”

Jackson Pollack Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist) 1950, Oil, enamel, and aluminum on canvas

Mark Rothko Russian Jew who came to America Color Field Painting Best viewed 18 inches away “The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.” Killed himself Mark Rothko Untitled 1960, Oil on canvas

Mark Rothko Black on Maroon 1958, Oil on canvas

Mark Rothko Black on Maroon 1959, Oil on canvas

Edward Hopper Nighthawks 1942, Oil on canvas

Francis Bacon, Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1953, Oil on canvas

Sculpture

Alberto Giacometti City Square 1948, Bronze

George Segal Bus Riders 1962 Plaster, cotton gauze, steel, wood and vinyl

Architecture

Eero Saarinen Trans World Airlines Terminal, Kennedy Airport, New York 1962

Frank Lloyd Wright The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Frank Lloyd Wright The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum interior

Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe Seagram Building, New York