SUMMARY: 'Some Relations between Conceptual and Performance art' - Frazer Ward

Conceptual art amplifies underlying states of aesthetic experience - LANGUAGE: communication through material form and sensory perception. Is considered elitist which is IRONIC in regards to origins of conceptual art being anti-elitist (Marcel Duchamp). Performance art is harder to define because it wasn't a movement, it kind of weaved in and out through contemporary art since the 1960s and the Happenings.

In the late 1960s to the '70s conceptual art and performance collided; conceptual art is RATIONAL, which means the work has cause and effect - performance art is iffier in this rational communication because their main material is their body, where Ward raises the Duchampian found object/Readymade theory ("Anyone can do it" notion is trumped by artists' process to form the concept and how they translate it through the object, in this case, their body), so the means by which they project information is even more subtle and at times, more incomprehensible. And because their was no movement, they cannot really be defined with a "style" BUT they are more accessible by considering the overarching theme in their concepts (Chris Burden embodies danger; Zhang Huan post-Mao China and Buddhist mindset of experiencing the "now"; Vito Acconci combines physical and emotional intimacy with the public, etc.).

The audience's sensory perception exceeds not only sight and aural senses but is ACTUALLY witnessing the creation of the work; their subjectivity is really put on the spot and their response is more immediate, therefore the artist must take into account of everything in their work (movement, attitude, environment, audience). Though that is not to say that they are driven by "intent" - conceptual performance artists should be pretty lenient on their outcomes (Burden's 1974 'Trans-fixed') but their priority is predominately how their actions communicate their concept. "... in order to speak the artist is not only trapped but let go in art" they are so embodied by concept their mindset is just to evoke it through actions and representation. In conclusion, conceptual performance art kicks major ass, yeeeeaahhhh booiiii!

Art and Politics - Ai Weiwei

Artzine's article on Ai Weiwei details a great political artist whose works most often, in some literally, tell the Chinese government to fuck off. http://artzinechina.com/display.php?a=180

His works are deliciously symbolic and radically avant-garde considering how late contemporary art began in China in comparison to Western countries. Their government has only allowed (well, be less pissed off about) public display of these works like in 2001 or something. Go Ai Weiwei!

ART AND THE ARCHIVE - MARY KELLY

Post-Partum Document Introduction (1973)

Interim Part II: Pecunia (1989)

Gloria Patri (1992)

The Ballad of Kastriot Rexhepi (2001)

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Foster, Hal, “An Archival Impulse.” October 110 (2004), 3-22, in The MIT Press, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3397555/ (accessed 15 August, 2011).

This article by Hal Foster was informative and engaging, where his educational background in Professor of Art and Archeology in Princeton is clearly evident. Foster’s clarification of archival art is insightful and engaging. He covers aspects of the development of the practice, including the issue of originality in sources and the increasing usage of digital information in contemporary times. His analysis of Thomas Hirschhorn, Sam Durant and Tacita Dean is thorough, the article providing sufficient images of their works. His choice of artists with varying styles successfully shows the reader the diversity of approaches in archival art, supporting his notion of the “utopian ambition” in which archival artists unite to bring historical information to the present. Foster’s “An Archival Impulse” is an important source to consider concerning this thematic area.

Bhabha, H.K., Crimp, D., Iversen, M. & Kelly, M., Mary Kelly. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1997.

The book is divided into chapters consisting of art history professor Douglas Crimp’s interview with Mary Kelly, separate surveys by art historian Margaret Iversen, professor of English and American Literature and Language Homi K. Bhabha, two writings chosen by Kelly from psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva and novelist Lynne Tillman, and finally, theoretical writings by the artist herself, respectively. Mary Kelly thus overflows with information, often resulting in repetition of artworks discussed by the six writers. However they all provide various analyses of Kelly’s practice, approaching her works with critical, psychoanalytical, cultural and theoretical insights with large colour plates to assist the reader’s sifting process. It is an overwhelming text but as a result, it is very thorough, a book one must have near while reflecting upon Mary Kelly.

White, Ian, “The Body Politic.” Frieze Magazine 107 (2007), 130-135, in Central Books Ltd, http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/the_body_politic/ (accessed 10 September, 2011).

The most recent of the three sources, Ian White’s interview with Mary Kelly reveals the artist’s objectives of her works from late 20^th to early 21^st century. As an artist, writer and curator, White’s leading questions deliver thorough information about Kelly’s artist practice. Kelly’s recount of the ideas behind her artworks increases the reader’s understanding of her interpretation of feminism, war history and contemporary news. Her extensive answers are incredibly detailed and informative, reflecting the analytical style of her works. The process in which she develops her works concerning materials and concept is provided, as well as her consideration of audience response and how she expects her highly conceptual works to be conveyed. White’s article allows a strong insight from the artist towards her work and how she conducts the complex practice of archival art.

Art and Globalism - Ujino Muneteru

Globalism upon more traditional countries often sees the fade of cultural identities to embrace the Western, and a growth in consumerist greed. UJINO MUNETERU is a Japanese artist whose practice combines sound, sculpture and performance. He combines Pop Art, Noise and Dada by converting found objects into technologically sophisticated but junk-looking instruments to comment on society's obsession with consumerism and materialism. In 'Love Arm' series (late 20th-early 21st century) he plays experimental noise music that operate electrically made up of disparate objects such as baseball bats, electric blenders, drills, hair dryers and motorbike handles that emit flashing lights - iconic American objects that symbolise his country's shift from being a strict Japanese culture to an international identity, due to the strong pop cultural influence of the United States. He often wears these machines upon his body, strapped upon his arm or around his waist to insinuate phallic forms in reflection of America's masculinity and Japan's adaption of this identity.

Vantage Point and Image-Worlds - From Analogue to Digital Photography

Ron Burnett's' Vantage Point and Image-Worlds' is an insightful essay on Art and Space, and the very act of "seeing" images via perspective, memory, photography, etc. and how they develop conceptually and technologically over time.

The opening poem 'Burnt Norton' by T.S. Elliot is a good summary of Burnett's discussion comparing physically "seeing" with emotionally "seeing":

"... To be conscious is not to be in time

But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden ...

Be remembered; involved with past and future

Only through TIME time is conquered."

Time must be experienced in order to be remembered, and by remembering time and collecting memories that is the only way in which we prove we are conscious in time, and thus, experiencing life. And by emotionally "seeing" the image can we fully understand its impact.

However, he argues about that idea for a bit near the end:

Analogue pictures are "naturally" taken photographs - just historically accurate without photomanipulation. The historical photograph Burnett provides is one of his mother boarding a train in Austria before WWII began. He then takes this photo and compiles it with photographs of smoking stacks (taken recently-ish) to create a new concept for the images by seeing them altogether. Burnett has an emotional connection with it, personalising it and at the same time preventing the audience in providing their own emotional take on it because of the close emotional proximity Burnett has with the subject. Then he frets about the moral dilemma of cropping the photograph and whether this reduces its emotional significance. Otherwise he produces a new idea by appropriating these photos and evoking symbolic significance with the stacks which the audience would use memory to connect with destruction and despair, and the one of his mother which provokes sympathy. Sympathy because the audience would realise the subject's relationship with the artist - an artist and not the photographer, because photographers were considered unimportant in comparison to the photograph. Later he reveals that he has reversed the way in which photographs should overwhelm the audience because his work is so obviously edited, and therefore not reality. But should knowing that overrule the reality of the concept?

ART AND SPIRITUALITY

Art:21's video is an incredibly informative and detailed source of the vast ways artists approach spirituality. http://video.pbs.org/video/1237561674

I found Ann Hamilton's work especially engaging. The artist does sculpture, textile arts and installations. Hamilton believes that while the process of textile works is meditative and satisfying, the very metaphor of cloth and what it offers is beautiful; everyone wears clothes and all material is made up of tiny threads which remain clearly visible no matter what weave the piece is, and the cloth requires each single one. She finds it an exceptional social metaphor and used material in the installation 'volumen' (1995), the audience would step into an 8-foot diameter closet-like space - the walls a curtain of white cloth which would revolve. The audience would then "experience a kind of dislocation that was part of Hamilton's investigation of New England Puritanism, the Shakers' bodily expression of spiritualism, and the Spiritualists' beliefs".(http://www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag03/may03/hamilton/ham.shtml).

Art and Architecture - Deconstructivism

DECONSTRUCTIVISM developed in the late 1980s is a movement in postmodern architecture. The rhetoric of this style orginated possibly by the French theorist Jacques Derrida. According to his philosophy "architecture is nothing but one of many ways of communication". This quote revives the early method in which architectural designs applied to cathedrals were to overwhelm visitors with spiritual resonance by including symbols in its floor plan (shaped as a crucifix) and using light to amplify heaven and its holy brightness. Deconstructivism may be also inspired by the Russian art movement constructivism, designed to reject autonomous art (Stalin propaganda) in favour of a practice for social purposes. Elements of the movement were a defiance against geometrics and decoration, to forward 'awkward' structures for buildings that are curvaceous and diagonal suggesting writhing and bulging movement, the form to react to its environmental surroundings, and of course the sense of originality. Famous deconstructivist artists include Frank Gehry, Coop Himmelblau and Zaha Haddid.

KRAUSS Sculpture in the Expanded Field

This article written by art critic and theorist Rosalind Krauss provides an almost mathematical perspective on the evolution of sculpture from history toward postmodernity. Written in 1985 Krauss attempts to distinguish the various and complex forms of sculpture created within the late 20th century.

The "elasticity" of sculpture enables it to be an overarching cultural term over almost anything. Krauss employs a metaphor that indicates sculpture's model of evolution, " so that the man who now is can be accepted as being different from the child he once was, by simultaneously being seen - through the unseeable action of the telos [an ultimate object or aim.] - as the same." . The child is conceptually undeveloped historical art, by which I mean THE MONUMENTAL, to stew and mature (in which I visualise as being the adolescent phase) "reducing anything foreign in either time or space" to result in a fully completed spunky sculpture-man that is totally complex and unique and original. I find the quote to be a great outline of one of the points she raises, where the "ideology of the new" is made comfortable by associating it with something familiar via historical justification: "The historian critic simply performed a more extended sleight-of-hand and began to construct his genealogies out of the data of millennia rather than decades."

She discusses the linear progression from historical sculptures (such as Bernini's Conversion of Constantine (mid 17th century)) to the gradual fall of the monumental and its symbology and place, to become nomadic (Auguste Rodin's pedestal and application-to-situation-dead-door fail in Balzac (1880)) - "the logic of sculpture is inseparable from the logic of the monument" LOGIC FAIL.

Krauss insinuates the most successful method to find definitions of sculptural works is by a process of elimination/default:

Not landscape + Not architecture = Sculpture aka Neuter Axis

Landscape + Not landscape = Marked Sites (Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, Carl Andre)

Architecture + Not architecture = Axiomatic Structures (Robert Irwin, Bruce Nauman)

Landscape + Architecture = Site Construction aka Complex Axis (Alice Aycock, Mary Miss)

Logical structure in sculpture does not restrict the artist due to the expanse in material and space. It is only up to the artist to create something that would amaze contemporary audiences as done by their predecessors.

Art and Narrative

Narrative imagery is a very engaging method to depict events from literature, history, mythology, and current events. I find narrative art a fascinating thematic area for its ability to express storylines within a single work. Although performance art separates itself from theatre for not having a linear narrative, 'Glimpses of Protoplasm' by Bruce Charlesworth and Colleen Ludwig are a compilation of stories the performers attempt to converse with one another. They use collection of objects and two video screens, "where their ideas are filtered through technology before reaching each other or the audience". http://www.brucecharlesworth.net/ and excerpt of performance http://vimeo.com/3155648

Exhibition thing

I engaged with Unguided tours, the Anne Landa Award exhibition at Art Gallery NSW more than Artspace's Talking Pictures. I found the Anne Landa works to be more interesting (subjective opinion) because they were playful visually and conceptually and literally ('The Outlands' -David Haines, Joyce Hinterding, what a mindfuck). I particularly enjoyed Ian Burns' sculptures. At first glance they just looked like assemblage works, a compilation of seemingly random objects. But when viewed on the live feed video, Burns creates extraordinary scenes mimicking space ('From Orbit'), a cheesy road movie ('Well Read'), a Hummer on the world ('Makin' Tracks') and the window view from a plane ('15 Hours v4'). With these four works Burns dismantles the glorification and glamour of exploring space, seemingly carefree life, ridiculous cars commercials and international air travel, respectively. I did take note of Nicholas Mangan's 'Some kinds of duration' in the exhibition Talking Pictures. The installation and the concrete photocopier itself were impressive, especially darkened room and the use of fluorescent lights that allude to the scanning light in the machine.

Annotated Biblio for Art and Identity

Heartney, E. 2008. Art & Today. London: Phaidon.

This book was an excellent source on identity and its significance in the history of contemporary art. The chapter illustrates the chronological development of identity as a conceptual liberation for ethnic and gender minorities in the mid-20^th century, including detailed analyses of artworks by said minorities. An art critic and scholar, Eleanor Heartney’s references to quotes by art critics and artists provide a solid essay examining identity as a malleable form and a hybrid of influence. Its maturity as a thematic field in contemporary art is the focus in this chapter and was of incredible use for the study of art and identity.

Storr, R., Golden, T., Siegel, K, Herbert, L.M. & Sollins, S. 2001. Art:21: Art in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Harry N. Abrams.

This chapter centred on art and identity written by curator and art critic Robert Storr was extremely helpful. His introduction gives a great outline of conditions that contribute to the development of human behaviour. Louise Bourgeois is amongst the artists in his analysis whom I had selected to discuss. His examination of her works was very in-depth, though I would have preferred an inclusion of more recent works, in particular her fabric sculptures. It provided a thorough overview of Bourgeois’ concepts, especially the fragility of human relations.

Morris, F. 2010. A Fight to the Finish. Sydney: Art & Australia Pty Ltd, Vol. 48 No.

Written after her death, this article Frances Morris provides an insightful overview of Louise Bourgeois’ material practice. She does not give a close study of individual artworks but reviews the artist’s skills over her artistic career. She aligns Bourgeois’ choice of materials (which she refers to as “weapons”) with significant moments of her life, specifically her fabric works, which marks the period before her death. Morris lacks specified data on Bourgeois’ art concepts but provides a good description of Bourgeois’ experimentation in the field of sculpture.

Conn, C. Delicate Strength. Retrieved from

http://www.launchprojects.com/IMAGES/Cyndi%20Conn%20Louise%20Bourgeois.pdf

This essay by founder and curator Cyndi Conn was well written and gives an incredible overview of Louise Bourgeois’ life and artworks. A great number of sources and quotes from art scholars and Bourgeois are provided that reveals various aspects of the artist’s complex practice and identity. Conn’s analysis of Bourgeois is thorough and offers a range of works throughout her career and was a detailed and useful source for my study.

Nature and Technology in art.

Savvy article. Also includes technology mimicking nature in human performance.
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409400552216

Stuckism and Hughes vs Conceptual Art

There is an international art movement called Stuckism that is against conceptual art and promotes new figurative art with ideas. In August 1999 there was a manifesto written and one sentence claimed "Artists who don't paint aren't artists". What a douche. Other manifestos include "Anti-anti-art" and one criticising Damien Hirst, in particular his artwork 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' (a.k.a the one with the Shark). I personally think that Stuckist art is a bit crap but I understand that they are attempting to revive traditional art practice and that artists need artistic talent possibly more than artistic concepts. Robert Hughes (Australian art critic/historian) is iffy about what is considered today as contemporary art, where he said in a speech in 2004: 'the string of brush marks in a lace collar in a Velasquez painting could be more radical than a shark "murkily disintegrating in its tank on the other side of the Thames'" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/jun/03/arts.artnews) I agree that just nothing can be art and something obviously extreme that makes controversy may not necessarily be good art. What IS good art, however, is having a concept and successfully transforming it into a physical form via any format. Sol Lewitt puts forward that any idea can be an artwork in itself, but I think it is art when the concept is able to communicate or at least have an impact on the audience. In conclusion, Robert Hughes has a point but Stuckism is balls.

SUMMARY FOR PERFORMANCE

Performance art of the 1930s-70s is timelessly unpredictable and thought-provoking. In 1933 Black Mountain College in North Carolina was directed by John Rice who brought in artists Josef and Anni Albers (who'd taught at the Bauhaus in Germany - "the house of building") for the mixture of disclipline and inventiveness "art is concerned with the HOW not the WHAT". Instead of literal content, Albers' performance art focused on factual content - the content of art. Art in this case is "a general study of fundamental phenomena; 'space, form, colour, light, sound, movement, music, time, etc.'" (Xanti Schawinksy in 1936, former Bauhaus colleague). A selection of these elements are impossible to achieve through two and three dimensional work. The college had brought in a European idea to America - 4D art. Schawinksy's first staged performance 'Spectrodrama' in Bauhaus was "an educational method aiming at the interchange between the arts and sciences and using the theatre as a laboratory and place of action and experimentation" - ACTION AND EXPERIMENTATION! FRESH, NEW, SHOCK, MONOCLES DROPPED IN CHAMPAGNE GLASSES. EVERYDAY: Young musician John Cage and young dancer Merce Cunningham broke out of conventional structures of music and dance. In 1937 Cage did 'The Future of Music' playing "non-intentional music" with found objects ("one way to write music: study Duchamp" - Cage) to expose everyday music - the Chicago Daily in 1942: "People Call it Noise - But he Calls it Music"; 1943 performed to "high-brow" audience at Museum of Modern Art in New York whom did not attack the "Futurist noise-musicians". Ordinary gestures were captured in Cunningham's dance performances "These were accepted as movement in daily life, why not on stage?". SPONTANEITY: Toss of a coin decision for performers to dance in which order in 'Sixteen Dances for Soloist and Company of Three' (1951). Zen Buddhism and oriental philosophy inspired Cage, noted by Francine Duplessix-Gray "Art should not be different [from] life but an action within life. Like all of life, with its accidents and chances and variety and disorder and only momentary beauties." Preparation could be minimal (Black Mountain College Untitled event 1952) in "Dada and Surrealism-like notions of chance and 'non-intentional' actions", or could be highly structured though seemingly unorganised (18 Happenings in 6 Parts 1959) where the viewer became participants by experiencing the works - AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION. Performance art; kicking 2D ass.

G&G

I watched this Gilbert and George interview a while ago http://www.abc.net.au/arts/stories/s3049336.htm Quoting George: "The picture stays still, the world changes" - their art can be interpreted throughout decades and could be just as related to current issues as they were since the 1960s (troubled youths, homosexuality, high art vs low art, poverty, etc.) They don't live their art (unlike Charlie Sheen or Lady Gaga) which makes their works that much more intense; these two well-spoken gentlemen do not seem to make artworks that involve nudity, sexualised acts and bodily fluids.

Appreciation for abstract art

The simplistic look of abstract art can be misleading. What I thought was a lack of concept is actually a lack of narrative. The geometric and organic forms provoke the audience's emotional responses to their pure physicality. Abstract Expressionism in the 1960s was initially shocking (akin to most of the movements) where artists concentrated on the structural nature of art and sculptors, like the painters, broke out from the frame and started to spread out through the room using materials that broaden from wood and metal to fabrics and glass. Though some works of abstract art do not particularly wow me, I appreciate their craftsmanship and intention to spur our responses merely by their colour, shapes and lines alone.

Summary for Unmonumental

The sculptures made during the 1950s-60s reflect European experimentation of the 1910s-20s (note that both periods of time were post-war and civilians sought freedom from government suppression - a factor in artists' goal to break traditions in visual culture?). Duchamp's Dada "aesthetic indifference" and concentration on the physical element of objects was reversed in the mid-20th century where works such as Robert Rauschenberg's Combines allowed the audience to ponder about the relationships the objects had with the other (and insisted any connection would have been from chance). Rauschberg's works were described by art critic and historian Leo Steinberg as the "triumph of the immiscible" - a celebration of unblendability (not a word). Since assemblage art is pure content with no narrative, I agree with writer Roger Shattuck in that the works from the 1950s-60s could not have lived up to the inital shock and outrage from early 20th century audience. While early works were original, unexpected and obscene, those from the 1950s-60s to my opinion were mere time capsules that carried on the name of assemblage art like a persistent donkey with an empty cart (ohh, harsh). Rauschenberg focussed on the "ability to turn familiar objects into mysterious through juxtaposition" which pretty much defines early assemblage art. Present unmonumental artists create sculptures that have narrative which reflects our freedom of speech and open-minded audience; they are now able to judge society rather than produce observations of it.