Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono was born in Japan in 1933. Her family moved back and forth between Japan and the United States with her father's job. She eventually enrolled in Sarah Lawrence College and developed an appreciation for the arts that led to her own art making.
She was one of the artists who belonged to the Fluxus Movement, and worked mainly with performance and conceptual art. She also dabbled in filmmaking and created 16 films in the late sixties and early seventies. Two of her most famous works are "Cut Piece" (1964) and "This is Not Here" (1970). "Cut Piece" was a performance in which she had the audience cut pieces of her clothing from her body until she was naked. "This is Not Here" was an exhibit with a scene from a living room cut in half. She wanted the audience to complete the image in their minds, so that their participation was integral to the art itself. Her first film from 1964 showed from what seems to be the viewer's prospective, as it depicts a walk through a snow storm on the way to the Taj Mahal. The majority of Ono's artwork relied upon the participation of the viewer, whether mentally or physically.
"This is Not Here" 1970
"Cut Piece" 1964
-Meghan Swisher
She was one of the artists who belonged to the Fluxus Movement, and worked mainly with performance and conceptual art. She also dabbled in filmmaking and created 16 films in the late sixties and early seventies. Two of her most famous works are "Cut Piece" (1964) and "This is Not Here" (1970). "Cut Piece" was a performance in which she had the audience cut pieces of her clothing from her body until she was naked. "This is Not Here" was an exhibit with a scene from a living room cut in half. She wanted the audience to complete the image in their minds, so that their participation was integral to the art itself. Her first film from 1964 showed from what seems to be the viewer's prospective, as it depicts a walk through a snow storm on the way to the Taj Mahal. The majority of Ono's artwork relied upon the participation of the viewer, whether mentally or physically.
"This is Not Here" 1970
"Cut Piece" 1964
-Meghan Swisher
Monday, October 26, 2009
John Cage by Tristan
John Cage, American, born in LA, 1912-1992
Cage briefly studied at Pamona College and UCLA. Cage knew that the music he wanted to make was unlike anything being made at the time. He had ‘no feeling for harmony’ and his teachers thought he would not be able to write music. Cage quickly realized that there were other ways to make art with music.
Cage collaborated with dancer Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg at Black Mountain College, a North Carolina-based art college. Cage made music for performances, interested in how music composed by ‘chance’ could ‘sound beautiful.’ Marcel Duchamp was a great influence on Cage. Cage liked Duchamp’s attitude to art––his ‘ready-mades’––and felt similarly. Cage ‘found music around him and did not necessarily rely on expressing something from within.’
Soon, Cage really began experimenting with music and musical instruments. He put metal fragments and screws between piano’s strings, for example. Then, he found new instruments altogether. He was very interested in chance and found sound.
‘Imaginary Landscape No 4’ (1951) was made up of 12 radios played at once. The sound of the piece depended entirely on the quality and content––‘chance’––of the broadcasts at the time of the performance.
Notable works:
‘Water Music’ (1952) used shells and water in an attempt to recreate the natural sounds ‘we find around us each day.’
‘4’33”’ (1952) is a three-movement composition for any instrument. It instructs the player to not play a single not for the duration of the piece. Generally believed to just be ‘four minutes and 33 seconds of silence,’ it is actually supposed to make the listener hear all of the sounds around him. His most important and controversial work.
‘Cartridge Music’ (1960) was made by amplifying numerous household appliances.
He was also very interested in literature. Silence, his first book, came out in 1961. At this point, Cage, inspired by Thoreau and Joyce, began in incorporate literature into his music.
While Cage is one of the most important composers of the 20th century (he composed much ‘straight classical music,’ too), his importance goes far beyond classical music. He changed the way people heard: it was impossible to look at anything––a painting, a book, a person, a tool––without thinking about what it might sound like.
––Tristan Eden
Cage briefly studied at Pamona College and UCLA. Cage knew that the music he wanted to make was unlike anything being made at the time. He had ‘no feeling for harmony’ and his teachers thought he would not be able to write music. Cage quickly realized that there were other ways to make art with music.
Cage collaborated with dancer Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg at Black Mountain College, a North Carolina-based art college. Cage made music for performances, interested in how music composed by ‘chance’ could ‘sound beautiful.’ Marcel Duchamp was a great influence on Cage. Cage liked Duchamp’s attitude to art––his ‘ready-mades’––and felt similarly. Cage ‘found music around him and did not necessarily rely on expressing something from within.’
Soon, Cage really began experimenting with music and musical instruments. He put metal fragments and screws between piano’s strings, for example. Then, he found new instruments altogether. He was very interested in chance and found sound.
‘Imaginary Landscape No 4’ (1951) was made up of 12 radios played at once. The sound of the piece depended entirely on the quality and content––‘chance’––of the broadcasts at the time of the performance.
Notable works:
‘Water Music’ (1952) used shells and water in an attempt to recreate the natural sounds ‘we find around us each day.’
‘4’33”’ (1952) is a three-movement composition for any instrument. It instructs the player to not play a single not for the duration of the piece. Generally believed to just be ‘four minutes and 33 seconds of silence,’ it is actually supposed to make the listener hear all of the sounds around him. His most important and controversial work.
‘Cartridge Music’ (1960) was made by amplifying numerous household appliances.
He was also very interested in literature. Silence, his first book, came out in 1961. At this point, Cage, inspired by Thoreau and Joyce, began in incorporate literature into his music.
While Cage is one of the most important composers of the 20th century (he composed much ‘straight classical music,’ too), his importance goes far beyond classical music. He changed the way people heard: it was impossible to look at anything––a painting, a book, a person, a tool––without thinking about what it might sound like.
––Tristan Eden
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Vito Acconci - Kyle
- 'City of Words', lithograph by Vito Acconci, 1999
- 'Crash', photointaglio, aquatint, relief and shaped embossing by Vito Acconci, 1985
-Acconci in 1971
Vito Acconci was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1941. His parents were Italian immigrants. When he was young his dad would take him to museums. He also gave Vito his first education in the arts. In 1968 he graduated from the College of the Holy Cross with a BA in literature. After college he worked as an art professor at many different universities. Currently, he teaches in the art department at Brooklyn College.
Acconci began his career as a poet, but later worked on performance and video artist. During this period, he focused on confrontation and Situationism. One work that I found interesting was a description of a performance he did in 1971 called Seedbed. He had a huge ramp installed in a gallery and while people would walk above him on the ramp he would vocalize his fantasies about the people into a loudspeaker. He did all of this while masturbating. One of the motivations for doing such a performance was to involve the spectators in the creation of the piece.
During the 1980’s he began to focus on different types of art. He began to make furniture and machinery that would allow spectators to erect signs and shelters. What interested him most, however, was architecture. He would construct prototypes of theoretical house designs and in 1988 opened the Acconci Studio for focusing on theoretical design and building. Acconci designed the United Bamboo store in Tokyo. Recently he has focused on architecture that blends private and public spaces. One example of this would be a hallway he designed for an airport in Wisconsin called “Walkways in the Wall” that lets people walk through the structural boundaries of the building.
Friday, October 23, 2009
About Beuys
Joseph Beuys was a German sculptor, art teacher, and performance artist, active from the 1950s to the 1980s. Beuys was heavily influenced by folklore, myth, humanism, social philosophy, particularly anthroposophicism, and German Romanticism with their ideas about the individual, the focus on nature, and the environment. He was especially interested in
animals and the mystical powers myth and folklores had imbued in them. His work spoke to naturalistic view of society, encouraging everyone to participate in society through meaningful creative acts (He remarked famously, “every human being is an artist.”) Beuys saw himself in a sort of shamanistic role that channeled the spirituality of human existence in the natural world, initiating a healing and rehabilitative process of society, which would arguably manifest in his later overt political activism. Through this lens of spiritual renewal from an understanding of natural society against the “repressive effects of a senile social system,” we can look at Beuys’s artistic work.
His performance work was first influenced by his encounters with Nam June Paik and the Fluxus group. The Fluxus artists put on public “concerts” that mixed literature, music, visual art, performance art, and everyday life. His engagement with the Fluxus group pushed him further to develop his ideas about the “evolutionary and revolutionary power” of art in society.
Perhaps, his most famous performance (or “actions” as he called them) was I Like America and America Likes Me. For this performance, Beuys was transported in an ambulance from the airplane from to a building room. He did not want to touch American soil, partly in protest of the Vietnam War. Wrapped in a felt blanket, Beuys spent three days in a room with a coyote, a powerful god in Native American folklore that could move between the spiritual and physical world. Everyday, fifty copies of the Wall Street Journal would be brought into the room, which the coyote urinate on. Beuys kept his attention on the coyote throughout the entire three days, and the coyote varyingly regarded Beuys with caution, aggression, and companionship. The coyote, like Native Americans, had been pushed to extinction by modern society, and the performance was an attempt to heal part of this damage.
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Years earlier, his action How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, involved Beuys sitting in a room covered in honey and gold in mumbling explanations of drawings on the walls into a dead hare’s ears, which he held in his arms. An iron slab was attached to his feet. The metals iron and gold symbolized connection to the earth and alchemical inquiry, respectively. Anthroposophicism, an influence upon him, taught that bees were the ideal society of brotherhood, and their product was seen in the honey poured on him. The performance spoke to the nature of ideas and their communication, and what this meant for education and politics.
Beuys later formulated an idea of society as one great work of art in which all of its participants, all of us, were artists transforming society through our words and deeds. From this understanding of art, ourselves, and society, we can see how “performance art” is one way to consciously shape the great work of art that is our society.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Alfredo Jaar (Kara Zdanowski)
Alfredo Jaar is an artist, architect and filmmaker born in Santiago de Chile in 1956. He currently lives and works in New York. He is mostly known for his installations where he incorporates photography and socio-political issues and war. He makes art out of information most people would rather avoid: genocide, plight of refugees, ethnic and political violence. His work has been shown all around the world in contemporary art exhibitions in Venice, Sao Paulo, Sydney, Istanbul, Kwangju, Johannesburg, and Seville.
His best known work is the 6-year long Rwanda Project. In August 2004 he went to Rwanda and witnessed the aftermath of genocide. He returned with thousands of images and over the next five years he worked to evoke these images without ever showing them. In Real Pictures, Jaar buried sixty images from Rwanda in black linen boxes with descriptions of Caritas, a woman who survived the 1994 Rwanda massacres, on the lid in white lettering.
He has also conducted many public intervention works including The Skoghall Konsthall, one-day paper museum in Sweden, A Logo for America (1987), and The Cloud, a performance on the Mexico-USA border. In A Logo for America, Jaar was invited to produce a 45 second computer animation/intervention on the light board in Times Square. Here he demonstrated the significance of the images and language of geography. For a month this animation was featured every six minutes surrounded be the advertising in Times Square. In The Skoghall Konsthall, Jaar constructed a building with wood and paper, in a small town in Sweden characterized by its paper industry. 24 hours later the building was burned.In One Million Finnish Passports (1995), Jaar constructed a room-sized rectangle of Finnish passports to symbolize the restrictive nationalism of Finland
A Logo for America (1987)
One Million Finnish Passports (1995)
One Hundred Times Nguyen
I enjoyed reading and viewing many of Alfredo Jaar’s pieces because he uses images and texts of subjects’ people would rather avoid. One of my favorite pieces is Real Pictures, because the viewer is only given text and is left to contextualize what is inside the box. Unlike most war images Jaar makes the viewer think about political and historical context of the situation
He has created more than fifty Public Interventions around the world and in 1985 he became a Guggenheim Fellow and a MacArthur Fellow in 2000.
Works Cited:
A Logo for America: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-adpTvjNOk&feature=related
http://www.alfredojaar.net/
His best known work is the 6-year long Rwanda Project. In August 2004 he went to Rwanda and witnessed the aftermath of genocide. He returned with thousands of images and over the next five years he worked to evoke these images without ever showing them. In Real Pictures, Jaar buried sixty images from Rwanda in black linen boxes with descriptions of Caritas, a woman who survived the 1994 Rwanda massacres, on the lid in white lettering.
He has also conducted many public intervention works including The Skoghall Konsthall, one-day paper museum in Sweden, A Logo for America (1987), and The Cloud, a performance on the Mexico-USA border. In A Logo for America, Jaar was invited to produce a 45 second computer animation/intervention on the light board in Times Square. Here he demonstrated the significance of the images and language of geography. For a month this animation was featured every six minutes surrounded be the advertising in Times Square. In The Skoghall Konsthall, Jaar constructed a building with wood and paper, in a small town in Sweden characterized by its paper industry. 24 hours later the building was burned.In One Million Finnish Passports (1995), Jaar constructed a room-sized rectangle of Finnish passports to symbolize the restrictive nationalism of Finland
A Logo for America (1987)
One Million Finnish Passports (1995)
One Hundred Times Nguyen
I enjoyed reading and viewing many of Alfredo Jaar’s pieces because he uses images and texts of subjects’ people would rather avoid. One of my favorite pieces is Real Pictures, because the viewer is only given text and is left to contextualize what is inside the box. Unlike most war images Jaar makes the viewer think about political and historical context of the situation
He has created more than fifty Public Interventions around the world and in 1985 he became a Guggenheim Fellow and a MacArthur Fellow in 2000.
Works Cited:
A Logo for America: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-adpTvjNOk&feature=related
http://www.alfredojaar.net/
Carolee Schneeman -David Walker
Carolee Shneemann, was born in 1939 and did most of her performance art throughout the sixties and into the seventies. Since she was born she has been said to have had an interest with the body. Some say that her father, a physician, supported her interest which plays a enormous role throughout her art. Shneemann started out as a painter, making paintings that were very close to those of the neo-dada movement and showed great influence from post-impressionists. However it wasn't until the sixties that she began to work on the art she is most known for.
Her performance pieces focused mainly on the body of an individual and how it relates to other social bodies and has been said to be influenced by the "happenings" of Allan Kaprow. In 1963 she started her work "Eye Body" where she herself tried to become part of the art. In 1964 she began her work "Meat Joy" which incorporated several partially nude characters interacting along with materials such as raw fish and wet paint. In 1967 Schneemann attempted to see if a female's depiction of her own sexual acts would be different from pornography in her film "Fuses" which is a film of her and James Tenney having sex. She did draw on the celluloid, imposes images of nature, and edit the speed of certain clips, but overall the film was viewed as pornographic.
At first Schneemann's work made me feel very uncomfortable. I was intimidated by her comfort with her own and other's sexuality. However after learning more and more about her I really think her work is amazing. Its power lies in the fact that yes it does make people uncomfortable because it brings up things that are taboo in our society. But that is not enough of a reason to not like her work, instead it is an invitation to look deeper into ourselves and try to understand why this makes us uncomfortable, and to decide if subjects such as our bodies or sexual acts have any real reason to be taboo.Add Image
Guerrilla Girls (Hannah Miller)
The Guerrilla Girls are a group of feminist artists that call themselves the "Conscience of the Art World". They formed in 1985 in response to the rampant sexism and racism they saw in the art world. They originally focused on the art museums in New York City and more recently have branched out into other countries as well. They examine the gender imbalances within museums and art shows and since have also looked at this gender imbalance in the film industry and pop culture in general. They use creative posters and other displays on a wide scale throughout cities in order to get their activist messages across. They want to "rehabilitate the 'F-word', feminism" and make it so that more people will want to call themselves feminists and work for women's rights.
This is one of their most famous works which addressed the 1984 exhibition An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in which only 13 out of the 169 artists included were women—none of them women of color. This is the event that propelled them into action and thus the Guerrilla Girls were created in 1985.
The Guerrilla Girls use humor very strongly within their work while they are addressing such serious issues. One example of this is within this poster.
They wear gorilla masks when they present their work because they believe that their anonymity makes their message stronger. To go along with this they adopt alternate names which are the names of famous female artists of the past. Their name is a play on the idea of guerrilla warfare because they don't want people to know who they are going to target next. They have expanded and in 2001 they split into Guerrilla Girls, Inc., GuerrillaGirlsBroadBand and Guerrilla Girls On Tour. This has allowed them to reach a greater audience and spread their message to more and more people and locations. They have also published a number of books including The Guerrilla Girls Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art, Bitches, Bimbos and Ballbreakers, The Guerrilla Girls Illustrated Guide to Female Stereotypes and The Guerrilla Girls Art Museum Activity Book.
A few more of their posters and billboards, which shows how they use facts and bold graphics to prove their point and work for women's rights.
(click on the images to make them larger)
This video gives a great overview to the Guerrilla Girls that discusses their goals, their history and provides a great deal of images. It is a presentation by two of the Guerrilla Girls at the MOMA Feminist Future Symposium.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHVBZh5HBgc
Their website is-
guerrillagirls.com
I had heard of the Guerrilla Girls before this project but after doing research I like them even more. I think it is very interesting how they chose to get their messages across and how they like to maintain their anonymity. I think their images are aesthetically pleasing as well as being very powerful in their message. I also appreciate the humor that they use and I really enjoyed researching them.
Vito Hannibal Acconci
Biography:
Born January 24, 1940, Vito Acconci resides in New York City were he practices as a architect, landscape architect, and installation artist. Vito is the son of an Italian immigrant father who raised Vito in the Bronx, taking his son to see museums, plays, and other art events. Vito too a like to architectural aspects and went to school at the College of Holy Cross, then to University of Iowa. He then taught at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax; California Institute of the Arts, Valencia; School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Yale University; and the Parsons School of Design. He currently teaches part time at Brooklyn Colleges Art Department.
Some of his Art Work.
Performance Vito Acconci’s Seedbed (1972) at the Guggenheim Museum
For more about Vito Acconci you can visit
http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/acconci.html - A interview on Vito Acconi or his website at
http://www.acconci.com/
Born January 24, 1940, Vito Acconci resides in New York City were he practices as a architect, landscape architect, and installation artist. Vito is the son of an Italian immigrant father who raised Vito in the Bronx, taking his son to see museums, plays, and other art events. Vito too a like to architectural aspects and went to school at the College of Holy Cross, then to University of Iowa. He then taught at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax; California Institute of the Arts, Valencia; School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Yale University; and the Parsons School of Design. He currently teaches part time at Brooklyn Colleges Art Department.
Some of his Art Work.
Performance Vito Acconci’s Seedbed (1972) at the Guggenheim Museum
For more about Vito Acconci you can visit
http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/acconci.html - A interview on Vito Acconi or his website at
http://www.acconci.com/
learningtoloveyoumore (Harrell Fletcher)
Submitted by Rachel Reed
Learningtoloveyoumore is a website made of a series of presentations made by the public. The presentations are responses to assigned tasks given by Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July. Since the project was started in 2002, over 8000 people across the globe have participated, and many of the displays can be seen in exhibits across the world. Assignments range from taking pictures to drawing, writing, or performing- but all tasks must somehow be documented so they can be displayed on the webpage. There are 70 tasks on the page right now, but this number continues to grow so people can continue submitting new responses to tasks. On the website, learningtoloveyoumore.com, you can see all the assignments and the work people have submitted in response. Some of my favorite assignments are:
#3 Make a documentary video about a small child
#6 Make a poster of shadows
#9 Draw a constellation from someone’s freckles
#14 Write your life story in less than a day
#25 Make a video of someone dancing
#27 Take a picture of the sun
#33 Braid someone’s hair
#40 Heal yourself
#41 Document your bald spot
#50 Take a flash photo under your bed
#55 Photograph a significant outfit
#58 Record the sound keeping you awake
#69 Climb to the top of a tree and take a picture of the view
Here are some of the responses from several assignments, as posted on learningtoloveyoumore.com:
#27 Take a picture of the sun
Submitted by:
Federica Bertorelli
Fidenza, ITALY
Submitted by:
Janna
Stavanger, NORWAY
Submitted by:
Cesar Castro
Chicago, Illinois USA
#69 Climb to the top of a tree and take a picture of the view
Submitted by:
Alex
Dublin, IRELAND
Submitted by:
Janna
Stavanger, NORWAY
Submitted by:
Jethro
Provo, Utah USA
Submitted by:
Ed Murphy
Dublin, IRELAND
Submitted by:
Stephanie Ognar
Champaign, Illinois USA
#55 Photograph a significant outfit
"What i was wearing when i realised i could be happy again; my 20th birthday."
Submitted by: Helen
Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire ENGLAND
"This is what I was wearing when I found out how poor I actually am."
Submitted by: Zoe
Boston, Massachusetts USA
"This is what I was wearing when I gave it all away and I didn't even care."
Submitted by: E.M.
Alexandria, Virginia USA
"What I wore the day I got married."
Submitted by: Shaun T.
Austin, Texas USA
"This is what I wore when I signed the contract for my first studio."
Submitted by: Julia Vitalis
Berlin, GERMANY
"What I was wearing the night he and I ended up dancing in the street at 6 AM"
Submitted by: Alba Mayol
Barcelona, SPAIN
In addition to the learningtoloveyoumore project, Harrell Fletcher continues to work on projects that socially engage the public. He works across the glove with a variety of groups including universities, schoolchildren, disabled adults, and countless other groups. He bases many of his projects on responses to books, movies, historical events, etc, but also has many creative ideas of his own. In a specific project in Brittany, France, Fletcher observed peoples responses to sculptures in a local park. He then asked local park-goers what kind of sculpture they would like to see in their park, and had them draw proposals of their ideas. An 8 year old boy proposed the idea of a turtle painted green and gold, and Fletcher liked this idea so much he helped the boy turn his idea into a sculpture that is still in the park today. As seen in this instance, Fletcher truly engages the public in his projects and acts as a facilitator to people in the sense that he gives people an idea to think about, then helps them turn their visions into concrete pieces of art.
Photos of the process of creating turtle scupture:
sources:www.harrellfletcher.com and learningtoloveyoumore.com
Learningtoloveyoumore is a website made of a series of presentations made by the public. The presentations are responses to assigned tasks given by Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July. Since the project was started in 2002, over 8000 people across the globe have participated, and many of the displays can be seen in exhibits across the world. Assignments range from taking pictures to drawing, writing, or performing- but all tasks must somehow be documented so they can be displayed on the webpage. There are 70 tasks on the page right now, but this number continues to grow so people can continue submitting new responses to tasks. On the website, learningtoloveyoumore.com, you can see all the assignments and the work people have submitted in response. Some of my favorite assignments are:
#3 Make a documentary video about a small child
#6 Make a poster of shadows
#9 Draw a constellation from someone’s freckles
#14 Write your life story in less than a day
#25 Make a video of someone dancing
#27 Take a picture of the sun
#33 Braid someone’s hair
#40 Heal yourself
#41 Document your bald spot
#50 Take a flash photo under your bed
#55 Photograph a significant outfit
#58 Record the sound keeping you awake
#69 Climb to the top of a tree and take a picture of the view
Here are some of the responses from several assignments, as posted on learningtoloveyoumore.com:
#27 Take a picture of the sun
Submitted by:
Federica Bertorelli
Fidenza, ITALY
Submitted by:
Janna
Stavanger, NORWAY
Submitted by:
Cesar Castro
Chicago, Illinois USA
#69 Climb to the top of a tree and take a picture of the view
Submitted by:
Alex
Dublin, IRELAND
Submitted by:
Janna
Stavanger, NORWAY
Submitted by:
Jethro
Provo, Utah USA
Submitted by:
Ed Murphy
Dublin, IRELAND
Submitted by:
Stephanie Ognar
Champaign, Illinois USA
#55 Photograph a significant outfit
"What i was wearing when i realised i could be happy again; my 20th birthday."
Submitted by: Helen
Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire ENGLAND
"This is what I was wearing when I found out how poor I actually am."
Submitted by: Zoe
Boston, Massachusetts USA
"This is what I was wearing when I gave it all away and I didn't even care."
Submitted by: E.M.
Alexandria, Virginia USA
"What I wore the day I got married."
Submitted by: Shaun T.
Austin, Texas USA
"This is what I wore when I signed the contract for my first studio."
Submitted by: Julia Vitalis
Berlin, GERMANY
"What I was wearing the night he and I ended up dancing in the street at 6 AM"
Submitted by: Alba Mayol
Barcelona, SPAIN
In addition to the learningtoloveyoumore project, Harrell Fletcher continues to work on projects that socially engage the public. He works across the glove with a variety of groups including universities, schoolchildren, disabled adults, and countless other groups. He bases many of his projects on responses to books, movies, historical events, etc, but also has many creative ideas of his own. In a specific project in Brittany, France, Fletcher observed peoples responses to sculptures in a local park. He then asked local park-goers what kind of sculpture they would like to see in their park, and had them draw proposals of their ideas. An 8 year old boy proposed the idea of a turtle painted green and gold, and Fletcher liked this idea so much he helped the boy turn his idea into a sculpture that is still in the park today. As seen in this instance, Fletcher truly engages the public in his projects and acts as a facilitator to people in the sense that he gives people an idea to think about, then helps them turn their visions into concrete pieces of art.
Photos of the process of creating turtle scupture:
sources:www.harrellfletcher.com and learningtoloveyoumore.com
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Martha Rosler - (Caitlin Size)
This is some of the Martha Rosler’s work that we have seen.
We have already seen some of Rosler’s work. A lot of it is an artistic commentary on everyday life or everyday objects. She will commonly give her work a distinctive woman’s perspective. Her performance piece “Semiotics of the kitchen” is no different. It is a look at the idea of a housewife and the tools they use throughout the day. In this piece Rosler lists kitchen utensils, one for each letter, as she picks up that utensil and demonstrates what it is used for. Her motions with each utensil become abrasive and almost aggressive. The piece is a commentary on the views of women in 1975.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zSA9Rm2PZA
Rosler was born in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BA from Brooklyn College in 1965 and her MFA from the University of California, San Diego in 1974. She works mainly in photo, text, installation, and performance as well as being writing as a critic.
Rosler currently teaches at the Mason Gross of the Arts at Rutgers University.
Adrian Piper (Erin Saul)
Dr. Adrian Piper is well known for her conceptual and performance based artwork in the 1980’s. Her work brings performance to minimalism as well as issues that she faces as a black woman in America. Dr. Piper has put many dents in the glass ceiling throughout her career including being the first Black woman to be tenured in the field of Philosophy. She focuses her academic exploration in the study of Kant, metaethics, and social ethics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUJ8MhXTwtI
One of her most well know works is “Cornered”. She addresses the many gender and racial issues while wearing a “school teacher” costume. She asserts herself as a black woman, and she questions why she has been told by society to pass as white. She brings the viewer in close to the screen where her performance is shown, and makes an intimate connection with the viewer. The intimacy makes some uncomfortable, especially as she bitingly addressed the harmful effects of sexism and racism.
She questions social boundaries and her “place” in society in her pieces “My Calling Card #1 and #2”.
http://images.artnet.com/images_US/magazine/features/saltz/saltz4-23-08-34.jpg
http://www.asu.edu/cfa/wwwcourses/art/SOACore/piper1.jpg
Jenny Holzer (Emily Coldiron)
Background:
Jenny Holzer was born in Gallipolis, Ohio in 1950. She attended Ohio State University, the Rhode Island School of Design, and New School University. Much of her work deals with the power of words and statements. Her performance pieces have been executed on some of the most famous buildings in the world, including the Reichstag and the Louvre.
Jenny Holzer was born in Gallipolis, Ohio in 1950. She attended Ohio State University, the Rhode Island School of Design, and New School University. Much of her work deals with the power of words and statements. Her performance pieces have been executed on some of the most famous buildings in the world, including the Reichstag and the Louvre.
She has had exibitons in several well-known art galleries. Some pieces have been exhibited in the Guggenheim in New York and the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. Not all of her work is performance-based, she also prints sayings on unconventional items such as condoms and various posters.
This is an interview where she discusses some of the texts she uses
A lot of the words and aphorisms Holzer uses come from cliche sayings and common phrases. She does use some of her own words in her pieces, but she also incorporates words drom outside sources. In one piece, she silk-screened text from declassified government documents detailing prisoner abuse.
I think the most interesting aspect of her work is the fact that she exposes truth through words and phrases in the weirdest places. It creates a certain atmosphere and background for the words, and gives them a new meaning. One of her works, titled "Truisms," dealt with the idea of truth in particular, and it was composed from a lot of her own ideas of what truth is and how we view it.
Chris Burden
-at twelve, had motorcycle accident and had surgery on left foot without anesthesia, formative nexperience
BA in visual arts, physics and architecture from Pomona College
MFA University of California, Irvine
1978 became Professor at University of California, LA
-resigned in 2005 over mishandled controversy over students work who echoed his own (involving a loaded gun)
performance artist through seventies, moved into installation art
currently lives and works in LA
basic concepts:
personal danger as artistic expression : Most of his work was during and after the vietnam war, so it seems to me that a great deal of his work has to do with bringing violence to the forefront, and asking people to recognize that violence is not exclusive - it can happen to anyone. There is a clear exploration of basic human fears (outside of the context of the vietnam war) that are usually left unspoken, and presented in a way that shows the artist actually experiencing these fears. (being shot, crucified, starving to death, socially ostracized, etc.) The fears become more knowable and less mysterious, less cryptic. Exploration of psychology and social occurrences.
And there is an obvious attempt to make the viewer uncomfortable, physically and mentally, perhaps to trigger new trains of thought?... "alternative" artist
I think this article is an interesting interpretation of Burdens work and intent. Its not too long! Read it!
brief timeline of some performance pieces:
1971: Five Day Locker Piece : Burden's MFA exhibition, five days in a locker with five gallons of water above him and a five gallon bucket below him. no other interaction with outside world, only limited number invited, no documentation
-Shoot : Burden had an assistant shoot him in the arm with copper jacket 22 long-rifle from a distance of 5 meters.
1972: Deadman :Burden covered himself with a tarp and lay in the middle of the road, with two flares on other side of him that would eventually burn out and increase the risk of being run over
-TV Hijack :When interviewed by television host, unplanned and unexpectedly held interviewer at knife point.
1973: B.C., Mexico : Experience of "starving to death."
-Fire Roll : “I began the evening watching television, smoking and drinking beer. The other artists were preparing their pieces. People were filling the museum and my activity went almost unnoticed. After about an hour I got up and went around the room turning off all the lights. I had a pair of old pants which had been passed around by many of my friends. I placed the pants on the floor and saturated them in lighter fluid. I lit the pants on fire and extinguished the flames with my body. I turned on the lights and returned to watching television.” -Burden
-747: “At about 8 am on a beach near the Los Angeles International Airport, I fired several shots with a pistol at a Boeing 747.” -Burden
1974: Trans-fixed : Burden had an assistant nail him to a Volkswagon by means of nails through his hands.
-White Light/White Heat : "For my one-man show at Ronald Feldman, I requested that a large triangular platform be constructed in the southeast corner of the gallery. The platform was ten feet above the floor and two feet below the ceiling; the outer edge measured eighteen feet across. The size and height of the platform were determined by the requirement that I be able to lie flat without being visible from any point in the gallery. For twenty-two days, the duration of the show, I lay on the platform. During the entire piece, I did not eat, talk, or come down. I did not see anyone, and no one saw me." -Burden
1975: Doomed : "Burden’s most trenchantly significant work was “Doomed,” performed in April, 1975, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. He set a clock on a wall at midnight, and lay down on the floor under a leaning sheet of glass. Viewers came and went. Burden didn’t move. Inevitably, he soiled his pants. (“It was awful,” he recalled.) Forty-five hours and ten minutes passed. Then a young museum employee named Dennis O’Shea took it upon himself to place a container of water within Burden’s reach. The artist got up, smashed the clock with a hammer, and left." -The New Yorker
1979: Honest Labor : Burden spent three days digging a ditch alone while acting as a visiting artist
2005: Ghost Ship (combination installation/performance)
-"his crewless, self-navigating yacht.... was funded with a significant grant from the UK arts council, being designed and constructed with the help of the Marine Engineering Department of the University of Southampton. It is said to be controlled via onboard computers and a GPS system, however in case of emergency the ship is 'shadowed' by an accompanying support boat." - wikipedia
video clips:
“Shoot” -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26R9KFdt5aY
“The Flying Steamroller” - 2nd through 18th October, 2006
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9K69zHLIeY
Burden about some of his installations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfOlIueMjpE&feature=related
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