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Photography out of Conceptual (Pop & Minimal, and performance) Art Why has photography moved from the margin to the center of contemporary art in the last 40 years?. Barbara Kruger Untitled (You are Not Yourself), 1981.
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Photography out of Conceptual (Pop & Minimal, and performance) Art Why has photography moved from the margin to the center of contemporary art in the last 40 years? Barbara Kruger Untitled (You are Not Yourself), 1981
Installation view of the 1970 Information exhibition, MoMA NYC, which marks the institutional “success” of text-based Conceptual art documented by photographs.
Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965, wooden folding chair, photographic copy of a chair and photographic enlargement of a dictionary definition of a chair
Gilbert and George, The Singing Sculpture, 1970, photograph of performance(Gilbert Proesch, b.1943, Italy; George Passmore, b. 1942, England). “Banal” photographic documentation of ephemeral works, like this “living sculpture.” Gilbert & George with Ginkgo series, British pavilion Venice Biennale 2005, This series was included in the 2008 San Francisco G & G retrospective.
Denis Oppenheim, Reading Position for Second Degree Burn, 1970, Stage 1 and Stage 2, book, skin, solar energy, exposure time 5 hours, Jones Beach, New York, color photography and collage, 216 x 152 cm . Photographs “were there simply to indicate a radical art that had already vanished….necessary only as a residue for communication.”
Bruce Nauman, Eating My Words, and Self-Portrait as a Fountain, from Eleven Color Photographs, 1966/67-70, chromogenic color print / performed for the camera only
John Baldessari (United States, b. 1931) (“Father” of Pictures Generation”)(left) Wrong, 1966-68, acrylic, photo-emulsion on canvas, 59 x 45 in.(right) Astronauts and Businessmen, 1988 , photograph with applied paint, Museum of Fine Art, Houston
Ed Ruscha (U.S. b. 1937), Flying A, Kingman, Arizona, from Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1963, photographic book, sold for $3.50 Minimalist and California Pop (anti)aesthetic: serial repetition and deadpan view of contemporary reality Book cover
Compare Ruscha’s (1963) vision of the American West (above) with Ansel Adams’ interpretation based on 19th century Romantic landscape aesthetics, (right) Moonrise over Hernandez, NM. October 31, 1941. Adams made “Art” and did not work in other media. Through his deliberate lack of style, Ruscha draws attention “to the estranged relationship of people to their rural environment, but without staging or dramatizing the estrangement.”
Ansel Adams, Grand Tetons and the Snake River, 1942 The artist’s road trip from California to Oaklahoma Albert Bierstadt, The Rocky Mountains, 1863
Ed Ruscha, Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas, 1963, oil on canvas, 5’5” x 10’
Ed Ruscha took the photographs of Sunset Strip with a motorized Nikon camera mounted to the back of a pick-up truck. This allowed him to photograph every building while driving – first down one side of the street and then the other. The pictures were then pasted in order they were shot, and the individual buildings were labeled with their respective address numbers.
Ed Ruscha, The Old Trade School Building, 2005, synthetic polymer on canvas 54 x 120 in, from The Course of Empire Series, US Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2005(bottom) Blue Collar Trade School, 1992, Synthetic polymer on canvas, 54 x 120
Robert Smithson, “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey,” 1967 from Artforum, vol.6, no.4, December 1967, pp. 48-51.
Robert Smithson (US Environmental Artist,1938-1973), Spiral Jetty, 1970, Great Salt Lake. Earthwork
Hans Haacke, detail of Shapolsky et al, Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real Time System as of May 1, 1971, 1971, two enlarged photographs, 142 black and white photographs with typewritten data sheets, six charts and one explanatory panel
Bernhardand Hilla BecherConceptual (typological) photography(left) Gas Tanks, 1963 (right) Water Towers, 1980, 9 b/w photographs mounted on board, 62inH overall
Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954), Sommerstrasse, Düsseldorf, 1980, Gelatin silver print, 16 1/2 x 22 1/2 in., Dallas Museum of Art
Thomas Struth (Germany, b.1954, student of Bechers) Shinju-ku (Skyscrapers), Tokyo, 1986 (right) Ferdinand-von-Schill-Strasse, Dessau, 1991
Candida Höfer (Germany, 1944, student of Bechers) (left) Stiftsbibliothek Klosterneuburg III, 2003, C-print, 68 in. HCa' Rezzonico Venezia II, 2003, C-print, 74 in. Width
Thomas Ruff (German, b.1958), House #9 II, 1991, 72 in. Hone of series taken in early morning, apartment blocks in Eastern Germany
Thomas Ruff, (left) Portrait, 1989, 63in. H(center and right) from Portrait series, 2001, conceptual typologies“absolute objectivity” like passport photos except for scale '... Like archetypal passport photos... young people with dead eyes and empty faces.' Ruff
Martha Rosler, detail of The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems, 1974, 45 black and white photographs mounted on 24 mat-board panels, each panel 25 x 56 cm
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/09/05/arts/rosler-audioss/index.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/09/05/arts/rosler-audioss/index.html 2008 New York Times slide show: Rosler talking about her work 1960’s-2008 Martha Rosler (US, 1943) Cleaning the Drapes, from series, Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful, 1967-72
Cindy Sherman (US, b.1954) Untitled Film Still #27, 197969 film stills from 1977 (23 years old) to 1980. She stopped making film stills, she has explained, when she ran out of clichés.
Cindy Sherman, (left) Untitled Film Still #35, 1979; (right) Untitled Film Still #54. 1980 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 8 x 10” glossies just like “real” film stills. "She's good enough to be a real actress.“ Andy Warhol
Cindy Sherman, (left) Untitled Film Still #37, (right) UFS #13, 1979
(left) Cindy Sherman, Untitled #188, Chromogenic color print, 43 ½ x 65 ½,“ 1989 (right) Hans Bellmer (German, 1902-1975) 'Poupee' (Doll) in Hayloft, 1935-1936 (historical source for Sherman)
(left) Sherrie Levine (US Postmodern Appropriation artist, b.1947) Untitled (After Alexander Rodchenko: 9), 1987 (right) Alexander Rodchenko (Russian Constructivist, avant-garde modernist), 1891-1956), Portrait of Mother, 1924 Postmodern “Appropriation” of “high” art challenged modernism’s key values of “originality” and “aura.” Key text: Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm
(left) Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans, 1981 – a photograph of reproduction of a photograph(right) Walker Evans, Hale County, Alabama, 1936. (Or is it the other way around?)Key text: Rosalind Krauss: “The Originality of the Avant-garde and other Modernist Myths” Post-structuralism – postmodern revision of modern theory
Richard Prince (American, born 1949), Untitled (four single men with interchangeable backgrounds looking to the right), 1977, Mixed media on paper, 23 x 19 in. Metropolitan Museum, NYC
Richard Prince, (left) Untitled (cowboy), 1981, Ektacolor photograph, 20 x 24 in (right) Untitled (cowboy) 1980-84, Ektacolor photograph, 27 x 40 in. “Pictures Generation” appropriation from mass visual culture: advertising photography
Barbara Kruger (U.S. b. 1945), (left) Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face), 1981, gelatin silver print, 72 x 48 in.; (right) Untitled (I Shop Therefore I Am), 1987. “Pictures Generation”
Louise Lawler (American, born 1947), Pollock and Tureen, Arranged by Mr. and Mrs. Burton Tremaine, Connecticut, 1984, silver dye bleach print, 28 x 39 in.
Jeff Wall (Canadian, 1946), Picture for Women, 1979transparency in light box, approx. 5 x 7ft
(left) Jeff Wall, Picture for Women, transparency in lightbox, 1979, around 5ft x 7ft; compare (right) Edouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, oil on canvas, 1882 / Art historical quotation is characteristically postmodern.
(left) Jeff Wall, Picture for Women, transparency in lightbox, 1979, around 5ft x 7ft; compare (right) Diego Velazquez (Spanish Baroque), Las Meninas, 1656.scale, complex composition drawing attention to the unity of reality and illusion, uncertain relationship between the viewer and the figures depicted.
Jeff Wall (Canada, b. 1946) Installation view of the exhibition Documenta 8, Kassel, Germany, 1987, showing The Storyteller, cibachrome transparency, lightbox, 1986
Jeff Wall,A Sudden Gust of Wind (After Hokusai), transparency in light-box, 1993, 7ft x 12ft. Hokusai, Ejiri in Suruga Province c.1831-3, woodblock print from series, 36 Views of Fuji, 26 x 38 cm
Felix Gonzalez-Torres (American b. Cuba 1957- NYC 1996), Untitled, 1991. As installed for The Museum of Modern Art, New York "Projects 34: Felix Gonzalez-Torres“ May 16 - June 30, 1992: 2 of 24 locations throughout New York City"EMERGING WOR(L)DS": June 2007 - October 2008: http://www.tina-b.com/content.php?akce=section&lang=en&season=2007&id=12 Gonzalez-Torres represented the United States at the 2007 Venice Biennale
Christian Boltanski (French, b. 1944) Jewish School of Grosse Hamburgstrasse in Berlin in 1939, 1991, moving photographs, fans, florescent lamps, dimensions variablehttp://www.monumenta.com/2010/english/monumenta/Monumenta-2010.htmlChristian Boltanski at the Grand Palais, Monumenta 2010 Monument (Odessa), 1989-2003, gelatin silver prints, tin biscuit boxes, lights, and wire
Annette Messager (French, b. 1943) My Vows (Mes Voeux), 1988-91, gelatin-silver prints under glass and string, dimensions variable detail
Annette Messager, My Vows, 1990. Gelatin silver prints and string. Dimensions vary with installation, approx.: 140 x 73 inches. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2007 purchase Catholic votives
“Pictures” PaintersPostmodern, Post-Pop “Painters of Modern Life”Postmodern tactics of pastiche, appropriation of found pictures from media (“low” art) and art history (“high” art)The “return of the ‘real’”
(left) David Salle (US, b. 1952), His Brain, 1984, oil and acrylic on canvas, acrylic on fabric, two panels, 9 ft 9 in x 8 ft 10 in overall [PICTURES GENERATION](right) compare Salle with James Rosenquist (US, b. 1933), President Elect, 1960-1 and (right below) Sigmar Polke (German, 1941), Alice in Wonderland, 1971
David Salle, Comedy, 1995, oil and acrylic on canvas, two panels: 96 1/4 x 144 1/8 inches overall; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Eric Fischl (US, b. 1948) Bad Boy, 1981, oil on canvas, 5ft 6in x 8ftdecadent suburbia Edgar Degas, Interior,1868-9 Secret brutalities of middle class lives
Eric Fischl, Sleepwalker, 1979, oil on canvas“What’s an adolescent boy’s masturbation about anyway if it’s not, in some sense, a separation technique? He’s separating from his parents. He’s becoming aware of himself.” - Fischl
Eric Fischl, A Visit to / A Visit from / The Island, oil on canvas, 1983