Contemporary Art Exam 2

35mm film

#mm = the width of the strip of celluloid - Standard film gauge for Hollywood (most expensive)

Found footage/Compilation film

(aka: appropriation) implies what the name means, and often offers the potential for something more

Keith Haring, black light installation in the Tony Shafrazi Gallery, 1982

(artist died from AIDS) - Ecstasy of movement & color - radiation quality -- Threatening?? Viral??

Kryzsztof Wodiczko, Works, 1988.

- A light projection on D.C. museum, 1988 - By making an artwork public = more people see it - the hypocrisy of the images

Arturo Di Modica, Charging Bull, 1989.

- Bull = meaning only on Wall Street (site-specific??) - Guerilla Artwork: present to the city - Wall Street was not really happy - ode to captialism

8mm film

- Cheap, easy, accessible, amateurish - Think: home videos

Fred Wilson, Metal Work 1793-1880, from Mining the Museum, 1992-3.

- Coordinate with historical society in Baltimore --- rearranged exhibitions -- insensitive issues are brought to the foreground - Shackles -- draws attention that museums emphasize "beautiful" artifacts - Silversmith (beautiful) & other metals (shackles for slaves) - Slavery is very important in our history - Museums don't do enough work to bring ideas together (compartmentalization)

Robert Longo, National Trust, 1981

- Fascinated with the gestures & flatness of art - juxtapositions: material & composition - status figures -- thrown around - themes -- human bodies controlled by unseen heavily influences - interest in corporate financial growth - composition -- art historical statement to alter pieces

Hans Haacke, MoMA Poll, 1970.

- How information reflect the museum - Rockefeller was on the board of MoMA, but was being super critiqued --- visual voting: not necessarily beautiful

Andrea Fraser, Little Frank and his Carp, 2001

- Institutional Critique - Critical of exhibition trend -- spectacular architectural experience --- taking power & funding away from actual artwork --- Frank Gehry -- Guggenheim Bilbao & destination museums - Over the top explanation of the architecture -- audio guides --- Began enacting the erotic plays the audio was prompting

Bruce Conner, A Movie (film still), 1961-1964

- Like Warhol's art background (3 dimensions, 2 dimensions, and film) - found footage films -- leftover film sequences - taking the climaxes of multiple film reels and putting them together

16mm film

- Medium range between 35mm & 8mm - Favorited for experimental film: it was not limited, freeing

Experimental Film

- Moving images, usually (but not always) in a single screen projection format - Mode of expression that engages with but often counters the mode of expression of commercial, feature-length film - Often questions or self-reflexively points to its own production of illusion - Implicitly or explicitly investigates the power of moving images to alter the way we see and comprehend representations

David Wojnarowicz, Water, 1987

- Openly gay - Comic strip language, mythologic feel

Julian Schnabel, The Patient and the Doctors, 1978

- Paintings -- affix broken pottery into his paintings (3D additions) - interest in referencing art history (triptych) - "Neo-expressionism"

ACT UP, Silence=Death, 1987

- Pink triangle -- one of the patches homosexual people were forced to wear in Nazi concentration camps - Using mass media strategies & avant-garde art/issues

Jenny Holzer, Truisms, 1977-79: Abuse of Power Comes as No Surprise, 1982.

- Public rhetoric vs. Public Space - Sentence-based artworks -- her own creations - Think about how language infuses a public space

Anish Kapoor, Cloud Gate, 2006.

- Public space: not a lot of pure public spaces anymore; hybrid public spaces - tips the hat to minimalism, bit more eccentric abstraction - successful public art: popular -- engages the audience directly - not necessarily site specific

Andy Warhol, Screentest (Edie Sedgewick) (film still), 1965

- Pushing the definition of what film could do - moving image portraiture - 300+ individual rolls of film (commercial packaging) - He simply let time elapse = representation of one's image (vanity/discomfort) - Irony: uniterested in acting, filming the "performance" of social settings - someone's persona

The Names Project, AIDS Memorial Quilt, 1987-ongoing

- Started small -- rapidly growing to significant meaning (art) - Made by normal people about their AIDS experience (lost loved ones) - Public, collective, activist statement art (memorial art)

Robert Mapplethorpe, Two Men Dancing, 1984

- Travelling exhibition -- retrospective of Mapplethorpe's work - Conservatives used some of his explicit work to attack the NEA - Paradox -- sexually explicit works vs. compositional still lifes - conservatives used his works to successfully close his exhibition

Michael Asher, Untitled, 1974

- Wants to show what is normally hidden at galleries - Institutional Critique -- financial transactions - His artwork is impossible to sell or buy

Andres Serrano, Piss Christ, 1989

- Was featured in an exhibition funded by the NEA - alluding to the cross submerged in urine - conservatives HATED this work!!! - Paradox: crucifix is glowing (halo effect), but created with urine - visual language is attacked first when cultural wars are fought over art

Expanded Cinema: Analytic

- deconstruction/disassembly of basic properties of cinema - thematic focus on cinema's structure, on film's material basis - strong political and/or social critique - Minimalist aesthetic, emphasis on everyday materials

Marcel Broodthaers, Museum of Modern Art, Department of Eagles, Dusseldorf installation view, 1972

- father of institutional critique - magazine clippings, fabric, books, statues, anything with eagles - questions the way collections get assembled - conceptual-ish, installation art (meant to be understood wholistically)

Hans Haacke, Shapolsky et al., Manhattan Real Estate

- information, research, documentation space - 42 photocopies of slum apartments --- wealthy people kept profiting - artwork was never shown -- critiqued shapolsky (powerful) - "Artworks are no longer a private affair"

Expanded Cinema: Synthetic

- supplementation/intensification of the basic properties of cinema - thematic focus on stimulation of visionary/altered consciousness - Ambivalent political and/or social critique -- technological optimism - Emphasis on new media/communication technologies

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Charles the First, 1982

- triptych: very large - graffiti artist -- worked into gallery art --- (counterculture --> mainstream) - interested in royalty & superheroism, body & language - Allusion to Charlie Parker -- jazz musician - Pays tribute to Black artists that are not as well known - Desire to show tension and conflict -- bold colors, words - very coded

AIDS

1981: HIV is noticed as an epidemic, name AIDS is given (1982) 1985: First AIDS conference 1989: 100,000 reported AIDS cases in the U.S. 2007: 565,000 people in the U.S. have died from AIDS since 1981 2012: AIDS is the 6th ranked cause of death globally

Photorealism

A return to figuration - Pop-like concern with the superficial, the reproducible, the commercial, and the everyday; pleasurable looking - Oscillation between an informationally saturated surface and an elusive subject, political vs. formal - Once a hierarchy, now a swapping of representational roles between painting and photography

"Identity politics"

A wide range of political activity and theorizing founded not on belief systems, programmatic manifestos, or party affiliation, but shared experiences of marginalization as a member of a particular social group. - Attempts to reclaim or transform the social narrative associated with an oppressed, exploited or underserved identity - demand for respect for oneself as different - People could band together based on a shared identity in their community

Institutional critique

An artist practice that makes visible and questions the power exercised in social and cultural institutions (ie: galleries, museums, art festivals, universities, etc.) - these institutions also criticized for their role in upholding conceptual institutions of dominant culture (financial, sexual, etc.) - takes the form of archives or installation art

Guerrilla artist

An artist who creates and installs artworks that are not commissioned.

VALIE EXPORT, Tap and Touch Cinema, 1968

Analytic expanded cinema - performance based - strapped a modified cardboard box to her chest (bare-chested) --- turned her female body into a camera & film - Eye contact = social taboo --> voyeurism

Public art

Art that is some combo of the following: - designed expressly for exhibition in the public sphere - dependent on the notion of the public for some part of its meaning/signification - funded/sponsored/erected with civic funding - Public art is an umbrella term which includes any work of art purchased with public funds, or which comes into the public domain (by donation, or by public display, etc.) irrespective of where it is situated in the community, or who sees it Site specific sculpture, monument, street art

Doris Salcedo, November 6 and 7, 2002.

At the site of a national tragedy in Columbia - Highly political, but takes no stance

"culture wars"

Clash of political (usually) ideologies that have gotten so aggravated that there is no dialog between ideologies. Art has extraordinary power in impacting culture, as it can fall right in the middle of the battles. Art is the very battleground for Culture Wars *Culture Wars make use of art and then devalue it*

Culture Jamming

Continuation of the project of détournement in late capitalism - specifically related to corporate advertising - Subversion, disruption of the normative messages of mainstream culture in image and text

Felix Gonzales-Torres, Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA), 1991

Created to commemorate the death of Ross, a loved one, who had died of AIDS. The pile of candy represents Ross through his weight, and people are welcomed to take pieces of candy away from the exhibition. As people take away candy, it is supposed to represent the literal wasting away of Ross that AIDS caused to happen.

Peggy Ahwesh, The Third Body (film still), 2007

Found footage: space adam & eve footage - looks dated on purpose, but is actually digital film

Nicholas Nixon, Donald Perham, Milford, New Hampshire, 1988

From the series "People with AIDS"

NEA

Government funding through grants given to support the arts, and was attacked as an organization

Anonymous (Doyle Trankina, Andrew Tider, Jeff Greenspan), Prison Ship Martyr's Monument 2.0, AKA 'The Snowden Statue', 2015.

Guerilla artwork - using existing monument & conceptions - This artwork experiences a second life in the virtual public sphere

Gunter Demnig, Stumbling Stones, 1993-present.

Holocaust memorial - placed where these people lived before deportation to concentration camps - Primarily Jewish individuals - Meant to be insignificant, but also noticeable enough that people stop to think about what it means

Peggy Ahwesh, Scary Movie (film still), 1993

Impatient with Structuralist and Lyrical filmmaking - loved popular culture, but also loved feminism - mix of pleasure & seriousness/clarity & mystery - Found footage film - features children -- not serious?? not art?? - The sound is not trying to match the images -- as silly as the images - monster vs. heroine trope -- formula for scary movies (feminist theme) - imperfection is the goal, not perfection - fascinated with childhood & girlhood -- fantasy

Cultural appropriation

Intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from one culture taken and used without permission, clear attribution or informed nuance in an alternative context. - Cultural appropriation "highlights the power imbalance that remains between those in power and those who've been historically marginalized" -- Nico Lang

Illuminator Art Collective, The Ghost of Edward Snowden, 2015.

Intervention - the public space is virtual now - references "The Snowden Statue"

Uncreative writing

Kenneth Goldsmith (2011) - "context is the new content" - purposeful appropriation, plagiarism, and word processing

Stan Brakhage, Dog Star Man (film still), 1963

Lyrical Film pictured is a film still -- evocative yet cryptic - embraced the imperfections -- impressionistic way - criticized for its restrictive (masculine) experience

Détournement

Modernist Appropriation - A symbolic theft, overturning of the socio-cultural norms - Subversive, politically charged, revolutionary - Citational in nature (one can see formal evidence of the change in context, dependent to some degree on the belief in an original context)

Stan Vanderbeek, Telephone Mural: Panels for the Walls of the World, 1970

Movement from "fusion film" to interest in new media (ie: the internet) - used the fax machine to make the mural (mosaic)

Richard Serra, Tilted Arc, 1981-89.

No longer exists: was removed - very interested in minimalism -- but not necessarily a minimalist - site-specific sculpture -- intervening with the geometry already in place

Voyeurism

Person who get pleasure by looking but not being looked at

Lyrical film

Poetic, embraced beauty & movement, epic themes - very personal and universal (mythical)

Single/multi-channel projection

Single: one video being channeled Multi: more than one video being channeled

Jordan Belson, Allures, 1961

Synthetic expanded cinema - Psychedelic and drug culture-ish - Planetarium shows

Stan Vanderbeek, The Movie-Drome, 1963-1965

Synthetic expanded cinema - multi-channel project surface - 360 degrees around the viewers - found footage & then multiplying it - moving image collage

Pichação/pixação

Tagging, graffiti in Brazil (street art was legalized in Brazil, but not graffiti)

Pastiche

The recycling of images/text/commodities that obscures, disregards, or challenges notions of originality and progress - Apolitical, or diffusely political - Formal emphasis on blending, smoothing, or shattering of contexts - *Signature style of appropriation in the postmodern period*

Appropriation

The strategic removal of image, object, or text from its original context and placement within a new context in such a way that its original meaning is destabilized or questioned - Centuries-old aesthetic strategy, but new significance with the intensification of mass media and commodity culture - interrogates notions of originality, authenticity, and authorship - Often paired with collage or montage as artistic technique - Self-reflexive (art about art), satirical, humorous, subversive

Stan Brakhage, Mothlight (film still), 1963

Used debrie of nature as the images -- assemblage? collage? - Meant to bring attention that the experience of cinema is just *light*

Street art

When the artist has permission to paint on a building

Archive

You know what an archive is