Art e-Facts – Page 4 – Contemporary Art Practice etc…

Art e-Facts 59

Published September 2, 2007

Gordon Matta-Clark was born in New York on June 22, 1943, to artists Roberto Matta and Anna Clark. Teeny Duchamp, Marcel’s wife, was Matta-Clark’s godmother. Matta-Clark’s childhood was spent in New York, Paris, and Chile. He studied architecture at Cornell University in 1963-68.

In 1969, Matta-Clark moved back to New York. Over the following two years, he explored the metamorphic possibilities of cooking, beginning by frying Polaroid photographs in oil with gold leaf. In the early 1970s, he helped organize 112 Greene Street, an exhibition space showing new art. He also collaborated on Food, a combined restaurant and performance piece; made Garbage Wall, a prototype shelter for the homeless; and was active in building SoHo as an artists’ community. He addressed popular culture in the 1973 Photoglyphs, hand-colored black-and-white photographs depicting New York’s burgeoning graffiti.

During the 1970s, Matta-Clark made the works for which he is best known: his “anarchitecture.” These were temporary works created by sawing and carving sections out of buildings, most of which were scheduled to be destroyed. He documented these projects in photography and film. Although he made interventions into a former iron foundry in Genoa, Italy, in 1973, his first large-scale project has been defined as Splitting (1974). To create this work, Matta-Clark sawed two parallel slices through a nondescript wood-frame house in Englewood, New Jersey, and removed the material between the two cuts. In addition, he cut out the corners of the house’s roof, which were subsequently shown at John Gibson Gallery in New York. He made similar gestures in some of his photographs, cutting the actual negatives rather than manipulating individual prints.

http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_bio_105A.html

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Art e-Facts 58

Published August 29, 2007

After his death on the 22nd of February 1987 Andy Warhol‘s estate was decided by the courts to be worth, conservatively, over half a billion dollars: $509,979,278.00. The Warhol Foundation contested this figure in court and it was eventually reduced to $228 million. It was to the Foundation’s advantage to have a lower evaluation of Warhol’s paintings because it meant they would have to pay less in legal fees to the attorney for the estate who was on a percentage of 2.5% of the value of the estate. Also, The Foundation was legally obligated to award 5 percent of its assets for charitable grants and a lower valuation meant that they would have to pay out less money.

In order to back up their legal challenge for a lesser evaluation, the Foundation argued in court that Warhol was not as great an artist as some independent experts believed him to be. Art dealer Andre Emmerich testified for the Foundation that Warhol’s work was likely to fade into obscurity because the subjects of his paintings (Marilyn Monroe, Elvis etc…) would eventually be forgotten. The Foundation paid Emmerich $4,000 a day to testify plus $3,500 for preparatory work.

Memory Lapse

Published July 23, 2007

Well it has just been one thing after another. Technical difficulties prevented daily blogging during the remainder of the trip and the plan was to upload a series of postings written while off line. Unfortunately the pen drive these were stored on has gone astray. This is hugely annoying as by far the best postings were on the drive including a rather witty description of a rather sweaty journey from Munster to Kassel in 37 degree heat and an incisive review of Munster Projects 2007.

I will not attempt to recreate these post but will summarise by saying the agreed highlights of Munster were; in no particular order:

Bruce Nauman:

Manfred Pernice: (see previous post for images)

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster:

Susan Philipsz: ( click on name for text and images )

Mike Kelley:

and of course the play park was a particular hit for some:

*next time Kassel and Documenta 12

Art e-Fact 56

Published May 21, 2007

In 1924 in the first surrealist manifesto, Andre Breton, the French poet and one of the founders of surrealism defined the essence of the movement as “Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation” The writers and artists associated with surrealism tried to reach this state of mind in order to create, by a number of means including sleep deprivation, hypnosis and drug induced states. However, after a series of disturbing incidents including an attempted mass suicide by a whole group who were in a hypnotic trance, the experiments of these extreme means of finding the unconscious were abandoned. Breton did not address these incidents in the first surrealist manifesto and rather emphasised that surrealism was a natural, not induced activity.
The visual manifestation of automatic thought can be clearly seen in the works of Andre Masson, his drawings appear as a stream of consciousness. A number of artists and writers were associated with the movement including Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Paul Eluard, Francis Picabia, Miro, Hans Arp and Salvador Dali.

Courtesy: J. Temple & C. Walker

Art e-Facts 55

Published May 14, 2007

British art group Unit One was formed by Paul Nash in 1933 to promote modern art, architecture and design. The two major currents in modern art at the time were seen as being abstract art on the one hand and Surrealism on the other. Unit One embraced the full spectrum, Nash made both abstract and Surrealist work in the mid 1930s and played a major part in organising the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936 (British Surrealism).

The launch of the group was announced in a letter from Nash to The Times newspaper, in which he wrote that Unit One was ‘to stand for the expression of a truly contemporary spirit, for that thing which is recognised as peculiarly of today in painting, sculpture and architecture’. The first and only group exhibition was held in 1934 accompanied by a book Unit One, subtitled The Modern Movement in English Architecture, Painting and Sculpture.

The other artists associated with the group were Armstrong, Bigge, Burra, Hepworth, Moore, Nicholson, Wadsworth and the architects Welles Coates and Colin Lucas.

Art e-Facts 54

Published May 9, 2007

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N8VsdaX8RM]

Doug Aitken’s complex multi media installations address the elaborate inter-relationships between man, media, industry and landscape and the nature and perception of time. The viewer’s experience of his installations is as much a process of discovery as the making of the pieces was for the artist. The narratives reveal themselves in intricate spirals in which the viewer is forced to actively engage, both physically by passing through the exhibition space to see the various projections and mentally as the multiple images prevent a single interpretation.

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2007/aitken/

Art e-Facts 52

Published May 2, 2007

During a career that has brought her controversy and acclaim in equal measure, Sarah Lucas has made art from the discarded and unexpected, incorporating such diverse materials as cigarettes, food, second-hand furniture, cars, pigeon shit and her own self-image.

In 1992 Lucas exhibited one of her most famous works, Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab, in a shop in Soho. Every morning, she had to get up and buy a kebab, then fry the eggs, then arrange them carefully on a table.

http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue5/encounters5.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1889518,00.html

Art e-Facts 51

Published May 1, 2007

Glasgow born artist Ross Sinclair has described his work as “a lifetime project that aims to engage as wide an audience as possible in a dialogue around the paradoxical gaps between life as it is lived by a society of individuals, and the aspirations afforded by ‘spectacular life’ as we absorb it through mediated images of ourselves and everything around us – in other words, it’s ourselves alone versus the world.”

Sinclair’s ‘Real Life’ has been unfolding since 1994 when he had the words Real Life tattooed on his back confirming a lifetime commitment to the project. With works such as ‘Studio Real Life’, ‘Real Life Rocky Mountain’, ‘Dead Church/Real Life’ and ‘I Love Real Life’, Sinclair has sought to open a new space in which to observe and discuss our relationships with the institutional pillars that form the architecture of all our lives. By doing so he has slowly begun to construct a parallel vision of society and its component parts. His is a vision of the world, “not as it is, but as it could be.”

Have a look athe web site and see if you can score in the game of real life !!!!!!!

I got beat 6 – 1, Ed.

http://www.rosssinclair.co.uk/

Art e-Facts 50

Published April 30, 2007

In 1921 Marcel Duchamp decided to launch a perfume. The bottle was to be a ‘false’ replica of the Rigaud brand perfume bottle that was available in the shops. The original label was modified by Duchamp by adding the face of Rrose Selavy (see fact of the day 18) Duchamp then instructed Man Ray to create a photomontage for the label to read BELLE HALEINE / Eau de Voilette (translated as Beautiful Breath: Veil Water). The perfume which was to be launched in Paris and New York had the company logo RS – New York – Paris. Duchamp then decided against the venture and the resulting false replica of the real Rigaud bottle (almost a reversed ready-made) has become one of the most precious ready-made objects of this period, authored by both Duchamp and Man Ray.

Courtesy: D. McLachlan

Art e-Facts 49

Published April 27, 2007

The artists magazine ‘Aspen’ was published between 1965 and 1971 and each issue had a different designer and editor. Former editor of ‘Women’s wear daily’ Phyllis Johnson conceived it as a multimedia magazine showcasing ‘culture along with play’ acting as ‘a time capsule of a certain period, point of view, or person’.

Over the 6 years there where 10 editions. Each edition came in a box containing booklets, phonograph recordings, posters, postcards — one issue even included a spool of Super-8 movie film. This format was incredibly important as the traditional bound format of the magazine was seen as restrictive.

For more information and to view a full archive visit

http://www.ubu.com/aspen

Courtesy: onezeroprojects

Art e-Facts 48

Published April 26, 2007

In 1938, Willem de Kooning started his first series of Women, which would become a major recurrent theme. During the 1940s, he participated in group shows with other artists who would form the New York School and become known as Abstract Expressionists. De Kooning’s first solo show, which took place at the Egan Gallery, New York, in 1948, established his reputation as a major artist; it included a number of the allover black-and-white abstractions he had initiated in 1946. The Women of the early 1950s were followed by abstract urban landscapes, Parkways, rural landscapes, and, in the 1960s, a new group of Women.

FOR INFORMATION ON FINE ART COURSES IN EDINBURGH PLEASE CLICK HERE

Art e-Facts 47

Published April 25, 2007

Carsten Nicolai is an artist and musician who lives and works in Germany. His work operates in the space in between art and science. His work operates to a very exacting minimalistic aesthetic utilising traditional sculptural and installation techniques in combination with sound and light elements.

A core influence of his practice has been sound and its inherent properties this lead to the formation of noton.archiv fur ton und nichtton (later to become raster-noton after joining with the record label Rastermusic). The record label focuses on releasing editions uniting sound and art design with a strong attention paid to scientific sequences. Carsten Nicolai also releases experimental electronic music under the title of Alva-Noto including recent collaborations with minimalist pianist Ryuichi Sakamoto and Japanese sound artist Ryoji Ikeda.

http://www.carstennicolai.de
http://www.alvanoto.de
http://www.raster-noton.de

Courtesy: onezeroprojects

Art e-Facts 46

Published April 24, 2007

In a career spanning more than six decades, the work of Louise Bourgeois encompasses the fields of sculpture and installation, painting, drawing, prints and illustrated books, which have been influenced strongly by autobiographical and psychological experiences as well as Surrealism. Born in Paris, Louise Bourgeois studied at various art schools and assisted in the tapestry restoration business of her father where she made drawings for restorations. With her husband, an art historian specializing in tribal arts, she moved to New York in 1938 and continued her studies at the Arts Students’ League in New York, before developing her complex and unique artistic work.

http://www.galeriepieceunique.com/infoframes/bourgeois.htm

FOR INFORMATION ON FINE ART COURSES IN EDINBURGH PLEASE CLICK HERE

Art e-Facts 45

Published April 23, 2007

Although born in Dublin in 1941 Michael Craig-Martin grew up and was educated in the United States of America studying Fine art at Yale University School of Art before moving to London in 1966.

Professor of Fine Arts in Goldsmiths College, London, in the 1980s and 1990s, Craig-Martin was a key influence on the YBA generation of artists—Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas, and many more.

Craig-Martin’s work includes sculptures, paintings and print-editions. Since the 1990s his paintings, wall paintings, on-site-installations and prints have represented colourful, clear compositions depicting an inventory of graphically outlined items of contemporary life.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/A3096092
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/critic/feature/0,,719505,00.html

Art e-Facts 44

Published April 18, 2007

Sol LeWitt helped establish Conceptualism and Minimalism as the dominant art movements of the postwar era. A patron and friend of colleagues young and old, he was the opposite of the artist as celebrity. He tried to suppress all interest in him as opposed to his work; he turned down awards and was camera-shy and reluctant to grant interviews.

Sol LeWitt was born in Hartford, Connecticut 1in 1928 and studied at Syracuse University, receiving a BFA.

He began making simple geometric paintings in series, which became the basis of his art. In the early 1960’s, he extended these ideas to three- dimensional wooden forms or “structures.” Bothered by their inconsistencies, he stripped the wooden skin off these structures to reveal the sculpture’s skeletal core. He also developed a prescribed ratio that he followed, which determined the amount of open space versus the amount of support structure in each piece. This focus on highly conceptual relationships, with increasing complexity and variation, has continued to guide his work as a sculptor.

In the 1960’s, LeWitt made open modular white cubes that are seminal works in the history of Minimalism. Using mathematical systems LeWitt emphasized the conceptual basis of art in direct opposition to the expressiveness and gesture identified with the work of the Abstract Expressionists.
The cube provided a particularly rich form for this kind of exploration and has been the focus of his attention for decades. He has been equally concerned with expanding the parameters of two-dimensional work, creating drawings and paintings that are applied directly to the wall and that transform entire architectural environments.
In the 1970’s, LeWitt introduced architectural scale works, Wall Drawings, based on verbal proposals or systems suggested by LeWitt but executed by others. In the 1980’s the Wall Drawings became more expressive with sensual color applied to various permutations of geometric shapes. In the past decade, LeWitt has used undulating waves and swirling bands of color that are hot, bold and highly decorative.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2053989,00.html

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/obituary/0,,2053692,00.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/arts/design/09lewitt.html?ref=design

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/news/2007/04/10/db1001.xml

http://news.scotsman.com/obituaries.cfm?id=552912007

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/09/news/obits.php

Courtesy: D. McLachlan

Art e-Facts 43

Published April 17, 2007

Since the late 1970s, American artist Vitto Acconci has designed architectural and installation works for public spaces, however he was originally a poet of the New York school before moving towards performance, sound, and video work by the end of the 1960’s.

Acconci changed direction in order to “define his body in space, his early performances—including Claim (1971) and Seedbed (1972)—were extremely controversial, transgressing assumed boundaries between public and private space, and between audience and performer.

Positioning his own body as both the subject and object of the work, Acconci’s used early video recordings to record actions taking advantage of the self-reflective potential of the media. Consistently exploring the dynamics of intimacy, trust, and power, the focus of Acconci’s projects gradually moved from his physical body (Conversions, 1971) toward the psychology of interpersonal transactions (Pryings, 1971), and later, to the cultural and political implications of the performative space he set up for the camera (The Red Tapes, 1976).

http://www.ubu.com/film/acconci.html

Art e-Facts (supplemental)

Published April 2, 2007

DEAR READERS DUE TO REASONS WELL WITHIN MY CONTROL Art e-Facts WILL APPEAR ONLY AS AND WHEN THE NECESSARY RESOURCES ARE AVAILABLE BETWEEN NOW AND THE 16TH OF APRIL WHEN I RETURN FROM HOLIDAY.

MEANTIME WHY NOT LEAVE COMMENT ON THE MANY PREVIOUS ENTRIES AND OR SEND IN YOUR VERY OWN FACT OF THE DAY.

BEST WISHES

Art e-Facts 42

Published March 30, 2007

Edward Kienholz emerged as an artist at the same time as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg in the US and was part of a generation of artists born between two World Wars.

His practice was informed by the emerging Beat Culture of the late 1950s and early 1960s in California, and was central to the development of the early Los Angeles gallery scene. In 1972 Kienholz developed a life long collaborative partnership with Nancy Reddin, who continues to make work since his death in 1994.

Kienholz sculpture takes the form of life-size environments; walk-in ‘installations’ incorporating everyday objects which critique modern society, and the political climate of the day. Compelled by a deep sense of moral justice and a provocative sense of humour, these uncompromising artworks continue to have a searing energy and pose a direct challenge to the viewer.

Art e-Facts 42

Published March 29, 2007

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o5i0eF2AF4]

Chris Cunningham is internationally known for creating and directing music videos for artists such as Björk, Madonna, Portishead and Aphex Twin. In 1989, aged only 19 Cunningham was working on the satirical sketch show Spitting Image, sculpting character models, he later went to work as Stanley Kubricks head of animatronics and special effects for the feature film A.I.

In 2000 Cunningham exhibited Flex:

“…….a video which aims to awaken one’s senses through the sound of electronic music, unforgettable images of both sexual violence and breathtaking serenity”. Anthony d’Offay Gallery

Flex was shown for the first time in: Apocalypse: Beauty and Horror in Contemporary Art at the Royal Academy in London.