The F-111: An interview with James Rosenquist - Gene R. Swenson

Angelin Sanchez S.V

1124136                                        

Thesis statement: Pop art is a big commodity in New York, and one recent example at the Leo castelli gallery was literally big, in both size and price.

Paragraph 1:

Topic sentence: F-111 covered all your walls of the gallery, making four right-angle turns.

Supporting statements: It was on loan-Jewish museum-New York-will go on a European tour-modern museum-Stockholm.

Paragraph 2:

Topic sentence: Monumentality may be impossible in an age of built in obsolescence.

Supporting statements: Plane-a bitterly ironic birthday cake

Paragraph 3:

Topic sentence: It is the newest, latest fighter-bomber at this time, 1965.

Supporting statements: A man-contract-making the bomber prime force-to keep people working-an economic tool-a war machine.

Paragraph 4:

Topic sentence: He is just misguided

Supporting statements: Masses of people-snagged into a life-in the wrong direction.

Paragraph 5:

Topic sentence: I think of it like a beam at the airport.

Supporting statements: Beam-less divergent-little narrower

Paragraph 6: 

Topic sentence: The ambience of the painting is involved with people who are all going toward a similar thing.

Supporting statements: Ideas-very divergent-basic meaning

Paragraph 7:

Topic sentence: The picture is my personal reaction as an individual to the heavy ideas of mass media and communication and to other ideas that affect artists.

Supporting statements: Produce-human idea-extreme acceleration of feelings –painting-like a sacrifice

Paragraph 8:

Topic sentence: I can only hope to grasp things with the aid of a companion like an IBM machine.

Supporting statements: Inject-humanity-into the IBM machine-extreme tool

Paragraph 9: 

Topic sentence: I hope to do things in spite of my own fallacies.

Supporting statements: New ideas-new inventions

Paragraph 10:

Topic sentence: In 1961 it seemed that you were adopting techniques and styles that were not your own but those of sign painters.

Supporting statements: Professional –objective techniques-anti-style-realistic style.

Paragraph 11:

Topic sentence: My techniques for me are still anti-style.

Supporting statements: Billboard painting techniques-like Mexican muralist techniques.

Paragraph 12:

Topic sentence: When they say the Rosenquist style is very precise, may be they just know that painting style as they know it is going out of style.

Supporting statements: Painting-exposed-large scale

Paragraph 13:

Topic sentence: The picture at the world's fair had a relation to the rest of the landscape, the huge buildings, and huge pink kodacolor photographs.

Supporting statements: My idea-showing art in a gallery.

Paragraph 14:

Topic sentence: The f-111 was enclosed-four walls of a room in a gallery.

Supporting statements: Gallery-painting-a cube or a box-missing panel-Plexiglas panel-exposed to the wall

Paragraph 15:

Topic sentence: At first the missing panel was just to expose nature, i.e, the wall wherever it was hung; and from there of course would be extended the rest of the space wherever it was exhibited.

Supporting statements: Wall paper roller-artificial flowers-aluminum flowers-visual effect

Paragraph 16:

Topic sentence: I used those some wallpaper roller patterns in 1962 on a painting called silver skies.

Supporting statements: Canvas-a brittle feeling

Paragraph 17:

Topic sentence: People came into the gallery and immediately they'd say, "It's a picture of a jet plane painted on aluminum panels"

Supporting statements: Fragment of architecture-a fancy cornice

Paragraph 18:

Topic sentence: Originally the picture was an idea of fragments of vision being sold, in completed fragments; there were about fifty-one panels in the picture.

Supporting statements: Flash of static movement-a strange idea-a fragment of painting

Paragraph 19:

Topic sentence: years  ago when  a man watched traffic  going up and down sixth avenue, the traffic would be horses and there would be a pulsing, muscular motion to the speed on the avenue.

Supporting statements: Fragments of vision-representation of images

Paragraph 20:

Topic sentence: I wanted to relate the idea of the new man, the new person who appreciates things, to this painting.

Supporting statements: Parallel parts of the life

Paragraph 21:

Topic sentence: At the gallery the hurdle was presented in two perpendicular halves because it came at the corner of the room.

Supporting statements: Hurdle-triangular hurdle

Paragraph 22:

Topic sentence: The angel food cake.

Supporting statements: Foodstuff-the flags-flaming candles-f-111-giant birthday cake-horrible killer

Paragraph 23:

Topic sentence: The tire is a crown, a celebration of the town and country winter tire.

Supporting statements: Two images-similar shapes-rising up like a crown

Paragraph 24:

Topic sentence: And those three light bulbs

Supporting statements: Pink+yellow+blue-basic colors of the spectrum

Paragraph 25:

Topic sentence: The girl under the hairdryer

Supporting statements: The little girl-change of nature-in relation to the new look of the landscape

Paragraph 26:

Topic sentence: Next there is an umbrella super imposed over an atom bomb blast.

Supporting statements: Umbrella-about fallout-a beautiful view of an atomic blast

Paragraph 27:

Topic sentence: When I was working in Times Square and painting signboards the workmen joked around and said the super center of the atomic target was around Canal Street and Broadway.

Supporting statements: Rockets aimed from Russia

Paragraph 28:

Topic sentence: To me it's now a generation removed, the post-beat  young people

Supporting statements: Sort of attitude-they've not afraid-restatement of the beat idea

Paragraph 29:

Topic sentence: The umbrella is friendlier than having to do with fallout.

Supporting statements: An aperture-umbrella is a realistic vision

Paragraph 30:

Topic sentence: Then next, that's an underwater swimmer wearing a helmet with an air bubble above his head, an exhaust air bubble that's related the breath of the atomic bomb.

Supporting statements: Unnatural force-man made

Paragraph 31:

Topic sentence: I heard a story that when a huge number of bombers hit in Vietnam, and burned up many square miles of forest then the exhaust of the heat and air pressure of the fire created an artificial storm and it started raining and helped put the fire out.

Supporting statements: Not a natural rain-put the fire out-but a man-made change in the atmosphere.

Paragraph 32:

Topic sentence: The blanket –like form at the bottom of the picture

Supporting statements: Huge arabesque-like a blanket-artist-like a samurai-relation between the painter and nature

Paragraph 33:

Topic sentence: Not conscious of it-and not of art for its own sake.

Supporting statements: Love for the billboard

Paragraph 34:

Topic sentence: Yes, I hope this picture is a quantity that will release the idea of the new devices.

Supporting statements: Idea-turn to subversion-picture-an antidote

Paragraph 35:

Topic sentence: What I meant was that ideas can have more of a mysterious effect than someone simply being eradicated.

Supporting statements: Reality-horrible and mysterious

Paragraph 36:

Topic sentence: Machines are exciting

Supporting statements: Machines-sophisticated

Paragraph 37:

Topic sentence: No .I'm amazed by-when I think of technology, I think of it being fantastic.

Supporting statements: F-111-war industry-technologist-became an artist

Paragraph 38:

Topic sentence: No .I see a closer tie with technology and art and a new curiosity about new methods of communication coming from all sides.

Supporting statements: Artists offer-humility-graciousness

Mapping of the essay The Museum of Modern Art as Late Capitalist Ritual: An Iconographic Analysis by Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach

Thesis statement: As an institution, MoMA (Museum of Modern Art, New York) appears to be a refuge from a materialistic society: a cultural haven, an ideal world apart and yet, it exalts precisely the values and experiences it apparently rejects by elevating them to the universal and timeless realm of spirit.

1)      Topic sentence: In recent years art historians have become increasingly interested in understanding works of art in relation to their original physical settings-the churches, palace rooms or temples for which they were made.

Supporting sentence: Like the church or temple of the past, the museum plays a unique ideological role.

2)      Topic sentence: Museums, as modern ceremonial monuments, belong to the same architectural class as temples, churches, shrine and certain kinds of palaces.

Supporting sentence: Although all architecture has an ideological aspect, only ceremonial monuments are dedicated exclusively to ideology.

3)      Topic sentence: The museum, like other ceremonial monuments, is a complex architectural phenomenon that selects and arranges works of art within a sequence of spaces.

Supporting sentence: This totality of art and architectural form organizes the visitor's experience as a script organizes a performance.

Key words: Rituals- form and content

4)      Topic sentence: In the museum, painting and sculpture play the same role as in other types of ritual architecture.

Supporting sentence: Monumental iconographic programs frequently evoke a mythic or historical past that informs and justifies the values celebrated in the ceremonial space.

Key words: Decorations-articulate and enlarge- meaning of the activities   

5)      Topic sentence: The images of John the Baptist that often decorated the walls of baptisteries gave meaning to the ritual of baptism.

Key words: Space- reliefs- meaning to pilgrim's walk

6)      Topic sentence: The museum serves as a ceremonial monument; its space and collection present an ensemble of art objects that functions as an iconographic program.

Supporting sentence: Museums almost everywhere sanction the idea that works of art should, above all, be viewed one-by-one in an apparently ahistorical environment.

7)      Topic sentence: Museums, like medieval abbey churches, town cathedrals and palace chapels tend to conform to one of a few well-established types, the two most important in the West today being such traditional state or municipal museums as the Metropolitan Museums of New York and such modern art museums as New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Supporting sentence: The iconographic program of any particular museum is almost as predictable as that of medieval church and is equally dependent on authoritative doctrine.

8)      Topic sentence: The Museum of Modern Art in New York City (MoMA) in its way represents the Charters of mid-twentieth-century modern art museums.

Supporting sentence: More than any other museum, MoMA developed the ritual forms that translated the ideology of late capitalism into immediate and vivid artistic terms- a monument to individualism, understood as subjective freedom.

9)      Topic sentence: A visit to MoMA begins with the façade.

Supporting sentence: When new, the clean, purified forms of MoMA's gleaming steel and glass façade announced the coming of a new aesthetic-a future of efficiency and rationality.

10)  Topic sentence: MoMA belongs to the age of corporate capitalism.

Supporting sentence:  It addresses us not as a community of citizens but as private individuals who value only experience that can be understood in subjective terms.

Key words: Ideal community- separation of public and private, external and internal

11)  Topic sentence: By employing the conventional rhetoric of public buildings, such traditional museums as the Metropolitan Museum of New York or the National Gallery of London dramatize the moment of passage from exterior to interior- from the everyday world to a space dedicated to the contemplation of higher values.

Supporting sentence: Here, too, the architecture asserts the existence of a community.

12)  Topic sentence: The ground floor (at MoMA) is an open, light-filled space.

Supporting sentence: On MoMA's ground floor you experience a heightened sense of individual free choice- a major theme of the building as a whole.

13)  Topic sentence: A museum, like a temple or church, serves different people in different ways.

Supporting sentence: The space of MoMA's ground floor creates a tension that later stages of the architectural script will eventually resolve.

14)  The entire paragraph talks about the way around the museum and the sense of bewilderment due to spatial disorientation by a newcomer.

15)  Topic sentence: The aura surrounding MoMA's permanent collection is unmatched by any other collection of modern art.

Supporting sentence: From the time of its founding, MoMA's trustees, led by the Rockefellers, promoted an image of glamorous modernity and liberalism that contrasted sharply with older types of museums and their nineteenth-century ideologies. 

16)  Topic sentence: The professionals who built the Museum's collection during the 1920's and the 1930's held their definite views about modern art and its historical development and sought out works accordingly.

Supporting sentence: The works of MoMA acquired express with extraordinary fullness and imagination of values, above all a belief in a certain kind of individualism.

17)   Topic sentence: Nineteenth-century art contained individualism within the representational conventions of naturalism.

Supporting sentence: The more subjective and abstract the visual language, the more unique and individualized the artist's consciousness.

Key words: Visual language- "real" and "objective" external world

18)  Topic sentence: As you walk through MoMA's permanent collection, you are aware of seeing a succession of works by artists whose uniqueness has been established in the authoritative literature and whose distinctive stylistic traits are easily recognizable.  

Supporting sentence: Individual artists acquire significance- art-historical importance- according to how much they contributed to the evolution of the total scheme.

19)  This paragraph talks about the directions in the museum.

20)  Topic sentence: As you advance along the prescribed route, the iconographic program emphasizes the principal moments and turning points of this history (of modern art).

21)  Topic sentence: In brief, that history records the increasing dematerialization and transcendence of mundane experience.  

Supporting sentence: The highlights of the route, which frame and define the history of modern art, are Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism.

22)  Topic sentence: The structure of MoMA's ritual conforms to the archetypal labyrinth experience.

23)  Topic sentence: The labyrinth, a basic image in world cultures, appears in literature and drama as well as ceremonial architecture and other ritual settings.

24)  Topic sentence: Passage through the labyrinth is an ordeal that ends in triumph- a passage from darkness to light and thus a metaphor for spiritual enlightenment, integration, rebirth.

Supporting sentence: The ancient labyrinthine structures in palaces and temples, as well as those described in primitive myths, were associated with the earth and the Great Mother Goddess and were often located underground.

25)  Topic sentence 1: MoMA's labyrinth, however, lies above the earth.

Supporting sentence 1: It is impossible to guess what lies behind it.

Topic sentence 2: MoMA's Bauhaus-inspired design signaled progress, science and rationality.

Supporting sentence 2: But, in effect, it is a rational cover wrapped around an irrational core, and, as one critic observed, even the rational-looking exterior does not correspond to the division of space inside.

Key words: Labyrinth- ritual activity

26)  Topic sentence: In MoMA you wind through a series of narrow, silent, windowless white spaces.

Supporting sentence: You are in a "nowhere", a pristine blankness, a sunless white womb/tomb, seemingly outside time and history.

Key words: Ritual- internal drama

27)  Topic sentence: As you pass through MoMA's white, dream-like labyrinth, the gaze of the Great Mother finds you again and again.

Supporting sentence: She personifies the dangers of the route first run by artists themselves.

Key words: "breakthroughs", domination

28)  Topic sentence: The labyrinth emphasizes the terrible aspects of the goddess, her power to engulf, ensnare, petrify, castrate. But in the garden outside, amidst trees, waters, animals and earth, her power will be celebrated as a positive force, expressed by the swelling volumes of her massive body.

29)  Topic sentence: Inside the labyrinth the principle of creativity is defined and celebrated as a male spiritual endeavor in which consciousness finds its identity by transcending the material, biological world and its Mother Goddess.    

Key words: Salvation- spirit, light, intellect

30)  Topic sentence: In the labyrinth the pictures lead you along a spiritual path that rises to ever higher levels of transcendence.

Supporting sentence: The increasingly dematerialized and abstract forms as well as the emphasis on such themes as light and air proclaim the superiority of the spiritual and transcendent while negating the world of human emotions and needs. 

Key words: Spiritual enlightenment, "mundane" and "vulgar"- suppressed- "aesthetic detachment"

31)  Topic sentence: Enlightenment in the labyrinth means detachment from the world of common experience and material need.

Supporting sentence: But the logic of renunciation is relentless. It leads to final revelation: The ultimate value of nothingness- the transcendent void.   

Key words: Renounce- history and myth- underlying human condition

32)  Topic sentence: The triumph of Abstract Expressionism, then, is the triumph of spirit.

Supporting sentence: In the ideology of modernist art, as embodied in MoMA, it takes the form of aesthetic detachment- the ultimate value in artistic experience- overpowering sense of liberation and elevation.

33)  Topic sentence: The everyday world, ostensibly banished from consciousness, nevertheless haunts the labyrinthine way.

Supporting sentence: The labyrinth ritual glamorizes the competitive individualism and alienated human relations that characterize contemporary social experience- reconciles to pure subjectivity by equating it with "the human condition."

34)  Topic sentence: Thus, MoMA would reconcile you to the world, as it is, outside.

Supporting sentence: MoMA's ritual is a walk through a hall of mirrors in which isolation, fear and numbness appear as exciting and desirable states of being.

 

 

 

Taking Stock (Unfinished) : Hans Haacke

Tara Rachel Thomas (1124129)

Hans Haacke : Taking Stock (Unfinished)

Thesis Statement: Examining the rise of Saatchi and Saatchi as an advertising powerhouse, its implications for their philanthropic interests and their overseas business ventures.

Paragraph 1
Topic Sentence: The marble sculpture of Pandora, respresented on the little Victorian table in the painting, is by the British sculptor Harry Bates, who carved it in 1890.
Supporting Sentence: It belongs to the Tate Gallery.
Keywords: Tate Gallery – Margaret Thatcher – Queen Victoria – Chair from Victoria & Albert Museum.

Paragraph 2
Topic Sentence: The initials MS and CS on the rims of the broken plates on the top shelf of the bookcase refer to the brothers Maurice and Charles Saatchi, whose portraits appear in the center of the plates.
Supporting Sentence: In 1982, Julian Schnabel, who is known for his paintings incorporating broken plates, had an exhibition and the Tate Gallery.
Keywords: 9 of 11 paintings owned by Saatchis – Patrons of the New Art – Jennifer Bartlett Murals.

Paragraph 3
Topic Sentence: The Patrons are a private association with the stated goal of acquiring and donating contemporary art works to the Tate Gallery (the museum operated by the British government)
Supporting Sentence: Its membership includes many collectors and nearly all London art dealers.
Keywords: Complaints about the Saatchis not donating any paintings – "Power, prestige and social climbing"

Paragraph 4
Topic Sentence: At the time, Charles Saatchi was also a member of the board of trustees of the Whitechapel Gallery, another public institution in London, predominantly exhibiting contemporary art.
Supporting Sentence: It is suspected that he profited from insider information about the gallery's exhibition plans, which allowed him to buy works - notably Fransesco Clemente and Malcolm Morley - at a favorable moment.
Keywords: Haacke exhibition – Resignation from positions held

Paragraph 5
Topic Sentence: Doris Saatchi, the former Doris Lockhartm is a graduate of Smith College and ex-copy-writer for the New York advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather.
Supporting Sentence: She now writes art criticism for The World of Interiors, Artscribe, and Architectural Review, and is the London editor of the American Home and Garden.
Keywords: Art collection – 1970s – Photo-realism – pattern painting – minimalism – neoexpressionism – Museum of Contemporary Arts, LA – Collectors Invited

Paragraph 6
Topic Sentence: The financial base for the massive acquisitions on the art market is the income from Saatchi & Saatchi Company PLCM, which has been built by the Saatchi brothers, through a string of spectacular mergers, into the largest advertising agency in the world.
Supporting Sentence: The necessary capital has been raised on the London Stock Exchangem where the company has been listed since 1975, as well as through the issuance of American depository shares.
Keywords: Assumed that – Support received from a trade journal called Campaign –Where Maurice Saatchi once worked. Controlling family trusts – Tory minister

Paragraph 7
Topic Sentence: In 1982, the Saatchis acquired Compton Communications, an important New York agency.
Supporting Statement : It provided them with a worldwide network and, a client, Procter & Gamble, the world's largest advertiser.
Keywords: Host of clients such as the Marlboro Group –  the"big bang merger" – $7 billion in nbillings - Relocation of Headquarters

Paragraph 8
Topic Sentence: The Saatchis are promoting the idea of "global marketing" i.e., the use of a single strategy, brand name and advertising campaign throughout the world.
Supporting Sentence:  They have expanded into areas beyond advertising, such as public relations, market research, and management consulting.
Keywords: Acquisition of Michael Deaver & Associates – questioned in Congress –  brothers Charles and Maurice referred to as "Snatchit and Snatchit"

Paragraph 9
Topic Sentence: Saatchi & Saatchi ran Margaret Thatcher's election campaign in 1979 and 1983.
Supporting Sentence: The New York Times commented that the themes of its political advertisements "tend to be simple to the point of brutality"
Keywords: Asian and West Indian population -Insulting  - Tory Election campaign – British Airways Account – South African Office hired by Nationalist Party – promote change in constitution – disenfranchised 21 million blacks – cemented apartheid

Paragraph 10
Topic Sentence: KMP-Compton, the South African outpost of Saatchi & Saatchi Compton Worldwide, serves government agencies, such as the Department of Trade & Industry and ISCOR, the government controlled Steel Corporation.
Supporting Sentence: Among its clients are also Senbank, "South Africa's leading merchant bank" and the Free Enterprise Bank, a subsidiary of Ciskei Peoples development Bank.
Keywords: Ciskei – creation of South African government – makes indigenous population foreigners in their own native land – unaccepted by other countries as nation.

Paragraph 11
Topic Sentence: In 1985, KMP-Compton ran the following full page advertisement in the Financial Mail, the leading South African business weekly.
Supporting Sentence: If there is one thing that Charles and Maurice have proved in their spectacular surge to the heights of advertising business, it's that they know how to pick winners.
Keywords: They noted KMPs professionalism, client base, financial stability, disciplined creativity – unmistakable South Africanism – highly important – more effective communication – fuller understanding of market.

Paragraph 12
Topic Sentence: The 1985 annual report for the first time lists Barker McCormac, which handles the Barclays Bank's account in South Africa, as a second South African agency of the Saatchi network.
Supporting Statement: Also, the newly acquired Hay Group maintains a management consulting office in Johannesburg.  
Keywords:  Acquired two big groups – Saatchi and Saatchi biggest agency in South Africa – Expanding – Acquired shares in National Mining Corporation – for "diversified, non-media related service agency"
Paragraph 13
Topic Sentence: In 1985, Doris and Charles Saatchi opened a private museum in the north of London, designed by Max Gordon, a friend and former colleague both at the Tate Gallery and on the board of the Whitechapel Gallery.
Supporting Statement: A lavishly illustrated four-volume catalogue of the collection has been published, with the title Art in our Time : The Saatchi Catalogue
Keywords: Ownership of pieces not mentioned – When on loan – attributed to Saatchis – listed in company annual report under "fixed tangible assets" – no depreciation -.

Paragraph 14
Topic Sentence: The Saatchis continue to buy contemporary art, usually a large number of works by the artists of their choice, e.g; they have nineteen large paintings by Baselitz, twenty seven by Schnabel, twenty-four by Clemente.
Supporting Sentence: According to Leo Castelli, "what collectors like the Saatchis do has a tremendous influence on what other people do and also on the market"
Keyword:  Normal Rosenthal has said - If they sell – whole market of art would crash. – Sandro Chia – Victim of this mechanism.