Collaborative arts

sorry so late.
I went researching collaboration art and found a great website from the blog http://collabarts.org/?cat=7 From our review i was really interest in Christo and Jeanne- Claude which have been apart of the kaldor art projects. I love this pairs work as i find collaboration art really powerful, bringing together ideas from two artists to create something of significance. Collaborations are more interactive and tend to been more powerful on an audience with the combining of resources as seen by Christo and Jeanne- Claude.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Wrapped Trees, Fondation Beyeler and Berower Park,
Riehen, Switzerland 1997-98
Photo: Wolfgang Volz, ©Christo 1998

Christo and Jeanne-Claude
The Umbrellas, Japan - USA, 1984-91
Photo: Wolfgang Volz ©1991 Christo

Self directed project

Vanessa Beecroft- Art and Audience

“No talking. No eye contact. No expression. Nothing too fast or too slow……look, but don’t touch. Don’t get too close. To ogle or stare, or look longingly.¹”

Evidently, Vanessa Beecroft is very strict with her models, giving specific rules to which they have to abide by during their 3-hour performances. However, these rules are not just for the models, but for the audience as well, and as a result, the interactions of the “participants” become apart of the artwork itself².

Vanessa Beecroft is a provocative contemporary performance and installation artist. Her performances involve large groups of naked or near naked models in large formations within the institutional space. The models have been described as “ her tools, her materials and powerful catalysts for the activation of social relations between her art and its viewers.³” This can be seen in her work V46, 2001, a performance piece involving a model, whose pubic hair is died red circling a large group of nude models⁴. All these women possess pale makeup and dyed white hair. It is through this aesthetic homogeneity of the model congregation that Beecroft is able to manipulate her audience. That is, the audience watch this work from the sidelines unable to avoid being involved in the piece. As the models “occupy the same territory that we do, but not the same space⁵”. Also, the work Vb53, 2003 involves a large diverse group of women standing nude on top of a mound of soil within a greenhouse. Ultimately, for the participant, as Heartney states, a “sense of personal inadequacy in the face of the performers physical and behavioural perfection⁶” is created from these works. It is through the manipulation of such psychological effects that Beecroft’s work is so powerful⁷.

Vanessa Beecroft’s connection with her audience within her work can be seen in her recent exhibition of the work Vb64, 2009. The gallery space featured a long line of women’s figures spread out on the gallery floor and on funeral looking platforms ⁸. These bodies are a mixture of real and cast figures covered in white, an effect referred to by one reviewer as “blanched sameness”⁹. The models move around the space, the white from the models rubs off onto the cast figures and the gallery floor. It is the “theatrically titillating¹⁰” live performance of these models and the space used by Beecroft that makes the audience an instrumental part of her work.

It is therefore clear that Vanessa Beecroft’s art makes an immense impact on the role of the audience in contemporary art.

This is the link to the exhibition review of her recent work:

http://www.artreview.com/forum/topic/show?id=1474022%3ATopic%3A765235

1 Jan Avgikos, “Let the picture do the talking”. Parkett, No.56 (1999): 108.

2 Eleanor Heartney, Art and today. (phaidon press limited,2008), p. 392

3 Jan Avgikos, op.cit., 107.

4 Eleanor Heartney, op.cit., 399

5 Vanessa Beecroft, Dave Hickey. VB 08-36: Vanessa Beecroft performances. Ostfildern : Hatje Cantz, 2000: 6.

6 Ibid., p. 399.

7 Jan Avgikos, op.cit.,107.

8 David Everitt Howe, “Vanessa Beecroft:Vb64.” Art Review 32, (May 2009): 114.

9 David Everitt, Howe. Op.cit.,114.

10 Ibid., p.114.

Resources

Cianchi, Lapo; Frisa, Maria Lusia,;Bonami, Francessco; Rosevinge, Line. VB53: Vanessa Beecroft. Milano: Charta, 2005.
Beecroft, Vanessa; Dave Hickey. VB 08-36: Vanessa Beecroft performances. Ostfildern : Hatje Cantz, 2000.
Beecroft, Vanessa. “Vanessa Beecroft” http://www.vanessabeecroft.com/frameset.html (accessed October 15, 2009)
Heartney, Eleanor. Art and Today. phaidon press limited, 2008.
Seward, Keith; Tazzi, Pier Luigi; Avgikos, Jan. “Vanessa Beecroft” Parkett, no.56 (1999): 76-119
Howe, David Everitt. “Vanessa Beecroft:Vb64.” Art Review 32, (May 2009): 114. Located from art index http://ovidsp.tx.ovid.com.ezproxy1.library.usyd.edu.au (accessed October 15, 2009)


Images (top to bottom)

Vanessa Beecroft, Vb64, 2009, , photographic documentation of a performance, Deitch Projects New York. Reproduced from http://images.google.com.au(accessed 18 October, 2009)
Vanessa Beecroft, VB 53, 2003. Photographic documentation of a performance. Firenze, Italy. Reproduced from http://images.google.com.au(accessed 18 October, 2009
Vanessa Beecroft, VB 46, 2001. Photographic documentation of a performance. Los Angeles. Reproduced from http://iages.google.com.au(accessed October 18, 2009).

Art and Architecture- Maya Lin

Maya Lyn we saw earlier in the Art:21 episode of art and identity but I thought she was also quite interesting in relation to art and architecture. As her works are part art and part architecture. This artist really inspires inspiration through her works.

She was trained as an artist and architect, and her sculptures, parks, monuments, and architectural projects are linked by her ideal of making a place for individuals within the landscape. She draws inspiration for her sculpture and architecture from culturally diverse sources, including Japanese gardens, Hopewell Indian earthen mounds, and works by American earthworks artists of the 1960s and 1970s.

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/lin/






Systematic Landscapes, 2009
2 x 4 Landscape
Wood, 36' x 53' x 10'




What is missing, 2009

Take a look through her website her works are amazing. http://www.mayalin.com/

Broken Homes – Andrew Mackenzie

Andrew Mackenzie has discussed some really intriguing ideas in relation to Callum Morton's piece 'Valhalla' which was featured in the 2007 Venice Biennale. This review explores the in-depth conceptual levels of meaning behind the artists work. This artwork as Mackenzie discusses due to size and scale allows the audience to engage with the work and entice a response.

This work was heavily influenced by the destruction Morton saw to his own family home. The work takes on the foundation of an old house however, the house is “burnt out, scarred and (a) maimed shell”. The location that was this work was exhibited added to its meaning as it was situated away from other works the public did not immediately identify the work as a piece of art.

This work also looks at the domestically of the family home. This idea of home is at the centre of all that is human, it is where most of our lives take place and it is where our humanity lies. The discussion of these ideas by Mackenzie is an emotive point of discussion as he sees “it becomes a powerful mediation on the domains of the private and the public.” This idea of the private and public is discussed quite frequently within the article. This work is believed to depict the “uneasy distinction between private and public life”. With this a sense of ethical, cultural and social concern arises. These concerns predominately lie within the decline in the “social life of the city” due to the political control on public life. Public life is slipping away by control on all aspects of social life. He continues on to discuss the decline of the American neighbourhood and the “prosperity that once existed between home and public life” and the neighbourhood that once was.

This last quote from Mackenzie encompasses all that this work displays that” The burn marks and bullet holes that deface ‘Valhalla’s’ walls are the damage done by the simultaneous erosion of public life and repressed internalisation of private life: the enslavement of architecture to property development in the broadest sense, as well as in the more specific demolition of a piece of Morton's past.”
This article is one of rich ideas and discussion; the writer does look at all the possibilities this work is offering in conceptual meaning. The ideas discussed in relation to public and private life for the reader ignite discussion of the modern world. The work is full of fascinating meaning and Mackenzie has brought up ideas in relation to this work i would not have considered.

art and globalism- Wenda Gu

united nations: babble of the millennium
san francisco museum of modern art, 1999
a site-specific installation. an entirely human hair made tower of nonsensical pseudo-chinese, english, hindi, arabic and synthesized english-chinese.


united nations-holland monument: v.o.c.-w.i.c.*
the kroller-muller museum, the netherlands, 1994
a site-specific installation for heart of darkness.
dutch hair curtain walls, hair rooms, hair carpets mixed with pages of dutch colonial history books

This artist relates to the ideas associated with art and globalism. This artist builds spaces that resemble tea houses, temples and national monuments. She uses eastern and western languages. As an artist she is fusing together cultures and languages from all over the global community. Wenda Gu looks "head to a utopian moment when all humankind's deliberating differences will be erased". (Eleanor Heartney)

Art and spirituality - James Turrell

Turrell’s work involves explorations in light and space that speak to viewers without words, impacting the eye, body, and mind with the force of a spiritual awakening. “I want to create an atmosphere that can be consciously plumbed with seeing,” Informed by his studies in perceptual psychology and optical illusions, Turrell’s work allows us to see ourselves “seeing.” Whether harnessing the light at sunset or transforming the glow of a television set into a fluctuating portal, Turrell’s art places viewers in a realm of pure experience.Working with cosmological phenomena that have interested man since the dawn of civilization.His fascination with the phenomena of light is ultimately connected to a very personal, inward search for mankind’s place in the universe. Turrell’s art prompts greater self-awareness through a similar discipline of silent contemplation, patience, and meditation. His ethereal installations enlist the common properties of light to communicate feelings of transcendence and the Divine.

I found Turrell's work really fascinating that through the use of light he is able to create many spiritual meanings. It draws upon many questions that one has in regard to spirituality and the universe. This artist relates to many of the ideas discussed by Heartney as spirituality has replaced religion in modern art and this combination of art and spirituality have provided the investigation of life, morality , consciousness and spirit.

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/turrell/index.html



"The Light Inside"
1999
Electric lights, wires, metal and paint, site-specific permanent installation at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

Art and the body- Marina Abramovic

The House with the Ocean View, 2002, performance, Sean Kelly Gallery, New York, November, 2002

I thought this artist discussed in art and today was of much significance when discussing the ideas Eleanor Heartney has presented, especially in relation to the body used in performance art. As seen in the work below the body has become a medium and a subject matter in her works. She has explored the physical and mental limits of her being, she has withstood pain, exhaustion and danger in the quest for emotional and spiritual transformation. I find her performance art fascinating. As Heartney believes “performers throughout the world have found the human body to be an unusually versatile instrument. The artist’s works accentuate self-control, physical endurance, and risk.” which Abramovic has encompassed. Through the use of her body as a material Abramovic is able to take control of her “own subjectivity”. I found this work which was featured in the chapter fascinating. The fact she was able to live without eating, speaking, reading or writing seems unbelievable. It makes one wonder how much she was challenged mentally and physically.

http://www.skny.com/exhibitions/2002-11-15_marina-abramovi

Critical review

Nicolas Zurbrugg in the article entitled “Installation Art – Essence and Existence’, gives a well rounded discussion of installation art. The chapter begins by discussing “what is an installation” and the development of postmodern installation art. Zurbrugg right from the beginning makes interesting statements about postmodern installation art. The writer states that an installation “typifies some of the most interesting of the wider contemporary artistic languages, challenging and extending our preconceptions regarding materials, conceptual, institutional and authorial parameters”(25). This statement is evident in many contemporary pieces as referred to later in the article such as, Jenny Holzer. Which through the use of text on buildings and billboards has revolutionized the gallery as an institution. Zurbrugg continues on to define an installation as something that can be installed “inside, outside or around an exhibition space (25).”

The ideas of existence and essence are mentioned throughout the chapter drawing on enthralling ideas. This being that “ its existence as an installation responding to a particular spatial or environmental context determines its specific aesthetic essence as installation art” (26) therefore, “Existence determines essence”(26) regarding an installation.

This article differs from others due to the fact that the writer has taken a different approach to establishing an understanding of installation art. Rather than looking at “ancient constructions”(26) he attempts to look at the differing periods in the early development of installation art in 20th century avant-garde movement. The writer looks at Duchamp's influential artwork “Fountain” (1917), and the works of Kurt Schwitters. Both were dominate artists within this avant-garde movement. Through the discussion of these works many intriguing ideas are unpacked. The writer states “schwitters implies that any selection of preexisting materials may function as an installation in any place if the artist considers them to have artistic value. Duchamp suggests that any materials, irrespective of artistic merit, must become art when signed by the artist.” (29)

This discussion continues with a few differing perspectives on installation artworks. The writer also makes the point that “installations that simply exploit a kind of second-hand Duchampian shock value”(30) are inadequate.
Overall, the chapter makes a knowledgeable discussion from the early 20th century to contemporary installation art. Making insightful statements about what makes installation art what it is today. This article makes reference to relevant artists, exhibitions, writings and theoretical discussion. From the discussion of defining an installation to the argument of its avant-garde origins Zurbrugg makes a compelling argument. I see many of his ideas having merit. Especially, in his final statements as he states in his opinion that “the most rewarding installations are perhaps those which imply or enact some sort of movement, be this their own literal movement as Kinetic structure or as installation action, or be this the viewer’s physical or mental exertions, across material or metaphysical space”(31). Even through he does make some fascinating points I felt that there could have been a more in depth discussion of views on installation art, looking at this art form from more different perspectives giving his argument more relevant continuity.

Source: Nicholas Zurbrugg chapter: Installation art – essence and existence from What is installation? An anthology of writings on Australian installation art /edited by Adam Geczy and Benjamin Genocchio. Sydney : Power Publications, 2001. pp. 25—31