Modern Art: Russian Avant-Garde Suprematism

Choose one of the following questions and write a two page essay (printed, double-spaced).
1. In the Russian Avant-Garde (Suprematism and Constructivism) an idea to merge art and life motivated many artists. As a result, they made both paintings and fabric designs, both sculpture and functional objects (tea pots, chairs, etc.) and extended art thinking into new arenas. Artists were interested in making “workers clubs” and “information kiosks,” sportswear for women, set designs for theater, and things for the home. This thinking—merging art and life—also surfaced in de Stijl with furniture and architecture and club interiors. It was also at the center of the modern art school, the Bauhaus: every consumer deserved good design. Write an essay giving three artists who were involved in this unprecedented expansion in art.
2. American artists of the early part of the 20th century were very involved in representing, and valorizing, New York City. One group of artists belonged to what became known as the Ash Can School and painted street scenes, immigrants, and new cultural life on the Lower East Side of New York. Other artists painted New York, too, including Georgia O’Keefe, Edward Hopper, Joseph Stella, and Florine Stettheimer. Select two artists, and two works by each artist, and write an essay on this topic. What picture of America did they create?
3. Abstract Expressionism, as the name of this movement suggests, was a style of art-making that embraced gestural abstraction and focused on the emotive potential of art to explore expressivity linked to subjective states of experience. Some artists claimed their efforts involved dredging up the contents of the unconscious mind and working completely intuitively. Sometimes the artist’s personal psychology was front and center in determining content. Discuss two artists of this movement and use their works to explore the “affective” (that is, the emotional, subjective) dimension of their paintings and/or sculptures.
4. Pop Art loves everything commercial! Cartoons, consumer products, media culture, fashion, celebrity and more. This new iconography represents a huge departure from the deep meaning and metaphysical concerns that motivated the artists of the Abstract Expressionist era. Select two Pop artists and evaluate their work. What kinds of statements were Pop artists making about commodity culture?