Contemporary Art Exam 2
Christopher Reed " The AIDS disease"
"By 1992, the effects of AIDS became arguably the dominant issue in avant-garde art." 208 1995: ¼ of the male artists who had exhibited in Extended Sensibilities had died of AIDS "Activists condemned documentary photographers whose work seemed to replicate journalistic clichés of AIDS patients as freaks dying pathetically alone. At a 1988 MoMA exhibition of Nicholas Nixon's photographs of people dying with AIDS, activists from the group ACT UP sat in the gallery with photographs of energetic people captioned as "living with"—not dying of—AIDS. The activists talked to viewers about their criticism of the art on display and handed out flyers that concluded with the demand, "STOP LOOKING AT US; START LISTENING TO US." 209
Stan Brakhage from Metaphors on Vision
"Imagine an eye unruled by manmade laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception."
AIDSgate, ACT UP 1987
"Impelled by the urgency of AIDS activism, ACT UP graphics shattered the boundaries that conventionally distinguish avant-garde art from mass media imagery." 208 -Christopher Reed
War on Culture/Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition/ Carol Vance
"In moral campaigns, fundamentalists select a negative symbol which is highly arousing to their own constituency and which is difficult or problematic for their opponents to defend. The symbol, often taken literally, out of context, and always denying the possibility of irony or multiple interpretations, is waved like a red flag before their constituents...Fundamentalists and conservatives are now directing mass-based symbolic mobilizations against 'high culture.'" (225)
Uncreative Writing, Kenneth Goldsmith
"You have a whole generation of writers who are exploring writing that has been thought to be traditionally outside the scope of literary practice: word processing, databasing, recycling, appropriation, intentional plagiarism, identity ciphering and intensive programming to name just a few. For them the act of writing is literally moving language from one place to another, boldly proclaiming that context is the new content."
A Movie (film still) Bruce Conner, 1958
16mm, 12 minutes, black & white, sound. Experimental Collage film. Put together by snippets of found footage, taken from B movies, newsreels, soft-core porn, and other sources played to music. The film is associational, in which a number of narratively and spatially unrelated shots from a number of sources are edited together to evoke emotions and make thematic points
Stan Brakhage, Mothlight (film still). 1963
16mm, 4 minutes, silent. Used the debris of nature as the images, dead bodies of moths, strips of celluloid spliced together, assemblage, brings our attention to cinema being an experience of light.
Peggy Ahwesh, Scary Movie (film still), 1993
16mm, 9 minutes, black & white, sound. Theres no narrative, use of children, contradictory sounds, gender roles/ mocking horror films unintentionally, feminist but doesn't aim to make it known, just displays it, the taking of innocence.
AIDS
1981: Powerful immune deficiency disease (HIV) is noticed as epidemic; in 1982, the name AIDS is given 1985, WHO hosts first International AIDS conference; at least one AIDS case has been reported in every region of the world; Ryan White speaks out about his AIDS diagnosis 1989: Reported AIDS cases in the USA: 100,000 1987: AZT approved by the FDA; ACT-UP founded; President Reagan's first public mention of AIDS; AIDS Memorial Quilt is first exhibited 1994-1996: AIDS is the leading cause of death for Americans 25-44 (currently 6th leading cause of death) 1997: Antiretroviral therapy with protease inhibitors becomes the new standard of HIV care; UNAIDS estimates that 30 million people worldwide are infected 2002: AIDS is the leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa, and 4th biggest global killer 2007: Since 1981, over 565,000 people in the USA have died of AIDS 2011: Hilary Clinton shares US government's goal of creating an AIDS-free generation with sophisticated prevention and treatment techniques 2012: AIDS is the 6th ranked cause of death globally 2013: Almost 50,000 new HIV infections in USA; 8th ranked cause of death globally
Experimental Film Formats
35mm (especially outside of Hollywood film culture and the cinematic history of the United States) 16mm- most used for experimental film 8mm- gateway to celluloid film, cheapest, most accessible Analog video Digital video-regular videos
Dog Star Man, Stan Brakhage (film still) 1961-1964
78 mins long, 16 mm, color, silent. Experimental/avant-garde/personal film. a man (played by Brakhage) carrying an axe and accompanied by a dog, struggles up a steep mountainside and chops down a dead tree. Originally, Brakhage has said, "I thought it would be a little, simple film on a woodsman, myself as the woodsman, the wood-gatherer," but "it ended up as . . . an exploration of the whole history of man. I mean, as I climb this hill the images suggest in many ways, metaphorically and in other ways, the history of man himself and his endeavor, and the meaning of whatever it is he does and makes." About general existence, criticized for being a masculine experience
Archive
A collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people.
Detournement
A kind of appropriation from the modern era where something is "stolen" out of one context and "forced" to exist in another context, often with a completely opposite meaning. Often subversive and political. Always a specific citation involved: it is able to deliver a political message because you can tell that the image/object/text was different in its original form than in its appropriate form. Revolutionary. Modernist.
Pastiche
A kind of appropriation from the postmodern era whose meaning is less clear and more blurry than détournement. The origin is often not very clear. For example, it seems as if an artist has put the images they are working with into a blender and mixed them all up together. The emphasis is not on "before" and "after," but rather on a recycling or mixing of different styles and meanings.
Culture Jamming
A kind of politically engaged appropriation from the last 20 years or so that acknowledges how hard it is to be truly political or subversive in an era that is so influenced by consumerism and media. A kind of appropriation that critiques the messages that dominant culture sends us through advertising. Doesn't attempt to be really revolutionary; instead, it is designed to be a temporary "jolt" to our capitalist system
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 A term charged with controversy for both liberals and conservatives As of the 1990s, "The demand is not for inclusion within the fold of 'universal humankind' on the basis of shared human attributes; nor is it for respect 'in spite of' one's differences. Rather, what is demanded is respect for oneself as different."
Guerrilla Art
Also referred to as street art, is a method of art where the artist leaves anonymous art pieces in public places. Often an installation in an unauthorized location.
Lyrical Film
An approach to experimental film. Tries to capture a personal perception or emotion, a flash of insight, conveys a mood or sensation directly without using any narrative structure. -puts camera into first person position (of the protagonist of film)\ -vision and looking are the crucial aspects of this film Stan Brakhage as example *first person seeing (camera movement & framing represent the filmmaker's physical vision) *can explore surface, texture, hue, light, reflection. Self-perception: artist feels more deeply and sees more deeply than others. He sought to capture untutored vision, beginner's vision, sense of space and light unspoiled by knowledge and social training.(Eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective/unprejudiced by compositional logic.
Institutional Critique
An artistic practice that makes visible and questions the power exercised in social and cultural institutions. Galleries, museums, art festivals, prizes and awards, universities These institutions also criticized for their role in upholding conceptual institutions of dominant culture (financial, sexual, political) Hans Haacke was trying to bring attention to the fact that museums are run and funded by politicans who control what is put in there and shown. A sort of censor that controls what the viewers get to see institutional critique is an artistic practice that tries to draw an art audience's CRITICAL attention to the INSTITUTIONS that art exists within Institutional critique practitioners believe that a lot of the choices behind the how/what/when/where/why of art exhibition is influenced by systems of money and power
Public Art
An umbrella term which includes any work of art purchased with public funds, or which comes into the public regardless of where it is situated in the community, or who sees it. Types: Site specific sculpture Monument Street art
What was experimental film's relationship to contemporary art in the 1960's?
Andy Warhol started making 16mm, long-take films in 1963 which brought visibility to experimental films as a whole. Also, the rise of a leftist counter-culture during the 60's and in the increased distribution of non mainstream movies led to an exponential increase in avant-garde films during this time. This was the time when experimental, avant-garde films were brought to the forefront of contemporary art and made it's mark. This is also when Stan Brakhage's films came to be well known.
The Body of Michael Brown, Kenneth Goldsmith, 2015
Avant garde poet, takes texts word for word. Took the autopsy report by the Ferguson Police Report. Rearranged and read out loud. Cultural Appropriation.
Why, according to A.L. Rees, is expanded cinema so difficult to define?
Because it is an elastic name for many kinds of film. It embraces contradictory dimensions of film and video art.
The Patients and the Doctors, Julian Schnabel, 1978
Cemented a field of broken dishes, cups, & other ceramic fragments to disjointed wooden planes as the support for the painting. Attempted to be as uncensored as possible. "I want my life to be embedded in my work.. crushed into a painting, like a pressed car" Abstract expressionism. Neo-Expressionism
The Dove, Romare Bearden, 1964
Collage. Not smooth or seamless, things clearly had a previous life. Pointed reference to diversity in Harlem, took african americans from different contexts. Forces us to study individual pieces of black identity. It is subversive for 1964. Detournement.
Analytic Expanded Cinema
Deconstruction/disassembly of the 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
Bringing The War Home: House Beautiful, Martha Rosler, 1967-72
Detournement. photo montages, 2 different medias brought together. Contrast in the nice house and the distressed child. War Atrocities- Vietnam War. People were viewing this war on tv bringing attention to what's going on in the world, or keep war out of the home. "The wealthy in the United States could afford to spend a lot of time and money decorating their homes in the late 1960s, while hundreds of thousands of American soldiers were at war in Vietnam and many more hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians were dying "Bringing the War Home" is trying to encourage us to totally subvert our conventional way of ignoring the stuff that is not happening in our own backyard.
Cameraless film
Direct or cameraless animation is the process of creating moving images by working directly onto motion picture film stock by hand. According to Devon Damonte, "Various graphics are set in motion by using the film material as a vehicle for a 'moving canvas'. Techniques may include (but aren't limited to) painting, scratching, adhering thin semi-transparent materials to the film with tape or glue, ironing to transfer inks from plastic, and various other strange and obsessive methods not recommended by the manufacture."
Andy Warhol's Pop
Eliminate most traces of the handmade, the expression and invention serial composition and grid organization (stressing objecthood and display) Overall regularization of the composition Business art (assistants, marketing, persona branding Immateriality, reflectivity and emptiness Mechanization of silkscreen transfer of photograph Banalizing exhibition installation (wallpaper or warehouse effect)
Little Frank and his Carp, Andrea Fraser, 2001
Filmed with hidden cameras at the Guggenheim Bilbao, in "Little Frank and His Carp" Fraser reverses her well-known role as museum docent, performing instead the position of a museum visitor listening to the official audio guide- which advises visitors, among other things, to caress the building's "powerfully sensual" curves. "Little Frank and His Carp" was produced by Consonni, Bilbao.
Prison Ship Martyr's Monument 2.0, AKA 'The Snowden Statue', 2015
Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn NY. Guerilla Artwork. The day after, city officials took it down. They were overjoyed bc they had documented everything and it had a second life through the documentation. Appropriation, detournement.
Charles The First, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1982
Has a graffiti-like quality. Also resembles the paintings of Cy Twombly whom he had scrutinized in museums and books. Is a coronation of the great jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Makes references to songs, and musicians associated with Charlie Parker. Also alludes to Marvel Comics so here the history and comic world merges. Also presents ambivalence. "royalty and heroism" he crosses things out so you'll want to read them more.
Edie Sedgwick Screentest, Andy Warhol, 1965. 16mm, 3 minutes, black and white. silent.
He let time pass, wanted to capture vanity, discomfort and her beauty in the every day moments when she would forget she's on camera. Calls attention to how we perform every day in some capacity. Could be seen as avant grade bc of his experimentation with social relationships
Stumbling Stones, Gunter Demnig, 1993-present
Holocaust memorial, thousands of bronze cobblestones engraved with the deceased. Commissioned by the artist, german artist. Controversial bc people think it's degrading, he argues that they should be a part of every day life.
Peggy Ahwesh on her filmmaking
I make a pastiche of many things...Allowing something to erupt out of nothing....I love that. There are people who don't like the film [Martina's Playhouse] because there's no explicit authority telling them how to think about the images or structuring the material in a way that reduces it to formality. I refuse to do both those things. I just refuse.
The AIDS Memorial Quilt, The Names Project, 1993 Washington DC -Gay Rights Activist Cleve Jones.
In June of 1987, a small group of strangers gathered in a San Francisco storefront to document the lives they feared history would neglect. Their goal was to create a memorial for those who had died of AIDS, and to thereby help people understand the devastating impact of the disease. This meeting of devoted friends and lovers served as the foundation of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. The Quilt was conceived in November of 1985 by long-time San Francisco gay rights activist Cleve Jones. Since the 1978 assassinations of gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone, Jones had helped organize the annual candlelight march honoring these men. While planning the 1985 march, he learned that over 1,000 San Franciscans had been lost to AIDS. He asked each of his fellow marchers to write on placards the names of friends and loved ones who had died of AIDS. At the end of the march, Jones and others stood on ladders taping these placards to the walls of the San Francisco Federal Building. The wall of names looked like a patchwork quilt.
Keith Haring, all works untitled
Inspired by graffiti writing, 22 years old. He was painting in a brushy, abstract style when he noticed that the transit authority covered the posters on the subway platforms with black paper after the rental period on the advertisement expired. This inspired his chalk on black method. He put them on the subways and they would remove them within days but he replaced them as soon as the black posters were back up. His drawings deal with the life of everyman in our television culture.
AIDS Timeline, Group Material, 1989-91
Installation piece. AIDS Timeline diagrammed a decade of chronological relationships, patterns, and ruptures, conveyed both in a long-form wall text written by the artists and in the exhibition's assortment of material fragments apportioned above and below the dateline's calendric tally.
Untitled (You Rule By Pathetic Display), Barbara Kruger, 1982
Interested in public spaces. Advertisement-like, not the whole image, less citational, violent undertone, ambiguous "you", more open, more inviting of debate, off-balanced. Culture Jamming.
Piss Christ, Andres Serrano, 1989
It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist's urine. The piece was a winner of the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art's "Awards in the Visual Arts" competition,which was sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a United States Government agency that offers support and funding for artistic projects, without controlling content. Favorably received. Later caused a scandal when it was exhibited in 1989 with detractors,including United States Senators Al D'Amato and Jesse Helms, outraged that Serrano received $15,000 for the work, and $5,000 in 1986 from the taxpayer-funded National Endowment for the Arts. Serrano received death threats and hate mail, and he lost grants due to the controversy. Others alleged that the government funding of Piss Christ violated separation of church and state. The work was vandalized at the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, and gallery officials reported receiving death threats in response to Piss Christ.Supporters argued that the controversy over Piss Christ is an issue of artistic freedom and freedom of speech.
WORKS, Kryzsztof Wodiczko, 1988
Light Projection, Washington DC. Reaches out to a bigger crowd, hypocrisy of the images, represented threat/hope, political. Suggesting maybe someone in our office should not be trusted.
What are the relationships between social practice and institutional critique?
Like the "appropriation and public art" comparison, I want you to understand that these art practices are sometimes combined or overlapping. Think of Haacke's "Shapolsky et al" and read Fineberg's description of it again. Because he actually did research on a slumlord operating in NYC, perhaps we could classify him as a social practice artist. But at the same time, he was critiquing the Guggenheim through this artwork because he know that the museum had received important financial support from this family. The two strategies of art making can coexist, but historically, the TERM institutional critique is coined in the 1970s, and social practice isn't coined as a term until the 2000s
National Trust, Robert Longo, 1981
Longo was interested in film and performance, this was inspired by his past works with film. Slightly larger than life-size drawings of single figures by a cast aluminum relief of a simplified block of urban buildings. Pop art appropriation. Fascinated by evocations of authority in its most obdurate forms. Makes the viewer crane their neck to look up at it. The powerless bodies is an acquiescence to the cold corporate authority expressed by the office block.
NEA budget over the last 30 years
Mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, NEA's budget was between $160 and $180 million. 1996: $99.5 million, an effect of successful lobbying of Congress from conservative groups 2015: $146 million
Cloud Gate, Anish Kapoor, 2006
Millenium Park, Chicago. Eccentric Abstraction, Chicago people call it "the bean" isn't as controversial as Tilted Arc because of it's inviting, mirrored surface and it doesn't get in anyone's way. Not site specific.
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
Hans Haacke On Institutions & Institutional Critique
Museums and the art world as a "consciousness industry" Every museum as a political institution "As soon as a work enjoys larger exposure it inevitably participates in public discourse, advances particular systems of belief, and has reverberations in the social arena. At that point, art works are no longer a private affair. The producer and the distributor must then weigh the impact...An institution's intellectual and moral situation should be challenged if it refuses to acknowledge that it operates under constraints deriving from its sources of funding and from the authority to which it reports." Hans Haacke, 1986
David Wojnarowicz quote
My whole life I've felt like I was looking into society from an outer edge, because I embodied so many things that were supposedly reprehensible--being homosexual or having been a prostitute when I was a kid, or having a lack of education. All my life I looked at the world with a longing to be accepted, but...the only way I could be accepted would be to deny all those things. At the moment of diagnosis [of AIDS] I fully gave up that desire to fit in, and started realizing that those places where I didn't fit and the ways I was diverse were the most interesting parts of myself. I could use that diversity as a tool to gain a sense of who I was.
War on Culture -Carol Vance
NEA funding permeates countless cultural institutions, schools and community groups, often making the difference between survival and going under; it also supports many individual artists." (227) The fiction of "a singular public with a universally shared taste" (228) "Diversity in images and expression in the public sector nurtures and sustains diversity in private life." (229) "Because images do stand in for and motivate social change, the arena of representation is a real ground for struggle." (230)
NEA
National Endowment for the Arts.
Eight Student Nurses, Gerhard Richter, 1966
Painted photorealistically. Eyes want to bring it to focus, inspired by a tragedy where a Chicago man killed 8 nurses. Made international news, memorialized them in an unsettling way, not giving any meaning. Culturally sensitive.
Post-Production
Part of the process of filmmaking, video production and photography. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art. It is a term for all stages of production occurring after shooting or recording individual program segments.
Alice in Wonderland, Sigmar Polke, 1971
Pastiche. Many points of reference, humorous, anxiety, psychedelic. Very vague, wide open.
Voyeurism
Related to Valie Export, is a psychosexual disorder in which a person derives sexual pleasure and gratification from looking at the naked bodies and genital organs or observing the sexual acts of others. The voyeur is usually hidden from view of others. Voyeurism is a form of paraphilia.
Atlas, Gerhard Richter, 1962-1995
Scrapbook of historical pieces of news, saw this as contemporary art itself w/ the paintings. Could be seen as archive, collage & photorealism.
November 6 and 7, Doris Salcedo, 2002
Site of a national tragedy. Leftist rebels held people hostage, killing 25 people. Extraordinarily meaningful, moving sculpture, political piece but does not take a stance.
Tilted Arc, Richard Serra 1981-89
Site specific sculpture, very controversial, no longer exists. Blocked the habitual route that people walked, forcing them to take a different route. Clashed with the spirals on the ground/affected your perspective. General Services Administrator William Diamond was the party responsible for Tilted Arc's removal.
Street Art
Street art is visual art created in public locations, usually unsanctioned artwork executed outside of the context of traditional art venues. The term gained popularity during the graffiti art boom of the early 1980s and continues to be applied to subsequent incarnations.
Synthetic Expanded Cinema
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
Metal Work 1793-1880, Fred Wilson, 1992-3
The installation "Metalwork 1793-1880" was another way that Wilson reshuffled the museum's collection to highlight the history of African Americans. The installation juxtaposed ornate silver pitchers, flacons, and teacups with a pair of iron slave shackles. Traditionally, the display of arts and craft is kept separate from the display of traumatic artifacts such as slave shackles. By displaying these artifacts side by side, Wilson created an atmosphere of unease and made apparent the link between the two kinds of metal works
Andrea Fraser, "From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique," 2005
The institution of art is not something external to any work of art but the irreducible condition of its existence as art. No matter how public in placement, immaterial, transitory, relational, everyday, or even invisible, what is announced and perceived as art is always already institutionalized, simply because it exists within the perception of participants in the field of art as art, a perception not necessarily aesthetic but fundamentally social in its determination. (104)
Serrano on Piss Christ
The only message is that I'm a Christian artist making a religious work of art based on my relationship with Christ and The Church. The crucifix is a symbol that has lost its true meaning; the horror of what occurred. It represents the crucifixion of a man who was tortured, humiliated and left to die on a cross for several hours. In that time, Christ not only bled to dead, he probably saw all his bodily functions and fluids come out of him. So if "Piss Christ" upsets people, maybe this is so because it is bringing the symbol closer to its original meaning. There was a time prior to the 17th century when the only important art, the only art that mattered, was religious art. After that, there were very few contemporary art pieces that were considered both art and religious, and "Piss Christ" is one of them.
Truisms, Jenny Holzer, 1982.
The way language infuses public space. She appropriated the advertisement space in Times Square in a way.
Stan Brakhage vs. Andy Warhol
They both could be considered avant-garde, Andy Warhol for his experimentation with social interactions. Stan Brakhage for the very nature of his films and his use of montage. They are different in the way that Andy Warhol films mostly people and Stan Brakhage does more montage work with different images and footage of nature. Andy Warhol eliminated the traces of the "handmade" in his films, and focused more on business art, branded himself. Whereas Stan Brakhage uses expressionism through his films by emphasizing that they are handmade, his films are more abstract.
Culture Wars - Carol Vance
Two battles staged in the "culture wars" of the late 1980s and early 1990s: Three-city exhibition organized by the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (NEA funding recipient), 1989 The Perfect Moment, Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective organized by Philadelphia's Institute of Contemporary Art (NEA funding recipient) , traveling to the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, 1989 Representative Dick Armey (R, TX): the NEA's $170 million budget should be cut and guidelines for art that could "clearly pay respect to public standards of taste and decency" should be created (223)
Scott Macdonald on Peggy Ahwesh
Unlike an earlier generation of film and videomakers, Ahwesh confronts popular culture not by avoiding it...but by appropriating it and recontextualizing it. The fun [of Ahwesh's films] is not in their demonstration of an intellectual or even a tonal unity, but in their very mix of pleasure and seriousness, clarity and mystery; they are a form of open-ended cine-play.
After Walker Evans: 4, Sherrie Levine, 1981
Used photography to question, took a catalog and photographs reproductions/framing them and exhibiting, not pastiche because she cites her sources. Depression in America. Postmodernism.
Appropriation
Useful umbrella term for an artistic strategy of taking images, words or objects from one context and putting them into another context. The 4 types are detournement, pastiche, culture jamming & cultural appropriation.
Austrian Filmmakers Cooperative, 1967
Valie Export was the only woman, went by her artist name,
Peggy Ahwesh, The Third Body, 2007.
Video, 9 mins, color, sound. The tropes of the garden, the originary moment of self knowledge and gendered awareness of the body (what is traditionally called sin) is mimicked in the early experiments with virtual reality. The metaphors used in our cutting edge future are restagings of our cultural memory of the garden. Wonderment regarding the self in space, boundaries of the body at the edge of consciousness and the inside and outside skin of perceptual knowledge.
Charging Bull, Arturo Di Modica, 1989
Wall Street, NY. Bull market=money. Site specific- not commissioned by New York or any agency. In December of 1989, there were several recessions and this was a rallying cry for capitalism. NY citizens loved it, Arturo paid a fine for it, it sits on land that is private and public.
The Ghost of Edward Snowden, Illuminator Art Collective, 2015
Was taken down almost immediately, documented as well, also lived a second life through it's documentation.
Valie Export, Tap & Touch Cinema, 1968. Photographic documentation of expanded cinema piece with Peter Weibel.
Went out into the public w/ a weird contraption on her chest, with nothing on underneath. Her boobs with a velvet curtain. She herself became a cinema. To draw attention to idea of voyeurism in Cinema.
Cultural Appropriation
When artists use the signs, symbols, or even bodily characteristics of a particular group of people out of their original context and in a new context. Cultural appropriation can be tricky, and it is important for artists to think through what the stakes involved are.
Andrea Fraser, "From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique," 2005 continued
With each attempt to evade the limits of institutional determination, to embrace an outside, to redefine art or reintegrate it into everyday life, to reach "everyday" people and work in the "real" world, we expand our frame and bring more of the world into it. But we never escape it. (104) It's not a question of being against the institution: We are the institution. It's a question of what kind of institution we are, what kind of values we institutionalize, what forms of practice we reward, and what kinds of rewards we aspire to. (105)
Monument
a statue, building, or other structure erected to commemorate a famous or notable person or event.
Found Footage/Compilation Film
a subgenre in films in which all or a substantial part of a fictional film is presented as if it were discovered film or video recordings.
Two Men Dancing, Robert Mapplethorpe, 1984
appropriated photographic images. In addition to refining his body of work, Mapplethorpe established a foundation in May 1988, naming his attorney Michael Stout as the executor of his estate and the president of the foundation after his death, and determining the mission it upholds to this day: supporting AIDS research and photography publications and exhibitions at the institutional level.
Shapolsky et al., Hans Haacke, Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real Time Social System as of May 1, 1971.
chronicles the fraudulent activities of one of New York City's largest slumlords over the course of two decades. The work comprises 146 photographs of Manhattan apartment buildings, mostly tenements; maps of Harlem and the Lower East Side; photographs and charts documenting real estate transactions; and texts with information about the location, ownership structure, and financial histories of the buildings. Haacke culled all of his data from the public record, adapting a neutral presentational style that resembles various contemporaneous projects in Conceptual art. Shapolsky et al. was to be part of the artist's solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in the spring of 1971, but the show was cancelled six weeks before its scheduled opening for fear that this work, and one other to be included in the show, might result in legal action.
Other names for experimental film
experimental cinema, avant-garde cinema
Water, David Wojnarowicz, 1987
he had been a child prostitute on the streets of time square and he died of AIDS at the age of 38. He had the most brilliant collage sensibilities of the late 20th century and used it in a lucid exposition of the layered interaction b/w nature, his personal identity and contemporary cultural values. painting that belongs to a cycle of compositions on earth, air , fire, and water, a dark ocean liner surges into a vast night sea. Includes sex scenes as a way of expressing his life and freedom, had a confrontational style of working that pushed his art out of his comfort zone.
Museum of Modern Art Department of Eagles, Marcel Broodthaers, 1972
in 1968 Broodthaers began making thin, vacuum-formed plastic signs of the kind typically used for advertising. The artist, who had begun his career as a poet, used the medium to create what he termed Poèmes industriels (Industrial poems); their cryptic text and imagery subvert the clarity expected of such signs. Called them "rebuses"- a form in which "reading is impeded by the image-like quality of the text and vice versa." Was a parody and critique to official art institutions. -institutional critique.
Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA), Felix Gonzales-Torres, 1991.
installation piece. In this "portrait" of his deceased partner, Ross Laycock, Gonzalez-Torres created a spill of candies that approximated Ross's weight (175 lbs.) when he was healthy. Viewers are invited to take away a candy until the mound gradually disappears; it is then replenished, and the cycle of life and death continues. More darkly, the steadily diminishing pile of cheerfully wrapped candies shows the dissolution of the gay community as society ignored the AIDS epidemic. In the moment that the candy dissolves in the viewer's mouth, the participant also receives a shock of recognition at his or her complicity in Ross's demise.
Pichacao/pixacao
is a unique form of graffiti native to the Southeastern metropolises of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil. It consists of tagging done in a distinctive, cryptic style, mainly on walls and vacant buildings. Many pichadores (pichação painters) compete to paint in high and inaccessible places.
Untitled, Michael Asher, 1974
known for research-driven projects probing the often hidden conditions that determine how art is viewed, evaluated and used. His always meticulous interventions encouraged spectators to reconsider the ways they thought about art, including how and why they valued it and what they valued it for.For instance, at the Claire S. Copley Gallery in Los Angeles in 1974, Asher removed the partition wall that separated the office space from the exhibition space, exposing the art gallery's backroom business operations.
MoMA Poll, Hans Haacke, 1970
proposed a work for the exhibition entitled Information to be held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (an exhibition meant to be an overview of current younger artists), according to which the visitors would be asked to vote on a current socio-political issue. The proposal was accepted, and Haacke prepared his installation, entitled MoMA Poll, but did not hand in the specific question until right before the opening of the show. His query asked, "Would the fact that Governor Rockefeller has not denounced President Nixon's Indochina Policy be a reason for your not voting for him in November?" Visitors were asked to deposit their answers in the appropriate one of two transparent Plexiglas ballot boxes. At the end of the exhibition, there were approximately twice as many Yes ballots as No ballots. Haacke's question commented directly on the involvements of a major donor and board member at MOMA, Nelson Rockefeller. This installation is an early example of what in the art world came to be known as institutional critique.
Apparatus
the technical equipment or machinery needed for a particular activity or purpose.
Graffiti
writing or drawings scribbled, scratched, or sprayed illicitly on a wall or other surface in a public place.