ARTH 633 Reading Log

Linda Nochlin, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?," ARTnews (January 1971) http://www.artnews.com/2015/05/30/why-have-there-been-no-great- women-artists/

""-"arguing that the myth of 'greatness' was basically constructed by art critics and historians and was not inherently natural or evidentiary, Nochlin explained how mainstream art institutions had consistently ignored and undervalued women's art - and that the very question of female 'greatness' betrayed that patriarchal conceit" (205, Doss) -"And it is here that the very position of woman as an acknowledged outsider, the maverick "she" instead of the presumably neutral "one"—in reality the white-male-position-accepted-as-natural, or the hidden "he" as the subject of all scholarly predicates—is a decided advantage, rather than merely a hindrance of a subjective distortion." -"the white Western male viewpoint, unconsciously accepted as the viewpoint of the art historian..." -"The feminist's first reaction is to swallow the bait, hook, line and sinker, and to attempt to answer the question as it is put: i.e., to dig up examples of worthy or insufficiently appreciated women artists throughout history; to rehabilitate rather modest, if interesting and productive careers; to "re-discover" forgotten ... and make out a case for them; ...in other words, to engage in the normal activity of the specialist scholar who makes a case for the importance of his very own neglected or minor master. Such attempts, whether undertaken from a feminist point of view, ... are certainly worth the effort, both in adding to our knowledge of women's achievement and of art history generally. But they do nothing to question the assumptions lying behind the question "Why have there been no great women artists?" On the contrary, by attempting to answer it, they tacitly reinforce its negative implications." -"If women have in fact achieved the same status as men in the arts, then the status quo is fine as it is." -"It is certainly not realistic to hope that a majority of men, in the arts, or in any other field, will soon see the light and find that it is in their own self-interest to grant complete equality to women, as some feminists optimistically assert, or to maintain that men themselves will soon realize that they are diminished by denying themselves access to traditionally "feminine" realms and emotional reactions. After all, there are few areas that are really "denied" to men" -"unlike other oppressed groups or castes, men demand of her not only submission but unqualified affection as well" -"genius"- thought of as mysterious power natural in the great male artist, unquestioned, supernatural, power of creation -notion of Great Artist as primary, social and institutional structures secondary -women forbidden from studying the male nude - generally accepted as the highest category of art -"simply to demonstrate both the universality of the discrimination against women and its consequences, as well as the institutional rather than individual nature of but one facet of the necessary preparation for achieving mere proficiency, much less greatness..." -she adds that the apprenticeship system and academic educational pattern also excluded women -deprived of encouragements, educational facilities and rewards -"amateurism and lack of real commitment as well as snobbery and emphasis on chic on the part of women in their artistic "hobbies," feeds the contempt of the successful, professionally committed man who is engaged in "real" work and can, with a certain justice, point to his wife's lack of seriousness in her artistic activities. For such men, the "real" work of women is only that which directly or indirectly serves the family; any other commitment falls under the rubric of diversion, selfishness, egomania or, at the unspoken extreme, castration" -"despite men's greater "tolerance," the choice for women seems always to be marriage or a career, i.e., solitude as the price of success or sex and companionship at the price of professional renunciation." -"Always a model but never an artist might well have served as the motto of the seriously aspiring young woman in the arts of the 19th century." -"women artists generally: they all, almost without exception, were either the daughters of artist fathers, or, generally later, in the 19th and 20th centuries, had a close personal connection with a stronger or more dominant male artistic personality" "without exception" -

Lucy Lippard, "Eccentric Abstraction," Changing: Essays in Art and Criticism, pgs. 98-111

-"eccentric abstraction is more allied to the conformal tradition devoted to opening up new areas of materials, shape, color, and sensuous experience" -introduces humor and incongruity -Eva Hesse, Meret Oppenheim, Louise Bourgeois -later faction of surrealism -"body ego" - "can be experienced 2 ways: first thru appeal, the desire to caress, to be caught up in the feel and rhythms of a work; second, thru repulsion, the immediate reaction against certain forms and surfaces which take longer to comprehend" -"all modern art is subject to the Camp cliche, 'its so bad its good,' which neutralizes opposites" -dualism is obsolete, art as art and art as life -pop art made palatable parts of the contemporary environment previously considered to be ugly, and inferior to beauty -raised low art, kitsch -Frank Lincoln Viner - transcendés ugliness by dirtying the notion of ugly vs beautiful -don Potts luxury items that invite touch but repel emotion -eccentric abstraction relies on unexpected materials meant to evoke sensuous response -claes oldenburg - soft sculpture -flexible but fixed medium -"funky" art -raunchy cynical eroticism -Alice Adams -"too much free association on the viewer's part is combated by formal understatement..." -"abstraction cannot be pornographic in any legal or specific sense no matter how erotically suggestive it becomes" -"presentation of specific facts- what we feel, what we see rather than why we do so" -"complete acceptance by the senses- visual, tactile and 'visceral' - the absence of emotional interference and literary pictorial associations"

Zoe Charlton and Tim Doud, "Introduction" and "Afterwords" from Out of Place: Artists, Pedagogy, and Purpose (2021), pgs. 23-28 and 385-398

-"post-black" -driving force behind avant-garde contemporary African-American art --- signifies a difference between black men and women and black straight and gay people, black experiences not hegemonic -political difference between those born before and after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (that ended legal segregation) -encounters with racism vary by age, class, and geographic location -blackness has become a culture, rather than a political value -

Briony Fer, "Bordering on Blank: Eva Hesse and Minimalism," in Eva Hesse, pgs. 57-85

-'eccentric abstraction'- a bag remains a bag and not a uterus, a tube is a tube -hesse's work more soft, organic -alternatives to a solemn minimalism, backlash -author interested in symbolism of Hesse's work, based on an economy of loss -idea of blankness -cotton covered wire spans the space between two canvases -1966 -goes beyond the canvas -disturbance by virtue of hardly being there --in actuality hardly being there requires a lot of effort on Hesse's part -greenberg argued that modernist art was the most convention bound of all -Lacan's theory of the subconscious/ unconscious in art choices -Greenberg's criticism of minimalism in his 1967 essay "Recentness ofSculpture," he dismissed the relevance ofthe much-vaunted crisis ofthe art object, making the point that "minimal works are readable as art, as al most anything is today—including a door, a table, or a blank sheet of paper" -look of accident was not the only 'wild' thing that Ab stract Expressionism first acclimatized and then domesticated in painting; it did the same to emptiness, to the look of'void. -Greenberg minimalist works were "art-denying" because they denied him the kind of aesthetic experience furnished by modernist painting -artwork fails to return the look -takes a break from discussing Hesse to analyze Greenberg theory of minimalism -author discusses Hesse's shift in style from Hang Up to her Metronomic series -author says that shift in her work was due to her unconscious -hesse acknowledged the absurdity of hang up as well as the name -author compares Hesse's drawings to the shift in her work -author takes into account her biography and death of her father -the wall space in between the work becomes a part of the work, an extension, activated space -idea of an empty space is isn't fillable -outpouring of an inner world, what to do with empty space inside -Hesse's work is an attempt to control the situation and reparation, the panels are pierced and stitched together with wire -he effect is to blank out and obscure; the wires might appear to fill the space, but ac tually they obscure it, and so leave unrepaired the structure ofthe gap -shadow play on the walls behind the work -authro suggests that Hesse read and is expanding on pollock's work -Death cannot be represented in Freud's unconscious but is imprinted only "by spacings, blanks, discontinuities -author says that Hesse's work is a minimalist project!! doesn't run counter to it -having an issue rectifying the literalness associated with eccentric abstraction, while minimalism is not literal at all -Hesse's work is with latex, not resilient material, breaks down over time -constrasts to Andre's minimalist works that can be walked on and are very sturdy -describes Andres work in detail -says that Andre's work is a counterpoint to hesse's -"It has certainly not been my aim to suggest that minimalism can be seen as a homogeneous movement into which Hesse fits more or less comfortably...her work and its particular compulsions prompt us to dislodge the rational frame in which the work of minimalist artists is usually viewed. Her work does not replicate theirs..Nor would I want to claim that the particular economy of loss played out in her work, where "blank space" and the "dark spot" add up to pretty much the same, is replicated by minimalism in general. What I do want to claim is the centrality of that constellation of metaphors that Klein's essay highlighted, as metaphors that continue to pervade the discourses of modernism: between blank space and a stain, between light and obscurity, between the horizontal and the vertical, between visibility and invisibility, between elevation and a fall. And just as Klein's blank space supposed sadistic impulses, so apparently restrained surfaces can harbor fantasies of both desire and destruction."

Doss, American Art, pgs. 245(Cindy Sherman)-247

-1980s feminist artists expanded on notions of the male gaze and ideological effects of male objectification -photography as main method -combination of black womanhood and feminism

Elyn Zimmerman, "Marabar to Barabar" [brief overview of the sculpture's move to AU campus]

-1984 site specific project for the Nat Geo Society's headquarters in DC -based off of Indian rock cut temples -Marabar Caves - rough natural exteriors and highly polished interiors -meant to look as if gigantic geode had been cracked open -marabar refers to a fictitious place -(((site specific installation moved))) -in jan 2020 the NGS wanted to make new entry pavilion and wanted to relocate marabar -artist wanted to reconcile pool and rock ensemble for a new home w a new identity -barabar caves are real caves in India that EM Forester visited and used as the model for the fictitious Marabar caves -they are oldest rock caves -Sudama is title of new installation at AU -sudama is one of the Barabar caves -it was used by monks and religious sects for meditation and chanting -polished inside walls reverberate sound

Douglas Crimp, "Introduction" to AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism vol. 43 of October (Winter, 1987), pgs. 3-16

-AIDS is not a homosexual disease, can be acquired also heterosexually or through shared needles -saying that gay people have a natural inclination towards the arts is stereotypical -saying that gay people are artists reinforces the idea that gay people must "redeem" themselves -Art Against Aids initiative ----criminal negligence on the government's end for research and health care ---raising money is the most passive response to social crisis -art can spread information and create community, especially public art -SILENCE=DEATH project from ACT UP, example of AIDS activism

Rosalind Krauss, "Sculpture in the Expanded Field," October, Vol. 8, (Spring, 1979): 30-44

-Perimeters/Pavilians/Decoys 1978 by Mary Miss -"By virtue of this logic a sculpture is a commemorative representation. It sits in a particular place and speaks in a symbolical tongue about the meaning or use of that place" -"sculptures are normally figurative and vertical, their pedestals an important part of the structure....meditate between actual site and representational sign" -"negative condition- a kind of sitelessness, or homelessness, an absolute loss of place" (ie modernism) -modernist period of sculpture that operates in relation to loss of site -monument as abstraction, pure marker or base, and fundamentally placeless and self referential -base as marker of the work's homelessness -modernist sculpture had idealized realm -Morris's mirror boxes as sculptures represented "not-landscape" and "not-architecture", a kind of absence -opposition between built and not built, cultural and natural -site-construction= both landscape and architecture (hedge maze, Japanese garden...), 1970 Partially Buried Woodshed by Smithson -marked sites= impermanent marks, or thru photography, actual physical manipulation of sites, Spiral Jetty, Mirror Displacements in the Yucatan- Smithson -axiomatic structures= mirrors, intervention into the real space of architecture, architecture plus not architecture, abstract conditions of openness and closure onto the reality of a given space -??

Watch "The Trial of Tilted Arc" from Paper Tiger TV: https://vimeo.com/152509973

-This video, made in 1986, documents some of the testimony given in the Trial of TitledArc. The artwork on trial is Richard Serra's public sculpture, Tilted Arc, commissionedand installed by the U.S. government in 1981. Four years later, a public hearing was heldto consider the removal of the sculpture from its site in Federal Plaza in New York City.Richard Serra and other artists, politicians and community members speak in defense ofTilted Arc, on public art, and the role of the government and the of thepeople in shaping the public's visual environment. Featuring Judge Re - US Court ofInternational Trade Richard Serra and other artists, politicians and community members speak on the role of public art.

Doss, American Art, pgs. 196-197

-anti form -determined by the space it occupied and the process by which its made -post minimalism- open ended modern sculpture that emphasized texture and made from unconventional materials -utilized the formalist grammar of minimalism, but emphasized personal action -expressive, ephemeral and transgressive -refused distinction between object and location

Buchloh, Benjamin. "Conceptual Art 1962-1969: From the Aesthetic of Administration to the Critique of Institutions." October, vol. 55 (Winter 1990), pp. 105-143.

-art practices that explicitly insist on being outside of perceptual objects and of art history and criticism -elimination of visuality and traditional def. of representation -structuralist analysis of language and the formalist examination of representation in cubism -conceptual art replaced the object with linguistic definition alone -death of the artist and role of the spectator -critique of traditional visuality -examine the artists of the period- self-righteousness, no effort placed on work or labor -article refers to the oedipus, kill the father theory, in reference to the artists, says each conceptual artist picked an artist to critique -LeWitt works -aesthetic of speech = this is art if I say it is -art practice emphasizing parallels with systems of linguistic signs -extension of Duchampian quest for non "retinal" art -works used puns - ((((scholarly art, required an informed viewer, opposite to early biblical art that was about educating illiterate viewers)))) -voiding aesthetic judgment and taste and connoisseurship -art then required certificates of authenticity, linguistic and legal convention -cancels idea of production and studio -certificate as art -aesthetic of administrative and legal organization and institutional validation -Edward Ruscha chose Conceptual art vernacular, used photography as representational medium, and new form of distribution -attempted the dismantling of the hierarchy of media -eliminated difference of artistic construct and its photographic reproduction, between exhibition of art and photograph of installation, and of space between gallery and catalogue -building on pop and minimal art -emphasis on its art bc I say it is - (((understanding of power, people in power can determine what art is, who's in power, how do power structures play into this))) -((thinking about studios and assistants even in renaissance times)) -against encountering art in specialized or qualified locations

Richard Meyer, "The Jesse Helms Theory of Art" October Vol. 104 (Spring, 2003), pgs. 131-148

-author argues that by trying to censor mapplethorpe and homosexuality, helms is instead publicizing and reproducing it (ironic), censorship relies on the imagery it aims to "snuff out" -public conflict had started before helms and mapplethorpe, when Republican Senator D'Amato publicly denounced Serrano's Piss Christ, an NEA funded work -full scale retrospective of Mapplethorpe at the Corcoran Gallery was targeted, it was cancelled as a result but a year later moved to CAC in Cincinnati -after the cancellation Helms called for content restrictions on NEA sponsored art (Helms Amendment) -helms compared homosexuality to AIDS and to child abusers

David Getsy, "Introduction: 'New' Genders and Sculpture in the 1960s" in Abstract Bodies: Sixties Sculpture in the Expanded Field of Gender, pgs. 1-41

-author argues that the sculpture of the 1960s reflect the human psyche even tho they are as far from recognizable object as can be "attention to how the human was mapped onto object that patently refused to image even the most basic traits of the human figure" -sculpture in the 60s' moved toward object hood, father from recognizable, "shattered the expectations of the medium", while still attempting to make its audience resonate or emphasize w the work -author argues that issues of gender and sex were still present even in works whose authors didn't discuss it, author does this thru discussion of their work rather than their biography - author loosely defines sculpture as anything that takes up space -artists are Flavin (minimalist), Smith (Abstract Expressionist), Chamberlain (pop/auto industry) and Grossman (found objects) -author compares the sculptures to human bodies, "its physicality and three-dimensionality necessarily invoke bodily relations - even in the most patently abstract of sculptures", objects share space with the viewer -1960s art had both attempts to complete abstraction and "non-reference" and metaphors of body, sexuality, and personhood -viewer of the sculpture forced to perceive scale, tactility, shared space with the object -" ' Traditional sculpture depends on anthropomorphism to strike a bond between the spectator and the object...' " - Colpitt -minimalism and abstraction make it harder to anthropomorphize the object but we still do so -at. the beginning of the 60s, artists attempted to move away from sculpture's reliance on the human form while still using the relying on the human body as means of communication -(((seems that minimalist art is an attempt to see how far an object can go before it stops being anthropomorphized)) -"how bodies and bodiless could be related to the non-representational object" -author argues that Brancusi's attempts to simplify form into basic organic spaces "often relied on allusions to gender and sexuality" ---further exemplified by Brancusi's titles which assign sex to the objects

Doss, American Art, pgs. 192-196

-body art - new performance art movement, emphasis on the experience of time and space -yoko ono - performances, sculpts and writing questioning relationships of power and authority, degrees of complicity between victims and oppressors -performance art stressed process over product -challenging commodification of art and authority in the art market by staging temporal events -yet photography and video preserved the ephemeral nature of these body actions

Doss, American Art, pgs. 187-192

-conceptual art -investigation of the function, meaning, and use of art -contested formalist hold on modern art, argued in favor of art's dematerialization, focused on issues of reception, distribution, and cultural reception -aimed to unsettle modernism -favored process over product -Kosuth's Art as Idea as Idea = expanding on Duchamp's criticism of purely visual art -interrogating America and modernism during the Vietnam war -recognition of the power of cultural institutions (museums, galleries, art market) -exposing the museum as sites where art is determined rather than just shown

Abigail Solomon-Godeau, "The Woman Who Never Was: Self-Representation, Photography, and First-Wave Feminist Art," in WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, pgs. 336-345

-discusses Antin's video Representational Painting (1971) in which the artist applies makeup - documenting a passage from the real face of Antin to an artificial one -diet culture in Carving; A traditional Sculpture (1972) reminds us that the coercive force of femininity is internalized by female subjects -female artist presents herself as impersonal, field of projection, of generalized women -artists responded to Freud's assertion that women are passive -female naked body insisting on the role of sexual difference -ana Mendieta's silhueta series focuses on disappearance of the subject -recognize the accomplishments of the women artists with so few artistic precedents to guide them... dared to challenge, mock , subvert or deconstruct existing artistic models

Adriano Abbado, "Visual Music Masters Download Visual Music Masters," pgs. introductory page and 76-87 ("Electronic Arts")

-discusses Fluxus artists and the Happenings -in 67, Experiments in Art and Technology was founded as collaboration between artists and engineers -multimedia works included lights, video and sound -the art depended on the type of computer used, relied on access to expensive fancy computers

Doss, American Art, pgs. 198-201

-earthworks share the look of minimalism and anti commodity -earthworks artists sought solace in the western landscape -by the 60s, the American desert had been claimed and compromised by mining, nuclear tests, and casinos -spiral jetty lake was highly polluted by oil mining -attempted land reclaimation -"consecrated spaces for a willfully secular area"

Doss, American Art, pgs. 203-217

-feminist art -judy Chicago's dinner party -linda nochlin's why have there been no great women artists -70s brought in political disillusionment -70s discussed female identity and the ways that images of the body shape identity -"recognizing the long history of demeaning representations of the female body that cast women as passive objects to be gazed upon (and sexually desired), ... Feminist artists sought to reclaim the female body as a subject" -women's right to control their bodies and they sexuality was fundamental to womens liberation -other feminist artists embraced female craft, embroidery, knitting, quilting, tatting, appliqué, china painting to discuss female identity -challenging divisions of art vs craft and feminine vs masculine -discussing gendered practices of domesticity and motherhood -explored psychological dimensions of women's confinement and oppression -Womanhouse , 1972, collaborative feminist project

Doss, American Art, pgs. 247-250, 256-257

-feminist work focused on abortion and reproductive rights -activist aids art -Gonzalez Torres - aids art and ethics of complicity and responsibility -"mourning and militancy" - fight against aids and homophobia -anti immigration backlash, corporate downsizing and downturned economics -Holzier's truisms- evoke the voice of authority, mock cliches, themes of sex death and war, paralleled bleak futuristic techno landscape -serrano's piss christ indirectly or directly led to targets on contemporary art based on claims of obscenity and led to "decency pledges" -politically motivated assaults on contemporary American art in the 80s

Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Film Theory and Criticism : Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44

-film reflects and plays on society established interpretation of sexual difference which controls image, erotic ways of looking and spectacle -uses psychoanalysis -the function of woman in forming the patriarchal unconscious symbolizes the castration threat and raises her child into the symbolic -"womans desire is subjected to her image as bearer of the bleeding wound, she can exist only in relation to castration and cannot transcend it" -signifier for male other -hollywood as dominant, everything else exists only as counterpoint to hollywood -central image of woman -feminist article- analyzing pleasure or beauty destroys it -scopophilia - looking is a source of pleasure, as is being looked at -cinema satisfied this need -person on screen can be seen as both object and can be identified with -active/male and passive/female gaze -female presence acts against the storyline , erotically freezing it -buddy movie does away w women all together, active homosexual eroticisim carries the film -woman is erotic object for the story characters and for the audience -male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification, he is solely empathized with -hitchcock interest in voyuerism, his heroes exemplary of the law but their erotic prices lead them into situations -power is backed by a certainty of legal right and the established guilt of the woman -woman as representation signifies castration, inducing voyeuristic or fetishistic mechanisms to circumvent her threat -three diff looks associated w film - the camera, the audience, and the characters -

Darby English, 'Fantasias of the Museum,' How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness, pgs. 145-170

-fred wilson considered collapsing the distance between ethnographic displays -Mining the Museum 1992-3 = modifying preexisting spaces in museums, alternative possibilities for the museum, mock museum spaces that make visible relations of power -political art -requiring viewers to negotiate the matter and subject of installation -Mining the Museum in Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore= 1992 -museums position themselves as public institutions to hide inner politics -Haacke commenting on current policies under Reagan thru photographs -Wilson's ability to show hidden power relationships already at place in the museum and to pinpoint the artificiality of the museum's structures of natural progression -"Mining the Muse um made legible the racism implicit in the Mary-land Historical Society's view of the population." -'confusion of priorities -welcome the new audience, assuage the old one, and be sure weary travelers can orient quickly to the purely experimental nature of the event-right at the top of the score-was given differe nt expression in Wilson's televised signature. This component isolated his perspective still more completely; indeed, the literature explains it as assuring visitors that the views expressed in Mining were Wilson's own' -Wilson can do this only bc the museum allows it -((I think the article is trying to say that bc he did it inside the museum, it seems that the museum is asking the questions??)) -"Here, Wilson's arrangement desublimated the image of enforced subservience by dramatically evoking scenes of the pursuit, capture, and eventual punishment of (poor) blacks by their (rich, white) oppressors. The most striking image was a hunting rifle mounted high on a pedestal, its barrel aimed at a group of mallard decoys flanking a wooden Zouave puppet (a racist caricature in a type of garb inspired by elite Algerian troops and later adapted to uniform an eccentric Civil War regiment)." -"The categories themselves-painting, metalwork, cabinetmaking, and others-were but convenient epistemological frameworks in which to model the larger predicament identifie d, though not problematized, by Mining: that is, the election of a single, simple relational dynamic-white/nonwhite, or dominant/oppressed-in which to "provide a strategy for the audience to reclaim the terrain of the museum for itself."" -"What were audiences to take away from the reinstallation that they didn't already know?" -"The transfor-mation Mining represented was one from concealment to admission (a considerable step by any measure), not from alienation to the possibility of its overcoming"

Doss, American Art, pgs. 243-245, 279-283

-guerilla girls - formed in 1984 w the intent of exposing sexual and racial discrimination in the art world --anonymous -1980s art scene w plastic gorilla masks and public performance --had lists of galleries w few or no women artists -from failure of Equal Rights Movement in 82, huge setback for women and feminism -1990s saw popularization of "feminazi" term -concentrated on patriarchal objectification -many worked w photography -discussions of how museums actually acquired works or why some works were displayed and not others -critique of the power of museums and the celebrated imperialism and progress of western history -museums added cafes, shops, blockbuster exhibits to get more money from consumers -calling out move from controversial to everyday changes in art -like Picasso was once unacceptable but now cherished -concealed histories of racism and slavery w in objects and providences -considering how museums shape understandings of race, cultural identity, and American history -considering how labels affect artworks and the viewing public -how museums dehumanize non western people -calling on museums to be more transparent about display practices

Allan Kaprow, "The Legacy of Jackson Pollock" in Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, ed. Jeff Kelley (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2003), pp. 1-10

-he suggests that after innovation is new, it then becomes accepted and considered cliche -"he created some magnificent paintings. but he also destroyed painting." -painting became less representational, more self sufficient -destroyed the idea of order, or natural balance in composition -emphasis on action of artist rather than on piece - concept over work -art goes beyond the canvas, the physical -rejects the idea that pollock created textures -large canvas creates the idea of environment but not like the large narrative paintings of the renaissance which offered a realistic new world -calls his work "childlike" -"crudeness of Jackson Pollock is not, therefore uncouth; it is manifestly frank and uncultivated, unsullied by training, trade secrets, finesse..." -move toward ordinary "But out of nothing they will devise the extraordinary and then maybe nothingness as well"

Watch lecture 1 "pressure" and 2 "Reversal" from Jennifer Roberts's A.W. Mellon Lecture Series "Contact: Art and the Pull of Print" (2021)

-idea that prints flip the work -disucsses how jasper John and Rauschenberg play w this -refusing artistic facility, unfamiliar set of skills -proof- print needs to be checked on cheaper paper before printed on nice paper -refers to glen ligons series as proofs of America, America reversal series -Pressure- pressure followed by release -matrix-object that bears the image to be transferred -support- surface that receives the image -mystique of the pull, blind contact under the sheet -fire prints - extinguishment, pressure creates the print -rauschenberg - how to make a 3d work into a print, 1) illusionism 2)run over it w a printing press -pressure from above and counter pressure from below - pressing down and up -bornstein- rubbing of khaki pants, can see both legs, see thru like an x ray -hammons - body print, cover himself w margarine then print himself and sift powered pigment on the image, equates pressure of printing with brutality , postures about immobilization but also about strategy, make transition in and out of representation, print is possible bc he is successful in pulling himself up, had to lightly press himself and resist gravity to get a clear print Cole- branding iron prints, diagram of the slave ship, pressings of ironing boards with his female relatives' names below them, hammers them until they are thin enough to print, vertical prints and posture of an item that was meant to be horizontal and printed horizontal (look like/recall gothic windows, shields , portraits)

Broude, Norma, "Alternative Monuments," Art in America (Feb 1991), Vol. 79 Issue 2, pgs. 72-81

-in the post Tilted Arc era, public acceptance can't be assumed, sculptors who pursue public commissions can't afford to dismiss popular taste and community needs -Marabar acts as oasis in concrete city -united the NGS plaza with with surrounding archtecture -delicate balance of opposing elements, rough and finished, natural and man made

Doss, American Art, pgs. 298-301

-issues of control and ownership -industry sustained by national organizations, local and state art agencies, degree granting programs, ,magazines, blogs, walking tours, how to guides and professional trained artists -assumptions that public art is a great form of economic investment -mode of civic beautification and economic benefit -The Gates in New York -Cloud Gate in Chicago -Levitated Mass in LACMA - moving mass from one place to another, making sacred landscapes, feat of engineering -City in Vegas

Romare Bearden, "The Negro Artist's Dilemma" (1946), pgs. 91-98

-it was difficult for black artists to buy materials to create works and were only really allowed expression thru religion, so they typically opted for cheaper options- ie singing -the stereotype that black people were dim witted and uncreative was the popular idea among white people and was distributed thru the idea of minstrel shows and blackface ---this idea was then internalized by some -black people were not allowed to be educated at the same level that white people were -they were depicted in art by white people until the 1920s in the "Negro Renaissance" or "New Negro Movement" where black art began to flourish -beginning in 1928, the Harmon Foundation held a series of Negro paintings and sculptures in a patronizing way rather than considering them as mature artists -black art was accepted if it fell into one of three categories 1) traditional african art, 2) jazz music and spirituals, 3) political and social aspirations -"culture is not a biologically inherited phenomenon" -african americans represent American culture as well as black culture, not just African culture -white artists (Picasso, Modigliani) study african sculpture, why shouldn't african American artists be allowed to -"the critic asks that the Negro stay away from the white man's art, but the true artist feels that there is only one art - and it belongs to all mankind" -"there is no single characteristic that would stamp their individual works as having been done by a Negro" -the black artist experiences pressure to have his work mirror the social injustices done to his community -the artists must think of himself as artist first, not as a negro artist only

Amelia Jones, "Introduction" to Body Art/Performing the Subject (1998), pgs. 1-19

-kusama known for photographing her naked, Asian female body, known for feminine and phallic imagery --she is playing on "doubled otherness" she is racially and sexually at odds with normative conception of artist as white European-american man --perfomance in a private setting for a "public-making eye of the camera" -pictures of kusama imbedded in the discussion of her work, her body/self is literally absorbed into her work and it becomes it ---she is playing a role, a performer, a persona -in her large scale mirror installations, the viewer becomes part of the artwork, not the artist -((considering the addition of the selfie, the pocket camera,,, thinking about her installation at LV, thinking about how unless we see her work ourselves we are always seeing another person in it, esp in social media culture)) -mirror exhibitions switch the place of kusama and the viewer, narcissistic -viewer is unable to separate themselves from the art -question of object vs subject or mix of both -many of her public exhibitions were demonstrations against the Vietnam war -she represents anti-war, women's movement and the sexual revolution of the 60s -challenges the existing perception of the artist -author views performance art as "suggestive, open-ended engagements rather than definitive answers to the question of what and how body art means in contemporary culture" -study of how body art "radical negotiates the structures of interpretation that inform our understanding of visual culture" ---enactment as artist as object and author -author says she will address 50s crisis of masculinity, and the rise of activism beginning in the 50s, the impact of the Vietnam war, free love and drug culture -author says she uses the term "body art" rather than "performance art" bc she wants to highlight the use of body in the artistic practice and bc it highlights that the body (and artist) cannot be separated from the art and bc she is interested in works that "take place through an enactment of the artist's body" and can be "experienced subsequently through photography, film, video, and/or text" -she argues that body art is an evolution of portraiture and of early 20th century avant grade performance art -radical merging of life and art, body as vehicle for social change, places the body as a political domain, body as political -discusses Ana Mendieta as exemplary of the problem of presence and absence -says that Pollock functions in art discourse as a hinge between body and art as "action painter" -author references Kaprow reading as "agressively performative", confused here, not sure what she's saying, body as brush literal? -calls wilke and kusma's work "radically narcissist" -orlan and Flanagan as exemplifying the body as "meat"

Doss, American Art, pgs. 175-181

-minimalism as objective and rational, opposed to emotionalism --focuses on industrial and elementary forms, prioritizes purity and flatness -structuralism analyzed social and culture relationships in terms of abstract patterns , codes and structures (signs, signifiers, and signifieds) -big players included Stella, Baer, Kelly, mangold, Noland, Rockburne -Stella pioneered minimalism with his series of "Black Paintings" inspired by Greenberg's theories for modern art ----principles include formal simplicity, legibility, strict adherence to structure ----canvases are inherently objects, their content is their form ---"what you see is what you see" ---titles of Stella's pieces included references to death, the Holocaust and homosexuality, titles which seem to have no relation to the paintings but still inject a somber tone into the pieces -minimalist sculpture was interested in industrial materials, those associated with working-class labor and focused on the literal nature of the materials -minimalist sculpture also included the act of installation or placement of the work as art -it recognized the confining space of the art gallery and critiqued notions of artistic authorship -it related more to mathematical principles and language theory rather than decoration, pop culture and consumerism -included chuck closes' minimalist portraits -efforts to control the making and meaning of art -involved hiring industrial fabricators to assemble their art, eliminating personal touch or "hand" in art -working class kinship be damned, the names of the fabricators are rarely released alongside the art -beginning of the white cube era -intersection of modern art, architectural and industrial style -many artists participated in the anti war movement and opposed 'establishment" views of consumerism -characterized by a predominantly male authority and sexism, problematic attachment to industrial materials and work, repurposement of mass production for art's sake, gender bias, and confused understanding of corporate power and "establishment" / authority

Doss, American Art, pgs. 233-238

-neoexpressionist movement -return to painting heavily inspired by other earlier styles, huge paintings -appropriation art - raises questions of authorship and figurative styles -bold, energetic paintings -diverse cultural references -return to figuration -Julian Schnabel reached big success -Mary Boone and Leo castelli were important patrons -1980-7 economic boom and crash -tied to commodity art and economics

Douglas Crimp, "Redefining Site Specificity" (1986) in Richard Serra (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000), pgs. 146-173

-no audience for sculpture -"Splashing" by Richard Serra - tossed molten lead and allowed it to harden in place -both painting and sculpture -"to remove the work is to destroy the work" -((kara walker esque)) -continued existence in the world of art objects -Tilted Arc - the work had been conceived for the site, built on the site, become an integral part of the site and altered the very nature -goal was a materialist critique of the presuppositions of the institution -to move it was to reveal the material conditions of the work of art, its mode of production and reception, the institutional supports of its circulation, the power relations , traditional aesthetic discourse -site needs to be in a public place to interact w formal characteristics of environment and to interact w public, meant to interrupt -art exists w/in viewer's temporal movement in space shared w the object -change of site would mean change of relationship w object, context, and viewer -failure of minimalism to think of spaces as individual and not as generic class -modern art became subject to the commodification from capitalism -minimalism accepted "spaces" as given -dangers of divorcing art practices from social and political climates in which they took place -serra determined to build his works outside the confines of art institutions -serras work would require the professional labor of others, to manufacture the material and to put in in condition or position to use -the sculpture would stand in the spot it was made -reliance on the industrial labor force -serras materials are materials used only for the means of production ?? -his sculptures work against the places they were installed in -author argues that Serra works against hiding the labor involved in these works -art work that could be seen in a gallery could be typically imagined to be inside private home also but not Serras works -against use in private spaces bc they are meant to be uncomfortable -public art in public space -holding the gallery hostage to sculpture -"Slice" cut the gallery in half with no communication between the halves -gallery as place of viewing and commerce -serras work cannot be a part of commerce -attempts to remove hand of the artist or so he says -didn't like isolated sites -"no,... I would rather be more vulnerable and deal with the reality of my living situation" -worked within NYC -serra wants to defeat surrogate consumption of art -earthworks exist in documents and photos and videos -transferred back thru reproduction, art abstracted from its context throughout the modern era!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -reduce sculpture to the flat plane of the photograph, denying temporal experience of the work, experience of the work is inseparable from the place in which the work resides, no neutrality of sites -what does it mean when his proposed works are rejected from their intended site -public art generally only granted for the function of aesthetic enhancements!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -(((his works are expenditures of city funds))) -(((what does it mean to make public art with the peoples taxes that they hate)) -"an artwork can become significant to its public thru the incorporation of content relevant to the local audience or by the assumption of an identifiable function" -Tilted Arc was situated in the very center of the mechanisms of state (NY) power -it implanted itself within the public's field of vision but didn't interrupt walkways or traffic -serra placed his own aesthetic assumptions above the needs and desires of the people who had to live w his work -city where control is only granted to property owners -Tilted Arc obscured the vision of security officers -showed the way in which the public was viewed by the state , showed the states need to control the public -we are considered potential loiterers, graffiti scribblers, drug dealers, and terrorists to the state -serra's work uncovers political specificities

Derek Conrad Murray, "Introduction," Queering Post-Black Art: Artists Transforming African-American Identity after Civil Rights, pgs. 1-22

-post-black- intersectionality within the black community -split between those born before and after Civil Rights Act of 1964 (ended legal segregation) -blackness has become cultural rather than political -african American struggle originally defined by black hyper masculinity -Black Arts Movement (BAM) was meant to elevate black culture, it ended up only promoting works that were political and evoked black cultural nationalism -concerns of black women were dismissed -

bell hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators" (1992) in Film and Theory: An Anthology

-power in looking -references Foucault -gaze as a site of resistance for colonized black people -mass media as a system of reproducing and maintaining white supremacy -negation of black representation led to independent black cinema -critically looking at white representations of blackness -looking is about confrontation -offered a way to gaze in private, black spectatorship -white women are depicted as the ones to be looked at and desired -erasure of black womanhood -even when black women were depicted it was to enhance and maintain white womanhood as object of the gaze -to enjoy cinema requires gaslighting - to forget racism and sexism -black women cannot identify with the white womanhood portrayed onscreen (not with the victim or perpetrator), they have an oppositional gaze -calls for intersectional feminism -says spike lee is transference without transformation, same script different skin tones -enables production of feminist film theory that theorizes black female spectatorship

Jennifer Roberts, "Spiral Jetty/Golden Spike," in Mirror-Travels: Robert Smithson and History

-says visual structure of photo of golden spike looks like an x, central point of juncture -completion of railroad led to standardization of clock time, gathered nation into single point -spiral jetty built next door to golden spike historical national site -author says they are geographically and experientially inseparable -made national historical site in 65 -excluded Chinese laborers and Native American history w the railroad -jetty occupied a side that had already been shaped by a conspicuous historical event and its existing politics -the question of race was first raised at the 69 centennial -site was a short drive from the golden spike visitors center -greenberg said that "the viewer in front of a piece of modern art was to be 'summoned and gathered into one point' by the work" -golden spike encapsulated manifest destiny -smithson argued that artists must "resist the process of temporal commodification that results from this object-oriented view of art" -smithson says that by focusing on the art object as a finished piece, it takes away from the time the artist spent on the work, devaluing the time of the artist -allowed for "extraction" of finished work -he encouraged artists to think of their career as continuous and hierarchical, against the idea of creative genius moment -against separation of history from the art object -author says that Golden Spike history fixated on golden moment of completion rather than on history and time it took to build -author says its building on conceptual art's emphasis on the value of time spent on art idea rather than on object -smithson objects to the art object being treated as unified, transcendent wholes -spiral jetty's size and physical relation to the site ensures that the work cannot be taken out of its environment and resultantly, its historical context -visitors to the jetty must pass thru golden spike national historic site and thru failed oil extraction site -smithson heavily documented construction of the jetty -smithson knew that this project may not be fulfilled and may fail bc the weight of the trucks might cause the lake to buckle -the jetty is constantly added to by the salt crystals from the lake itself -form of history based on extension and inclusion -smithson compared the shape of the jetty to a spiral ear -spiral jetty essays seem to be fables made up about the area -photographs taken of the jetty during construction and after were published as art themselves -the photos start from aerial view then get closer and closer to salt crystals, sense of scale, of verticality, of falling into the work -the sheltering shape of the spiral increases the concentration of salt brine, making the color of the water a darker red inside the work -salt as both adding to the work and corroding the stone of the work -use of patterning in the shape of the work and in the crystals of the salt -"new kind of order within disorder" -emphasis on extension, duration, labor, and materiality -suggestion to Poe's whirlpool storm story -smithson alludes to potential slipping of history, poe argues that one must have the proper vehicle to avoid slipping from history -idea of disappearing into the inner spiral of the jetty, very junji Ito

Douglas Crimp, "The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism," October, Vol. 15 (Winter, 1980) P91-101,

-talking about how art has an aura that gets lost with multiple reproductions (inevitable) -aura association with uniqueness -aura made up of exposure time and the relationship between the photographer and the sitter -aura of a photo directly concerned w the uncontrollable intrusion of reality -Benjamin liked the liberation of the object from the aura -depletion of aura = emptiness -museums rely on uniqueness of the object -museum crisis of the photography-as-art -rarity of the vintage print -photographer's hand of the artist is in her vision or darkroom activity -discusses Sherrie Levine's art in which she rephotographs photos and hangs them as her own ---photography as art -cindy sherman photography - self portraits, ambiguity of self and narrative, self portrait as "guises she assumes", inauthenticity of photographs -photographs assumed to be documentary -Rephotographed photographs signify commodity fetish

Joseph Kosuth, "Intentions," in Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology, eds. Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimpson (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999), pgs. 460-468

-typically considered to be 2 things- work of art and artist intention -conceptual art= artists work w meaning, not material -presentation has no value apart from its role as vehicle for the idea of the work -idea=artist intention directly -works of art uninhibited by object -takes away art process -aspect of questioning process called "institutional critique" -disappearance of the art object -no difference between object and intention -artist going beyond producer of goods for market -conceptual art is more than a style -artist defines work, not the viewer -art objects need to have a "text" in order for viewers to see what they want them to see -subjective presence of intention is what makes art "art" (authenticity)

Doss, American Art, pg. 195

-video art -Joan Jonas, Dan Graham, Vito Acconci, Dara Birnbaum -some artists used video as live recording of performance art -some incorporated video into performance art -video installation art -Paik works include single-channel closed-circuit transmission that allows taping and viewing at the same time -challenging the myth of media neutrality -recognizing media power to shape public opinion -videos of protests and countercultural events were circulated

Watch the conversations with Betye Saar and Faith Ringgold from Crystal Bridges's symposium on "Soul of a Nation: The Art of Black Power" (2018)

Betye Saar -inspired by the Watts Towers -became interested in found objects -created prints and collages in her kitchen ---(motherhood and domesticity) -interested in palmistry and mysticism -in the 60s she started collecting derogatory images of black people, said that black people never had a chance to see each other other than these works, purchased them from the Pasadena and Alameda flea, to not let the objects go to other people, to make them empowered -Liberation of Aunt Jemima - recycle anger of MLK into creative process, creation of a black "(s)hero" -slavery objects that still worked even after slavery had ended -made her a warrior, gave her a gun -I Will Bend but I Will Not Break - ironing board made of a slave ship, examining how black women had to wash and iron kkk clothing -technology and circuit board series from found materials at her residency at MIT -compares technology to spirituality, magic and religion faith ringgold --says art is about telling your story, not about pleasing people -says in the 60s, the head of the NAACP was a white man, she made art analyzing sex and class structures in america (American People series) this was her first series that took a political stance -she made a black power poster stamp -DIe, 1967 - made it to speak about the riots in Harlem, wanted her piece displayed to try and bring attention to the violence, final painting in the American people series ---went to the MOMA to see Guernica, heavily inspired by Picasso, has an MA in art -went to Africa to study with african artists -joined the spectrum gallery -discusses how artists in the 60s focused on abstract rather than showing political issues -began making political posters to be distributed for the Black Panthers and for Angela Davis -campaigned for museums (ie MOMA) to show black art with the Artists Coalition, bc she was a woman, she wasn't invited inside the museum to talk -wanted to get women into art shows, Where We At -The United States of Attica - how the states and cities were created from violence and how many people died, map of American Violence

Doss, American Art, pgs. 217-224

The Black Art movement -in 1963, Lewis, Bearden, Woodruff, and Alston formed Spiral, the first black arts group organized since the New Negro era --it only held one exhibition (Works in Black and White (1965)) and disbanded the same year -aimed to raise American consciousness about the visibility and history of black culture and black people -black artists used the American flag as pictorial pushback -Black Power gained visibility with the emergence of political groups like the Black Panther Party -by the late 60s, nonviolence, civil disobedience and integration were perceived to be not enough to enact any actual social change -aunt Jemima (and sufficiently the "mammy" archetype) was used in works as a symbol of black resistance to white authority -in 1971, ring gold helped organize the black feminist artists group, Where We At ---ringgold began teaching and making African-inspired crafts (beadwork, appliqué, and masks), soft sculptures and story quilts (traditional examples of women's crafts)

Rachael DeLue, "Conjure and Collapse in the Art of Romare Bearden," Nonsite.org [online journal]

https://nonsite.org/conjure-and-collapse-in-the-art-of-romare-bearden/ --traditional african culture as a source of strength!!!!! -20th-century American artist -Bearden's work for the most part alternated between social realist imagery—straightforward, unstinting depictions of everyday people, especially the working class -Through the 1950s, Bearden's primary medium was paint—oil, acrylic, watercolor, or gouache—but in the late 1950s and early 1960s he began to experiment with collage, pasting paper onto canvas to create figurative or abstract compositions -when he was in his early 50s, he spent his full attention on collage and created his most well known works including The Dove (1964) ---this is a scene of an African American community on a New York street, a collage of noisy, cluttered urban life, wherein figures are broken, or overlap, or are only pieces of a full person --different sizes create different viewpoints and lenses of an object, magnifying glass effect, kaleidoscope effect -To make his collages, Bearden began with a small board to which he added his cut paper and photographs as well as his paint and pencil marks; he then applied a resin emulsion adhesive to the whole and pressed the pieces to the board with a roller such that they settled into the viscous and thick adhesive and lay flat, he then weighted the boards so they wouldn't warp ---this gives the piece a uniform texture in opposition to the chaotic nature of the work -vividly colored (vibrant) -"A conjur woman," wrote Bearden in 1969, "was an important figure in a number of Southern Negro rural communities. She was called on to prepare love potions; to provide herbs to cure various illnesses; and to be consulted regarding vexing personal and family problems. Much of her knowledge had been passed on through the generations from an African past, although a great deal was learned from the American Indians. A conjur woman was greatly feared and it was believed that she could change her appearance." -magical, sub natural adjacent in opposition to the prejudice, racism, and segregation experienced by the black community -cutting, pasting, and slicing aspect of collage mirrors war torn societies, mirrors violence of political oppression and trauma ----collage requires an aspect of rebuilding, making old into new -conjure as in tearing apart one object (Or multiple) to create a new object (quite literally) -viewer sees these objects as real and weighted -uses animals as a way of communicating "extra-human" perception, uses parts of animals to make collages of conjure women -uses physical materials of the world in his work rather than purely pictorial ones -Bearden as conjure figure - creating new objects from old ones, transcending human condition and human body -

Malcolm X, "By Any Means Necessary," speech delivered at the March on Washington 1963

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/speeches-african-american-history/1964-malcolm-x-s-speech-founding-rally-organization-afro-american-unity/ -Organization of Afro- American Unity -calling that black Americans (African Americans) should be able to have equal rights and should be able to have every right listed in the Constitution -african Americans should be allowed to be defensive rather than passive -against the use of nonviolence as protest -education is important and all African Americans should be educated and fight for the right to be educated -african americans need to be voters, and need to be registered to vote and educated on what they're voting on -they need to start and organize political clubs and to run for office -he's against crime and organized crime and drugs but also against corrupt police and politicians -"What we do here in regaining our self respect, our manhood, our dignity and freedom helps all people everywhere who are also fighting against oppression." -he wants to be closer to african culture -he wants to start a newspaper to have the power of press and a cultural department -

Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream," speech delivered at the March on Washington (1963)

https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety -"There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges." -"We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence" -argued for black and white people to work together -argued for nonviolence, to take the highroad -"No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream." -"So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."