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Modernisms 1900-1980
Course: Modernisms 1900-1980 > Unit 9
Lesson 2: New York School- The Impact of Abstract Expressionism
- Sari Dienes, Star Circle
- Jasper Johns, Flag
- Johns, White Flag
- Robert Rauschenberg, Erased de Kooning Drawing
- Robert Rauschenberg, Canyon
- Robert Rauschenberg, Bed
- Robert Rauschenberg, Signs
- Ed Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz Useful Art #5: The Western Hotel, 1992
- Ad Reinhardt, Abstract Painting
- Ad Reinhardt
- The Painting Techniques of Ad Reinhardt
- Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains and Sea
- Helen Frankenthaler, The Bay
- Frankenthaler's The Bay
- Frank Stella, The Marriage of Reason and Squalor
- “Protractor, Variation I” by Frank Stella
- New York School (quiz)
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Sari Dienes, Star Circle
Sari Dienes' "Star Circle" transforms a manhole cover into a striking print. Dienes' innovative approach highlights the unexpected beauty in everyday objects, challenging our perception of art. Created by Smarthistory.
Video transcript
(jazzy music) - [Steven] We're in the modern
and contemporary galleries of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and we're looking at a work of art by an artist whose name is Sari Dienes, called "Star Circle." And we think at least elements of it date to 1953, maybe 1955, but I hesitate to call this a painting because it's way too complicated. I'm not sure what it is. - [Sarah] It's somewhere
between an assemblage, a relief sculpture and a painting. And I think just that
description right there tells you how experimental
Sari Dienes was as an artist. She loved to try out new materials, sometimes even as they were being made. So she loved new kinds of paper. She was working with material
that was very similar to Tyvek already in the
1950s to make rubbings of subway grates and manhole covers. And then she was also interested in making plaster casts of things. And so what you're seeing here as the focal point of this work is a plaster cast of a manhole cover. - [Steven] And she would've gone onto the streets of Manhattan and created art from the sidewalk that she was walking across, the subway grates that you step on, the manhole covers that you overlook. This industrial world became
the material for her artwork. - [Sarah] She was out in
the middle of the night. We know that Jasper Johns
was helping hold these down in the middle of the street sometimes in the middle of the night when she could trust that there wouldn't
be too much traffic. And so the plaster casts are like that. She is making a cast of the manhole cover and then she's making
a positive from that. - [Steven] But we should say that this is long before Jasper Johns became one of the most significant artists of the second half of the 20th Century. - [Sarah] Jasper Johns
and Robert Rauschenberg were really just beginning
and I believe, in fact, that they met in her studio. It was an exciting place to be because she was so experimental
and she was so open to different ideas and
different uses of materials. So both artists were inspired by some of the things she
was doing with materials. - [Steven] Well, it's impossible
for me to look at this work without being reminded
of Johns' later work, his interest in creating broad, rough fields of battleship gray. - [Sarah] It's almost as if
she's recreated the street. I'm not sure that it's
supposed to be that literal, but she has taken the
cast of the manhole cover and then she has roughly affixed it to this surface of plaster that is rough, and that she's then painted gray. It feels almost like asphalt. And then she's stenciled on top of it. - [Steven] I think it's hard
to remember just how radical it must have been in the mid
20th Century to create art, that is to create beauty,
out of everyday materials, out of the things that we
step on, that we overlook. But while she was open
to the world around her, I'm not sure how open
the world was to her. And I think especially because
of the critical neglect that surrounds her work,
it's wonderful to see her up on the walls here. - [Sarah] I think that one of the areas, at least that I would like to explore as far as future scholarship is the show that Jasper Johns and Robert
Rauschenberg did of her work in 1955 in the Bonwit Teller windows. This was this lesser-known
story in art history where artists like Andy
Warhol, before him Dali, and then Johns and Rauschenberg were using the Bonwit Teller windows as a experimental gallery space where they were making display windows that were the background for fashion for the products that
Bonwit Teller was featuring, but my understanding is
they had pretty free reign on the kinds of work
that they were showing behind those mannequins
and those displays. I think it gives us a
sense of the high regard they held for Sari
Dienes that in that year they gave her an entire show
of her subway grate rubbings and manhole covers and
some of her plaster casts. - [Steven] Bonwit Teller was a
very upscale fashion retailer on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. And so, although it was a store, it was a very prestigious space. - [Sarah] So we know that Sari was making these plaster casts of
manhole covers by 1953. So that's our start date. But we also know that the entire work is mounted onto a piece of foam-core, and we believe it's a very
early version of foam-core. And that would be so
fitting for Sari Dienes because she loved new materials. So we think that this piece
was made between 1953 and '59. We don't know exactly
when it all got assembled and that was just very
much part of her process. She would have things in her studio and she might assemble them later, but the rough dates are 1953 to 1959. (jazzy music)