http://blog.art21.org/2008/05/08/lari-pittman-craft/painter Lari Pittman on “craft”

The Art 21 blog has lots of good video clips. Check it out!

Our last quiz is next Thursday before the group discussion of final exam proposals

The quiz is 20 minutes for two identification slides. The quiz will cover material from the last quiz (conceptual photography), Downtown New

York in the ‘eighties, Jordana Saggese’s lecture on Jean Michel Basquiat, and material from today’s lecture. Be able to state succinctly key art historical points about the artwork. Review relevant readings.

Photography out of Conceptual Art

Why has photography moved from themargin to the center of contemporary

art in the last 40 years?

Installation view of the 1970 Information exhibition, MoMA NYC

Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965, wooden folding chair, photographic copy of a chair and photographic enlargement of a dictionary definition of a chair

Kosuth, One and Three Tables, 1965, Installation, wooden table, gelatin silver photograph, and photostat mounted on foamcore

Gilbert and George, The Singing Sculpture, 1970, photograph of performance(Gilbert Proesch, b.1943, Italy; George Passmore, b. 1942, England)

Gilbert & George with Ginkgo series,British pavilion Venice Biennale 2005

Bruce Nauman, Self-Portrait as a Fountain, from the series Photograph Suite, 1966-70, chromogenic color print

Denis Oppenheim, Reading Position for Second Degree Burn, 1970, Stage 1 and Stage 2, book, skin, solar energy, exposure time 5 hours, Jones Beach, New York, color

photography and collage, 216 x 152 cm

Denis Oppenheim’s Hanging Gardens, Sacramento airport

Ed Ruscha, Flying A, Kingman, Arizona, from Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1963, photographic book

Compare Ruscha’s vision of the American West with Ansel Adams’ sublime interpretation based on Romantic painting aesthetics. (Moonrise over Hernandez, NM. October 31, 1941) Adams made “Art” and did not work in other media. He was a modernist and not a postmodern conceptual artist like Ruscha.

Through his deliberate lack of style, Ruscha draws attention “to the estranged relationship of people to their rural environment, but without staging or dramatizing the estrangement.” (Jeff Wall)

Bierstadt, The Rocky Mountains, 1863

Adams, Grand Tetons and the Snake River, 1942

Ed Ruscha, The Old Trade School Building, 2005, synthetic polymer on canvas, 54 x 120 inches, from The Course of Empire Series, US Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2005

(bottom) Blue Collar Trade School, 1992, Synthetic polymer on canvas, 54 x 120

Robert Smithson, “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey,” 1967 from Artforum, vol.6, no.4, December 1967, pp. 48-51.

Robert Smithson (American Environmental Artist, 1938-1973), Spiral Jetty, 1970, Great Salt Lake. Earthwork

Anselm Kiefer, Heroic Symbol , page 9, 1969

Christian Boltanski (French, b. 1944) Jewish School of Grosse Hamburgstrasse in Berlin in 1939, 1991, moving photographs, fans, florescent lamps, dimensions variable

Christian Boltanski, The Reserve of Dead Swiss, 1990 (two different installations)

We hate to see the dead, yet we love them, we appreciate them

Boltanski

Hans Haacke, detail of Shapolsky et al, Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real Time System as of May 1, 1971, 1971, two enlarged photographs, 142 black and white photographs with typewritten data sheets, six charts and one explanatory panel

Bernhard and Hilla Becher (German, born 1931 and 1934 respectively) Conceptual (typological) photography

(left) Gas Tanks, 1963 (right) Water Towers, 1980, 9 b/w photographs mounted on board, 62inH overall

Thomas Struth (Germany, b.1954, student of Bechers) Shinju-ku (Skyscrapers), Tokyo, 1986

(right) Ferdinand-von-Schill-Strasse, Dessau, 1991

Candida Höfer,(Germany, 1944, student of Bechers) (left) Stiftsbibliothek Klosterneuburg III, 2003, C-print, 68 in. H

Ca' Rezzonico Venezia II, 2003, C-print, 74 in. Width

Thomas Ruff (German, b.1958), House #9 II, 1991, 72 in. Hone of series taken in early morning, apartment blocks in Eastern Germany

Thomas Ruff, (left) Portrait, 1989, 63in. H(center and right) from Portrait series, 2001, conceptual typologies

“absolute objectivity” like passport photos except for scale

'... Like archetypal passport photos... young people with dead eyes and empty faces.' Ruff

Martha Rosler, detail of The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems, 1974, 45 black and white photographs mounted on 24 mat-board panels, each panel 25 x 56 cm

Martha Rosler (US, 1943) Cleaning the Drapes, from series, Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful, 1967-72

Allan Sekula, detail of Aerospace Folktales, 1973, 51 black and white photographs in 23 frames, 56 x 72 cm each, three red canvas director’s chairs, three CD players and

speakers, three simultaneous unsynchronized audiotape recordings: duration 17 min, 21 min and 23 min, edition 1 of 2

Produces Berthold Brecht’s “alienation effects” that make viewers continually aware that they are looking at a representation. Participants are highly conscious of the camera. Sekula consciously pretends a (fictional) objectivity

Eleanor Antin, from The King of Solana Beach, 1974, Eleven black-and-white photographs, mounted on board with two text panels, 6 x 9 inches each

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/antin/index.html

"I took on the [persona of the] King, who was my male self. As a young feminist I was interested in what would be my male self…he became my political self."

— Eleanor Antin

Eleanor Antin, Carving: A Traditional Sculpture, 1972, grid of 144 photographs of her naked body during a month of crash-dieting. Spoof (serious humor) on dieting obsession of post-sixties US women’s culture

Eleanor Antin, 100 Boots: (top) 100 Boots Move On; (bottom) Tree BootsConceptual series of 51 pictures of black rubber boots photographed in various locations from coast to coast across the United States from 1971 to 1973.

Cindy Sherman (US, b.1954) Untitled Film Still #27, 1979, black and white photograph

Cindy Sherman, (left) Untitled Film Still #37, (right) UFS #13, 1979

(left) Cindy Sherman, Untitled #188, Chromogenic color print, 43 ½ x 65 ½,“ 1989 (right) Hans Bellmer (German Surrealist photographer, 1902-1975) 'Poupee' in Hayloft, 1935-1936

Annette Messager (French, b. 1943) My Vows (Mes Voeux), 1988-91, gelatin-silver prints under glass and string, dimensions variable

detail

Annette Messager, My Vows, 1990. Gelatin silver prints and string. Dimensions vary with installation, approx.: 140 x 73 inches. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2007 purchase

Catholic votives

Messager, Casino, French Pavilion,2005 Venice Biennale prize for best pavilionkinetic installation

The point here is that conceptual artists are not “photographers” or “installation artists” or “painters,” etc. After the “conceptual turn” of the late 1960s and early ’70s artists have worked in whatever medium best says what they want to say. Interaction (dialogue) is key in such work, but it was of little if any interest to the late modern Abstract Expressionists.

Annette Messager installation from 2001-2 called “articulés/desarticulés,” in which animals and limbs rise and fall while a stuffed dead cow is dragged around the room. “The idea is to confront movement and immobility,” she said, “but people only see the movement.” This installation is from the 2007 retrospective at the Pompidou Center in Paris

FYI - Christian Boltanski and Annette Messager have been partners since 1971

(left) Sherrie Levine (US Postmodern Appropriation artist, b.1947) Untitled (after Alexander Rodchenko: 9), 1987 (right) Alexander Rodchenko (Russian Constructivist, avant-garde modernist), 1891-1956), Portrait of Mother, 1924

Postmodern “Appropriation” art challenged modernism’s key values of “originality” and “aura.” Key text: Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

(left) Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans, 1981 – a photograph of reproduction of a photograph(right) Walker Evans, Hale County, Alabama, 1936. (Or is it the other way around?)Key text: Rosalind Krauss: “The Originality of the Avant-garde and other Modernist Myths” Post-structuralism – postmodern revision of modern theory

Jeff Wall (Canada, b. 1946) Installation view of the exhibition Documenta 8, Kassel, Germany, 1987, showing The Storyteller, cibachrome transparency, lightbox, 1986

Jeff Wall, Picture for Women, 1979, transparency in light box, 163 x 229 cm

(left) Jeff Wall, Picture for Women, 1979compare (right) Edouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, oil on canvas, 1882

Interactive gaze and complicity of viewer – art about art and art theory

The “painting of modern life” of 19th century avant-garde as defined by poet-critic Charles Baudelaire (French, 1821-67). Retrieval of the interactive subversive intent of mid-19 th century Realist painting.

Hokusai, Ejiri in Suruga Provincec.1831-3, woodblock print from series, 36 Views of Fuji, 26 x 38 cm

Jeff Wall, A SuddenGust of Wind (After Hokusai),transparency in light-box, 1993,229 x 377 cm

Art about art – self consciousness

Jeff Wall, After Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, The Preface, 1999-2001, cibachrome transparency, aluminum light box, 76 x 106 x 10 in. Literary source: Invisible Man (1952) by African-American novelist, Ralph Ellison (1913-1994)

Allan Sekula (US. b. 1951), Panorama. Mid-Atlantic, 1993, plate 28, from Fish Story, 105 color photographs, 26 text panels, 2 slide

sequences featured in globalist Documenta 11, 2002

“The old myth that photographs tell the truth has succumbed to the new myth that they don’t.” - Sekula

Return to social engagement of documentary photography

Sekula, Detail, Inclinometer: Mid-Atlantic, 1993, from Fish Story, 1987-95, “Middle Passage,” chapter 3, plate 27

A “detailed account of the general political and economic transformation brought about by the globalization of late capitalist rule.”

- Benjamin Buchloh

Sekula, Third Assistant Engineer Working on the Engine while Underway, 1993, from Fish Story, “Middle Passage,” chapter 3, plate 31

Sekula, Conclusion of the Search forThe Disabled and Drifting Sailboat HappyEnding, 1993, from Fish Story, “MiddlePassage,” chapter 3, plates 32-4

Felix Gonzalez-Torres (American b. Cuba 1957- NYC 1996), Untitled, 1991. As installed for The Museum of Modern Art, New York "Projects 34: Felix Gonzalez-Torres“ May 16 - June 30, 1992: 2 of 24 locations throughout New York City

"EMERGING WOR(L)DS": June 2007 - October 2008: http://www.tina-b.com/content.php?akce=section&lang=en&season=2007&id=12

Gonzalez-Torres represented the United States at the 2007 Venice Biennale

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, (left) Perfect Lovers, 1987-90, two wall clocks; (right) Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), 1991; Multicolored candies, individually wrapped in cellophane. Dimensions variable. Candies are meant to be consumed by viewers (metaphor of Ross’ death by AIDS) Exhibition staff is instructed to regularly replenish candies to ideal weight: 175 pounds.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres. (American, born Cuba. 1957-1996), "Untitled" (Death by Gun),1990. Stack of photo-lithographs: 9 x 44 15/16 x 32 15/16" at ideal height. Museum staff is instructed to replenish stack as visitors take them.

Stack of prints uses Minimalist formal vocabulary. Print appropriates 450 photosand statistics from one week of US news media

Zhang Huan (China, b. 1965), To Raise the Water Level in a Fishpond by One Meter, 1997, performance documentation (detail), August 15, 1997, unemployed Beijing workers, Chromogenic print