An Incomplete Education - 3,684 Things You Should Have Learned but Probably Didn't

82 AN I N C O M P L E T E

Impasto: and contrasting. This may see
Van Gogh's tershed in the history of art.
Self-Portrait sculpture, but the example yo
David.

FRESCO: This was the metho
Minoan civilization in Crete
brushing water-based pigmen
"fresh" in Italian), so that the
becomes part of the wall. Fre
sance, when artists had the ba
undertake the kind of monum
it's also referred to as "buon fre
or "mezzo" fresco, a later meth
get similar results with less tro
some of the most famous are M
the Stanza della Segnatura an
Arena Chapel in Padua. Duri
Project commissioned a couple
and mostly forgettable.

IMPASTO: The technique o
that they stand out from the

or rounding of edges in sculptu
a bad day, could seem to degen

PENTIMENTO: A painter's te
word for "repentance," and re

E EDUCATION

em like picky technical stuff to you, but it was a wa­
Contrapposto is all over the place in Renaissance
ou can't get away with ignoring is Michelangelo's

od for painting indoor murals, from the days of the
right up to the seventeenth century. It involves

nts onto fresh, moist lime plaster {fresco means
pigment is absorbed by the plaster as it dries and
esco painting reached its peak during the Renais­
acking—and the backup crews—to allow them to
ental works the technique is best suited to. Today,
esco" or "true fresco," to distinguish it from "secco"
hod of painting on dry plaster that allowed artists to
ouble. Frescoes abound in European art history, but
Michelangelo's, in the Sistine Chapel; Raphael's, in
nd the Loggia of the Vatican; and Giotto's, at the
ing the 1930s and 1940s, the WPA Federal Arts
e thousand frescoes, mostly for municipal buildings

of applying thick layers or strokes of oil paint, so
surface of a canvas or panel: also called "loaded
brush." Such seventeenth-century paint­
ers as Rubens, Rembrandt, Velazquez,
and Frans Hals used impasto to em­
phasize pictorial highlights; in the nine­
teenth century, Manet, Cézanne, Van
Gogh, and others used it more exten­
sively for texture and variety. Some mod­
ern painters, including de Kooning and
Dubuffet, took to laying the paint on
with a palette knife or simply squeezing it
directly from the tube. (One does not, it
should be clear, create impasto with
water colors.)
MORBIDEZZA ( M O R - b u h - D E T Z - u h ) :
Literally, "softness," "tenderness." Used
to describe the soft blending of tones in
painting—by Correggio, for instance—

ure, especially in the rendering of human flesh. On
nerate into effeminacy and sickliness.
rm (and Lillian Hellman's) derived from the Italian
eferring to the evidence that an artist changed his

mind, or made a mistake, and tried to conceal it by
by, the top layer of paint may become
transparent, and the artist's original state­
ment begins to show through. Pentimento
can often be found in seventeenth-century
Dutch paintings, in which the artists
commonly used thin layers of paint to
obliterate an element of a composition—
one of the children, say, in an interior—
only to have its ghost reappear behind a
lady's dress or a piece of furniture a couple
hundred years later. One of the most
famous examples of pentimento is the
double hat brim in Rembrandt's portrait
Flora.

PUTTO (POO-toe): Putti (note the
plural) are those naked, chubby babies
that cavort through Italian paintings, es­
pecially from the fifteenth century on.
"Putto" means "little boy" in Italian, and
originally the figure was derived from
personifications of Eros in early Greek
and Roman art; by extension, the term
came to apply to any naked child in a
painting. Putti were very popular in Re­
naissance and Baroque paintings, where
they stood for anything from Cupid,
to the pagan attendants of a god or
goddess, to cherubim celebrating the
Madonna and child.

QUATTROCENTO; CINQUECENTO (KWA-
tro-CHEN-toe; CHINGK-weh-CHEN-
toe): Literally, "the four hundred" and
"the five hundred"; to art buffs, the fif­
teenth and sixteenth centuries, respec­
tively. In other words, the Early and the
High Renaissances.

SFUMATO (sfoo-MAH-toe): Comes
from the Italian word for "smoke" and
describes a method of fusing areas of color or tone
spheric effect, not unlike the soft focus in old H
most often mentioned in connection with Leonard

ART HISTORY 83

y painting over it. As time goes

Pentimento:
Rembrandt's
Flora

Putti in Veronese's
Mars and Venus
United by Love

e to create a soft, hazy, atmo­
ollywood movies. Sfumato is
do and his followers.

84 AN I N C O M P L E T E

SOTTO IN su (soh-toe-in-SO
means, approximately, "under
in perspective on a ceiling so
impression, when viewed from
overhead instead of lying flat i
lar in Italy during the Baroque
centuries), when lots of people
rate visual illusions. The name

VEDUTA (veh-DOO-tah): M
more or less factual view of a
were in vogue during the seven
who painted, drew, or etched
veduta was the veduta ideata (
juxtaposed in such a way as to
Canaletto's drawing of St. Pe
Venice). T h e vedutisti to remem

EDUCATION

OO): This one is good for a few brownie points; it
on up," and describes the trick of painting figures
that they are extremely foreshortened, giving the
m directly underneath, that they're floating high
n a picture plane. Sotto in su was especially popu­
e and Rococo periods (seventeenth and eighteenth
e were painting ceilings and trying to create elabo­
es to drop: Tiepolo, Correggio, Mantegna.
Means "view"; in this case, a detailed, graphic, and
town, city, or landscape. Vedute (note the plural)
nteenth and eighteenth centuries, when the artists
them were known as vedutisti. A variation of the
("idealized"), in which the realistic elements were
o produce a scene that was positively bizarre (e.g.,
eter's in Rome rising above the Doge's Palace in
mber: Canaletto, the Guardi family, Piranesi.

Six -isms, One

YOUR PERSONAL GUID
MOVEMENTS
AND

Be grateful we edited out Orphis
Scuola Metafisica at the last mi

FAUVISM

Headquarters: Paris and the South o

Life Span: 1905-1908.

Quote: "Donate/to chez lesfau
tered at the Salon d'A
ing sight of an old-fas

Central Figures: Henri Matisse, Andr

Spiritual Fathers: Paul Gauguin, Henri

Salient Features: Raw, vibrant-to-strid
ately distorted perspec
love of order and har
gant; healthiest metab

Keepers of the Flame: None (though Matis
body).

ART HISTORY ^5

-ijl, and Dada

DE TO EUROPEAN ART
BETWEEN 1900
HITLER

sm, Vorticism, Suprematism, and the
inute.

Henri Matisse,
Blue Nude
(1907)

of France.

uves!" ("Donatello among the wild beasts!"), ut­
Automne by an anonymous art critic upon catch­
shioned Italianate bust in a roomful of Matisses.

ré Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, all painters.

i "Le Douanier" Rousseau.

dent color within bold black outlines; moder­
ctive; an assault on the Frenchman's traditional
mony that today reads as both joyous and ele­
bolism this side of soft-drink commercials.

sse is a big, and ongoing, influence on every­

86 AN I N C O M P L E T E

EXPRESS

Ernst Ludtoig Kirchner, Wa
Street, Dresden (1908) (19

Headquarters: Germany.

Life Span: 1905-1920s.

Quotes: "He who renders his in
so with spontaneity an

"Something like a neck
he feared abstract art m

Central Figures: In Dresden (in "The B
Rottluff, painters. In
Paul Klee, Franz Marc
ity": George Grosz, O
and honorary membe
Brecht, dramatist; Fra

Spiritual Fathers: Vincent van Gogh, Ed

Salient Features: A tendency to let it all
distortion, fragmentati
crude woodcuts; the de
clare Germany's artistic
under Kandinsky—a R
a California religious cu

Keepers of the Flame: The abstract expressi
expressionists of the E

E EDUCATION

SIONISM

assily Kandinsky, Black Lines
913)

nner convictions as he knows he must, and does
nd sincerity, is one of us."—Ernst Kirchner.
ktie or a carpet."—Wassily Kandinsky, of what
might degenerate into.
Bridge"): Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Karl Schmidt-

Munich (in "The Blue Rider"): Kandinsky,
c, painters. Under the banner "New Objectiv-
Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, painters. Confrères
ers: Arnold Schoenberg, composer; Bertolt
anz Kafka, writer.
dvard Munch, Friedrich Nietzsche.
l—pathos, violence, morbidity, rage—hang out;
on, Gothic angularity, and lots of deliberately
etermination to shake the viewer up and to de-
c independence from France. Down in Munich,
Russian with a tendency to sound like a scout for
ult—abstraction, and a bit less morbidity.
ionists of the Forties and Fifties, the neo-
Eighties, and a barrioful of graffiti artists.

CUB

Headquarters: Paris.

Life Span: 1907-1920s.

Quote: Anonymous tasteful
beautifully, why do
things?" Picasso: "Th

Central Figures: Picasso, of course, an
nand Léger, all painte

Spiritual Father: Cézanne.

Salient Features: The demise of persp
amenities; dislocati
memory as an adjunct
a thing to be; collage
lectual in appeal), th
"natural" appeal); the

Keepers of the Flame: Few; this half century
and master debunker

ART HISTORY 31

BISM

Georges Braque,
Soda (1911)

lady to Pablo Picasso: "Since you can draw so
you spend your time making those queer
at's why."
nd Georges Braque. Also, Juan Gris and Fer-
ers. Guillaume Apollinaire, poet.

pective, shading, and the rest of the standard
on and dismemberment; the importance of
t to vision, so that one painted what one knew
; analytic (dull in color, intricate in form, intel­

hen synthetic (brighter colors, simpler forms,
successful break with visual realism.

y has gone not with Picasso but with antiartist
Marcel Duchamp.

88 AN I N C O M P L E T E

FUTUR

Headquarters: Milan.

Life Span: 1909-1918.

Quotes: "A screaming automo
Samothrace." "Burn th
—Filippo Tommaso M

Central Figures: Marinetti, poet and pr
painters; Umberto Boc
architect.

Spiritual Fathers: Georges Seurat, Henry

Salient Features: Dynamism, simultanei
important than form;
havior as art. Had an
Constructivism, Dada

Keepers of the Flame: Performance artists (w
nescent), conceptualist

E EDUCATION

RISM

Umberto Boccioni,
Unique Forms of
Continuity in Space
(1913)

obile is more beautiful than the Victory of
he museums! Drain the canals of Venice!"
Marinetti.
opagandist; Giacomo Balla and Gino Severini,
ccioni, sculptor and painter; Antonio Sant'Elia,

y Ford.
ity, lines of force; vibration and rhythm more

exuberant, optimistic, anarchic, human be­
immediate impact bigger than Cubism's—on
, and Fascism.
who likewise stress the theatrical and the eva­
ts.

CONSTRU

Headquarters: Moscow.
Life Span:
Quotes: 1913-1932.

Central Figures: "Engineers create new

Spiritual Fathers: "Constructivism is
Salient Features: Nagy.

Tadin, sculptor and
typographer; El Liss
Antoine Pevsner, scu

Kasimir Malevich, Le

Art as production, rat
service of the Left; a
rivets, celluloid, and a

None: The State ultim

ART H I S T O R Y

UCTIVISM

Naum Gabo, Column
(1923)

w forms."—Vladimir Tatlin.
the Socialism of vision."—Laszlo Moholy-
architect; Aleksandr Rodchenko, painter and
sitzky, painter and designer; Naum Gabo and
ulptors.
enin, Marinetti.
ther than elitist imaginings, and squarely in the
abstract forms wedded to utilitarian simplicity;
airplane wings; the State as a total work of Art.
mately squashed it.

Headquarters: Amsterdam.

Life Span: 1917-1931.

Quote: "The square is to us as
van Doesburg.

Central Figures: Van Doesburg and P
J . J . P. Oud, architects

Spiritual Father: Kandinsky.

Salient Features: Vertical and horizont
sense of spiritual miss
purest of the abstract
important new artist o
the way, not "steel."

Keepers of the Flame: Minimalists.

s the cross was to the early Christians."—Theo

Piet Mondrian, painters; Gerrit Rietveld and
s.

al lines and primary colors, applied with a
sion; Calvinist purity, harmony, and sobriety;

movements (and Mondrian the single most
of the between-the-wars period); say "style," by

DA

Headquarters: Zurich (later Berlin,

Life Span: 1916-1922.

Quotes: "Like everything in
sake."—Tristan Tzar

Central Figures: Zurich: Tzara, poet,
and Paris: Marcel D
Ray, photographer.
Schwitters.

Spiritual Father: Marinetti.

Salient Features: Anarchic, nihilistic,
most important sour
baby-talk word; born
came, in Berlin, over

Keepers of the Flame: Performance artists,
ceptualists.

ART HISTORY 91

ADA

Marcel
Duchamp,
Fountain
(1917)

New York, and Paris).

life, Dada is useless." "Anti-art for anti-art's
a.

and Jean Arp, painter and sculptor. New York
Duchamp, artist; Francis Picabia, painter; Man

Berlin: Max Ernst, George Grosz, Kurt

and disruptive; childhood and chance its two
rces of inspiration; the name itself a nonsense,
n of disillusionment, a cult of nonart that be­
rtly political.

"happenings" and "assemblages" people, con-

AN I N C O M P L E T E

SUR

Headquarters: Paris (later, New York)

Life Span: 1924-WorldWarII.

Quote: "As beautiful as the cha
machine and an umbre

Central Figures: André Breton, intellect
Cocteau, writer and fi
wing: Joan Mirô, pain
guy, Max Ernst, René

Spiritual Fathers: Sigmund Freud, Giorg

Salient Features: Antibourgeois, but wi
omnipotence of the d
tions, juxtapositions, co

Keepers of the Flame: Abstract expressionists

E EDUCATION

RREALISM

Salvador Dali,
The Persistence of
Memory (1931)
).

ance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing
ella."—Comte du Lautréamont.
tual; Louis Aragon, Paul Eluard, writers; Jean
ilmmaker; Luis Bunuel, filmmaker. Abstract
nter. Explicit wing: Salvador Dali, Yves Tan-
Magritte, painters.
gio de Chirico, Leon Trotsky.
ithout Dada's spontaneity; committed to the
dream and the unconscious; favored associa­
oncrete imagery, the more bizarre the better.
s, "happenings" people.

Thirteen Young

Well, not all that young. And certainly not T
has nothing to do with it. For the last forty
cally, New York—that's been serving as the clubh
shake hands with a dozen of its most illustrious mem
in the Stetson and Laurie Anderson in the Conver

JACKSON POLLOCK (1

Don't settle for the "cowboy" legend, in which Po
artist of the last half century years—blows into
Wyoming, riding his canvases like broncos and pac
six-gun. The man had a rowdy streak, it's true, spat
paint by day and picking fights in artists' bars by ni
sisted that he was a sensitive soul; inspired by th
steeped in the myths ofJung, all he wanted was to be
case "all-over" painting, with no beginning, no end, a
nomenclature: "Action painting" is what Pollock (a
particularly splashy, "gestural" variant of Abstract E
hang-this-upside-down art turned out by the so call

ART HISTORY

Turks

Turks. In fact, the Old World
y years, it's America—specifi­
house of the art world. Now
mbers. That's Jackson Pollock
rse All Stars.

1912-1956)

llock—the most talked-about
New York City from Cody,
cking his frontier image like a
ttering, flinging, and dripping
ght, but his friends always in­
he lyricism of Kandinsky and
"a part of the painting," in this
and no center of interest. Some
alias "Jack the Dripper") did, a
Expressionism, the better-not-
led New York School.

AN I N C O M P L E T E

MARK R

Declaring that he painted "t
pleased when people broke do
drew from an important mural
rant because he couldn't stand
in the presence of Abstract E
also sheltered Barnett Newman
fondness for monasticism and
floating horizontally in a vertic
minimalism begins here, with

WILLEM DE

T h e other "action" painter, and
he was born in Holland) after
lost faith in recognizable image
aged women (of whom he lat
sters")—and never tossed ou
hotter-than-a-pepper-sprout f
soup down a chin, and he did
comfortable.

E EDUCATION

OTHKO (1903-1970)

tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on," Rothko was
own and cried in front of The Work—and with­
l commission for New York's Four Seasons restau­

the idea of them eating in front of it. Here we're
Expressionism's so called theological wing (which
n and Clyfford Still), typified by—in addition to a

bombast—large, fuzzy-edged rectangles of color,
cal field. Renunciation is the keyword. In a sense,
Rothko.

E KOONING (1904-1997)

d the most famous New York School artist (even if
his Wyoming colleague. D e Kooning never totally
ery—most notably, a gang of big-breasted middle-
ter said, "I didn't mean to make them such mon­
ut his brushes. But he did paint in the same
fever, allowing paint to dribble down the canvas, as
d reach beyond where he could be sure of feeling

DAVID SMITH (190

Was to postwar sculpture what Jackson Pollock w
like Pollock, was killed at his peak in an automobil
work of Picasso and by a summer vacation he'd spe
factory, and intent on glorifying, rather than a
world, Smith constructed his work instead of cast
shapes that are "ready-made" rather than solid, a
sional instead of stately, and a mood that is anythin
the Englishman Henry Moore (the other "sculpto
to be making things for museum foyers and urban
likely to rise, oil-well-style, from a spot nobody
home to a work of art.

ANDREW WYETH

Of course, not everybody was really ready to deal
or Smith's Cubi XVIII, and they almost certain
owning one of them. For those thus resistant t
bona fide art acquisition, there was Andrew Wy
can realist tradition of Grant "American Gothi
Night Diner" Hopper, and given to painting in
liked to call "hauntingly evocative," as with the
World. A s to whether Christina is trying to g
Texas Chainsaw Massacre) or back to it (à la Lassi
us. Don't look at Wyeth for too long, either: Yo
tellectual, aesthete, and cosmopolite.

ROBERT RAUSCHENBE
JASPER JOHNS (1

Counts as one selection: Not only were Rauschenb
not only did they together depose, without really
stract expressionists, they also, for a time, lived tog
have been less alike, temperamentally and philoso
vinaigrette dressing. Rauschenberg is the oil: appl
thing, rich, slippery, viscous. Probably best know
(like this freestanding angora goat, with a tire aro
streets and store windows of downtown Manhatt

ART HISTORY

06-1965)

was to postwar painting (and,
le accident). Influenced by the
ent as a welder in a Studebaker
apologizing for, the workaday
ting or molding it. The result:
arrangements that look provi­
ng but monumental. Whereas
or of our time") always seemed
n plazas, Smith's work is more
could have guessed would be

(1917-)

l with de Kooning's Woman II
ly hadn't given a thought to
o Art, but still desirous of a
yeth, working in the Ameri­
ic" Wood and Edward "All-
a manner middlebrow critics
much-reproduced Christinas
et away from the house (à la
ie, Come Home), don't look at
ou'll lose all credibility as in­

ERG (1925-)
1930-)

erg and Johns contemporaries,
y meaning to, the reigning ab­
gether. However, they couldn't
ophically. Think of them as a
lied lavishly, sticking to every­
wn for his so called combines
ound its belly), he scoured the

an for junk; believed that art

could exist for any length of t
critic said, "didn't seem house-

Johns, by contrast, is the vineg
sharp, stinging, thin. In his pa
bers, and rulers—all as familia
dowed the pop icons of the
reduced painting to the one-d
generation, and got to seem se
hipper-than-hip things—in a

time, in any material, and to any end; and, as one
-trained."

gar; poured stintingly, cutting through everything,
aintings of flags, targets, stenciled words and num­
ar, abstract, simple, and flat as objects get—he en­

twentieth century with an "old master" surface,
dimensionality it had been hankering after for a
ensuous, ironic, difficult, and unavailable—all those
single breath. Together, Rauschenberg and Johns

did for art (whose public, such as it was, had been g
to groove on the stuff Rothko, de Kooning, et al. we
tles did for music. Note: Rauschenberg and John
pop artists; the former is not to be confused with
(the one who does the paintings based on comic-bo
(the one who does the sculptures of cheeseburgers
Rosenquist (the one who does mural-sized can
bombers and Franco-American spaghetti).

ANDY WARHOL (19

Needs no introduction here. But forget for a minut
ver fright wig, the guy who painted the Campbe
boxes, Liz and Marilyn; who made underground
and Flesh; who founded Interview and took Studio
got shot in the gut by Valerie what's-her-name. Co
the tyrant and entrepreneur, the man who taught th
tages of bulk (a few hundred was a small edition of
dredth of them was presented, promoted, and, inev
the original) and who persuaded the middle class t
ture of a race riot, or an electric chair, or an aut
man Mao, over the couch in the family room not o
kind of sense. More recently, there were the comm
Goya's renditions of the Spanish royal family, it's b
people who should have known better so reveled i

FRANK STELLA (

"All I want anyone to get out of my paintings . . . i
whole idea without any confusion. What you see
Frank Stella, who'd learned something from Jasper
while still in his twenties, to help launch the moveme
cording to some the most self-consciously American
ing to others the last, wheezy gasp of modernism its
from the how-often-have-you-seen-this-one-before
abstraction—a new abstraction that was fast, hard,
tive. Keywords here are "self-referentiality" and "red
a painting (preferably unframed and on a canvas the
had no business acknowledging the existence of any
the more air you could suck out of art's bell jar th

ART HISTORY 91

getting tired of not being able
ere turning out) what the Bea­
ns are usually billed as proto-

pop artists Roy Lichtenstein
ook panels), Claes Oldenburg
s and clothespins), and James
nvases full of F - l l l fighter-

28-1987)

te Andy, the albino in the sil­
ell's soup cans and the Brillo

movies like The Chelsea Girls
o 54 as his anteroom; and who
oncentrate instead on Warhol,
he art world about the advan­
f his prints, and the two hun­
vitably, purchased, as if it were
that hanging a wall-sized pic­
tomobile accident, or Chair­
only was chic, but made some
missioned portraits: Not since
been observed, has a group of
in being made to look silly.

1936-)

is the fact that you can see the
is what you see." Thus spake
Johns, and who would go on,
ent known as Minimalism, ac­
n of all the -isms (and accord­
self). The idea was to get away
literalness of pop and back to
flat, and hauntingly unevoca-
duction"; the former meant that
e shape of a lozenge or a kite)
ything but itself, the latter that
he better. By the 1970s, Stella

o8 AN I N C O M P L E T E

would be making wall sculptur
machine then crudely and free
mately as Francis Ford Coppol

CHRISTO A
(1

It started as an obsession wi
spent years swaddling bicycle
moving on to wrap a section of
and eventually all twelve arche
cal embankment, and esplanad
wrap the Reichstag. But Chr
Claude are quick to insist that
total oeuvre. There were, for
white nylon, eighteen feet high
cisco; the eleven islands in
wrapped, mind you—with pin
blue and yellow "umbrellas" th
fornia and Japan. Not to men
sixteen-foot-tall saffron panels
body, over twenty-three miles

So, what's their point? Rest
more eager to tell you than the
"Christo and Jeanne-Claude")
fact, taking art public—that
Gallery Complex by making it
was part of the original idea. N
once dubbed the "New Scale,"
point is, literally, to rock your
environment, they hope to get
eyes and a new consciousness."
attention, make buckets of mo
self, redeemable in working dr
épater les bourgeois.

E EDUCATION

res of corrugated aluminum and other junk, cut by
ely painted, that relate to his early work approxi­
las Dracula relates to The Godfather.

AND JEANNE-CLAUDE
1935-,1935-)

th wrapping. The Bulgarian-born artist Christo
es, trees, storefronts, and women friends before
f the Roman Wall, part of the Australian coasdine,
es, plus the parapets, sidewalks, streetlamps, verti­
de, of Paris' Pont Neuf. And yes, together they did
risto and his wife/manager/collaborator Jeanne-
t wrappings form only a small percentage of their

instance, those twenty-four and a half miles of
h, they hung from a steel cable north of San Fran­
Biscayne Bay, Florida, they "surrounded"—not
nk polypropylene fabric; and the 3,100 enormous
hey erected in two corresponding valleys in Cali­
ntion their 2005 blockbuster, "The Gates," 7,503
s they suspended, to the delight of almost every­
of footpaths in New York's Central Park.
t assured, you're not the first to ask. And no one is
e artist formerly known as Christo (now, officially,
whose art is nothing if not Open to the Public. In
is, taking it away from the Uptown Museum-
t too big to fit in studios, museums, or galleries—
Now that lots of artists have adopted what critics
Christo and Jeanne-Claude will tell you that their

world. By temporarily disrupting one part of an
you to "perceive the whole environment with new
" Along the way, it's been nice to get tons of media
oney (Christo's been known to issue stock in him­
awings), and, as with so much that went before it,

LAURIE ANDERSON

"Our plan is to drop a lot of odd objects onto yo
some of these objects will be useful. And some wil
these oddities were produced by a people free eno
in the first place." That's Laurie Anderson speaki
certainly last—artist-in-residence. She of the tra
high-top sneakers, the seven-hour performance
dark electric violin, the movie clip of an American
dry cycle. Anderson has spent the last quarter-ce
yoking music with visuals, cliché with poetry, ele
shows with outrage, the intimate with the eleph
mance artists do what they can to take art out of th
quote that indefatigable old avant-gardist John Ca
to be a way "simply" to make us "wake up to the v

Over the years, performance art has tended to
its visual-arts roots to embrace, especially, theater
has more than once drifted toward the self-indulg
some of us wondering what, exactly, the payoff w
six-hour Robert Wilson piece on Stalin or Que
Karen Finley cover herself in melted chocolate,
protest against society's treatment of women.

Still, it has survived. Stripped down (Anders
mostly black, creates ninety-minute shows, and rel
she can produce with her violin and a laptop), h
technology (you'll find most emerging performanc
straddling so many of postmodernism's fault li
against male-bonding rituals, where stand-up
Amendment freedoms, where multiculturalism vie
tobiography, Dadaist absurdity with vaudeville pra
no signs of going quietly up to bed.

ART HISTORY 91

N (1947-)

our country from the air. A n d
ll just be . . . odd. Proving that
ough to think of making them
ing, NASA's first—and almost
ademark red socks and white

pieces, the lights-up-in-the-
n flag going through the fluff-
entury as a performance artist,
ectronics with sentiment, slide
hantine. Like Christo, perfor­
he institution; they also tend to
age, who years ago declared art
very life we're living."
move farther and farther from
r and dance. In the process, it
gent and the soporific, leaving
was for sitting through another
een Victoria or for witnessing
, alfalfa sprouts, and tinsel in

son, for instance, now wears
lies, for special effects, on what
hitched more or less firmly to
ce artists on the Internet), and
ines—where feminism grinds
comics hold forth on First
es for attention with simple au­
atfalls—performance art shows

IOO AN I N C O M P L E T E

JULIAN

He was arguably the most amb
no American artist loomed lar
in Ping-Pong-table-sized canv
ken crockery, yards of cheap v
pair of antlers. Also, as Mark
so on"—or what passed for sam
dealers such as Mary Boone
Schnabel's work was everywhe
were over and the critics be
smorgasbords as leftovers from
stoppable, however; he's since
as the writer/director of critica
feature films, such as Basquiat

MATTHE

Worked his way through Yale
barely arrived in New York
bench made of petroleum jelly
artist using ice screws to haul
walls of the gallery in which it
the art scene's Next Big Thing
Cycle, a series of five lavishly s

E EDUCATION

SCHNABEL (1951-)

bitious painter since Jackson Pollock, and for a time
rger or used up more oxygen. Schnabel specialized
vases covered with entire cupboards' worth of bro­
velvet, lots of thick, gucky paint, and the occasional
Rothko might say, in "tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and
me in the supply-side art world of the 1980s, where
e frequently got higher billing than their artists.
ere and sold like crazy—until one day the Eighties
egan to refer to his mammoth neo-expressionist
m yesterday's bender. Schnabel himself proved un­
e made a successful comeback, not as a painter but
ally respected—and surprisingly viewer-friendly—

(1996) and Before Night Falls (2000).

EW BARNEY (1967-)

modeling for Ralph Lauren and J. Crew, and had
when his sculptures (especially the weightlifter's
y) and videos (particularly the one that featured the
l himself, naked, across the ceiling and down the
was being shown) turned him, at twenty-four, into
g. To date, Barney is best known for the Cremaster
surreal films made between 1993 and 2001, which

attracted huge, mostly young, audiences; garnered
bewildered, reviews; and taught museum-goers a ne
ter," the muscle that raises and lowers the testicles in
fear), T h e Cremaster films, which were made and
from a forty-minute 1930s-style musical featuring
girls, an Idaho football field, and two Goodyear bl
hour allegory starring the Chrysler Building, in
Serra, playing the role of the Master Architect, and
Apprentice, reenact elaborate Masonic rituals; a pa
potatoes with blades fastened to her prosthetic fe
stage a demolition derby in the lobby of the build
which we're told has something to do with pregeni
pure potential and something to do with violence
thickly layered with mythological references, histo
bolism and is, in Barney's words, "somewhat autobi
say "captures the Zeitgeist," critics were hailing B
American artist of his generation" and comparing C
Ring cycle. We'd love to weigh in ourselves, but we

ART HISTORY IOI

wildly enthusiastic, if slightly
ew vocabulary word ("cremas­
n response to temperature and
d released out of order, range
g elaborately costumed chorus
limps {Cremaster Î) to a three-

which the sculptor Richard
d Barney, playing the Entered
araplegic fashion model pares
eet; and a bunch of Chryslers
ding (Cremaster 3). T h e series,
tal sexuality as a metaphor for
sublimated into pure form, is
orical details, and arcane sym­
iographical." Before you could
arney as "the most important
Cremaster to Richard Wagner's
e have a hair appointment.

I02 AN I N C O M P L E T E

Raiders of

A SPRINTER'S
TEMPLE AND

You don't have to be standi
those old doubts about wh
proximately, when somebody
city post office can make yo
narthexes, and even a moderat
fact, a little practice here at h
Paris, and points in between.

DORIC

Entablature-! Gornice

Frieze

Architrave

Capital-

Shaft-

Base-
Pedestal-

E EDUCATION

the Lost Architecture

GUIDE TO THE GREEK

THE GOTHIC CATHEDRAL

ng in front of the Parthenon to be suffused with all
hat's Doric and what's Ionic and where to look, ap­
calls your attention to the frieze; almost any big-
ou feel just as stupid. Ditto, Chartres, naves and
ely grandiose Catholic—or Episcopal—church. In
home isn't such a bad idea before you hit Athens,

IONIC CORINTHIAN
Dentils

Plinth

GOTHIC ELEVATION

Clerestory—+ _ ,
Triforium - -

Dripstone/Head Mold Po

GOTHIC FLOOR PLAN
North Tower
Narthex

South Tower Aisle

ART H I S T O R Y JO3

Louver Window

Belfry Floor
Gallery
.^-Running Mold/Running Ornament
Double Lancet Window
Rose Window

Tracery
Mullion

ortal CROSS-SECTION OF NAVE

Altar

Ambulatory

Crossing Choir

IQ4 AN I N C O M P L E T E

Real-Esta
for

ontributor Michael Sork
V^primest buildings, and p
we add our two cents' worth.

FIVE M

Architectural fashion is like a
tects are forever looking for a U
sion. This is hardly a new imp
and the Gothic cathedral had
have taken hundreds of years
beach house can get done prac

The International Style

A coinage of the early 1930s
actually did have a "style" and
ture. The movement's major
essentially "rational," that wha
or a can opener. L e Corbusie
moted the gruesome slogan "A
analogy, machine imagery is
thing with vaguely nautical ov
tings. Also popular were glas
facade. International Style bu
in terms of planes—like house
neo-classical and Victorian ar
were reacting. (A sense of mas
Key monuments include Grop
Corbusier's Villa Savoie (192
years later, the style would be
there, it was next to impossib
blocks from your Breuer chair

E EDUCATION

ate Investment
the Aesthete

kin assesses the choicest styles, hottest architects,
pithiest sayings of modern architecture. And then

MODERN STYLES

any other: It changes. T h e difference is that archi­
Universal Style, something suitable for every occa­
pulse. The folks who brought you the Doric order
something similar in mind. However, while it may
s to put up Chartres, a smart-looking Hamptons
ctically overnight.

s, this label recognized that modern architecture
was not, as many had argued, simply a force of na­
perpetrators tended to argue that their work was
at they did was as scientific as designing a dynamo
r, the most vigorous polemicist of the time, pro­
A house is a machine for living." Thanks to which
one of the hallmarks of the style, especially any­
vertones such as steel railings and shiny metal fit­
ss-block-and-strip windows mounted flush with a
uildings are almost invariably white and conceived
es of cards—rather than in terms of the solidity of
rchitecture, against which many of these architects
ss, it is often said, was replaced by one of volume.)
pius' buildings for the Dessau Bauhaus (1926), L e
29), and Aalto's Paimio Sanitorium (1928). Fifty
e much appropriated by restaurants: For a while
ble to dine out without staring at a wall of glass
r.

The Bauhaus, Dessau, Germany; Walter Gropius,
architect

Brutalism

The name, like so much in the modernist lexicon, c
case béton brut. Which is not, as you might suppo
unfinished concrete, the kind that shows both
wooden formwork and lots of rough edges. The Fr
referring to the presumed ardors of the natural—"E
always emitted strong vibes, one way or the other,
no doubt because the ideological basis for modern a
else worthwhile) comes from the Enlightenment
nalism. On the one hand, it's resulted in a lot of bui
the other, in a preoccupation with a kind of architec
which preoccupied Rousseau. (Perhaps this is why
ings so often feature lots of trees.) Brutalism repre
precision of the International Style, a reversion to r
teristics include large expanses of concrete, dunge
and a quality of military nostalgia, a sort of spirit-o
gone down happily on the Siegfried Line. The styl
early Seventies—has pretty much taken a powder, b
Paul Rudolph's Art and Architecture Building at
and McKinnell's Boston City Hall.

The Yale Art and Architecture Building;
Paul Rudolph, architect

comes from the French, in this
ose, an after-shave, but rather
the grain of the underlying
rench have a special genius for
Eau Sauvage"—and nature has
for modern architects. This is
architecture (as for everything
and its problem child, Ratio­
ildings that look like grids; on
ctural state of nature, like that
y renderings of modern build­
esents a reaction to the flimsy
roughness and mass. Charac­
onlike interiors, bad finishes,
of-the-bunker that might have
le—popular in the Sixties and
but it's left behind the likes of
Yale University and Kallman

io6 AN I N C O M P L E T E

Expressionism

A style whose day was, alas, br
the other arts, architects (main
get a number of projects built i
inet of Dr. Caligari (see page 15
tend to get a little skewed, no
seeming to be on the point of m
best embodies the kind of loo
aberrations of the unconscious
Berlin. The two greatest work
Tower, an observatory in Potsd
terior for the Grosses Schausp
cave. The latter was commissi
slouch when it came to the v
modern styles.

P

A
P
w
ti
"m
"m
m
sh
th
p
P
an
ar
po
he
gr
co
th
"h
of
an

T
B

EDUCATION

rief. Concurrent with Expressionism s flowering in
nly German, mainly in the Twenties), managed to
in a style that will be familiar to you from The Cab­
52). As you will recall, with Expressionism, things
ot to mention a little sinister, with materials often
melting. More than any other, this is the style that
oney tunes sensibility, with its working out of the
s, that we all identify with the fun side of Twenties
ks in the genre are Erich Mendelsohns Einstein
dam that looks like a shoe, and Hans Poelzig's in­
pielhaus in Berlin, an auditorium that looks like a
ioned by theatrical impresario Max Reinhardt, no
visual. Expressionism is easily the funkiest of the

Postmodernism

A kind of portmanteau term (no relation to John
Portman, the architect of all those ghastly hotels
with the giant atriums), meant to describe a condi­
ion as much as a style, the condition of not being
modernist." As you have undoubtedly noticed,
modern architecture" in the 1980s came in for
more than its share of lumps, with architects
hamelessly scrambling to disavow what most of
hem only a few years before thought was the cat's

ajamas. Postmodernism's most exemplary figure:
Philip Johnson, the architect of the cocktail circuit

nd, until his death in 2005, the leading arbiter of
rchitectural fashion. His premier contribution, as a
ostmodernist at least, was a New York skyscraper
eadquarters for American Telephone and Tele­
raph that looks a lot like a grandfather clock, or, ac­
ording to some, a Chippendale highboy, allegedly
he result of the postmodernist preoccupation with
history." L o o k for Corinthian columns in the foyer
f such extravaganzas, as well as dirty pastel colors
nd ornament and detailing out the wazoo.

The AT&T Building; Philip Johnson and John
Burgee, architects