Foreign Art: a Comparison
Lucio Fontana rocked both the art and international world with his work. Although he was born in Argentina, Fontana spent most of his life in Italy. I wrote the following comparative essay for my Post-1945 World Through Art and Text class in response to a prompt asking to draw conntections between works of art. The underlying thread, though, is that the pieces of art I talk about are global pieces. While Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg are relatively sterotypical American artist, Lucio Fontana fits in with their work. Yet, his style is heavily reflective of the global art of the time.
While three pieces by Jackson Pollock, Lucio Fontana, and Robert Rauschenberg look aesthetically different when visually compared, the details and context of each piece tie them together well. They each seem exactly opposite of the others - in color or medium - but they all share the abstract classification.
Pollock’s Number 1, painted in 1949, incorporates bright colors that, as Pollock put it, should represent one’s unconscious stream. Pollock is classified as an American abstract artist for the way he portrayed these thoughts through use of dimension and lines. Its colors appear relatively random - pink, yellow, lots of black and white - but the visual still seems relatively cohesive. Therefore, the simple abstractness of the art seems emphasized by the strange color mix.
Fontana’s Struttura al neo per la IX Triennale de Milano could not look more different than Number 1. Fontana’s piece looks like a neon string purposely manipulated into a random shape. The art encompasses Fontana’s spatialism as it hangs from the ceiling. While Pollock and Fontana developed art in separate locations and in different mediums, the use of lines in both pieces creates cohesion. While Pollock uses bright oil colors to create splattered lines on canvas, Fontana created a similar line with a different approach. Both pieces are classified as abstract art, however, which creates cohesion as well.
On the other side of Number 1 stands Automobile Tire Drawing. Rauschenberg painted the long, black and white piece in 1953 during the beginning of the neo-dada area. Automobile Tire Drawing shares only an abstract idea - not medium or color scheme - with Number 1. Because the piece is done simply with a type of black ink, its abstractness comes in its representation of a tire. Tires are not usually rolled flat on paper, yet Rauschenberg abstractly portrays a tire in this way. Neo-dada artists used every-day materials to display their anti-aesthetic agenda. Rauschenberg specifically blurred the distinction between painting and sculpture through his work. In other words, a tire sculpture may be more realistic, but the painting portrays the tire in a different way. Whether or not a drawing is a more effective representation of a tire is another topic.
While Number 1 and Automobile Tire Drawing seem quite different outside of their respective representations of abstraction, Fontana and Raeuschenberg seem to share more similarities. Beside Automobile Tire Drawing and Struttura al neo per la IX Triennale de Milano’s visual simplicity, they both blend technology and art in a sense. Because Fontana’s piece is literally neon, it gives a futuristic visual that draws on technology. With Rauschenberg’s tire, he blends industrialism, and therefore modern technology, with art. Their direct connection to each other is less clear. Technology takes on different forms, but each piece seems to have adapted to the tech idea differently.
The differences between the three pieces are more obvious - colors, medium, emphasis, subject - but their commonality lies superficially in their abstraction. Their missions are different, as Pollock tried to paint the unconscious and Rauschenberg attempted social commentary, but each artist achieves their purpose through abstract art. While they may have different effects when viewed together depending on the perspective and context, their immediate impact is a commentary on abstract art. Pollock, Fontana, and Rauschenberg each uniquely employ abstract art for their own purpose.
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