1. European Postwar Existentialism 1943 Jean-Paul Sartre
1949 – a founding
feminist text rooted in
existential doubts
about the true nature
of Being.
“One is not born a woman,
one becomes one.”
1943
Jean-Paul Sartre
Simone de Beauvoir
1938 Paris

2. “These paintings addressed the
Jean Fautrier (French, ) Art Informel, tachisme, Head of a Hostage, 20," oil on panel, 1944, one of over thirty “hostage” paintings and sculptures that he made during the occupation of Paris alluding to Nazi atrocities Fautrier is said to have witnessed there.
“These paintings addressed the
most important issue of their time, epitomizing a 'new human resolve'
against the horrors of war."
- Fautrier

3. Jean Fautrier, Large Tragic Head, bronze, 1943

4. 1960 oil on canvas, tachisme 35 in. x 57 1/2 in.
Slide concept by William V. Ganis, PhD
FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY
For publication, reproduction or transmission of images, please contact individual artists, estates, photographers and exhibiting institutions for permissions and rights.
Jean Fautrier
Nude
1960 oil on canvas, tachisme 35 in. x 57 1/2 in.

5. Germaine Richier (French, ) Crucified Christ, 1950, Notre-Dame de Tour Grâce d'Assy, France. Post-humanist? (lower right) Richier’s teacher, Emile-Antoine Bourdelle, Hercules, What became of the heroic human body in Western art? Why?

6. Richier, The Shepherd of Landes, 1951; (right) Le Griffu, 1952 Bronze, 98 x 94 x 74 cm

7. Germaine Richier, Praying Mantis, 1949, bronze, 47” height, Middelheim Sculpture Museum, Antwerp

8. 2 of 5 casts. Guggenheim collection photos, lower,
Alberto Giacometti (Swiss, ), (left) City Square, 1948, bronze, c. 8 x 25 x 17“ (right) Giacometti, Portrait of a Seated Man (Diego), 1949, oil on canvas, 80 x 64 cm.
2 of 5 casts. Guggenheim collection photos, lower,
shows artist’s preferred viewpoint (eye-level, close up), which alters the viewer’s perception of scale
Portraits are the stopping point
of an agonized struggle with
perception as proof of existence

9. Giacometti, The Palace at 4 a. m
Giacometti, The Palace at 4 a.m., 1932, construction in wood, glass, wire, and string, 25 x 28 x 15 in. Prewar Surrealist work
Artist’s sketch, 1932

10. Giacometti, Woman with Her Throat Cut, bronze, 1932, prewar Surrealist work drawing from the artist’s dreams and imaginings
MoMA New York, 2005

11. Sacramento’s Poseidon
(left) Poseidon, Greek, c. 575 BC, bronze, found in the Aegean Sea in 1926: gods as men (right) Giacometti, Man Pointing, 1947, bronze, 70 inches high, Existential man: “thrown naked into the void” (Heidegger, German WWII era existential philosopher). The classical Poseidon was a source for Giacometti.
Sacramento’s Poseidon

12. Jean Dubuffet [French, ] “Art Brut,” Large Sooty Nude, 1944, o/c, 64”H; (right) Tree of Fluids, 1952; compare (center) Willem de Kooning, Woman I, 1952 “Art addresses the mind, not the eyes.” (Dubuffet)

13. Jean Dubuffet, Art Brut, Fleshy Face with Chestnut Hair, 1951, Oil & mixed-media, 28”H

14. Brassai, (Gyula Halasz, French b
Brassai, (Gyula Halasz, French b. Romania, ) (left) Swastika Graffiti; (right) Passion Graffiti, both Paris, 1939

15. Slide concept by William V. Ganis, PhD
FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY
For publication, reproduction or transmission of images, please contact individual artists, estates, photographers and exhibiting institutions for permissions and rights.
Henry Moore (English ) Tube Shelter Perspective,1941, chalk, pen and watercolor, 8 1/2 x 6 1/2 in., one of thousands of such drawings Moore made during WWII.

16. Henry Moore King and Queen 1952 bronze
In the eighties there is a marked shift in the reception of photography that deghettoizes the practice from being a practice parallel to painting and sculpture to one that is today on parwith these expressions.
This change is grounded in conceptual art, where photography was used to document actions and ideas, and thus became part of the artist’s expression, rather than the photographer’s expression. In the works were about to look at we think today of these practitioners as artists who use photography rather than as photographers.
We will see that the conceptual thread wound in the seventies continues through all of these eighties works.
It is also important to consider that these artists we are about to look at have less interest in making photographic images, than in showing the construction and betraying our conventions for looking at those images.
These works become constructed pictures full of legible signs that the artists call to our attention.
Henry Moore
King and Queen
1952
bronze

17. Working model for Reclining Figure for Lincoln Center
Slide concept by William V. Ganis, PhD
FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY
For publication, reproduction or transmission of images, please contact individual artists, estates, photographers and exhibiting institutions for permissions and rights.
Henry Moore
Working model for Reclining Figure for Lincoln Center
plaster

18. Reclining Figure for Lincoln Center
Slide concept by William V. Ganis, PhD
FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY
For publication, reproduction or transmission of images, please contact individual artists, estates, photographers and exhibiting institutions for permissions and rights.
Henry Moore
Reclining Figure for Lincoln Center
bronze

19. Francis Bacon (British, ), (left) Painting, 1946, oil and pastel on linen, 6' 6" x 52“ MoMA NYC; (right) Head Surrounded by Sides of Beef, oil on canvas, 1954
Black umbrella was the symbol of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of Nazi appeasement before WWII. “An attempt to remake the violence of reality itself” (Bacon)

21. Francis Bacon, Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 5 x 4 ft, 1953 (right top) source: Velazquez, Pope Innocent X, 1650; (right below) a still from Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 The Battleship Potemkin, Odessa steps sequence

22. Francis Bacon, Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, 1944, oil and pastel on canvas, triptych on wood fiberboard, each 37 x 29 inches. The crucifixion was for Bacon a symbol of humanity’s sadism. (lower right) crucial source: Picasso, On the Beach (La Baignade), Picasso encouraged Bacon and bought his work early on.
Aeschylus’ The Eumenides:
The Furies, the hidden side of
the human psyche, with Orestes

23. (left) Francis Bacon, Three Studies of figures on Beds, 1972, oil and pastel on canvas, triptych, each panel 6’6” x 4’ 10” (right) source: Eadweard Muybridge, photograph from The Human Figure in Motion, 1887

24. Sotheby’s May 14, 2008, a 1976 Francis Bacon Triptych Fetches $86,281,000