Very Last Lecture!!!

Why make a video of your top Jackson Pollock paintings?   Pollock made paintings and was the epitome of abstract expressionism.  He was also known as "Jack the Dripper" because of his style of "action paintings." He made many paintings that were so huge that he had to fling paint onto the canvas while on the floor.  He was a very well known and often was seen in Life magazine and was known for his crazy antics and excessive lifestyle similarly to celebrities.  His example paved way for other artists to be sort "art stars/celebrities."  Pollock had a lot of wealthy and private investors who bought his paintings because they were some of the only ones who had the space for his large paintings.

When he painted, he used his whole body in a very loose manner that was more natural as opposed to controlled strokes.  Pollock felt that he did not need to think so much about art and that it should be free with artwork and that there does not need to be a special meaning for it, just as nature can make beautiful marks so could he.  

Franz Kline was also an abstract expressionist.  However his paintings had more abrupt strokes but they were not as radical as Pollock's paintings were.  Many artists were more accepting of Kline's because he actually touched the canvas but Pollock just dripped or threw the paint onto the canvas.  Joan Mitchell  also painted in a similar fashion as Pollock but she never saw herself as an action painter because she would paint a little stop look at it and paint a little more.

Cy Twombly went back to the roots of Pollock's paintings.  Twombly made very juvenile marks onto his canvas and treated it as if it were a wall and he was an amateur graffiti artist.  Bryce Martin began as a minimal painter.  Later on he used some sticks and branches as his brushes and painted on giant canvases like Pollock and Twombly.  His paintings had very loose strokes and the backgrounds were very plain or blank.  Some strokes were different colors and others were a very grayish black color.

Helen Franken... Had a more calm approach to painting and took part in the color field paintings.  Rothoko also took part of the color field paintings and like Helen paid less attention to stroke and more attention to the different colors.  He started off with brighter colors and over the course of his lifetime the colors started to be less and less vibrant.  When looking at his paintings, people observed them as if looking through a window and you can kind of guess what the weather was like at the time.  His paintings were often put in rooms without windows in order to help this idea of looking at the paintings like windows.

The Painted Word 
Tom Wolfe was a satirist about many things and his book The Painted Word was a satire about the art world.  He made fun of hard edge, pop, op, and all the -isms.

Pop Art
 had a lot of social satire.  Andy Warhol was one of the ringleaders of pop art. He ate a hamburger!!!!!!