19th Century: Modern and Contemporary
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Dupre:
In the Pasture
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Lichtenstein: Untitled
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Paalen: Key Lords of the Prismatic Situations
JULIEN DUPRÉ French, 1851-1910
In the Pasture, 1883
Oil on canvas, 53 x 78"
University of Kentucky. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Henry H. Knight to the University
of Kentucky Carnahan House. L1987.2.1
ROY LICHTENSTEIN American, 1923-1997
Untitled, 1955
Oil on canvas, 17¾ x 15¾"
University of Kentucky Art Museum. Gift of Debra and Robert Mayer from the
Robert B. Mayer Memorial Loan Collection. 1983.27
Lichtenstein was a pioneer of the Pop art movement, best known for his oversized
comic book-style images. Born in Manhattan, he enrolled at Ohio State University,
was drafted in the army, and served in Europe in World War II before returning
to Ohio State to complete his studies and later to teach art there and in
Cleveland. By 1949, he was exhibiting in group shows in New York City and,
in 1957, he moved back east where he taught briefly at SUNY-Oswego and then
at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Early on, he found inspiration in images
of everyday life which he would transform by giving uniformity to colors and
shapes. Lichtenstein appropriated the appearance of commercial art to develop
his signature style of bold black outlines and Ben Day dots, a streamlined
shading pattern adapted from photoengraved reproductions. (His first Pop painting,
Look Mickey of 1961, led to Life magazine publishing an article about him
asking, "Is he the worst artist in America?") Throughout the 1950s
and like many artists of his generation, Lichtenstein painted in a variety
of modes, some abstract and some figurative, as part of his search for a style.
This untitled work reveals the influence of Picasso and synthetic cubism in
the younger artist’s tentative exploration of deep colors, decorative
pattern,and flattened space to render a robed figure holding the reins of
a horse.
WOLFGANG PAALEN Mexican, born Austria, 1905-1959
Key Lords of the Prismatic Situations, 1947
Oil on linen canvas, 81½ x 31¼"
University of Kentucky Art Museum. Gift of Richard B. Freeman. 1976.13
A
native of Vienna Paalen led a cosmopolitan life, living in Tivoli, Berlin,
Munich, Paris, Mexico City, and San Francisco. In Paris from 1935 to 1939,
he held a central place in the surrealist movement. (He is credited with inventing
a form of automatism called fumage, which consisted of passing candlesmoke
swiftly over a freshly primed surface and then interpreting through new brushwork
the design suggested by it.) In 1939, at the invitation of Frida Kahlo and
Diego Rivera, Paalen immigrated to Mexico, becoming a citizen in 1947, and
where he moved on to a new post-surrealist style which he dubbed "cosmic."
While living in the San Francisco Bay area from 1947 to 1951, he formed the
Dynaton group with Lee Mullican and Gordon Onslow Ford. According to Paalen,
the Dynaton group believed that "a work of Art has to bring about an
awareness of universal concerns...through momentary suspense of purpose; any
incitation to immediate action prevents this state of ego-transcending awareness...Art
could provide an equivalent for what in the East is called meditation."
Combining post-Einsteinian quantum physics and astrophysics with utopian social
ideals, Paalen and his Dynaton colleagues developed a complex iconography
that aimed to reintegrate man with the cosmos. Key Lords of the Prismatic
Situations is one of the artist’s "Cosmogons," a group of
paintings created during this California sojourn in which geometric elements
are configured into figural presences.
Entry based on essay on the artist by Amy Winter in Pacific
Dreams: Currents of Surrealism and Fantasy in California Art, 1934-1957, a
catalogue published in conjunction with the exhibition held UCLA at the Armand
Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, 1995.
