A new favorite piece of art!!!

Frank Stella, La scienza della pigrizia, 1984

K, so the actual piece...not totally a fave, but the NAME...whoa....it's like an entire (unfortunate) life manifesto on a wall. La scienza della pigrizia (The Science of Laziness) by Frank Stella (he's a minimalist...for a while anyway...he did a LOT with stripes...he was influenced by Pollock and Kline, both abstract expressionists).

I found it as I was doing research for a music/art history project (I'm using the research for both classes, different papers, same research...pretty sweet!)  So yeah, the Science of Laziness...I just LOVE that title!

I had so much fun today with my research.  I got to look at pieces by Mondrian (totally LOVE his stuff!!!), Brâncuşi, and I got to think about Duchamp (one of my absolute FAVORITE artists!!!), and Lichtenstein (an artist I probably won't showcase in my project, but he's my all time favorite artist!!!).  *sigh*  Boy do I LOVE art!!!!

Piet Mondrian, Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-43

I got to see this one in New York at the MoMA... LOVE Mondrian...like seriously.  He was one of the founders of De Stijl, a Dutch movement that means "the Style" (and is pronounced surprisingly similar to that).  They focused on using black, white, and primary colors and very geometric shapes.  I thought he was minimalist, but he wasn't, he just really influenced the movement.  This piece was really influenced by the music of the day.  Mondrian loved music (and that's pretty cool!)

Piet Mondrian, Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow, 1930

This is probably my favorite piece of his!  Very quintessential Mondrian (in my opinion).

'Sleeping Muse', bronze sculpture by Constantin Brâncuşi, 1910

"The Endless Column" in Târgu Jiu, Romania, as restored after 2000

Brâncuşi doesn't really fit into much of a solid movement cuz he's mostly into sculpture, but he was also a really big influence on the minimalists.  The column is in this totally random place in Romania.  It's about as tall as a 10 story building and it's in the middle of this totally rural area.  It was originally commissioned for an Indian temple, but the temple was never built, so it just stayed in Romania...all random and everything.

Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1912

K, this is one of my absolute FAVORITE pieces ever!!!  It's cubist, but I like it so much more than Picasso (I think it's mostly because you don't get to see a whole lot of cubism from Duchamp).  It's in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, so I've never seen it in real life...but I soooooo very much want to!!!  The story behind this is really kind of sad, cute, cool, funny.  It was all ready to be in a display in Europe but the place that was holding the exhibit told Duchamp's brothers (who were also artists) that they needed to tell him to remove the painting from the exhibit.  They said the reason was that he etched the title into the painting (you can sort of see it in this picture...it's in the bottom left), but that's debatable truth due to the fact that text was very prevalent in cubist art.  So Duchamp went to the exhibit, unbeknownst to his brothers, and removed the painting himself, and went back home all dejected in a taxi.  He then moved to New York and displayed this same piece in an exhibit there.  It was so shocking to the public and a lot of people either hated it or didn't quite know what to think of it.  There were so many different reactions to it that it became the most famous piece in the exhibit, so Duchamp decided that New York was the best place for him, so he stayed and kept doing (a lot of rather shocking) art.

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917

I got to see this one!!!!!  In real life!!!!!  And the picture in real life too!!!!!  It was also at the MoMA when I went...they had a Dada exhibit.  I saw it!  It was just as weird in person!  I saw the "R. Mutt" and EVERYTHING!!!!  Dada art is soooo weird, and that's exactly is purpose.  It's designed to be purposeless, and that's why it is so incredibly awesome!!!!  (yeah, I saw that one!!!)

Roy Lichtenstein, Drowning Girl, 1963

I got to see this one too!  Not quite as exciting as all the Duchamp stuff I got to see.  I love Lichtenstein, but you pretty much always know what to expect: cartoons.  And that's why I love it!  I had an art teacher in 7th grade that said "comics are NOT art!"  I vehemently disagreed with her, but she didn't budge on the topic.  And then...behold: Lichtenstein.  When I first saw his stuff and had to do a report on him (I had to do a report on Duchamp too...hence the total and complete adoration) I couldn't get enough of it!  I looked for piece after piece after piece.  It was pop art, but not Andy Warhol!!!  And it was COMICS!!!!  I love comics!!!!  His later stuff is more abstracted, but none the less awesome!!!  So yeah, LOVE that man's stuff!!!!  (And I got to see two of his pieces in real life!)

So yeah, probably more than you wanted to know about my love, obsession, excitement in relation to art history, but I do love it!!!  Especially the modern stuff (hence the me taking 20th Century Art and Architectural History this semester).  So, hope you enjoyed the little crash course in "Manda's completely trivial knowledge about random pieces of art that don't have that much to do with her project or her class but that she thinks are totally worth while anyway!" cuz I sure had fun today with my long, long hours of research!  Love you guys!!!

~Manda

P.S. check out this awesome quote I found during my research:

"Work like a slave; command like a king; create like a god."

~Constantin Brâncuşi ♥

I loved it!!!