SDMC Art Comparison of Artist Jackson Pullock Wyeth & Georgia Okeeffe Essay

In the mid-20th Century, American Art matured, rising to the same level of creativity and importance as European art. Among art students, there arose an idea of “the Great American Novel” and “the Great American Painting.” Many students consciously strove to create these pinnacles-of-creation. We still do. Ironically, some of the most important “American” accomplishments in art, literature, and science were produced by immigrants, particularly those driven out of Europe by the rise of Nazi Germany.

This assignment is a follow-up to the films I assigned you to watch about Georgia O’Keeffe and Andrew Wyeth. O’Keeffe was a Surrealist, Wyeth a romantic Realist, and they were complemented by the Abstract Expressionists, of whom Jackson Pollock was the most famous.

Here is the assignment. I hope to see some thinking, which will take you at least two pages (350 words):

Please compare the work and the personalities of these three important and very individual artists. Please do not spend more than a sentence or two describing the work of O’Keeffe and Wyeth (You did that in the previously-assigned individual film responses). You can write a little more about Pollock’s work, if you are so moved. But the point of this assignment is to try to say something about the FEELINGS these three inspire, the rich diversity of 20th-century American Art, and to explore WHY they were all so different.

You may want to research one or more of these three artists on the Web. If you do, always cite full URLs, please. You are allowed to judge the excellence of your sources… The more controversial artists generate the most heated disagreement, so be prepared to critique your reference material as much as the artists themselves!

Up through the19th century, most artists all appear pretty uninterested in being unique and different; they wanted to be accepted, successful, and often conformed to the fashions of the time, which were usually highly realistic. (Some 19th-century artists like Blake, the Pre-Raphaelites, and most famously, the Impressionists, consciously turned their backs on prevailing fashions. But looking back at them, they still seem pretty conventional.) Then, starting with Cubism and other 20th-century movements, artists started trying to be as different as possible. In their search for Newness, they turned away from narrative, from realistic images, and from beauty. It became less important to make us, their viewers, feel good, and more about making us uncomfortable. This is why “modern art” is so hard to like.

(Feel free to look up videos and websites about Mark Rothko, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Paula Rego, James Rosenquist, Arshile Gorky, Andy Warhol, and other artists. I will be happy to grant extra credit for your insights into these artists.)

If you research anything (look up more of his work on Google, for example), always include citations and URLs of the sources and resources you used. Likewise, if you reproduce a painting of his in your paper, be sure to give it a complete caption. Also, take care to spell correctly, and to organize your ideas into paragraphs. It will affect your grade, (though not so much as it would in an English class!)

This is one of several biographical videos of Pollock:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYpA0iWhjJc (Links to an external site.)

This video biography of O’Keeffe is the best I’ve seen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DMMWaGm4jU (Links to an external site.)

The film above contains clips from this interview film below, made some forty years earlier. It’s unfortunately of lower resolution than the first:Georgia O’Keeffe (Links to an external site.)(I do not know why Canvas is not showing a preview…)

…And here is the biography of Andrew Wyeth I presented for you before. :

BBC Michael Palin in Wyeth´s World (Links to an external site.)