Month: February 2007

Art e-Facts 9

The term Neo-Dada is associated with the work of artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. The term was first applied, in an un-attributed comment, in a 1958 issue of the American magazine Artnews .

The term refers to two aspects of the early 20th Century Dada movement. Firstly there was the connection through the use of ‘found’ objects and junk to create combines – which are hybrid painting – sculptures – which can be seen in the work of Rauschenberg and Schwitters and secondly there is the Dada-like sense of paradox and ambiguity which can be seen in the paintings of Jasper John with his use of numbers, maps, targets that fill the canvas.

Neo-Dada provided a bridge between abstract expressionism and pop art.

Courtesy of D. McLachlan.

Art e-Facts 8

Marlene Dumas was born in Cape Town i South Africa. From 1972 to 1975 she attended Cape Town University, where she studied for a BA in Visual Arts. She then completed her studies in Haarlem, in the Netherlands.
The majority of her works may be categorised as ‘portraits’, but they are not portraits in the traditional sense. Rather than representing an actual person, they represent an emotion or a state of mind. Themes central to Dumas’ work include race and sexuality, guilt and innocence, violence and tenderness.

Art e-Facts 7

The Guerrilla Girls is a group of feminist artists established in New York City in 1985 and is known for using guerrilla art) to promote women, and minorities, in the arts. Their traditional tactics included putting up posters decrying the gender and racial imbalance of artists represented in galleries.
One of their most famous posters was plastered across New York City buses in 1989. Its headline read, “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?” According to the Guerrilla Girls, they conducted a “weenie count” at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and found that less than 5% of the artists in the Met’s Modern Art sections were female, but 85% of the nudes were female.

http://www.guerrillagirls.com/

Art e-Facts 6

German artist Anselm Kiefer prduced a series of books which are so poisonnous to the touch that the assistants who fabricated them had to wear gloves.

Coutesy of I. Henderson

Art e-Facts 5

Maurizio Cattelan may be best known to British audiences for his sculpture of Pope Jean Paul II struck down by a meteorite yet the only Maurizio Cattelan in a British private collection is ‘Betsy’ a life size photo realist sculpture of the collectors Grandmother kept in a domestic fridge.