History of Modern Art with Klaire
Explore Modern Art history including Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, and other key Modernist art movements. Join artist and educator Klaire Lockheart as she examines famous artists and artwork through a 21st century intersectional feminist lens. Whether you’re an artist, student, or patron of the arts, you will hopefully learn something new about Modern Art.
Postmodernism: Let’s Make the Art World a Better Place
If you enjoy rebelling against established institutions, you’ll enjoy some aspects of Postmodern Art and the work it inspires today. Host Klaire Lockheart will briefly review Modernism before explaining the Postmodernism movement. Discover the legacy of the Guerrilla Girls, and learn about an epic feud over the blackest black paint.
Artists and Artwork: Damien Hirst (Away from the Flock), Colleen Wolstenholme, Jeff Koons (String of Puppies), Art Rogers (Puppies), Chuck Close, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Al Diaz, Andy Warhol, Guerrilla Girls (Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?; When Racism And Sexism Are No Longer Fashionable, How Much Will Your Art Collection Be Worth?), Anish Kapoor (Cloud Gate), and Stuart Semple
Additional Topics: Modernism, SAMO©, Neo-Expressionism, Linda Nochlin, James Elkins (Stories of Art), the Bean, Vantablack, Culture Hustle, Black 3.0, and “Art Workers’ Coalition: Statement of Demands”
Artists and Artwork: Damien Hirst (Away from the Flock), Colleen Wolstenholme, Jeff Koons (String of Puppies), Art Rogers (Puppies), Chuck Close, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Al Diaz, Andy Warhol, Guerrilla Girls (Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?; When Racism And Sexism Are No Longer Fashionable, How Much Will Your Art Collection Be Worth?), Anish Kapoor (Cloud Gate), and Stuart Semple
Additional Topics: Modernism, SAMO©, Neo-Expressionism, Linda Nochlin, James Elkins (Stories of Art), the Bean, Vantablack, Culture Hustle, Black 3.0, and “Art Workers’ Coalition: Statement of Demands”
Transcript
Hello, my friends! You’re listening to the History of Modern Art with Klaire, a chronological inspection of Modern Art history viewed from a 21st century intersectional feminist perspective. I’m your host Klaire Lockheart, and I am so happy that you want to explore Postmodern Art with me. I thought Postmodernism would be a fitting conclusion to the History of Modern Art with Klaire so I could share what happened after Modernism ended and give you a transition from art history to contemporary art. Whether you’re an artist, a student, or just here to enjoy the exciting conclusion to this program, I’m glad you’re listening!
[Music]
Art jargon can get confusing. Art made today is not considered “Modern Art,” because Modernism ended about 50 years ago. Postmodernism, as you probably already surmised, came after Modernism; however, that art style is from the past as well. Modernism lasted from around the 1870s through the 1970s, and that century encompassed many different subcategories. Postmodernism began during the 1970s and possibly ended around the year 2000, but the timeline varies depending on whom you ask. Regardless, Postmodernism is over, and it is up to future art historians to suss out what movement we’re currently inhabiting. If you’re an artist, please gather your friends and write a manifesto just to see if you can make it into future art history books.
Before I explain Postmodernism, please permit me to recap Modernism in order to provide some context. Those who created Modern Art, with a capital “M,” were interested in depicting their modern lives. Many of the Modernists were wealthy, well-connected, men who lived in Paris, which means the vast majority of artists during the late 19th century and 20th centuries were excluded from art history. It’s necessary for me to mention this because throughout the history of Western art, women weren’t allowed to train equally as men. They also weren’t permitted the same opportunities to create and display their work. I need to share this because Modern Art history doesn’t include nearly as many as women as men artists, and it isn’t because women from that era weren’t skilled or committed. Women have been historically excluded from training, exhibition opportunities, and art institutions. Unfortunately, this discrepancy is even worse for people of color. Overall, Modern Art historians tend to only focus on a select few artists from Paris and New York. There were a few exceptions, but the traditional history favors rich, privileged, heteronormative, Judeo-Christian white men.
Anyway, the exact date of the birth of Modernism is debatable, but I like to credit Impressionism as one of the first Modernist movements. Impressionists rebelled in the 1870s against the Salon, which was the official art exhibition in Paris. These artists painted with loose brushstrokes and bright colors to show the viewers that their artwork was obviously handmade in opposition to the invention of photography. They were influenced by Japanese prints and they liked to paint outside. The Orientalists were contemporaries of the Impressionists, but they used their art to project their imperialist fantasies on the Middle and Near East for a European audience. Postimpressionism came next, and these artists saw themselves as continuing the rebellion the Impressionists began, but they were heavily invested in color theory. In the early 20th century, the Fauvists emerged in Paris, and they claimed to be the first people in the world who used color non-representationally, even though many other cultures outside of Europe produced artists who also used unrealistic colors. The Cubists spawned the next artistic movement, and they were convinced that they were the first people on the planet to discover that paintings were flat, and they represented a fragmented three-dimensional world on two-dimensional canvases. Suprematism was one of the first Modernist movements that art historians recognize that happened outside of Paris. It occurred in Russia, and this art included paintings of flat, geometric shapes that were supposed to represent the world more accurately than anything else that preceded it. During World War I, Dadaism emerged in Sweden, Paris, and the United States. The Dadaist artists were disillusioned because they were promised utopia, but they lived in chaos. They decided that if the world didn’t make sense, then art shouldn’t either. These are the artists who created readymades, which were everyday objects brought into the gallery and transformed with the magic of artistic intent. Surrealists came next, and they were centered in Paris and New York. These artworks were dream-like and absurd. The artists were influenced by Sigmund Freud, but as it turns out, Freud was pretty much wrong about every idea he had. Many people who are heavily invested in Modernism will claim that Abstract Expressionism is the apex of human civilization. This genre was developed in midcentury New York, and this is art doesn’t represent anything. Artists painted blurry shapes or flung paint on canvas, and it was heavily promoted by the CIA to advertise American freedom. Afterwards, Pop Art developed in rebellion against abstraction. Pop Artists embraced popular culture and consumerism.
Modernists and their their supporters declared that their art was universal and everyone could understand it without an education, yet this premise is false because a few wealthy and well-connected artists couldn’t possibly speak for and resonate with everyone on the planet. Art is tied to culture, and most of the prominent Modern Artists were a few rich heteronormative white men from Paris and New York. Of course there is nothing objectively wrong with being white or a man because none of us chose how we are born, but it is problematic when one demographic rises to prominence and there are many systems in place to keep it that way at the expense of everyone else. Of course there were artists that didn’t fit this model exactly, and I try to include these artists because representation matters and diverse artists enrich our experiences. Throughout the history of Western Art, women and people of color were excluded from receiving equal education and representation. Obviously there have been skilled artists who were people of color and women from the past, but if they became successful it was the exception and not the rule. Keep in mind that Modernism arose around the same time that the Civil War was occurring in the United States. American women couldn’t even vote until after Cubism was invented. Even today, artwork made by people of color and women, especially women of color, isn’t included in major museums, galleries, and private collections.
I’m sure there were artists who knew that the universal idealism promoted by prominent Modernists wasn’t true, but I bet they weren’t influential enough for the Guardians of the Art World to notice. However, during the 1970s, artists with power challenged Modernism, and thus Postmodernism was born! When exactly Postmodernism began is up for debate depending on the source. If a collector believes their artwork is more valuable to be categorized as Modernism, they’ll say that it is Modern Art. If an auction house believes that a piece will grab a higher price because it’s Postmodern, they they will select this categorization. Postmodernism is tricky to classify because there isn’t a unifying theme and these artists didn’t band together and write manifestoes.
After the break, I will explain the Postmodernism movement and introduce you to some of the prominent artists.
[Break]
Postmodernism was a reaction against Modernism. While Postmodernists claimed they were rebelling against authority, they did continue the parade of rich white men. However, the center of the Art World expanded beyond New York to also include London. Damien Hirst, who lives in London, is the richest living artist in 2021, and he is worth over $1 billion. He is well known for suspending dead animals in leaky tanks full of forameldyde. His piece called Away from the Flock is a lamb preserved in a tank, and this object is at the Tate. In addition to the controversy over what caused the deaths of the thousands of animals in displays, he has also been accused of plagiarism. In 2016 he was sued by Colleen Wolstenholme because he sold a pill bracelet that look remarkably like her jewelry. Wolstenholme sold her charm bracelets for about $2,000 while Hirst sold his for $35,000. Jeff Koons is the second wealthiest living artist, and he is notorious for stealing ideas from less famous artists as well. He has his workshop create sculptures of compositions and concepts created by other people who he doesn’t credit. For example, in 1988, he had his employees manufacture a sculpture titled String of Puppies, which is a 3D copy of a photo called Puppies by Art Rogers from 1985. The composition includes two people holding 8 puppies and sitting a bench. The sculpture even crops the legs of the people in the same spot just like the photograph. The original photographer Art Rogers sued Koons, and the judge ruled in the Rogers’ favor. Koons has been sued by many other artists, and every time he always acts like he doesn’t know that it is wrong to copy others and this is first time someone told him to stop plagiarizing. This is extra funny because Jeff Koons once filed a lawsuit against a gallery for selling little sculptures that resemble balloon dogs since he sells large metal sculptures of balloon dogs, and apparently he believes he is the only person who should be allowed to sell items that look like ballon animals. Chuck Close is another Postmodern artist, and he is worth $25 million. He’s is best known for creating gigantic hyper-realistic paintings of faces. He also made colossal images of nude models in the 1960s, which are often omitted in typical art curriculum. However, a few years ago several women came forward with allegations against Close for inappropriate behavior and touching. Not all rich, famous artists abuse their power, but it appears that Chuck Close is yet another one who did.
If you’re unimpressed with this art created by the same standard of well-connected men of European descent, you are not alone. Jean-Michel Basquiat was a young artist in New York who rose to prominence during the 1980s. He began making art as part of a graffiti duo team called SAMO© with Al Diaz. That’s spelled “S-A-M-O with a copyright ‘c’ at the end. “SAMO©” is short for “same old shit.” Even though Basquiat was a man from New York who didn’t treat women fabulously, he didn’t fit the mold of the typical 20th century famous artist. His parents were from Puerto Rico and Haiti before they moved to New York, and Basquiat wasn’t wealthy. His art is categorized as Neo-Expressionism, and his large paintings are scratchy, gestural, and packed full of color. He also challenged the way that the Euro-centric art world regarded artists from Africa or who had African ancestry.
Jean-Michel Basquiat met Andy Warhol, but some people criticize this relationship because they accuse Basquiat of profiting from Warhol’s fame. I think those people tend to forget that most prominent Western artists knew each other and were well-connected with art critics and gallery owners. It’s not a coincidence that Monet, Manet, and Degas all knew each other. Jean-Leon Gerome’s father-in-law was an influential art dealer and reproducer. Vincent van Gogh’s brother was an art dealer, and his sister-in-law promoted all of his work after his death. Both Matisse and Picasso were supported by the wealthy Stein family. Jackson Pollock was adored by powerful art critic Clement Greenberg, and so on and so forth. Personally, I recommend being friendly with the artists in your life because you never know who is going to get famous next. I mean, it’s just a good idea to be kind and supportive to others in general, but I’m stating this just in case you need an extra reminder to reach out to your artist friends and send them a message of support. I love it when friends and acquaintances send me positive messages out of the blue.
[Music]
Anyway, Basquiat wasn’t the only Postmodern artist who actually challenged the status quo of Modern Art. In 1985, an art collective called the Guerrilla Girls was born. This was a group of women artists from New York who had to remain anonymous because they didn’t want to kill their careers and get black-listed because they critiqued the most powerful art institutions. In 1989 the Guerrilla Girls created a poster called Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?, which literally asked the question “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?” They visited the Modern Art sections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and did a “weenie count,” where they concluded that even though 85% of the nudes were female bodies, less than 5% of the artists were women.
This was an important exercise, and I urge you to be cognizant of what types of artists are represented the next time you go to a museum or art gallery. When I taught Modern Art History, I developed an assignment for my undergraduate students where they had to evaluate a local art institution and derive statistics on a group of artists they thought were underrepresented. The students assessed permanent collections, Modern Art displays, or specific exhibitions. They calculated what percentage of the artists were women, people of color, or whoever else they were interested in seeing represented. In addition to discovering the problem, they also had to formulate a solution, such as purposefully purchasing art by specific artists for a permanent collection. Finally, the students had to write to someone who worked at the institute to share their findings. They did admit that directly contacting curators and directors was a little intimidating, and I completely understand. They were young adults working on their bachelor’s degrees, and they were criticizing experts in authority. I do want to share that some of my students received some incredibly thoughtful responses from the curators at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. Unfortunately, two of my students got a very brief and disappointing copy-and-paste response from an art institution in Sioux City that I won’t mention by name. Fortunately, no one was banned from any museums, and I was proud to witness my students interacting within the contemporary art world. If you ever notice that your local museum, gallery, or art center could use some improvement, you should seek out who is in charge and share your thoughts and solutions. My advice is to be very polite in your message, cite your statistics, explain how you derived your numbers, and then offer a course of action you’d like the institution to take. If you really want to get your point across, you could even create a poster like the Guerrilla Girls did! A little humor goes a long way.
The Guerrilla Girls made another print in 1989 called When Racism And Sexism Are No Longer Fashionable, How Much Will Your Art Collection Be Worth? It’s a horizontal poster with black, sans serif text on a white-ish background. The top third states, “When Racism And Sexism Are No Longer Fashionable, How Much Will Your Art Collection Be Worth?” in all capital letters. Underneath, the text reads, “The art market won’t bestow mega-buck prices on the work of a few white males forever. For the 17.7 million you just spent on a single Jasper Johns painting, you could have bought at least one work by all these women and artists of color:,” and then they list 67 artists. Some of the names you might be familiar with from Modern Art history include: Mary Cassatt, Hannah Hoch, Frida Kahlo, Hilma af Klint, Lee Krasner, Berthe Morisot, Georgia O’Keeffe, Olga Rosanova, and Alma Thomas. If they were to update their poster, the most expensive painting by Jasper Johns was Flag, which he painted in 1958. A powerful art dealer sold the painting for $110 million in 2010, which is equivalent to over $130 million today. The most expensive artwork by an artist on the Guerrilla Girls’s list is Georgia O’Keeffe. Someone purchased her painting called Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 in 2014 for $44.4 million, which is about $49 million today. That’s actually the highest price anyone has ever paid for an artwork by a woman artist in the history of the world, and that’s just insultingly low when compared to Jasper Johns’s price. The most expensive artwork by a Modern Artist is Willem de Kooning’s 1955 painting Interchange, which sold for about $300 million in 2015. When adjusted for inflation, that painting is worth over $330 million, and that’s about seven times more expensive than O’Keeffe’s painting.
The Guerrilla Girls made their “When Racism And Sexism Are No Longer Fashionable, How Much Will Your Art Collection Be Worth?” poster in 1989, and unfortunately it appears that racism and sexism are still fashionable in the art market. The most expensive painting ever sold was Salvator Mundi, a painting attributed to Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci. The steep price was achieved because of the artist’s fame, not the quality of this particular composition. It was purchased in 2017 for $450.3 million, which is over $475 million today. The Guerrilla Girls listed Italian Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi as a woman artist to collect and she is probably most comparable to Leonardo from anyone on the list, and her most expensive painting sold for only $5.2 million in 2019. Yeesh. That’s a little insulting. The good news is that we can make a difference in the art market. All we have to do is get ridiculously wealthy and spend hundreds of millions of dollars on art by women and people of color to drive the prices up and make them more desirable in the regular art market. Or, a more feasible option is to evaluate our own personal art collections and take notice of what artists are represented on our walls. Not all great art has to be expensive. Then, we can mindfully purchase art to include a variety of voices who fit within our budgets. One of the most valuable aspects about art is that it can broaden our worlds and expose us to the stories and experiences of people who differ from us. Artists have the monumental job of humanizing people outside of the viewers’ social circles, which can help the viewers develop empathy.
You don’t need to buy art from women or other marginalized artists just to check a box, but if your art collection was overwhelmingly made by white men I encourage you to ask yourself why. It’s probably not even a conscious decision. In 1971, Linda Nochlin wrote, “In the field of art history, the white Western male viewpoint, unconsciously accepted as the viewpoint of the art historian, may—and does—prove to be inadequate not merely on moral and ethical grounds, or because it is elitist, but on purely intellectual ones.” If it turns out that the galleries you visit and your artist friends are a homogenous group, it doesn’t mean that you need to replace them. Instead, I recommend that you branch out and seek new experiences; support new and different artists. You could find the results pleasantly surprising. According to the Guerrilla Girl who uses the pseudonym Kathe Kollwitz, “If museums don’t cast a wide net and connect the real, full picture of wonderful art in our country, then they’re just collecting the history of wealth and power.”
Join me after the break, and I’ll discuss one more Postmodern artist and the backlash his selfish hoarding inspired.
[Break]
When Art Historian James Elkins published Stories of Art in 2002, he asked, “If Postmodernism is our current period - and that’s an assertion that is far from generally accepted - then what happens when it ends?” The simplest answer is that people will continue to make art and rebel against the previous generations of artists. Even though we are beyond Postmodernism, there are several Postmodern Artists who are alive and still manufacturing art. Whether or not that art is still considered Postmodern, considering that the movement ended about 20 years ago, will be up for debate amongst art historians and scholars. However, I want to focus on a current artist and his battle against a wealthy Postmodernist.
Anish Kapoor is a Postmodern artist who lives in London, and during the year 2021 he is ranked as the 7th richest artist in the world. One of his most recognizable sculptures is called Cloud Gate, and it’s on display in Millennium Park in Chicago. Kapoor’s team welded the 42 foot long sculpture together between 2004 and 2006. When the public first encountered this sculpture, guards were posted to prevent people from photographing it. At first, professional photographers and journalists were required to pay over $300 if they wanted to include this sculpture in their compositions, but now permits are no longer required. If you’re unfamiliar with Cloud Gate, you may recognize it by its nickname. Most people refer to this sculpture as “the Bean” because it looks like a giant jelly bean that was spray painted silver. Kapoor hates that it is called “the Bean,” and I would typically want to respect an artist’s wishes, but he is not the hero of this story.
In 2014, a company named Surrey NanoSystems invent a pigment called Vantablack. This is a pigment that absorbs 99.96% of light and makes 3D objects appear as silhouettes. It is made out of carbon nanotubes, and so this substance has to be applied in lab. Shortly after Vantablack made its debut, Anish Kapoor bought the exclusive rights to use it. No other artist on the planet can legally incorporate it in their art. Even though most artists couldn’t even dream of being able to afford this substance, the concept of elitism and preventing access to materials infuriated many people. Not only did Kapoor use his wealth and influence to prevent all other artists from utilizing Vantablack, he hasn’t even used this material to create anything as far as I can tell. Kapoor thought that this very black substance was cool, and instead of just making something amazing out it, he bought the rights to prevent anyone else from using it. Compared to the other Postmodernists I mentioned earlier, including Koons and Hirst, a lack of creativity seems to be a common thread with the wealthiest Postmodern artists who are alive today.
Fortunately, there are contemporary artists who are fed up with the elite malarkey of the art world in addition to the Guerrilla Girls. Stuart Semple is one of these artists who strives to make the art world more inclusive. When he learned that Kapoor was preventing all other artists from accessing the blackest black, Semple chose to retaliate with an act I would categorize as performance art. In 2016, he decided to share the “World’s Pinkest Pink” pigment he created with everyone. To teach Kapoor a lesson about what it feels like when people don’t share resources, Semple included the following stipulation, “By adding this product to your cart you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not purchasing this item on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information and belief this paint will not make its way into the hands of Anish Kapoor.”
Stuart Semple stated, “I wanted to make a point about elitism and self-expression and the fact that everybody should be able to make art.” He originally thought he would only sell just a couple jars of pigment, but the paint proved to be popular. Additionally, Kapoor did not like being banned from using a color, and someone on his staff procured a jar of the Pinkest Pink for him. To announce to the world that the rules don’t apply to him, he dipped his middle finger in the pink powder, and took a bad snapshot of his hand flipping everyone off next to the $6 pot of pigment. To prove that rich people don’t need to develop manners or process class, he then posted the photo on Instagram with the caption, “Up yours.” Kapoor, who follows no one on social media, still has this image posted. There are over 3,000 comments on it, and people still write on this post in support of Semple. Most of the comments are along the lines of, “Okay Bean Boy,” yet some of the messages are very mean-spirited, but I do not encourage blatantly harassing people on the internet (even if they won’t share their colors).
After this incident, Stuart Semple was inspired to create his own light-absorbing black paint. He first created Black 1.0, but that wasn’t dark enough. Semple then teamed up with artists and scientists to develop Black 2.0. This acrylic paint is non-toxic, it absorbs 96% of light, it smells like cherries, and it is unavailable to Anish Kapoor. Instead of stopping there, Semple began working on an even blacker black. He collaborated with over 1,000 artists to create Black 3.0, “the Blackest Black Paint in the World.” To make this paint available to the masses, he created a Kickstarter campaign, which released the paint in 2019. Black 3.0 is easy to apply, smells like coffee, and absorbs 99% of light. It also isn’t available to Anish Kapoor, who still refuses to play nice with others
I must disclose that I have purchased some of these paints from Stuart Semple’s Culture Hustle website, even though I typically don’t use acrylic paint. I truly wanted to support an artist who strives to make art more inclusive as opposed to excluding others, and I was pleased with my purchase. I bought Black 2.0 to use as a primer for Black 3.0. If you decide to you need to buy some matte, black acrylic paint, I would recommend this combination. It’s fun coating 3D objects so they appear flat like silhouettes in low light and photographs.
In 1970, the authors of the “Art Workers’ Coalition: Statement of Demands” declared, “Artworks are a cultural heritage that belong to the people.” Postmodern artists and authors began to receive attention for challenging Modern Art. While not all Postmodernists were successful rebels, Jean-Michele Basquiat and the Guerrilla Girls challenged the notion that artists had to be white men. Even though the art market still heavily favors a small group of wealthy, privileged artists, it is possible to make changes. We can contact art institutions that need improvements. We can seek out artists who have different backgrounds to expand our world view. We can purchase art from contemporary artists to build our personal art collections, and we can also support artists who are making the world a better place.
[Music]
Thank you very much for sharing your time with me to learn about Postmodernism. This is the last installment of the History of Modern Art with Klaire, and I technically should have concluded this program with the previous episode, but I wanted to transition from Modern Art to Postmodern Art and then back into our current world. I truly appreciate that you trusted me to share what I know about Modern Art history with you. I’m aware that I didn’t cover all the Modernist art movements in this series, but I wanted to share the highlights with you along with including some artists who were often excluded by traditional art history resources. I hope that you found this program informative and that you will be able to take action to impact the contemporary art world. If you want to read this episode’s transcript, consult my resources, or support this podcast, please go to my website klairelockheart.com, spelled K-L-A-I-R-E-L-O-C-K-H-E-A-R-T dot com, and then click on the “Media” tab. Please follow me on Instagram @klairelockheart so we can keep in touch, or you can find me on Facebook by searching for Klaire A. Lockheart.
The History of Modern Art with Klaire was created by me, Klaire Lockheart. This series was recorded with equipment generously provided by the amazing Aaron C. Packard of Aaron C. Packard Productions. Please check out his artwork at aaronpackard.com, that’s A-A-R-O-N-P-A-C-K-A-R-D dot com. Thank you once again for joining me on this exploration of Modern Art! You’re wonderful!
[Music]
Art jargon can get confusing. Art made today is not considered “Modern Art,” because Modernism ended about 50 years ago. Postmodernism, as you probably already surmised, came after Modernism; however, that art style is from the past as well. Modernism lasted from around the 1870s through the 1970s, and that century encompassed many different subcategories. Postmodernism began during the 1970s and possibly ended around the year 2000, but the timeline varies depending on whom you ask. Regardless, Postmodernism is over, and it is up to future art historians to suss out what movement we’re currently inhabiting. If you’re an artist, please gather your friends and write a manifesto just to see if you can make it into future art history books.
Before I explain Postmodernism, please permit me to recap Modernism in order to provide some context. Those who created Modern Art, with a capital “M,” were interested in depicting their modern lives. Many of the Modernists were wealthy, well-connected, men who lived in Paris, which means the vast majority of artists during the late 19th century and 20th centuries were excluded from art history. It’s necessary for me to mention this because throughout the history of Western art, women weren’t allowed to train equally as men. They also weren’t permitted the same opportunities to create and display their work. I need to share this because Modern Art history doesn’t include nearly as many as women as men artists, and it isn’t because women from that era weren’t skilled or committed. Women have been historically excluded from training, exhibition opportunities, and art institutions. Unfortunately, this discrepancy is even worse for people of color. Overall, Modern Art historians tend to only focus on a select few artists from Paris and New York. There were a few exceptions, but the traditional history favors rich, privileged, heteronormative, Judeo-Christian white men.
Anyway, the exact date of the birth of Modernism is debatable, but I like to credit Impressionism as one of the first Modernist movements. Impressionists rebelled in the 1870s against the Salon, which was the official art exhibition in Paris. These artists painted with loose brushstrokes and bright colors to show the viewers that their artwork was obviously handmade in opposition to the invention of photography. They were influenced by Japanese prints and they liked to paint outside. The Orientalists were contemporaries of the Impressionists, but they used their art to project their imperialist fantasies on the Middle and Near East for a European audience. Postimpressionism came next, and these artists saw themselves as continuing the rebellion the Impressionists began, but they were heavily invested in color theory. In the early 20th century, the Fauvists emerged in Paris, and they claimed to be the first people in the world who used color non-representationally, even though many other cultures outside of Europe produced artists who also used unrealistic colors. The Cubists spawned the next artistic movement, and they were convinced that they were the first people on the planet to discover that paintings were flat, and they represented a fragmented three-dimensional world on two-dimensional canvases. Suprematism was one of the first Modernist movements that art historians recognize that happened outside of Paris. It occurred in Russia, and this art included paintings of flat, geometric shapes that were supposed to represent the world more accurately than anything else that preceded it. During World War I, Dadaism emerged in Sweden, Paris, and the United States. The Dadaist artists were disillusioned because they were promised utopia, but they lived in chaos. They decided that if the world didn’t make sense, then art shouldn’t either. These are the artists who created readymades, which were everyday objects brought into the gallery and transformed with the magic of artistic intent. Surrealists came next, and they were centered in Paris and New York. These artworks were dream-like and absurd. The artists were influenced by Sigmund Freud, but as it turns out, Freud was pretty much wrong about every idea he had. Many people who are heavily invested in Modernism will claim that Abstract Expressionism is the apex of human civilization. This genre was developed in midcentury New York, and this is art doesn’t represent anything. Artists painted blurry shapes or flung paint on canvas, and it was heavily promoted by the CIA to advertise American freedom. Afterwards, Pop Art developed in rebellion against abstraction. Pop Artists embraced popular culture and consumerism.
Modernists and their their supporters declared that their art was universal and everyone could understand it without an education, yet this premise is false because a few wealthy and well-connected artists couldn’t possibly speak for and resonate with everyone on the planet. Art is tied to culture, and most of the prominent Modern Artists were a few rich heteronormative white men from Paris and New York. Of course there is nothing objectively wrong with being white or a man because none of us chose how we are born, but it is problematic when one demographic rises to prominence and there are many systems in place to keep it that way at the expense of everyone else. Of course there were artists that didn’t fit this model exactly, and I try to include these artists because representation matters and diverse artists enrich our experiences. Throughout the history of Western Art, women and people of color were excluded from receiving equal education and representation. Obviously there have been skilled artists who were people of color and women from the past, but if they became successful it was the exception and not the rule. Keep in mind that Modernism arose around the same time that the Civil War was occurring in the United States. American women couldn’t even vote until after Cubism was invented. Even today, artwork made by people of color and women, especially women of color, isn’t included in major museums, galleries, and private collections.
I’m sure there were artists who knew that the universal idealism promoted by prominent Modernists wasn’t true, but I bet they weren’t influential enough for the Guardians of the Art World to notice. However, during the 1970s, artists with power challenged Modernism, and thus Postmodernism was born! When exactly Postmodernism began is up for debate depending on the source. If a collector believes their artwork is more valuable to be categorized as Modernism, they’ll say that it is Modern Art. If an auction house believes that a piece will grab a higher price because it’s Postmodern, they they will select this categorization. Postmodernism is tricky to classify because there isn’t a unifying theme and these artists didn’t band together and write manifestoes.
After the break, I will explain the Postmodernism movement and introduce you to some of the prominent artists.
[Break]
Postmodernism was a reaction against Modernism. While Postmodernists claimed they were rebelling against authority, they did continue the parade of rich white men. However, the center of the Art World expanded beyond New York to also include London. Damien Hirst, who lives in London, is the richest living artist in 2021, and he is worth over $1 billion. He is well known for suspending dead animals in leaky tanks full of forameldyde. His piece called Away from the Flock is a lamb preserved in a tank, and this object is at the Tate. In addition to the controversy over what caused the deaths of the thousands of animals in displays, he has also been accused of plagiarism. In 2016 he was sued by Colleen Wolstenholme because he sold a pill bracelet that look remarkably like her jewelry. Wolstenholme sold her charm bracelets for about $2,000 while Hirst sold his for $35,000. Jeff Koons is the second wealthiest living artist, and he is notorious for stealing ideas from less famous artists as well. He has his workshop create sculptures of compositions and concepts created by other people who he doesn’t credit. For example, in 1988, he had his employees manufacture a sculpture titled String of Puppies, which is a 3D copy of a photo called Puppies by Art Rogers from 1985. The composition includes two people holding 8 puppies and sitting a bench. The sculpture even crops the legs of the people in the same spot just like the photograph. The original photographer Art Rogers sued Koons, and the judge ruled in the Rogers’ favor. Koons has been sued by many other artists, and every time he always acts like he doesn’t know that it is wrong to copy others and this is first time someone told him to stop plagiarizing. This is extra funny because Jeff Koons once filed a lawsuit against a gallery for selling little sculptures that resemble balloon dogs since he sells large metal sculptures of balloon dogs, and apparently he believes he is the only person who should be allowed to sell items that look like ballon animals. Chuck Close is another Postmodern artist, and he is worth $25 million. He’s is best known for creating gigantic hyper-realistic paintings of faces. He also made colossal images of nude models in the 1960s, which are often omitted in typical art curriculum. However, a few years ago several women came forward with allegations against Close for inappropriate behavior and touching. Not all rich, famous artists abuse their power, but it appears that Chuck Close is yet another one who did.
If you’re unimpressed with this art created by the same standard of well-connected men of European descent, you are not alone. Jean-Michel Basquiat was a young artist in New York who rose to prominence during the 1980s. He began making art as part of a graffiti duo team called SAMO© with Al Diaz. That’s spelled “S-A-M-O with a copyright ‘c’ at the end. “SAMO©” is short for “same old shit.” Even though Basquiat was a man from New York who didn’t treat women fabulously, he didn’t fit the mold of the typical 20th century famous artist. His parents were from Puerto Rico and Haiti before they moved to New York, and Basquiat wasn’t wealthy. His art is categorized as Neo-Expressionism, and his large paintings are scratchy, gestural, and packed full of color. He also challenged the way that the Euro-centric art world regarded artists from Africa or who had African ancestry.
Jean-Michel Basquiat met Andy Warhol, but some people criticize this relationship because they accuse Basquiat of profiting from Warhol’s fame. I think those people tend to forget that most prominent Western artists knew each other and were well-connected with art critics and gallery owners. It’s not a coincidence that Monet, Manet, and Degas all knew each other. Jean-Leon Gerome’s father-in-law was an influential art dealer and reproducer. Vincent van Gogh’s brother was an art dealer, and his sister-in-law promoted all of his work after his death. Both Matisse and Picasso were supported by the wealthy Stein family. Jackson Pollock was adored by powerful art critic Clement Greenberg, and so on and so forth. Personally, I recommend being friendly with the artists in your life because you never know who is going to get famous next. I mean, it’s just a good idea to be kind and supportive to others in general, but I’m stating this just in case you need an extra reminder to reach out to your artist friends and send them a message of support. I love it when friends and acquaintances send me positive messages out of the blue.
[Music]
Anyway, Basquiat wasn’t the only Postmodern artist who actually challenged the status quo of Modern Art. In 1985, an art collective called the Guerrilla Girls was born. This was a group of women artists from New York who had to remain anonymous because they didn’t want to kill their careers and get black-listed because they critiqued the most powerful art institutions. In 1989 the Guerrilla Girls created a poster called Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?, which literally asked the question “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?” They visited the Modern Art sections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and did a “weenie count,” where they concluded that even though 85% of the nudes were female bodies, less than 5% of the artists were women.
This was an important exercise, and I urge you to be cognizant of what types of artists are represented the next time you go to a museum or art gallery. When I taught Modern Art History, I developed an assignment for my undergraduate students where they had to evaluate a local art institution and derive statistics on a group of artists they thought were underrepresented. The students assessed permanent collections, Modern Art displays, or specific exhibitions. They calculated what percentage of the artists were women, people of color, or whoever else they were interested in seeing represented. In addition to discovering the problem, they also had to formulate a solution, such as purposefully purchasing art by specific artists for a permanent collection. Finally, the students had to write to someone who worked at the institute to share their findings. They did admit that directly contacting curators and directors was a little intimidating, and I completely understand. They were young adults working on their bachelor’s degrees, and they were criticizing experts in authority. I do want to share that some of my students received some incredibly thoughtful responses from the curators at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. Unfortunately, two of my students got a very brief and disappointing copy-and-paste response from an art institution in Sioux City that I won’t mention by name. Fortunately, no one was banned from any museums, and I was proud to witness my students interacting within the contemporary art world. If you ever notice that your local museum, gallery, or art center could use some improvement, you should seek out who is in charge and share your thoughts and solutions. My advice is to be very polite in your message, cite your statistics, explain how you derived your numbers, and then offer a course of action you’d like the institution to take. If you really want to get your point across, you could even create a poster like the Guerrilla Girls did! A little humor goes a long way.
The Guerrilla Girls made another print in 1989 called When Racism And Sexism Are No Longer Fashionable, How Much Will Your Art Collection Be Worth? It’s a horizontal poster with black, sans serif text on a white-ish background. The top third states, “When Racism And Sexism Are No Longer Fashionable, How Much Will Your Art Collection Be Worth?” in all capital letters. Underneath, the text reads, “The art market won’t bestow mega-buck prices on the work of a few white males forever. For the 17.7 million you just spent on a single Jasper Johns painting, you could have bought at least one work by all these women and artists of color:,” and then they list 67 artists. Some of the names you might be familiar with from Modern Art history include: Mary Cassatt, Hannah Hoch, Frida Kahlo, Hilma af Klint, Lee Krasner, Berthe Morisot, Georgia O’Keeffe, Olga Rosanova, and Alma Thomas. If they were to update their poster, the most expensive painting by Jasper Johns was Flag, which he painted in 1958. A powerful art dealer sold the painting for $110 million in 2010, which is equivalent to over $130 million today. The most expensive artwork by an artist on the Guerrilla Girls’s list is Georgia O’Keeffe. Someone purchased her painting called Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 in 2014 for $44.4 million, which is about $49 million today. That’s actually the highest price anyone has ever paid for an artwork by a woman artist in the history of the world, and that’s just insultingly low when compared to Jasper Johns’s price. The most expensive artwork by a Modern Artist is Willem de Kooning’s 1955 painting Interchange, which sold for about $300 million in 2015. When adjusted for inflation, that painting is worth over $330 million, and that’s about seven times more expensive than O’Keeffe’s painting.
The Guerrilla Girls made their “When Racism And Sexism Are No Longer Fashionable, How Much Will Your Art Collection Be Worth?” poster in 1989, and unfortunately it appears that racism and sexism are still fashionable in the art market. The most expensive painting ever sold was Salvator Mundi, a painting attributed to Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci. The steep price was achieved because of the artist’s fame, not the quality of this particular composition. It was purchased in 2017 for $450.3 million, which is over $475 million today. The Guerrilla Girls listed Italian Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi as a woman artist to collect and she is probably most comparable to Leonardo from anyone on the list, and her most expensive painting sold for only $5.2 million in 2019. Yeesh. That’s a little insulting. The good news is that we can make a difference in the art market. All we have to do is get ridiculously wealthy and spend hundreds of millions of dollars on art by women and people of color to drive the prices up and make them more desirable in the regular art market. Or, a more feasible option is to evaluate our own personal art collections and take notice of what artists are represented on our walls. Not all great art has to be expensive. Then, we can mindfully purchase art to include a variety of voices who fit within our budgets. One of the most valuable aspects about art is that it can broaden our worlds and expose us to the stories and experiences of people who differ from us. Artists have the monumental job of humanizing people outside of the viewers’ social circles, which can help the viewers develop empathy.
You don’t need to buy art from women or other marginalized artists just to check a box, but if your art collection was overwhelmingly made by white men I encourage you to ask yourself why. It’s probably not even a conscious decision. In 1971, Linda Nochlin wrote, “In the field of art history, the white Western male viewpoint, unconsciously accepted as the viewpoint of the art historian, may—and does—prove to be inadequate not merely on moral and ethical grounds, or because it is elitist, but on purely intellectual ones.” If it turns out that the galleries you visit and your artist friends are a homogenous group, it doesn’t mean that you need to replace them. Instead, I recommend that you branch out and seek new experiences; support new and different artists. You could find the results pleasantly surprising. According to the Guerrilla Girl who uses the pseudonym Kathe Kollwitz, “If museums don’t cast a wide net and connect the real, full picture of wonderful art in our country, then they’re just collecting the history of wealth and power.”
Join me after the break, and I’ll discuss one more Postmodern artist and the backlash his selfish hoarding inspired.
[Break]
When Art Historian James Elkins published Stories of Art in 2002, he asked, “If Postmodernism is our current period - and that’s an assertion that is far from generally accepted - then what happens when it ends?” The simplest answer is that people will continue to make art and rebel against the previous generations of artists. Even though we are beyond Postmodernism, there are several Postmodern Artists who are alive and still manufacturing art. Whether or not that art is still considered Postmodern, considering that the movement ended about 20 years ago, will be up for debate amongst art historians and scholars. However, I want to focus on a current artist and his battle against a wealthy Postmodernist.
Anish Kapoor is a Postmodern artist who lives in London, and during the year 2021 he is ranked as the 7th richest artist in the world. One of his most recognizable sculptures is called Cloud Gate, and it’s on display in Millennium Park in Chicago. Kapoor’s team welded the 42 foot long sculpture together between 2004 and 2006. When the public first encountered this sculpture, guards were posted to prevent people from photographing it. At first, professional photographers and journalists were required to pay over $300 if they wanted to include this sculpture in their compositions, but now permits are no longer required. If you’re unfamiliar with Cloud Gate, you may recognize it by its nickname. Most people refer to this sculpture as “the Bean” because it looks like a giant jelly bean that was spray painted silver. Kapoor hates that it is called “the Bean,” and I would typically want to respect an artist’s wishes, but he is not the hero of this story.
In 2014, a company named Surrey NanoSystems invent a pigment called Vantablack. This is a pigment that absorbs 99.96% of light and makes 3D objects appear as silhouettes. It is made out of carbon nanotubes, and so this substance has to be applied in lab. Shortly after Vantablack made its debut, Anish Kapoor bought the exclusive rights to use it. No other artist on the planet can legally incorporate it in their art. Even though most artists couldn’t even dream of being able to afford this substance, the concept of elitism and preventing access to materials infuriated many people. Not only did Kapoor use his wealth and influence to prevent all other artists from utilizing Vantablack, he hasn’t even used this material to create anything as far as I can tell. Kapoor thought that this very black substance was cool, and instead of just making something amazing out it, he bought the rights to prevent anyone else from using it. Compared to the other Postmodernists I mentioned earlier, including Koons and Hirst, a lack of creativity seems to be a common thread with the wealthiest Postmodern artists who are alive today.
Fortunately, there are contemporary artists who are fed up with the elite malarkey of the art world in addition to the Guerrilla Girls. Stuart Semple is one of these artists who strives to make the art world more inclusive. When he learned that Kapoor was preventing all other artists from accessing the blackest black, Semple chose to retaliate with an act I would categorize as performance art. In 2016, he decided to share the “World’s Pinkest Pink” pigment he created with everyone. To teach Kapoor a lesson about what it feels like when people don’t share resources, Semple included the following stipulation, “By adding this product to your cart you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not purchasing this item on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information and belief this paint will not make its way into the hands of Anish Kapoor.”
Stuart Semple stated, “I wanted to make a point about elitism and self-expression and the fact that everybody should be able to make art.” He originally thought he would only sell just a couple jars of pigment, but the paint proved to be popular. Additionally, Kapoor did not like being banned from using a color, and someone on his staff procured a jar of the Pinkest Pink for him. To announce to the world that the rules don’t apply to him, he dipped his middle finger in the pink powder, and took a bad snapshot of his hand flipping everyone off next to the $6 pot of pigment. To prove that rich people don’t need to develop manners or process class, he then posted the photo on Instagram with the caption, “Up yours.” Kapoor, who follows no one on social media, still has this image posted. There are over 3,000 comments on it, and people still write on this post in support of Semple. Most of the comments are along the lines of, “Okay Bean Boy,” yet some of the messages are very mean-spirited, but I do not encourage blatantly harassing people on the internet (even if they won’t share their colors).
After this incident, Stuart Semple was inspired to create his own light-absorbing black paint. He first created Black 1.0, but that wasn’t dark enough. Semple then teamed up with artists and scientists to develop Black 2.0. This acrylic paint is non-toxic, it absorbs 96% of light, it smells like cherries, and it is unavailable to Anish Kapoor. Instead of stopping there, Semple began working on an even blacker black. He collaborated with over 1,000 artists to create Black 3.0, “the Blackest Black Paint in the World.” To make this paint available to the masses, he created a Kickstarter campaign, which released the paint in 2019. Black 3.0 is easy to apply, smells like coffee, and absorbs 99% of light. It also isn’t available to Anish Kapoor, who still refuses to play nice with others
I must disclose that I have purchased some of these paints from Stuart Semple’s Culture Hustle website, even though I typically don’t use acrylic paint. I truly wanted to support an artist who strives to make art more inclusive as opposed to excluding others, and I was pleased with my purchase. I bought Black 2.0 to use as a primer for Black 3.0. If you decide to you need to buy some matte, black acrylic paint, I would recommend this combination. It’s fun coating 3D objects so they appear flat like silhouettes in low light and photographs.
In 1970, the authors of the “Art Workers’ Coalition: Statement of Demands” declared, “Artworks are a cultural heritage that belong to the people.” Postmodern artists and authors began to receive attention for challenging Modern Art. While not all Postmodernists were successful rebels, Jean-Michele Basquiat and the Guerrilla Girls challenged the notion that artists had to be white men. Even though the art market still heavily favors a small group of wealthy, privileged artists, it is possible to make changes. We can contact art institutions that need improvements. We can seek out artists who have different backgrounds to expand our world view. We can purchase art from contemporary artists to build our personal art collections, and we can also support artists who are making the world a better place.
[Music]
Thank you very much for sharing your time with me to learn about Postmodernism. This is the last installment of the History of Modern Art with Klaire, and I technically should have concluded this program with the previous episode, but I wanted to transition from Modern Art to Postmodern Art and then back into our current world. I truly appreciate that you trusted me to share what I know about Modern Art history with you. I’m aware that I didn’t cover all the Modernist art movements in this series, but I wanted to share the highlights with you along with including some artists who were often excluded by traditional art history resources. I hope that you found this program informative and that you will be able to take action to impact the contemporary art world. If you want to read this episode’s transcript, consult my resources, or support this podcast, please go to my website klairelockheart.com, spelled K-L-A-I-R-E-L-O-C-K-H-E-A-R-T dot com, and then click on the “Media” tab. Please follow me on Instagram @klairelockheart so we can keep in touch, or you can find me on Facebook by searching for Klaire A. Lockheart.
The History of Modern Art with Klaire was created by me, Klaire Lockheart. This series was recorded with equipment generously provided by the amazing Aaron C. Packard of Aaron C. Packard Productions. Please check out his artwork at aaronpackard.com, that’s A-A-R-O-N-P-A-C-K-A-R-D dot com. Thank you once again for joining me on this exploration of Modern Art! You’re wonderful!
Resources
Greg Allen, “How Leo Castelli, MoMA, and Two Wealthy Collectors Charted Today’s Rocket-Fueled Art Market,” ARTnews, November 20, 2019, https://www.artnews.com/art-news/market/leo-castelli-archive-moma-contemporary-art-market-1202667829/
“Art Workers’ Coalition: Statement of Demands,” in Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 926-927.
Tamir Avishai, “The Guerrilla Girls, Feminist Activists & Artists,” The Lonely Palette, November 12, 2020, thelonelypalette.com/interview/2020/11/12/tamar-avishai-interviews-the-guerrilla-girls
John Berger, Ways of Seeing. (London: Penguin Books, 1977).
Sarah Cascone, “Anish Kapoor Owns the Rights to the Blackest Color Ever Made. So Another Artist Made His Own Superblack—and Now It’s Even Blacker,” Artnet, January 30, 2019, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/stuart-semple-blackest-black-anish-kapoor-1452259
Katelyn Davis, “Anish Kapoor Artist Overview and Analysis,” ArtStory, 2021, https://www.theartstory.org/artist/kapoor-anish/
Guerrilla Girls, Bitches, Bimbos, and Ballbreakers. (New York: Penguin Books, 2003).
James Elkins, Stories of Art. (New York: Routledge, 2002).
Michael Findlay, The Value of Art. (New York: Prestel, 2014).
Guerrilla Girls, The Guerrilla Girls’ Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. (New York: Penguin Books, 1998).
Caroline Goldstein, “How Many Animals Have Died for Damien Hirst’s Art to Live? We Counted,” Artnet News, April 13, 2017, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/damien-whats-your-beef-916097
Ben Joravsky, “The Bean Police,” Chicago Reader, January 27, 2005, https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-bean-police/Content?oid=917867
Peter Kalb, ed., H. H. Arnason History of Modern Art, 5th ed. (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, Inc, 2004).
Barbara Klein, “Art, Friendship, and An Awakening,” Carnegie Museums of Pittsburg, Spring 2021, https://carnegiemuseums.org/carnegie-magazine/spring-2021/art-friendship-and-an-awakening/
Olivia McEwan, “Seeing Beyond Basquiat’s Market Value,” Hyperallergic, January 26, 2018, https://hyperallergic.com/423612/jean-michel-basquiat-boom-for-real-barbican-centre/
Henri Neuendorf, “Anish Kapoor Angers Artists by Seizing Exclusive Rights to ‘Blackest Black’ Pigment,” Artnet, February 29, 2016, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/anish-kapoor-vantablack-exclusive-rights-436610
Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” ARTnews. May 20, 2015, https://www.artnews.com/art-news/retrospective/why-have-there-been-no-great-women-artists-4201/
Kylie Northover, “Koons lawsuit reveals his ballooning ego,” January 22, 2011, Sydney Morning Herald, https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/koons-lawsuit-reveals-his-ballooning-ego-20110121-1a025.html
Sam Phillips, …isms: Understanding Modern Art. (New York: Universe, 2013).
Naomi Rea, “Jeff Koons Is Found Guilty of Plagiarism in Paris and Ordered to Pay $168,000 to the Creator of an Ad He Appropriated,” November 09, 2018, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/jeff-koons-plagiarism-lawsuit-1354876
Stuart Semple, “Join the Cult,” Culture Hustle, June 18, 2020, https://www.culturehustleusa.com/pages/join-the-cult
Briony Sparg, “15 Richest Painters,” Alux, January 21, 2021, https://www.alux.com/richest-painters/
Benjamin Sutton, “Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Lucretia” sold for $5.2 million, smashing the Baroque master’s auction record,” Artsy, November 13, 2019, https://www.artsy.net/news/artsy-editorial-artemisia-gentileschis-lucretia-sold-51-million-smashing-baroque-masters-auction-record
“Top 10 World’s Richest Living Artists,” Design Museum, June 07, 2020, http://www.designmuseum.me/artists/top-10-worlds-richest-living-artists-nowadays/
James Traub, “Art Rogers vs. Jeff Koons,” Design Observer, January 21, 2008, https://designobserver.com/feature/art-rogers-vs-jeff-koons/6467
Claire Voon, “Artist Suing Damien Hirst Over Charm Bracelets Needs to Take a Chill Pill,” June 15, 2016, https://hyperallergic.com/305373/artist-suing-damien-hirst-over-charm-bracelets-needs-to-take-a-chill-pill/
Claire Voon and Jillian Steinhauer, “Four More Women Allege Sexual Misconduct by Chuck Close,” Hyperallergic, January 16, 2018, https://hyperallergic.com/420538/four-more-women-allege-sexual-misconduct-by-chuck-close/
“Art Workers’ Coalition: Statement of Demands,” in Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 926-927.
Tamir Avishai, “The Guerrilla Girls, Feminist Activists & Artists,” The Lonely Palette, November 12, 2020, thelonelypalette.com/interview/2020/11/12/tamar-avishai-interviews-the-guerrilla-girls
John Berger, Ways of Seeing. (London: Penguin Books, 1977).
Sarah Cascone, “Anish Kapoor Owns the Rights to the Blackest Color Ever Made. So Another Artist Made His Own Superblack—and Now It’s Even Blacker,” Artnet, January 30, 2019, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/stuart-semple-blackest-black-anish-kapoor-1452259
Katelyn Davis, “Anish Kapoor Artist Overview and Analysis,” ArtStory, 2021, https://www.theartstory.org/artist/kapoor-anish/
Guerrilla Girls, Bitches, Bimbos, and Ballbreakers. (New York: Penguin Books, 2003).
James Elkins, Stories of Art. (New York: Routledge, 2002).
Michael Findlay, The Value of Art. (New York: Prestel, 2014).
Guerrilla Girls, The Guerrilla Girls’ Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. (New York: Penguin Books, 1998).
Caroline Goldstein, “How Many Animals Have Died for Damien Hirst’s Art to Live? We Counted,” Artnet News, April 13, 2017, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/damien-whats-your-beef-916097
Ben Joravsky, “The Bean Police,” Chicago Reader, January 27, 2005, https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-bean-police/Content?oid=917867
Peter Kalb, ed., H. H. Arnason History of Modern Art, 5th ed. (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, Inc, 2004).
Barbara Klein, “Art, Friendship, and An Awakening,” Carnegie Museums of Pittsburg, Spring 2021, https://carnegiemuseums.org/carnegie-magazine/spring-2021/art-friendship-and-an-awakening/
Olivia McEwan, “Seeing Beyond Basquiat’s Market Value,” Hyperallergic, January 26, 2018, https://hyperallergic.com/423612/jean-michel-basquiat-boom-for-real-barbican-centre/
Henri Neuendorf, “Anish Kapoor Angers Artists by Seizing Exclusive Rights to ‘Blackest Black’ Pigment,” Artnet, February 29, 2016, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/anish-kapoor-vantablack-exclusive-rights-436610
Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” ARTnews. May 20, 2015, https://www.artnews.com/art-news/retrospective/why-have-there-been-no-great-women-artists-4201/
Kylie Northover, “Koons lawsuit reveals his ballooning ego,” January 22, 2011, Sydney Morning Herald, https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/koons-lawsuit-reveals-his-ballooning-ego-20110121-1a025.html
Sam Phillips, …isms: Understanding Modern Art. (New York: Universe, 2013).
Naomi Rea, “Jeff Koons Is Found Guilty of Plagiarism in Paris and Ordered to Pay $168,000 to the Creator of an Ad He Appropriated,” November 09, 2018, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/jeff-koons-plagiarism-lawsuit-1354876
Stuart Semple, “Join the Cult,” Culture Hustle, June 18, 2020, https://www.culturehustleusa.com/pages/join-the-cult
Briony Sparg, “15 Richest Painters,” Alux, January 21, 2021, https://www.alux.com/richest-painters/
Benjamin Sutton, “Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Lucretia” sold for $5.2 million, smashing the Baroque master’s auction record,” Artsy, November 13, 2019, https://www.artsy.net/news/artsy-editorial-artemisia-gentileschis-lucretia-sold-51-million-smashing-baroque-masters-auction-record
“Top 10 World’s Richest Living Artists,” Design Museum, June 07, 2020, http://www.designmuseum.me/artists/top-10-worlds-richest-living-artists-nowadays/
James Traub, “Art Rogers vs. Jeff Koons,” Design Observer, January 21, 2008, https://designobserver.com/feature/art-rogers-vs-jeff-koons/6467
Claire Voon, “Artist Suing Damien Hirst Over Charm Bracelets Needs to Take a Chill Pill,” June 15, 2016, https://hyperallergic.com/305373/artist-suing-damien-hirst-over-charm-bracelets-needs-to-take-a-chill-pill/
Claire Voon and Jillian Steinhauer, “Four More Women Allege Sexual Misconduct by Chuck Close,” Hyperallergic, January 16, 2018, https://hyperallergic.com/420538/four-more-women-allege-sexual-misconduct-by-chuck-close/