Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette – 3/12/19
Dr. Jeanne Willette unfortunately passed away in early 2019. She supported thousands of students in their exploration of art history during her career and was a valued colleague. This site, Art History Unstuffed, was one of her major contributions to those studying this field. Without Dr. Willette this site is not being updated with new content. While her web master, with support from her two sons, continues to maintain the site for the time being, a new generation of Art Historians is needed to carry the site into the future. If you are interested in participating or have other suggestions for this site, please click here to leave a note.
On line. At your convenience. In your own time. On your own terms.
For too long art history has been held hostage by scholars speaking to scholars and not to people. The purpose of this site is to educate and to inform and to do so with respect to the intelligence of the readers. Designed as a site for serious students of art history in need of solid substantive material, Art History Unstuffed is written for Twenty-First-century learners who prefer reading “text-bytes” and “sound-bytes” of targeted information.
Written by Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette, a published scholar who has researched and consolidated both well-respected classical sources and vetted the latest research, this site creates a middle ground between arcane scholarly jargon and informed discourse and presents a detailed account of Modern, Postmodern, Philosophy and Theory that is accessible to all readers interested in the history of the modern and contemporary periods.
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Art History Unstuffed is listed on the ACI Scholarly Blog Index.
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Episode 43: Painting 10 – Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol and “Decorative Art”
Andy Warhol played many roles in the art world of the sixties. Although he produced more films than paintings and sculptures, he re-defined “painting” and “sculpture,” bringing these traditional practices into the modern age. Using serigraphy as a metaphor for commercialism and consumerism, Warhol brought his advertising sensibilities to fine arts. Wooden boxes with purloined logos suggested that the art world was a market place for the high-end consumer. Casting aside hierarchy and judgment, the artist consumed the ubiquitous imagery of his time and put together an encyclopedia for his decade. Acting like a bricoleur, he gathered the pictures of mass media and re-produced and re-presented the already known and the already seen and forced the viewers to examine the overlooked and the banal of the culture.
Episode 42: Painting 9 – Pop Art
Pop Art and Popular Culture
Pop Art was essentially an American phenomenon that included European responses to the imagery of the post-war consumer culture pioneered in New York ad agencies. Like Neo-Dada, Pop Art exposed the limits of Modernism and the prevailing discourse on the aesthetics of painting. These two movements supported mixed media, mass media, hybrid objects and anti-art gestures, employing sources from popular culture, low art and advertising. Perhaps more interesting than the art was the new attitude of the artists–irreverent and business-minded, they thumbed their collective noses at the high-minded, humanist based Abstract Expressionism. But the biggest change wrought by the post Ab Ex movements was the return of representation, upending the dominance of abstract art.
Episode 41: Painting 8 – Neo-Dada
Neo-Dada and anti-Moderism
It is one of the ironies of art history that at the very moment Abstract Expressionism began to gain traction in the art world, that a major challenger would emerge to steal the spotlight. Neo-Dada, somewhat indebted to Marcel Duchamp, was a non-movement made up of two painters, Robert Raushchenberg and Jasper Johns, and two performance artists, John Cage and Merce Cunningham and their associates. Neo-Dada was an underground art movement of underground artists that managed to gain the support of the Museum of Modern Art and of the cutting edge galleries in New York and Paris.
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The Construction of a Discourse, 1910-1914
Creating a Culture of Cyber Criticism
Volume One: Blindness (Volume 1)
Dr. Willette is currently completing an entirely new kind of book on design, a book that is multi-modal. Offering multiple modes of output, this book offers the readers several ways of receiving information, slide shows, podcasts, texts and images. The interactive book, Design and the Avant-Garde, 1920-1940, will be divided into several volumes. Volume One will focus on the interconnections between art and design at the fine-de-siècle period, leading up to the creation of “modern” design.