In this paper we will look at how the 1970s and the early 80s showed a resurgence of interest in painting. This was a result of suppression of visual pleasure that was present at the time in the dominant art practices of the 70s. There came up a movement of painters who came up with the neo-expressionism style that advocated for the freedom in painting, a style that became really popular with the people (Sandler, 1996). It started in Germany in the 60s spread through Europe and then America. So as to study this movement well, painters like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol and David Salle will be looked at and their effect and contribution to the art scene during this time (McEvilley, 1993). This was also a time in which painters were seen by a segment of people as not real artists but people who were pursuing wealth instead of painting like the painters of the earlier periods. There was the promotion of painters by critics, dealers and curators and this brought various changes in this sector like never before (Sandler, 1996). Various people benefitted as will be seen in this paper and the various socio-economic factors that encouraged this will be looked at in detail.
Andy Warhol
Warhol was a leading figure in the pop art which was visual art movement that he pioneered and contributed a lot to. The projects of this artist investigate the relationship connecting artistic appearance, celebrity way of life and advertisement which flourished in the 1960s (Mattick, 1998). After a triumphant occupation as a marketable illustrator, Andy became a well-known and occasionally an artist who was shrouded in controversy. He has a museum named after him that is found in his native city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, harbors a wide-ranging permanent compilation of art and archives (Mattick, 1998, 1990). The Andy Warhol Museum is the biggest museum in the US dedicated to one artist.
Warhol's artwork spanneda variety of media whichencompassed drawing by hand, printmaking, painting, silk screening, photography, film, sculpture, and music production. He is seen as the leader in computer aided and produced art by the use of Amiga computers which came up in 1985, just prior to his death in 1987. He was the founder of the Interview Magazine and wrote many books like The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Popism: The Warhol Sixties. Andy was also openly gay who lived freely as such even prior to the gay libertymovement. The Factory, which was his studio, was a well-known meeting place which brought together illustrious intellectuals, playwrights, drag queens, Hollywood celebrities, people who lived in the streets, and patrons of art who were rich (Mattick, 1998).
Warhol went on to become a subject of many books, exhibitions, and characteristic and films which were of documentary nature. A lot of his works and creations are of high valued as collectibles. The maximum price ever transacted for a painting done by Andy Warhol was 100 million dollars for Eight Elvises a canvas that was painted in 1963 (Mattick, 1998).
As likened to the accomplishment and outrage of his vocation in the 60s, the 70s became a quieter decade for him as he turned out to be more entrepreneurial. As per Bob Colacello, it is seen that Warhol dedicated most of his days searching for new, rich clientele for commissions to paint their portraits. These included the Iranian Shah Reza Pahlavi; the Shah’s sister Princess Ashraf Pahlavi and the wife Farah Pahlavi. Other clients included Mick Jagger, pop star John Lennon, Ross Diana, Liza Minnelli and Brigitte Bardot. Warhol's well-known portrait of the Chinese Communist head Chairman Mao was produced in the year 1973. Warhol also formed, in partnership with Gerard Malanga, the magazine known as the Interview, and put in print The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975). There is a premise which is expressed in his book which says that the making of money is an art, and functioning is also an art and but doing good business can be categorized as the exceptional art (Mattick, 1998).
The artist was accustomed to mingling at a variety of nightspots in the city of New York. He was normally seen as calm, shy, and a keen viewer. Robert Hughes, an art reviewer and critic referred to Andy as the Union Square white mole.
Warhol together with his friend founded the New York Academy of Art in the year 1979.
Andy made a comeback of vital and financial triumph in the 80s period, in part because of the association and acquaintances with several up and coming younger artists taking over the 80s New York art scene bull market like Basquiat, David Salle, Julian Schnabel and other well-known Neo-Expressionists. He also associated with painters from the European Transavantgarde movement which was dominant in Europe (Sandler, 1996).
As of this period, Andy was being attacked for turning out to be just a commercially motivated. In the year of 1979, critics did not like his display of paintings of 70s figures and celebrities by referring to them as shallow, facile and for profit, with no intensity or sign of the importance of the things he painted. They also attacked his 1980 show of portraits which was took place at the New York Jewish Museum, known as the Jewish Geniuses, in which Warhol, who was clearly not interested in Judaism and Jews, had written in his book as they were going to be bought (McEvilley, 1993)In retrospection, however, some reviewers have come to see Warhol's showiness and commerciality as the most dazzling reference of the present times by saying that Warhol had capturedratheran irresistible image of the happenings of the culture in America in the 70s (Mattick, 1998).
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiatcame from the "Punk" landscape in New York as a rough, street-smart graffiti artist who lucrativelytraversedhis downtown roots to the international and global art gallery circuit. In a few years which were fast-paced, Basquiatquickly rose to turn out to be one of the most distinguished and perhaps most commercially subjugated American "naif" artist of the extensivelydistinguishedNeo-Expressionism art movement (Pinn, 2013).
Basquiat's work can be seen to the one that set the tone and the few instances of how apioneer of the 80s American Punk, counter-cultural workor graffiti-based paintingcould turn out to be fully acknowledged, critically acclaimed and popularly distinguished artistic occurrence, which was not unlike the growth of the American Hip Hop as of the same era.
In spite of his work's "unschooled" look, Basquiat very dexterously and with determination brought together in his art a host of dissimilar traditions, cultures, and styles to make a special kind of visual collage, one that was derived, in part, from his urban roots, and in a further, more distant African-Caribbean legacy (Pin, 2013).
For some reviewers, Basquiat's speedy rise to fame and similarlyquick and disastrous death by drug overindulgence epitomizes and personalizes the excessively commercial, overestimated international art scene that was seen in the mid-80s, an artistic phenomenon which for numerouscritics was indicative of the mostly artificial bubble economy of the period (Pin, 2013).
Basquiat'svocation is an instance of how American artists from the 1980s could try and introduce the human figure once again in their work after the wide accomplishment of Minimalism and Conceptualism and therefore bringing about a discussion with the more distant custom of 1950s Abstract Expressionism (Pin, 2013).
David Salle
In 1970, he started his studies at the recently founded California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, where he started working with John Baldessari. From his creation of abstract paintings and various installations coupled with video and conceptual pieces, Salle was awarded a BFA in 1973 and subsequently an MFA in 1975, with both coming from CalArts (Rubinstein, 1993).
After his education, Salle went to New York, where he earned a living forhimself by working for various artists like Vito Acconci; instructing art classes; and food preparation in restaurants. The artist also did paste-ups in the art section of a soft-core porn magazine (Rubinstein, 1993). A display of Salle’s works on large rolls of paper was displayed at the Artists Space in New York in the year 1976. Just about this time, he started experimentation with relief prints on unprimed canvas. He also produced charcoal drawings on canvas which featured nude women in erotic poses and other of thingslike telephones and airplanes (Rubinstein, 1993). He soon gained prominence as a pioneer in the comebackof figurative painting of the 1980s. He began painting on very large canvases in 1983 with some of them having art-historical references. His first solo museum showcase was presented in 1983 at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (Rubinstein, 1993).
As can be seen above, there was the rampant commercialization of painting from this era. Even though there was the comeback of the old styles of painting and critical acclaim of these painters by their fans, many critics saw them as posers who did it for money and fame instead of painting for the sake of it. This was the Ronald Reagan era which put a price tag on everything including works of arts and therefore these painters could not be faulted (Sandler, 1996). This was the era of economic growth, rebirth and rebellion of the American people and it contributed a lot to the Neo-expressionism movement. The promotion by galleries, critics, dealers and curators saw the rise to fame of the artists during this era. It was through this promotion that these artists were exposed (Sandler, 1996).
References
Anthony B. Pinn. (2013). “Why Can't I Be Both?”: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Aesthetics of Black Bodies Reconstituted. Journal of Africana Religions,1(1), 109-132. doi:1. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jafrireli.1.1.0109 doi:1
Mattick, P. (1998). The Andy Warhol of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Andy Warhol. Critical Inquiry,24(4), 965-987. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1344114
McEvilley, T. (1993). The exile's return: Toward a redefinition of painting for the postmodern era. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press
Rubinstein, G. (1993). Dutch Landscape Prints. Print Quarterly,10(3), 286-289. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41824787
Sandler, I. (1996). Art of the postmodern era: From the late 1960s to the early 1990s. New York: Icon Editions
