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A non-figurative puzzle with mood-boasting pattern and colors
AREAWARE DUSEN DUSEN "STONES" 500-PIECE JIGSAW PUZZLE
DETAILS:
Bold fun!
Introducing the captivating and vibrant Dusen Dusen "Stones" 500-Piece Jigsaw Puzzle by Areaware! Designed by Dusen Dusen and manufactured in collaboration with Areaware, this abstract puzzle is a true work of art. The backside of the box describes this bold design as an "after-image trance, mind-bender color shifter, abstract shape mixer," promising an engaging and stimulating puzzling experience.
Featuring a print from the Dusen Dusen Spring '18 collection, this colorful puzzle showcases a repurposed and re-colored design translated into a mesmerizing puzzle format. Crafted with attention to detail and quality, this puzzle is made of 100% chipboard, ensuring sturdy and long-lasting puzzle pieces that will withstand countless hours of assembly and enjoyment.
Once completed, the "Stones" puzzle measures an impressive 18" x 24", making it a striking piece of art to display in your home or office. Made in China with precision and care, this puzzle is a testament to the craftsmanship and dedication of both Dusen Dusen and Areaware.
Dusen Dusen is a renowned Brooklyn-based textile and home goods line founded by Ellen Van Dusen in 2010. Originally established as a women's wear label, Dusen Dusen has since expanded to offer a wide range of products, including bedding, throws, pillows, towels, and clothing. Inspired by fine art, commercial and naïve design, as well as the brain's reaction to color, movement, and contrast, Dusen Dusen's seasonal collections are known for their bold and original prints that captivate the imagination.
Ellen Van Dusen, the creative force behind the brand, was born and raised in Washington, DC, and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY with her dog, Snips. With a keen eye for design and a passion for creativity, Ellen has led Dusen Dusen to collaborate with prestigious international brands such as Uniqlo, Keds, and West Elm, solidifying the brand's reputation for innovation and style.
Experience the artistry and creativity of Dusen Dusen with the "Stones" 500-Piece Jigsaw Puzzle by Areaware. Dive into a world of color, shape, and design as you piece together this captivating puzzle and discover the beauty of Dusen Dusen's vision. Elevate your puzzling experience with this unique and inspiring puzzle that is sure to delight puzzle enthusiasts and art lovers alike.
Dimensions:
Completed jigsaw puzzle is 18" x 24" (inches).
CONDITION:
In very good, pre-owned condition and complete. Box has light storage wear. Please see photos.
To ensure safe delivery all items are carefully packaged before shipping out.
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"Dusen Dusen is a Brooklyn-based textile and home goods line that includes bedding
, throws
, pillows
, towels
and clothing. Founded by Ellen Van Dusen
in 2010 originally as a womenswear label, Dusen Dusen develops seasonal collections inspired by fine art, commercial and naïve design, as well as the brain's reaction to color, movement, and contrast
. In 2015, the brand expanded with the launch of Dusen Dusen Home
. Known for its bold and original prints, Dusen Dusen has collaborated with a wide range of celebrated international brands including Uniqlo, Keds, and West Elm, to name a few
. Ellen Van Dusen was born and raised in Washington, DC and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY." (dusendusen.com)
"OUR PHILOSOPHY
We believe the best design evokes good feelings, and think everyday objects should be as fun as they are functional.
YOURS FOR KEEPS
We make everyday objects for home, work, and play that are for keeps. Our products are artful and fun, and have a story just as unique as the designers who created them.
HOW WE WORK
We collaborate with independent designers to create pieces that bring a touch of delight and charm into your home. Some of our designers are well-known and established in the industry, while others are up-and-coming, bringing diversity and a fresh perspective to the world of design." (areaware.com)
"
Ellen Van Dusen
U.S.A. (1987)
Designer Ellen Van Dusen has always been attracted to textiles, the more brightly colored and patterned the better. Raised by two architects in a vibrant, creative home, Van Dusen started creating her own fashions in high school. She painted designs on clothes to wear at concerts with friends, and she started frequenting thrift stores, picking up garments to take apart and remake in her own style. Shortly thereafter, she moved on to buying fabric and making her own clothes from scratch, at one point running a one-woman business knitting hats and selling them at school.
Still, Van Dusen didn’t imagine she could sustain a career in textiles or fashion. Instead, at Tufts University in Boston, she designed her own degree centered on the psychology of design, studying the visual system, how we experience aesthetics and how the brain reacts to visual stimuli. During college, she created costumes for the theater department, anything from Victorian dresses to animal costumes, which gave her an opportunity to become proficient at sewing and tailoring.
After graduating from Tufts, Van Dusen moved to New York and worked a series of internships, including those with fashion designers Norma Kamali and Proenza Schouler. In 2010, at the age of 23, she founded Dusen Dusen, based in Brooklyn. Once on her own, she could translate her fondness for vibrant colors and geometric, doodle-like patterns into simple, wearable clothing. Her inspiration is at times unconventional, ranging from midcentury resort architecture and Scandinavian textiles to fine art, native design and even handwriting. Business quickly took off for Van Dusen, with orders coming in from New York boutiques, and as her clothing line has continued to grow, she has created new textiles for each season. Her work has been written up in numerous publications, including Refinery29 and Vogue.
In 2015, Van Dusen expanded her company to include Dusen Dusen Home, a home-goods line of bedding, rugs, towels, pillows and blankets – all with her trademark look – through which she can work on a larger scale with color and pattern." (dwr.com)
"Ellen Van Dusen and Ben Sigerson’s wedding was a long time coming. They first met in elementary school in Washington, D.C., and remained friends throughout high school. After going to college in different states, they found themselves bumping into each other at parties when they both moved to New York post-graduation. However, it took a chance run-in on the subway in 2018—where they realized that they lived on the exact same street in Bedford–Stuyvesant—for them to go out to drink. After that, it was (romantic) history.
In August 2022, Ellen, the designer and founder of Dusen Dusen, and Ben, a vice president at a natural language processing firm, were on a walk after dinner. At one point, he handed her a Starburst tube. Such an offering wasn’t unusual—“I’m a candy fanatic,” Ellen explains—but the contents inside were: tucked amid the sweet fruit candy was an engagement ring by Karl Fritsch.
The two wed in Savannah, Georgia, on April 29. The night before, the couple hosted a welcome party at Ellen’s grandmother’s home, planned with help from Gina Berchin. Ellen, a cheerfully bold dresser, wore a Cecilie Bahnsen dress with a scarlet slip underneath paired with coordinating socks, chunky JW Anderson earrings as well as a resin chain necklace and bracelet by Braxton Congrove. She finished her look with an Alaïa bag and Marni shoes. Ben, meanwhile, wore an Issey Miyake suit and a Marni shirt.
On Saturday, Ellen and Ben held an outdoor ceremony at The Wyld, a waterside restaurant upon Savannah’s Countryside Creek overseen by Tara Skinner Events. The couple and their wedding party arrived via boat as storm clouds rumbled above them. It was a dramatic entrance: Just as they got under the covered dock, a torrential downpour began as Ellen’s brothers played “Moon River” on pedal steel and acoustic guitar.
Yet, what could have been a dreary day had plenty of color. Ellen eschewed a traditional white wedding gown for a yellow dress by Lela Rose, adorned with a giant flower appliqué. (“I fell in love with it right away,” she says. “I ordered it immediately and luckily it showed up a couple of days before I left town.”) Their officiant Tasha Goldthwait, meanwhile, wore a blazing red Narciso Rodriguez look. The three of them all stood in front of a powder blue orb made by Ellen’s father and painted by the couple themselves. “Between my yellow dress, our officiant’s red dress, Ben’s dark suit, and the blue dot we had a nice primary palette happening,” the bride says.
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After heartfelt remarks from Tasha that prompted the couple to both laugh and cry, the two exchanged mood rings from Claire’s. (Amid the craziness of wedding planning, they ran out of time to get formal ones.) “Ben and I were both nervous, and with the crazy storm in the background it all just felt like chaos— but in a wonderful way,” says Ellen of the ceremony. They walked back down the aisle to “Love is Strange” by Mickey & Sylvia, with Ben’s niece accompanying Ellen’s brothers on the tambourine.
For cocktail hour, guests enjoyed a traditional oyster roast before a tented dinner of steak, grilled fish, and succotash began. Ellen, whose kaleidoscopic, geometric textiles and homewares are sold everywhere from the MoMA Design Store to Nordstrom, made all the tablecloths and napkins herself. (Her signature Dusen Dusen for Areaware wastebaskets doubled as beer buckets.) Sarah Murphy, her maid of honor, made papier-mâché vessels for the white florals from August Designs.
Their friend, ceramicist Helen Levi, created all 150 of their bespoke wedding plates. “Ben and I spent many, many Saturdays painting each plate individually with Helen, who then glazed and fired them herself,” Ellen says. At the end of the evening, each attendee took their plate home with them, along with canvas tote goody bags by Lorien Stern and Dave McPeters. “We had a lot of friends contribute their time and artistic prowess towards the wedding,” Ellen says. “[It] made the whole thing feel super personal.”
During dinner service, the Austin-based musical group Spliff and Kazoo played what Ellen describes as “Hawaiian and old country music.” (During their song “Sleepwalking,” they jokingly bumped into people and furniture.)
Then, it was time to party. Indie-folk artist Faye Webster sang Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One” for Ellen and Ben’s first dance, a moment Ellen describes as “very special.” Then, her brother assumed the role of DJ and put on a custom playlist with all their favorite songs, mixed with voices from family, friends, and even their dog, Snips. It got everyone moving for hours on end—with only a brief pause to cut a gator-head-shaped cake from Wicked Cakes: “I think everyone left Savannah with at least one new friend,” says Ellen.
Looking back at it now, Ellen and Ben wouldn’t change a thing—even the biblical weather. “The rain really threw a wrench into some of our original plans but the chaotic element and loss of control ended up making it more fun and crazy in the end,” Ellen admits. “It was a really fun time, and it felt very us. I feel grateful that we have so many generous, creative, fun people in our lives.”" (vogue.com)
"Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world.[1]
Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality. By the end of the 19th century many artists felt a need to create a new kind of art which would encompass the fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy. The sources from which individual artists drew their theoretical arguments were diverse, and reflected the social and intellectual preoccupations in all areas of Western culture at that time.[2]
Abstract art, non-figurative art, non-objective art, and non-representational art are all closely related terms. They have similar, but perhaps not identical, meanings.
Abstraction indicates a departure from reality in depiction of imagery in art. This departure from accurate representation can be slight, partial, or complete. Abstraction exists along a continuum. Even art that aims for verisimilitude of the highest degree can be said to be abstract, at least theoretically, since perfect representation is impossible. Artwork which takes liberties, e.g. altering color or form in ways that are conspicuous, can be said to be partially abstract. Total abstraction bears no trace of any reference to anything recognizable. In geometric abstraction, for instance, one is unlikely to find references to naturalistic entities. Figurative art and total abstraction are almost mutually exclusive. But figurative and representational (or realistic) art often contain partial abstraction.
Both geometric abstraction and lyrical abstraction are often totally abstract. Among the very numerous art movements that embody partial abstraction would be for instance fauvism in which color is conspicuously and deliberately altered vis-a-vis reality, and cubism, which alters the forms of the real-life entities depicted....Early Abstract Art
During the 1912 Salon de la Section d'Or, where František Kupka exhibited his abstract painting Amorpha, Fugue en deux couleurs (Fugue in Two Colors) (1912), the poet Guillaume Apollinaire named the work of several artists including Robert Delaunay, Orphism.[12] He defined it as, "the art of painting new structures out of elements that have not been borrowed from the visual sphere, but had been created entirely by the artist...it is a pure art."[13]
Since the turn of the century, cultural connections between artists of the major European cities had become extremely active as they strove to create an art form equal to the high aspirations of modernism. Ideas were able to cross-fertilize by means of artist's books, exhibitions and manifestos so that many sources were open to experimentation and discussion, and formed a basis for a diversity of modes of abstraction. The following extract from The World Backwards gives some impression of the inter-connectedness of culture at the time: "David Burliuk's knowledge of modern art movements must have been extremely up-to-date, for the second Knave of Diamonds exhibition, held in January 1912 (in Moscow) included not only paintings sent from Munich, but some members of the German Die Brücke group, while from Paris came work by Robert Delaunay, Henri Matisse and Fernand Léger, as well as Picasso. During the Spring David Burliuk gave two lectures on cubism and planned a polemical publication, which the Knave of Diamonds was to finance. He went abroad in May and came back determined to rival the almanac Der Blaue Reiter which had emerged from the printers while he was in Germany".[14]
From 1909 to 1913 many experimental works in the search for this 'pure art' had been created by a number of artists: Francis Picabia painted Caoutchouc, c. 1909,[15] The Spring, 1912,[16] Dances at the Spring[17] and The Procession, Seville, 1912;[18] Wassily Kandinsky painted Untitled (First Abstract Watercolor), 1913,[19] Improvisation 21A, the Impression series, and Picture with a Circle (1911);[20] František Kupka had painted the Orphist works, Discs of Newton (Study for Fugue in Two Colors), 1912[21] and Amorpha, Fugue en deux couleurs (Fugue in Two Colors), 1912; Robert Delaunay painted a series entitled Simultaneous Windows and Formes Circulaires, Soleil n°2 (1912–13);[22] Léopold Survage created Colored Rhythm (Study for the film), 1913;[23] Piet Mondrian, painted Tableau No. 1 and Composition No. 11, 1913.[24]
With his expressive use of color and his free and imaginative drawing Henri Matisse comes very close to pure abstraction in French Window at Collioure (1914), View of Notre-Dame (1914), and The Yellow Curtain from 1915.
And the search continued: The Rayist (Luchizm) drawings of Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, used lines like rays of light to make a construction. Kasimir Malevich completed his first entirely abstract work, the Suprematist, Black Square, in 1915. Another of the Suprematist group' Liubov Popova, created the Architectonic Constructions and Spatial Force Constructions between 1916 and 1921. Piet Mondrian was evolving his abstract language, of horizontal and vertical lines with rectangles of color, between 1915 and 1919, Neo-Plasticism was the aesthetic which Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg and other in the group De Stijl intended to reshape the environment of the future....Many of the abstract artists in Russia became Constructivists believing that art was no longer something remote, but life itself. The artist must become a technician, learning to use the tools and materials of modern production. Art into life! was Vladimir Tatlin's slogan, and that of all the future Constructivists. Varvara Stepanova and Alexandre Exter and others abandoned easel painting and diverted their energies to theatre design and graphic works. On the other side stood Kazimir Malevich, Anton Pevsner and Naum Gabo. They argued that art was essentially a spiritual activity; to create the individual's place in the world, not to organize life in a practical, materialistic sense. During that time, representatives of the Russian avant-garde collaborated with other Eastern European Constructivist artists, including Władysław Strzemiński, Katarzyna Kobro, and Henryk Stażewski.
Many of those who were hostile to the materialist production idea of art left Russia. Anton Pevsner went to France, Gabo went first to Berlin, then to England and finally to America. Kandinsky studied in Moscow then left for the Bauhaus. By the mid-1920s the revolutionary period (1917 to 1921) when artists had been free to experiment was over; and by the 1930s only socialist realism was allowed....he Bauhaus
The Bauhaus at Weimar, Germany was founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius.[29] The philosophy underlying the teaching program was unity of all the visual and plastic arts from architecture and painting to weaving and stained glass. This philosophy had grown from the ideas of the Arts and Crafts movement in England and the Deutscher Werkbund. Among the teachers were Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, Anni Albers, and László Moholy-Nagy. In 1925 the school was moved to Dessau and, as the Nazi party gained control in 1932, The Bauhaus was closed. In 1937 an exhibition of degenerate art, 'Entartete Kunst' contained all types of avant-garde art disapproved of by the Nazi party. Then the exodus began: not just from the Bauhaus but from Europe in general; to Paris, London and America. Paul Klee went to Switzerland but many of the artists at the Bauhaus went to America.
Abstraction in Paris and London
During the 1930s Paris became the host to artists from Russia, Germany, the Netherlands and other European countries affected by the rise of totalitarianism. Sophie Tauber and Jean Arp collaborated on paintings and sculpture using organic/geometric forms. The Polish Katarzyna Kobro applied mathematically based ideas to sculpture. The many types of abstraction now in close proximity led to attempts by artists to analyse the various conceptual and aesthetic groupings. An exhibition by forty-six members of the Cercle et Carré group organized by Joaquín Torres-García[30] assisted by Michel Seuphor[31] contained work by the Neo-Plasticists as well as abstractionists as varied as Kandinsky, Anton Pevsner and Kurt Schwitters. Criticized by Theo van Doesburg to be too indefinite a collection he published the journal Art Concret setting out a manifesto defining an abstract art in which the line, color and surface only are the concrete reality.[32] Abstraction-Création founded in 1931 as a more open group, provided a point of reference for abstract artists, as the political situation worsened in 1935, and artists again regrouped, many in London. The first exhibition of British abstract art was held in England in 1935. The following year the more international Abstract and Concrete exhibition was organized by Nicolete Gray including work by Piet Mondrian, Joan Miró, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. Hepworth, Nicholson and Gabo moved to the St. Ives group in Cornwall to continue their 'constructivist' work....Late 20th century
Main articles: Modernism, Late modernism, American Modernism, and Surrealism
During the Nazi rise to power in the 1930s many artists fled Europe to the United States. By the early 1940s the main movements in modern art, expressionism, cubism, abstraction, surrealism, and dada were represented in New York: Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, Piet Mondrian, Jacques Lipchitz, André Masson, Max Ernst, and André Breton, were just a few of the exiled Europeans who arrived in New York.[35] The rich cultural influences brought by the European artists were distilled and built upon by local New York painters. The climate of freedom in New York allowed all of these influences to flourish. The art galleries that primarily had focused on European art began to notice the local art community and the work of younger American artists who had begun to mature. Certain artists at this time became distinctly abstract in their mature work. During this period Piet Mondrian's painting Composition No. 10, 1939–1942, characterized by primary colors, white ground and black grid lines clearly defined his radical but classical approach to the rectangle and abstract art in general. Some artists of the period defied categorization, such as Georgia O'Keeffe who, while a modernist abstractionist, was a pure maverick in that she painted highly abstract forms while not joining any specific group of the period.
Eventually American artists who were working in a great diversity of styles began to coalesce into cohesive stylistic groups. The best-known group of American artists became known as the Abstract expressionists and the New York School. In New York City there was an atmosphere which encouraged discussion and there was a new opportunity for learning and growing. Artists and teachers John D. Graham and Hans Hofmann became important bridge figures between the newly arrived European Modernists and the younger American artists coming of age. Mark Rothko, born in Russia, began with strongly surrealist imagery which later dissolved into his powerful color compositions of the early 1950s. The expressionistic gesture and the act of painting itself, became of primary importance to Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and Franz Kline. While during the 1940s Arshile Gorky's and Willem de Kooning's figurative work evolved into abstraction by the end of the decade. New York City became the center, and artists worldwide gravitated towards it; from other places in America as well.[36]
21st century
Main articles: Abstract expressionism, Color field, Lyrical abstraction, Post-painterly abstraction, Sculpture, and Minimal art
Digital art, hard-edge painting, geometric abstraction, minimalism, lyrical abstraction, op art, abstract expressionism, color field painting, monochrome painting, assemblage, neo-Dada, shaped canvas painting, are a few directions relating to abstraction in the second half of the 20th century.
In the United States, Art as Object as seen in the Minimalist sculpture of Donald Judd and the paintings of Frank Stella are seen today as newer permutations. Other examples include Lyrical Abstraction and the sensuous use of color seen in the work of painters as diverse as Robert Motherwell, Patrick Heron, Kenneth Noland, Sam Francis, Cy Twombly, Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, and Veronica Ruiz de Velasco....One socio-historical explanation that has been offered for the growing prevalence of the abstract in modern art – an explanation linked to the name of Theodor W. Adorno – is that such abstraction is a response to, and a reflection of, the growing abstraction of social relations in industrial society.[37]
Frederic Jameson similarly sees modernist abstraction as a function of the abstract power of money, equating all things equally as exchange-values.[38] The social content of abstract art is then precisely the abstract nature of social existence – legal formalities, bureaucratic impersonalization, information/power – in the world of late modernity.[39]
Post-Jungians by contrast would see the quantum theories with their disintegration of conventional ideas of form and matter as underlying the divorce of the concrete and the abstract in modern art." (wikipedia.org)
"Op art, short for optical art, is a style of visual art that uses optical illusions.[1]
Op artworks are abstract, with many better-known pieces created in black and white. Typically, they give the viewer the impression of movement, hidden images, flashing and vibrating patterns, or swelling or warping. ...Method of operation
Black-and-white and the figure-ground relationship
Op art is a perceptual experience related to how vision functions. It is a dynamic visual art that stems from a discordant figure-ground relationship that puts the two planes—foreground and background—in a tense and contradictory juxtaposition. Artists create op art in two primary ways. The first, best known method, is to create effects through pattern and line. Often these paintings are black and white, or shades of gray (grisaille)—as in Bridget Riley's early paintings such as Current (1964), on the cover of The Responsive Eye catalog. Here, black and white wavy lines are close to one another on the canvas surface, creating a volatile figure-ground relationship. Getulio Alviani used aluminum surfaces, which he treated to create light patterns that change as the watcher moves (vibrating texture surfaces). Another reaction that occurs is that the lines create after-images of certain colors due to how the retina receives and processes light. As Goethe demonstrates in his treatise Theory of Colours, at the edge where light and dark meet, color arises because lightness and darkness are the two central properties in the creation of color.[citation needed]
Color
Beginning in 1965 Bridget Riley began to produce color-based op art;[16] however, other artists, such as Julian Stanczak and Richard Anuszkiewicz, were always interested in making color the primary focus of their work.[17] Josef Albers taught these two primary practitioners of the "Color Function" school at Yale in the 1950s. Often, colorist work is dominated by the same concerns of figure-ground movement, but they have the added element of contrasting colors that produce different effects on the eye. For instance, in Anuszkiewicz's "temple" paintings, the juxtaposition of two highly contrasting colors provokes a sense of depth in illusionistic three-dimensional space so that it appears as if the architectural shape is invading the viewer's space....Similarities with other art styles
Although op art is a unique style, it has similarities with styles such as abstract expressionism (color field painting). Although color field painting does not give us illusions, similarities can still be found. We can see that both of these styles are minimalist, only a few colors prevail, and no object or plot is shown. These styles can cause us emotion, since there is no clear plot, the human mind itself imagines and interprets it in its own way. Cold colors are usually associated with sadness, while warm colors are associated with joy. Also, op art and color field painting are characterized by the fact that the image is aesthetic and orderly." (wikipedia.org)
"Hard-edge painting (also referred to as Hard Edge or Hard-edged) is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas.[1] Color areas often consist of one unvarying color. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstraction, Op Art, Post-painterly Abstraction, and Color Field painting.[2]
History of the term
The term “Hard-edge painting” was coined in 1959[3] by writer, curator, and Los Angeles Times art critic Jules Langsner, along with Peter Selz, to describe the work of several painters from California who adopted a knowingly impersonal paint application and delineated areas of color with particular sharpness and clarity. This style was a significant reaction to the more painterly or gestural forms of Abstract expressionism, one of the United States’ primary painting movements at the time. The “hard-edge” approach to abstract painting became widespread in the 1960s, though California was its creative center.
Other earlier art movements have also contained the quality of hard-edgedness; for example, the Precisionists also displayed this quality to a great degree in their work. Hard-edge can be seen to be associated with one or more school of painting, but is also a generally descriptive term, for these qualities found in any painting. Hard-edge painting can be both figurative or nonrepresentational.
Four Abstract Classicists Exhibition
In the late 1950s, Langsner and Peter Selz, then professor at Pomona College, observed a common link among the recent work of Lorser Feitelson (1898–1978), Feitelson's wife Helen Lundeberg (1908–1999), John McLaughlin (1898–1976), Frederick Hammersley (1919–2009), and Karl Benjamin (1925-2012). This group of seven gathered at the Feitelson's home to discuss a group exhibition of this nonfigurative painting style. Curated by Langsner, Four Abstract Classicists opened at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1959, then traveled to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Exposition Park. Helen Lundeberg was not included in the exhibit.[4]
Four Abstract Classicists was renamed West Coast Hard-edge by British art critic and curator Lawrence Alloway when it traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, where Alloway was assistant director, and Queen's University in Belfast. The term came into broader use after Alloway used it to describe contemporary American geometric abstract painting featuring "economy of form," "fullness of color," "neatness of surface," and the nonrelational arrangement of forms on the canvas.[5]
California Hard-Edge Painting Exhibition
In 1964, a second major hard-edge exhibition curated by Jules Langsner, simply titled California Hard-Edge Painting, was held at the Pavilion Gallery in Balboa, CA (also known as the Newport Pavilion) with the cooperation of the Ankrum Gallery, Esther Robles Gallery, Felix Landau Gallery, Ferus Gallery, and Heritage Gallery of Los Angeles.[6] Along with Feitselon, Lundeberg, McLaughlin, Hammersley, and Benjamin, California Hard-Edge Painting included Florence Arnold, John Barbour, Larry Bell, John Coplans, June Harwood, and Dorothy Waldman.
Legacy
In 2000, Tobey C. Moss curated Four Abstract Classicists Plus One at her gallery in Los Angeles. The exhibit again featured John McLaughlin, Feitelson, Hammersley, and Benjamin, and added Lundeberg as the fifth of the original Hard-edge painters.[7] In 2003, Louis Stern Fine Arts presented a retrospective exhibition for Lorser Feitelson entitled Lorser Feitelson and the invention of Hard-edge painting, 1945–1965.[8] The same year, NOHO MODERN showed the works of June Harwood in an exhibition entitled June Harwood: Hard-edge painting Revisited, 1959–1969.[9] Art critic Dave Hickey solidified the place of these 6 artists in The Los Angeles School: Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley, June Harwood, Helen Lundeberg, and John McLaughlin, an exhibition held at the Ben Maltz Gallery of the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles in 2004-2005.[10] In 2007-2008, the Orange County Museum of Art exhibited Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury, which included the original "four abstract classicists" along with midcentury design, music and film. Birth of the Cool traveled nationwide to the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA; the Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA; the Mildred Kemper Lane Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; and the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX.[11]
In 2011, the style was featured prominently at the Getty Museum’s initial iteration of Pacific Standard Time, titled Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970 , which showcased the artistic practices that characterized the postwar L.A. art scene.[12] The exhibition highlighted selections from Louis Stern Fine Arts including Karl Benjamin’s Stage II (1958)[13] and Helen Lundeberg’s Blue Planet (1965).[14]
Louis Stern Fine Arts continues to exhibit and represent the estates of Hard-Edge painters, including Benjamin, Lundeberg, and Feitelson." (wikipedia.org)
"In the arts, maximalism, a reaction against minimalism, is an aesthetic of excess.[1] The philosophy can be summarized as "more is more", contrasting with the minimalist motto "less is more"....Visual arts
Maximalism as a term in the plastic arts is used by art historian Robert Pincus-Witten to describe a group of artists, including future Oscar-nominated filmmaker Julian Schnabel and David Salle, associated with the turbulent beginnings of Neo-expressionism in the late 1970s. These artist were in part "stimulated out of sheer despair with so long a diet of Reductivist Minimalism".[21] This maximalism was prefigured in the mid-1960s by certain psychoanalytically oriented paintings by Gary Stephan.[22]
Charlotte Rivers describes how "maximalism celebrates richness and excess in graphic design", characterized by decoration, sensuality, luxury and fantasy, citing examples from the work of illustrator Kam Tang and artist Julie Verhoeven.[23]
Art historian Gao Minglu connects maximalism in Chinese visual art to the literary definition by describing the emphasis on "the spiritual experience of the artist in the process of creation as a self-contemplation outside and beyond the artwork itself...These artists pay more attention to the process of creation and the uncertainty of meaning and instability in a work. Meaning is not reflected directly in a work because they believe that what is in the artist's mind at the moment of creation may not necessarily appear in his work." Examples include the work of artists Ding Yi and Li Huasheng.[24]
In 1995 the "antipreneurial" one-man artist group Stiletto Studio,s [fr][25] presented LESS function IS MORE fun as a post-neoist special waste sale of interpassive design-defuncts[26] in a so-called Spätverkauf installation by Laura Kikauka at the Volksbühne Berlin, which she claimed as one of her projects of Maximalism." (wikipedia.org)
"Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as intermedia, installation art, conceptual art and multimedia, particularly involving video are described as postmodern.
There are several characteristics which lend art to being postmodern; these include bricolage, the use of text prominently as the central artistic element, collage, simplification, appropriation, performance art, the recycling of past styles and themes in a modern-day context, as well as the break-up of the barrier between fine and high arts and low art and popular culture.[1][2]
Use of the term
The predominant term for art produced since the 1950s is "contemporary art". Not all art labeled as contemporary art is postmodern, and the broader term encompasses both artists who continue to work in modernist and late modernist traditions, as well as artists who reject postmodernism for other reasons. Arthur Danto argues "contemporary" is the broader term, and postmodern objects represent a "subsector" of the contemporary movement.[3] Some postmodern artists have made more distinctive breaks from the ideas of modern art and there is no consensus as to what is "late-modern" and what is "post-modern." Ideas rejected by the modern aesthetic have been re-established. In painting, postmodernism reintroduced representation.[4] Some critics argue much of the current "postmodern" art, the latest avant-gardism, should still classify as modern art.[5]
As well as describing certain tendencies of contemporary art, postmodern has also been used to denote a phase of modern art. Defenders of modernism, such as Clement Greenberg,[6] as well as radical opponents of modernism, such as Félix Guattari, who calls it modernism's "last gasp,[7]" have adopted this position. The neo-conservative Hilton Kramer describes postmodernism as "a creation of modernism at the end of its tether."[8] Jean-François Lyotard, in Fredric Jameson's analysis, does not hold there is a postmodern stage radically different from the period of high modernism; instead, postmodern discontent with this or that high modernist style is part of the experimentation of high modernism, giving birth to new modernisms.[9] In the context of aesthetics and art, Jean-François Lyotard is a major philosopher of postmodernism.
Many critics hold postmodern art emerges from modern art. Suggested dates for the shift from modern to postmodern include 1914 in Europe,[10] and 1962[11] or 1968[12] in America. James Elkins, commenting on discussions about the exact date of the transition from modernism to postmodernism, compares it to the discussion in the 1960s about the exact span of Mannerism and whether it should begin directly after the High Renaissance or later in the century. He makes the point these debates go on all the time with respect to art movements and periods, which is not to say they are not important.[13] The close of the period of postmodern art has been dated to the end of the 1980s, when the word postmodernism lost much of its critical resonance, and art practices began to address the impact of globalization and new media.[14]
Jean Baudrillard has had a significant influence on postmodern-inspired art and emphasised the possibilities of new forms of creativity.[15] The artist Peter Halley describes his day-glo colours as "hyperrealization of real color", and acknowledges Baudrillard as an influence.[16] Baudrillard himself, since 1984, was fairly consistent in his view that contemporary art, and postmodern art in particular, was inferior to the modernist art of the post World War II period,[16] while Jean-François Lyotard praised Contemporary painting and remarked on its evolution from Modern art.[17] Major Women artists in the Twentieth Century are associated with postmodern art since much theoretical articulation of their work emerged from French psychoanalysis and Feminist Theory that is strongly related to post modern philosophy.[18][19]
American Marxist philosopher Fredric Jameson argues the condition of life and production will be reflected in all activity, including the making of art.
As with all uses of the term postmodern there are critics of its application. Kirk Varnedoe, for instance, stated that there is no such thing as postmodernism, and that the possibilities of modernism have not yet been exhausted.[20] Though the usage of the term as a kind of shorthand to designate the work of certain Post-war "schools" employing relatively specific material and generic techniques has become conventional since the early to mid-1980s, the theoretical underpinnings of Postmodernism as an epochal or epistemic division are still very much in controversy.[21]
Defining postmodern art
The juxtaposition of old and new, especially with regards to taking styles from past periods and re-fitting them into modern art outside of their original context, is a common characteristic of postmodern art.
Postmodernism describes movements which both arise from, and react against or reject, trends in modernism.[22] General citations for specific trends of modernism are formal purity, medium specificity, art for art's sake, authenticity, universality, originality and revolutionary or reactionary tendency, i.e. the avant-garde. However, paradox is probably the most important modernist idea against which postmodernism reacts. Paradox was central to the modernist enterprise, which Manet introduced. Manet's various violations of representational art brought to prominence the supposed mutual exclusiveness of reality and representation, design and representation, abstraction and reality, and so on. The incorporation of paradox was highly stimulating from Manet to the conceptualists.
The status of the avant-garde is controversial: many institutions argue being visionary, forward-looking, cutting-edge, and progressive are crucial to the mission of art in the present, and therefore postmodern art contradicts the value of "art of our times". Postmodernism rejects the notion of advancement or progress in art per se, and thus aims to overturn the "myth of the avant-garde". Rosalind Krauss was one of the important enunciators of the view that avant-gardism was over, and the new artistic era is post-liberal and post-progress.[23] Griselda Pollock studied and confronted the avant-garde and modern art in a series of groundbreaking books, reviewing modern art at the same time as redefining postmodern art.[24][25][26]
One characteristic of postmodern art is its conflation of high and low culture through the use of industrial materials and pop culture imagery. The use of low forms of art were a part of modernist experimentation as well, as documented in Kirk Varnedoe and Adam Gopnik's 1990–91 show High and Low: Popular Culture and Modern Art at New York's Museum of Modern Art,[27] an exhibition that was universally panned at the time as the only event that could bring Douglas Crimp and Hilton Kramer together in a chorus of scorn.[28] Postmodern art is noted for the way in which it blurs the distinctions between what is perceived as fine or high art and what is generally seen as low or kitsch art.[29] While this concept of "blurring" or "fusing" high art with low art had been experimented during modernism, it only ever became fully endorsed after the advent of the postmodern era.[29] Postmodernism introduced elements of commercialism, kitsch and a general camp aesthetic within its artistic context; postmodernism takes styles from past periods, such as Gothicism, the Renaissance and the Baroque,[29] and mixes them so as to ignore their original use in their corresponding artistic movement. Such elements are common characteristics of what defines postmodern art.
Fredric Jameson suggests postmodern works abjure any claim to spontaneity and directness of expression, making use instead of pastiche and discontinuity. Against this definition, Art and Language's Charles Harrison and Paul Wood maintained pastiche and discontinuity are endemic to modernist art, and are deployed effectively by modern artists such as Manet and Picasso.[30]
One compact definition is postmodernism rejects modernism's grand narratives of artistic direction, eradicating the boundaries between high and low forms of art, and disrupting genre's conventions with collision, collage, and fragmentation. Postmodern art holds all stances are unstable and insincere, and therefore irony, parody, and humor are the only positions critique or revision cannot overturn. "Pluralism and diversity" are other defining features....After abstract expressionism
Main articles: Post-painterly abstraction, Color Field painting, Lyrical Abstraction, Arte Povera, Process Art, and Western painting
In abstract painting during the 1950s and 1960s several new directions like Hard-edge painting and other forms of Geometric abstraction like the work of Frank Stella popped up, as a reaction against the subjectivism of Abstract expressionism began to appear in artist studios and in radical avant-garde circles. Clement Greenberg became the voice of Post-painterly abstraction; by curating an influential exhibition of new painting touring important art museums throughout the United States in 1964. Color field painting, Hard-edge painting and Lyrical Abstraction[44] emerged as radical new directions.
By the late 1960s, Postminimalism, Process Art and Arte Povera[45] also emerged as revolutionary concepts and movements encompassing painting and sculpture, via Lyrical Abstraction and the Postminimalist movement, and in early Conceptual Art.[45] Process art as inspired by Pollock enabled artists to experiment with and make use of a diverse encyclopedia of style, content, material, placement, sense of time, and plastic and real space. Nancy Graves, Ronald Davis, Howard Hodgkin, Larry Poons, Jannis Kounellis, Brice Marden, Bruce Nauman, Richard Tuttle, Alan Saret, Walter Darby Bannard, Lynda Benglis, Dan Christensen, Larry Zox, Ronnie Landfield, Eva Hesse, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, Sam Gilliam, Mario Merz, Peter Reginato, Lee Lozano, were some of the younger artists emerging during the era of late modernism spawning the heyday of the art of the late 1960s....Pop art
Main articles: Pop art and Western painting
Lawrence Alloway used the term "Pop art" to describe paintings celebrating consumerism of the post World War II era. This movement rejected Abstract expressionism and its focus on the hermeneutic and psychological interior, in favor of art which depicted, and often celebrated, material consumer culture, advertising, and iconography of the mass production age. The early works of David Hockney and the works of Richard Hamilton, John McHale, and Eduardo Paolozzi were considered seminal examples in the movement. While later American examples include the bulk of the careers of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and his use of Benday dots, a technique used in commercial reproduction. There is a clear connection between the radical works of Duchamp, the rebellious Dadaist — with a sense of humor; and Pop Artists like Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and the others.
Thomas McEvilly, agreeing with Dave Hickey, says U.S postmodernism in the visual arts began with the first exhibitions of Pop art in 1962, "though it took about twenty years before postmodernism became a dominant attitude in the visual arts."[11] Fredric Jameson, too, considers pop art to be postmodern.[56]
One way Pop art is postmodern is it breaks down what Andreas Huyssen calls the "Great Divide" between high art and popular culture.[57] Postmodernism emerges from a "generational refusal of the categorical certainties of high modernism."" (wikipedia.org)
"A pattern is a regularity in the world, in human-made design,[1] or in abstract ideas. As such, the elements of a pattern repeat in a predictable manner. A geometric pattern is a kind of pattern formed of geometric shapes and typically repeated like a wallpaper design.
Any of the senses may directly observe patterns. Conversely, abstract patterns in science, mathematics, or language may be observable only by analysis. Direct observation in practice means seeing visual patterns, which are widespread in nature and in art. Visual patterns in nature are often chaotic, rarely exactly repeating, and often involve fractals. Natural patterns include spirals, meanders, waves, foams, tilings, cracks, and those created by symmetries of rotation and reflection. Patterns have an underlying mathematical structure;[2]: 6 indeed, mathematics can be seen as the search for regularities, and the output of any function is a mathematical pattern. Similarly in the sciences, theories explain and predict regularities in the world.
In many areas of the decorative arts, from ceramics and textiles to wallpaper, "pattern" is used for an ornamental design that is manufactured, perhaps for many different shapes of object. In art and architecture, decorations or visual motifs may be combined and repeated to form patterns designed to have a chosen effect on the viewer." (wikipedia.org)
"A shape is a graphical representation of an object's form or its external boundary, outline, or external surface; it is distinct from other object properties, such as color, texture, or material type. In geometry, shape excludes information about the object's location, scale, orientation and reflection.[1] A figure is a representation including both shape and size (as in, e.g., figure of the Earth).
A plane shape or plane figure is constrained to lie on a plane, in contrast to solid 3D shapes. A two-dimensional shape or two-dimensional figure (also: 2D shape or 2D figure) may lie on a more general curved surface (a non-Euclidean two-dimensional space).
Classification of simple shapes
Main article: Lists of shapes
Some simple shapes can be put into broad categories. For instance, polygons are classified according to their number of edges as triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, etc. Each of these is divided into smaller categories; triangles can be equilateral, isosceles, obtuse, acute, scalene, etc. while quadrilaterals can be rectangles, rhombi, trapezoids, squares, etc.
Other common shapes are points, lines, planes, and conic sections such as ellipses, circles, and parabolas.
Among the most common 3-dimensional shapes are polyhedra, which are shapes with flat faces; ellipsoids, which are egg-shaped or sphere-shaped objects; cylinders; and cones.
If an object falls into one of these categories exactly or even approximately, we can use it to describe the shape of the object. Thus, we say that the shape of a manhole cover is a disk, because it is approximately the same geometric object as an actual geometric disk.
In geometry
A geometric shape consists of the geometric information which remains when location, scale, orientation and reflection are removed from the description of a geometric object.[1] That is, the result of moving a shape around, enlarging it, rotating it, or reflecting it in a mirror is the same shape as the original, and not a distinct shape.
Many two-dimensional geometric shapes can be defined by a set of points or vertices and lines connecting the points in a closed chain, as well as the resulting interior points. Such shapes are called polygons and include triangles, squares, and pentagons. Other shapes may be bounded by curves such as the circle or the ellipse. Many three-dimensional geometric shapes can be defined by a set of vertices, lines connecting the vertices, and two-dimensional faces enclosed by those lines, as well as the resulting interior points. Such shapes are called polyhedrons and include cubes as well as pyramids such as tetrahedrons. Other three-dimensional shapes may be bounded by curved surfaces, such as the ellipsoid and the sphere.
A shape is said to be convex if all of the points on a line segment between any two of its points are also part of the shape." (wikipedia.org)
"A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together (or take them apart) in a logical way, in order to arrive at the correct or fun solution of the puzzle. There are different genres of puzzles, such as crossword puzzles, word-search puzzles, number puzzles, relational puzzles, and logic puzzles. The acad