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Modernisms 1900-1980
Course: Modernisms 1900-1980 > Unit 9
Lesson 1: Abstract Expressionism- Abstract Expressionism, an introduction
- Finding meaning in abstraction
- Norman Lewis, Untitled
- de Kooning, Woman I
- How to paint like Willem de Kooning
- How to paint like Willem de Kooning - Part 2
- Willem de Kooning, Woman, I (from MoMA)
- Barnett Newman
- Newman's Onement I, 1948
- The Painting Techniques of Barnett Newman
- Restoring Rothko
- Why is that important? Looking at Jackson Pollock
- Representation and abstraction: Millais's Ophelia and Newman's Vir Heroicus Sublimis
- The Case For Mark Rothko
- Rothko, No. 210/No. 211 (Orange)
- Mark Rothko's No. 3/No. 13
- The Painting Techniques of Mark Rothko
- The Painting Techniques of Jackson Pollock
- The Case for Jackson Pollock
- Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)
- Jackson Pollock, Mural
- Paint Application Studies of Jackson Pollock's Mural
- "One: Number 31, 1950" by Jackson Pollock, 1950 | MoMA Education
- Lee Krasner, Untitled
- Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 57
- Franz Kline
- The Painting Techniques of Franz Kline
- Hedda Sterne, Number 3—1957
- "Low Water” by Joan Mitchell
- Beauford Delaney's portrait of Marian Anderson
- Abstract Expressionism
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Representation and abstraction: Millais's Ophelia and Newman's Vir Heroicus Sublimis
Representation & Abstraction: Looking at Millais and Newman John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851-2 (Tate Britain) and Barnett Newman, Vir Heroicus Sublimus, 1950-51 (MoMA) A conversation with Sal Khan, Beth Harris & Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris, Steven Zucker, and Sal Khan.
Want to join the conversation?
- With the Vir Heroicus Sublimis are we looking at a strict 2 dimensional painting? When I first looked at it, it seemed to me this was something that was put together with 3 dimensional shapes, a piece of canvas placed in front of another canvas. However, after hearing the discussion it sounds like the impression of dimensionality is something that was created by the artist...(29 votes)
- The speakers say that the Millais is an illusion and that the Newman is not. Then they go on to talk about how Newman created an illusion of differing depths with those vertical lines. So it is confusing.(1 vote)
- I have absolutely no idea where did they see all that they said about the red painting. I only say a red gigantic painting with 4 lines, two almost imperceptible and two others one cream and the other black. Where do they see all the other stuff?(7 votes)
- i like the Ophelia it is more beautiful then the red wall.(7 votes)
- Is the reason that this painting is called "vir heroicus sublimis" what Steven said at the end? That the artist was brave enough to break with such a long tradition of representational art? or are there other explanations for that title?(5 votes)
- well, "vir heroicus sublimus" means man, heroic and sublime in latin, so maybe he was trying to represent that in a gigantic painting that would awe everyone because of it's size, But i think in cases like these you can kind of explain it or think about it in any way you want since it is sort of open to interpretation.(3 votes)
- At the five minute mark the speakers say that the Newman is a "rupture". They go on to talk about it as a "Fundamental break". They call it "brave" and "heroic". But isn't this partly because of the Millais that has been chosen to compare it to? Would the Newman be as "up-ending" if it was being compared to expanses of Islamic Mosaic, or the gold leaf/mosaic backgrounds of Byzantine art, or the expanses of monochromatic spaces in Japanese Edo panels, or even the fabric back drop of Van Der Weyden's Crucifixion?(6 votes)
- Couldn't this stuff about "are for itself"" be applied to all patterns and shapes? Temples in ancient times could have had patterns which were not trying to depict nature and were there for the sake of themselves. But the speaker acts like no one did this until the 1950s...(4 votes)
- Perhaps it was because of the abstract art movement that was happening at that time, and this was the first most people were introduced abstract art to within modern times.(2 votes)
- it looks so real I want to be an artist and I really wonder who long it took them to make this look so real but into a certain way to make it look like a real girl was in there and still not real like an elusion(3 votes)
- @, and 2:09https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-history/art-history-1907-1960-age-of-global-conflict/big-questions-modern-contemporary-art/v/art---context @, Sal said, "I can imagine how that would look nice above my sofa." Sal, how many pieces of art do you have over your sofa? 0:46(3 votes)
- Newman's Vir Heroicus Sublimis exemplifies what art is not. And the commentators are trying to look intelligent by justifying it. There is nothing there, besides a basic painting that even a child wouldn't dare to do, because there is nothing there, but the so-called "experts" will defend it to look intelligent and smart.
Music is not noise. That painting in music form would be noise. The Millais's Ophelia is something, it produces a sensation, a feeling, there is something there. While the other is just the complete lack of talent to produce something. Yes, it is red and contains some lines.... end of story. There is nothing more to it other than that.
Art is subjective but needs to represent something. Joan Miró might look basic but there is more to it, other than a red canvas with two or three lines, that doesn't represent anything.(3 votes)- This is yet another valuable and valid comment, but I wonder why you placed it in the spot for questions.(1 vote)
- Now, I have the impression that there is some contradiction.
Correct me, if I'm wrong.
Beth Harris () speaking first said that painting became tangled up with the expectations of people and strict rules through art with Raphael. In other words they tried to make sense and find its own internal logic right? 0:34
Then Steven Zucker atsays painting has never been that way. 6:07
He should have been able to clarify a bit further but as the statement stands, I think it's wrong or at least confusing. At least for some time it was seen that way.
Steven Zucker: "Music: it's about tone. It's about rhythm. It's about its own internal logic. Painting had never been that."
I believe that statement is wrong.
Like art, rules can be applied, but they don't have to. Jazz can follow a more unclear pattern, regarding all of the points mentioned (Rhythm, Tone) just as much as the Vir Heroicus Sublimus. There are certain rules, but just as much as in paintings they can and will be broken.
Listen to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Intt62GyqxE
This is also music, you might not like it.
Is it the music's problem or yours? You can also say it follows certain rules to a certain degree but not necessarily.
It's wrong to break down music to a bunch of rules for people to sleep well at night, just because they are afraid of its depth. This is why they want to have some sort of control. They are scared of the world and its complexity.
I am speaking as a musician, designer and obviously as a critic.(2 votes)- The point that I was making, that you seem to have missed, was that painting had never been abstract in the way that music is.(3 votes)
Video transcript
DR. BETH HARRIS: Two of
my favorite paintings, John Everett Millais' Ophelia,
a Pre-Raphaelite painting. SAL KHAN: What do you
mean by Pre-Raphaelite? DR. BETH HARRIS: Well,
the Pre-Raphaelites were a group of artists
in the 1850s in England. Actually they formed
a group in 1848. And their goal was to challenge
the official ideas of art and what it should be. SAL KHAN: They were
Pre-Raphaelite, but Raphael was a Renaissance
artist who really made things exact, and very technical, and-- DR. BETH HARRIS: Raphael
was a Renaissance artist who was revered in
the Victorian era. But by then, they were so
used to looking at Raphael and painting like
Raphael, they so admired him, that it had become
a kind of formula for painting. And the Pre-Raphaelites
said, we want to go back to look at
the art before Raphael because we've descended
into a formula, and we've lost our
real connection to looking and
observing the world. And so they painted directly
from looking closely at nature. They really fit with
these ideas that we've been talking about
of how we value art that challenges
the establishment. SAL KHAN: And I definitely
appreciate that. What this piece does is
it still is aesthetically beautiful in a
traditional sense. And you also look at
it and say, well, there was definitely skill there. I can't just show up at a
canvas and produce something like that. DR. BETH HARRIS:
Yeah, the painting is incredibly absorbing. I mean, in person, it's
astoundingly beautiful. The colors are rich and deep. You can look at how
the artist painted every flower, every blade
of grass, every reed. So that idea of
technical skill-- SAL KHAN: And even the
choice of subject is very-- DR. BETH HARRIS: Beautiful. SAL KHAN: Beautiful. DR. BETH HARRIS: Yeah,
the subject and the way it's painted are both beautiful. And the way it's painted
shows great technical skill. SAL KHAN: So for
this one, I get it on a bunch of different levels. It challenged people. It was kind of a
pivotal piece of art. And it is beautiful and
technically sophisticated. What are we looking on
the right-hand side? DR. BETH HARRIS: Barnett
Newman's Vir Heroicus Sublimus. SAL KHAN: This is kind of the
classic when people look at it. And they say, well, you
know, that looks nice. It might look nice
above my sofa. But there's a big
difference here where most people would look
at the left-hand side and say, geez, it's pivotal, challenging,
and very technically and beautiful and all. While on the right, it's like,
well, I think I could do that. In fact, you see on these home
improvement shows, people say, oh, we need a piece of artwork. And literally they'll
produce something that looks not too
different than that in a little amount of time. DR. BETH HARRIS: Absolutely, so
it's not about technical skill at all. But for me, what the
Newman asks me to do is something that I really
value in my experience of art. What it does is it
concentrates my attention. First of all, it's really big. And so when you're in its space,
you feel really overcome by it. You feel it kind of
calling out to you. And so you're kind
of drawn to it. And you walk up
close, and it almost starts to become your world. The color is really intense. What happens to me when I'm in
the presence of the painting is that I start to notice
the color and its effect on me and the way that
colors remind me of feelings. SAL KHAN: And I
guess the cynical-- and there are people
who look at that and say, oh, I can
appreciate that. It's a big aesthetic. It's a big red thing
with some lines in it. But it's not-- someone
else could have done it, or someone could do it now. And so that's not why--
what you just described, you are appreciating
the aesthetics of it. And it is this huge
painting, and I can see that. But it's more that he was
the first to kind of-- DR. BETH HARRIS: It actually
is a lot more complicated than it looks. And so it draws us into it. And then we start
looking at the lines, we notice that they go
from the top to the bottom, that he created the
lines in different ways, that they have
different qualities. These are hard
things to tell when we're looking at
the reproduction. It draws us in, and I find
myself paying attention in a way that I don't
normally in my everyday world. And I really appreciate that
for that moment in the museum, I'm taken out of my everyday
world of being distracted and surrounded by a million
different things that I hardly notice. And I'm being asked to
really visually focus. SAL KHAN: I actually appreciate
it in a very similar-- I've actually never
visited it in person. But I can somewhat
imagine on a larger scale, especially if you go up close
and you see the detail there. But there does seem to
be a fundamental division between what-- I mean,
they're both aesthetically captivating and interesting. The painting on
the left, I think you go across culture, really
almost any time in history, and you would have gotten
some appreciation for it. While the painting on
the right, they also would say, well, that's
an interesting way to paint a wall or something. But they wouldn't put
them in the same category. Is that fair to say? DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: I think that
what you're saying is fair. There is a real rupture here. The image on the left
is still very much a part of a history
of art making that has to do with
representation and depiction. And I think that what we're
looking at on the right is a fundamental break. The painting on the left
was a fundamental break in its own day, this
Pre-Raphaelite idea. SAL KHAN: It was more
of a break in style, though, but not really
hitting what is art. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: That's right. It is pure abstraction. Barnett Newman was an
abstract expressionist. He belonged to a
group of artists that were thinking
about painting in very different ways. They were asking
whether or not art had to be something
other than what it was. In other words, if
you look at Ophelia, you see this woman
who's drowning, who's submerged in this
stream, and it is beautiful. But in a sense, it's a lie. This is colored
paste on canvas that is trying to represent
something that it's not. It's a falsehood. It's an illusion. The image on the
right is saying, can we be true to the
materiality of our art and still create something
that is profound? So think about
music for a moment. In music, we do not
require a symphony to represent a landscape. It might, and certain
symphonies will do that. But music has taken on its own-- SAL KHAN: Or a human voice. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: That's right. But music has taken
on its own terms. Music is about tone. It's about rhythm. It's about its own
internal logic. Painting had never been that. DR. BETH HARRIS: And
you could say, in fact, that the Millais distracts us. SAL KHAN: Right. DR. BETH HARRIS:
From those things that Steven is referring to,
to color, to shapes, to lines. SAL KHAN: The paint itself. DR. BETH HARRIS: Yeah. In a way, what the Newman is
doing is concentrating that. And look at it. Don't be distracted by
all of these other things. SAL KHAN: Yeah, I'm
not trying to be a scene out of Shakespeare. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: But can
I still be as profound? Can I still be in fact
as emotionally powerful? And so here an artist is
saying, you know what? A canvas is two-dimensional. I am going to create
something that seems at least at first
blush to be absolutely flat. But then look at those lines. How do they occupy space? Do they begin to create
an illusion of space in a subtle way? Beth mentioned just a
moment ago that the lines moved from the
top to the bottom. And so they do measure actually
the size of the canvas. In that way, announce
the two-dimensionality of the canvas. But at the same time,
they're different tones, and they're different
qualities of density. And they recede or
they project forward. DR. BETH HARRIS: So let me
ask you, do one of those lines move back? Does one come forward? SAL KHAN: No, it is interesting. It kind of has this very core
primitive dimensionality to it, and you start to see-- I never
thought of it that way before. You're right. What's on the left is a lie. It's something trying to
be something that it's not, while on the right, it literally
is, look, this is the painting. The painting is what
you are trying to see. It's not trying to be a TV
set for the rest of reality. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
And so there is a kind of fundamental truth
to the painting on the right that was upending 2,000
years of representation-- SAL KHAN: Or longer, probably. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Absolutely. SAL KHAN: And with
cave paintings. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
That's exactly right. One could say 38,000
years of tradition. And so how radical is that? How brave is that? How heroic is that?