We saw photography again in performance art. Wherever temporary art needed to be preserved, photography was there to provide documentation. In fact, all of the art we have seen to date, we have seen because of photography. With digital photography, we are able to look at artwork in class that just went on exhibit in a gallery in New York or anywhere else in the world. .

It is such a common occurrence in our lives that it can almost become transparent. Today, we will focus on photography as a medium, and see how it has not only supported contemporary art, but also shaped it.

After this class you should be able to

Define the following:

• shutter speed
• depth of field
• digital
• doppelganger
• time (in photography)
• space (in photography)

Answer the following:

• How does photography integrate into other artistic practices and media?

Recognize artwork by the following artists:

• Gordon Parks
• Carrie May Weams
• William Eggleston
• Alec Soth
• Bernd and Hilla Becher
• Edward Burtynsky
• Andreas Gursky
• Thomas Demand
• Peter Fischli & David Weiss
• Erwin Wurm
• Tatsumi Orimoto
• Cai Guo Qiang
• Zhang Huan
• Cindy Sherman
• Niki S. Lee
• Gregory Crewdson
• Charlie White
• Wendy McMurdo
• Roni Horn
• Hiroshi Sugimoto
• Barbara Probst
• Philip Lorca Dicorcia

External Links for further reading:

Erwin Wurm website Barbara Probst website

After this class you should be able to

Recognize artwork by the following artists:

• Komar and Melamid
• Shadi Ghadirian
• Ramin Haerizade
• Tala Madani
• Halim Al-Karim
• Ahmed Alsoudani
• Hayv Kahraman
• Mona Hatoum
• Marwan Rechmaoui
• Wafa Hourani
• Jeffar Khaldi
• Adi Nes
• Anish Kapoor
• Tehching Hsieh
• Xu Bing
• Ai WeiWei
• Cai Guo-Qiang
• Yue Minjun
• Lee Bul
• William Kentridge
• Jane Alexander#
• El Anatsui
• Felix González-Torres
• Rirkrit Tiravanija
• Ernesto Neto
• Arturo Herrera
• Jason deCaeirs Taylor
• Gabriel Orozco

External Links for further reading:

• Ai Wei Wei speaking about freedom of thought
• Sunflower Seeds review of Ai Wei Wei in the Turbine Hall
• Chinese Artists Profiles from Undead Astronauts Blog
• Book From The Sky Historian’s Craft Blog on Xu Bing
• Xu Bing artist’s website Square Word Calligraphy digital Copy of Xu Bing’s Book
• A Conversation with El Anatsui Interview
• review of Lee Bul

In the 1960s, the Italian art scene becomes well known through the work of the Arte Povera movement. Using poor materials, that is materials of everyday occurrence, they commented on issues of contemporary society, as well as the historical traditions of Italian art.

In Austria, a group of artists centered around Herman Nitsch became known as the Viennese Actionists. Documenting performances through photography, they explored the Dionysian and visceral side of ritual. These pieces can be seen as carnal performances exploring the darker side of life.

In Germany, post-war reparations took a more apologetic tone, and artists such as Joseph Beuys looked to performance as a way to find healing rather than carnage. Other artists began exploring what became known as Neo-Expressionism, direct unmitigated expression with the traditional medium of paint and canvass. We will follow this style into the American scene in the 1980s as well.

In England in the 1990s, we also see a group of artists become collectively known as the YBA, or Young British Artists. Often creating sensational work, they don’t so much share a common style or subject, as much as a common interest in producing provocative artworks.

After this class you should be able to

Define the following:

• Arte Povera
• Neo-Expressionism
• trickster

Answer the following:

• After World War II, how did modernism develop differently in Europe and the United States?
• What similarities and differences do you see between European and American art in the 1960s and 1970s?

Recognize artwork by the following artists:

• Giovanni Anselmo
• Aligiero e Boetti
• Mario Merz,
• Michelangelo Pistoletto
• Austria – Viennese Actionists
• Günter Brus
• Hermann Nitsch
• Otto Muehl
• Rudolf Schwarzkogler
• Joseph Beuys
• Hans Haacke
• Anselm Kiefer
• Sigmar Polke
• Gerhard Richter
• Martin Kippenberger
• Rebecca Horn
• Katharina Fritsch
• Yves Klein
• Anette Messager
• Antoni Tàpies
• Juan Muñoz
• Damien Hirst
• Marc Quinn
• Gillian Wearing
• Rachel Whiteread
• Jake and Dinos Chapman
• David Cerny

External Links for further reading:

• Film of Joseph Beuys with the Coyote
• Chapman brothers website
• Sculptures by David Cerney

Plato’s Cave:

We first looked at this idea in relation to the work of James Turrell. This idea shows up in Plato’s Republic, a philosophical work that is presented as a dialogue between philosophers discussing the nature of a just city and a just man. In it, one philosopher describes a metaphor for life. He describes the human condition as similar to prisoners who are chained up in a cave, staring at the back wall. Core points are:

• Men live in ignorance of the true nature of the world, as if they were prisoners in a cave who can only watch shadows of reality.
• The role of the philosopher is to discover the true nature of things, like leaving the cave of shadows and seeing the real world.
• It is natural that apon returning to the cave, the philosopher sounds quite ridiculous to the other prisoners when he describes how the world really is.

Apollonian vs. Dionysian:

Apollo and Dionysus were two sons of Zeus. Apollo is associated with the sun, dreams, reason, and the arts. Dionysus is associated with wine, music, ecstasy, and intoxication. Although they were not originally seen as opposites, today the distinction between the two is often emphasized when describing the nature of artwork. Be careful of absolutism though, now that we live in a monotheistic world, it is all too easy to make black and white distinctions like good vs. evil, light vs. dark, order vs. chaos. Most things in the world are usually a blend of attributes.

Sartre’s Existentialism:

We first studied this as background to the Abstract Expressionists. Core points are:

• First we are born, then we define ourselves.
• Anxiety comes from being responsible for our own actions.
• Blaming others for our actions is acting in bad faith.

Saussure’s Semiotics:

Saussure was a Swiss linguist, and he used what we call structuralism to look at how language works. He said elements of language can be called SIGNS. Every SIGN is a combination of two things: the SIGNIFIER (the image or the sound of the word) and the SIGNIFIED (the mental association we have when we read or hear the word). This is interesting to us, because these ideas have been extended to the visual arts, where elements of pictures are seen as signifiers, and to understand the work, we must decode what is signified.

Barthes’ Myth:

Roland Barthes was one of a group of French philosophers known to us as post-structuralism. They took the ideas of Saussure and applied them in new and interesting ways. One of Barthe’s ideas was to take the idea of the SIGN-SIGNIFIER-SIGNIFIED, and to apply it to the concept of Myths. He explained how additional meaning is culturally heaped upon certain signs in order to elevate them to the status of myth. He uses wine in French society as one example. Wine to the French is much more than just an alcoholic beverage. Even we as Americans have our own perceptions and stereotypes associated with the French and Wine, don’t we? In class we follow the example of the American flag as a myth, and look at many of the places where the American flag shows up in our semester.

Barthe’s Death of the Author:

We studied this before watching Exit Through the Gift Shop. Core points are:

• Any artwork can be read as a “Text”.
• There is no one single “Author” for a “Text”.
• Instead, any Text is a mixture of quotations from other sources.
• It is the responsibility of the Reader to decide the real meaning of the Text.

Foucault’s Panopticon:

Michel Foucault, also grouped under post-structuralism, explored ideas of power and authority, and how they were implemented and how they controlled society. We look at one specific example of his, the Panopticon. At it’s foundation, this idea relates to a specific architectural layout for prisons, where a central guard tower is positioned to have a perfect view of all the prison cells arranged in a ring around it. He explores this design in order to explain how positions of power maintain control by what they are able to see and police. He also explains how, when we never know just when we are being watched, we internalize the policing, and always behave as if we are being watched. As artists, this is particularly important as technology becomes part of the landscape, and part of the list of materials that artists use.

External Links for further reading:

Harun Farocki – Images of the World and the Inscription of War (1989)blogspot review Videograms of a Revolution Another Harun Farocki film, on Youtube Videograms of a Revolution on-line review

Presence: Before it even became of interest to the contemporary artworld, the African American community had their own vibrant artistic culture. We begin by examining the work of Artists such as Bill Traylor, who was born a slave and died a free man. Untrained formally, his work continues to have a profoundly contemporary feel. We also look at the quilts produced by the community in Gee’s Bend, an artistic tradition that is passed from mother to daughter. Artists and arts communities such as these, who have always been present, have surfaced and become known to the larger arts community in recent years.

Present: Some artists who were very well versed in the contemporary art scene in the forties and fifties found inspiration both from modern artistic influences as well as from their personal cultural veiwpoint. Two such artists are Jacob Lawrence and Romare Beardon. They sought to present, in a sincere and straight-forward manner, black history and culture through narrative painting.

Represent: Other artists choose to create archetypes, or figures who stand-in to represent a larger experience, such as Kerry James Marshall’s Lost Boys, who represent the African American youth who’s childhoods have been lost in incarceration. Other artists produce objects which serve to validate the experience and pride within the community, such as David Hammonds flag for the U.N.I.A., Chakaia Booker’s abstract process art sculptures that also reference skin tones and African masks, or Chris Ofili’s large-scale paintings that immerse black pop references in an intricate web of colorful patterns.

Re-present: Another strategy for some artists is to directly confront racism and inequality by taking images from culture, re-contextualizing them, and displaying them in such a way as to make the history of oppression undeniable. This is what we see with pieces like The Liberation of Aunt Jemima by Betye Saar, or the Flag for the Moon by Faith Ringgold. Fred Wilson created meaning through juxtaposition in his series Mining the Museum, where historical objects are placed together to trace the history of racism in this country.

Re-invent: Finally we look at artists who completely reinvent history, by recombining factual and fictitious elements, and in the process produce new contexts within which we can examine our own culture. Kara Walker’s deeply psychological cutouts take archetypes from the Antebellum South and literally turn them on their ends. Kehinde Wiley infuses classical portraiture with a hip hop style in a nouveau riche time-warp redaction. Yinka Shonibare takes classical European clothing styles and represents them in colorful patterning. In so doing he traces what we think of as traditional African fabrics and shows their complicated history, as Indonesian textiles that were copied by the Dutch, made profitable by the English in sales to Africa, which in turn brought the slave trade to the Americas and increased the production of the cotton with which these fabrics were made.

After this class you should be able to

Define the following:

• racial identity
• identity politics
• curator
• stereotype

Answer the following:

• Explain the complicated history of the textiles found in Yinka Shonibare’s work. How are they tied into the history of slavery?
• How do artists use stereotypes in their art as a way to confront racism?
• What cultural reference is being made by Kerry James Marshall by calling his series “Lost Boys”?

Recognize artwork by the following artists:

• Bill Traylor
• Quilts from Gee’s Bend
• Jacob Lawrence
• Romare Bearden
• Kerry James Marshall
• David Hammons
• Chris Ofili
• Chakaia Booker
• Betye Saar
• Faith Ringgold
• Michael Ray Charles
• Renee Cox
• Fred Wilson
• Robert Colescott
• Kara Walker
• Kehinde Wiley
• Yinka Shonibare

External Links for further reading:

More about Bill Traylor The Gee’s Bend Foundation interview with Kerry James Marshall re:making history David Spalding interviews Fred Wilson Kehinde Wiley website Yinka Shonibare website

If there is a Wikipedia page for the artist, it is a good indication that there is enough source material out there for you. Look to the external links section of the Wikipedia entry for a list of biographical resources to use.

Below is a short list of interviews with important artists, and artist lists from a few galleries. I may continue to add to this in the future.

Lists of Artists to Consider:

Interviews and blogs about artists:

• PBS Art21 series
• Robert Ayer’s “A Sky Filled with Shooting Stars” Artist interview blog.

Lists of artists at the following galleries:

• Gagosian Gallery
• Barbara Gladstone Gallery
• Matthew Marks Gallery
• Cheim and Read
• Sikkema Jenkins
• 303 Gallery
• Feature Inc.
• Deitch Projects
• David Zwirner
• Luhring Augustine

We look today at several strategies, and methods, of trying to play outside the rules. Unlike many of the previous lectures, these artists do not constitute a particular style, or chronology, as much as they all are interested in a particular objective. They want to make sure that women are given their just place in the art world, and the world in general. To do this, they employ several strategies, and today we try to loosely group these artists not by time or style, but by common strategy.

First, we look at women taking on stereotypically male roles in order to construct their artistic identity. So far we have been seeing women artists doing just that, trying to fit in and play a man’s game according to man’s rules. Today though, these artist’s make the gender role apparent, and discomforting. Niki de Saint Phalle, after playing the role of the beautiful model, the object to adore, changes course and begins shooting guns at artworks in a destructive act of creativity. Taking on male aggression and turning it into a form of self-therapy that violates the canvas, she says “In 1961 I shot at: Daddy, all the men, small men, tall men, important men, fat men, men, my brother, society, church, school, my family, my mother, all the men, Daddy, myself, men again.” She then turns to the most traditional female role, that of the mother, in her Nana series. Linda Benglis, as much as her artwork fits what is expected of a 1970’s process artist, posts humorously obscene ads in Artforum that challenge our ideas of both masculinity and femininity.

Next we look at artists who don’t just try to play the game, but actually tell the men in charge that they aren’t invited to the party. We start with Womanhouse by Miriam Schapiro and Judy Chicago. Here, women artists were invited to create installations in a home where men were not allowed to tread, at least until after the opening day. This questioned whether the course of art so far, one determined by men and made by men, even deserved the attention of women, who could create their own, parallel history.

At this point, we start to examine the role of questioning authority. Nancy Spero challenges the powers that be, not just in terms of woman’s issues, as in pieces like Torture of Women, but governmental roles in general in the oppression of the masses. And we look at the Guerilla Girls, anonymous women artists, who create political pieces that examine the horrifying fact that the artworld, of all places, is even more backwards and resistant to women’s rights than mainstream America.

In the next few sections we look at the concept of power, and where power resides. We start with the body as a point of power, and women who look to use their bodies to exhibit this power. This is tricky territory, as women’s bodies are traditionally subject to objectification, and to seduce with an image of one’s body quickly plays into this. So how do they try to overcome this obstacle? Carolee Schneeman, starts with videotaped performances of bodies writhing in piles of meat, her body covered with sculptural materials as if she were herself a canvas. Then, in her most famous work, pulls a scroll from her vagina that confronts a film critic who has told her the messy feminine and emotional esthetic of her films makes them unwatchable. Hanna Wilke tries through various means to objectify herself and the female body while adding aggressive elements like guns, prosthetic wounds, and maladies to distance the viewer and bring humanity back to the body. She posses in pinup fashion covered with little sexual organs made of chewing gum attached all over her body and sais ““I chose gum because it’s the perfect metaphor for the American woman – chew her up, get what you want out of her, throw her out and pop in a new piece,.” When she herself succumbs to lymphoma at the age of 53, she documents her deterioration and forces the viewer to see women not just as objects but also as human.

As much as the body is a place of power, so is the voice, and this is explored by artists such as Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer. Kruger uses the language to consumer advertisements and cold war propaganda to lambaste the viewer for their complicity in male power. Jenny Holzer explores many voices through her truisms, and finds various artistic media with which to display these thoughts. Her piece Detained, from 2008, displays “redacted” documents obtained through the freedom of information act. These documents detail the controversial treatment of prisoners in Guatanamo. Throughout the documents, text has been blacked out before the report was made public, showing that we still live in world which fears the power of the voice.

Finally we look at the gaze as a source of power. Just by looking, by confronting the viewer, the artists gains power. We see this today throughout this lecture, when photographs of artists depict themselves looking straight back at us. Sophie Calle is one example of an artist who takes this to an extreme, as she becomes the voyeur, following people unsuspecting through the streets, or photographing their possessions when they are out of their hotel rooms. Sue Williams shows us that knowing what to look for is as important as the looking. Her seemingly innocent abstract paintings take on a new level of meaning once we know that within the gestures are hidden sexual organs and exploded body parts, challenging notions of sexuality and violence.

After this class you should be able to

Define the following:

• feminism
• the gaze
• hegemony

Recognize artwork by the following artists:

• Linda Benglis
• Sophie Calle
• Judy Chicago
• Guerrilla Girls
• Jenny Holzer
• Barbara Kruger
• Sarah Lucas
• Ana Mendieta
• Carolee Schneemann
• Nancy Spero

Be familiar with the following artists:

• Marina Abramovic
• Tracy Emin
• Niki De Saint Phalle
• Miriam Schapiro
• Sue Williams
• Hannah Wilke

Answer the following:

What was Womanhouse? What is The Dinner Party?

Which artist compiled lists of text that she called Truisms?

Which of these artist’s work also fits into other movements that we have studied?

External Links for further reading:

A good post on Niki de Saint Phalle Judy Chicago’s website The Dinner Party at the Brooklyn Museum Nancy Spero’s Obituary in The Guardian Off topic — Young Women Set Vocal Patterns

Importing Camera Images

• Import images from camera in Bridge, save into a “masters folder”
• Use Review Mode (cmd-B) to pick the picture you want to work with
• Copy this image into a “working folder”
• Load this picture into Camera raw, make adjustments, use Recovery to bring back detail
• Open in Photoshop

The Portrait

In Photoshop

Three Layers, Three Groups, Three Masks

• duplicate the background layer (cmd-j), then hide background layer (safety layer)
• duplicate twice more, name new layers “me”, “shirt”, and “wall”
• make three groups (folders) “face group”, “shirt group” and “wall group” and pick a color for each
• drag each image into its group
• select the face layer, and make a mask for the face (see Photoshop Masks below)
• copy (command-option drag) the mask onto the “wall” layer, and then invert it
• select the shirt layer, and make a mask for the shirt

Taking the shirt out of the wall layer:

• command click the shirt mask, it should now be a selection
• with the selection active, make the wall layer mask active
• go to “edit/fill…” choose black. This should add the selection to the black of the mask.

Clean up the layers:

• Make sure you have the three pieces, one in each layer
• Use “Mask Edge…” from the masks window to refine the masks, use “contract/expand” to make sure there aren’t any missing areas
• drag each mask off of the image layer and onto the group (folder) layer
• save the file, and save a copy of the file

THE OVERLAY IMAGES

Find Images in the Browser

• Do a Google Search for the theme images you want, select the images tab to browse
• Select “Full Size image”, right click, save in “masters folder” with serialized names (image001.jpg, image002.jpg etc.)
• Find 5 to 10 images to start with

Global Adjustments In Bridge

• Copy all of the images over to the “working folder”, open images in camera raw, make adjustments, hit done
• reopen about five at a time in Camera Raw, Select All, Open Image (in Photoshop)

Prep Images in Photoshop

• duplicate the background layer (cmd-j), then hide background layer
• Make a layer mask containing what you want to use (see Photoshop Masks below)
• save the images

PUT THEM TOGETHER

• Create a new top layer in the portrait (“image dump”) and select it
• Use “Arrange Documents”, open up the overlay images and drag the layer with the mask into your portrait.

Arrange the overlays

• Examine one added image at a time
• use Edit/Transform…(or cmd-T) and Move(v) to find a good placement
• Starting with Overlay, find a good blend mode for the image (see Blend Modes below)
• give it a descriptive name, and then drag it to the appropriate layer
• refine the mask with the Brush tool
• Add adjustment layer onto individual layers to refine colors and shadows

TIPS:

• Make SUB-GROUPS, and NAME your layers
• Edit/Transfom/Flip & Rotate are non-destructive, Scale and the others aren’t so use wisely
• When EDITING MASKS, Make sure the MASK is selected, not the IMAGE, Click on the MASK not the LAYER
• Choose a BRIGHT COLOR for foreground / background color to warn you if you are editing the image

Photoshop Masks

• make sure you have your Layers and Masks windows open
• make sure you have black and white as your selected colors
• use Quick Selection Tool (W) or “Select/Color range…” to select the parts you want
• switch to the Quick mask (Q) tool and refine the edges of your selection
• You can use the Brush tool (B) to change the selection, square brackets to change size, add shift to change hardness
• switch back (Q) to the regular selection marquee (marching ants), then add a vector mask (from layers window)
• If the mask is reversed use Invert from the masks window
• You can also use “Mask Edge…” from the masks window to refine the edge
• Option-click on the mask to view it, use brush tool and black/white or grey to clean it up

Photoshop Blend Modes

shift+/- : cycle through blend modes shift/option+(letter): (S)creen, (M)ultiply, (O)verlay, (F)soft light…

Big Three Blend modes:

• Screen: Ignores black, makes things lighter
• Mutliply: Ignores white, makes things darker
• Overlay: Ignores grey, makes things lighter or darker: increase contrast

Blend If Sliders

• Right click on layer and choose “Blending Options…”
• Use the four “Blend If:” sliders to effect when blending occurs, choose grey unless you want to target a color channel
• option click on the sliders to split them apart and create a smoother blend