Japanese Outsider Art

Posted on 25 April 2013 by beckybendylegs

A while back I was introduced to the field of Outsider Art at college, a concept which fascinates me as it connects the notion of creativity and mental health with the idea that everyone has creativity within them.

The Wellcome Collection is currently running an exhibition of Japanese Outsider Art. Having lived in Japan for two years I have an interest in Japan. The exhibition consists of works of art (ceramics, textiles, paintings, sculptures, drawings) by forty-six artists who are residents and day attendees at social welfare institutions across Japan.

‘Souzou’, the title of the exhibition, has no direct translation in English but a double meaning in Japanese. It means both creation and imagination.

So-called Outsider Art in Japan has remained deeply embedded in the realm of social care in the country rather than being integrated into the formal art circuit as in Europe.

Outsider Art has followed a different path in Japan to in Europe. In Europe, it developed at the same time as psychiatry, with a handful of doctors keeping their patients’ works as diagnostic aids after the mid-nineteenth century. Around the same time, avant-garde artists took an interest in what they saw as expressions of the subconscious by psychiatric patients, children and ‘primitive’ non-Western cultures.

In Japan, Outsider Art was associated closely with public health and education reform after 1945 when the new post-war social welfare system was formed. Post-war educationalists championed the production of art within an institutional context.

The original emphasis of such institutions was on work, an essential component of Japanese life. The idea was that training people in workshops would improve their chances of finding employment and a place in society. In 1954, artist Kazuo Yagi took over the ceramics workshop at Omi Gakuen, which had previously produced crockery. He insisted on his students’ right to self-expression. This policy of ‘non-intervention’ in the creative process became a model for other social welfare institutions in the rest of Japan

Some of the pieces on show

Untitled by Shingo Ikeda

Shingo Ikeda’s notebooks show his calculations of the journeys he would like to make on the Tokyo subway, or predictions of the outcomes of the baseball tournaments and sumo wrestling competitions he follows.

The Economically Booming City of Tianjin, China by Norimitsu Kokubo

Norimitsu Kokubo’s imaginary cityscapes explore real places that he has never been to. They are created in his mind from snippets and facts he finds in newspapers and the Internet.

Untitled by Satoshi Morita

Satoshi Morita’s tapestries are made from other people’s discarded thread ends in the ceramics workshop he attends.

Dairy by Takanori Herai

Takanori Herai’s diaries look at first to be made up of abstract shapes but are in fact hieroglyphs, which both record and disguise his daily activities.

References

The Wellcombe Collection, http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions/japanese-outsider-art.aspx [last accessed 25 April 2013]

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Artists I have ‘discovered’ at college

Posted on 21 April 2013 by beckybendylegs

I was thinking today, randomly, about the good and great artists I have been ‘introduced’ to during tutorials at college. I think they deserve a blog entry to themselves as I owe them a debt for the inspiration they have provided me with (I’m sure they’d be much flattered). There are many more than just these three but these are the three who stick in my mind the most.

John Virtue

Early on in the course, while thinking about contrast and colour (or lack thereof), I came across John Virtue and his amazing black-and-white paintings of London. John Virtue is a landscape painter first and foremost, who’s work is somewhere between real and abstract. his style straddles oriental brush-painting and abstract expressionism. They relate closely to the likes of Turner and Constable, whom he admires enormously. Later on in the year when we talked about the sublime, I thought of John Virtue. One thing he said that stuck with me is how important it is to realise when you have to stop, when the painting is complete. I admire anyone who can paint without colour yet create a strong sense of the sublime.

Colour is an ‘unnecessary distraction’ (Rupert Wright, The Times, 19 May 2007)

Lisa Milroy

Lisa Milory’s paintings were introduced to me as I began the Near and Far project as her style and subject matter is similar to mine. I am fascinated with her large canvases of collections of seemingly ordinary objects, such as shoes or records. I admire her technical skill but also the sense of ‘memory’ in her paintings (I learnt on research about Lisa Milroy that she didn’t generally paint from life but often from memory). I copied a painting of hers as part of my project. I came across the notion of grounding by studying Lisa Milroy. Previously I had always painted on white. Now I consider the background colour with all of my paintings. In addition to her ‘still lifes’ or ‘collections’ of objects I am attracted to her street scenes, especially those of Japan as I lived there for two years. To me they oozed Japan. I can almost smell the soya sauce or the tatami when I look at them.

The painting I copied

I am in that room, I can smell the tatami

Ben McLaughlin

The next artist I discovered who had an emotional impact on me was Ben McLaughlin who’s work matched my sense of the obscure and humour, as he states: ‘Being an artist is totally self-indulgent, but somebody has to do it’. First and foremost I love his paintings. They are simple, yet they have a huge impact and presence. He is another artist who paints the ordinary, everyday. His pictures evoke a feeling of the captured moment. His use of light and tone adds to the atmosphere of each scene. However, perhaps most interesting fact about Ben McLuaghlin is how he titles his pictures. He chooses snippets of everyday life, pieces from his thoughts or the radio, or overheard conversation. I’ve always struggled with titling paintings so to me this is pure genius. His paintings capture a moment and the titles do too. You can almost ‘hear’ the radio in the background.

‘The British Born Wife of Syria’s President Bashar Assad Has Been Banned From Traveling to European Union Countries by the Parliament in Brussels 2012’

I hope one day someone writes about me in their blog.

References:

John Virtue at the National Gallery, http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/learning/associate-artist-scheme/john-virtue/ [last accessed 21 April 2014]

Hamilton, J., (2006) The Paintings of Ben McLaughlin, Merrell, London

Lisa Milroy on Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Milroy [last accessed 21 April 2013]

Journal Notes

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Gallery visits – what they do for me

Posted on 20 April 2013 by beckybendylegs

Since starting my Foundation Degree course I have been fortunate enough to visit a fair few galleries and exhibitions, some through the college, others with my family. This is a brief post about these visits, what I saw, and how much they have impacted on me and influenced my art practice.

Berlin – September 2012

The weekend before I started the Foundation Degree course I was in Berlin. While in Berlin I visited the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin. There I was moved by Hans-Peter Feldmann‘s A3 photographic images of people (police officers, hostages, terrorists, and civilians) who have lost their lives as a result of violence and terrorism.I also came across Morton Bartlett‘s bizarre collection of per-pubescent dolls, which became useful later on when we studied collections in our tutorials. Cy Twombly also featured in an exhibition there at the time of my visit. I wasn’t particularly moved by his work at the time, but it came up in our tutorial about ‘What is drawing?’ which made me question the notion of drawing. I also remember seeing lots of work by Joseph Beuys whose work affected me in different ways. His large lumps of animal fat repulsed me (inviting an abject response), his ‘tactile’ felt sculptures amazed me, and his bizarre videos fascinated me.

Lumps of Fat in the middle of Berlin

Liverpool – October 2012

In October I took part in a student trip to Liverpool to visit the Walker Gallery. The past and current works of the John Moores Painting Prize had a lasting affect on me and gave me much inspiration in my art that followed. In particular I remember Hu Wenlong‘s phenomenal photo-realistic oil painting ‘Aphasia’ which made me realise I will never be able to paint like him, Dan Hay‘s ‘Harmony in Green’ whose use of colour and line reminded me of my interest in the affect of colour and shape on perception, Peter Doig‘s ‘Blotter’ which inspired me in my work on the Contrast project of the time (looking at water reflections and patterns). I was also influenced by Jack Smith’s ‘Creation and Crucifixion’ for its ‘ordinaryness’ and Peter Davies’s ‘Super Star Fucker‘ for its humour.

Aphasia – a photo or an oil painting?

Edinburgh – February 2013

For half term my family and I took a trip to Edinburgh and while we were there I dragged everyone to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Edinburgh. This visit interested me because I was able to test the extent I could engage my children in art. It seemed, as it turned out, not very far. They were more interested in tactile and physical artwork such as Helen Chadwick‘s piss flowers or Ernesto Neto‘s ‘It happens when the body is anatomy of time’, than any two-dimensional art they saw despite my attempts to engage them.

It has an aroma that appeals to children.

Birmingham – March 2013

One slow Sunday afternoon after half term I dragged my reluctant family to the MAC in Birmingham to see the Drewood Drawing Prize entries. After our experiences in Edinburgh I thought that they’d struggle to find inspiration in the artworks there (especially as they would likely have less colour). I was wrong. They loved looking at the drawing, examples of interesting mark making and collages they saw. Perhaps because some of them had a rather primitive child-like quality to them. They particularly enjoyed watching the video installations. I found particular inspiration there from Tanya Wood’s ‘Pillow’ which was a pencil drawing of a pillow (making the ordinary extra-ordinary), Min Kim’s ‘Waiting’ as it had been created through an intense desire to make marks, ‘Ishai Rimmer‘s ‘In the Kitchen’ as another example of making the ordinary extra-ordinary and making it large. Finally the most influential piece was Carol Randall‘s ‘Notes from the Tokyo Underground’ which inspired some later studies of people in ordinary situations which I used for my ‘Near and Far’ project. Overall, I was impressed with the diversity of the definition of drawing – drawing really could be almost anything (and back to our first tutorial: What is drawing?’)

The ordinary people of Tokyo

Glasgow – March 2013

The day after going to Birmingham I took part in a three-day student trip to Glasgow, where we visited a lot of art, some of which inspired me in my practice, such as Colin Gray’s ‘Scans‘ of ordinary objects from around his parents’ house which provided an interesting example of a collection of ordinary things expressed in an extra-ordinary way and Alexander Hamilton’s Cynotypes which inspired my work with colour even further. The most inspirational visit was a tour of the Glasgow School of Art. I almost ached with jealousy of the art students studying there. It made me think a lot about the choices I’d made in my life so far, including not to pursue an education in art age 18. While we were there I made a few sketches of the other students and people in the galleries viewing the art, which inspired me with my ‘Near and Far’ project.

No broken bones here

So are gallery visits good?

Absolutely! Not just for me but for my children too. Where can I go next?

References:

Journal notes

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Homework – read an article and comment on it, with pictures and stuff

Posted on 17 April 2013 by beckybendylegs

For this week our homework was to chose an article (we were given three articles to chose from, one each, without knowing which article we were going to get), read it, and report back with pictures and comments.

The article I chose is called ‘Matisse develops his “aesthetic of blinding”‘ and it is a piece written about a particular aspect of the art scene in the year 1910. The other two articles were written about an area of art in the 1960s and the 2000s. At first I thought I was unlucky, having chosen the most ‘traditional’ era. After reading the article this response seems ironic.

What was the article about?

The article is about Matisse pushing the boundaries of ‘decorative’ and challenging traditional notions of aesthetics with the paintings Dance II and Music, and the lead up to and ramifications of that.

Matisse: ‘When I paint green, it doesn’t mean grass; when I paint blue, it doesn’t mean sky’ (p. 7, Orienti, S. Matisse Hamlyn, Middlesex). This saying lies at the root of all Matisse’s work: he was able to get away from the claims of nature. How did he manage this?

The focus of the article is 1910. Matisse, known for experimentation, in that year sent the two canvasses to to the Salon d’Automine, an annual showcase for contemporary art. The two works were met with quite severe criticism. Despite being normally used to such a response, on this occasion Matisse was deeply affected, especially when his rich Russian patron, Schsukin, first rejected and then accepted the commission he was responsible for. The whole incident shook him greatly. This incident is what the article centres on.

What lead to this situation?

Matisse was no stranger to causing a stir with his art and his vibrant explorations with colour. He was used to a negative reception. His involvement with the Fauvists attests to that.

In 1907 Matisse had been engaged in a ‘friendly’ rivalry with Picasso. In answer to Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which explored exploratory ideas about primitivism and perspective, he painted Bathers with a Turtle.

Picasso’s serve…

Les Demoisells d’Avignon

Matisse’s back-hander…

Bathers with a Turtle

What was Matisse trying to do with this painting? Looking at this painting it is hard to focus on anything. It is bewildering. The viewer isn’t quite sure what to look at and wonders ‘why a turtle?’. For the first time Matisse reduces the decor to areas of plain colour.

Matisse’s next step in his exploration of decor was Harmony in Red painted in 1908.

Harmony in Red

This painting is so full of confusion and colour that the spectator is rendered unbalanced upon looking at it.

With his ideas of decoration it was almost as if he was laughing in the face of traditional values of decoration, of the painter and the viewer.

Matisse’s next move

In 1910, the art world seemed ready to return to more traditional notions of representation after a few years of rebellion, yet Matisse refused to condone this. This was the point at which he submitted his next two major pieces of work. He labelled Dancers II and Music ‘decorative panels’.

Dance II – too much to behold?

The works had an impact because of the high-pitched colour, the scale and the lack of elements. They were far from ‘decorative’ in the traditional sense. Dancers II said to convey the feelings of emotional liberation and hedonism. It was criticized for being ugly and barbaric.

As Matisse said ‘a square centimeter of blue is less blue than a square meter of the same blue’ which might make us think of the likes of Rothko and Newman with their attempts at the sublime. These paintings were extremely radical for their time.

Music

I find Music much more challenging to look at than Dancers II. In fact I find it very disturbing. It is the ‘ugliness’ of the colours, the way the figures appear to be placed on the canvas and their disturbing facial expressions that I find quite haunting. Matisse’s Russian patron Shchukin described it as ‘boy werewolves hypnotized by the first ever strains of the first ever instruments’. It lacks movement whereas Dances II has a sense of motion that is quite pleasing to me. Lawrence Gowing describes Matisse’s use of form in this painting as expressing the ‘essential irrationality’ of Matisse’s style. The static equilibrium of Music compares to the dynamic equilibrium Dancers II.

After 1910?

The works after 1910 went off on a tangent from the direction Matisse had been following. Dancers II and Music were followed by two Spanish still lives, and Matisse’s famous large interiors of 1911, such as Interior with Eggplants.

Interior with Eggplants

This painting is designed to confuse. All the colours and patterns are competing with each other for the viewer’s attention. Where is the negative space? The painting is almost moving, swimming before the viewer’s eyes. It takes a while to notice that there really are eggplants (or aubergines) in the painting – small and insignificant as they appear on the table. Mattisse has blinded the viewer to their presence.

Matisse says in his ‘Notes’: ‘To me, expression does not lie in the passion that appears suddenly on a face or shows itself in some violent movement. It is in the whole arrangement of my painting’ (p. 32, ibid).

Someone called Reynal is going to have the final world on Matisse: ‘the mystery of Matisse’s amazing magic lies somewhere between his imagination and his gold-rimmed spectacles’ (p. 29, ibid).

References:

Unknown author, ‘1910: Matisse develops his “aesthetics of blinding”‘.

Wikipedia article ‘Dance (Matisse),’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_%28Matisse%29 [last accessed 17 April 2013]

Orienti, S. (1973) Matisse Hamlyn, Middlesex

Posted in Blog | Tagged Fauvism, Matisse, Newman, Picasso, Rothko | Leave a comment

The Abject vs The Sublime – more thoughts and tutorial notes

Posted on 27 March 2013 by beckybendylegs

In the tutorial this week, which was about the abject based on previous research, we discussed the issue of the relationship of the sublime to the abject.

The sublime experience is a positive one and the abject is a negative one. Both invoke a heightened emotion, but in each case it is a different emotion.

Body/ Nature

Is it a matter of the body (abject) vs nature (sublime)? The abject response comes from a rejection of an aspect of the body, whereas the sublime response comes from a reaction to nature.

Near / Far

The abject response relates to something personal, something close, something we can relate our lives to. The sublime response is something we sense from a distance. We don’t feel personally connected to it so it doesn’t repulse us. A good example is war. The abject response can be related to war, to the destruction of the body. The sublime response can also be related to war, but on the grand scale, the destruction of a landscape.

Macro / Micro

Both abject and sublime cause anxiety. The abject response happens on a micro level (small, tangible objects) and the sublime response occurs on the macro scale (hurricane, earthquake, destruction).

What they do have in common, however, is that artists who use both are just trying to produce a reaction in their audience, a strong emotional response. In the sublime it is awe, in abjection it is revulsion. The overall objective is the same: some sort of high, doubt, crisis, turmoil, trauma.

References:

Tutorial Notes

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The Abject – it’s not just about poo, blood, and body bits

Posted on 20 March 2013 by beckybendylegs

What does abject mean?

According to the oracle of words and their meanings (the dictionary) it means: extremely bad, unpleasant, and degrading or experienced to the maximum degree.

This makes me think of Embarrassing Bodies. Why do I (and others like me) love this programme so much?

Nothing provokes an abject reaction in me!

This is the one recent image that sticks in my head from that programme that made me feel both repulsed (and guilty for feeling that way) and fascinated (and guilty for feeling that way). Is this an example of an abject reaction?

A tumor has eaten away at this poor man’s face

What does it mean in relation to art?

Abject art refers to works, which contain abject subjects, materials and substances.

In relation to art, the term was first used in the 1990s, by the French literary theorist and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva. In her book Pouvoirs de l’horreur. Essai sur l’abjection, Kristeva talked about the idea of abjection as the basis of a differentiation between the self and non-self. She defined it as a reaction to the confrontation with the abject, triggered by disgust or phobias which have no status as objects, and do not belong to the self, and therefore are viewed as a threat by the subject, who rejects them.

Is it the opposite of the sublime? The abject representing the basest states of life, the sublime representing the highest states of life. I’m not sure they are so different.

‘Reject those bits you don’t like.’

In other words, abjection happens when a subject separates, ejects or divides anything that is part of it in order to define itself. The subject can be a person, society or perhaps a corporation. Abjection happens when the subject looks for its ideal, therefore putting aside those parts that are not. When the subject is confronted with a part of itself that has been separated the subject feels a sense of trauma along with feelings of nausea and repugnance. To see a corpse provokes this shock as we perceive the absolute separation of the person from its body.

What else, besides dead bodies, provokes an abject reaction?

An open wound, excrement, sewage, cancer, disease, vomit, bad grammar, mold, the skin that forms on the surface of warm milk, a homeless man (from society), genocide (from society), homosexuality (from the self), socially-unacceptable sexual desires (from the self). Abjection occurs when we sense a danger to our life: danger comes from disease, germs, viruses, bacteria, infection.

Things that make you go hmmmm…

Abjection in art goes back a long way. Artists before the Renaissance showed a fascination with blood. The Marquis de Sade, notorious French philosophical thinker, investigated the abject in relation to sexuality in his fiction (his two novels Justine and Juliette). The Dadaists took the notion a step further in their explorations of the taboo and the violation of moral principles. The Surrealists also displayed a sense of abjection in their art. Antonin Artaud, mentioned below, who was active in the 1930s, is perhaps the forerunner of the idea of the abject and performance with his ‘Theatre of Cruelty’. The Viennese Actionists dabbled in the abject in the 1960s and Hermann Nitsch, one of the members, set up the radical theatre group, known as the Orgien-Mysterien-Theater which involved animal carcasses and blood being used in a ritualistic way. Other members of the Viennese Actionists, such as Gunter Brus and Otto Muehl collaborated on performances. The performances of Brus involved urinating, defecating and cutting himself and this had a huge influence on abject art. Rudolf Schwarzkogler dealt with the abject in his photography. The growth of extreme performance art coincided with the radicalisation of politics in the late 1960s. In the second half of the 20th century, the theme of abjection has exploded, for example with Andre Serrano’s ‘Piss Christ’ (1987), which shows a crucifix submerged in the artist’s urine. Many feminist artists have been connected with abjection in art , particularly in connection with an increased focus on the body. In the 1970s, for example, Judy Chicago made menstruation the focus of a number of her works. Other feminist ‘abject’ artists include: Vito Acconci, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, Carolee Schneemann and Hannah Wilke.

Piss Christ

Five artists, besides the above, who have explored abjection in art

Not an artist as such Antonin Artaud introduced the idea of a theatre of cruelty in the 1930s. He aimed for a form of theatre that he hoped would unleash unconscious responses in audiences and performers that were normally hidden. He hoped that audiences would find in the theatre not an area for escape from the world, but the realisation of their nightmares and fears. He attempted to provoke conditions that would allow for the release of primitive instincts he saw to be below the civilised social veneer masking all human behaviour. He hoped to entice irrational impulses that could be stimulated by suffering and pain and argued that every facet of theatricality should be used to encourage a sense of danger, violence and disorientation in the audience.

The theatre is not for entertainment

In the early 1970s Mary Kelly caused a stir in 1976 when she exhibited dirty nappies at London’s Institute of Contemporary Art. Post-Partum Document was actually a six-year exploration of the mother-child relationship. The work provoked tabloid outrage.

These nappies were not part of Mary Kelly’s project

In Edinburgh last month I got the chance to see Helen Chadwick‘s piss flowers, which scream abjection to me. I found these sculptures fascinating. They were both beautiful and repulsive. The sculptures had been cast from cavities made by both Helen Chadwick and her husband David Notarius urinating in the snow.

Nature calls in cold climates

My next artist, Sarah Lucas, seems to be following me with her fried eggs photograph. I first saw it in Berlin and then recently it appeared in Edinburgh. I’m not sure this piece is an example of abject art but Sarah Lucas is an artist who has explored the abject with other works, such as ‘Au Naturel 1994 Mattress, water bucket, melons, oranges and cucumber’.

The photograph that follows me around Europe

There’s nothing wrong with cucumber sandwiches

Jake and Dinos Chapman are British visual artists, also known as the Chapman Brothers, who work together (they are brothers). Their artwork is definitely abject as they like to shock with the appalling, vulgar, or offensive. Perhaps their most ambitious work was ‘Hell’ (1999), which was an immense tabletop display, showing over 30,000 two-inch-high figures, many in Nazi uniform and performing egregious acts of cruelty.

The Chapman Brothers aim to shock

Last but not least, Cindy Sherman. I’ve just come across this image, Untitled no. 175, which is an assemblage of rotting fruit, half-eaten cupcakes, and vomit. Surely this is pure abjection? Ironically perhaps it appears more distasteful than the Chapman Brothers’ Hell.

I can’t imagine calling this anything except ‘untitled’. It is beyond description.

Is it universal?

I wonder whether the abject is a universal thing or whether every individual has their own abject response. Does it necessarily have to be something grotesque or distasteful? Could it be something feared (something not everyone fears equally)? For example, spiders or buttons. Or can it be a part of the self that the self dislikes but which might be generally regarded as acceptable? For example, sexual feelings, nakedness.

I am cute and cuddly to some, an object of repulsion to others

Why are children so fascinated with the abject? Doe we lose that as adults? Do they feel revulsion to the same degree as adults or is that something that we mature to?

Does the degree of abjection depend on familiarity? People working in medical professions are either able to suppress their abject reaction or different people feel abjection to different degrees (hence some become nurses, pathologists, doctors etc). Is the abject response stronger in the 21st century than it might have been in the 16th century? We are now not used to butchering animals for our dinner, walking down streets strewn with rubbish and feces or people close to use dying young and painfully at home. The world now is so sanitized that when we come across the abject we feel revulsion.

The abject and the sublime – are they the same thing?

Is the abject really that different from the sublime? They are both triggered human reactions when confronting the unknown and unknowable. The sublime is a reaction, a state of mind, an individual response to what is ‘terrifically terrible’. Do we not also get a sense of terror and wonder when facing the abject? A fascination (and shame of that fascination) with something repulsive to us? There is a contradiction going on inside the viewer: a repulsion away from the abject presented to us, but a fascination with it as well. We want to see more. Images of death, for example, present us with the unknowable enormity and finality of death. This relates to that notion discussed by Kant of our minds imagining what is greater than what our senses can experience. We are made suddenly aware of the existence of things that we cannot grasp; we become aware of the gap between lived reality and a a real world we don’t normally see.

References:

Ketterer Kunst, http://www.kettererkunst.com/dict/abject-art.shtml [last accessed 20 March 2013]

Wikipedia on abject art, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjection [last accessed 20 March 2013]

Hypocrite Design, http://www.hypocritedesign.com/project/jake-dinos-chapman/ [last accessed 20 March 2013]

Wikipedia on the Piss Christ, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ [last accessed 20 March 2013]

Cat Una O’Shea, The Abject/Sublime Reaction and the Genius of Damien Hirst (presented at the Brian Stoker Club 8 Feb 2012), http://tcdphil.com/the-abjectsublime-reaction-and-the-genius-of-damien-hirst-by-cat-una-o%E2%80%99shea/

Notes made on visit to Museum of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Posted in Blog | Tagged Acconci, Artaud, Chadwick, Chapman Brothers, Chicago, Dadaism, Duchamp, Kelly, Kristeva, Lucas, Schneemann, Serrano, Sherman, Smith, Surrealism, Wilke | Leave a comment

The Sublime – what is it and where can you find it?

Posted on 13 March 2013 by beckybendylegs

The sublime is used today as a superlative expression. What does it really mean?

Home-made apple pie is sublime? Or do I mean divine?

When I think of ‘the sublime’ I think of that feeling I get when stood in front of a wide sea (Borth) or on top of a mountain (Haughmond Hill). That feeling of being small and insignificant. It is a feeling of fright, of sudden realisation that I am powerless and small and the sea or the landscape is powerful, great and all-knowable. It is the sense of vertiginous at the scale of the view before me.

On top of Haughmond Hill

We could say that it means transcendent, uplifting or ecstatic. It is also used to mean awe-inspiring or grandiose. The sublime is that which is frighteningly vast or powerful. Or perhaps it is that which is unexplainable, ungraspable or unimaginable. The sublime came to refer to a surge of aesthetic pleasure which paradoxically arises from the displeasure of fear, horror or pain. Does it have more than one meaning?

Where did the term come from?

In the Middle Ages, to ‘sublime’ a material in alchemical terminology, meant to transform it directly from its solid state to its gaseous state. Such a transformation had metaphysical overtones: a transformation from earthly to heavenly.

It was then mentioned again during Age of Enlightenment. English essayist John Hall translated the work of an obscure Roman thinker called Longinus into English he was introducing the notion of the sublime to late 17th-century Britain. Longinus wrote, ‘As if instinctively, our soul is lifted up by the true sublime; it takes a proud flight, and is filled with joy and vaunting, as though it had itself produced what it had heard’.

I know what the sublime is!

He was referring to the impact of language. He wanted to draw attention to anything that challenges our capacity to understand. However, in the 18th century the concept was taken up by British artists, poets, philosophers and scientists who adapted its meaning to encompass the intellectual and physical landscape. But why were they so taken with this notion? What was it about the sublime that sparked their imagination and creativity?

Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) is perhaps the painter most associated during the eighteenth century with the development of the taste for representing the sublime. His work in eighteenth-century Northern Europe was extremely popular, and his influence can be seen in artists such as Turner.

Rosa, Evening Landscape, 1640-ish

The concept of the sublime as an aesthetic quality in nature different from beauty was developed in the writings of Anthony Ahsley-Cooper (third Earl of Shaftesbury) and John Dennis. Both writers expressed an appreciation of the frightening and irregular forms of external nature. Edmund Burke‘s concept of the sublime was developed in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756). Burke was the first philosopher to posit that the sublime and the beautiful were not the same. Beauty may be accentuated by light, but either intense light or the absence of light is sublime to the degree that it can make opaque the sight of an object. Burke connected the sublime with experiences of awe, terror and danger. He saw nature as the utmost sublime object, capable of generating the strongest sensations. He was interested in what happens to the self when it is confronted with danger. This Romantic idea of the sublime was influential for several generations of artists.

Terror is terrific!

It was a key term for which ideas on taste for art and for the aesthetic appreciation of nature were developing. It was used to elevate the taste for ruins, mountains, storms, deserts, seas, the supernatural and the shocking. This notion also encourage a taste for the rugged rather than the ordered, the forceful rather than the restrained, the chaotic rather than the arranged, the primitive rather than the sophisticated. It expressed a preference for the Romantic and Gothic rather than the Neoclassical.

J. M. W. Turner, Snow Storm – the sublime in buckets

At the end of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant also had a lot to say about the sublime. To Kant, the sublime is more infinite and can be found even in an object that has no form. He argued that beauty is a temporary response of understanding, but the sublime goes beyond the aesthetics into a realm of reason. To him there were three types of sublimity: the awful, the lofty, the splendid. The sublime was seen as a negative experience of limits. We need to turn, he believed, this into a positive gain.

This guy had lots of deep thoughts

The sublime went out of fashion somewhat during the Victorian era, perhaps because Victorians didn’t like being overwhelmed with emotion, or awed by greatness. They preferred the pretty (‘prozac’ art) to the magnificent.

Almost a century after Kant was musing on the sublime, Fredrich Nietzsche also concerned himself with the matter. He said that a truly sublime individual was someone who was willing to abandon the safeness of rationality, to embrace the frenzy of madness.

Abandon oneself to the sublime of madness!

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the sublime became one of the central ideas around which discourses on art and aesthetic experience were articulated.

Fascination with the sublime continued in landscape art, literature and philosophy. The terrifying is attractive, it is sublime.

John Martin, The Great Day of his Wrath, 1851-3

How about now?

The sublime is something that exceeds the ordinary. It doesn’t simply need to apply to nature. Over the 19th and 20th centuries, the focus for the experience of the sublime gradually shifted from nature to technology. We are in an age of secularization. God is retreating from nature. Man made the world, not God. So is the sublime only in the realm of technology now, rather than nature? I don’t think the sublime of nature has gone. I think we have both.

Contemporary artists who exhibit the sublime in their work: Anish Kapoor, Mike Kelley, Doris Salcedo, Hiroshi Suimoto, Fred Tomaselli.

Anish Kapoor, Turning the World Upside Down

During the 1980s we see a new wave of postmodernist sublimity dissatisfied the two polar opposites of pop aesthetic on the one side, and the deep thinkers of conceptualism and minimalsim on the other. For example with the installations of James Turrell.

James Turrell, Space That Sees

Also we have artists such as Bill Viola looking at evocations of extreme states of mind via the medium of video, and Mike Kelley looking at the darker side of the sublime.

Other artists such as Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer and Doris Salcedo have examined the connection between the sublime and historic events.

Anselm Kiefer, History’s Dark Woods

Other artists who aimed to evoke the sublime might include: Mark Rothko and Yves Klein. Rothko painted floaty woozy colours on immense canvases that give that vertiginous sensation of the sublime.

Rothko ‘But Does It Float’ – does it float?

Klein painted blue, a colour to lose oneself in, feel amazed by, sense the sublime in.

Blue, lots of it

So if blue, how about black? Malevich’s paintings of an absence of colour create a sublime feeling, the eyes constantly searching for something in the nothingness.

Greatness in nothingness

The sublime was also being discussed by various thinkers in recent years such as Jean-Francois Lyotard’s essays ‘The Sublime and the Advant-garde’ (1984) and ‘Presenting the Unpresentable: The Sublime’ (1982) in which he postulated that the mind cannot always organise the world rationally and this is a good thing. What happens in the sublime is a crisis where we see the inability of the imagination and reason to relate to one another. Also a connection was made between technology and the sublime by Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe in Beauty and the Contemporary Sublime (1999) in what he called ‘technological sublime’. In 2007 Tate Britain held a symposium on the subject of the sublime, inviting all sorts of interested parties to consider the sublime in contemporary art.

Artists, however, seem reluctant to openly associate their work with the sublime. The discourse of the sublime is affected by the subliminal in politics and popular culture. Sublime today defines that moment when our thought end and we are confronted with something else, something more significant than a slice of home-made apple pie perhaps?

References:

Longinus On the Sublime Translated by W. Rhys Roberts, reproduced by the University of Adelaide, http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/longinus/on_the_sublime/ [last accessed 13 March 2013]

BBC Radio 4 ‘In Our Time’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p004y23j [last accessed 13 March 2013]

Wikipedia on the sublime in literature, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublime_%28literary%29 [last accessed 14 March 2013]

‘What is the sublime?’, in Nigel Llewellyn and Christine Riding (eds.), The Art of the Sublime, January 2013, http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/what-is-the-sublime-r1109449 [accessed 14 March 2013]

Morely, Simon, ‘Introduction / The Contemporary Sublime’ in Documents of Contemporary Art (co-published by Whitechapel Gallery and the MIT Press; 2010)

Posted in Blog | Tagged Beuys, Kapoor, Kelley, Kiefer, Rosa, Salcedo, Suimoto, The Sublime, Tomaselli, Turner, Turrell, Viola | Leave a comment

1990s – tutorial notes

Posted on 12 March 2013 by beckybendylegs

The 1990s means…

Supermodels. What was it about these ladies that exploded them on to the celebrity scene in the 1990s? Was it their amazingly long legs? Was it the fact they refused to get out of bed for less than £10.30, a glass of champagne and a stick of celery?

Five points if you can name each one, bonus point for the middle top

What were we wearing in the 1990s? Designer labels, mostly, or fake designer labels if we were poor. Shell suits (if we were really in the trend). I wore long dresses, big cardigans, and big boots mostly.

Remember this Versace dress?

Or was this more your style?

Interior design meant an appreciation of the minimalist aesthetic. Can we take absolutely every characteristic away from art and still call the end product art? When I think of 1990s interior deco I think of calm hues, greys, coffee coloured walls, white minimalist sofas, cushions that match curtains and carpets and sleek, shiny, reflective kitchens. Think IKEA.

Don’t spill coffee on that sofa.

These people made important decisions in the 1990s. No more Tory’s, yeah! And a nice, young handsome Prime Minister to boot. What did the New Left mean? The Old Right?

I needed just a handful of CSEs to get this job

Rory Brenner did a very good ‘me’

I went a bit mad in the 1990s:

What do I like to do at the weekend? Go to the mooovies.

I also went a bit mad in the 1990s:

I’ve come to save you all from sin, but only if you wear green

This person lost her life in the 1990s.

Do you remember where you were on August 31st, 1997?

So did this person.

I just want to break free!

What were we watching on TV in the 1990s? Baywatch, Beverly Hills 90210, Friends, Absolutely Fabulous, Brookside, Hollyoakes, Have I Got News For You, This Life, X Files, ER.

Dylan or Brendan, Dylan or Brendan? Decisions, decisions

The show with a man called Egg

Are you a Rachel? A Monica? Or a Phoebe?

Does she fancy him, or what?

Music of the 1990s: another iconic decade for music which brought us Brit Pop, the Blur vs Oasis battle (of course you couldn’t like both), Pulp (pasty, skinny British men singing angsty songs), Nirvana, Indie (Stones Roses, Charlatons, Soup Dragons – perhaps more end of the 1980s). Oh, and how could I forget that girl band with silly names: Baby, Sporty, Ginger, Posh and Scary. So did the 1990s witness the birth of the squeaky clean girl band and boy band brand of pop?

And it’s not about you joggers who go round and round and round

We’re better than those Blur blokes you know

We’ll tell you what you want, what you really, really want, you want, you want a load more girl bands

Films of the 1990s were a mixture of light-hearted British humour, gritty realism, sweet love stories and big, blockbuster ‘USA vs them’ epics: Four Weddings and a Funeral, Titanic, Independence Day, Armageddon, The Sixth Sense, Pretty Woman, Basic Instinct, Saving Private Ryan, The Matrix, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Philadelphia, Reality Bites.

Do you love someone else, Charles? Do you? Do you, Charles?

I’m a nice lady, not a lady of the night

Art in the 1990s makes me think of those lovely Young British Artists such as Damien Hurst, Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas and friends. Tony Blair and others like him of course capitalized on this new popularity of home-grown artists, realising the potential of this new ‘trendy’ image for Britart.

Haven’t we seen this bed before?

What were we reading in between all this TV watching, art appreciating and film watching? Nothing much else besides Harry Potter it seems. But also perhaps Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, Irvin Welsh’s Trainspotting, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and Philip Pulman’s His Dark Materials.

The book of the decade?

And in conclusion to the 1970s, 1980s., 1990s watch this: YouTube slightly rude video about the last three decades.

References:

Tutorial Notes

Posted in Blog | Tagged Emin, Hirst | Leave a comment

1980s – tutorial notes

Posted on 11 March 2013 by beckybendylegs

The 1980s means…

This person, miner strikes, AIDs, Yuppies, aerobics, Band Aid, economic boom and economic bust.

I’m made of iron

Scary leaflet that was put through everyone’s door

We were wearing leg warmers, button-fly Levis, t-shirts with sleeves rolled up, fingerless gloves, bangles, shoulder pads and big earrings.

Where is the Green Goddess?

Do my shoulders look big in this?

New things in our lives include the Compact Disc which was supposed to be indestructible (my first one being The Best of R.E.M.), the personal computer, the mobile phone (or car phone) and the video recorder (truly a revolutionary invention giving us the ability to watch films at home whenever we wanted to – after a visit to Blockbuster Video – and record missed episodes of Coronation Street, record over precious recordings of other family members with Coronation Street).

Indestructible?

Where does the floppy disk go?

Is it a brick?

For the first time we could record Brookside and watch it later

Keeping us entertained in the evenings were Cilla Black on Blind Date (essential Saturday night viewing), Countdown (the thinking man’s quiz show), Dallas (so who did shoot JR?) and Top of the Pops. Also on TV in that decade: Miami Vice, Blockbusters, Blackadder, Birds of a Feather, Just Good Friends, Howard’s Way, Casualty, That’s Life, The Young Ones, Spitting Image, Not The Nine O’Clock News, Pebble Mill at One, Krypton Factor, St Elsewhere, 30-Something, The Cosby Show, Different Strokes, Bread… I could go on and on.

Look who you turned down?

I’ll have a consonant please Bob (oops wrong show)

Who shot the one with the weird eyebrows?

Thursday nights, just before Tomorrow’s World

On our heads we heads we had…

How much hair spray?

We were listening to the likes of Wham!, post punk, new wave, electronic, two-tone and reggie and Stock, Aiken and Waterman (Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Sonja, The London Boys. The 1980s was a fabulous decade for music, much of which is still played today. My favourites of this decade include: The Cure, Smiths, Joy Division and The Housemartens.

The specials were special

Will love tear us apart or what?

The song that to me epitomises the 1980s is ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ by Band Aid:

It’s Christmas time
There’s no need to be afraid
At Christmas time
We let in light and we banish shade

And in our world of plenty
We can spread a smile of joy
Throw your arms around the world
At Christmas time

But say a prayer
Pray for the other ones
At Christmas time, it’s hard
But when you’re having fun

There’s a world outside your window
And it’s a world of dreaded fear
Where the only water flowing
Is a bitter sting of tears

And the Christmas bells that ring there
Are the clanging chimes of doom
We’ll, tonight, thank God, it’s them
Instead of you

And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time
The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life
Where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow
Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?

Here’s to you
Raise your glass for everyone
Here’s to them
Underneath that burning sun
Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?

Feed the world
Feed the world

Feed the world
Let them know it’s Christmas time and
Feed the world
Let them know it’s Christmas time and
Feed the world
Let them know it’s Christmas time and

Art in the 1980s consisted of…

Noe-expressionism: Georg Baselitz

I’m feeling creative today…

New Realism or Appropriation: Gretchen Bender

Video art is big

Graffiti: Harald Naegeli

The decade of doodling

Neo-pop: Jeff Koons (famous for making things more grotesque and taking ordinary objects out of context)

That’s rather a large dog

Film in the 1980s was quite light-hearted, rebellious, and futuristic. Films I remember include: Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, St Elmoe’s Fire, Back to the Future, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Aliens, E.T., Ghostbusters, Dirty Dancing, and Beaches.

She should have gone for Duckie

The 1980s also saw the birth of the ‘rom com’ with When Harry Met Sally in 1989 (which I feel nervous about classifying as a rom com as it is a really rather good film).

We read some great books in the 1980s including Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale, Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Umberto Eco The Name of the Rose, and Gabriel García Márquez Love In The Time of Cholera.

I read this in 1993 but it was a book of the 1980s

Colours of the 1980s? Pastel pink, pastel yellow, pastel blue.

Food in the 1980s was faster than food from the 1970s. I had my first ever McDonald’s in the 1980s. We ate much more processed food, in front of the TV. It was the decade of convenience.

Three minutes in the microwave and tea time!

Interior design: I remember the 1980s as the era of borders around rooms and stenciling. I also think of pink, flowers, satin bedspreads (satin pyjamas – see below), roses, fru-fru, fills, and fitted wardrobes in white.

Is this room frilly enough?

References:

Tutorial Notes

Posted in Blog | Tagged Georg Baselitz, graffiti, Gretchen Bender, Harald Naegeli, Jeff Koons, Neo-Expressionism, Neo-pop, New Realism | Leave a comment

1970s – research a decade – the decade that taste forgot?

Posted on 2 March 2013 by beckybendylegs

For our homework this week we were asked to research a decade and I chose the decade of my birth: the 1970s. The 1970s is often remembered with a bit of embarrassment. Why is this so? It seems that we remember the 1970s as the decade where fashion went a bit bonkers, notions of good design went out the window and children were made to look ridiculous in flared trousers, patterned jumpers and bowl-cut hairstyles. But I remember the decade very fondly as I was born at the start, and age 9 at the end.

I spent much of the decade glued to one of these

Disco fever came in the 1970s

Fashion

Iconic fashion of the 1970s includes: platform shoes, which made an appearance in 1971; hot pants, which also appeared in the early part of the decade; the jersey wrap dress invented by Diane von Fürstenberg in 1972; cropped tops; the three-piece suite (think Saturday Night Fever); leotards, the like of which were worn by Cher, Joni Mitchell and Rod Stewart; and high-waisted bell-bottomed trousers which evolved from the hip-hugging flares of the 1960s.

I feel tall in these.

These trousers were made for walking…

However, when I think of the 1970s I think of kipper collars, which I remember wearing.

Loves those collars

Hair

The hair of the 1970s was shaggy. The Afro made it big. Women usually wore their hair long with a centre parting, or in a ‘gypsy’ style. When I think of 1970s hair, though, I think of Farrah Fawcett.

This look takes hours to perfect

Music

There isn’t enough room to list all the top ‘bands’ and singers of the 1970s so I’ll just restrict myself to some that I remember from my childhood: The Carpenters, Queen, Abba, Brotherhood of Man, Rod Stewart, Kate Bush, Slade, Status Quo, Showaddywaddy, Boney M and Supertramp.

These guys knew how to sing

To me the music of the 1970s (and indeed beyond) happened on Thursday nights, 7.30pm, BBC1 with Top of the Pops.

Before the Now albums came the Top of the Pops albums – this one from 1979

The 1970s churned out many enduring songs that are still played now, and especially many of the Christmas hits we are forced to listen to every year were written in the 1970s including my favourite one from 1975:

They said there’ll be snow at Christmas
They said there’ll be peace on Earth
But instead it just kept on raining
A veil of tears for the Virgin’s birth
I remember one Christmas morning
A winters light and a distant choir
And the peal of a bell and that Christmas Tree smell
And their eyes full of tinsel and fire
They sold me a dream of Christmas
They sold me a Silent Night
And they told me a fairy story
‘Till I believed in the Israelite
And I believed in Father Christmas
And I looked at the sky with excited eyes
‘Till I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn
And I saw him and through his disguise

Inventions

1970 – Jumbo Jet, lead-free petrol, DRAM (dynamic random access memory)
1971 – floppy disc, pocket calculators
1972 – word processor, video games, email
1973 – disposable lighters, genetically modified organisms
1974 – post-it notes, Rubik’s Cube, liposuction
1975 – digital cameras, laser printers
1976 – ink-jet printers
1977 – mobile phone, personal stereo
1978 – spreadsheets
1979 – roller blades, Sony Walkman

The best invention of the 1970s

Design trends

My memories of 1970s interior design include: shag pile carpets, patterned carpets, simple modern lines, a leather three-piece suit, swirly patterned wallpaper, wicker chairs, wood paneling, cork tiles, wood-chip wallpaper (which I used to pick at), giant rubber plants and avocado three-piece bathroom suits.

My bottom used to stick to a sofa just like that one

Mmmm lovely

Colours

Brown, cream, orange, avocado (see above).

Food

The 1970s is remembered as well as being the decade that taste forgot in terms of clothes, also in terms of food. However, this decade is vastly underrated in terms of gourmet history. The decade embraced the modern and the processed. Convenience was good, spending hours in the kitchen making food was bad. Instant coffee boomed in the 1970s. Think also Smash, Angel Delight and Soda Streams. To make all this delicious instant food we used pressure cookers, hostess trolleys, and if we were rich enough, microwaves. I ate my first yoghurt in the 1970s (incidentally I also slept in my first duvet, no more candle wick bedspreads).

No more mashing, no more hours spent slaving over a hot potato.

Other foods I remember from the decade: stroganoff, goulash, chicken kiev, black forest gateau, prawn cocktail, Arctic Roll, mince and onions, beef curry, buffet food, pickled onions, proper ham, jam sponge, custard, concrete cake, mint custard, pink custard, tapioca, semolina.

Starter, anyone? We are so posh!

Architecture

Architecture in the 1970s began as a continuation of styles created by such architects as Frank Lloyd Wright. Early in the 1970s, architects competed to build the tallest building in the world. Tall buildings built include Bruce Graham and Fazlur Khan’s John Hancock Centre and Sears Tower in Chicago, and the World Trade Center towers in New York by American architect Minoru Yamasaki. The 1970s also saw some experimentation. The decade also brought experimentation in pop art, postmodernist design and geometric design.

House building bombed during this era and the 1970s house looked something like this:

This would have been the dream house of my childhood

News headlines

The 1970s was a period of oil crises (1973), inflation, unemployment, strikes and general discontent in the UK. ‘The Winter of Discontent’ ran from 1978-9 and is remembered as a time of labour dissatisfaction as well as extreme cold. I also remember the hot, dry summer of 1976 when I was just five years old.

Conserving water in 1976

We saw a fair few Prime Ministers during the 1970s: Edward Heath, Harold Wilson, James Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher.

The Winter of Discontent, or the Winter of Bins?

Richard Nixon remembered the 1970s as the decade that saw the Watergate Scandal.

We were also still in the throws of the Cold War in this decade which led to the ever increasing arms race between the Soviets and the United States. This of course was a big influence on popular culture in TV and literature.

The 1970s was a great time for women with many advances in equality being made and lots of debate about sexual equality and gender issues.

Theatre

The iconic play of the 1970s is Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party, which first appeared in 1977. It is described as a suburban sit-com of manners. It is a satire on the aspirations and tastes of the new emerging lower-middle class in Britain in the 1970s. Within a simple staging of neighbours meeting for drinks, the obsessions, prejudices, fears and petty competitiveness of the main characters are exposed.

Gin and Tonic anyone?

TV

My favourite TV programmes from the 1970s include: Faulty Towers, The Good Life (I wanted to marry Tom), Angels (TV hospital drama, a precursor to Holby City and Casualty), Bagpuss, Dallas (or was that the 1980s?), Sapphire and Steel (I particularly remember the episode where they are stuck in time a petrol station), Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em (the theme tune to which still gives me nightmares when I hear it), Only When I Laugh (sit com about two men who never seemed to leave hospital), Dr Who (the Tom Baker years), Terry and June, Songs of Praise, the Antiques Roadshow and Chorlton and the Wheelies.

The nurses with exciting lives

Oh no, please no more darleks!

After school TV viewing

Toys

This part is easy for me. The 1970s it seems was a great decade for the invention and popularity of some great toys which are now categorised as ‘retro’ including the Space Hopper, the Pogo Stick, Etch a Sketch (hours of frustration), the Stylaphone (invented in the 1960s), Simple Simon (positively space age), Evil Knievel (he never did what you wanted him to do) and the View Master. It was also the decade that gave birth to the computer game (although I don’t think I played any sort of computer games until the 1980s when my brother got a zx spectrum).

The musical toy of the 1970s

Simple Simon

Art

I found it surprisingly difficult to get any information regarding famous artworks and artists from the 1970s. Was the 1970s an uncreative decade? On the contrary it was a very creative decade. It was a decade of much intellectual thought in art.

The art of the 1970s focused mainly on minimalised ideas or environmental art. It was the decade of ‘sculpture in the expanding field’. At the start of the decade art was about relating the object to light and space. At the end of the decade the object had been dispensed with completely and art was about creating an altered space – a space where the artist makes a minimal intervention. This is the notion of ‘site-specificity’. Site-specific art extended the ideas of minimalism.

Key art movements include: postmodernism, feminist art, environmental art, land art, photorealism, hyperrealism, superrealism, graffiti, comic art, performance art and conceptualism.

The early 1970s saw a clash between the minimalists and the newly emerging conceptualists, as illustrated by a dispute between Daniel Buren and other exhibitors at the Sixth Guggenheim International Exhibition in 1971. They objected to Buren’s ‘Peinture-Sculpture’ on the grounds that it obscured the viewing of their work.

Buren’s ‘Peinture-Sculpture’ is clearly in the way.

Artists in the 1970s also increasingly began to explore the medium of video not as a device for recording but as a medium in itself. Performance and body art, also, grew as mediums of exploration.

Chris Burden’s ‘Trans-fixed’ is a good example of extreme body art

Feminist art encompasses many different strands of enquiry and developed alongside changes in the feminist movement in the 1970s.

Judy Chicago ‘The Dinner Party’

Artists in the second half of the decade began to challenge the idea of authorship and origin through mediums such as photography. This is the philosophy of postmodernism. They challanged the concept of the self as author and individual, the condition of selfhood being built on representation.

One of Cindy Sherman’s untitled film stills – is it her? Who is it?

Key artists include: Richard Serra, Robert Smithson (land art); a Puerto Rican sociology student called Hugo Martinez (famous for establishing the United Graffit Artists in 1972); Gerhard Richter, Hans Haacke (conceptualism); John Salt, Richard Estes, Chuck Close (photorealism); Andy Warhol and Gilbert & George (pop art); Yoko Ono (performance art); Cindy Sherman (postmodernism).

The infamous Spiral Jetty by Smithson

Film

The 1970s saw an explosion of filmmaking and well-known films of that era include: The Godfather, Deer Hunter, Star Wars, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Capricorn one.

Don’t play with your food!

The 1970s splits films into two distinct types: gritty realism and science fiction.

The 1970s also saw the birth of the blaxsploitation genre.

Literature

Famous writers of the decade include John Updike, Stephen King, John Fowles, Tom Wolfe.

Book we read include: The Exorcist by William P. Blatty, The Shining and Dead Zone by Stephen King, The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer.

Don’t mess with her.

Literature, like film, looked at issues relating to capitalism, horror, space exploration, life on other planets and sexual adventure.

Unusual facts about the 1970s

In 1971, women were still banned from going into Wimpy Bars unaccompanied after midnight, on the grounds that the only women out on their own at that hour must be prostitutes.

In the early 1970s, Margaret Thatcher as Education Secretary earned the nickname ‘Thatcher, Thatcher the Milk Snatcher’ after she stopped the system of supplying free school milk.

Remember poking the straw in the top?

In 1978 the first test tube baby was born in the UK.

In 1970 Tarawood Antigone, a four-year-old Burmese cat gave birth to 19 kittens: 14 males and one female survived from the litter in Oxfordshire.

In 1970 the average house cost £4.9k (this increases to £23.5k in 1980).

Confectionary

My favourite chocolate bars from the 1970s were the Curly Wurly, Flake and the Texan bar. Yummy.

My childhood in a photograph

References:

Wikipedia on 1970s fashion, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s_in_fashion [last accessed 2 March 2013]

When We Were Kids, http://www.wwwk.co.uk/culture/housing/index.htm [last accessed 2 March 2013]

Elyrics.net lyrics for ‘I Believe in Father Christmas’ by Greg Lake (1975), http://www.elyrics.net/read/e/emerson,-lake-&-palmer-lyrics/i-believe-in-father-christmas-lyrics.html [last accessed 2 March 2013]

Wikipedia on 1970s architecture, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s#Architecture [last accessed 2 March 2013]

Childhood memories.

Inventions of the 1970s, Buzzle, http://www.buzzle.com/articles/inventions-of-the-1970s.html [last accessed 2 March 2013]

Knowledge dredged up from studying a degree in Economics and Politics (news headlines).

The History of Art Education Timeline 1970s, http://www.personal.psu.edu/mas53/timln970.html [last accessed 2 March 2013]

Conversation with husband over lunch.

Dominic Sandbrook ‘Why does the 1970s get painted as such a bad decade?’ (16 April 2012), http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17703483 [last accessed 2 March 2013]

Foster, H., Krauss, R., Bois Y-A and Buchloh, B. Art Since 1900 2004 (Thames & Hudson, London)

Wikipedia on Abigail’s Party, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abigail%27s_Party [last accessed 5 March 2013]

Alex James on 1970s food in The Guardian online (The Observer, 6 December 2009), http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/dec/06/alex-james-1970s-food [last accessed 5 March 2013]

Posted in Blog | Tagged 1970s, Close, comic art, Conceptualism, environmental art, Estes, expanding field, Gilbert and George, graffiti, Graham, Hnacock, hyperrealism, Khan, Martinez, Ono, photorealism, Postmodernism, Salt, Smithson, superrealism, Warhol, Wright, Yamasaki | Leave a comment

Some of the pieces on show

References

John Virtue

Lisa Milroy

Ben McLaughlin

References:

Berlin – September 2012

Liverpool – October 2012

Edinburgh – February 2013

Birmingham – March 2013

Glasgow – March 2013

So are gallery visits good?

References:

What was the article about?

What lead to this situation?

Matisse’s next move

After 1910?

References:

Body/ Nature

Near / Far

Macro / Micro

References:

What does abject mean?

What does it mean in relation to art?

What else, besides dead bodies, provokes an abject reaction?

Five artists, besides the above, who have explored abjection in art

Is it universal?

The abject and the sublime – are they the same thing?

References:

References:

References:

The 1980s means…

References:

Fashion

Hair

Music

Inventions

Design trends

Colours

Food

Architecture

News headlines

Theatre

TV

Toys

Art

Film

Literature

Unusual facts about the 1970s

Confectionary

References:

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