Paper #2 Assignment

4pp, due Thursday, October 21st. Please include a works cited page, and please bring two copies to class on the due date.

Using provocative quotes and ideas gathered from course readings in addition to readings of artworks, please prepare an analytic essay that addresses one of the following questions, all of which are pulled from the blogged questions about Duchamp and Abstract Expressionism. In this essay, I would like you to practice integrating complex theoretical ideas (about how both genres of art and specific artworks respond to or reflect upon society, politics, history, etc) with close readings of artworks. To that end, you may choose to use one or several artworks as your primary example(s), and you may feel free to make a comparative study of artworks across genres using multiple texts from the course reader. For example, you might discuss the legacy of futurism in Duchamp’s work or compare and contrast Duchamp and Pollock to approach the role of gesture in Abstract Expressionism. When you select an artwork or artworks, please use one(s) shown in the text(s).

Questions:
1. While reading for a different class, I came across the quote "A wise man defined the purpose of art as 'making the phenomenon strange.' Things become so familiar that we no longer perceive them at all. Art, however, can take ordinary phenomena out of the background of existence and into the foreground of consideration." How can this quote be applied to Duchamp? What phenomena did he make us perceive that we otherwise may not have noticed?
2. Each artistic movement seems to grow out of a larger historical context, such as war, in the case if Abstract Expressionism. How did the war affect Abstract Expressionism and how does this compare to previous artistic movements in their respective historical context?
3. How does one go about analyzing abstract art when it is described as "gestural" and has more to do with the process or act of painting rather than its meaning?
4. What makes Duchamp’s use of utilitarian objects art? Why is Duchamp’s indifference and mockery of traditional sculptures interpreted as artwork by critics?
5. Duchamp isn't really an artist in a traditional sense that he uses skills of the hand to paint on the canvas. After all, it seems like all he really had to do was experiment with putting different objects together. But he is an artist in a sense that he started a revolutionary movement in art. So does that make Duchamp an artist, or a thinker?
6. For my own clarification, what exactly is the importance of myths and symbols to abstract expressionism? Everitt states “[Pollock’s] pictures illustrate, in a partly automatist style, primitive myths…” (Everitt 263) how does Pollock demonstrate these primitive myths? What elements from his artwork show this?
7. In “Abstract Expressionism” Anthony Everitt, states that Alan Davie commented “that ‘the artist was the first magician and the first spiritual leader and indeed today must take the role of arch-priest of the spiritualism’” (Everitt 302). In what ways does Duchamp try to reject this statement? Why does Duchamp do this, what is his ultimate goal?
8. Everitt mentions Pollock's interest in Carl Jung and the "primitive symbols and semi-conscious patterns of automatism", is there a relationship between psychologist's theories of the unconscious mind and abstract expressionist's attempt to capture more primitive art?
9. Abstract art, more than any other style of art that preceded it, seems very personal to the artist who created it. Do people appreciate the art because they understand the artist's intentions, or is art only what we viewers make of it? When you look at many of the featured paintings in "Abstract Expressionism," what do you really see and do you think you understand the artist's intentions? Does the value of art depreciate when it becomes inaccessible to the general public, or is it the opposite?
10. If Duchamp's Fountain and other pieces like it were intended as a "screw you" statement, to be shocking and ironically placed on a pedestal, now that such art pieces are appreciated, accepted, and non-ironically placed on a pedestal, do they still retain their artistic value?
11. Why did abstract expressionist painters produce so many seemingly repetitive pieces of art (such as Rothko's rectangles, Pollock's drip paintings, etc.)?

When you are beginning to think about this essay, you may approach the question “straight”, and simply weave the line of thinking from the blog post into your own motivating thesis/question. Or, you may ultimately decide to set yourself against the way the question from the blog is conceived and/or articulated—that is, you may find that the question you’re discussing misses a crucial point that would enable it to be posed or answered in a more productive way. If this is the case, don’t become grouchy or “argumentative” in a colloquial sense. Rather, set yourself to the task 1) of reformulating the question and 2)of incorporating into your paper an analysis of how you might answer the blog post as if it were a counterargument to your own.