Contemporary Art Test 2

performance art boomed after pollock's deaths, with artists in agreement that his greatest achievement being the aspects of performativity in the paint pouring technique. Paintings are no longer important to these artists, they wish to do to the world what pollock did to the studio. Filled the courtyard between two galleries with used rubber tires. People were asked to cross the courtyard. Probably would have been difficult in a suit or dress. Uses John Cage's notion of involving the audience in art. Developed the idea of happenings--participation from audience is essential. Eliminated the separation between the viewer and the event. Lack of perceived goal or resulting product. Displaces the singular authority of the artist.

ALLEN KAPROW Yard 1961

Fire brick sculptures. White bricks in different formations. Shows that art is highly contingent on its context. In the world, its just bricks.In a gallery, its art. Dont exist as art objects without cultivated context. Does not retain its artistic integrity without installation. Forces people into a physical interaction--imposing. Judd's one thing repeated. deployment of our bodies in negotiating space with these objects.

ANDRE Equivalent 8 1969

Advertisement for her show. Photographed nude self-portraits. Wearing sunglasses and holding an enormous dildo at her crotch. Photo changed everything for women in the art world. Took out a full 2-page ad in Artforum, the most widely circulated art magazine in the US and Europe. People were so shocked. The entire editorial staff of Artforum resigned in protest. Many reporters for the magazine quit. Message that "you need a dick to be noticed as an artist" . Also a sneak peak for her exhibition, which featured many penises. Overturning of the male gaze with self-representation and "core" imagery. A majority of 2nd wave feminists wanted to blend in, head down, and excel quietly until achievements are recognized. A screaming minority disagreed--wanted to assert presence and fought against the so-called "fascist feminism"

BENGLIS Artforum Ad 1974

Tulane graduate--studied painting but moved to new york as a sculptor. Her early art was latex "carpets". Did "public pouring" to performatize her practice like pollock. Wanted photos taken of her performance pouring. Past pollock into something more sculptural with the resulting carpets from pouring--could roll them up after and move them. The colors and latex move, float, and the solidify into a latex sculpture. Influence from the "formless" movement. Feminist art as a category of minimalism. Like andre's powerful, room-filling objects. Measures herself against minimalism--takes on post-minimalism as a female sculptor. Had it harder than female painters--women arent sculptors.

BENGLIS Contraband 1969

Bronze, double-headed dildo/penis. Stands erect. post-minimalism. specificity and humor lacking in the minimalism movement.

BENGLIS Smile 1974

Concept of literal space. Made tiled "carpets". Grid of steel and magnesium tiles placed on the floor. Solid metal, very heavy. Occupies space. Viewer needs to figure out how to interact/negotiate with the object. Walk around? over art? Dominates space, yet doesnt forbid you from entering it. Forced physical interaction between the viewer and art. Physical effects, not just retinal. Within tradition of performance art. Rule that we shouldn't touch art ignored and questioned. We respect works of art like humans--dont walk up and randomly touch. To walk on art--liberating? uncomfortable?

CARL ANDRE Steel and Magnesium Plain 1969

Her most major project. Full-scale installation art piece. Conceived as symbolic history of women in western civilization. Collaboration of 400 people, triangle-shaped table 48' on each side with 39 dinner settings representing historic female figures. Settings included a porcelain plate and ornamental needle-work table runner. Used traditional forms of female art. Styles tailored to the figures they represent. Moves chronologically around table. Plates with vaginal-like designs become more and more elaborately sculptural and object-like. Uses mythic and historic figures like the "primordial goddess" and "fertile goddess" brought together at the dinner party. "men have meetings, women have dinner parties". O' Keeffe was placed at the end of the dinner table, she was upset because she was still alive. Chicago spent decades trying to find a place for her installation. Museums didnt want it for a while. Some women protested its existentialist traits--constructing womanhood and female achievements around the vagina. The "core" symbol too reductive, not displaying the women's accomplishments adequately. Problematic linkage between females and the vagina--biological nature.

CHICAGO The Dinner Party 1974-79

Uses strategy of self-representation to divert male gaze. Idea to colonize women's bodies and experiences from men. Representing women in a way no male has ever done--a uniquely feminine experience never colonized by male artists. Screen print. Important feminine art theorist. Co-founded the feminist art movement at cal arts in 1971. "the personal is the political". Encouraging art from the personal, female experiences of the students. Exhibition space "Woman house" in an abandoned house in LA. Born in Chicago as "Judy Cohen"--changed name like Rob Indiana. Describes her work as using "core imagery"--core of the woman's body as her vagina. "c*nt art"--negative connotation taken back by women.

CHICAGO The Red Flag 1971

Prep studies sold to fund project. Entirely on private property--owned by 59 different ranchers in Sonoma, CA. 18 feet high, 24.5 miles long, 450 page environmental impact report, 2 million sq feet of woven nylon, 2000 steel poles, held on cable with 350,000 hooks for 14 days. A ghostly linear fence illuminating the landscape for locals.

CHRISTO and JEANNE-CLAUDE Running Fence 1972-76

their last realized project. feb 2005. long gestation period from original plan. very important to them as NYC residents. free-hanging saffron cloth panels along the pathways in central park. challenge because the paths were different widths--each made specifically to fit its location on the path. all sam heights, 25 different widths, 23 miles of walkway. Installed at 12 foot intervals except where trees intruded that could have been damaged. 600 workers, up for 16 days.

CHRISTO and JEANNE-CLAUDE The Gates (Central Park, NYC) 1979-2005

avant-garde art changed considerably after rauschenberg's use of new mediums. post minimal artists looking for new, anti-art medium. some of the most important art is the stuff that seems anti-artistic when its made. boredom w/ minimal art, disgust with pop arts commercialism. pursuit of a moral, intellectual superiority. post-studio, post-object, durational art (limited time). Christo was born in communist Bulgaria. went to art university--professors all russians who were only allowed to teach social realism. the professors smuggled in books--supremist, constructovist movements. bribed an customs official as a stow-away on a train. surrendered his passport (didnt have one for 17 years). wrapped items exploring theme of secrecy, mystery. jeane claude born on same day as christo--they met in paris and she left her husband for him. this work was done in the suburb of little bay, sydney, australia. Wrapped a cliff connecting 2 beaches. invited by australian collector. refused funding from govt or taxpayers. sold "prepatory" drawings done after the projects--included maps and some materials used. project done w 100 people, 1700 man hours, 1.5 miles of coastline, 1 million square feet of erosion control fabric, 35 miles of rope, 4 weeks of prep, 10 weeks of display. Did environmental impact reports with wrappings. Testing that fabric wouldn't affect climate, local ecology. Light, pourous--cut trap doors every few inches for little animals to get in and out. At the time, it was the largest work of art ever mafe. ghostly pale cliff-side visible from the beaches. illuminating a localm everyday experience.

CHRISTO and JEANNE-CLAUDE Wrapped Coast 1969

Prep drawings sold. wanted to do wrapping for long time. oldest bridge in paris wrapped in a beige fabric. 300 workers done quickly overnight. even lamps wrapped. 450,000 sq feet of fabric, restrained by 8 miles of rope. 14 tons of steel chains under water at base of towers. up 14 days. everything looked different on the bridge--changing visual experience for people.

CHRISTO and JEANNE-CLAUDE Wrapped Pont Neuf 1975-85

Minimalist light art. Art out of neon light rods and tubes. Wall and floor sculptures. Refusal to be contained within an architectural space or specific installation--light goes everywhere, fills the room, uncontained. The neon gasses that fill the tubes are very poisonous, though. If stepped on, could be fatal.

DAN FLAVIN Untitled (To Henri Matisse) 1964

enormous, sublime scale. Hundreds of acres in new mexico. primary medium is lightning--drawn by grid of 400 steel lightning rods. 20 feet tall--remote site with unknown location. high occurrence of atmospheric electricity. involved the earth and sky but intrudes upon neither. very few people have seen in person. seen only through photography. post-object, post-studio--totally uncontrolled and unpredictable. purchased by DEA art foundation added a lightning proof cabin on site--can rent out for events. People blindfolded and driven to remote location. safety for random wanderers.

DE MARIA Lighting Field 1978

earth art emerges with concept of ecology and land preservation. talking about irreversability of whats happened to the earth. filled gallery with soil. spread wide and deep. brings nature back to art and prevents viewers and collectors from entering the gallery--disrupts arena of commercial art.

DE MARIA New York Earth Room 1977

Judd was an important painting critic but he was a sculptor--lost faith in painting. Lack of title, description, metaphor in his work. The two ends of box in aluminum, the rest is amber-tinted plexiglass. Can see the tension wires holding the inside together--removes mystery and questioning from it--literal and figurative transparency. Nothing there but space. Not on base or display. Occupies literal, human space (not display/art space).

DONALD JUDD Untitled 1966

response and reaction to minimalism. reminiscent of judd's hanging pieces. friends. Hesse died young of terminal brain cancer--prob caused by her working conditions. Virtually unknown during her life (1 exhibition as part of group). Strength of her friends allowed her work to emerge after her death. Friends with many minimalists and female art historians. Born in Germany to Jewish family--sent out on trains as child with her sister. Mother and father escaped and joined them in S. America. they committed suicide once they moved to new york and her sister died of cancer. Her frustration with painting at Yale inspired her sculpture career. Title of work as verb, noun, and colloquialism for "a problem". Frame of some kind wrapped with fabric and painted. wire protrusion that comes forward into the viewers space. "first time idea of absurdity of extreme feeling comes through". frame wrapped like hospital bandages. "absurd and extreme" to have the thin, long, metal rod coming out of the structure. "depth, soul, absurdity, feeling, life, intellect". frame wrapped with chord, then ace bandages, then painted in grey, the intensity of grey gets lighter and darker. Wire wound tightly with string and then painted. Work characterized by obsessive compulsive wrapping. Bandage quality--vulnerability? Taking minimal terms of geometry and the unit--making more expressive. Refuses to let the material define itself.

EVA HESSE Hang Up 1966

Minimalism as a movement concurrent with color field, happenings and performance art, neo-dada, and pop art--post-war economy and death of jackson pollock. Stella began hearing (never seen) about the stripes of Jasper Johns' flag in college--an underground reputation. Began painting striped abstractions as a response. Hard to photograph because he used shiny black enamel. Paints well-measures stripes. DEDUCTIVE STRUCTURES--system which continues based on last move. Kind of logic. Once he figures out what he's doing in one part of painting, it defines the rest. Follows logical, deductive implications of structure and pattern. Continues painting with stripes of the same width, uses uniformity to regularize his paintings. Like a regular work day, he paints like a house painter, with a work ethic. Didn't want the drama, emotion, or reflectivity of DeKooning. Didn't want a reflection of subjective self, just to paint "straight out of the can". "what you see is what you get". minimalism develops out of stella--what you perceive physically--a body response.

FRANK STELLA Arbeit Macht Frei 1959

Geurilla Girls as a "feminist assault" on the art world. Argued that if art is a reflection of human experience, all human experiences should be included. Art world guerrilla (revolutionary) activity. Wore gorilla costumes and took on pseudonyms with the fear that their art careers would end if known. Called selves the "conscience of the art world"--pointed out the sexism, racism, and homophobia of the art world. This was a re-print of the original poster. Ingres' Grande Odalisque painting posed with a gorilla head over it. They got paid to do "teach ins" at universities, galleries, etc. Made additional posters about wage inequality, calling out museums and collectors, etc.

GEURILLA GIRLS "Do Women Have to Be Naked ...." 1989

Wrapped sculpture. wrapping as a central theme--compromising idea of materials dictating everything, qualities of art. 2nd wave feminists saw wrapping as a feminist practice--marking differences from male art practices. wrapping as "women's work" in society--caring for sick, bandaging, wrapping gifts, coiling balls of yarn. Word ingeminate--to repeat something for the purpose of emphasis. sausage like phallic shapes connected with hospital medical tubing--relating to her long periods of hospitalization (brain cancer). Objects thought to be balloons, since deflated, covered with paper mache, bound with thin chord, and painted with black enamel. x-ray shows nothing inside, very fragile. Never displayed in her life, unknown how it is meant to be seen. Picture shows her wearing it--interacting personally with her art. Humanizing qualities of art. playful, funny, pleasurable--unlike minimalism.

HESSE Ingeminate 1965

gets more ambitions, larger, conceptual. Judd's idea of repeating a primary object. Tests the "one thing after another" idea by altering the mimicked units. slightly shifts each object. cures a can-shaped object in plaster. while its curing, hits it with something. every one is different. some nearly perfect. minimalist repetition of unit, changes slightly for repeated variation. can imagine what they looked like before the variation. unknown how to deploy/install work. wanted to deviate from minimalist grid. put together in random, chaotic, messy way, non-geometric. "expanded or contracted at will". did not want her photographs of work used in a fundamental way. installed differently each time. shifts trust from self to people installing the work--realization after she knew she was dying from cancer.

HESSE Repetition 19, No 1. 1967

Last work before death. Very large. finished by friends after she died. 7 L-shaped elements. separate and hung from ceiling in different distances in different installations. thin chicken wire--stretched out slinky--chicken wire in series of loops--held in place w/ smaller wires. wrapped with polyethylene--soaked in fiberglass resin. light passes all the way through objects. wire bending an enormous, obsessive compulsive task--would have cut up hands. Funny feet at the bottom of elements.--could have just been hung from ceiling. she knew the way they could be installed differently makes them important. very light, geometric columns in right angles. eccentric--importance of craftsmanship and the handmade. funny, interesting, and beyond minimalism in intellectual structure. Her art was only acknowledged in the wider community after her death, partially as a result of the growing feminist art movement in the 70s. A new raw audience for women's history was driving the discovery/recovery of women's art (O'Keeffe as well).

HESSE Seven Poles 1970

takes on a life beyond its original creation with varied installations. created work while she was ill. used unconventional media. employed rope as artistic material. knotted rope. weaves into web-like design. knots the rope together at different junctures. Picked up and hung from ceiling/wall from different knots. condensing or spreading out suspension wires changes piece. work completely adaptable--will never look the same twice. No indication of which knots to hang from. Painted with enamel paint. Shows her love of knotting and wrapping from her earlier work. influence from pollock's poured paintings--bring painterly gesture into sculpture by mimicking pollock. re-invest sculpture with expressiveness of AE. "chaos can be structured"

HESSE Untitled (Rope Piece) 1970

Never officially named by hesse. Darkly romantic aesthetic of AE. 4 sets of nets with one extra. Idea of repetition of a single unit from minimalism. stones wrapped in clear polyethylene and stuffed in nets. seem heavy. heaviness contrasted with milky white of polyethylene. appear sensuous--like breasts or testicles. playful studio photograph--gets inside formation and hugs them to her. interacts with her art. intimate, physical relationship to her work--contrasting the minimalist aesthetic of her friends.

HESSE Untitled or Not Yet or Nine Nets 1966

based on a metal box found in Andre's studio. had this one prefabricated. Cut lengths of latex tubing that she wove through the fenced sides of the box. Wound thousands of sections of cut latex. obsessive compulsive handiwork. weaving, knotting. essential minimalist box--primary structure. gives it an interior life. gives it a psychology, emotion, sense of touch. want to interact with object, put hand inside. deeply sexual urge to rub fingers inside. 2'x2'x2'. essentialist ideas connected to box-- men have more of a visually oriented imagination, women more tactile. re-awakens idea of mystery and allegorical space.

HESSE Accession II 1967

Interested in the use of movement in sculpture. Friends w Klein. Did enormous kinetic sculptural performance in the sculpture garden at MOMA (a week after Klein's performance). Assemblage of the sculpture took 3 weeks. Used objects from junkyards. Spilling, clacking, wafting, etc. A sensory experience. The "performance" lasted 30 minutes until it self-destructed. fire dept there for explosion. Answer to pollock's performative paint techniques--doing to the world what he did to the studio. Nothing left behind to sell. Leaving behind the world of galleries and collectors by making art that was unsellable and uncollectable.

JEAN TINGUELY Homage to New York 1960

Perfected the idea of repeated units. Light can pass through plexiglass center of wall hangings. Wanted to end ideas of complex compositions coming from Europe. Assembles units "one thing after another". Pre-set construction after the first unit. On wall. Post-studio art. Sent out to be fabricated by tool and dye shops. Just needed to give instructions--his tools are paper, pencils, and a ruler. Fabricated then carefully installed. Huge, dominates room. Not on the wall or floor--playing with placement.

JUDD Untitled 1969

First performance. Anthropometry means the "measure of man". Produced paintings in a performance setting. Sent out invites to 100 guests. Layed out sheets of paper on the walls and floor. Orchestra performed "monotone symphony"--20 minutes of continuous sound followed by 20 mins of silence. 3 naked women with IKB paint began to smear the blue onto their bodies. Klein then steps out to start the symphony and the women begin to imprint their bodies against the papers. Klein directed the entirety of their actions. Referred to the women as his "human paintbrushes"--tools he uses to paint--asserts a level of control. Took questions after.

KLEIN Action-Spectacle: Anthropometries of the Blue Era 1960

Member of a catholic fraternal order dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Believed the color blue had a very specific spirituality. After the same blue of 14th cent. italian paintings. Went to a plastics company to perfect the pigment of "International Klein Blue". Believed that more blue meant a greater spiritual health in the world. He repainted the history of art in IKB, turning recognizable pieces of art blue.

KLEIN Blue Winged Victory 1962

Klein was the french son of abstract painters. His first solo exhibition was in Milan, where he displayed 7 identical blue paintings. They all varied in price reflecting their "varying levels of spirituality". Spent the rest of his life attempting to paint the world blue. He tried to transcend/annihilate representation. In a fake version of the Demanche newspaper that Klein created and circulated through kiosks, he included this photo. Sold instead of the real paper. People were not used to trick photography, so it made a big impact. He made statements that artists must go to space in order to represent it and also be "capable of levitation". Here, the documentation of bodily acts becomes art, the art was the leap itself...documented with a photograph.

KLEIN The Painter Casts Himself into the Void 1960

Made during his performance piece, the performance commodified in paintings after the fact. Made by a woman dragging her body across the floor and then bouncing on her chest at the end. Made art in the performance that could be sold. Much performance art of the time didnt produce goods.

KLEIN Untitled Anthropometry 1960

Pop artists rebelled against the purely retinal values of so-called "pure art" of color field. Movement back towards subject matter. The post-war economy created a large level of wealth in the middle class, and then a new market for art. There was a mass expansion of galleries, and dealers enabled new ways to encourage art sales to the middle class, like monthly payments on a single piece. The middle class went for pop art, while the "traditional" collectors went for color field. Pop art was more of a cultural/marketing phenomenon than a movement. Paintings based on popular culture. Uses magna paint and ben-day dot screen printing with flesh-toned dots like they do in the comics. From a romance comic. Appropriating media culture. Offensive to some "traditional" collectors. Adds hand and changes hair color of woman--improving the image. Composition pulled in and added popping background color. His version more energized.

LICHTENSTEIN Hopeless 1964

Big impact. Paintings based on "low culture" comic books, transformed into "high art". Comics bifurcated by gender. War comics for boys and romance comics for girls. Taken from a comic strip--common aesthetic of the 60s that permeated through media culture--large lettering, primary colors, animated. Uses magna jewel-looking acrylic paint. Dries instantly and not water soluble. Creates a hardened surface. Difficult to correct mistakes. Black outlines filled with this magna paint or ben day dot screen printing. He would enlarge, change, and consolidate the original comic images to make more of an impact, and be more visually stimulating. Makes artistic decisions to improve the aesthetics of his work. Not a full appropriation, an improvement. Removes location (guadal canal) that places war in WWII, a clear war between "good" and "bad" sides. Art released during vietnam war--not as simple. America never the hero.

LICHTENSTEIN Takka Takka 1962

Minimalism as a reduction. uses theme of "primary structures". Sets one unit and repeats it creates one thing then adds. Wouldn't change the character of sculpture to have more or less repetitions. Sculpture and installation can change, move. Modular. The original mirrored cubes were destroyed, then re-fabricated. Four cubes with mirrors on 4 sides (top and bottom aluminum). The mirrors force the viewers to think about the objects deployment in their environment and consider them as a factor of their own environment/space. Reactive to surroundings.

MORRIS Mirrored Cubes 1965

Self portrait used as a poster for his exhibition. Wearing a WWII German helmet, sunglasses, and chains. Possibly naked. Assertive, masculinist, BDSM? Reading ideas of power and containment. Current civil rights movement--engaging with issue.

MORRIS Poster, The Self Constrained 1974

Used wire armatures for the shape of his objects then covered with plaster and enamel paint. Only uses 7 colors. Plays with the scale of objects, like artists, but replicates a store model. Acting between art and everyday life.

OLDENBURG Mu Mu 1961

Combined commercially produced display cases and stands with his own creations on them. Foods, cakes, objects on commercially produced displays. Making art versions of commodity objects--acting between art and life. Created art versions of consumer goods and displayed them in "the store". opened like a real store to sell and showcase art. Looks like an authentic store setup. Only difference are the objects themselves. Makes more objects in the back of the store, to replace the ones that were sold (creates a supply). People could take home their objects with them. An alternative to the gallery space where he replicates the dynamics of the marketplace.

OLDENBURG The Store 1961

De-construct, critique the art gallery. The art buying/selling process is no different from regular objects, why parade as such? Turns art into sellable commodity. The items from the store got put later in a gallery

OLDENBURG Hamburger with Pickle and Olive 1961

Series of "prop pieces". Leaning weights of cards on each other---inevitable collapse. Now 500 pound cards leaning on each other. His art becomes life threatening and dangerous with the threat of collapse. Installation workers put at great risk.

RICHARD SERRA One Ton Prop Piece (House of Cards) 1969

From Indiana, changed last name to the state name. Got his first job with Mattson Jones (Johns and Rauschenberg's company). Convinced Johns to come look at his work, and he didnt like it. Much of his work held political messaging. (anti-war, anti-confederacy) his most famous piece. a pop painting. About the riots at Berkley. President of Berkley, Clark Kerr, political appointee--made "F*CK" painting for "freedom under Clark Kerrr"--got destroyed. His partner at the time told him it was too foul. F*ck became love. Amazing color combo that plays on elements of negative space. Made abstract designs from the letters' negative spaces. Regretted not patenting his design--was used commercially.

ROBERT INDIANA Love 1966

minimal art installation at the Green gallery. Aspects of performativity in the imposition into the viewer's space. Makes it difficult to walk through the gallery. The physical structures important to the viewers experience of them--predicated on human interaction.

ROBERT MORRIS Green Gallery Installation 1964

Co-founder of the feminist art program at cal arts. Investigated uses of traditional forms of female art like textiles. Known for "femmage"--a collage of fabric, collage of "female activity". A shaped canvas painting out of fabric. Designed piece but did not fabricate it herself--crafts people on west coast.

SCHAPIRO Heartfelt 1979

Uses tactics of self-representation and core imagery. Performed 6 times. She comes out, takes off clothes, starts posing like a model, then starts painting her body in bright red. Imprints her body onto the walls of the room. Reference to Klein. Only person on stage. Puts her body through what his "living paintbrushes" went through. Goes back to center of stage/platform, and discovers she has a scroll in her vagina. As she pulls it out she starts to read from it. Started making films herself--scroll reads critiques from a male filmmaker. He mansplains why her films are too emotional and bad. Her inner core is speaking to her--from her womanhood comes these messages of not being good enough. The truth felt and not thought. Female artist reclaiming anatomy from the male gaze. Message that her work has too many feelings/metaphors.

SCHNEEMANN Interior Scroll 1975

Performance piece. group of men and women come out on stage and undress each other (heteronormative). Fall to ground in orgy-like scene. Women come out dressed like maids and throw raw meat at orgy. The meat dropped on the undressed people and they start to rub it all over themselves and then collapse, exhausted.

SCHNEEMANN Meat Joy 1964

2000 pound slabs on floor and ceiling--meant to walk through. Testing bounds of bravery--performance art. Interactive.

SERRA Delineator 1974-75

So large and imposing, almost seems like a natural wonder. Forces viewer to re-examine their environment and the context of the piece. Feels like steel is falling. Blocks ability to see urban environment--dangerous? Can't scan your surroundings easily. 12'x120'. Very controversial. Discussion about public art in daily life. Commissioned outside of the federal building as part of percent for art program. made specifically for this plaza. Causes a negative effect to those who had to negotiate with it in their space? Bleak, aging piece of steel. Employees sued city to remove piece. Went on trial in public. Debate of what art should/shouldn't do. Serra argued that since he made the piece for that specific location, to move it would be to destroy his art. Argument of the imposing view being dangerous.

SERRA Tilted Arc 1981

Idea of earth in gallery. Smithson was the intellectual and artistic catalyst for the earth art movement. friends with hesse and minimalists. earth/rocks have inherent "formlessness". connection between earth and the human mind in a constant state of erosion. fascinated by entropy--matter tends to less and less complex patterns of order. wanted to "prove the irreversability of eternity". makes it clear that his earth doesnt belong or originate in the gallery. Set of sculptures that all include map/diagram of location that the earth is from. the site being where the earth was originally located, and the non-site being the gallery/museum space. complete piece is sculpture, rocks, and map/description on wall. samples from specific, documented outdoor sites placed in minimalist sculptural containers. minimal sculpture refers to the architectural space it occupies. this post-minimalist sculpture refers to the site where the samples are from---outside of immediate space. sites as an open limit non-sites as closed limits. green, metal bin with shards of rock. Measures both site and nonsite. "instead of putting a work of art on some land, some land is put in a work of art". description of original site important--place of erosion, abuse, a "fouled area". society had built something and allowed it to fall apart. --disrupting a space that had already been disrupted and left to decay. ecological implications--revive a more meaningful relationship to land and nature.

SMITHSON Site/Nonsite (The Palisades) 1969

most magnificent of earth art objects. ironically in trying to release selves from commercial art world became dependent on engineers, photographers, earth moving equipment. smithson died shortly after in plane crash photographing a different site. In great salt lake, Utah 1500 feet long of track, 15 feet wide. made of black rock, salt crystal, soil. built on site that was formerly an oil rig. found site in spoiled environment, equipment left to rot. recycling a used site. kept location of spiral jetty secret until very recently. didnt want to trigger tourism or risk destroying site he tried to intervene so little in. access given to public only through photographs. started signing and selling photo for $. spiral reflects the "water spirals" seen to happen in the lake, seemingly a product of an underground tunnel linking the salt lakes to the pacific. spiral also about death and rejuvenation. wife kept location secret after his death--30 years later, she announced that the jetty was gone, water level increased, submerged jetty. 6 years ago, a small plan radioed about martians--spiral emerging from the lake as levels dropped again. location now known and has become a tourist site.

SMITHSON Spiral Jetty 1970

Started set of "copper paintings". Metallic paint like car paint. Follows the same striped DEDUCTIVE sequences. shaped differently. Not on traditional rectangle canvases. Idea of deductive/logical structure--changes the shape of canvas support. SHAPED CANVASES. uses 90 degree angles--tailored shape of canvas in response to the surface motif. The ultimate deductive structure--external surface of canvas as the final stripe. 3 links of elbow joints--more and more complicated support structures develop for his canvases. Done by woodworkers.

STELLA Ophir 1960-61

Uses the inversion strategy for subverting the male gaze. Strategy to literally "invert" the gaze to make the men the objects of gaze and herself and women viewers the subject. Used her husband (british art critic) in the front, taking the position of Manet's olympia--reclining with one leg over other and gold bracelet on his wrist. Mens identities all known. Ingres' version of Turkish bath an orientalist painting of harem women where they are all having a good time, touching, sexual. Sleigh painting not like that. The men refused to pose naked together. Actively uncomfortable. attempt to establish a female gaze doesn't work. She also had difficulty finding men to pose for her and had to use her studio assistant twice on either side of the painting. They are not effectively sexualized.

SYLVIA SLEIGH The Turkish Bath 1973

Warhol started his career doing window designs and advertisements, this gave him a background in aspects of advertising, selling, and popular media. Would sign the print ads that he did, and his name was known from his ads. His commercial art became fine art--this was done later in his career based off of an ad for a plastic surgeon in the New York Post. The piece was fairly large--5'x7'. Black enamel on canvas. Took the ad and projected it against canvas to scale up.

WARHOL Before and After 1961

Electric chair paintings were super popular in paris. He traveled around europe where his paintings were seen as a commentary on american society as brutal and violent. For post-war europe, america was the land of guns, cowboys, and slavery. Warhol was seen as the prophet who revealed the underbelly of American life and culture. In the 60s, capital punishment was always in the news as an ethical discussion. Moral debate that was prominent in the presidential campaigns. In the midst of the debates, does this piece with the chair from Tsing Tsing. Not a social commentary, just reflecting current events. Ghostly scene of an empty chair in an empty room. a "silence" sign paired next to a blank canvas. Answered the ghostly image with an empty panel (done in different colors).

WARHOL Blue Disaster 1963

Uses image from a NYT spread promoting the hollywood movie Cleopatra. promotional image for one of the most expensive films ever made. A tabloid story--while filming liz had an affair with her co-star and they publicly left their spouses. Huge spectacle. Done the same year the film was released. The bottom two registers are colliding together--the moving, rushing together alludes to a film reel speeding up images. Re-creates the effect/mistake in silver version. Virtually no market for his work at the time.

WARHOL Blue Liz as Cleopatra 1963

Warhol was the most important pop artist. His studio was called "the factory" where his assistants mass-produced his works of art using screen printing. The brillo boxes were made from industrially produced plywood boxes. They were then painted white, and screen printed. He would have a separate print for each color on each side of the box. Each side was screened twice, once for each color. It was a 5-sided box with the bottom open. 300 boxes were made in his first batch. He appropriated the recognizable brillo box packaging from the grocery store, but the larger supply box, as if it had come from a factory to stock the shelves. Installed, the boxes sit on the floor. Anti-art by using normal items. Unlike John's painted bronze, a meticulous depiction of everyday objects, these were mass-produced with industrial carpentry materials. Gap between art and life. Johns is art first, Warhol is life first--questioning the context leads to the conclusion of art. Did an exhibition of packaged boxes in '64. Mostly brillo boxes. The back room was stuffed with even more of the boxes for people to buy and take home. Modeled after the conditions of a supermarket. Conditions of supply and demand brought into the art gallery space. The boxes didnt sell well. 50$ people who could afford didnt see as art. Mass media event of opening night.

WARHOL Brillo Box 1964

Theme of plentifulness-- one is good but many is better. Banal, everyday topics in his painting. Screen printed a bunch of soup cans. does all 32 flavors of the soup. Company kept producing some of the flavors for years after, simply because of Warhol. Made from projectors--can see the tracing pencil lines. Was having a hard time finding venues because this didnt look like art. Went to the Ferris gallery in LA. paintings put on shelves around the gallery just like soup on shelves. Warhol gave a dealer all of the rest of them for 1000$ and then the dealer bought back the two that did sell. Full set eventually sold for millions.

WARHOL Campbell's Soup Cans 1962

Very brushy piece, recalls brushstrokes of abstract expressionism. A good example to see his movement forward as an artist. Image known to popular culture.

WARHOL Coca Cola 1960

In some way the badly done paintings were better than his careful ones. They had dust and dog fur stuck to them from the whole process. In his intentional use of the most sexual image of elvis he could find, he reveals his own homoerotic desire.

WARHOL Elvis I and Elvis II 1964

Warhol was obsessed with the image of monroe. She died in the same year Warhol became an official "artist", the same year he made this piece. Was the face of popular media, tabloids. Loved celebrities and movie stars. 7' large memorial painting. Head floating in a field of gold--like byzantine representations of virgin mary. Marilyn as a venerated icon. Used silk screen for his portrait of her. would send in a desired image to a company who would send back the screen. outsourced his work. Screen used over again many many times. Found the image source in his archives of the exact size of screen--draws what he wants--focuses in on her face--photomechanical. Doesnt involve drawing--mechanical process. From a publicity photograph--commodity culture. Dealing with media, a reproduced image. Does not reveal aspects of his personal life in his art. Started with gold background, drew rectangle where screen would be placed, only screened one color-black. Does a faint ghost print first, then paints color on by hand--then a full screen on top of the color. Ghost and final didnt perfectly match here--eyeshadow off--MISSED REGISTER. Each pass of the screen print is called "register". Allowed accidents in his work, an ambivalent image. Religious icon--goddess of the screen. Looks a bit like a drag queen--vulgarity and garish qualities in color.

WARHOL Gold Marilyn Monroe 1962

"death and disaster" series. "when you see something gruesome over and over, it tends to lose its effect" -warhol. From mass media, but not commodities or banal aspects of life. Body of work of car crashes--gruesome disasters. newspapers in the 60s all published images of crashed cars. Part of everyday viewing experiences. Dramatized and painted with "designer" colors. Impersonal image choices and presentation--no authorized voice. Exploits the confusion between art and marketing and dramatized commodity exchange by exposing realities of suffering and death. Art here acts as remembrance of dead and reflection of reality. No personal commentary, just reflection. Shows how the car, a symbol of wealth becomes an instrument of death.

WARHOL Green Disaster 10 Times 1963

used the first lady as his next celebrity--not a sexual commodity. Previously invested in sexual glamour. Jackie was the most photographed person in the world in '63. Valued intelligence, wit, elegance. Not same ability to sell image. Kennedy admin the "first TV presidency". Very telegenic presidency. The assassination of kennedy was also filmed. A public death, funeral, and mourning process. All changed for warhol. The funeral images of jackie are the most widely published to date--internationally used. Different canvases and screen prints nailed together. Went into production right after the funeral. End of female celebrities.

WARHOL Jackie: The Week that Was 1964

Sleek, mechanical looking. Showing style of what pop art would become. Invited the assistant from the castelli gallery and some other collectors to compare this piece to an earlier rendition--they liked this one better. Took advice and criticism well--wanted to respond to popular culture. Looked like the future. Brought in experts just like an advertising executive would.

WARHOL Large Coca Cola Bottle 1962

Did a series of most wanted men from "wanted" posters in post offices. Listing the top 10 wanted fugitives. A double entendre of wanted by the FBI and also wanted by Warhol, sexually. Finds the mug shots of handsome men. Lots of danger associated with these pieces. Danger of criminality and of homosexuality. When asked to do art for the NY pavilion for the worlds fair, he did a GIANT most wanted poster series that was hung outside. Screened on silver, lasted about a week. Asked to replace it, danger associated with male desire? Excuse that it was a slur against the Italian community--but he didnt use last names. Replaced it by painting the whole canvas silver and put it back up as a mark of censorship.

WARHOL Most Wanted Man, No. 1, John M. 1964

zooms in on jackie's face on the scene right after her husband's death, LBJ being sworn in for the presidency. Her husbands blood still on her coat. Most political of his images so far? Cast the events of Kennedy's death through jackie's eyes. She becomes the protagonist for him. Female-centered artist. Jackie emerges as a heroine. Nobody will show these paintings. Too raw, recent, soon. His shows in the US barely sold, Europe loved him.

WARHOL Multiplied Jackies 1964 (from photo of LBJ being sworn in on Air Force One)

Birmingham race riots of 1963. MLK leads an anti-segregation march. Attack dogs sent by police chiefs to prevent civil action. MLK taken to jail. Wrote a letter on toilet paper, an indictment of american society--questioning values of freedom--confronting hipocracy. Caused a second march--dogs and firemen called--used high pressure fire hoses on marchers. Children pushed into tiny cells. Cameras captured the mistreatment for the whole world to see. Warhol uses the images from the first civil rights march where the national guard was called. Warhol was sued at this point for using someone else's photos. Reflecting the moment, the day in his art. Not a social activist or commentator. Just making art out of the world. Almost perverse to use different "aesthetic" colors over these scenes.

WARHOL Red Race Riot 1963 (from photos in Life magazine)

Elvis made many movies. The way he moved his hips on TV made him deeply sexualized--would only be printed/photographed from the waist up. Images from the waist down were controversial; so, of course, Warhol found one of those images. Ultimately found a "full hipped" image of elvis for his largest figures. Used a publicity image from a western film. Uses same logic of multiplicity. Showed elvises as Ferris gallery in LA. The paintings are done pretty badly because they were so large and difficult to screen.

WARHOL Single Elvis 1963 (from promo shot for 1960 movie Flaming Star)

If one marilyn is good, many is better. Theme of repetition. Same screen used in multiple paintings. Only ever used one photo for the marilyn image. Originally two paintings bought by a collector who put them together--warhol loved the imput on his art. See on the right how light/dark images can be screened. Over-inked to ghost image. Experimenting with his monotonous work.

WARHOL Marilyn Diptych 1962

Distorted some of his Liz Taylor paintings to the point that they would almost look ugly. See the accidents in her hair--ink didnt come all the way through the screen. embraced and loved his mistakes. 40 paintings like this in different colors. Added an empty panel next to one of his silver liz just to make it bigger. "it makes it more expensive". colors done by hand until he just stops using color altogether. uses straight screen on background for a larger body of work. Liz series shown together in LA. silver color as a metaphor for the silver screen. movie star goddess.

WARHOL Silver Liz 1963

famous statement to "beware of fascist feminism" and avoid the ideas they spread to blend in and "button up". Counters this idea with a topless photo--also wearing a tie as the not to the movement asking women to blend into a patriarchal society.

WILKE Marxism and Art 1974

Used core imagery. Uses chewing gum and constructs tiny vulvas that she sticks to herself for photographs and then to paper. Idea of repitition and variation of post-minimalism. Reproducing a unit. Personal is political. Not just primary structures, core anatomy. The manipulation of the gum into a shape performative. Would often go places in a persona--chewing gum, manipulating it into vulva shapes, and sticking it to herself. Did photographs of herself in different personas of women. The object is the photos--includes the gum from the photos under on paper. Her persona and performance results in the photos.

WILKE S.O.S. Starification Object Series 1974-78

Performance art with social commentary. Japanese american artist famous for marrying john lenon. She sits down in the traditional "position of submission" of a geisha. Leaves two pairs of scissors next to her and a written statement asking for members of the happening to cut pieces of her clothing and take it with them. Tries very hard to remain impassive through the event. Re-performs after 9/11 "originally done out of anger, re-done with the hope for world peace". Idea that you can still exist after things are done unto you without your control. World peace is possible even after a terrorist attack. Don't need to answer violence with violence.

YOKO ONO Cut Piece Carnegie Hall, New York 1965

american art movement that uses natural landscape for site-specific structures, art forms, and sculptures. considered post-minimalist and comes out of the US environmental movement. rejected traditional gallery and museum spaces. Outside of these institutions, earth artists rebuffed the commodity status these venues conferred on art, challenging traditional definitions of art as something to be bought and sold for profit. artists often utilized materials available on site, honoring the specificity of the site. often required wide, open spaces not available to the average viewer. Questioned the very purpose of art as something to be viewed.

earth art/land art/earthworks

gains for women's rights in the 70s (roe v. wade and title IX) sparked the feminist art movement and forms of self-conscious feminist art. Late 60s. sought to question art history and the current political and social landscape through inclusion of women's perspectives. Embraced alternative materials traditionally connected to the female gender (textiles, pottery). Goal to influence cultural attitudes and transform stereotypes. Created spaces and opportunities for women and minorities that previously didnt exist. Paved way for identity art and activist art of the 80s.

feminist art/women's art movement

1) inversion 2) self-representation 3) deconstruction

feminist strategies for subverting the male gaze

Form of performance art late 50s-60s. Occurred anywhere; multi-disciplinary--nonlinear narrative and active participation of the audience. No consistent style, but operated with the fundamental belief that art could be brought into the realm of everyday life. The concept of the ephemeral was important--art as a temporary experience, could not be exhibited in a museum. Only artifacts remaining from the happenings are photos. Goals to confront and dismantle traditional views of "art". The world was turned into pollock's studio.

happenings

emerges among artists who renounced recent art and considered painting as stale. New art of minimalism favored the cool over the emotional. Sculptures frequently made from industrial materials. Emphasized anonymity over the expressive process of Abstract Expressionism. Avoided overt symbolism or emotional content. Removed suggestions of biography from art and metaphors of any kind. Used prefabricated industrial materials and simple, repeated, geometric forms together with an emphasis on physical/literal space of the art itself.

minimalism

A branch out of the Abstract Expressionism movement. Genre in which art is presented "live", usually by the artist. A form of conceptual art which conveys content-based meaning in a drama-related sense, rather than as entertainment. Purpose to challenge conventions of traditional forms of visual art. Find new audiences and test new ideas.

performance art

re-introduction of identifiable imagery into art. the imagery was drawn from mass media and popular culture. Aim to blur the boundaries between "high art" and "low culture" of mass culture objects and media stars. Embraced the post-WWII manufacturing and media boom. Some say pop art was an endorsement of the capitalist market, others note elements of cultural critique by tying the status of goods represented to the art itself. Both art and the goods represented are a commodity.

pop art

range of art practices that emerged in response to minimalism. rejected the earlier movement's impersonality, trying to invest sculpture once again with emotionally expressive qualities. rejected minimalism's cold, over-intellectual, and authoritarian mood, responding with sculptures of more expressive qualities, often evoking the body and aspects of sexuality. Some got out of the gallery and installed art in new environments.

post-minimalism

from a 1975 article by Laura Mulvey, "visual pleasure and narrative cinema". In feminist theory, male gaze is the act of depicting women in visual arts from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer. Mulvey defines the male gaze with 3 perspectives i) the man behind the camera ii) the male characters within the film and iii) spectator gazing at the image. Mulvey argues that in narrative cinema, men actively "look" while women are "looked at" and exhibit a passive state of "to be looked at-ness". psychology of the male gaze is comparable to scopophilia (freud) the pleasure of looking. Thus the terms scopophilia and scoptophilia identify both the aesthetic and sexual pleasures derived from looking at something

the male gaze