INSTALLATION ART
•
Temporary
•Indoors
•Socially-Engaged
Since he became a doctor in 1974, Laib has worked exclusively as an artist using milk, stone, beeswax, rice and pollen as his main mediums. Through his own meticulous collection process Laib is no longer separate from the world of nature but a participant in its organic process. His installations strive to maintain this organic and natural cyclical process.
Laib collects pollen from the fields around his home and stores the particles in glass jars, some of which is a collection of over 15 years worth of collecting. For instance, dandelion has very little pollen and is blossoming only for about four to six weeks, so the artist can only collect a small jar of dandelion pollen during one summer. Other pollen collections include buttercup, hazelnut, pine and moss. The artist then shapes these vibrant colors into cones, or sifts them through muslin directly onto a bare stone or concrete floor, as in Pollen from Hazelnut (1992), creating a brilliant field of yellow and orange. The cyclical nature of collecting, constructing, and then recollecting and cleaning the pollen at the end of an exhibition is key to the artists’ process.
This process is also emphasized with Laib’s “Milkstone” pieces, which he began making in 1975. The act of pouring the milk into the hollow is a participatory ritual: Laib performs the initial pouring and then the museum staff empty the stone at the end of each day, clean it, and refill it the next morning.
IMAGES:
- Untitled. 1998. Pollen from hazelnut. Height: 2 ¾ inches
- Pollen from Dandelion. 1997. Five jars of pollen.
- Milkstone. 1988. Marble and milk. 2 ½ x 23 1/2 x 30 ½
Here milk is used to create the illusion of a solid object. The marble slab is a stone with a shallow depression filled with exactly enough milk to create a smooth surface.
Dread addresses questions that are part of the public discourse from the standpoint of the oppressed by exposing the misery society causes for so many people. Dread makes art in which people see themselves and their world in a way that empowers others to change it.
IMAGES:
- What is the Proper Way to Display the US Flag?” 1998.
The installation is comprised of: a photomontage (the montage consists of pictures of South Korean students burning US flags holding signs saying 'Yankee go home son of bitch' and flag draped coffins in a troop transport; text printed on the photomontage reads "What is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag?"), books (originally with blank pages) on a shelf, ink pens, a 3'x5' American flag on the ground and an active audience. The audience was encouraged to write responses to the question "What is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag?" As they did so, they had the opportunity to stand on the flag as they wrote their response. When this work has been displayed, thousands of people filled hundreds of pages with responses. Many of those stood on the flag as they added their comments to the work.
- Lockdown. 2000 – present. 5 gelatin silver prints, sound, text
Over the last two years, Scott has been photographing and interviewing prison inmates, recording their stories in both audio and written form. His sensitive approach elicits a sense of compassion for his subjects, ensuring that we do not overlook the fact that these are human beings.
- The Blue Wall of Violence. 1999. 8’ x 16’ x 4’
FBI Targets, wallet, house keys, 3-Muskateers Bar, Squeegee, coffins, police batons.
Installation that addresses police brutality. It focuses on the object which the police "mistook" for a dangerous weapon when they shot an unarmed person. The project consists of several elements: On the wall are six actual FBI silhouette targets which police use for shooting practice. Protruding from each of these is a cast of an arm. In each hand is an object-wallet, house keys, 3 Musketeers bar, squeegee, etc. In front of this is a coffin and in front of the coffin are three police batons which each strike it every 10 seconds with a loud penetrating bang.
- Harmed and Dangerous. 1993. 8’ x 10’ x 8’ consists of four 20"x20" Cibachrome.
Photos of armed Black and Latino men and women are placed on the wall and a "prison booth" approximately 4' from it standing on the floor. The "prison booth" is what you might find if you visited someone in prison-you are separated from them by a wall and a thick Plexiglas window. To speak with them you must sit at the booth and each pick up a phone. When you pick up either phone in Harmed and Dangerous, you will hear someone speaking about violence. The message plays in a continuous loop, thus the voices that the viewer hears depends upon the position of the tape at the time they pick up the receiver.
- Enduring Freedom. 2001. 1’ x 17’w x 11’d.
Installation is s a response to the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the US led war against Afghanistan. Drawing on the displays of public grieving and memorials for those killed in New York, this installation presents a memorial for the thousands of Afghans killed in the war. Upon each “grave” is a torn out section of a newspaper article that gives brief but specific detail about Afghan civilians killed by US bombing.
* Above descriptions copied from: http://dreadscott.home.mindspring.com
Further Reading:
Dubin, Steven C. Arresting Images: Impolitic Art and Uncivil Actions. Routledge, 1992.
Michael Landy destroyed all his possessions - every single one – in fourteen days and cost approximately £100,000. It was staged at a recently vacated store and commissioned by The Times and Artangel.
The artist spent three years cataloguing the 7,006 separate items that would be destroyed during this piece. Each object was numbered, separated into a category and included in a long list displayed on the walls. The smaller objects were bagged in plastic and placed in yellow crates that snaked along 160 meters of conveyor belt around four dismantling bays. Landy and his team of operators, all clothed in industrial blue overalls, systematically reduced each item down to its basic components. The pieces were then shredded or granulated and bagged up.
Landy’s “production line of destruction” drew in both astonished shoppers and gallery goers. They came to see the latest Artangel project and to be shocked by Landy’s destruction of, among other things, his irreplaceable collection of artworks, his father’s sheepskin coat and even his beloved Saab. A unique insight into the artist was given to visitors who read the listed items or peered into the crates clunking round the mechanical conveyor belts.
IMAGES:
- Break Down. Two Weeks in 2001, London’s C&A department store, Conveyor belt, list
Each item was placed in one of ten categories: art, clothing, electrical equipment, furniture, kitchen contents, leisure, perishables, reading material, studio contents and motor vehicle. This process employed a team of operators who each day set about separating each item into its basic elements – metal, paper, wood, plastic or ceramic and so on, finally shredding or granulating them. The result was more than 5.75 tons of material, which was not eventually archived, preserved or exhibited or even sent to market, as might be expected from such a seemingly narcissistic act. Rather, it was deposited in landfill sites
- Art Rubbish, January, 2010. 6 weeks. South London Gallery.
Created environments that were also comments on life and death. Gathered objects and articles based largely on autobiographical imagery, but also projected collective experiences, often dealing with anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.
IMAGES:
- Monument Odessa, 1991. Photographs, lights, tin boxes, wire, 1118 x 48 x9 in
Called the photographic installations “monuments.” Included a wild tangle of electrical wires, connected to electric lamps placed near the small black and white photographed faces of small children. Boltanski’s use of old objects does not allow for the subject matter to be dismissed as a fiction, but rather as ghostly records of real missing people.
- Reserve 1989. ½ ton used closed clothes
Clothes heaped and strewn from wall to wall filling a room with no path left to walk on. The clothes were of a European style – a musty smell and small sizes – indicated missing children from WWII. Boltanski was aware that the Nazis collected the possessions of deported Jews for the purpose of creating a museum of an extinct race and stored them in a “reserve.”
Video:
Boltanski: Christian Boltanski.
Produced by RM Arts this video surveys Christian Boltanski's Christian Boltanski. Running Time: 53 minutes.
Barbara Kruger has a background as a graphic designer at Mademoiselle and House and Garden, and has since been commissioned to design covers for numerous magazines, from Esquire and Newsweek to The New York Times Book Review. She has also created posters, the backdrop for the Rage Against the Machine 1997 tour, a series of lenticular-screen pieces (1982 Documenta), installations amped by ominous voice soundtracks. Kruger’s public work, has consisted of placards on transit shelters, mosaics in lobby floors, quotations (by Franz Kafka, Mary McCarthy and Malcolm X) emblazoned across (stopped) buses, quasi-political cartoons on The New York Times op-ed page.
Kruger is best known for her provocative black and white photographic images, banded with red stripes of text bearing bold messages, delivered in her trademark Futura Bold Italic. These signature images, produced in the 1980s, consistently raise questions about values, taste, materialism, war, abortion, racism, censorship, bigotry and power.
IMAGES:
- Barbara Kruger. 1991. Mary Boone Gallery
"All that seemed beneath you is speaking to you now. All that seemed deaf hears you. All that seemed dumb knows what's on your mind. All that seemed blind sees through you. All that seemed silent is putting the words right into your mouth."
- Love for Sale. Museum of Modern Art at Heide. 1994.Mary Boone Gallery
Giant multisensory arena waged a contest between the sexes. Inflammatory statements plastered the walls, ceilings and floors. Recorded sounds of a stadium heard behind a male voice agitating a crowd. TEXT:
“How dare you not be me?”
“Your inability to empathize. Your eroticized combats.”
“Your aesthetics of virginity. Your image of imperfection. Believe like us.”
“Your selective memory. Think like us.”
Faith was introduced to Judy Chicago in the early 70’s and together they created the new "Women's Class" in the art department at Fresno State. She was also deeply involved in Womanhouse and collaborated with others to create two rooms and two performance pieces.
IMAGES:
Consists of framed, certificate-like (with drawing and text) actual sperm donor profiles and sperm donor fitness tests obtained from fertility clinics.
- Wall of Wounds 1996, 100 prints. UC Riverside, CA.
Installation of 100 6” x 6” Rorschach print and painted “wounds.” This piece was an ironic comment on our public victim culture where each person is eager to proclaim his/her own wound, inviting the viewer to acquire a personalized wound—a unique, original, hand-painted wound, signed by the artist. Get your wound here cheap, only $15! What a bargain! The fluid, repulsive beauty of the small vulnerable paintings is irresistible. Imagine! your own wallet-sized wound.
Each wound has a title drawn from a seemingly inexhaustible list of categories: patriotic wound, political wound, infectious wound, deep wound, phallic wound, flesh wound, soul wound, heart wound, false wound, faith wound, bullet wound, knife wound, urban wound, tropical wound, unhealable wound, perpetual wound, jagged wound, self-inflicted wound, family wound, congenital wound, nomadic wound, love wound. Believe your wound. Choose your wound. Pick your wound. Lick your wound. Bless your wound. Curse your wound. Feed a wound. Starve a wound. Embrace your wound, etc. etc.
“I think of my visual work as a kind of “applied theory” based in research about contemporary social and cultural phenomena and ideas. A recent project, Wall of Wounds, is an example of such “applied theory.” “Show your wound!” is an imperative which seems to be the motivation furling TV and radio talk-show entertainment all across America today. Wall of Wounds seeks to comment on this situation using sensuous printed stains and marks on skin-thin tissue paper to restore affect in opposition to the numbing spectacle of pain. At the same time it draws attention to the consumption aspect of the talk-show phenomenon, by inviting the viewer to acquire a personalized wound. I am currently very interested in random and involuntary processes and in the ideas they give me for consciously manipulated and developed images.”
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/fwild/faithwilding/
Further Reading:
Faith Wilding and Critical Art Ensemble, Notes on the Political Condition of Cyberfeminism.
The subject of Fred Wilson’s work is museums. He travels to museums across the country and reconfigures displays to make original interpretations to reveal hidden biases and ideologies. To date he has worked with more than twenty institutions.
IMAGES:
- Metalwork 1793 – 1880. 1991.
Selections from the Maryland Historical Society
Silver vessels in Baltimore Repousse style, 1830 – 80, maker unknown.
Slave shackles, c. 1793 – 1872, maker unknown (probably Baltimore)
- Cabinetmaking 1820 – 1960. 1992.
Selections from the UC Berkley Art Museum
Whipping post surrounded by ornate wooden chairs.
- Road to Victory. Online Project 3/14 – 6/1 1999
http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/1999/wilson/
BOOKS:
Maurice Berger, Fred Wilson Objects and Installations 1979 – 2000. Baltimore: Center for Art and Visual Culture. 2001.
Multimedia video installation artist who orchestrates experiences between the physical, mental, emotional and psychological aspects of perception. Camera used as an extension of the body. Use of electronics adds sounds, light and an overall environment to often opposing forces: light and dark, spiritual and physical, life and death.
IMAGES:
- The Sleepers. 1992, video installation. Museum of Contemporary Art, Montreal.
Bodies submerged in water hang limp, suspended in space in a five-channel installation. Different images appear on cloth screens and on the polished granite slabs on the floor beneath the screens.
A man repeatedly rises from the water, in hales deeply and sinks back under water.
Seemingly peaceful images (flowers, tomatoes, sky, etc.) erupt in violent sound and movement.
PUBLIC ART
•Outdoors
•Sited
•Socially-Engaged
•Temporary
Wodiczko’s goal is to confront contemporary society with its own tribulations. His pieces involve the projection of images onto public or commercial buildings as social critiques. The ephemeral projection pieces last only a night or two and force the viewer to reexamine the function of architecture. Wodiczko cites the following criteria as being keys to successful projections the attack must:
1.Be unexpected.
2.Be frontal.
3.Come at night when the building is undisturbed by its daily function, and can act as an unmasking and revealing the unconscious of the building during its sleep.
Krzysztof Wodiczko said this of his projections. "My work reveals the contradiction of the environment and the events actually taking place there. It is to do with politics of space and the ideology of architecture. City centers are political Art Galleries."
IMAGES:
- Mexican Worker. Feb. 23 and 24, 2001. Theatre of Tijuana.
Theme: undocumented Mexican workers who risk their lives to cross into the United Sates in search of jobs. Mexican Worker with his hands clasped behind his head, as if being arrested by the INS.
- Tijuana Participant. (detail)
In preparation for the projection, the artist conducted almost one year of workshops with the participants, working with the help of two organizations oriented towards helping women -Factor X and Yeuani. The testimonies focused on a variety of issues including work related abuse, sexual abuse, family disintegration, alcoholism, and domestic violence. These problems were shared live by the participants, in a public plaza on two consecutive nights, for an audience of more than 1,500. This was his first “live public intervention.”
- Cuantos? (How much?) January, 1991. Madrid, Spain.
Theme: a pair of death hands grasps an M-16 machine gun and a gas pump nozzle. The top of the arch (a Franco Spanish civil war monument) asks “How much?” and was projected a few days after the start of the first Gulf War.
FRANCIS ALYS b. 1959, Antwerp (Belgium)
On April 11th 2002, 500 volunteers were called in order to form a line to move a sand dune situated in the surroundings of the city of Lima, Peru, to form a single line at the foot of a giant sand dune and moved it four inches using shovels.
IMAGES:
- When Faith Moves Mountains, 2002
A project by Francis Alÿs, collaborating with Rafael Ortega and Cuauhtémoc Medina.
http://geocities.com/francisalys/11abril/index.html
http://www.postmedia.net/alys/alys.htm
AGNES DENES b. 1938
“My decision to plant a wheatfield in Manhattan instead of building just another public sculpture grew out of a long-standing concern and need to call attention to our misplaced priorities and deteriorating human values.
Manhattan is the richest, most professional, most congested, and without a doubt, most fascinating island in the world. To attempt to plant, sustain, and harvest two acres of wheat here, wasting valuable real estate was the paradox I had sought for the calling to account. The idea of wheatfield is quite simple. One penetrates the soil, places one’s seed of concept, and allows it to grow, expand, and bear fruit. That is what creation and life is all about. It’s all so simple, yet we tend to forget basic processes. What was different about this wheatfield was that the soil was not rich loam but dirty landfill full of rusty pipes, boulders, old tires and overcoats.” ~ Agnes Denes, “Wheatfield – A confrontation” (1982), Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 1992, 118.
IMAGES:
- Wheatfield, a Confrontation, 1982. Manhattan, USA
She planted a two-acre field of wheat in a vacant lot in downtown Manhattan. The artwork yielded 1,000 lbs. of wheat in the middle of a New York City to comment on "human values and misplaced priorities.” The harvested grain then traveled to 28 cities worldwide in "The International Art Show for the End of World Hunger" and was symbolically planted around the globe.
- Tree Mountain – A Living Time Capsule. 11,000 People, 11,000 Trees, 400 Years. 2002, Finland.
This massive earthwork and reclamation project involved the construction of a "mountain" on the site of an old gravel quarry and the planting, by volunteers from different countries, of 11,000 Finnish Pine trees in an intricate pattern. The volunteers were then each given inheritable certificates (valid for 400 years). The forest was dedicated in June 1996 by the president of Finland, and will be maintained for 400 years to hold back land erosion, provide a home for wildlife, and create interaction between individuals. The trees were planted according to an intricate mathematical pattern derived from a combination of the golden section and sunflower/pineapple pattern designed by the artist. Measuring 420 meters long, 270 meters wide, 28 meters high and oval in shape it was planted in June 1996 in Ylöjärvi, Finland, where people from around the world were invited to plant a tree which bears their name and those of their respective heirs and descendants for the next 400 years. Tree Mountain is international in scope and unparalleled in duration. It is an undertaking dedicated to benefit future generations with a meaningful legacy.
Von Tiesenhausen is an eco-artist who allows his pieces to both absorb and be absorbed by the environment. At first recognizable by the intrusion in the landscape, over time their profiles shift closer to the contours of the land, or in the case of the ice-works, disappear altogether.
IMAGES:
- The Watchers, 1997 – 2002.
The five life-size wooden figures, sculpted with a chainsaw and blackened by the flames of a Prairie bonfire.
Von Tiesenhausen drove the five statues in the back of his ’84 Ford pickup to every Canadian province and territory. They passed over three oceans and the Northwest Passage. It was a five year journey that ended on Saturday, April 13, 2002 at midnight. Examples of settings: Assembled on a raft in a lake, on a Canadian Coast Guard ship in Greenland and atop a roof.
JENNY HOLZER b.1950, Ohio
“I have shown things in galleries and museums in the last few years, but my main activity and my main interest is still the public work. From the beginning, my work has been designed to be stumbled across in the course of a person'’ daily life. I think it has the most impact when someone is just walking along, not thinking about anything in particular, and then finds these unusual statements….” ~ Jeanne Siegel, excerpts from “Jenny Holzer’s Language Games: Interview,” Arts 60, no. 4 (December1985)
IMAGES:
Examples: “Children are the cruelest of all.”
“Children are the hope of the future.”
“Everyone’s work is equally important.”
“Exceptional people deserve special concessions.”
“…I wanted to show that truths as experienced by individuals are valid. I wanted to give each assertion equal weight in hopes that the whole series would instill some sense of tolerance in the onlooker and reader; that the reader could picture the person behind each sentence believing it wholeheartedly.
My painfully sincere intentions to instill tolerance via the “Truisms” were just as described. The other thing I was going for was the absurd effect of one truism juxtaposed against the next one. I hope it would be adequately ridiculous….”
Jeanne Siegel, excerpts from “Jenny Holzer’s Language Games: Interview,” Arts 60, no. 4 (December 1985)
*See more on Holzer in pending Web Art section
Participatory public art works inviting the viewer to explore their perception of the local environment.
IMAGES:
- Reflections on Arroyo Seco
A PUBLIC INVITATION:
Come and look, stop and listen, sit down and dream.
Secluded in a grove of willows, this pond beckoned me. I decided I would spend a day here, looking carefully, reflecting, recording what I saw photographically.
What happens when we sit down and look closely?
At moments my mind wandered off, dreaming. When I first visited this site there was a much heavier flow of water. I imagined casting my wishes into the water and the water carrying them away. I would mold my wishes in the form of small boats. They would probably clump in the thicket of cattails blocking the southern end of the pond. A fitting metaphor for Los Angeles, I thought--too many dreams confined into too small a basin.
Water cleanses; water heals. What do we want to float away in the flood control channel? When I returned to spend a day reflecting upon the water, the pond was drying up. It was early September and the rain had not fallen for months. Instead the pond was filled with trash, unable to cleanse itself--discarded dreams that would not wash away.
I invite you to have your own experience at the site. What does the water hide and what does it reveal? The site provides contrasting vision--a riparian pond nestled next to stark concrete, under majestic bridges designed to provide a park-like atmosphere for motorists.
You may need to look closely to find animal life in the viewers. As I sat, I noticed more and more small details, but I no longer heard the din of the traffic overhead What do you choose to perceive and what do you choose to ignore?
When this pond dries, water still flows downstream in the adjacent flood control channel. Does the channel distance us from seeing a reflection of our choices? What are we choosing to preserve and what are we choosing to discard?
If we see the water as a precious resource, as our own reflection, what can it teach us?
Record your reflections in the book if you wish.
Further Resources:
http://communication.ucsd.edu/rwallen/godecoart.html
Tunick temporarily installs hundreds of arranged nude human bodies at selected public locations for photographic documentation.
“Sometimes I feel like I am an explorer,
sometimes I feel like I am a criminal,
sometimes I feel like I am an artist.
I create my work under very stressful conditions.
While a lot of work done by contemporary artists
is very controversial,
I feel that my nudes are not controversial.
The controversy lies in the fact that
I am using the city as my landscape.
The conditions in which I create my work
are tense, crazed and unpredictable.
My models are urban adventurers.
I assist them in seeing the world in a different way.
I create dreams and I create memories
that they will hold with them forever.” Tunick
IMAGES:
- Barcelona. June 9, 2003. Maria Cristina Ave. 7,000 Spaniards posed for 90 minutes in 15 degree C weather.
- Melbourne 2. 2001. Melbourne Royal Gardens. 4,000 people.
A British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist producing site-specific sculpture and land art situated in natural and urban settings. He lives and works in Scotland.
Images:
PUBLIC ART
•Outdoors
•Sited
•Socially-Engaged
•Permanent
Best known for the quintessential, controversial public art project "Tilted Arc," but Serra has also produced over 150 steel sculptures and endless drawings.
IMAGES:
- Tilted Arc, Federal Plaza, New York. 1981. Steel. 12’ x 120’ x 2 ½”
- 4-5-6. 2000. Forged steel, 47 1/4" x 57" 90 tons. Paul J Schupt Sculpture Garden, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine.
“…..I think that if a work is substantial, in terms of its context, then it does not embellish, decorate, or point to specific buildings, nor does it add on to a syntax that already exists. I think that sculpture, if it has any potential at all, has the potential to create its own place and space, and to work in contradiction to the spaces and places where it is created in this sense. I am interested in work where the artist makes an “anti-environment” which takes its own place or makes its own situation, or divides or declares its own area.” ~Serra
Richard Serra, “Rigging,” in Richard Serra and Clara Weyergraf, Richard Serra: Interviews, Etc. 1970 – 1980 (New York: Hudson River Museum, 1980) 119 – 31.
Reading:
http://www.arts.arizona.edu/are476/files/tilted_arc.htm 11/21/2003
Unlike the earth artists of the 1960s and 1970s who saw the landscape as a field for formal modification, Sonfist has been concerned with preservation and renewal of the environment by providing actual examples of the natural environment that existed prior to human intervention.
IMAGES:
- Time Landscape: Greenwich Village, New York
1978 indigenous plant life, soil, rock samples. 8,000 square feet
Greenwich Village, New York. In 1978 in conjunction with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, city planners, and community boards, he created Time Landscape: Greenwich Village, New York, located between Houston and Bleeker streets in Manhattan, New York. Sonfist conceived a plan to return areas of cities across the world to a more balanced ecosystem called Time Landscapes.
Fifteen years after Sonfist first proposed a series of time landscapes, he was asked to consolidate his ideas into one man-made island, slated to be built in 2002. This single island both restores the river’s natural edge and filters sewage and industrial waste.
OTHER: In 1969, Sonfist monitored the air quality of four popular New York City intersections (57th Street and Fifth Avenue, 42nd Street and Broadway, West Broadway and Houston Street, and Rector Street and Broadway) and posted the results to alert passersby’s.
NOTE: Sonfist has bequeathed his body to Museum of Modern art after death.
Maya designed the prize-winning design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 1982, while she was a student at Yale University. There are 60,000 names of Americans who died in Vietnam engraved into the walls in chronological order, according to their dates of death. Maya fused architecture and sculpture to create this permanent site-specific memorial.
IMAGES:
- Vietnam Veterans Memorial. 1982. Washington, D.C.
“The worst thing in the world would have been indifference to my piece. The monument may lack an American flag, but you’re surrounded by America, by the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. I don’t design pure objects like those. I work with the landscape, and I hope that the object and the land are equal players.
…………..The piece itself is apolitical in the sense that it doesn’t comment directly on the war – only on the man that dies…. I wanted something that would be soft on the eyes, and turn into a mirror if you polished it. The point is to see yourself reflected in the names…”
Maya Lin, experts from Elizabeth Hess, “Interview with Maya Lin,” Art in America 71, no. 4 (April 1983): 123.
Tom Otterness is a sculptor who casts his work in bronze, giving it the look and feel of monuments; however, by creating subjects which at first glance seem too cute to be serious, he undermines their sense of importance.
IMAGES:
- The New World. 1991. 255 E. Temple St., within the Federal Center, Los Angeles
Controversial display due to nude baby.
- Crying Giant. 2002. Bronze. Marlborough, 57th St., NY
- Free Money. 2002. 9’, bronze. Nassau.
Visit:
http://www.tomostudio.com/#
Click on “Candice Bergen Interview Tom Otterness” to view eight minute movie.
PERFORMANCE ART
•Temporary
•Transformation
•Body
•Audience as Witness/Participants
Mierle Laderman Ukeles b.1939, Denver, Colorado
Artist-in-Residence for the New York City Department of Sanitation
In 1959, Ukeles was forced to contemplate the discontinuity between being and artist and caring for her new baby. Suddenly her life seemed like it was full of little repetitive tasks: laundry, food, cleaning, etc. and not making art. Here she began to think of the workers who do these tasks daily. She constructed a “Manifesto for Maintenance Art” where she strives to integrate the necessity of maintenance work with that of living:
“Maintenance Art Manifesto” (1969)
Maintenance is a drag; it takes all the fucking time (lit.) The mind gobbles and chafes at the boredom. The culture confers lousy status on maintenance jobs – minimum wages, housewives – no pay.
Clean your desk, wash the dishes, clean the floor, wash your clothes, wash your toes, change the baby’s diaper, finish the report, correct the typos, mend the fence, keep the customer happy, throw out the stinking garbage, watch out don’t put things in your nose, what shall I wear, I have no sox, pay your bills, don’t litter, save string, wash your hair, change the sheets, go to the store, I’m out of perfume, say it again – he doesn’t understand, seal it again – it leaks, go to work, this art is dusty, clear the table call him again, flush the toilet, stay young.
Art:
Everything I say is Art is Art. Everything I do is Art is Art. “We have no Art, we do everything well.” (Balinese saying)
Since being the artist-in-residence at the New York Dept. of Sanitation, Ukeles has choreographed “ballets” performed by garbage trucks and construction vehicles, scrubbed sidewalks in front of an art gallery, as well as created an installation at a landfill. This installation allows the public to watch as thousands of tons of solid waste are processed and shipped to landfills on barges.
IMAGES:
- Touch Sanitation: Handshake Ritual. 1978 – 79. 8,500 sanitation workers.
- Wash. 1973.Sidewalk performance at A.I.R. Gallery, New York City.
FURTHER READING: Phillips, Patricia C., “Maintenance Activity: Creating a Climate for Change,” But is it Art? The Spirit of Art as Activism.” Edited by Nina Felshin. Seattle: Bay Press. 1995. P 165 – 193.
JAMES LUNA b. 1950 La Jolla Indian Reservation, California
Luna is a counselor on alcoholism. He understands that part of the whole process of recovery is talking about problems. He brings up issues (alcoholism, drugs, crime and cultural apathy) that need to be talked about, promoting dialogue and making his work remain accessible to his community.
IMAGES:
- Artifact Piece, 1987. Museum of Man in Balboa Park, San Diego. Dimensions variable
Clothed in a loin cloth, Luna himself lays in a large display case in a Native American gallery presented as an artifact. Luna tries to bring understanding of Native American culture to people both inside and outside of his culture. Here, he is on display with the museum’s relics. Nowhere in the museum are “real-life” problems mentioned. With Luna on display, the viewers were confronted with his scars and labeled explanations of how they got there:
Drunk beyond the point of being able to defend himself,
he was jumped by people from another reservation.
After being knocked down, he was kicked in the
face and upper body. Saved by an old man,
he awoke with a swollen face covered with dried blood.
Thereafter, he made it a point not to be as
trusting among relatives and other Indians.
The burns on the fore and upper arm were sustained during days of excessive drinking. Having passed out on a campground table, trying to walk, he fell into a campfire. Not until several days later when the drinking ceased, was the seriousness and pain of the burn realized.
Having been married less than two years,
the sharing of emotional scars from alcoholic
family backgrounds was cause for fears of giving,
communicating and mistrust. Skin callous on ring
finger remains, along with assorted
painful and happy memories.
“Unless you are confronted with a genuine personal crisis, or freely choose to push deeper and ask yourself more comprehensive and disturbing questions about the genesis and justification of your own beliefs, your actual degree of self-awareness may remain relatively thin.”
*Adrian Piper, “Ideology, Confrontation, and Political Self Awareness: An Essay,” High Performance 4, no. 1 (Spring 1981):34-39
IMAGES:
- Calling Card (Racial Slur). 1986 – 1990. Business card size.
- Calling Card (Alone). 1986 – 1990. Business card size.
- Self-Portrait as a Nice White Lady, 1995.Photograph altered with oil crayon, 10 x 8 inches. Collection of the artist - and Self-Portrait Exaggerating my Negroid Features, 1981
Two self-portraits. In her 1981 pencil drawing "Self-Portrait Exaggerating My Negroid Features," Piper emphasizes her broad nose, full lips, and luxuriant Afro hairdo. Her direct gaze in this drawing seems emblematic of how her art confronts you. Hanging next to that drawing is a 1995 photograph altered with oil crayon, "Self-Portrait as a Nice White Lady." Piper still stares out at you with a no-nonsense expression, but her hair is long and straight. The photograph's background has been painted a vivid red, prompting you to wonder if this person is nice or angry. Further complicating matters is the cartoon-style balloon encapsulating the woman's thoughts in Ebonics-inflected fashion: Whut choo lookin at, mofo.
IMAGES:
- 1-900-ALL-KAREN. President’s Day, Feb. 2, 1998
“Every day for six months, Finley will perform a daily message that audiences across the country can access. Her phone commentary will respond to a range of topics including observations on news headlines and social injustices as well as more personal reflections on motherhood and daily life. Listeners will have a more personal experience than ever before--a virtual one-on-one look at an artist.” - http://www.creativetime.org/900_all_karen/
- We Keep Our Victims Ready, 1990.
Finley's national notoriety began with a performance called We Keep Our Victims Ready, a relatively quiet work of empathy, and the most straightforwardly political thing she'd ever done. In one section, she used food as a ritual, smearing on chocolate as she talked about female victimization—because women are treated like shit.
A column written by the Washington Post regarded it as a “federally funded porn palace.” Because of this press release, she lost a Solo Performance grant that had been awarded by an NEA peer panel. Also defunded were Holly Hughes, John Fleck, and Tim Miller. The NEA Four eventually won back their grants, but they didn't stop there. They challenged the constitutionality of legislation requiring the NEA to consider "general standards of decency," a case that took them all the way to the Supreme Court, where, in 1998, they lost.
Further Reading:
Brenson, Michael. Visionaries and Outcasts: The NEA, Congress, and the Place of the Visual Artists in America. New York: The New Press. 2001.
STATEMENT:
We, LINDA MONTANO and TEHCHING HSIEH, plan to do a
One year performance.
We will stay together for one year and never be alone.
We will be in the same room at the same time, when we are inside.
We will be tied together at the waist with an 8 foot rope.
We will never touch each other during the year.
The performance will begin on July 4, 1983 at 6 p.m.,
And continue until July 4, 1984 at 6 p.m.
The artists took on different meanings to the artists. In an interview they explain:
TH: …. It’s interesting to me because if we want to be a good human being and good artists at the same time, that’s one kind of clash and struggle. Also if we want a relationship and independence at the same time, that creates a double struggle.
LM:……There are many people in worse conditions than we are – the person tied to a bad job or a bad place or a bad marriage. This piece is about the realities of life.
Alex and Allyson Grey, excerpts from an interview with Linda Montano and Tehching Hsieh, “One Year Art/Life Performance: Alex and Allyson Grey Ask Questions About the Year of the Rope,” High Performance 27 (1984): 24 – 27.
IMAGES:
- One Year Art/Life Performance, July 4, 1983 – July 4, 1984. Linda Montano and Tehching Hsieh.
- Mercer Street Window, December 8, 1984. A 12 year performance.
Attempt to use ‘art in everyday life as a means of spiritual development for herself and others. The performance ended on her 50th birthday. During these 12 years, she lived privately and meditatively, in her home in Kingston, NY. Once a month for one day, she met with people in a window installation space in the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City to give “art/life counseling” and read palms. At her home, she spent several hours each day in a room, painted a single color (the first year was red) and dressed in the same color and listened to the same tone. The color and tone changed annually.
*Pope.L is not a stage name, but a composite invented. By his mother, who tagged the initial L for Lancaster, Her maiden name, to his biological father’s surname Pope.
William Pope.L, a visual and performance/theater artist and educator, has staged over 40 crawls since 1978 as an extension of his larger eRacism project. His performances vary in duration. Some are extemporaneous, while others push the limits of his physical endurance. In 2002, scheduled to coincide with the opening of the Whitney Biennial, Pope.L set off on his most ambitious crawl to date, The Great White Way. It was performed in stages, he crawled from the Statue of Liberty and through Manhattan via Broadway, ending in the Bronx, where his mother resides.
IMAGES:
- Crawl. 22 miles, 5 years, 1 street, 2002.
- In Eating the Wall Street Journal, William Pope.L makes theater of bingeing and purging. Dressed only in a jockstrap and some crusty-looking glasses, flour covering his body, he plays a character he describes as "part shaman, part clown." Seated on a toilet that rocks like a rocking chair, he peruses the Journal as thoughtfully as any businessman, tears off a strip or maybe a little square, looks it over, then stuffs it into his mouth. He's built a little bed under the throne, and whatever he spews back out tends to land on the pillow. By the day of his fourth performance, discarded newspaper and crud have built up under there in layers one could only call sculptural, and Pope.L has taken to descending during the piece to lie on the bed, trying to get spectators to lie down next to him. A couple of art lovers actually do. (From Village Voice web site: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0028/carr.php)
READING: Carr, “On the Edge,” The Village Voice. Date unknown.
BOOK: Bessire, Mark H.C., Ed. Pope William.L: The Friendliest Black Artist in America. MIT Press, 2002.
Throughout the 1990’s, Antoni has produced a body of work with a broad understanding of feminist artistic strategies. Some of her mediums have included sculptural forms made of chocolate, fat, soap, and weaving. The first inclination is to associate these mediums with obsessions concerning eating habits, guilt, and the desire for love and cleanliness, however, deeper issues regarding historical and contemporary ideas about representation and gender are evident.
IMAGES:
- Gnaw, 1992. Three part installation. Chocolate, lard and lipstick. Luhring Augustine Gallery.
Antoni made the two 600 pound cubes of chocolate and lard. She then chewed some of the chocolate and lard off each cube and spit it out. Out of the chewed chocolate she manufactured 27 heart-shaped candy boxes. Adding pigment and beeswax to the chewed lard removed from the lard cube made 130 lipsticks. The entire work is exhibited in a mirrored room.
- Loving Care, 1992. D’Offay Gallery, London.
Antoni soakd her long hair in hair dye and used it as a brush to mop the gallery floor, combining cleaning and painting into a single action……… mopping to make the floor dirty rather than clean.
- Lick and Lather, 1993 – 94
A group of soap and chocolate self-portraits were gradually work away by licking (chocolate) or compulsively washing (soap) her own features.
READING: Weintraub, Linda. Art on the Edge and Over. Litchfield, CT: Art Insights, Inc., 1996. Pg. 123 –128.
Early Fluxus performance artist who recently re-performed her 1964 Cut Piece for a new audience.
IMAGES:
I sit, impassive,
Before you and wait to be
Unwrapped, strip by strip.
Scissor blades reveal so much;
Look – you cut me to the stone.
- Cut Piece, Paris, September 12, 2003
She sat in a chair wearing a long black silk skirt with a matching long-sleeved top. One by one, the 200 members of the audience filed onstage with scissors and snipped away pieces of clothing from Ono to carry off stage. She was left sitting in her black undergarments. She hoped to show that this is “a time where we need to trust each other.” (Speaking to the aftermath of 9-11.)
A performance artist who explores the physical and mental limits of her being. She has withstood pain, exhaustion, and danger in her quest for transformation. In 1975, Marina met artist and future collaborator Ulay. The two performed works such as:
- Breathing In/Breathing Out. 1976, Belgrade and Eindhoven. In the performance, with lips locked and noses blocked with fingertips, the artists breathe each other’s carbon dioxide. 19 minutes.
- Nightsea Crossing. 1982 – 1986. Series of endurance performances at various locations worldwide. They would sit motionless opposite each other at a table for up to seven hours a day, sometimes in three-day increments. Performed 90 times. No eating or speaking.
- Rest Energy. 1978, Dublin. Ulay, blindfolded, holds a taut bow with the arrow aimed at Abramovic’s heart. Gradually, they lean back while the weight of their bodies pulled the string tight.
“……….We start in a very rational state with the idea to bring into life our own concept. But after that rational beginning there comes the moment when you start to be your own piece, where there is a complete identification with the concept of the piece and at the same time less and less consciousness of rational control. It is somehow the situation where you cannot remember later what was happening. In that moment you are absolutely doing what you are doing, but you don’t think, you are not separate any more from your own idea……….”
*Heidi Grundmann, excerpts from a dialogue with Marina Abramovic’ and Ulay (Vienna, 15 April 1978), in Marina Abromovic/Ulay, Ulay/Marina Abromovic: Relation/Works: 3 Performances (Innsbruck: Galerie Krinzinger, 1978), n.p.
- Dragon Head. 1992, Hamburg.
Five snakes, mostly pythons and boas move over Abramovic as she maintains steady eye contact with the spectators as she sits inside a ring of ice. The snakes sought the warmth of her body and were allowed to crawl over her face and hair.
- Room with an Ocean View, November 15, 2002. 12 Days. Sean Kelly Gallery, New York.
Halfway up the wall were three open platforms where she intended to live—without eating, without speaking—for 12 days. She would have no privacy. Not only were the rooms open, but spectators would be invited to observe the artist through a high-powered telescope. And she would have no escape. The ladders leaning against bedroom, sitting room, and bathroom had rungs made of large butcher knives. Her pillow was made of crystal. Falling would be possible, especially after she'd grown weak and dizzy from lack of food. She intended this; danger would help her to focus.
Burden is a conceptual artist who began exhibiting in 1971. His instant fame came that year with a performance piece called Shoot, in which a friend, at his request, shot him in the arm. Today he works as an installation artist.
“…I think a lot of people misunderstood because they think I did those pieces for sensational reasons, or that I was trying to get attention. But those pieces
were really private – often there were only two or three
people there to see them, or maybe just the people
who were there helping me. After Newsweek and
all the publicity came out, I had to stop doing
those things because I couldn’t keep doing
them in the light of that kind of publicity.
It was more like a kind of mental experience
for me – to see how I would deal with the mental
aspect – like knowing that at 7:30 you’re going to stand in
a room and a guy’s going to shoot you. …………..it was a crux to make all the mental stuff (anticipation) happen.”
*Jim Moisan, “Border Crossing: Interview with Chris Burden,” High Performance 2,no. 1 (March 1979): 4-11.
IMAGES:
- Transfixed. Venice, California, April 23, 1974.
Inside a small garage on Speedway Avenue, Burden stood on the rear bumper of a Volkswagen and stretched out over the car on his back, stretching his arms onto the roof. Nails were driven through his palms into the roof of the car. The garage door was opened and the car was pushed half way out into the road. The engine was run at full speed for two minutes, metaphorically screaming for the artist. After two minutes, the engine was turned off and the car pushed back into the garage. The door was closed.
- L.A.P.D. Uniform. 1993. Wool, metal. Leather
Installation includes thirty enlarged versions of a police uniform. The uniform, made for an officer seven-feet, four-inches tall, includes a badge, a baton, and an actual gun. The number, size and forms of this piece allows the work to retain powerful meanings even when divorced from its original context. The viewer becomes child-size, disempowered, and vulnerable. Or are we protected and shielded?
COLLECTIVE/COLLABORATION
•Research
•De-Centered
•Socially – Engaged
IMAGE: The Dinner Party. 1974 - 197. Brooklyn Museum of Art. 48’ x 42’ x 3’
*The Dinner Party is a massive ceremonial banquet in art, laid on a triangular table measuring forty-eight feet on each side. Combining the glory of sacramental tradition with the intimate detail of a carefully orchestrated social gathering, the artist represents thirty-nine “guests of honor” by individually symbolic, larger-than-life-size china-painted porcelain plates rising from intricate textiles draped completely over the tabletop. Each plate features an image based on the butterfly, symbolic of a vaginal central core. The runners name the 39 women and bear images drawn from each one's story. *from: Judychicago.com
Hundreds of women helped construct the installation. Each place setting represents a noted woman of the past and includes a china painted plate (approx. 14” in diameter) of porcelain made by Chicago, a needlework table runner with the lady’s name, a fork, knife, spoon, napkin and a chalice.
Placesettings:
Primordial Goddess
Fertile Goddess
Ishtar
Kali
Snake Goddess
Sophia
Amazon
Hatshepsut
Judith
Sappho
Aspasia
Boadaceia
Hypatia
Marcella
Saint Bridget
Theodora
Hrosvitha
Trotula
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Hildegarde of Bingen
Petronilla de Meath
Christine de Pisan
Isabella d' Este
Elizabeth R
Artemisia Gentileschi
Anna van Schurman
Anne Hutchinson
Sacajawea
Caroline Herschel
Mary Wollstonecraft
Sojourner Truth
Susan B. Anthony
Elizabeth Blackwell
Emily Dickinson
Ethel Smyth
Margaret Sanger
Natalie Barney
Virginia Woolf
Georgia O'Keeffe
1971-72. Landmark collaborative feminist installation in a house in Hollywood, by Feminist Art Program at California Institute of the Arts. Womanhouse examined and commented on the content, forms, and history of gender roles and of women's maintenance work in the home; and delved into the complex dynamics and relations that have constituted women's separate sphere in the division of labor.
People Involved:
*List may not be all inclusive
Mira Schor
Faith Wilding “Dining Room,” “Crocheted Environment,” “Waiting,” performance, also performed in ”Cock and Cunt Play.”
Susan Frazier “Nurturant Kitchen”
Vicki Hodgetts “Nurturant Kitchen”
Robin Weltsch”Nurturant Kitchen”
Beth Bachenheimer “Shoe Closet”
Sherry Brody “Lingerie Pillows” “Doll House”
Miriam Shapiro “Doll House”
Judy Chicago “Menstruation Bathroom,” writer of “Cock and Cunt Play.”
Sandra Orgel“Ironing,” a performance.
Nancy Youdelman“Leah’s Room” performer
Karen LeCocq“Leah’s Room” performer
Janice Lester“Cock and Cunt Play,” performer
Film by by Johanna Demetrakas features performances from Womanhouse.
Member Roster:
Mundy McLaughlin 1981 – 1986
Tim Rollins 1981 – 1987
Doug Ashford 1982 –
Felix Gonzales-Torres 1988 -
Karen Ramspacher 1989 –
In 1980, collective opened a storefront called Group Material.
IMAGES:
- First exhibition called The People’s Choice (Jan. 9 – Feb. 2, 1981)
Invited friends and neighbors of 13th Street to bring “things that might not usually find their way into an art gallery: the things that you personally find beautiful, the objects that you keep for your own pleasure, the objects that have meaning for you , your family, and your friends….”
Objects: family photographs, crafts, religious imagery, china dolls, Pez candy dispensers.
Book: Democracy. 1987.
Began long term project in the form of public lectures, exhibitions, town meetings and a book. Underlying inquiry became, “How is culture made, and for whom is it made?”
Chapters include: education, electoral politics, cultural participation, and AIDS. Lucy Lippard, Paulo Freire, Tim Rollins and Catherine Lord are a few participants mentioned in the book.
Book: Democracy: A Project by Group Material (Discussions in Contemporary Culture, No5, by Brian Wallis (Editor), Charles Wright (Designer), Gary Garrels (Designer)
A feminist collective that consists of anonymous gorilla mask-wearing members whose identities remain anonymous, though they go by names of women artists from history – eg., Georgia O’Keeffe. They plaster posters and billboards in public spaces, as well as collectively protest and lecture in order to promote feminist issues while pointing out gender inequalities and biases.
IMAGES:
- Naked Met. Billboard. 2002 - 2003
- Estrogen Bomb. Poster. 2003
- Dear Santa. Poster. 2002 – 2003.
- Women Earn 1/3 Less than Men. Poster/Stickers. 1985 – 1989.
- Oscar. Billboard. 2002 – 2003
BOOK:
Guerilla Girls, The Guerilla Girls’ Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art/ the Guerrilla Girls. New York: Penguin Books. 1998.
In 1987, Rollins left Group Material to devote himself to working collaboratively with youth from the South Bronx. In 1981, he became the project director of the Art & Knowledge Workshop, Inc. for which he got funding from the NEA Rollins' program is based on an intensive mentoring relationship with youth, particularly those with special-education needs. The youth in the workshops call themselves “Kids of Survival,” or KOS. Through rigorous visual arts training, exhibitions and immersion in world art history, students prepare themselves for long-term involvement in the arts and education. Art studios in the Bronx and Manhattan serve as instruction sites for after-school, weekend and summer programs. Youth attend studio classes as often as 15 hours each week.
IMAGES:
- The Scarlet LetterRevelation, 1994, by KOS and Tim Rollins. Watercolor and graphite on book page mounted on linen panel.
- The Scarlet Letter – V. 1994, Oil, Acrylic, Bookpages on Linen. 90 x 120 inches.
22 no 3 36 J/Ag ’98.
READING:
Neill, Michael. “Escape Route,” People Weekly. V 46, p 119 – 21 N25, 1996.
Golub, Adrienne M. “Layers: Between Science and the Imagination: Tim Rollins & K.O.S.: Kids Across America:: Contemporary Art Museum, University of South Florida, Tampa,” Art Papers. 22 no3 36 J1/Ag ’98.
A proclaimed “temporary interventionist” Peggy sees public art as something constructed to live in a public space, but as a temporary intervention within that space. It can be site specific or a guerrilla tactic. Regardless, it’s aim is to promote dialogue.
Diggs works collaboratively with many groups: senior citizens, students, abuse and homeless shelters to name a few. In order to penetrate these collaborations, she must ethnographically research her base. Time, patience and the ability to listen are a few key factors needed to build the trust she needs to accomplish her goals. The end products are constructed by her, though the imagery is based and contingent upon the recommendations and critiques of her collaborators.
Collaborations with High School Students:
IMAGES:
- Do Not Sleep, 2001 – 03. Digital Mural, Philadelphia
- We are the Future. 1993. 11” x 28” bus cards
- Sex Bias Shirt. 1993. 100 Recycled white dress shirts.
- Collaborations with Homeless Shelters: Finding Home. 2001.
Fourteen 5’ x 8’ vinyl and ink banners.
Text depicts sayings and PhotoShopped images of homeless residents at the shelter.
- Collaboration with Industry and Abuse Shelters: Domestic Violence Milk Carton Project. 1991 – 92. Cardboard, ink on half – gallon containers. Prototypes selected by Tuscan Dairy
Through research, Peggy understood that some audience members are so controlled by abusive partners that they are not allowed out of the house to be confronted by art in public spaces, let alone inside a museum or gallery. BUT…. She suspected they probably do go to the grocery store…….
OTHER Collaborations:
- Hartford Grandmothers Project, 1993 – 94. Scratch-off cards distributed to community to promote dialogues between teenagers and elderly women.
- Pittsfield High School Bulk Mail Project, 1993. Postcards sent to households in the city depicting the decline of opportunities for teens.
- Drury High School Restaurant Table Tent Project and Bar Coaster Project. 1993. Items distributed to local eateries and bars to heighten public awareness of drinking and driving. Done in conjunction with local high school students.
Peggy “makes objects” too:
- Memorial. 1991.Baby Dress, wire, frame, Plexiglas. 29” x 35 ½” x 3”
- Objects of Abuse. 1991. Mixed Media on Steel Grid. 48” x 96” x 12”
Consists of a collection of objects used by abusers to control, attack, kill or injure their partners or children:
Hairbrush
Boot
Enema Bag
Lamp
Pillow
Tree Stand
Dictionary
Urn
Mirror
Glove
Knife
Spoon
Chopsticks
Rope
Candle Stick
Fire Poker
Further Reading: Patricia C. Phillips, “Peggy Diggs: Private acts as Public Art,” But is it Art? The Spirit of Art as Activism. Ed. Nina Felshin. Seattle: Bay Press 1995. Pgs. 283 – 308.
IMAGES:
- River of Hopes and Dreams. 1992Three-acre eco-sculpture garden at San Francisco's waste management company, NORCAL Sanitary Fill Company.
Susan cast a metaphorical concrete river into which some 75 high school students wrote their hopes and dreams into the wet pavement. The “river” becomes a time capsule of teenagers from 1992. The central garden area is paved with cast concrete stepping stones in which are objects collected by Steinman at the land fill.
The site selected is not only a landfill, but a man made “mountain” made of freeway rubble collected after an earthquake. Eventually rock climbing plants will cover this mountain.
Further Reading:
Sanders, Patricia B. “A Conversation with Susan Leibovitz Steinman,” Artweek, 29 no 11 14 N ’98.
A “band of individuals united in anger and dedicated to exploiting the power of art to end the AIDS crisis.” Got its name from the Plymouth automobile that was once the preferred car of police stations nationwide. Produced graphics for posters, billboards, bus shelters, subway and vending machines for the predominately gay male activist chapters of ACT-UP.
IMAGES:
- Read My Lips, 1988. 10 ½ x 16 ½” Poster. Also used on T-Shirts.
Sleek images. Relied on visual pleasure rather than terror to seduce their audience.
- Kissing Doesn’t Kill, 1989 – 90. 136” x 28". Reprinted thousands of times. Initially bus poster.
This poster prompted the Illinois state senate to outlaw “any poster showing or simulating physical contact or embrace within a homosexual…context where persons under 21 can view it.” Caused much press and destruction of ads. Thus opened significant dialogue about AIDS, homosexuality and homophobia.
CONTEMPORARY PAINTERS
Ida Applebroog. b. 1929.
Chuck Close b. 1940
Peter Doig b. 1959
Luscian Freud b. 1922 - 2011
Sam Gilliam b. 1933
James Rosenquist. b. 1933
Susan Rothenberg
David Salle b. 1952
Jenny Saville b. 1970
Pat Stier b. 1940
Yue Minjun b.1962
Not to Leave Out:
Jeff Koons (b.1955),the celebrated American self-taught sculptor and mixed-media neo-pop artist.
Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-88), the Afro-Caribbean-American painter and ex-graffiti artist.
Damien Hirst (b.1965), the British sculptor, mixed media artist noted for his dead shark (The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living) and diamond encrusted skull (For the Love of God).
Richard Prince (b.1949), the American painter and photographer.
Cindy Sherman, b. 1954 photographer
Sandy Skoglund, installation
Vito Acconci b. 1940, installation
Laurie Anderson, b. 1947, performance artist
Felix Gonzales - Torres (1957 - 1996), installation
Christo b. 1935 (Jeanne-Claude (1935–2009), installation
Gilbert and George, (born 1943 & 1942), performance
Suzanne Lacy b. 1945, public/performance
Paul McCarthy b. 1945, sculpture
Bruce Nauman, 1941, media installation
Bansky, b. 1971, graffiti
Orlan, b. 1941, performance
Carlos Villa
Carolee Schneemann (born 1939), performance artist
Kiki Smith, b. 1954, installation
Jeff Wall, b. 1946, photographer
Ai Weiwei, b. 1957, conceptual artist
Rachel Whiteread, b. 1963, sculptor
Yolanda Lopez, painter
Carrie Mae Weems, photographer
RANDOM CONTEMPORARY ART LINKS:
