A Virtual Exhibition

MACHINE

MADE

ART Gรถkberk Koรงak

.

2019

Prologue

Context

CONTENT

Aleksandr Deyneka - Donbass -1947 Andreas Gursky - Salerno - 1990

Object as it is Dan Flavin - The Diagonal of May 25,1963 -1963 Jeff Koons - New Hoover Convertibles, Green, Red, Brown, New Shelton Wet/Dry 10 Gallon Displaced Doubledecker - 1981-87

Attributes of Machinery Repetition, Rhythm, Identicality Andy Warhol - Campbell’s Soup Cans -1962 Allan McCollum - Individual Works - 1983

Simplicity and Materiality Carl Andre - Steel Zinc Plain -1969 Donald Judd - Untitled - 1967

Formal Composition Richard Hamilton - Hers is a Lush Situation -1958 James Rosenquist - I Love You with My Ford - 1961

Endnotes & Bibliography

PROLOGUE

This exhibition aims to reveal the relationship between the industrial context, “readymade” objects as the outcome of industrial manufacturing, mass production of commodities, physical, commercial, economical and formal attributes of mass production and machinery, and the art that was produced after 1945.

It was not the first time that the creative process got affected by the ever-advancing industry and machine technology. Early Modernism at the beginning of 20th century gave the start, followed by the 1930s interest on machinery aesthetics as demonstrated in Machine Age Exposition at 1927 in New York1, then the mass production and commercialization of commodities as the result of economical boom after the World War II deeply influenced the highly-creative members of capitalism, not only the ones who had a scholastic art education, but now advertisement script writers, billboard painters, comic book drawers and railroad workers found their place to express both themselves and the conditions of the epoch.

Art was freed out of the elite to the masses, now it is in a medium that anyone can understand and produce. It exposed itself as just a fluorescent lightbulb on the museum wall, or a collage of various billboard posters. As manifested by Fluxus; “... he must demonstrate that anything can substitute art and anyone can do it. Therefore this substitute art-amusement must be simple, amusing, concerned with insignificances, have no commodity or institutional value.”2 So the art was simplified and purged from all the additional, non-necessary, meaningless, ornamental attributes, again as Fluxus manifested; “ Purge the world of bourgeois sickness, “intellectual”, professional & commercialized culture, PURGE the world of dead art, imitation, artificial art, abstract art, illusionistic art, mathematical art, PURGE THE WORLD OF EUROPANISM!”3

Through this purging process, it is quite interesting that produced-by-machinery objects appealed artists as to be the pure forms that could be the subject of their artwork. Then it raises the question of which attributes of these objects make us conceive them as pure, simplified forms. The answers should lie in their actual method of manufacturing. Geometrical precision, simplicity and materiality, identicality and repetition, usage of common materials as steel, plastic, glass and wood, provide the coherency over all the industrially produced goods, resulting in constructing a common formal language and purity, that at the end, could be the subject of the art.

Selected artworks are classified in a manner that makes it easier and more concrete to understand the effect of machinery and manufacturing on the modern art scene, by starting from general to specific. First, the context of industry, then artworks dealing with the object itself are displayed. On the third part, being the largest part of the exhibition, physical attributes of machinery and mass-production are examined through the artworks as in three sub-parts, which I claim that, they are the characteristics eventually constructing what we call as machinery aesthetics.

Aleksandr Deyneka Donbass

CONTEXT

1947

Photographic realism is blended with dynamism and masculinity. Industrial context of the epoch is represented in a Socialist Realist manner, strong heroic postures of female workers, brown industry and hard production together with steam engines and factory chimneys... He paints the effect of machinery and industry on the life itself, through the creation of the new nation.

Andreas Gursky Salerno

CONTEXT

1990

As the artists refers “aggregate states�, a whole made up of repeating elements(Southbank Centre, 2018), large-scale industrial environment, an Italian port town - a context that is filled with industrial outputs, cars, cranes, containers and cargo ships that define the landscape, becoming a whole. An environment that is machine-made with a bit of human intervention. Elements in the photograph exist in detail regardless to their distance , the loss of depth results in a homogeneous flatness.

Dan Flavin The Diagonal of May 25, 1963

OBJECT AS IT IS

1963

The “diagonal”, in the possible extent of its dissemination as a common strip of light or a shimmering slice across anybody’s wall, had the potential for becoming a modern technological fetish.”4 Industrially manufactured fluorescent tube is hung discretely on the museum wall. After some trials of different colors such as gold, green, yellow, and red, the final one is the pure white, ultraviolet light. The “found object” exists as it is, machine creates, artist exhibits.

Jeff Koons New Hoover Convertibles, Green, Red, Brown, New Shelton Wet/Dry 10 Gallon Displaced Doubledecker

OBJECT AS IT IS

1981 - 87

Readymades.

He refers to the concept of newness, mechanical cleanliness and perfection that appeals our fantasies and desires(Tate Modern,2015) on the new “object� which is brought freshly from its factory. Displayed in sterile plexiglass boxes lit with pure white fluorescent bulbs under, the machine based clean-cut outcome of the industrial production becomes the sole matter to be displayed.

ATTRIBUTES : REPETITION, RHYTHM, IDENTICALITY

Andy Warhol Campbell’s Soup Cans 1962

“I don’t think art should be only for the selected few, I think it should be for the mass of the American people.”5 When it was first exhibited, the soup can canvases were displayed together like products in a supermarket.

Kind of mimicking the mass production of goods, Warhol repeats the same image of the can, varying only the flavor label. He directly references to the standardized, repetitive and identical machine-based production, as he does in his other works.

ATTRIBUTES : REPETITION, RHYTHM, IDENTICALITY

Allan McCollum Individual Works 1983

Hundreds of small shapes are collected from houses, supermarkets, stores and even from sidewalks; cosmetic containers, yogurt cups, pencil sharpeners, etc (Fraser). Then he produces rubber molds imitating these collected shapes, to be cast out of plaster. Eventually each piece looks identical, but all of them are unique.

He criticizes the standardization in mass production and consumption of things that results in the reduction of originality.

ATTRIBUTES : SIMPLICITY, MATERIALITY

Carl Andre Steel Zinc Plain 1969

12 steel and 12 zinc plates placed in a check-board pattern on the floor without joining them together. Visitors are allowed to walk on the plates, resulting more intimate physical connection with the artwork. Usage of mass-produced industrial materials as steel and zinc and placing them in geometrical seriality gives the idea of materiality and simplicity as attributes of machine forms and outcomes of the industrial production.

ATTRIBUTES : SIMPLICITY, MATERIALITY

“In terms of existing, everything is equal.�6

Donald Judd Untitled 1967

Identical rectangular boxes are placed arraying vertically, their quantity and distance between are determined by the wall height of the museum, without other intensions.

Sides are painted with green automobile paint, while top and bottom surfaces are galvanized metal, giving the industrial sense which is simple, precise and identical, as just come out from a machine.

ATTRIBUTES : FORMAL COMPOSITION

“The driver sits at the dead calm centre of all this motion; hers is a lush situation.” 7

Richard Hamilton Hers is a Lush Situation 1958

His work focuses on the erotic image between woman and machinery used in mass media advertisement. He merges machine forms and woman body parts - a blend of 1955 Buick headlamp detail and Sophia Loren’s lips in this case. As a result of his formal exploration of machinery, the way that car parts designed and produced takes part in the artwork.

ATTRIBUTES : FORMAL COMPOSITION

James Rosenquist I Love You with My Ford 1961

Similar to Hamilton’s work, the effect of mass media and consumer culture - outcome of the boom in industrial manufacturing after the War, is felt.

Images are zoomed in to remove the context, as it’s done in advertisements, resulting in the demonstration of various forms found in detail. The erotic imagery can exist in spaghetti with tomato sauce or in the front bumper of a Ford. Machine form is represented with reference to eroticism and consumerism.

Citations Southbank Centre. (2018). Salerno I by Andreas Gursky. [online] Available at: https://www. southbankcentre.co.uk/blog/salerno-i-andreas-gursky.

ENDNOTES & BIBLIOGRAPHY

Auping, Michael. “Modern Art Museum Of Fort Worth”. Themodern.Org, https:// /collection/ Diagonal-of-May-25-1963/1126.

Tate Modern.(2015). “‘New Hoover Convertibles, Green, Red, Brown, New Shelton Wet/Dry 10 Gallon Displaced Doubledecker’, Jeff Koons, 1981-7 | Tate”. Tate, 2019, https://www.tate.org. uk/art/artworks/koons-new-hoover-convertibles-green-red-brown-new-shelton-wet-dry-10-gallon-displaced-ar00077.

Fraser, Andrea. “Individual Works: Allan Mccollum”. Allanmccollum.Net, 1988, http://allanmccollum.net/allanmcnyc/Andrea_Fraser2.html.

Endnotes 1 Machine-Age Exposition was held on 16-28 May 1927 at 119 West 57th Street in New York, being advertised as the first event bringing together “architecture, engineering, industrial arts and modern art.”

The exhibition was initiated by Jane Heap of The Little Review, a New York literary magazine, and organised along with Société des urbanistes, Brussels; U.S.S.R. Society of Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries; Kunstgewerbeschule, Vienna; Czlonkowie Group Praesens, Warsaw; Architects D.P.L.G, Paris; and Advisory American Section. (https://monoskop.org/Machine-Age_Exposition) Machine-Age Exposition, New York, 1927, 44 pp. Catalogue.

2 Cited partly from George Maciunas’ work, Fluxus Manifesto, 1963. (https://www.moma.org/collection/works/127947) 3 Cited partly from George Maciunas’ work, Fluxmanifesto on Fluxamusement, 1965. (http://georgemaciunas.com/exhibitions/flux-labyrinth-fluxus-gag/fluxmanifesto-fluxamusement-1965) 4 Dan Flavin, “’...in daylight or cool white.’ an autobiographical sketch,” Artforum 4 (December 1965): 20–24.

5 Andy Warhol. (https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-campbells-soup-cans-1962)

6 Donald Judd. (https://www.moma.org/collection/works/81324)

7 The ending line of the review of 1955 Buick by Deborah Allen, International Design magazine. http://www.grahamfoundation.org/grantees/5343-sifting-the-trash-a-history-of-design-criticism

Websites Used As Sources https://www.themodern.org/collection/Diagonal-of-May-25-1963/1126 https://www.moma.org/collection/works/81324 https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-campbells-soup-cans-1962 http://allanmccollum.net/allanmcnyc/Andrea_Fraser2.html http://allanmccollum.net/allanmcnyc/iwtexts.html https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/andre-steel-zinc-plain-t07148 https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/hers-is-a-lush-situation-70719 https://artsgraph.wordpress.com/2014/04/19/i-love-you-with-my-ford-james-rosenquist https://www.artsy.net/artwork/james-rosenquist-collage-for-i-love-you-with-my-ford