Appunti delle lezioni di Modern and Contemporary Art del prof Spampinato, Appunti di Storia dell'arte contemporanea

Scarica Appunti delle lezioni di Modern and Contemporary Art del prof Spampinato e più Appunti in PDF di Storia dell'arte contemporanea solo su Docsity! 13/11 MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART Prof. Francesco Spampinato 1) Painting in the 1950s: Expressionisms, Abstraction and Disfiguration 1) MODERNIST ABSTRACTION MODERNISM is an era that begins with expressionism and ends in the 60s. Tendency towards abstraction from 1910s: a new understanding of reality that can no longer be represented as such but through eyes of artists, even in political terms. New form of non objective art, non representational and non-narrative (of course exceptions like Picasso but mainly storytelling becomes the domain for other art forms like cinema), painters take a position to deal with something else. Emphasis on materials, techniques and processes. Artists driven by social and political agenda. Clement Greenberg (theorist that will stress the importance of abstraction in this period) in Modernist Painting, 1960 : “The essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence. [...] Modernism criticizes from the inside, through the procedures themselves of that which is being criticized.” He identifies that there is a meta-linguistic dimension: tendency within painting itself to talk not only about the outside world but to talk about painting itself. It’s a self reflective approach that artists adopt (ex. Impressionists oevres are about free time, prostitutes, absynth but also painting ). Giacomo Balla in the 1910s paints in a way that is unique compared to other futurists/movement. He focusses on light: painting is the result of the light process, light produces colours. Visualising of colours. Studies of light and how you can fragment light as you can fragment reality in its wholeness and beautiful nature. Reality needs to be analysed through all its different particles. - Iridescent compenetration 7, 1912 This idea develops in light of new advanced technological devices and instruments that were discovered in this time and which could reveal new parts of reality that before were invisible= IDEA OF INVISIBILTY OF REALITY is very fascinating and a basic notion for modernists, leads to new forms of abstractism. In the 1910s Claude Monet’s paintings became more and more abstract in this sense, Water Lilies is an example of ephemeral, intangible reality. This picture is detatched from every kind of storytelling, reality is non-objective. It almost looks like a scientific human rendering of dna. “It quickly emerged that the unique and proper area of competence of each art coincided with all that was unique in the nature of its medium. The task of self-criticism became to eliminate from the specific effects of each art any and every effect that might conceivably be borrowed from or by the medium of any other art. Thus would each art be rendered ‘pure’, and in its ‘purity’ find the guarantee of its standards of quality as well as of its independence. ‘Purity’ meant self-definition, and the enterprise of self-criticism in the arts became one of self-definition with a vengeance.” 1 In its purity art finds its quality and independence. Purity meant self-definition. Greenberg was very committed in what he was saying about abstraction, because he thought about abstraction as a mean of change of society, that was making people more and more numb and comfortable in their own seats. In order to achieve this independence and autonomy, Art had to be needed to be self-referencial, self critical, it had to look to itself. In this sense any reference to any form of art was forbidden for Greenberg. Malevich is a ukranian painter and pivotal figure in the abstraction movement. He worked with the very basic contraposition of black and white and primary geometric forms such as squares, triangles, ecc. Black Square (1913) from Kasimir Malevich looks monochrome but it is a black square framed within a white frame. It is flat, pure, non objective, not illusionistic, it’s a painting: an object, does not open a window on another reality. In this sense it is groundbreaking. This is a work about anything than these three elements. The proportions and shape of canvas itself. Seems like he is underlying that this is the painting of a square on a squared canvas: it’s more about an object than an illusionistic space. Pigments: normally in the past different shades were use to render depth and illusionistic reality, in this case these problems are totally obsolete, the painter can use whatever colour he wants as flat as he wants it. “The avant-garde poet or artist tries in effect to imitate God by creating something valid solely on its own terms, in the way nature itself is valid [...] in the way a landscape -- not its picture -- is aesthetically valid; something given, increate, independent of meanings, similars or originals.” Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch”, 1939 Normally, since advent of perspective (mathematical instrument) in renaissance, painters had invented ways to represent illusionistic reality, but when photography came in the 19th century, this was useless. A that point, painters were left without a proper “goal” or need to represent reality any more, so they started to investigate the properties of painting itself. Impressionism was one of the first movements after the invention of photography, in fact they were not interested in representing reality as it was. He says that these artists stress paint in a way that creates something independent of any meaning. Greenberg wrote an essay called Avant-garde Art and Kitsch in 1939. It was a moment of breakthrough not only for art but also for emerging commercial art forms like cinema, theatre, illustration and ads (magazines were full of these kinds of images). For this reason he believes that avant-garde art has to take space from these commercial art forms that he defines as Kitsch. He makes a list of categories in which he explains the main differences between avant-garde and kitsch: AVANT-GARDE ART • Truth to materials • Medium-Specific • Valid on its own terms • Autonomous • Original & Unique • Dynamic / Living • Forward Progress • High Art (e.g. Abstract Painting) KITSCH • Illusionistic • “Theatrical” Effects • Illustrative 2 Hans Namuth was a photographer that shot Pollock during the creation of one of his paintings in 1950. He says that Pollock looks like he’s dancing like a shaman (helps community to get in touch with god or nature), was in fact caught in a shamanic act. In this case, unconscious comes up in this way. Excavation- Willem de Kooning, 1950 Psychic automatism and abstraction in a more figurative way. Name reminds archeology and painting actually looks like layers of paint and colours. “There is no destruction but instead constant wiping out and starting over... and the whole image is kept under rigorous control.” Thomas B. Hess reviewing Willem de Kooning s second show in 1951ʼ Woman I, 1950-1953 De Kooning became even more figurative, painting figures, especially women (defined a sexist and misoginist) in an non objective way, misogynist approach but also understanding that figure and background can be a unique. b) COLOR FIELD PAINTING Other path of abstract expressionism: legacy of modernist abstraction, extreme moment of revolution as it. It was analysed by Greenberg. Not very different from the other movements of abstract expressionism. Always Greenberg’s ideas. Moment, 1946 Newman Vertical dimension and vertical break called zipper. Jewish idea of God as being split in two possible identities + Idea of working onto the canvas in a more programmatic way. Colours become more and more flat. No gesture or mark (=/= pollock, de kooning) the surface of canvas is not 100% flat but is more conceptual. Onement, I, 1948, Newman - Color is more and more flat - Painting through color fields that are flat. Areas in which the color is put as flat as possible Vir eroicus sublimis, 1950-1, Newman - Field of canvas becomes more and more filled with flat colours. Vertical elements. MARK ROTHKO, No.3/No.13, 1949 - Flatness, attention to colors and proportions of the canvas [cfr Greenberg] - Fields of colors are not ment to go outside the canvas, they’re made for it N. 10 Rothko is another artist developed a proper peculiar form of color field painting. It is very spiritual for him (=/= Greenberg, even though Rothko, as Greenberg said, is inventing his own nature/ new way of seeing reality like a God). His colour field relates to emotions, especially quoting the scream. Colours in layers and in contraposition with one another. Fitting within a specific frame, underlying shape of canvas. All signs of Greenberg’s presence also here: flatness, canvas shape, pigments not used illusionistically. 5 “I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. [...] And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions....If you...are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point.” — Mark Rothko “The Old Masters created an illusion of space in depth that one could imagine oneself walking into, bur the analogous illusion created by the Modernist painter can only be seen into; can be traveled through, literally or figuratively, only with the eye.” C. GREENBERG, “Modernist Painting”, 1960 No more the idea of old masters’ ability to create a piece where you could seemingly jump to the other side of the canvas: flatness of the canvas: canvas is an object, no other world. It is a painting: an object. Mountains and Sea- Helen Franckenthaler 1952 She is a NY artist, invented the soak stain technique: she dilutes colours and substances, so that colours used as if they were water and transparent (not just out of can). She was also portraid in Life Magazine and with Morris Louis she lived in Washington D.C. with another group of painters. MORRIS LOUIS, Dalet Kaf, 1959 - He adopted the soak stained techinque, he made variations - confused composition Beta Lambda, Morris Louis, 1961 Underlying the canvas’ purpose with the colours, diluted and his evolution of paint is inspired by Franckenthaler. Colours used to visualize empty space within the frame: underlying the shape of the canvas Turnsole, Kenneth Noland, 1961 Based on concentric circles (kept coming in this century,like in Jasper Johns) like shooting targets. Concept of shooting boards. The marriage of leisure and squalor, Frank Stella, 1959 Abstraction typical of the 60s: based still on Greenberg’s idea on self analysis and self-definition of painting. GUTAI Born in Japan. Interpretation of Pollock which is different: painters only saw photos by Namuth of Pollock painting in his studio, not his pictures, so they saw the vivid performative act. • Just a decade after the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • Radical, post-war movement in Japan • “Gu” (tools or measures); “Tai” (body or substance) = “concreteness” 6 • Founded in 1954 by the painters Jiro Yoshihara and Shozo Shimamoto • Paintings are the result of performative acts. Action painting pioneered a new way to wander reality: artists like Pollock integrated performative acts into their works. • Rejection of traditional styles • Emphasis on freedom in line with the US occupation of Japan. They put the accent on freedom, particularly the freedom of the individual • Idea of abstract art as a universal language • Inspiration from Abstract Expressionism, notably Pollock. Pollock was celebrated in Japan. The country after the war was in a strange position. It was destroyed by the 2WW, but even so there is an increasing fascination for the western and american world. Pollock was the ultimate example of an avant-garde artist coming from american culture • Community was essential in fostering individuals’ creativity. The artists collaborated a lot with each other • Some Gutai artists also organized technology-based spectacles. Laceration of paper by Saburo Murakami (1955) is a painting but in reality it is a performance: he runs through a sequence of paper canvases. Performative act: he passes through them. Kazuo Shiraga tries to imitate Pollock’s way of painting in Untitled 1957, but he does it with his feet. Distorted version of Pollock. Shozo Shimamoto uses cannons to shoot paint : balloons filled with colours, which explode on a surface, creating undefined traces of colour. New relation with technology. Atsuko Tanaka in Electric Dress makes a performance where she wears a dress made with electric cables and light bulb (again: relation with technology), she was risking electrocution, which anticipates forms of cyber feminism. Golden Work of 1962 merges science, chemistry and physics, where circular and abstract shapes that create networks and resonate together. Prefiguration of internet: hyperconnectivity. ART BRUT Born in the 50s, in France, with Jean Dubuffet, an artist interested in figuration, but not conventional, primitive approach: explores outsider Art, where there is no culture yet, so children drawings, folk artists, for rites and ritualistic purposes not self expression. He was an art curator, so collected and displayed all these kinds of works, for example at Galerie Rene Drouin in Paris (1947). Primordial phase of painting. JEAN DUBUFFET, Woman with pom-pom, 1946 - He starts from human figure, but it is disfigured - Psychological trauma - Outsider art J. DUBUFFET, Business Prospers, 1962 - Seems made by a child - Graphic representation of the city 7 Psychogeography also lies in the derive: idea of getting lost, getting rid of any duty of your life, letting yourself lose (the flaneur in the 19th century). This approach could be found also in surrealism, even if it is not psychoautomatism itself. Intention to erase the idea of art itself and embrace life, change life through art. “The dérive entails playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psycho-geographical effects; which completely distinguishes it from the classical notions of the journey and the stroll. In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.” GUY DEBORD, “Theory of the Dérive”, 1958 Situationists were anti-capitalists, anti-entertainment, they were against any idea of war, industrial production/factories. They published illustrations and magazines periodically (Internationale situationiste”), which included documentations, messages, articles and manifestos. o Illustration from IS n.6 – 1961, tells what they were against: the idea of the work within factories. In this case we can see the massive amount of strength that a human being can perform in a typical situation in a factory, the kind of activity a machine could do(and today does). Another tactic they purpose is the detournement, the most successful one. Appropriation of something that something that already exists and that you change in order to change its effect (also memes are an ex.). idea that you can appropriate sth that is already existing and you change its meaning. Already practiced with historical avant-garde: Dada’s collages/works were exactly a recontextualization of already existing objects/works of art. There is a satirical dimension (ex. Mona Lisa from Duchamp). “Detournement, the reuse of preexisting artistic element in a new ensemble, has been a constantly present tendency of the contemporary avant-garde both before and since the establishment of the SI. The two fundamental laws of detournement are the loss of importance of each detourned autonomous element – which may go so far as to lose its original sense completely – and at the same time the organization of another meaningful ensemble that confers on each element its new scope and effect.” GUY DEBORD, “Detournement As Negation and Prelude”, 1959 Hannah Hoch was a dada feminist artist whose work can be perceived as detournement. Cut with the kitchen knife dada through the beer-belly of the Weimar republic (1919), is an example in this sense. She created a counter discourse against nazi and Hitler. Asger Jorn was painter of Cobra (Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam), an avant-garde which embraced an idea of painting based on outsider art. The Avant-Garde Doesn't Give Up, 1962, shows a connection to past painting, even though this picture was bought in a flea market. But he painted over it. Situationists also use a language that is easy to understand. They used the language of comics and produced sort of graphic novels: it is immediate. They make figures that say things that they’re not supposed to say/are hardly addressed in a graphic novel (ex 10 the topic of culture in André Bertrand (illustration) and Raoul Vaneigem (text), International Situationniste, no. 11, 1967) “The construction of situations begins on the ruins of the modern spectacle. It is easy to see to what extent the very principle of the spectacle – nonintervention – is linked to the alienation of theold world. Conversely, the most pertinent revolutionary experiments in culture have sought to break the spectator’s psychological identification with the hero so as to draw him into activity by provoking his capacities to revolutionize his own life. The situation is thus made to be lived by its constructors. The role played by a passive or merely bit-part playing ‘public’ must constantly diminish, while that played by those who cannot be called actors but rather, in a new sense of the term, ‘livers,’ must steadily increase.” GUY DEBORD, “Toward a Situationist International”, 195 Guy Debord talks about passivity in contraposition of the construction of situations and the idea of the spectacles: the spectator is sb who doesn’t intervene, who stays still and spectates. The moment you construct the situation you participate and the situation becomes life. Spectators become actors, hence livers (idea explored in theatre and cinema). SO a new idea of spectacle emerged in the late 50s. He was so serious about what he was saying that in the 60s, when he was already a well known intellectual he published a book “ The Society of the Spectacle” (1967). Here he promoted reaction to everyday commodities, acts of participation, freedom from work, self-determination, realization or creative potential, valorization of spontaneity and play, free and transparent information. The spectacle is sth he is against: he was talking about television, Hollywood movies and advertisements. He was inspirational for a new generation of French students in the late 60s. The counter culture movement was interntional, it was one with many individual micromovements (African americans who claimed rights, operaismo in Italy, anti-Vietnam war, ec.). The first legitimization of S I are from the late 1980s: huge gap between the birth of the movement and its recognition. What happens in France is that some uni students invited Debord in 1966 in their uni. Mai 1968 is a symbolic moment of his revolution in Paris and France in general. Art is no longer taken into consideration (in Italy arte povera artists decided to close their rooms at biennale ) birth of democratic and art forms. Atelier populaire was a collective of artists, designers and typographers who created and displayed images of the counter culture all over the city. Some slogans were: free radios, information libre, la beauté est dans la rue, je participe…ils profitent (the more we participate the more they profit of their participation). People start to create their own media, situations that allowed them to live in their own way Debord also supported the idea of enterteinment as a product of consumerism: “The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point where it becomes image.” Debord also made a movie “the society of the spectacle” (1973) about his book, not original (no scenes filmed with camera), but fragments of videos. Boy reading passages of books + citation of historical texts (Marx,..). For example, he says “The spectacle is capital accumulated..” role of images in our culture: how they can look weak but in every image there is a capitalist purpose. 11 ASSEMBLAGE IN USA (1940s - 50s) New approach to everyday things and life. Combination of three dimensional elements, found obj. appropriated that artists found. Found objects and materials (industrial: metal parts..); pioneered by historical avat-garde artists (e.g. Picasso [absinthe spoon], Tatlin [counter relief, proto installations], Duchamp [bike wheel]): they appropriated found objects and created forms of assemblages in their own way and in different moments. Major figures for understanding assemblage: Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Charlene, 1954- lots of 3D materials: paint, reliefs that come out of the work more volume,no neglect but investing and occupying the space. Combines, 1955 – Rauschenberg start incorporating 3D objects  actual bed, there is paint on the bed, in vertical: change the everyday perception of the bed major transformation. He was interested also in media culture, wanted art to make sense of his own time, trying to understand what life was around him in that moment. “These pictures no longer simulate vertical fields, but opaque flatbed horizontals. They no more depend on a head-to-toe correspondence with human posture than a newspaper does. ‘The flatbed picture plane makes its symbolic allusion to hard surfaces such as tabletops, studio floors, charts, bulletin boards—any receptor surface on which objects are scattered, on which data is entered, on which information may be received, printed, impressed—whether coherently or in confusion [...] the painted surface is no longer the analogue of a visual experience of nature but of operational processes. [...] I tend to regard the tilt of the picture plane from vertical to horizontal as expressive of the most radical shift in the subject matter of art, the shift from nature to culture.” Leo Steinberg, The Flatbed Picture Plane (from Other Criteria), 1968 Leo Steinberg is another key figure in this movement, in 1968 he wrote “The Flatbed Picture Plane” part of Other Criteria. Says that it’s no longer a painting on the wall, it is closer to a newspaper. No longer the idea of painting and window vertical. When perspective was invented it was invented to let artists represent nature, but now we entered a new era where art is mediated by movies, magazines, ads. The painted surface is the result of an operational process not a visual experience any more. the shift from vertical to horiz = shift from nature to culture: nature was perceived as a vertical window, whereas horizontal= mediated reality: not sth you can look at anymore, fictive (magazines, newspapers, ecc.) beginning of the era of the screens. Jasper Johns works with American flags. Surface of canvas is a collage of newspaper placed onto the canvas. J. JOHNS, Flag, 1954-55 - Apparently an american flag, apparently bidimensional - Paced ups, it is a painted american flag - Paced up magazines: they say there is another reality. Behind the flag there are layers and layers of culture put in a specific way by people in power 12 So started to paint those images again with a new configuration: couple of hands holding a cake, car and jfk. o Marylin Monroe 1-1962, the icon per eccellenza. He also painted her name. o F-111, 1965 - ensemble of canvases that crate a diorama. Meant to be horizontal In California there is a shift, the culture is peculiar and different from east Coast. Ed Ruscha (from Nebraska to California), for example started painting words. In Noise (1963) the idea of noise does not correspond to what it is in real life, it’s soft, anestethysised. o Large Trademark with eight spotlights- 1962, logo is an extention of the Los Angeles landscape itself. It looks like as if it is abuilding or coming out of the street as if projected but not tangible or physical as life in L.A. o Standard station Amarillo- 1963, he loved to paint gas stations. They were a recurrent element in his travels. Encountered them when he traveled from Nebraska. o Every building on sunset strip – 1966, he was the first to produce artist books, like this one. Based on a technique single page folded so when you unfold it you see single image. In this case it is a sequence of photos if Sunset Strip (street of LA). He took photos while he was on a moving truck. ANDY WARHOL (1960s-80s) Started as illustrator, self-defined commercial artisti: working on commission, especially for fashion magazines (harper’s bazaar, bloomingdales). Uses watercolors. But in the 60s wants to do sth on his own, unrelated to commissions. Painting based on recognizable images but also branded images. He chose branded products like in Campbell soup can (1962). Repetition of images was used to conceive consumerism and also the idea of different kinds of product, when in fact they’re all the same: Campbell soup can installation. Rules of customization and obliteration. o Green coca cola bottles o Brillo box – 1964: cleaning product called Brillo. He makes a sculpture which replicates the original box in wood and used screen print to screen print the sides of the brillo box, with same colours, size and shape. Idea of democratization: everyone rich or poor, famous or not buys and drinks these products. “What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca-Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca-Cola, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it”. ANDY WARHOL, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol. From A to B and Back Again,1975 Arthur Danto discussed Warhol’s Brillo Box. Tells that the difference between the product and warhol’s one is the Artworld (us): we legitimate the work of art. It’s our own idea of the art work that makes it legitimate. “Why the Brillo people cannot manufacture art and why Warhol cannot but make artworks? [...] Well, his are made by hand, to be sure [...] What makes it art? And why need Warhol make these 15 things anyway? Why not just scrawl his signature across one? It is the role of artistic theories, these days as always, to make the artworld, and art, possible [...] Brillo boxes may reveal us to ourselves as well as anything might: as a mirror held up to nature, they might serve to catch the conscience of our kings.” ARTHUR DANTO, The Artworld, 1964 In the early 60s he screen printed outdated celebrities like Marylin and Elvis: archetypal celebrity culture, they were famous in the 50s not just in the entertainment industry, but also anything that was part of the pop culture as in Double Jackie – he is interested in the somatic features of sb which can bring them to be famous (her image was seen so much after her hubby’s funeral). He created a work for an expo in NY in 1964 -> Thirteen most wanted men-> the work was removed very soon, they were convict, he explored the photogenity of people The Factory –> his headquarter, studio. He filmed people o 13 most wanted men: they were criminals but appealing because they responded to beauty imposed by media culture. HE COULD PRODUCE CELEBRITIES, his studio became place of production of celebrities, who he used in his own movies. o Sleep: is a movie on the act of sleeping. John Jorno, artist and poet, sleeps. Not an actor but a real man sleeping. Warhol can see how handsome he was. He wanted to transform the mundane into popular, significant. Actors didn’t just need to be good in their job but also appealing. He started a screen tests (short film): auditions where he studied their image, while they spoke/stayed silent. The superstar is a simulated kind of ready-made: a readymade based on a human being > a human being that simulates a celebrity. Outer and inner space (1965) is a video installation. 2 projections close to each other. Each one, based on same image and split in 2 parts. On one side we see real time and another where she looks as if she tries to connect with her mediated self. This is a concept he explored also with the video he made for the concert of Velvet Underground. Exploding Plastic Inevitable, multimedia show built around a performance, 1963 –> The velvet underground are playing live, but there is also a recording. He pre filmed the velvet underground and played the movie background: images of themselves behind their real selves. Contraposition between yourself and your mediated self. Also realized the album cover: fallic symbol decontextualized banana peeled off. Object of desire. Elvis because he makes the pelvic movement. Record cover for The Velvet Underground and Nico, The Velvet Underground and Nico, Verve, 1967 - It is a sticker banana and you can peel it. Pink banana, fallic image. - He created record covers on commission “Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist [...] Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.” ANDY WARHOL, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol. From A to B and Back Again, 1975 He also started to star in tv commercials and shows like Love Boat 16 He started producing his own tv shows. Warhol went to work with art to make business For ex he made Fifteen minutes for MTV. Some of the covers of the Interview Magazine: shows that he used media products by himself real superstars and his own superstars are mixed together. Started to make portraits on commission. He says that he started as commercial artist and wants to end up as business artist, making money as art = he says that business is art. He had lists of prices for his works + made deals if you bought two instead of one. Also started to work as a model for advertisers and tv shows + making his own productions. 16-11 3)Processes and Systems: Minimalism, Conceptual art and Arte Povera Movements and practices of the 60s, also in the 70s. MINIMALISM(1960s-70s) Emerged in NY in the 1960s, same time of Pop Art. Called also Minimal Art and Literalist Art or ABC art. ABC art is an art that wants to transform the place in which it is in an eligible place. Form of geometric abstraction in sculpture. Emphasis on simplified scales and shapes (usually cubes or geometrical primary form). Interest for seriality and sequencies. Surfaces are unprimed or monochrome: idea to use industrial and prefabricated materials as just outside of the factory. Emphasis on the space and site: site specificity. Use of industrial materials for constructions (bricks…). Consequence but also against Greenberg’s minimalism (Michael Fried talks about it and criticizes minimal art). Movement also in music, dance, theatre: wider phenomenon. Major figures: ANNE TRUITT, CARL ANDRE, DONALD JUDD, DAN FLAVIN. In big cities like NY and Berlin we can analyse clusters of artists working in a similar way and in differnt contexts Modernism brought to some conditions: • Viewer is conscious of the fourth wall • Viewer is self-conscious and active • Medium-specificity • Painting about painting • Sculpture about sculpture Illusionism was put aside, the emphasis was put on materials that show us what really the work of art is made of. Colors are used not to represent a figure illusionistically but they are presented for what they really are: material Faktura: materials dictates the form Modernism brought to sth that minimalism was trying to refer to. It brought to awareness of the fact that there is a fourth wall: concept emerging from theatre, intended as the invisible wall that separates audience from the stage, it’s what makes the illusion, makes us think that we are looking at a real story. Modernism makes us conscious that there is a fourth wall even in art and painting: flatness emphasizes objecthood no fourth wall: what we see is an object. Also, the viewer becomes more self-conscious and active. Medium-specificity. Use of colour as it is, a product from 17 peculiarity that makes it unique and different from others (same with Warhol’s soup cans: of different colours) idea of customization in seriality: industrial production. Series of homages to Tatlin, Dan Flavin, 1964 – tatlin was a reference for minimalists: first to experiment idea of emphasizing specificity of space and exploring 3 dimension with abstract form. Use of neon lights typical of Flavin. Went to electricity stores and bought what was available in the market. Didn’t customize them himself. Plays with different configurations and compositions of these tubes. Importance of the situation and time to experience. This idea becomes very relevant in this moment: minimalism, performance art, land art  all emphasises importance and our investment of time. This issue of time becomes turning concept in art history. New priority for artists in the 60s. Untitled (to Katharina and Christoph), 1966-1971. – neons used to highlight this corner: it is a specific shape of a place where you make experience of art. Untitled, Flavin, 1970 – installation Dia Foundation. Evident metalinguistic dimension: importance of walking through the pieces. Use of light: reflection of it on the floor you get reflected too when you walk near it: you get a feeling and perception of the light, you get an experience = audience becomes a performer. This is sth Greenberg disliked: art had to be a universe in its own terms, without being contaminated or damaged. According to him, as human beings we contaminate the work of art with what is kitsch. This is why he is critical of minimalism: feels that in the moment we are incorporated in the art form we annihilate/ contaminate it and take out its potential to be different from the outside world. PROCESS ART(1960s-70s) Offshoot of minimalism or sort of Post-Minimalism: bridge between minimalism and conceptual art. Emphasis on process of making art. Express actions in the process. Major figures: ROBERT MORRIS, RICHARD SERRA, SOL LEWITT. R. MORRIS, Box with the sound of its own making, 1961– looks like a 50 . there is a cable connected to speakers inside the box. Sound prerecorded from Morris when he was making this cube. You can hear the sound of the activity performed by him. Untitled, Morris, 1969 – made with felt. He made cuts to these sheets and displayed them after cutting them out, in order to see if they took different shapes according to weight and gravity. The shape they take is the result of the object in the process, which is the result of an idea. The final shape is result of a process. Everytime they are displayed in museums they change shape. Using these industrial materials is a way of giving up authorship: these works can be done by anyone depersonalization of art. Bodyspacemotionthings, Morris, 1971 – Tate Gallery for the first time, reinstalled in Tate Modern. Unique type of exhibition. No space in title: on purpose. There are platforms, wooden anc concrete structures, the spectator was invited to interact with them. Idea of playing with them = theatricality ( vs Fried’s thought)  idea of use of the body and performance 20 To lift, Serra, 1967 – emphasis on the process rather than the product. The product is always the last point, end of the process. Artist lifted this sheet of lid before the lid could condense (dangerous, might have used sth to protect his hands), but catches the only moment of possible modification, explaining the process. Verb list, Serra, 1967-68 – Series of verbs, with sth in common: activities to create a sculpture = all possible techinques in order to make a sculpture. All about the process of making sculptures. Splashing, Serra , 1968 – Leo Castelli Gallery (major avant-garde gallery in NY in 60s). About of making a work, but not an object but splashing liquid onto the floor and corners of this room. Room is being modified. Result: stains on the ground after the exhibition  result of an action/process. Reconsideration of the possibility of constructing at the time: democratization of the artistic work. Use of everyday materials or everyday technology. Idea that these people understood that they were living in a society that was more and more rigid : omologization and compartimentalisation due to economic boom. This is a critique of this economic boom. One ton prop, Serra , 1969 – house of cards=made of metal sheets > playful approach but to sth that is really heavy and can be very dangerous. Ellipses, 1990s – elliptical structures inside which you can enter: kinda inclined and flipped, walls around flipping in a diagonal way: when you walk through them you feel disoriented. When you are at the centre you feel in danger: because they are very heavy > idea of heaviness. Modular cube, Sol lewitt – 1965, explores configurations of abstract minimal forms and shapes. In this case the cube (the simplest form of all) is reconfigurated as part of a larger system. Cube is a unit with which you can make many different configurations. Cube structures based on five modules: different shapes that a series of cubes can have. Wall drawing – wall drawings based on instructions: clear idea that artists had interest in loss of personalization, and not in leaving a personal mark. Instructions: idea that anyone can do that, allow anyone to reconstruct all these drawings. Actually, most of these drawings were not even made by him, but by his assistants. - Various wall drawings based on instructions - Also made by museum staff and collaborators - By contract you can reproduce them but you have to follow the instructions. Diagrams that show where you need to put colors, what color to use, how many lines etc - Many variations in wall drawings: some more abstract, some more detailed - The process inspires the work. It is never about the end point, that’s why instructions are important Diagram and instructions for wall – all the specific numbers, colours and sizes that these drawings should respect. Usually about series of lines horizontal or vertical. Wall Drawing – panel with the actual diagram displayed: perfect idea of process art > the wall drawing is the end point, the resulting work that you need in order to develop the process. 21 CONCEPTUAL ART (1960s-70s) New idea based on an emphasis on ideas and concepts with a metalinguistic nature. Definitions about the idea of definition. Artwork about idea of artwork. Critique of formalism and commodification of art: form and shape are present in front of us but must not be celebrated + interest in depersonalization against art as product process is sth dynamic, cannot be solved. Often based on instructions and documentations. What you can buy is the product not the process == interest for processes and system: it’s difficult to commodify them. Reference to language. Forms of conceptual art are also: Minimalism, Process Art, Arte Povera, Land Art, Fluxus and some forms of Institutional Critique. Even today we have a conceptual approach. Production of multiples and ephemera such as books, records, posters. 4’ 33’’, John Cage (musician but also artist), 1952 – silent composition: absence of notation. Piano player Tudor cannot play the piano, had no note. Idea to execute nothing: silence. But it is not silence: you hear sounds of people in the audience, doors, chitchat, traffic == little noises : speculate on the idea of noise. One and three chairs, Kosuth, 1965 – provocative idea (not meant to provoke though) of three chairs. What we see is just one chair (obj) but then photo of the chair and dictionary definition of word chair. Yes there is one chair but in fact there are three. Interested in questioning what is in front of us. J. KOSUTH, Titled (art as idea as idea) The Word “Definition”, 1966-1968– representation of the definition of definition taken from the dictionary. The treachery of images, 1929 – Magritte had already worked with the ambiguities of definitions: images might not be what they look like. Here depiction of pipe but contradictory phrase. What is he talking about? The pipe, the phrase or image of the pipe? It is not the pipe, it is the image of the pipe. 4 colours 4 words, 1966 – titles says what we are looking at (Magritte in mind), but also the artwork itself is saying the same things with actual colours = hyperdefinition of the idea of definition. “If one wanted to make a work of art devoid of meaning, it would be impossible because we’ve already given meaning to the work by indicating that it’s a work of art. [...] Works of art are analytic propositions. That is, if viewed within their context – as art – they provide no information whatsoever about any matter of fact. A work of art is a tautology in that it is a presentation of the artist’s intention, that is, he is saying that that particular work of art is art, which means, is a definition of art.” JOSEPH KOSUTH, Art After Philosophy, 1968–1969 He has similar concerns as minimalist artists (what art is and is not). He says that before anything else any work of art is a definition of art proposed by the artist. This is why it gets close to philosophy. 22 Io che prendo il sole a torino, Boetti, 1969 – man took too much sun and was petrified. Performative dimension: stones that sb can take and trhow Oggi è venerdì 27 marzo 1970 – phrase stating what day it was. He tries to write it with both hands going to opposite directions. 27-11 4)Art and technology: cybernetics, intermedia and video art Impact of technology in the 1960s changed art and art-making. Video was a pivotal medium back then, integrated with wider set of technologies. Technological works were put aside for a long time in art history. Many times artists dealing with technology developed artworks that explore technology, but without understanding its impact This relationship started in the 60s bc artists were able to intract with technology, they have the possibility to use it McLuhan is an inspirational figure for the counterculture movements, important for understanding the passage. Information age is a moment beginning with advent of cybernetic culture in 1950s, in coincidence with diffusion of first transmittors. Continues in the 60s and finishes with advent of world wide web in the 90s. information age= prehistoric reality of today, relating to information and data. CYBERNETIC ART (1950S-1960s) “It is the thesis of this book that society can only be understood through a study of the messages and the communication facilities which belong to it; and that in the future development of these messages and communication facilities, messages between man and machines, between machines and man, and between machine and machine, are destined to play an ever-increasing part.” NORBERT WIENER, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, 1950 In the 50s Norbert Wiener published The human use of human beings: Cybernetics and Society. In it he presents an almost frightening idea about machines and communication. Humans are not taken into consideration anymoreSounds as if he’s talking abt our age (machines – basis of artificial intelligence). Back in the 50s only few people could access computers: kept in refrigerated facilites or within universities (MIT), in general operated by specifically trained personel. Not anyone could access them because there was no interfaces, screen and information, which emerged only in 1980s with first mackintosh projects. Ettore Sottsass was very close to Olivetti, who commissioned to him the design of one of the first computers: ELEA 9003 coming from Greek (poetry behind it). Idea to make it more approcachable and friendly. No interface but more relatable, in comparison ith other computers: colours, shapes of buttons. Many references to science fiction: movies were influential in perception of this technology in society and reality. This is why artists were inspired as well by this science fictional, futuristic dimension. 25 Artificial Sun, 1964, Paolozzi- reference to artificialization of environment, primordial environmentalism. Collage. “In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium—that is, of any extension of ourselves—result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.” MARSHALL MCLUHAN, The Medium is the Message, from the book Understanding Media, 1964 McLuhan’s book Understanding Media is important to understand XIX century, not only in the arts field. Some key words of his writings. A medium is an extension of ourselves: technological devices are really extension of ourselves nowadays. He focuses on the phrase “the medium is the message”, that almost becomes like a motto. He was suggesting that technology was not separated by human beings but was extension of our senses. Sth that other people didn’t quite get at the time. He was acknowledging the fact that technology was going to become a part of us, physical and mental (dependence). The medium is the message:  Medium as medium of communication. Not speaking abt just painting, ecc.  Medium used changed the way the message was perceived. We cannot separate the two.  Communication medium should be the focus of study not the content/message it carries (to talk abt selfies one must mention iphone and Instagram)  Character of medium is message  Nature of medium is more important than the meaning  Message is change in society brought by medium  Content of a medium distracts and deceives the users: you forget how much that content comes out a specific contest  The content is always another medium: speech is content of writing, which is content of print… All of this will lead to specific studies and disciplines regarding media and their influence. Explanation of the phrase “The medium is the message”: • Medium intended as a medium of communication in a broader sense • The medium employed (e.g. print, television, computer etc.) determines the ways in which that message will be perceived. The medium employed is important to affect the message. If you deliver a message through tv it will be affected differently than if it is transmitted through virtual reality • A communication medium itself, not the message it carries, should be the primary focus of study. For McLuhan we should focus on how television works for ex • The character of the medium is also a message. We should understand the character of the medium which is already a message itself • The nature of the medium is more important than the meaning or content of the message • A message is also the change in society brough by a new medium • The legible content of a medium distracts and deceives viewers/users • The content of a medium is always another medium: speech is the content of writing, writing is the content of print, and so on Artists working with mediums are illuminating. They explore the characteristics of that technology. When cinema became available, artists started to explore it and experiment with it. Cinema is mediating reality. The moment of mediation is a moment of reconfiguration 26 PABLO PICASSO, Ma Jolie, 1911-1912 - Through McLuhan we can see at cubism through a different pespective that makes us understand how it was revolutionary “cubism, by giving the inside and outside, the top, bottom, back, and front and the rest, in two dimensions, drops the illusion of perspective in favor of instant sensory awareness of the whole. Cubism, by seizing on instant total awareness, suddenly announced that the medium is the message.” MARSHALL MCLUHAN, The Medium is the Message, from the book Understanding Media, 1964 Cubism for him was a perfect example to understand idea of medium and message possibility to display more sides of reality than sides you can see with your eyes. Cubism made effort in decostructing vision itself showing our reality is not only what you see = whole picture First exhibitions on art and technologies: 1. Cybernethics serendipity: computer and arts. Curated by Jasia Reichardt in ICA (where independent group organized exhibitions in London) 2. The machine as seen at the end of the mechanical age – Moma, wider exhibition based on idea that this was end of mechanical age (started with industrial revolution) and new age born: ae of computers many artists of avant-gardes (constructivism, ecc.) 3. Software:information Technology: its new meaning for art - contemporary computer art and technology in the art. LEON D. HARMON and KENNETH C. KNOWLTON, Mural, 1966 - Basic computer artwork based on transformation of photo of a nude female body but fragmented and reconsidered through algorithms. They used software to reduce photo in a sequence of data and information way of showing that behind imaged there were CODES = new reality. Before: in mechanical age there was no codification. JOHN WHITNEY, Permutations, 1968 - He starts experimenting with computers to create abstract animations, from first part of century (ex. Richter: synesthesia: mixing images with sounds), he follows that lineage but with computers. WEN-YING TSAI, Cybernetic Sculpture System No. 1, 1968 - Builds cynetic sculptures: sculptures based on sun movement, places in a space with other elements, lights that create illusion of self-moving eco system. Art historians didn’t get these works because they had no knowledge about that. Lights and elements move and act with controller = also what happens in exhibition on cybernetics where cables that goes from the floor to ceiling keep vibrating and producing light effects based on different projections of light on them: illusion of space impossible to perceive from a single standing point. NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE and THE ARCHITECTURE MACHINE GROUP, Seek, 1969-70 - Central piece of the exhibit Software, group of scholars and artists from MIT (massachussets institute of technology), scientifical and sociological experiment. Ecosystem with small cubes, where gerbils living within inside this ecosystem. They move around but there is a mechanism that brings every cube to their former position. Metaphor for life and society: nth can be changed and goes back to what it was 27 literacy that takes him out of his collective tribal world and beaches him in individual isolation. We are as numb in our new electric world as the native involved in our literate and mechanical culture.” MARSHALL MCLUHAN, The Medium is the Message, from the book Understanding Media, 1964 Comparison btw Western man and native is expedient to underline that the more technology gets diffused the more numb we become. The more dependent we become the more we delegate to it things that come from us. Media technologies are present within radical architecture: coming from Florence, GRUPPO 999 created speculative disfunctional projects, installations and design for night clubs. Space Electronic’s design was innovative environment for presence of media and activities organized inside (avant-garde theatre performances, psychedelic concerts, film screenings) but also for presence next to the dance floor of a field that could be cultivated as if it was possible to integrate nature with technology. Man on camel in the desert: we are isolated but in the same time we are hyperconnected with technology and self- sustain ourselves with by forms of self-productions. “What many of us fail to realize is that the last four hundred years are a highly special period in the history of the world. The pace at which changes during these years have taken place is unexampled in earlier history, as is the very nature of these changes. This is partly the results of increased communication, but also of an increased mastery over nature, which on a limited planet like the earth, may prove in the long run to be an increased slavery to nature. For the more we get out of the world the less we leave, and in the long run we shall have to pay our debts at a time that may be very inconvenient for our own survival.” NORBERT WIENER, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, 1950 This is a question of survival, not any more abt taking care of nature. Dystopian vision: central in their projects. GRUPPO 9999, Concorso per la Nuova Università di Firenze, 1971- Proposal they made for a competition to create new building for uni. Dystopian feature: idea of University with integration btw nature and urban, in which nature uccupies Florence, but is controlled by computers. Impossible. UGO LA PIETRA, Immersion “Caschi Sonori”, La Triennale, Milan, 1968- worked by himself. Helmets people could wear at the Triennale, isolated from surrounding space: reality seen through translucent element (altered image) with sound a noises that alterated perception of the space. You are in reality but also transported in another virtual reality. UGO LA PIETRA, Telematic House — Living Cell, 1972– very simple idea of equipping apartments with video phones (today natural for us, skype). Example of how much video communication would guarantee hyperconnection but also provoke also alienation. HAUS-RUCKER-CO., Electric Skin, 1968– wearable technologies: extend human sensorium (Mcluan). Collective from Vienna who created electric dresses to wear. Through sensors allowed people to have stricter connection with surrounding space (sound, touch and senses) 30 “With the arrival of electric technology, man has extended, or set outside himself, a live model of the central nervous system itself. To the degree that this is so, it is a development that suggests a desperate suicidal autoamputation, as if the central nervous system could no longer depend on the physical organs to be protective buffers against the slings and arrows of outrageous mechanism.” MARSHALL MCLUHAN, The Gadget Lover, from the book Understanding Media, 1964 Talks about the cyborg: technology allows the enhancement of our human senses. HAUS-RUCKER-CO, Flyhead, Environment Transformer, 1968– presented at Dokumenta in kassel. Similar to Caschi Sonori. The person who wears this device wears goggles too which should allow him to perceive reality as a fly = see the world like a fly. Experimenting isolation: isolationist approach anticipating late 1970s Walkman (people going around listening to music through earphones) INTERMEDIA (1960s-70s) Concerned with media saturation, image saturation. Possibilities of perceiving an overwhelming effect produced by many media at same time. BRION GYSIN, The Dream Machine, 1959– Brion Gysin (artist) with Willian Borroughs (understood what living in new world meant, close to artists and musicians). Machine basically a cynetic sculpture based on a lamp: cylinder with surface perforated. Moves around and around: you perceive the light as if coming on and off (stroboscopic effect), inducing you in a state of meditation and after dreaming > surrealism (reality is what we dream abt). Technology to get to see real reality. STAN VANDERBEEK, Movie-Drome, 1963-65– new idea of cinema theatre, based on structure of a dome, that would become a screen, so that when you project image you don’t project it on a wall but more images at the same time onto a wall where there is no distinction btw wall and environment  no distinction of spaces. Mekas: facilitator and experimental filmmaker from USA, “anthology archives” and “film culture”(journal). He promoted media practices. “[Intermedia]: marked by an almost mystic drive towards pure motion, color, light, experience. It has much to do with the other arts, painting, sculpture, happenings, environment, music, but the cinema aspect of light, screen (in a number of different forms), image (filmed or produced by other means), motion dominate these works.” JONAS MEKAS, untitled article, “Village Voice”, November 11, 1965 These are works classifiable according to typical different kinds of disciplines (cinema, music, painting) = all devices aimed at creating experience. Intermedia is connected to psychedelic culture, USCO was a collective of artists who created immersive environments based on soundscapes, paintings with references with eastern religion and mythology. Stroboscopic lights were its special feature: effect of alteration of perception (coming from romanticism: see sth that is invisible and trespassing doors of perception (Blake) now promoted by new thinkers and artists), achieved also by musicians and other artists creating light shows (gelatins moving because heated up by heat of the lamp) for their performances. Root in surrealism but bring to reality their concepts. 31 USCO, Down by the Riverside, Riverside Musem, New York, 1966– film documenting the installation by USCO in NY at Riverside Museum. Yalkut filmed stroboscopic lights. Used a song by the beatles as soundtrack. USCO invited by Gene Youngblood, editor of Expanded cinema, a book in which he explores alternative image practices (film making, intermedia..). “‘Intermedia’ refers to the simultaneous use of various media to create a total environmental experience for the audience. Meaning is communicated not by coding ideas into abstract literary language, but by creating an emotionally real experience through the use of audio-visual technology. Originally conceived in the realm of art rather than in science or engineering, the principles on which intermedia is based are grounded in the fields of psychology, information theory, and communication engineering.” USCO in Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema, 1970 Visual artists touching upon issues that scientists and people from other field were interested in. E. A. T. - Experimements in Art and Technology, Pepsi Pavilion, Expo ’70, Osaka, Japan, 1970 - architects and eingeneers that created many projects, one of them was the Pepsi Pavillon made for the Expo of Osaka in 1970. Futuristic buildings, speculations -visual artists like Rauschenberg and engineers created Pepsi Pavillon for 1970 Expo in Osaka. Conceived as dome with fragmented surface. Artist from japan created fog around it using fog machine. Illusion of ethereal space. Right side: backstage equipped with machines controlling the space, effects, images, ecc. Inside: music performances. Bubble space with surface upon which you could see your reflections. GUERRILLA TELEVISION (1960s-70s) Emergence with Sony portapack camera, considered as device from which video art and guerrilla television were born. Sony wanted to promote audiovisual technology (before they were in domain of big companies: for cinema, tv, ecc.), now video cameras could be used by anyone + their technology was different from film technology (use of film that needs to be developed). News brought by video: allows users to see live on screen what is filmed = groundbreaking invention + possibility of controlling those images. Sense of empowerment: people could modify that image. Up to that point: people watched videos in cinema, they were passive, but now they were active participants. “...cultural guerrilla fought by the scholars and educators of tomorrow...using the means of technologic society...that would re-introduce a critical dimension in the passive reception.” Umbero Eco, Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare, 1967 McLuhan said that the WW3 was a guerrilla information war. War fought with technological system and mediums “World War I was a railway war of centralism and encirclement. World War II was a radio war of decentralization. World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.” Marshall McLuhan, 1970 New idea of television based on forms of empowerment for people, embraced by collectives such as Raindance Croporation which produced Radical software: journal based on computer idea of 32 “The medium of video is narcissism?” — Rosalind Krauss Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan defines “the monumental construct of his narcissism” the narrative told by the patient who is asked to describe himself. In this process she is also interested to see what happens in psychoanalytical terms: she bases her idea on Jacques Lacan idea of psychoanalysis. He defines that what you describe to a psychoanalyst is not yourself but an artificial construction of yourself. And so she is fascinated by the fact that psychoanalytical dimension of video as a mirror emerges in these works. Linda Benglis, Now, 1973 – feminist artist who pre-films herself, projects the image and then interacts with prefilmed image of herself. She tries to find connection with her mediated self and when she thinks she finds a connection she screams the word ‘Now!’. “Benglis is using the word ‘now’ to underline the ambiguity of temporal reference...we do not know whether the sound of the voice is coming from the live or the taped source.” — Rosalind Krauss “The double that appears on the monitor cannot be called a true external object. Rather it is a displacement of the self which has the effect of transforming the performer’s subjectivity into another, mirror, object” ROSALIND KRAUSS, Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism, 1976 28-11 5)The museum deconstructed: happening, land art, fluxus and institutional Critique We mean forms of institutional critique (one side of the coin): dematerialization of art as object, new ways of art to be conceived, accessed and approached. HAPPENING (1950s-60s) Late 1950. Term by Allan Kaprow, trained as art historian but also he had art practice: could theorise and exercise it. It is theatrical, a live event thay combines painting, theatre, poetry, music and dance. Real life situation triggered by artist. Involvement of audience: breaks the barrier btw performers and audience. One happening is never repeated, partly improvised: non scripted events. Based on approach: cooperative, interactive, participatory and multimedial. Typically took place in environment or installation. Influences by futurism and dada performances = idea of art into life (interactivity and involvement of viewers: ex. Cabaret Voltaire). Connections and exchanges with coeval movement such as Pop art and Fluxus (particularly in USA). MAJOR ONE: KAPROW, OLDENBURG AND JIM DINE, WORKING IN NY, KOWN AS POP ARTISTS. “Pollock left us at the point where we must become preoccupied with and even dazzled by the space and objects of our everyday life, either our bodies, clothes, rooms or, if need be, the vastness of Forty-second street...Objects of every sort are materials for the new art: paint, chairs, food, electric and neon lights, smoke, water, old socks, a dog, movies” ALLAN KAPROW, The Legacy of Jackson Pollock Artforum, 1958 Article “legacy of Jackson Pollock” (1958 – when Pollock was at his most famous point) published by Kaprow on art forum (he was practicing what he was writing). In this moment either you did sth like Pollock or you did sth completely different. This is the kitch Greenberg was afraid of, the everyday, mass culture vs abstraction of Pollock (Greenberg). He even mentions old socks and dogs: anything can be a part of it. 42nd street is an important street in NY, in the 50s it was filled shops. Commercial and busy street. 35 A. KAPROW, 18 Happenings in 6 parts, Reuben Gallery, New York, 1959– non scripted event articulated in 6 parts. Sculptural elements: table with cubes, numbers on them but no narrative/beginning or end. People performing situations that remind you of everyday life. People chatting but no purpose, no storytelling or horizontal evolution. As if a fragment of everyday life was brough in the gallery, as if life was deconstructed and repositioned ina. New way. Yard – organized in the backyard of a gallery: not using the gallery space but back part. Sculptural dimension: all these tires were displayed to reconfigure the space, which becomes like a playground where children/people can play: it stimulates play == new lifestyle might be developed  same context of situationists but different: they didn’t want any relation with art (anti-art)/where it was displayed C. OLDENBURG, Snapshot from the city, Ray Gun Show, Judson Gallery, New York 1961– he became sculptures of everyday objects reference to ray-gun (science fiction movies): what people from space used to fight aliens. He created The Store: like a real store where you could find everyday object but reconstructed trough sculptural idea J. DINE brings in some theatrical elements–> The Car Crash, Reuben Gallery, New York, 1960– recreated a car accident. Actual accident he had with his own car: he reenacted the actual crash. People personified cars and moved like ones at one point crashing with each other. No scripted: reconsidered and improvised as metaphor of what daily life is. FLUXUS (1960s-70s) International movement. Group based in Ny and Europe. Coined by Maciunas. Focus on production of events, performances and objects. Emphasis on process over product. Satirical look at high art: bottom art practice as satire of what art is (laughing at Pollock and painters that took themselves sos seriously). Production of multiple objects not only posters, ecc. interactive dimension aimed at involving the viewer (became international but started in NY it took place in lofts: cubic apartment, perfect places to experiment new forms of cultural productions because the loft itself as a living place is alternative form of art system itself). Major figures: DICK HIGGINS, GEORGE MACIUNAS, YOKO ONO, LA MONTE YOUNG. “FLUX ART – non art – amusement forgoes distinction between art and non-art forgoes artists’ indispensability, exclusiveness, individuality, ambition, forgoes all pretension towards a significance, variety, inspiration, skill, complexity, profundity, greatness, institutional and commodity value. It strives for nonstructural, non-theatrical, nonbaroque, impersonal qualities of a simple, natural event, an object, a game, a puzzle or a gag. It is a fusion of Spike Jones, gags, games, Vaudeville, Cage and Duchamp.” GEORGE MACIUNAS, Fluxus Manifesto, 1961 Muciunas says Fluxus has non structural qualities All of these things are criticized (ambition, exclusiveness..), opposite to this idea. La Monte Young was a musician working with drones (sounds kept on for a certain duration: same sound ) but also experiments on performative side of music. Composition 5 is not a proper composition but a set of instruction for creating your own compositions, which anyone can play. 36 “Turn a butterfly (or any number of butterflies) loose in the performance area. When the composition is over, be sure to allow the butterfly to fly away outside. The composition may be any length, but if an unlimited amount of time is available, the doors and windows may be opened – the composition may be considered finished when the butterfly flies away.” Anyone can make this performance: music is not even considered if not in terms of sound produced by butterflies. Instructions are basis of fluxus events: Graphis 82, Dick Higgins, 1960 – numbers of progression (works are parts of series). Based on a labyrithic sign to be drawn on the floor which creates a playful performance in moment you try to follow and respect the path. Work clearly about automation: relation with advent of technology. Work of art based on set of information/data, if you follow this you get to the end of the work: through information age our life became coded. Water Yam , George Brecht– 1962, boxes of instructions, multiple: reproduced in more editions. Within you find cards with instructions: “write the word exhibit..”  conceptual: it empowers the viewer, not considered as passive visitor but active participator in his own art-work = customized view, art as a democratic object, no longer for elite people but generic audience. Fluxshop, Maciunas – 1960s, actual shop on canal Street in NY in which you could buy multiples created by him: art books, catalogue, ecc. Flux year box 2, Maciunas – 1967, filled with games, cards, kid games, instructions, film you can play, target for shooting, pear. Playful. Wants to stimulate anyone to interact with them in a place that is no longer a gallery museum: you don’t open it on the floor of museums but at home == outside of institutional art system HANS HAACKE AND DANIEL BUREN (1960s-70s) Institutional critique developing at the time is based on critique of institutions that display art. Haacke and Buren are two examples. HANS HAACKE, MoMA Poll, 1970– he was invited to take place in exhibition in Ny deconstructed the system within but with outsider’s perspective. This was made for exhibition named “Information” (very important!!): based on idea that since life was more and more based on data, more and more artists started working with information as driving element of their practice. Haacke proposes an interactive installation presented in form of a referendum: occasion for people to express their position in regard to a question but he doesn’t say what the question is about Nelson Rockfeller, major billionaire, one of those sponsoring MoMa, huge influence on politics (refers to war in Vietnam: going on from 60s to mid 70s = sensitive topic). This was a way for him to acknowledge the fact that economy, politics and art were connected  Rockefeller was the living representation of this connection. This show had 299.057 vistiors. 12,4 participated, majority was against him. H. HAACKE, Shapolsky et al Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real-Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971– for solo exhibition at Guggenheim. Major point in his career. Shapolsky was rich 37 both fascinated by marketing. But Piero makes fun of art system and marketing, whereas Warhol not. On Kawara was artist from japan and made works on flowing of life. Basic information on daily life, that do not say anything about personality and style of this artist. Today (date paintings) , 1966 – series up to 2014 (his death) he painted paintings like this almost everyday of his life. Everytime he painted them he placed them inside a box with the date (inside was a page of newspaper). He changed style: font, colour but in general just slight variations. Less than a metre size but sometimes even big ones: no special meaning. May 20, 1981 – way of their archive. If he didn’t finish the painting by midnight he destroyed it. Apr- 1 1969 – postcard from a Series. He sent them in different parts of the world. Everywhere he was (Italy, USA, ecc.) he bought them and stamped them, then he sent them. Normally people write messages on these but not him: he stamped time of the day in which he woke up: point is to give us an information of his life that makes his life as boring as a normal person’s one. Depersonalizes it, anyone can do it. Self-portrait as a fountain, Nauman, 1966 – playful approach to what he’s doing. Performing as a fountain. Perfect moment when flow of water coming out his mouth. Personification complete. The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truth, 1967 – vs art history is built on idea as artist like a supernatural creature In the 60s created videos documented activities while in his studio: walking in an exaggerated manner around the perimeter of a square – negates any assumption of what an artist is supposed to do, not reveals mystic truths: he simulates things, making himself busy because he doesn’t have anything to do  negation in art making connecting with idea of failure: artist who fails = doesn’t respect what society expects from him (Cattelan) B. NAUMAN, Walking in an exaggerated manner around the perimeter of a Square, 1967-68 - Action described in the title - Just about an action based on putting in discussion the role of the artist: is asking himself “what am I supposed to do as an artist? What is the point in being an artist?” Mapping the studio I, (Fat Chance John Cage), Dia Foundation, Beacon, NY, 2001– dia foundation. Video shows studio of Nauman at night with infra-red camers. Cat. Empty space, sometimes you see the rat = activity going on  against idea of artist’s studio as mystic space EXHIBITIONS AS SUBJECT MATTER (1960s-70s) This is the moment in which artists consider exhibitions as subject matter: Marcel Broodthaers is artist from Belgium, creating exhibition projects as if they were fake museums: within Tate ? he realizes a department of the Eagles: representations of eagles coming from everyday life (bottles, tanks). He founded the Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, 1968. 40 He founds a museum, particularly a department of it: Department of Eagles –> it displays every day objects with images of eagles. Can you say this is a museum? He’s analysing how the museum works. GRACIELA CARNEVALE, Confinement Action, Rosario, Argentina, 1968– exhibition as device of political participation. She was based in Argentina (under control of totalitarian regime, high degree of censorship, control and surveillance). Exhibition without walls: when everyone was inside she simply left and kept those people closed inside the gallery. After few minutes people started braking windows because felt imprisoned = stimulate form of empowerment that would bring these people to find agency to rise against any regime MIERLE LADERMAN UKELES, Hartford Wash: Washing, Tracks, Maintenance: Outside, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, 1973 - brings feminist perspective: cleaning activities inside exhibition spaces. She even writes a manifesto. Idea to bring issues of domesticity and control within a gallery space but also critiquing institutions as places in which art doesn’t correspond to needs of society. MICHAEL ASHER, Installation, Art Center at Pomona College, California, 1970 - empty gallery filled with fake walls that transformed empty gallery into new space: still a gallery but inner shape was modified = Manipulation of this space. Art & Language, The Air-Conditioning Show, Visual Arts Gallery, New York, 1971: empty gallery with air conditioning with temperature turned to a degree that one could not feel: it is not empty but there is temperature This idea was explored in surrealism by Duchamp back in 1938: 1.200 bags of coal – Duchamp covered ceiling with coal bags: smell and sound produced were to be felt by the audience. O Doherty in Inside the white cube  white cube as device, until 1990s it’s a place decontextualized from the world. with post modernism gallery is not neutral any more. We assume that inside exhibition space what we see is art but who says that that is art. “By exposing the effect of context on art, of the container on the contained, Duchamp recognized an area of art that hadn’t yet been invented. This invention of context initiated a series of gestures that ‘develop’ the idea of a gallery space as a single unit, suitable for manipulation and aesthetic counter.” BRIAN O’DOHERTY, Inside the White Cube, 1976 “With postmodernism, the gallery is no longer ‘neutral.’ The wall becomes a membrane through which aesthetic and commercial values osmotically exchange. As this molecular shudder in the white walls becomes perceptible, there is a further inversion of context. The walls assimilate; the art discharges. [...] The white wall’s apparent neutrality is an illusion. It stands for a community with common ideas and assumptions. Artist and audience are, as it were, invisibly spread-eagled in 2-D on a white ground.” BRIAN O’DOHERTY, Inside the White Cube, 1976 “Most of the people who look at art now are not looking at art; they are looking at the idea of ‘art’ they carry in their minds.” BRIAN O’DOHERTY, Inside the White Cube, 1976 41 Formula of the white cube neutralize the artworks and isolates them. What we see in it is already art because it is presented as such: this mindset affects the viewers perception 4-12 6)Body Politics: performance art and feminist art From 69s and 70s: deal with new issues related to body. Body that is becoming a political instrument. It’s the time within countercultural and feminist movement motto “the personal is political” based on idea that your individuality is instrument for social change and getting attention on larger social and political issues. -Neoconcretism (tropicalia)- Brazil, 1960s -Performance art -Feminist art NEO-CONCRETISM/ TROPICALIA (1960s) Movement inspired by reconsideration of European concretism, born in Switzerland, France and Italy (Max Bill) based on forms of geometric abstraction ( bidi and 3D), also cynetic, they moved, machine dimension = remind of clean universe of forms developed in line with all ideas of abstraction proposed by Greenberg. Very close to design. In Brazil there was major exhibition of Max Bill’s works. But also new generation of artists who wanted to reconsider and twist concretism. They were inspired by geometric shapes but gave to them new meanings. In particular, interactive reconsideration. Lisa Clark, major figure of this movement: making sculptures, very similar to Bill’s artworks. But allowed forms of interactivity not considered by concretism. Ex: meant to be manipulated, touched, modified, played with. LYGIA CLARK Bicho de bolso, works from the 1960s series Bicho, installation view, MoMA, New York, 2015 : hands manipulating it. Conceived like origami: made with faces and sides that you could modify. In museums always info on possibility to touch them = period in which people were allowed to touch things. In most institutions it is uncommon: DO NOT TOUCH signs  touch considered dangerous, compromises unity and integrity of work but also sth that breaks fourthwall separating viewer from artwork (imaginery wall: broken also by minimalism and happening). In fact works are objects, look like sth high, but in reality part of everyday reality. Neoconretist artists start to produce new devices and objects this way that allow communication tw art and people: trigger social dynamics, social processes. LYGIA CLARK Dialog Goggles, 1968– wearable glasses, elaborated and meant to put people in communication. They smile because it is funny and embarrassing situation. Supposed to wera them with sb you don’t know. To start normal behaviours like chatting. 1960s is moment when global cultural movements are born. Brazil, like south American countries are under totalitarism hence censorship and controls. This is why neoconcretism becomes a social and political art form  change midset of the citizens. This is why many artists were forced to leae the country and arrested and persecuted for their practice. 42 americans, for him coyote was last personification of beings coming from that territory struggling against coloners. In photo: at the beginning they fight that more familiar relationship. He proposed new idea of art based on fact that anyone could be artist (aside your status, birth..): created process based on situations called SOCIAL SCULPTURES  social process, social dyinamic, putting people together and making them communicate with each other. Takes advantage of his own charism within major art exhibitions (ex. Dokumenta in Kassel). 1972: Bureau for the Organization of Direct Democracy, Documenta 5, Kassel,– him wandering and chatting with people, asking about issues based on culture, environment. He was not telling them this but interested in starting dialogue (like Lisa Clark). Art as trigger for conversation and dialogue. Beuys referred to activties such as this as a form of “social sculpture”: something that society cannot offer so we need an artist to do t Yoko Ono did same thing as fluxus even though instructions had shape of poems: short compositions. Collected in book called “Grapefruit” (1964) = suggestions for creating your own performance.  Cloud free – “Imagine the clouds dripping. Dig a hole in your garden to put them in”  Art not material, based on imaginery and works with the potential, sth that could be. Based on imagination. The moment when you imagine this possibility is empowerment moment.  starts process of social transformation based with imagination  Snow piece –“Think that snow is falling. Think that snow is falling everywhere all the time. When you talk with a person, think that snow is falling between you and on the person. Stop conversing when you think the person is covered by snow.” suggestion that allows you to see things from different angles Cut piece, 1965 – prefiguring feminist issues (emerging in 70s)and Marina Abramovic’s work. Based on possibility of viewers to cut with scissors pieces of clothes she was wearing. After some time she finds herself almost naked. Idea: issue of vulnerability of body and woman.  tool of agency in feminist terms. Performance based on rituals with spiritual dimension. Spiritual in the sense of sacrifice to gods, dionisian ritual, abjection, torture in order to please the gods. Viennist actionists created perfomances that were violent and psychologically powerful (rituals with animals and anthropomorphic creatures). They were radical. They wanted “absolute revolt, total disobedience, and systematic sabotage [...] All art will be destroyed, annihilated, terminated and something new will begin.”— OTTO MUEHL Materialaktionen, Otto Muehl, 1965 – artist covered in fat, blood, urin and substances. Choreographed ritual. HERMANN NITSCH, Action, 1968– some performances involved tortures of dead animals. Carcass of cow. Idea of butchery: inside our collective unconscious. Sometimes animals were killed on stage: very controversial. 45 “Ancient Dionysian and Christian rites were re-enacted in a modern context, supposedly illustrating Aristotle’s notion of catharsis through fear, terror and compassion. Nitsch saw these ritualistic orgies as an extension of action painting, recalling the Futurist Carrà’s suggestion: you must paint, as drunkards sing and vomit, sounds, noises and smells.” ROSELEE GOLDBERG, Seventies’ Performance: ‘To be with Art is All we Ask’, 1979 There is idea of letting body do things with no control: same idea in abstract expressionism, particularly action painting, also based on surrealist automatism. It was very provocative: GUNTER BRUS, Kunst und Revolution, University of Vienna, 1968 - Brus naked in university in Vienna. Fingers in mouth to vomit, abject things in front of his audience. RUDOLF SCHWARZKOGLER, Knife, 1965– sensible and provocative: you could not distinguish btw sadomasochism and artistic reconsideration of sadomasochism. Performance made in his own studio and documented, not live action. As if act of mutilation: sb cutting off his penis not what happened. It’s a simulation of cut. Blood is real but from other parts of world = very cruel. Vito Acconci is a key figure in this movement, particularly in relation to video and photography = pivotal instruments to make performances legitimate artwork, transform them into sth that could circulate and discussed photo artworks were documentation but sometimes became metalanguage for communication = objects of reflection. Following Piece, 1969– work normally could be done by anyone. He identifies sb in street and follows them untile they enter in a building. Idea of following a strager and you have to feel what stranger might feel. Feeling of danger in the air and of randomness = idea of picking sb and transform his life in sth different. He was also key figure for allowing us to understand that performance is subject and object in same time: Trademarks, 1970: he bites himself. You can see the marks of his teeth on skin  he is subject who bites but also object of biting action. Again imagination: he plays on it. Seedbed, 1971 – work based on idea of perversed persona (basis of his works). In Sonnabend Gallery in NY. Created a diagonal platform: people could walk on it (idea of minimalism: site specificity but as you walk you start hearing a man saying things, displaying the fact that he was excited that you were here. Acconci was masturbating under the platform. Perversion element of the thing: as if he had built platform so that he could hide under it + idea of disconnecgion with the world 8it’s psychological disconnection from common social behaviours). CHRIS BURDEN, Five Days Locker Piece – 1971, Burden. This was his graduation piece from art school. Photo of some lockers, typical of American college, where people could leave their stuff. Below you see informations + description. Very mysterious. Sth that may have happened but we don’t really know. Imagination again plays role in this. Shoot – 1971. Burden: representative work (art and life cannot be separated anymore). He asked a friend to shoot it with real rifle. His friends witnessing this, maybe understanding the deathly danger 46 of this action or maybe not. About the fact that in USA weapons were free. Social issue of gun violence. Use of guns which is entertaining, spectacularized use of guns (like cowboy movies: guns are symbol for people to defend themselves. also, in Las Vegas you find guns entertainment: place where people go and can feel what it is to shoot with rifles and army guns). Also when he was interviewed about it: he said “what’s problem? People shot everyday on tv”= reference to Vietnam War: everyday you saw images of people getting killed on tv. His work was not simply abt organizing nonsensical performance in which you could get killed but also to simulate dangerous action based on ehich wuou could have discussion. Marina Abramovic, Rhythm 0, 1974 – reference to cutpiece of Ono. She is vulnerable with series of objects: food, grapes, bread, wine, oil), torch, hat that people are allowed to take and use on her body. Sb feeding her grapes, sb pointing torch on her face. Also there was gun: sb pointed it at her head =end of performance. She presents herself as vulnerable being in order to talk about asence and abuse that people feel and experience everyday. M. ABRAMOVIC & ULAY, Imponderabilia, GAM, Bologna, 1977 - Presented here in Bologna for la Settimana della Performance week by Alinovi and Barilli (1977-1983, every year focus on sth specific) idea to bring international and local artists. Marina and Ulay were naked: people getting into this space and had to deal with fact that the y had to pass through these bodies and touch them = creating embarrassing moments. Contraposition btw nudity and clothes as forms of social construction, filter which prevents us from seeing people for who they are + vulnerability of these bodies, not interacting with audience: looking each other all the time. M. ABRAMOVIC and ULAY, Rest Energy, 1980– performance based on couple dynamics: reciprocal trust. In this case balance based on pure trust. You trust that he won’t hurt you because he loves you. Also can be transformed in idea of ferocity. ambiguity: trust vs danger that it can become. Most of her performances based on training of meditations. She defines them “durational” = based on length in time, in order to perform you have to train and work hard. The artist is present, MoMA, New York, 2010– moma, people could sit in front of the artist. She was always aware of fact that her persona was what really counted. She didn’t tell stories, only war. Interested in confrontation btw people. In this case confrontation btw people and herself. “gold mother of performance art” (name she gave to her persona). She looked into person’s eyes until she went away, never gave up. She played as living sculpture: straight glance into eyes. Idea of living sculpture taken by Gilbert an George, Underneath the arches, 1969– gay couple from UK, gentle behavior and nice clothes. In this piece they oversimulated this features: being perceived as typical British gentlemen. Sometimes had faces painted in colours. Idea of monumentalizing the Britishhoodness and deconstructing it: because they were queer and wanted to break steretypes. GILBERT & GEORGE, Red sculpture, 1975 - Skin painted red - They explore this idea of living sculptures in many ways, also through photomontage 47 Cube is solid, industrial, monumental and heavy. Inside: sth like living organisms =nails like fur of some animals. Handmadeness emerges from this (industrial origins of materials in minimalism) E. HESSE, Repetititon Nineteen III, 1968 – in this case: vases of translucent material = plastic glass reminds us this handmadeness, sth organic not industrial. Also symmetry refers to minimalism in this case it is living symmetry, broken down = way of breaking code at basis of minimalism. Also unclassifiable figures. LOUISE BOURGEOIS, Fillette, 1968– reminds us of male genitals. Materials are organic and natural, recall skin Hanging man killed or fish caught =conflictual dynamic btw man and woman explored. Spider, TATE Moden, London, 1994 – part of long series. For her spiders = incarnations of women. Particularly pregnant spiders. Also lots of people are really scared of this insect (surrealist animal). Animal that gives birth to thousands children, build net but also dangerous. NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE, Hon, 1968 – interpretation by Phalle. Immersive installation: presented in Stockolm. Woman’s legs where people could enter passing thou vagina: uncanny and embarrassing. Interior is structured not in a particular way. Idea of confrontation also by Valie Export. Body is mean of social change. She was part of Viennese and actionist group, but she was younger. She explored the body I similar way as Brus. Body is vulnerable but also leads to confrontation: it is instrument for social change but also overturns dynamics btw male and female. Touching cinema – cinema as place in which voyeurs dynamic are enacted. Viewer fantasizing on what he sees in films = cinema palce in which women are objectified. She uses body to create experience of touchable cinema: invites men to put hands inside box and touch her breast (she naked). Action Pants: Genital Panic, 1968– enters pornographic cinema wearing nth but crotchless pants. Explores limits btw art and real life. “The answer to why there have been no great women artists lies not in the nature of individual genius or the lack of it, but in the nature of given social institutions and what they forbid or encourage in various classes or groups of individuals.” LINDA NOCHLIN, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?, 1971 Answer that she proposes: it’s not that there were no women artists. They lived in system in which thy were not allowed to become artists  based on idea that artist as individual genius. JOHANN ZOFFANY, The Academicians of the Royal Academy, 1772– only men. Not true: there were women in academy. Angelica Kaffmann could not be portrayed because there were naked men (anatomy lessons) = women not allowed to see naked men. She actually is in the picture. Again Transformation of human body in image that can be erased, deleted, transformed, manipulated, moved… 50 MARY BETH EDELSON, Some Living American Women Artist / Last Supper, 1972- reconsideration of da Vinci’s ultima cena  replaces faces of Jesus Christ with faces of women artists: at centre Georgia o’Keffee. In frame also. 5-11 7)Postmodernism: the Pictures Generation 1980s, late 1970s. Complex idea: not a concept defining art movement but historic moment = radical transformation of society and moment of transformation based on what world was like in modernist time. From western perspective: industrial revolution and so urbanization, automation, this moment finishes with post-modernism. Post-modernist time: new idea of economy, new importance of media in daily life and understanding of media in electronic culture  art changes. Pictures generation is group of artists from NY, emerged in 1970s late, some from Buffalo and California. Pictures is title of exhibition curated by Dougls Crimp, in Artists Space in NY (1977): non profit-space of first generation, could survive thanks to forms of economic support from state and private sector.  small group show with just 4 artists. In 2009 the MET organized exhibition titled Pictures Generation = first attempt to look back at this movement, putting together artists part of same community, maybe didn’t know to have sth in common with each other 840/50 artists9. Characteristics: generational dimension: mostly part of same generation (people born in 1950s). used forms of appropriation, montage, found footage and simulation  media images coming from ads, cinema, fashion, cultural industry, anything produced in media system: they wanted to expose cultural sterotypes emerging from them. Challenged ideas of originality and autorships: interested in idea of the copy ( lots of series) = allow to create critical response to power of mass media. Exposed mechanisms of media. Recurring use of allegory: as rethorical form for revealing hidden meanings behind images. Work of art. Often becomes visual essay: they had conceptual approach, close to conceptual art and to research based approach (as if they were within academia, teach sth, writing essays). Reference to conceptual but also pop art: ads, everything that was approachable. Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger (second wave feminist art), Richard Prince. John Bladessari was older (no artisti of PG), but was teacher for them, particularly California ones. Professor at California institute of art, old school created by Walt Disney. He was one of the original ones: perfect conceptual artist who could teach what it means. Interest in revealing hidden meanings on idea of defining definitions. In mid-late 70s started making artworks based on appropriation of imagery. Blasted allegories (colourful sentence) – 1978, complicated. Made of several screenshots (stillframes). These are taken from tv programs and together with his assistants took many of them and created taxonomies/categories, in which he put them (all those in which there were couple, guns). Assigned specific colour and word to each and reconfigured them according to this colours an to one word (ex. Wait, again, acrobats,  idea of space of time and motion emerges from them) == semiotic reading of tv: you take tv, deconstruct it and with the pieces you try to understand how it works  behind each image there is a content not immediately revealed. Kiss/panic, 1984 – idea expressed before is evident. All guns held by hands, placed to form a frame within which other hidden images you read in connection with guns: you create connection in mind to make sense abt all that. 51 Heel, 1986 – appropriated images from movies with a new element: superimposition of geometric coloured elements: circles, curve. Primary colours. As if he tries to reduce images to basic configuration which allows people to understand that images are placed together to gain specific idea. Pictures, exhibition curated by DOUGLAS CRIMP, Artists Space, New York, 1977– not appealing, based on small photographs mostly photos of other photos(appropriation) and other tricks and games and readings, whereas The Picture Generation in 1980s was bigger, better emphasis of artists and their works. “Those processes of quotation, excerptation, framing, and staging that constitute the strategies of the work I have been discussing necessitate uncovering strata of representation. Needless to say, we are not in search of sources of origins, but of structures of signification: underneath a picture there is always another picture.” DOUGLAS CRIMP, Pictures, 1979 Crimp says whatever seems natural to us like a tv image it is in fact not natural. Artits investigate processes of stratification. Crimp wrote this essay with documentation of artworks, then rewrites it and expands it for October: one of the most important journals for contemporary art theory founded by group of Professors in Columbia University (Rosalind Krauss), he didn’t teach there but was close to them. JACK GOLDSTEIN, The Knife, 1975– one of the first P G artists, pupil of Baldessari. Created most basic pictures artworks and short films like this one. Film is made with camera in fixed position filming a kitchen knife placed on a table with blue background. Always same image, no sound but change of light around it. Depending on this change he would suggest different ideas and effects/ideas/emotions/perceptions. Shane, 1975 – same thing with german sheperd dog. Dog decontextualized on black background simply barking, doing what dogs usually does. According to him these images came from movies: you see knife in Hitchcock movies (Psycho)  he explores here how a kitchen knife, very basic object might be transformed in weapon. And in change of colour: when becomes red it suggests fear and danger. Same is true for Shane: this kinds of dogs are used in nazi films along SS officers to smell for jewish people dog embodies fearful media persona. Also it is very friendly when domesticated. Back in 80s was the most popular dog. Moment you approach dog and you don’t know its intentions or reference of dog used by policemen to detect drugs and you still are triggered by his presence. He is suggesting that everything is mediated so all these images are part of our collective subconscious= reality is social construct. Goldstein was interested in movies and Hollywood as entertaining machine. MGM (1975) is one of most important and old production company in Hollywood. Roaring lion in symbol of the company: he took that lion and decontextualizes logo placing red background all around. Reference to how many fantasies Hollywood has created in which we identify. Unusual inventive artworks: 52 Fairy Tales: Untitled #153, 1985– more different genres. Here: she looks like a corpse = horror imagery. Robert Longo also interested in movies: The American soldier , 1977– statue based on movie that he said to be most amazing movie he had ever seen: guy is dying because he was shot that moment is so theatrical, unnatural position = interested in idea of distortion, transformation of body during effort, imposition, restraint Men in the cities, photographs, 1979– series took on rooftop of building where he lived. Idea of distortion. They wore normal office clothes (they saw them everyday) but interested in what happens when bodyunder condition of distress  unnatural set of positions (Bacon reference to Deleuze: invisible forces that affect body: as if punching face like in fight club). Same here: idea of invisible force/enemy that anyone has  hypercapitalism: concept of liberalism in USA (Robert Reagan was president: suggested that private sector had to be more powerful than public one) = transformation of society in this moment: began to start to look like society today (no empathy, just economic value) Men in the cities, drawings, 1979– hyperrealistic drawings using pencils, bigger than actual size of human beings. Wall street – movie by Oliver Stone, 1987. Movies on brokers: avid person looking for ways to make money  change in conception of economy + starting era of credit cards: immaterial money (money you know you have but you cannot count it)  dematerialization of money makes people ungrier for power. Bodyhammers, 1993 – economy goes with politics one has consequences on the other: part of politics is warfare and geopolitics. He was interested in guns basic ones but also highly sophisticated ones: these are hyperrealistic drawings from specific perspective. In 1995 he directed a movie, mainstream science fiction movie: Johnny Mnemonic. With Keanu Reene. Not very successful, but very influential for new gen of science fiction movies (matrix). Shows hypertechnological world: science fictional but rooted on what world was at the time. Science fiction was recurring reference for other artists. Dara Birnbaum was interested in representation of women in tv, a silent presence in daily life. DARA BIRNBAUM, Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, 1978– tv series on wonder woman, one of first women superheroes. However also represented as hypersexualized character: tight clothes, making her body subject of transformation and object of desire. She appropriates only certain scenes of tv series, particularly when she transforms into Wonderwoman. Superheroes are always basic normal people, she transforms when she turns around and around. Wonderwoman was already feminist icon used by artists and feminists. But also controversial: she was still product of male dominated society. Moment of transformation is a fantasy moment as if wonderwoman becomes her but in fact that doesn’t happen in society where women are subjugated = focus on technology as if that tool of transformation has not yet been explored, like technology: as empowering tool, potential still not explored. (cyberfeminism starts from here) 55 Kiss the Girls: Make Them Cry, 1979– game show based on the greed, made of 9 boxes where there are 9 participants. In thi episode: 3 women, with blonde, red and black hair = way to categorise identities that can be controlled and also associating typical personalities with those features. “...these artists are not primarily interested in what representations say about women; rather, they investigate what representation does to women (for example, the way it invariably positions them as objects of the male gaze).” CRAIG OWENS, The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism, 1983 Artists are all understanding how harmful was media in that sense. Barbara Kruger is based on same premise. Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face), 1981– empowerment when you show you are aware of being objectified by media. She says I. know what you have done to me. Semiotic visual language typical of her work: use of 3 colours (black, red, white) + diversified materials (illusrations, photo from magazines and ads) + superimposes messages on them  works are visual but also textual. They are close to being visual essays. Untitled (You are not yourself), 1981– idea of stereotype and categorization of women’s ideantities. Mirror as space on which new identity can be created = here it is broken: showng same person as if that person in fragments becomes different We Won’t Play Nature to Your Culture, 1983– brings up dichotomy btw nature and culture (Rauschenberg: bed) = by nature we mean sth natural (human being without stereotype) and culture (media, society with all its conventions)  this is natural whereas it is cultural construction. Culture= negative, construction of dominant power system. Untitled (We don’t need another hero), 1987– idea of loss of faith vs narrative of past and concept of hero. 2 children: she points at bicept of kid, impersonating macho man even if he is young child. We don’t need hero = she points at bicept but also to all representations in history, movies and anything that is incarnation of macho character. Interested also in anti-consumerism/capitalism: Untitled (I Shop therefore I Am), 1987– takes back motto Cogito ergo sum = in consumerist society you are defined by what you buy. Same images printed over and over again. Most of her artworks are prints on paper (no canvas): not original but reproduced. Picturing Greatness, exhibition curated at MoMA, New York, 1988 - Invited by Moma to curate a show - she was one of the artists that curated exhibition: Moma, offered curatorial project on works at museums. She was not interested in selecting artworks, but photos representing artists (Picasso, Duchamp, Kokoshka). Representing greatness: all men. Your body is a battleground in Columbus, Ohio, 1990: Billboard – approach typical of the 1980s (aids)  display on public sphere to better spread message with generic audience. B. KRUGER, Installation at Mary Boone Gallery, New York, 1991 56 She started to create immersive installations covering the whole room of the exhibition space –> saturated media experience as viewer like in Times Square, in the everyday. Some are temporary, some permanent Also designed many artists’ book, covers of magazines: Ms (1980s), Newsweek, New York, W (Kim Kardashian). “It is precisely at the legislative frontier between what can be represented and what cannot that the postmodernist operation is being staged – not in order to transcend representation, but in order to expose that system of power that authorizes certain representations while blocking, prohibiting or invalidating others.” CRAIG OWENS, The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism, 1983 SARAH CHARLESWORTH, Modern History series, 1977- Charlesworth works with printed media. Series of pages of newspapers on which she erases text, you get hierarchy of photographs = way to deconstruct pages of newspaper and highlight content but also position in the page that makes their importance (strategy of editors: people don’t read articles) Rider, 1983 – similar to Levine’s work. Superimposing images of women from magazines and movies onto silouhettes of a cowboy. Objects of desire 1983– decontextualize bodies of women objectified. Here: elegant dress and body covered in bondage latex suit, used in vdsm sexual practices. Suggests analogy btw the 2 based on the material. But also idea of transforming body in object = No identity: no face or arms. Untitled (couple), 1977– Richard Prince : known for taking photos of photos, mostly advertisements. Couple not looking at you : objectified as stereotype of what couple is in society. Untitled (Four Women Looking in The Same Direction), 1977 – all photos of advertisments. He worked in archives of Time Magazine company, so had chance to access huge amount of photos. Cowboy series, 1980-2 – he was very interested in cowboys: incarnated type of macho character + quintessential American invention. Mythology of cowboy was media invention, but not interested in cowboys from movies but in Marlboro advertising campaigns = selling cigarettes through images of cowboys. Not interested in association with marlboro but in collective unconscious affected by these images and Marlboro. Types of men not afraid of nature, but dominating it, control of their own future. Connection with nature: Canyon, landscape’s of American West. Girlfriends series, 1990s – interest in biker culture  biker photographs: no interest in bikers but girlfriends of the bikers. Many magazines for bikers, on which same bikers published photo of Girlfriends in appealing ways. Interested in celebrities: typical press photos he appropriated for series Celebrities (1990s) : collected photos and made fake signature over them as if he was following them over their journeys. 57  Self expression: about autor and authenthicity vs role playing: Sherman acting like characters from movies, looking as sb else  Art > kitch (entertainment, cinema, advertisement, ecc) vs all these things are reappropriated. Mix of low and high culture  Art based in originality vs based on remixing, pastiche, putting together different elements  Symbolic unity= sth greater/important vs always playful irony, everybody likes to joke and assume fake identities (Memphis: colourful children interiors for adult houses)  About one single form vs references to various sources  Embraces abstract essence vs decoration ( use of abstraction in terms of decoration)  Belief in true materials (Tatlin took directed pieces from factory) vs simulation of materials (looks like wood but it is synthetic)  Belief in progress vs skeptical abt idea of present and future. Examples of this comparison: 1. - PAUL GAUGUIN, Primitive tales, 1902 – considered sb to have brought idea of exotic in western world, looked at other cultures from western perspective. Today we believe he was more of a colonist (went to colonies of France). His paintings reflect this colonial approach, taking advantage of situation: painting naked women from tribes (marrying one of them). Here he portrays himself with them: emerging from shadow: he is there, including himself in paitning. - BARBARA KRUGER, Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of my Face), 1981: as if she answers to him, giving voice to those women  I know you’re looking at me. Feminist reconsideration of this geopolitical situation. 2. – TATLIN, Corener Counter-relief, 0, 10, Exhibition Petrograd, 1915 : elements from factory: cables, metal parts  prefigures installation art. - JEFF KOONS, vacuum cleaners series, 1981-1988: goes directly to shopping center. Why going in factory. Buys new product in market = vacuum cleaner, placed in kind of shopping display (cube – minimalistic) but lights  comes after minimalism, they would never do this. Reconsideration in light of consumerist society 3. MONDRIAN, composition with red, blue and yellow, 1929: search for purity and self- definition, distance from kitsch. Highlighting shape of canvas and colours GERHARD RICHTER, 64 Colors, 1974: different colours (64) resonating from new configuration coming from new systems (rgb) codification of colour and light vs purity and self-definition. 4. POLLOCK Number 1 vs CRISTOPHER WOOL – forms of layering. Different images: some look abstract as if made with spray cans but on some of them also flowers as if coming from comic book. Everything is layered so you cannot understand unity of picture = pastiche of style 5. FORTUNATO DEPERO, Futurismo, journal cover, 1931 cover for futurist publication using abstraction and typography that is cubical, monumental, sticking into your face = embodies idea of belief into progress and industrial production. PETER SAVILLE, record cover for New Order, Movement, Factory Records,1981 – record cover for New Order, band of Manchester, typical British insutrial city, in this time 60 sifunctional = started to close for economic crisis during Thatcher’s time. Exploring dark side of insutrial production: produced forms of automation and alienation. This is moment in which pop culture gets into our discourse. Birth of MTV in USA or new genres of magazines like The Face. Media platforms allowed new forms of experimentation, artists started to work with this new media scenario, experimenting with new forms of contamination, sources and new interdisciplinary approach. LAURIE ANDERSON, United States, 1981- Laurie Anderson is unclassifiable artist, multimedial projects. Ambitious decision to name it as country. Allegorical view on USA. Many references to media, technology and ideas of future. Music project actually: she sung and played violin/electronic instruments with performers moving around. Background: huge USA map with light shows. Moment in which she plays Chinese shadow game: her arm personifying superman  Nietzsche idea of superman (totalitarian regime) + as comic superhero (American dream, sb that dominates other =American culture). She also recorded one of those songs and “O superman” became a single (hit): made with drum machine and vocoder (used to modify your voice). In first 10 hits of USA. She signed contract wth Warner Bros. al of a sudden she was musician and recorded artist. Emerging of new machines and devices: video switchers (Grass Valley Model 200-1 video switcher, 1980s) and synthetisers allowing you to move images and experience different forms of post-production. Ex. Apple II, 1981 – new possible adoption of personal computer at home: back then it was new. To show us what we could do with computers: control all family business, do your own work and creating your own artwork. Also moment of emergence of music subculture based on sampling and remixing: Hip Hop = people using vynil records and extrapolating only some samples, usually most interesting and fast ones. Not interested in those songs but gave new meaning to those samples = political: bottom up response on mainstream music based on appropriation on previous songs, movement, not commercial  pastiche of those samples Turntablism: new use of record player in new alternative way ex. C. MARCLAY(began playing with sounds before images),  invented phonoguitar: record but shape and plays it like guitar. In early 80s started some works: Recycled Records, 1983: take actual records, braking, keep pieces and creating new records made with these fragments = sound always changing  typical example of pastiche in sound terms. In terms of post-productions: PIPILOTTI RIST, I’m not the Girl who Misses Much, 1986– video in which there is basic form of post-production which presents possibility of manipulation on female body by artist different from feminist art we discussed. Based on appropriation but with a twist. She sings chorus of Beatles song usually with narrative . Always that part in obsessive way. Topless = body as object, reference to music video of time sexist hard rock music videos (stripper or crying, same cliché). Not really altering her image: plays with possibility of moving forward and slowing down, as if body is controlled by sb else who is not in frame (exterior). Also reminds to horror movies like Chucky, like she is a doll controlled by obscure force that brings her to sing obsessively same phrase. 61 Details: focus on face and mouth as if she is in a cage, prison. Reminds of presence of surveillance camera. Anticipates issues of surveillance we deal with today. GERHARD RICHTER: six different paintings  many different styles in his productions. He changed naturally moving from hyperrealism to abstraction. First on left: based on photo, hyperrealistic. Also abstract flat configurations, graphical like greed in central. Gestural abstraction in bottom left as if action painting. Evident idea of pastiche: any art can be adopted and put together with other styles. In 1960s he was part of gen of German artist associated with idea called Capitalist Realism (offshoot of pop art, typically German) already post-modernist. Nude descending the Staircase, 1965– based on Duchamp. It’s not nude, photo out of focus. Uncle Rudi, 1965 – Also interested in exploring family history (idea of schizophrenia). References artists made to nazi: children born during or after = difficult to confront with their own fathers and families part of nazi regime. Typical family photograph: uncle rudi was in fact nazi officer. Out of focus: clearly telling us that Richter was not able to focus on that reality: he was his uncle but really didn’t understand what it was, he was definitely against. 256 colours, 1973 – not any number: maximum number of colours available in computer system. no longer colour coming from nature: simulated colour, used to produce a simulated version of reality = telling us how fake reality is at that time. Abstract Painting, 1980 – totally different style as if abstraction is technique he can use whenever he like it. - Changes style. Mixing styles from the past. Reference to electronic culture Skull, 1983 – traditional idea of memento mori, icons and religion. Out of focus effect: as if image is fading = we are going to forget  we live in perpetual present, there is only that. Barn, 1984 – totally different subject matter. Landscape in countryside, beautiful sunny day October 18, 1977: Man Shot Down 1 / Confrontation 3 / Funeral , 1988– series of paintings of 1988 referring to 11 years before: people prisoners in German prison were found dead, not random inmates, members of terrorist group from Germany known as Rough. It was like german version of Brigate Rosse. Extreme leftist group who killed people based on political reasons. These people were killed by police officers, no suicide = he collected photos of media (newspapers, personal, incarceration photos + photos of funerals): he was impressed on the amount of people who went to that funeral. Interested in dynamic and discussion of that moment. Interested in photogenic dimension of these terrorists (like Warhol). It’s about mediation of reality not its documentation. CHRISTOPHER WOOL, Untitled, 1987 – Wool embraced abstraction and configuration made of stencils used to paint same images over and over again. Untitled, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 1991–1992– The show is over = nth to be happy abt any more  annihilated identity by capitalism Untitled, 1996– flower as if from comic book but it gives rise to form of abstraction. Stencils to create contradiction of marks and precoded images. 62 MARTIN KIPPENBERGER, Dialogue with the Youth of Today, 1981– self portrait after fight he had with punks. He runs club in Berlin typical for punks. They rose price of beer and punks beat him up. Untitled (from the series Dear Painter Paint for me), 1981– little dog: as if making fun of what painter is supposed to do. Untitled,1988 – himself: deformed being, wearing boxers up to belly, shorter arms. Dealing with strange structure, like metal used to renovate buildings? At gym? Sexual machine? We don’t know. “Radical artists are now faced with a choice- despair, or the last exit: painting. The discursive nature of painting is persuasively useful, due to its characteristic of being a never-ending web of representations. It does often share the irony implicit in any conscious endeavor these days, but can transcend it, to represent it.” THOMAS LAWSON, Last Exit: Painting, 1981 Painting is still a valid medium. Neo-geo (1980s) Smaller micromovement emerging from NY: group show in 1986 in gallery name Sonnabend. Geometric forms of abstraction where geometry= metaphor of synthetic reality. References to high- low culture, high art and low commodities. Commentary on consumerism: not clear if negatively or not. Technology as promise or threat. Reference to minimalism and pop/optical art. References to other philosophical theories (Jean Beaudriard). PETER HALLEY, Yellow Cell with Conduits, 1985– started painting these circuits, conduits, networks, connections. Might seem electrical connections or water connections/electric wires, but symbolic forms: greater connections  anticipating invisibility of network (invention of world wide web) installation view, Sonnabend Gallery, New York, 1989- Uses flat and bright colours. Fluorescent, creating contrast btw squared areas and showing this connection. HAIM STEINBACH, Supremely Black, 1985– works with sculpture and installation. This is based on displays and shelves 8like in shopping center or in any mall). 2 objects: present in 2 times and 3 times. Placed on shelf with triangular shape which makes them look avant-gard (reminds Bauhaus and constructivism). Colours: typical used in construstrivism and Russian avant-garde  idea of pastiche but also reappropriating them in light of American consurmerism Charm of tradition, 1985– Kitch abat jure and shelf split in 2 parts. Made of marble and wood = plys with opposite nature of these materials. Nike shoes (symbol of the 1980s): moment in which nba became popular  people wore these in daily life. Together naturally V2, 1986– abstract shapes: 2 vases as if abstract sculptures from 1930s. abstraction with lost critical property but only reappropriation. 65 Jeff Koons elaborates complicated discourse on consumerism not only on objects ut also on personality. Ex New Hoover Convertible, 1980 and Three Ball 50/50 Tank, 1985– same thing he did with vaccum cleaner: balls placed in tank with water wo they floated  reference to commodification and popularization of NBA and African-American culture (all linked) Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988– people as commodities he was THE celebrity, most relevant. He was very popular and known for he eclectic lifestyle (antique shopping, amusement park in villa, monkey he walked with). Koons into the kitsch side of Michael. This is sculpture of him made of porcelain, usually used to make little objects people collected. 1:1 = same size. Banality series, 1988-89 – other sculptures in porcelain representing idea of kitsch: proud of them, he places himself amid them. He was a broker, always kept typical broker/financial approach = always business dimension in his practice, strictly connected with marketing of his own persona. Created series of ads for magazines: Art Magazine Ads (Art Forum), 1988–1989 – not advertisements on objects or exhibitions but of himself = him in classroom with children wanting to ask question because he looks like charismatic teacher (one other with girls in bikini). On the chalk board: banality as savior = role playing, he was impersonating typical successful artist. Awareness to be artist and media person  he naturalizes it (emerged with Warhol): artists not seen as artists anymore. Made in Heaven, 1989- Works made with his wife: Cicciolina (pornstar from Hungary). She eve presented as candidate of political itallian party. Really married. Works: pornographic settings in which they are placed. Some are erotic, other openly pornographic = Usually disclaimers before rooms with these. Different scenes and materials/techniques (glass sculptures, porcelain) Heaven=sex  pornography as heaven built on fantasy, and hypersimulation of sex IDEA THAT ARTISTS SHOULDN’T NECESSARILY BE CRITICAL 11-12 9)Art from below: punk, graffiti art and other subcultures Bottom up practices: not established art practices, mostly emerged within underground field. Underground is obsolete now. Overtime they have been legitimized within contemporary art discourses, configuring in proper individual fields sometimes. Colab: collective of York exhibitions in 80s, UK and USA punk, graffiti, east village, j.m. Basquiat and Haring. UK PUNK Political situation in which punk formed in 70s: Margaret Thatcher is new leader of government (in parallel with Reagan in USA = the 2 of them were pivotal in creating alternative idea of politics and economic dynamic  liberalism: invest and accumulating more capital vs state owned power). Creation of unemployment. Punk was response to authoritarian and less democratic government, oriented to production of capital and consumerism rather than caring for needs of people. Punk also came out from artistic stiuation: they were aware of importance of dada and situationism (avant- garde) some started as situationists, creating smaller groups. Mclaren was art student in several art schools in UK, never finished his courses but ended up in music business, strictly connected with Vivienne Westwood, creator of first punk boutique: Sex, 66 owned by the two of them (opened in 1974), sold bondage clothes, military outfits, t-shirts with pastiche of several references to previous ideologies and cultural references  Ex. Recurring symbol: controversial  svastica: ancient spiritual origin but adopted by nazism. Very risky to use it: easy to be associated to that  why lots of punks were considered nazi but they just wanted to. Will to go against status quo and authority. This is why they used symbols of government with the svastica: reconsidering these symbols and representing them as if broken up and manipulated in controversial provocative way: pins= keep together sth that is no longer together, as if community of Uk is broken down. Also Queen Elisabeth with pins on her lips as if it was a mouth that could not speak any more: kind of a censorship as if didn’t represent their country any more = visual metaphor  they were antigovernamental. “Performers made fools of themselves, denounced their ancestors, and spit on their audiences, which spit back. I began to wonder where these gestures came from. It was, finally, no more than an art statement, but such statements, communicated and received in any form, are rare. I knew a lot about rock 'n' roll, but I didn't know about this. Did the voice and the gestures come out of nowhere, or were they sparked? If they were sparked, what sparked them?” GREIL MARCUS, Lipstick Traces, 1989 Marcus is a famous music critic. He analyzes the main features of punk, which was a life style He was music critic, who wrote illuminating book on punk. He acklowedges dfact that some of gestures and spirit of punk was coming from rock n roll but also from avant-garde: idea of spitting to audience at concerts and audience spitting back. References to artistic practices also to situationists: rebels in 1968 France. For example posters of Atelier Populaire: images of revolt, triggering and stimulating revolt against authorities. Poster with a face covered in bendages, made for the May 1968 uprising in Paris with the writing “une jeunesse que l’avenir inquiète trop souvent” –> one of the motto of the movement was no future. Something that punk culture had in common with post modernism. Having lost our sense of future is a feeling we can have today after the pandemic. Poster made in 1968 – one of key posters: future makes too often preoccupied. Face of young person mummified + pin on the lips= same of Queen Jamie Reid was responsible for visual communication f sex pistols. They were a band of people who went to Sex to buy Westwood clothes. Vivienne and her lover were fascinated by these guys: wearing those clothes and incarnating punk spirit that they were promoting (provocative, rebellious, unapologetic always confrontational in regards to everyday people). This is why Reid designed Sex Pistols single covers:  Black monochrome: recuperates idea of abstract monochrome of Rodchenko within Russian avant-garde and now reproposed as record cover for their first single  Pop corn: cinema as entertainment machine  Burger  reappropriation to pop culture and consumerism  Credit card We can read this in term of pastiche but they are also satirical, not close to P G pictures but more to Dada photomontage “This book is about a single, serpentine fact: late in 1976 a record called "Anarchy in the U.K." was issued in London, and this event launched a transformation of pop music all over the world. Made by a four- man rock 'n' roll band called the Sex Pistols, and written by singer Johnny Rotten, the song distilled, in crudely poetic form, a critique of modern society once set out by a small group 67 No wave group was movement based on music, but performative and visual, offshoot of punk, abput reconsideration of the body. Idea of Robert Longo  ROBER LONGO, Men in The Cites, 1978-82 - contortions of bodies wearing formal suits represented by no wave bands: James really danced on stage as if caught from convulsion and contortion. Suicide (Alan Vega and Martin Rev) performing at Max’s Kansas City, New York, 1980 Suicide was another band with Vega and rev, both coming from art world. Vega was singer but also artists, produced installations since late 1960s: Untitled  dark side of Dan Flavin. Based on installation on Neon tubes but with colours and disorder related to religion and consumerist culture. In California we see other peculiar characteristics: birth of the Black Flag, a band connected to Raimond Pettibon. Very popular artist, once reviewed in major contemporary art magazines, dozens of exhibitions and publications. Record cover designed by him. In 1970s created drawings and published them in form of zines: contributed to out an underground network of people listening to emerging punk music R. PETTIBON, record cover for Black Flag, Nervous Breakdown, SST Records 1978 - Record cover with teacher pushing a student on a side– incarnation of punk. Scene represents a classroom: high school with adult (prof) and student in corner, rebelling against authority and indoctrinating system school impersonates. Boy is tensed: almost exposing of anger against his prof. prof is trying to keep him away as if he was a wild animal. He was interested in Charles Manson, hippie who misread hippy values: created his own commun made of young women, called it “family” but organized killings (Sharon tate). Here one of his family members with knife and says sth. Drawing with a girl from Charles Manson circle -> writing “she was a nice, sweet girl before movving to California”. What they found was Charles Manson. NAN GOLDIN, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, posters, late 1970s Nan Golding was part of this scene. Coming from Boston, adopted photography (Boston’s school of photography). The one who became more known and attracted the most visibility. But in late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, she was interested in documenting her life. Candid style of photo: taking photo without attention to details/light effects. Photos give idea of being shot randomly, based on improvisation. Content is also based on improvisation: characteristic of daily life: people chatting, drinking, but also, dying being beaten up. Ex. Lots of people who died from Aids were depicted. She collected these works in series, like ‘Ballad of sexual dependency’: light show made in analog way, carousel with slides projected one after other, while soundtrack made of songs she listened tos, over time new versions = today updated versions with new songs and photos. Idea of working with moving image becomes integral in punk and post-punk: production of experimental film and videos  Kern and Berry’s music video for death valley 69. Short film: music video but with life od his own, another reference to Charles Manson (pivotal figure). Performer personifies him with black beard and people making peace symbol. Sonic youth has been quintessential music band to understand music subculture, collaborated with many contemporary artists. 70 PETTIBON also worked for them –> cover for Sonic Youth, Goo, CGD 1990 – cover for album. Representing couple of young people who really murdered parents of girl to gain freedom. History narrated also in 90s movie: once we were villains COLAB (1977- mid 1980s) Rooted in life on the streets. Particular approach on curatorship. Collective made of several artists who got together for projects, exhibitions, tv show, individual artworks + new idea of collective= gave up individual idea of artist. Most of them remained little known overtime. In 1980 organised 2 major exhibitions. 1. The real estate show – opened in 31-12-79, after hours closed by police because in abandoned disused building owned by sb: illegal occupation. Focused on issue of gentrification. Close to that exhibition project by Haacke at Guggenheim: institutional critique. Had a symbolic image: octopus= incarnation of real estate  collecting buildings, and selling them to highest bid. Art show celebrating insurrectionary urban development: people reclaimed their right to occupy buildings and wanted to reconstruct social dynamics that regulated hierarchy btw people with different incomes. Lots of artworks made by artists but also random passersby: it was low neighbourhood with many minor communities of lower wast side, typical immigration neighborhood(Italians, Jews, Chinese) . 2. Times square show – 2nd exhibition co-organized by Colab and Fashion Moda in a former massage parlor on the corner of Seventh Avenue and 41st Street in June 1980. Back then it was place of sex and drug trafficking. Massage parlor= lots of prostitution. This time legally occupied, it was empty. Open 24 h a day, everytime you could find people and considering life there: illegal activities inside show. Some artists customized actual building: air conditioning with wall paper showing rats (also true: rats might be there). Artists participated there: Basquiat when he was emerging, some of them created wallpapers and installed them in random configuration without hierarchies, painting everyday objects (chairs) = new idea of what art can be presented in non-profit space. paintings, sculptures, and ephemera, realized site-specific interventions, graffiti, and installations that related to Times Square or current political events, and experimented with unschooled forms of art brut for the late-capitalist times. Colab invested $32,000 worth of grants and donations, mainly on advertising in newspapers, magazines, and television. A video by Jane Dickson of two hands playing the three-card street trick was animated on a Times Square billboard. Concerts, performances, and screenings took place over the weekend. In 2014/5 these 2 shows became object of attention: restaged and presented in new spaces real estate in James Fuentes Gallery: some artworks were remade for this purpose. Also another one in Hunter College and one on the Times square show. Why? Some issues were still relevant: gentrification still characterizes NY today and years ago. Revisitation of 2nd show: Works restaged in the new show include Scharf’s and Haring’s The Sparkl End, a lo-fi video originally installed in a narrow cabin on the second floor of the former massage parlor. Half home video, half art film, it documents the extravaganza of the group of people who gravitated around East Village underground venue Club 57 (such as Ann Magnuson, John Sex, and the authors themselves). Fitzgibbon and Winters’ Gun, Money, Plate is a black-and-white wallpaper which 71 suggests a connection between family values, finance, and criminality. A series of rats by Rupp run along the bottom of the same wall. Originally pasted in both exhibition spaces and on public walls, the rats are one of the most representative symbols of the decadence and abandonment of New York City, directly related to the problem of gentrification. A text sign by Jenny Holzer similarly begins with: “Many dogs run wild in the city.” If there is a question that these restagings pose, it is: Has the situation not gotten worse in the past thirty years? The attention toward the collective’s activities and ethos is particularly representative to understand a new era of art production in which Colab could serve as a model of decentralization, pluralism, and autonomy, both in the cultural field and in society at large. The reason why it took more than three decades for these exhibitions to be revalued and restaged is not simply that they have been overlooked, but the result of Colab members’ rejection and search for disappearance from an art system they did not identify with, and still struggle with. To acknowledge their relevance today is symptomatic of the need to construct future art history on different paradigms than those of authorship and market value that have so far characterized most of modern and contemporary art. GRAFFITI ART Within lower Manhattan new wave of art there was also birth of Graffiti art, born in downtown Ny and Bronx (quintessential dangerous place). This is why many artists decide to move in Bronx, like Stefan Eins. He went there to open Fashion Moda. Gallery space, name was catchy (nth to do with fashion), with Joew Lewis (neighbor friend). Non profit space in which attention was pointed to emerging graffiti artists (sides of subway trains), considered one of early exhibitions of graffiti. GAS (Graffiti Art Success for America), exhibition curated by Johnny “Crash” Matos, Fashion Moda, 1980 - This is one of the first exhibitions on graffiti art, curated by John, who was 18/19 y o back then. He invited list of artists practicing graffiti in the streets. Also figures who moved towards more commodified type of graffiti, like graffiti on canvas. Many artists moved to Bronx, always in the newspaper= criminal spot. JOHN FEKNER, graffiti in the South Bronx, 1980 (photo by Lisa Kahane)– stencils graffiti. Falsas promessas/broken promises. Buildings in south Bronx were abandoned, ruined by fires. References to speech made by Reagan where he promises to renovate neighborhood and make things better. JOHN AHERN – sculptural portraits of Neighborhood people displaying them in walls as monuments. Monument: not elevating historic people but heroes of everyday, placed up in order to be seen by their neighbors. Emergence of hip hop culture in this period too. Creation of performing art of different kinds: dance, music. Flyer – advertises typical hip hop event: Afrika bambaata was dj. Emergence of street gangs into groups of artists: Afrika was part of a gang and thanks to him lots of people coming from this background embraced alternative forms of cultural expressioin rather than violence. Sociological dimension around birth of hip hop. In Graffiti some artists like Dondi were able to bring their works all around city painting on sides of subway trains = whatever he painted could be seen by all the city. 72 Schnabel was part of neo-expressionist movement and romantisised on Basquiat: created biopic on him commodified his persona more and more. worked on process that with O’brien downtown 81. In 2017: selling a work of Baquiat price: 110.5 million dollars, most expensive American artwork ever sold = changes perspective on commercial art system. KEITH HARING Acts of Live Art, Club 57, New York, 1980 - Club 57 in which he performs on stage - Haring performances not very known - He uses a frame of a tv and presents himself as a sort of tv host, parody of tv characters Emerged within Club 57. Performed Acts of live arts – as if newscast presenter telling the news with fake tv. Untitled, 1980 Created graphic artworks, like Basquiat taking inspo on info graphical sources = information, small phrases, word, references to technology, computer culture and historical art movements (renaissance, egyptian): ex. human being who has lost identity and became universal anonymous being. REFERENCE TO MASS MEDIA. Language is very important. He devlops a visual laguage. Pictorial term. Moment in which our culture becomes more and more visual and less and less textual. References to media, sci fi, communication in his works. Universe with little anonymous figures but working collectively Billboards in subway stations with chalk – arrested for that. Black papers placed there to obscure expired advertisements, so he wasn’t really occupying a space that wasn’t his own Highlight universal condition of existence: why his work became relatable. Universal language: first truly universal one in computer culture. Moment in which we start to deal with icons on our screens, when first computer interfaces appear, programmers invented language made of symbols, with which we relate all the time. Anyone could recognize them. Untitled, 1982 - Gender identification - Red backrground Invented iconographies that anyone could relate to talking abt love and hate, touching on emotional elements with references to art historical works like in this case with Marriage of heaven and hell, 1984. Also mixing with science fiction inventing iconography which shifted and transformed whether it was poster, mural, record cover or wall painting Untitled, 1984 - Pyramid with ufos - There is a pc (the first one was the macintosh) at the top of the pyramid Wall painting made by him at Paradise garage, night club in NY where people danced house music, I photo: he dancing like crazy 75 Pop Shop, 292 Lafayette Street, New York, 1986–2005 Founder of project: Pop shop, actual store in Lafayette street in Ny (closed down in 2005) where he sold t-shirts, gadgets, ecc anything that was commodified by his own foundation, he did this for democratic dimension that these gadget allowed, people criticized him:” you’re selling yourself”, but he responded that he could make more money if he sold his art. Aware he was going to die (1989, of aids). Icons Series: Radiant Baby, 1990 He is mostly important for the visual language that he devlops. Anyone could relate to it Counterculture= politicised, protests against sth, opposes dominant culture vs subculture= emerges from bottom, not explicitly/necessarily political 12-12 10)Mutations and Transgressions: Post Human, Abject Art and the YBA’s Emerging in 1990s. POST-HUMAN ART(1990s) Contemporary issue: was about modifications of human beings, body modifications produced by meda and science. Connected with science fiction and media culture in general: it’s with the media that this idea started to emerge and be diffused. Curator Jeffrey Deitch curated 2 exhibits “artificial nature and post-human in 1992, both organized with collaboration with foundation in Greece. The latter presented in castello di rivoli. Consideration of change of body in everyday life: increase of gym related practices: more and more people start to go to gym in 1990s. blending of visual arts and pop culture: for example music videos (Chris Cunningam) Page of catalogue of Artificial Nature – graphic by Friedman, influenced by combinations of images and text (Barabara Kruger and artists from 80s). boxes and key words isolated, decontextualized to suggest new idea of artificality (fantasy, hyperhuman…). Not given for granted: in 2000s artworld people distanced from this: revival in handmade techniques (collages, ecc) However in 2010s we can talk about these topics again. Example: virtual reality = in fact first wave in 1990s. JEFFREY DEITCH was a curator and art advisor. He was recently the director of MOKA. He has his own private galleries called Deitch projects (New York and Losangels) –> important in endorsing new practices and involving downtown community He started as a curator working with Chris Johanson, wealthy man founder of Deste Foundation, here in Athens Deitch made his first exhibition Artificial Nature (1990). The exhibit was accompanied by a book that had a strong visual identity, designed by Dan Friedman. The actual book is a catalogue and an artist book. Many pages show images from different sources. There are references to mutations, modifications of the body. In the graphic work Friedman highlights some key work “Could it happen that the next generation will be our last generation of real humans? [...] Nature is less and less the mysterious nourishing force that emerged with the birth of the universe, and more and more something that we are re-creating ourselves” Jeffrey Deitch, Post Human, 1992 76 We are re-creating human nature: before Anthropocene -> new idea based on fact that nature in which we live almost entirely under control of human beings and artificial impact generated by mankind. This speculations on futuristic transformations of society in light of this idea in 1990s. JEFFREY DEITCH, page from the book accompanying the exhibition Post Human, 1992 Catalogues of this exhibition are not really catalogues showing artworks on display but similar to art books: choice by images > half from media and half from art. Artworks featured in exhibition as well as from previous decades. Media: from magazines, ads, television. Here: profile of Michael Jackson = form of alteration of human body (speculations on his surgeries and white skin) + pop culture. On these media images always messages, reflections, motto: here  writing in 1992, referred to 2022: prefigurates reality of today = robotic beings, ai robots = indistinguishable from humans “A new construction of the self will take hold as ever more powerful body-alterating techniques become commonplace. [...] The new construction of the self is conceptual rather than natural.” JEFFREY DEITCH, Post Human, 1992 Before transforming yourself literally with surgery you think abt this transformation and this is why this is prophetic of virtual beings: constructed according to set of paradigms and options. We invent a version of ourselves that we want to be our social media persona. Page from book of Post Human – 1992, he was aware of impact of technologies and transformation of art. Beginning of new world which has been naturalized > possibility of visual artists collaborating with scinetists MATTHEW BARNEY, Drawing restraint 2, performance, 1988 M. Barney was student of Yale to become visual artist. Made project: Drawing Restraint 2 – working within his studio. Not producing actual videos/paintings but performances and events documented with photos. Performances part of this project Drawing restraint = possibility of drawing after some type of effort in order to get the drawing. Ex. Him struggling and moving as athlete: ending point was to drawing more important than restraint. He was also football player, model and good looking boy. M. BARNEY, Drawing restraint 7, video still, 1993 This concept evolved over years and became cycle of works within he changed techniques. Content was same. Started using video: D R n. 7 = totally different from first one. Mythical grotesque creature in limousine painted in light blue colour. Many references we cannot connect: mythology, religion, media culture and sport. M. BARNEY, Drawing restraint 9, trailer, 2005– made in collaboration with Bjork, with whom they were marries. She made soundtrack for this film and personified a strange character. -viseo still: she performs enigmatic character, references to tea ritual from japan and extraction of oil and arctic ways ?? 27 min. Science fictional but no specific narrative: set of unclassifiable characters living with each other. Cremaster 4, video still, 1994 – another cycle from 1990s. Made from 1994-2002. Various episodes in random order no coherent horizontal narratives but references that can be mixed up as you wish. Based on idea of muscle that only males have which manages movement of testicles. It is 77 PAUL MCCARTHY, The Garden, 1992– by Mccarthy, installation at Deitch projects (gallery in NY). 1992, diorama= simulation of forest within which there are activities going on: mannequins, sculptural beings perfomring things you never want to see: guy lying on floor (you don’t want to know if he was abused/dead). Middl-aged guy having sexual intercourse with tree= perverse. Spaghetti Man, 1993– sculpture. Up is funny but then you see extremely long penis creating spiral on floor P. MCCARTHY, Pinocchio Pipenose Householddilemma, 1994 - Created videoinstallation made with props used in videos: developed scenography and same one presente din exhibit space. Inside space you see videos. Videos with many references to children, fantasies, stories borrowed from fairytales, Disney movies: here = pinocchio, but also santa. All interpreted in situations of torture or abuse. Here Pinocchio: one is doll the other is man dressed up. Hairy legs = already destabilizing. Tomato in his nose = abusing act. Santa chocolate shop – 1997, perverse santa making sth horrendous with tomato soup and chocolate, looks like people playing with escrements. Elf in the same way. Psychoanalytical dimension: sth you lived as child but stays there. “Abjection is above all ambiguity. Because, while releasing a hold, it does not radically cut off the subject from what threatens it – on the contrary, abjection acknowledges it to be in perpetual danger.” JULIA KRISTEVA, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, 1982 There is sth submerged in our subconscious that emerges one of a sudden MIKE KELLEY, Banana man, 1983– Mike Kelley:started in early 80s. This character is from character of children show, he used to watch. This was character he was never able to see cause never watched episode in which banana man was coming on stage, but his friends told him abt him and what he did. He recreates it as sth he never watches: kind of a clown, had own pockets filled with very very long things  he extracts from pocket where penis is, a fabric (sexual allusion trauma) Nostalgic Depiction of the Innocence of Childhood (detail), 1990– photo: man and woman having sex with stuffed puppets and toys. Man is performing artist, a friend of Kelley. Using food materials that are visual metaphors of blood/escrements. Ahh ... Youth!, 1991/2008 - Photo included in cover of Sonic Youth record titled Ah Youth! – inside: stuffed puppets he found in thrift stores and markets for cheap prices. Dirty, torn up, as if tortured, scars : suggest children who had them had had difficult childhood = psychoanalysis. Also his portrait Heidi , 1992 – with Paul mccarthy. Based on Heidi narrative: but in this case new  Heidi helping sb defecating. Inanimate puppet. Educational Complex, 1995– references to childhood. Architectural maquette in which building where he received indoctrination: school, church, house = impact on his formation as human being. 80 Kelley took his ow life ten years ago: moment you realize he never played. Was really working on his traumas and on his self with his art. “The ‘uncanny’ is that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar. [...] an uncanny effect is often and easily produced by effacing the distinction between imagination and reality, such as when something that we have hitherto regarded asimaginary appears before us in reality, or when a symbol takes over the full functions and significance of the thing it symbolizes, and so on. [...] It may be true that the uncanny is nothing else than a hidden, familiar thing that has undergone repression and then emerged from it, and that everything that is uncanny fulfills this condition.” — Sigmud Freud, The Uncanny, 1919 Uncanny = Sth that was familiar but has undergone repression ahs been forgotten by person living that traumatic event. What emerges from psychoanalysis: patient tells his story: emerging of events that may be suppressed. The Uncanny, book accompanying the exhibition curated by M. KELLEY, Sonsbeek ’93, 1993 - Sonsbeek 93 –> an art event of the Netherlands - Works of Hans Balman was a minor figure associated with surrealism: dolls of women presented in fragmented ways and recombined Kelley curated exhibition called Uncanny in 1993: greatest artist in 20th cent. Presented in Netherlands, featuring artists from different generations with psychoanalytical common look of uncanny. Sculptural objects referring to body + surrealist artists. Quote Double has become vision of terror: sth you don’t want to meet in daily life but is in nightmares and subconscious, moment of confrontation when you see it in real life. Alma Mahler Doll, fabricated by HERMINE MOOS, commissioned by OSKAR KOKOSCHKA, 1918 – artist from late 19th cent Austrian artist (Klimt, Schiele), expressionist, completely in love with Alma Mahler, originally wife od composer Mahler, but when he came back from WWI she didn’t want him. Kokoschka went to Paris to commission doll to this famous doll maker. Reminiscent as Alma. Described Alma as distorted version of the real one : socialite, elegant, beautiful. He described her as primitive being, similar to Australopithecus. Doll maker created doll similar to animal rather than true woman. Kokoschka threw a party and took out doll: hit it and destroyed it. Also maybe had sex with it. The Uncanny, exhibition curated by M. KELLEY, Tate Liverpool, 2004 - Sculptures in exhibition curated by Kelley – look like mannequins/creatures or replicas of human beings. Life size dolls ROBERT GOBER, Untitled (Leg), 1989 - leg of a man as if coming out of wall. In fiber glass: looks organic like real skin and real hair. Untitled – 1990, looks like torso of a man whereas in fact it is a bag filled with different materials. Painted nipples and implanted real human hair so it looked like real torso but was just bag, body without life. Wedding Gown in front of Hanging Man/Sleeping Man, 1989– 1989, allegory of marriage: wedding dress with hanging man next to hit. 81 Foster: discusses abject art “The abject touches on the fragility of our boundaries, the fragility of the spatial distinction between our insides and outsides as well as of the temporal passage between the maternal body (again the privileged realm of the abject) and the paternal law. Both spatially and temporally, then, abjection is a condition in which subjecthood is troubled, ‘where meaning collapses’; hence its attraction for avant-garde artists who want to disturb these orderings of subject and society alike.” HAL FOSTER, The Artifice of Abjection, 1996 You take subjectivity and put it into trouble. Fragmented identity as main condition of abject being CINDY SHERMAN, Untitled #191, 1989– installation with puppets with sex and anatomic dolls by Sherman. Reminds of alma mahler’s doll. Australopithecus female. Erotisised and fascinated bu repulsive in same time. Untitled #263, 1992 - 2 gentials, male and female put together as if work of a serial killer. Masks all around: used anatomical dolls (used by medicine students) as well as sex dolls. Untitled #261, 1992– also assemblage of body part and mannequins YOUNG BRITISH ARTISTS (1990s) Emerging in late 80s with works based on provocative issues borrowed from magazines. Movement presented as if it was a brand by a sponsor, Charles saatchi, owner of advertising agency, he promoted this group. Artworks based on sex, drugs, ecc. punk and surrealism references. Freeze, Yba (achronim= brand) and sensations = exhibits. • Art movement quintessentially British, late 1980s–1990s. • Works based on provocative issues and imagery: shock tactics • Recurring topics: death, sex, drugs • Supported by advertising agency owner CHARLES SAATCHI. Saatchi promoted the group. He paid for the production of some ot heir works • Often these artists ended up on UK tabloid press coverage • Use of materials drawn from mass media and mass culture • Conceptual works presented in a spectacular accessible form • Influenced by Surrealism and Punk • Major exhibitions: Freeze (1988), Young British Artists (1992) and Sensation (1997). • Major figures: DAMIEN HIRST, SARAH LUCAS, TRACEY EMIN Post human was about explore fantasies of body modifications with futuristic approach. Abject art psycoanalitical approach. YBA about shocking viewers DAMIEN HIRST, Enemy, 1988-1989 - Early work - Recurring themes: medicine, chemistr and pharmacy –> they make us look at us as patients Head of cow eaten up by flies. Worked with dead animals. Putting into display the actual circle of existence, nature, in which life and death part of same cycle. D. HIRST, A thousand years, 1990 - Interest in life questions 82 as if he’s trying to give life again to his partner. Detail: at the end of the day staff has to put back candys in a bowl  weighted. Untitled, 1991 – relational and emotional. Based on posters. Dynamic: pile of posters, you take it (normally you pay for it), it’s free, you can take more = you make work alive. No explicit references: in this case a photo of dark sea, as if taken from above, not specifici but in same time is personal and individual Untitled (Go Go Dancing Platform), 1991– performative, Go Go dancing is specific form of subculture7entertainment, takes place in gay clubs. Kind of gay version of disco dance on cubes: stimulate dancing of the people. Cube: reminds us of minimalism, howver it’s lightened up with light bulbs. It’s primary form but it is activated. Sometimes cube is activated by gogo dancer with his Walkman, stimulating erotic relationship, not always tho. DISCURSIVE SPACES Subgenre of relational aesthetic. Proper relational. RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA, Untitled (Pad Thai), Paula Allen Gallery, New York, 1990 Tiravanija is from Thailand, really connected with own thai roots, particularly from food. Food is central element = exhibitions in NY when he moved there, all earliest exhibits are abt convivial situations where he cooks with friends and people getting in shows are invited = pure relational moment of exchange involved, no formal art. Pots, gas, tanks, ingredients, people chatting and having fun. Untitled (Pad See-ew), 1990-2002– abt thai food/ food as instrument of social bonding/ empowerment for people to understand their own power as social creature  separate from Internet era: innocent technology in 1990s and early 2000s but here there is response to it. “[social interstice is a] term used by Karl Marx to describe trading communities that elude the capitalist economic context by being removed from the law of profit: barter, merchandising, autarkic types of production, etc. The interstice suggests other trading possibilities than those in effect within this system. This is the precise nature of the contemporary art exhibition in the arena of the representational commerce; it creates free area, and time spans whose rhythm contrasts with those structuring everyday life, and it encourages an inter-human commerce that differs from the ‘communication zones’ that are imposed upon us.” NICOLAS BOURRIAUD, Relational Aesthetics, 1998 what changes if I do what he does in my apartment/gallery. He says those are free areas, no networking system involved. There is a human commerce: economic dynamic at stake (emotional economy, friendship economy, not money one). Social interstice is space within capitalist economical context, cannot be classified. Suggests that contemporary art exhibition is a social interstice = super powerful nature of art exhibition space == how powerful art is to reconsider social dynamic. Might be a simulation but you are in space without conditions in that moment. LIAM GILLICK, (The What If? Scenario) Report Platform, 1996– Gillick started with installations like this, typical discursive space. British artist: relational aesthetic is international group of artists(asia, Europe, usa). What if is generally discussed within speculative narratives: for example science fiction. What if refers to possible alternative futures, what if we put upside down this world plays on small details of everyday, just changing perspective: what if=new ways of seeing. Here: report platform, covering portion of exhibition space: 2 bars holding it up, made of coloured glass (reminds minimalism: always point of reference in this cases). 85 L. GILLICK, Big Conference Platform Platform, 1998 - Big conference platform – idea of determining a space (not in minimalism). trying to visualize virtual space within space: where you could do sth, based on imagination. References to power system (institutions and corporations) = corporate visual language (interior design offices) L. GILLICK, The State Itself Becomes a Super Whatnot, Corvi-Mora Gallery, London, 2008– Impersonal design elements: phrases on the wall. Key words: what is the goal of these relations’ maybe form community? In fact, what artists did: design space where communities took space. Idea to suggest possibility to create new community. Utopia Station, curated by MOLLY NESBIT, RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJIA and HANS ULRICH OBRIST, 50th Venice Biannale 2003. Plywood structures designed by Liam Gillick and Rirkrit Tiravanija.– Tiravanija and Obrist. Project curated by Nesbit, at 15th Venice biennale. Series of platforms, benches designed by Gillick and Tira. Created shelves, benches not abt art, not supports for art but defining space, relational space, inside biennale, allowing people to sit and chat with each other. Maybe holding presentation for books but it was shape designed according to them = shift of focus on space not on art object fitting in the space: space suggested new behavior/attitude not look at artwork but it was space the artwork, and space is activated/legitimized as artwork by the audience. Empowering: power of participating  stimulate awareness in people: they have power to change social condition “An effect of this insistent promotion of these ideas as artists-as-designer, function over contemplation, and open-endedness over aesthetic resolution is often ultimately to enhance the status of the curator, who gains credit for stage-managing the overall laboratory experience [...] if relational art produces human relations, then the next logical question to ask is what types of relations are being produced, for whom, and why?” CLAIRE BISHOP, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics, 2004 She criticizes Bourriaud. There is sth wrong/ too pure/romantic in relational aesthetic. What is this community abt who is included or not included’ why are these relations produced? VIEWER AS SPECTATOR Vanessa Beecroft, Italian, part of relational aesthetic movement. Interested in representations of women’ bodies within fashion industry. Was and is reference for her. Started working in galleires, creating performances involving women, coming from fashion industry (models). They performed as if part of runway show but in kind of disfunctional situation. You see them walk but also stup and sit/stretch = not usually what happens. Normally wearing lingerie or naked. Lingerie offered by sponsors (she had connections: Gucci). Most of times: performes wear same clothes with same colour and have a wig = omogenous group as if sharing values and aesthetic elements, as if meant to be stereotypical beings to be reproduced endlessly. Analysis on Psychopatological condition emerging from this representation: eating disorders (connected with this fashion world + she suffered from these). VANESSA BEECROFT, VB26, Galleria Lia Rumma, Napoli 1997 VANESSA BEECROFT, VB35, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1998 – role of viewers: relation based on fact that these people are spectating, not interacting, touching/speaking with performers. They just watch. Audience is reminded that in daily life we are primarily spectators, we 86 look at spectacles: fashion is based on spectacles selling us clothes. Idea to promote a lifestyle a fantasy. CARLOS AMORALES, Amorales vs Amorales, 2000, Mexican artist. Interested in Mexican tradition: Mexican wrestling ancient: wrestlers wearing masks (you don’t know who they are) who perform invented characters, popular in Mexican society also for performing in movies and media culture in general. Interested in fantasy and artificiality, fictional side of wrestling = violent but artificial things (people jumping on others, punching with chairs = theatre). Identity can be invented through wrestling matches = goes to professional mask maker and commissions mask based on a character invented by him (amorales). Sometimes performs wrestler who fights with sb with his same mask = amorales vs amorales = fighting with another side of your identity and yourself, playful but psychoanalytical C. AMORALES, Nuevos Ricos, installation view, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, 2009 - Responsible for creation of record label based in Mexico city, producing musicians from Mexico city underground scene. Produced songs but also merchandising (gadgets, t-shirts, ecc.) = for hm not just about music/records but what was all around record label: the community, creating social space allowing real musicians to emerge and orginise love concerts. As if activity of traditional record label but in same time based on production of items that were also displayed in art sphere  ex. Kunsthalle in Kassel: installatioin of items produced by Nuevos Ricos label. REALITY VS REPRESENTATION When relational dimension is more implicit, you don’t really see it. PIERRE HUYGHE, The Third Memory, 1999– unique and complex, conceptual. Based on original real event: robbery in a bank (1970s). Robber was not a professional, got a gun, entered in the bank and threatened people. Tv troops filmed robbery from outside (it was a big news): interviewing people > heavily mediatized event. After few years a movie was made: “dog day afternoon” with Al Pacino.what he did was to investigate how much mediation process had produced a second reading of that event: first event was actual robbery, second one was narrative of movie, third event (memory) is what he created. He went to the bank robber (in right) and asked him to tell abt robber: moment when you understand memory of him was modified by mediatization of the event, not simply during robbery but of movie. Work was not relational but focused in contraposition btw reality and representation 8key for relationists) P. HUYGHE, Human Mask, 2014 - Made other complex narratives. Humanesque, dystopian science fiction. Monkey wearing girl mask. Decadent landscape of area in Japan after earthquake dog with pink leg wonders through the spaces of LACMA, Los Angeles, 2015– one of characters of his videos. LA in 2015. People going around installation and watching film with dog and turned around to find that dog = uncanny: nightmarish dog, exists in dystopian narrative we don’t expect to see but in fact we see it. Parreno, French, connected to Huigue. PHILIPPE PARRENO, No More Reality: La Manifestation, 1991– performance based on children protesting holding up signs saying we don’t want reality but fiction = idea of duality: fantasy vs reality. Moment in which fantasy, through internet and media, is becoming more real than the real. Overwhelming reality: has lost connection with real reality, fake and artificial one. P. PARRENO, Marquee, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2008 - Also created paltforms. This reminds of Gillick’s one. Marquee was name of a popular night club in NY. Made in front of 87 Most extreme work is Untitled from 2003. Act of prostitution, organized by her with support with gallery she was working with: abt selling a night with sex with a collector inside a hotel room. Collector paid a certain amount of money. Video was produced: cocktails and sex, in 5 copies: 1 to collector, 1 sold to private collector, 1 in museum collection. What it shows is they having intercourse. Act of prostitution but also as if she says “I can sell myself because all art is commodified, so also artist can be commodified, since I’m selling myself as art product”. “Every time we speak of the ‘institution’ as other than ‘us,’ we disavow our role in the creation and perpetuation of its conditions. [...] 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. Because the institution of art is internalized, embodied, and performed by individuals, these are the questions that institutional critique demands we ask, above all, of ourselves.” ANDREA FRASER, From a Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique, Artforum, 2005 She revives institutional critique but proposing new way based on fact we are institution and cannot escape this. This emerges also in Cattelan’s work. 1980s: design objects, in 1990s: typical autobiographica dimension. MAURIZIO CATTELAN, A Sunday in Rivara, 1991 - Here: work for exhibition in Piemonte in Rivara, where artists had to expose works. Nobody had seen him. Next morning they found set of blankets knot (remind of slapstick comedies) : like prisoner escaping from prison, as if not taking responsibility for showing artwork = artwork : escapre from showing Untitled, 1998 – Mascotte wearing Picasso mask in front of moma. People took photo with him. The perfect day ,1999– Interested in institutions: even gallery owners. Massimo de Carlo her, taped on the wall. He even collapsed after a while. The 6th International Caribbean Biennal, Saint Kitts Island, 1999 – never existed press releases circulating with list of artists participating. Nb knew where it was. Book of 6 editions. But photos: artists having fun on an island. 2011 he retired from artworld, simply editorial project with toilet paper (brand producing gadgets). In that occasion decided to take all artworks he had created and presenting them at Guggenheim for major retrospective in middle building as if hanging from ceiling = decontextualized from original setting as if trying to disqualifying hem as specific artowrks= suimply manufactured objects, presented as pieces of archive. This is so contemporary – Tino Sehgal, german artist organizing performances, normally never documented: illegal photo in this case. Comes from dance/theatre education = interested in relational dimension within disciplines. Involved everyday people performing in choreographies: here = museum guards of german pavillon of venice biennale welcome you when you enter pavillon and start dancing and singing song based on rhyme (allusions to contemporary art and need to be obbligations). In same time they are real guards = hidden movement within that community. 14-12 Art and Politics: Postcolonialism, Public Art e Art Collectives 90 Political art forms emerged in 1990s and 2000s = group material and aids crisis( = 1980s: new awareness of social potential of art). Postcolonialism and globalization. African American art. Pedagogic art questioning authority. GROUP MATERIAL AND THE AIDS CRISIS Collective formed in NY: interest. In social dimension of ar. Rented place in lower East Side (immigrant neighborhood). Same community of graffiti/punk but they are more politicised: not really political. In terms of embracing specific ideology but exploring social power of art and very idea of art and how it changes depending culture we come from. People’s choice: project 1991. Based on invitation left in mailboxes of people: bring object to Gallery that meant art for them. == people’s choice, what they meant was art. (comics, photos, toys)  difference based on education and culture we come from (ex. Within a tribe art = ritual function vs Italian culture. In some cases art as commercial products in other not). Works in public sphere. DA ZI BAOS – 1982, based on posters in public sphere, inspired by use of public posters in china and possibility to deliver social and political messages through them. DA ZI BAO – poster develops meta-language= reach a wider audience. Working with them was empowering for artists: started using them in 1980s, was a way to go vs idea of art object as unique piece/ authorship. Also posters have possibility to reach people from the streets: passersby who don’t know what art is but can recognize message and absorb it. In urban scape most of posters are ads of products: until 1980s when artists challenged this commercial dimension of public sphere (with graffiti art= action based on reclaiming right to own posters). This one was talking abt poster art= potential of art to address wider audience and empower it by stopping him being passive spectator but active participant = take responsibility for own life. Group Material organized town meetings. Here flyer ad of one of these meetings: on AIDS, 1988 (apex of aids rise). With different representatives: political side, journalist = each invited to develop a dialogue abt aids. Why does artists do that? Why not public administration? Because they didn’t care enough >> start to create new opportunities for confrontation on socio-political issues == expanding role of artist: supposed to be sb working in studio, now in streets, talking to people, dealing with these issues  maybe because nb cared or they could face issues in different way than public administration. Some wrote texts: “Our exhibitions and projects are intended to be forums in which multiple points of view are represented in a variety of styles and methods...We are not interested in making definitive evaluations or declarative statements, but in creating situations that offer our chosen subject as a complex and open-ended issue. We encourage greater audience participation through interpretation.” — Group Material, On Democracy, 1990 They embrace new mode of cultural production based on dialogue/democratic exchange with public with no hierarchy, everyone participates with same degree of importance. AIDS was huge problem in 1980 and following decades. Still no vaccine, but more medications. Today it has lost visibility (more in Africa than USA/Europe), but still considered pandemic. In 1980s it was uncontrollable and uncomprehensible. What people knew since beginning and thought it was abt was Lgbtq community = considered a “gay cancer”, first cases identified in San 91 Francisco. Affected a lot gay community but then spread in whole society. as it was connected with gay community = considered a punishment for what they did, exploited by religious community/ politics and media, according to their ideologies. 1981 was moment of its emergence, but Nixon first addressed this problem in 1984 = many had already died. This is why artists were first to act vs aids and call attention towards this dramatic phenomenon. Die-in demonstration by ACT UP, New York, late 1980s= organization devoted to fight vs aids. Here: Protest in front of FDA (food and drug administration) = part of government that takes control of drugs and medicines. Evolution of sit-ins (way of protest in 1960s: people sit down to occupy space and don’t move until removed): physical form of protest, but more theatrical= all laying down pretending they are dead. Sign moved behind head as if tombstone with inscription “rip killed by fda”. ACT UP also aware of importance of visual and graphics. Visual communication was important: they used and made own logos = triangle with slogan “silence= death”  triangle from concentration camps to identify gay people within that camp. They identified with this triangle with point upside down= flipped it as gesture of empowerment: appropriation but also points up. Silence= death  people not talking enough abt aids and the more they stayed silent the more they died. Let the Record Show, New Museum, New York, 1988 - ACT UP close to art world, many of them were artists, and this is why they invited to organize installation at New Museum in NY, back then was a non profit space. Feature: presence of window on street which made possible interactivity with public sphere and relation with passersby. Project for window: complex installation, slonga in neon lights(conceptual art/minimalism-Flavin; Nauman) + black and white photo in background= from Newrberg trial, organized by United Nations afte WWII, made to punish and condemn people involved in Nazism and conttentration camps. Foreguround: figures printed in cut-out cartons associated with sentence: quote from public speech/article they wrote= people representatives of various fields (priest, journalist..) = they all condamne lgbtq community for circulating aids and consider it punishment for this community. DONALD MOFFETT, He Kills Me, 1987– Moffett. In photo: Reagan + target next to him (appropriationist art: Kruger= message over appropriated photo/font/black and whit + colour; Noland/Johns; abstract art). Here message. This guy is killing me, not doing enough > political against American president GRAN FURY, The Government has Blood in Its Hands, 1989– poster by Gran Fury. Reproduced many times also globally with translation in different languages. Gran Fury was key presence in act up, collective of artists. Red hand print as if blooded. Again typical Kruger’s aesthetic and contraposition of images and text, but more direct political Kissing doesn’t kill, 1989 – for being displayed on side of buses/public transports/subaway platforms. 3 couples kissing: aids though to circulate just by kiss/touch hands  this didn’t kill. Shows also interracial couple and omosexual couple= deconstructing typical binary codes of what relationship could be AIDS Timeline, University of California Berkeley Art Museum, 1989 – organized year by year documenting evolution of aids and its discussion within media (newspapaer pages, magazine cover) + artistic reponse 92 Malinche, 1991 – portrait of woman with native American features and found natural elemtns to recontruct body, that has lost unity and made of fragments = metaphorical elements within original body parts. Coco Fusco was born in USA but origin in Cuba. Was theorist but also artist, wrote many publications and performed many installations. “Physical and cultural dislocation characterizes the daily life condition of many, if not the most, of the people of this world. Those in a position of privilege live this condition by choice, conducting international business, engaging with advanced technology, or playing with virtual reality games; others who are less privileged are compelled to live this sense of dislocation without respite as migrant workers, immigrants, exiles, refugees, and homeless people.” COCO FUSCO, Passionate Irreverence: The Cultural Politics of Identity, Whitney Biennial catalogue,1993 Essay she wrote for catalogue of Whitney biennal organized in Whitney museum in NY. Second name is museum of American art= idea it incarnates is to present American art/ important to American culture why it became place of controversy: not always American art: one of first museums to adapt to revolution proposing new considerations and visibility to artists non-white. In 1993 organised one of its biennals. Many artists were highly politicised, many activist groups and from different films (Spike Lee, film director). COCO FUSCO and GUILLERMO GÓMEZ-PEÑA, The Year of the White Bear and Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West, 1992–1994 - In collaboration with her then-husband. 2 of them stood in cage and performed 2 members of tribe “Amerindians” = generaically referred to possible tribe in caribbeans. Cage inside natural history museums not art history = were you see ancient civilization presented to tell you narratives on evolution >> they deliver more radical and political message to audience. Reference: form of entertainment in 19th cent called “human zoos”  based on possibility of abducting people from colonized countries (Asian, African, southamerican) and brign them in West, putting them in cages and displaying them as if animals. This is what she had in mind: wants to say few years before this was normal. More and more new art based on globalization. Cities on the Move, Secession, Vienna, 1997 (ape/taxi di Navin Rawanchaiku– deals with increasing globalization of artworls featuring Asian artists. Artist from india moving in front of Bollywood posters Evolution of contemporary art system: we can see similar transformation in more countries  biennals born in Asia at this time: • Gwangju Biennal, South Korea, since 1995 • Shangai Biennal, China, since 1996 • Taipei Biennal, since 1998 • Singapore Biennal, from 2006 … Gives idea on how important Biennale becomes expanded and globalized system, especially in Asian countries. 95 Seoul home, 1999 – by DO HO Suh, artist from south korea emigrated in USA to study. Always explored autobiograohical condition of sb migrating to another country. Here: installation of his own home in Seoul where he grew up, where he didn’t live anymore but kept present in his own memory/mind. Reconstructed it by elevating structure and cables from ceiling. Kind of ghost present: transparent fabric: it’s there but not theres + soft material: moving. Hanging it from ceiling: allows visitors to see home from different vewpoints (you never see home from bottom)  dreamy space, comes frm memory and previous identity that he tries to hold up and keep present Apartment A, Unit 2, Corridor and Staircase, 348 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011, USA, 2011-2014 – similar, reproducing apartment in ehich he lived. Here: where he lived when moved to USA. More details: handles, light buttons, however not functional + again transparent. External and internal are connected= domesticity is expanded, not intimate any more. you see people go out and in. AFRICAN AMERICAN ART African American community prefers to identify with this term tells us how kind of a challenge integrating in society is. Form of discrimination kept existing and characterizing USA even after abrogation of slavery in 1860. Apex: 1940s: public things divided for white and non white > people emerging in 50s and 60s vs this discrimination. But in any case even today it is still present. ADRIAN PIPER, Catalysis III, 1970- by Adrian Piper, one first ones, emerging in 60s and working until 80s in constisten way, then changed. Produced many artworks. Here: performance in Harlem (today it’s fancy but before: typical all African-american neighborhood). Went around in 25th street, central street in Harlem, wearing wet paint sign = typical sign when there is work of renovation on a wall/ entrances of subways. When there is this manufacturing job person puts this sign as warning not to touch it so you don’t get your hand dirty. She tries to establish distance bte her and who she encounters: if they touch her they can make their hands dirty. Also reference to colour: normally we think of white, but here she contraposes it with her skin’s colour. The Mythic Being: Still 10, 1973– video on another performance: stereotypical black man from 1970s wig with typical afro haircut, glasses, moustaches = provocative figure. Time where black males considered dangerous = stereotype perpetutated by mass media. Self-portrait exaggerating my negroid features, 1981– marks more and more somatic features that make her look as if more black than she already is DAVID HAMMONS, America the Beautiful, 1968– Hammons. Self portrait done by printing his own body covered with paint against the canvas. Problem: didn’t know how to do face  did one side at a time= why it looks smashed/flattened: reference to violent attempt. Also in contraposition with American flag conflictual dimension btw African American identity and difficulty of representing African American man body art: patriotic reference to American flag as if a compassing presence justifying any form of representation of identity Bliz-aard Ball Sale, New York, 1983– performance organized by him on side walk of city in NY: clothes hanging next to him (he was part of flea market where people sold stuff found in the trash, typically done by poor people). Selling snowballs with specific price based on size of the balls (small= cheap vs big) sell sth collapsible: would melt = meant to be ephemeral impermanent 96 artwork. Another reference to colour: whiteness of snow, association of whiteness with purity (in our unconscious) vs black= mystery and danger. Wilson working for issues related with slavery. Invited in Maryland Historical Society, very institutional archive related to American culture and evolution of USA. Normally on display you find small decorative objects. Within those objects he selected some part of archive that were never displayed: handcuffs used for keeping hands of slaves during slave marketing. FRED WILSON, Mining the Museum, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, 1992– title: institutional critique is evident in this work. Stroller + mask used by Ku Klux Klahn = association of people racist and Anti -integrational, during Jim Crowe Laws organized punishment activities vs African americans. When they went to ther homes wore these white clothes and masks holding candles (spiritual dimension – connection with Christian culture). Remote control: maybe related to Media that enticed this form of discrimination and diffused. KARA WALKER, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart, 1994– cara Walker became one of major ones dealing with slavery. Typical wallpaper, as if painting on a wall but made of tiny sheets of black paper that she cuts out and places onn the wall. Fairy tale dimension: figures remind you of another time (18th cent). But in fact what you see is: turture, abuse and rape. Woman with African American slave haircut is giving birth to children but doesn’t care= probably children of rape. K. WALKER, My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, Whitney Museum, New York, 1998 - Black silhouettes on a white wall - She creates panormas, panoramic view. They remind us of historical views in which we normally see beautiful landscapes or cityscapes, here we se narratives that are costantly mining that heritage K. WALKER, A Subtlety, Domino Sugar Factory, Brooklyn, 2014 Massive sculptural project inside dominco sugar factory, most important in USA. This was going to be demolished to build residential building in Williamsburg. She was invited to do sth with it. Somino produced sugar > produced by Slaves in plantations. Sculptures entirely made of white sugar, reminds of sphynx,but somatic features are typical of African American + surrounded by little boys made in black sugar meant to melt down (not the white one). K. WALKER, Fons Americanus, Tate Modern, London, 2019 Created work at tate modern in turbine hall. Huge fountain which reminds of typical Italian squares whereas in fact it is fountain is fountain in front of Buckingham Palace = reference to government and to immigration from Africa to Europe. Characters trying to survive with sharks going around trying to eat them + heroic figures like general standing there very proud. All African features, even woman performing as fountain PEDAGOGIC ART “For many decades, artists have attempted to forge a closer connection between art and life, referring to their interventions into social processes as art; most recently, this includes educational experiments. [...] The 2000s saw a marked rise of pedagogic projects undertaken by contemporary artists and curators. [...] [They] have become increasingly engaged in projects that appropriate the 97