1970s Flashcards
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“Scaffale (Bookcase)”
- Michelangelo Pistoletto, 1976
- Later Arte Povera
- Pistolette reclaims the bookcase by applying a signature shape to it.
- This is an expansion on one of Arte Povera’s notions, of finding poetry in the industrialized world. And seeing industrialism as a means to art.
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“Body Pressure”
- Bruce Nauman, 1974
- Performance piece. The viewer of the art becomes the performer, they are instructed by a set of directions to press their body against a glass structure in a variety of ways.
- The experience manipulates eroticism.
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“Cooling towers, Wood n B”
- Bernd and Hilla Becher, 1976
- Conceptual artists and photographers.
- These structures are placed side by side so the viewer is allowed to compare and contrast them.
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“Advertisement for ‘Artforum’”
- Lydia Benglis, 1974
- This photograph ran in Artforum.
- Although the image is now commonly praised as an example of gender performativity in contemporary art, it provoked mixed responses when it first appeared.
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“Senster”
- Edward Ihnatowicz, 1970
- Robotic art
- Comissioned by Philips, it was controlled by a computer.
- This work of art was magnificent, however, the necessary comission of it by Philips led many to be distrustful of robotic and technological art.
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“Advertisement for Castelli-Sonnabend exhibition”
- Robert Morris, 1974
- Used to advertise his exhibition.
- The poster was a statement about hyper-masculinity and the stereotypical idea that masculinity equated to homophobia.
- Equates violence with art.
4
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“Trans-Fixed”
- Chris Burden, 1974
- Performance Art
- Burden was nailed through his hands to a Volkswagon.
- Burden questioned the desensitization Americans garner towards the image of Christ on the cross.
5
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“Dog Duet”
- William Wegman, 1974
- Film Art, reliant on irony and wit.
- Two of Wegman’s dogs sit side by side as they keenly follow an object moving behind the camera that is finally revealed to be a ball.
- Meanwhile the viewers, become transfixed by this game of pursuit and unwittingly fall for the chase.
- Nearly all his work involves dogs.
5
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“Rhythm 0”
- Marina Abramović, 1974
- Abramović allowed the audience to interact with her body as she stood perfectly still in front of a table with 72 items they were allowed to touch her with.
- Feminist art, performance art, and body art.
- By the end of the performance, her body was stripped, attacked, and devalued into an image that Abramović described as the “Madonna, mother, and whore”.
- Abramović affirms her identity through the perspective of others, however, more importantly by changing the roles of each player, the identity and nature of humanity at large is unraveled and showcased. By doing so, the individual experience morphs into a collective one and creates a powerful message.
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“Facing a Family”
- Valie Export, 1971
- Groundbreaking Video Art
- Shows a bourgeois Austrian family watching TV while eating dinner.
- Aired, unannounced, during prime TV time.
- The family is staring at the viewer, creating a mirror effect.
5
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“Untitled (A Warli painting)”
- Jivya Soma Mashe, 1970s
- Radicalized the traditional Warli painting style.
- Commercialized the style.
6
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“Double Vision”
- Peter Campus, 1971
- Video Art
- Campus’s work used the camera as an active party to the action.
- The two cameras represent eyes, and various editing techniques are used to manipulate the sensations of various visual disabilities.
- The film takes place in a sad suburban bedroom modelled after Campus’s childhood room.
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“Red-winged blackbird”
- Pioneered by Ken Knowlton and Leon Harmon, 1970s
- ASCII Art
- During the 1970s it was popular in malls to get a t-shirt with a photograph printed in ASCII art on it from an automated kiosk manned by a computer.
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“Centers”
- Vito Acconci, 1971
- Film Art: Acconci films himself pointing at himself for about 25 minutes.
- By doing so Acconci makes a nonsensical gesture that exemplifies the critical aspects of a work of art through the beginning of the 20th century.
8
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“Vertical Roll”
- Joan Jonas, 1971
- Video Art
- The work explores the limits of film in capturing experience.
- Jonas plays an erotic dancer, the film cuts in and out creating the “vertical rolls” referenced in the title.
- As it intercuts between other scenes, Jonas explores the various rolls of women- suggesting that, although the rolls may be varied, they’re still limiting.
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“Untitled (Münster)”
- Donald Judd, 1977
- Sculpture (associated with minimalism)
- Eschews the European tradition of representative art
- Exemplifies Judd’s belief that art should not represent anything, that it should unequivocally stand on its own and simply exist.
11
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“Untitled Film Still #21”
- Cindy Sherman, 1978
- Precurser of the Pictures Generation
- Sherman stages scenes that look like they are stills of films.
- In doing this she points out how cliched film cinematography is, but more importantly, she suggest that women are compartmentalized into roles, both in media and in life. There is the notion that part of being a woman is constantly acting.
- Important work of the Appropriation and Feminist Artwaves.
11
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“The Dinner Party”
- Judy Chicago, 1979
- Important feminist installation artwork.
- Each plate depicts a brightly-colored, elaborately styled vagina-esque form.
- The settings rest upon elaborately embroidered runners, executed in a variety of needlework styles and techniques.
- “The Dinner Party” celebrates traditional female accomplishments such as textile arts (weaving, embroidery, sewing) and china painting, which have been framed as craft or domestic art, as opposed to the more culturally valued, male-dominated fine arts.
- Criticized as being kitchy and for erasing black womens identities.
12
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“Staple Cheese (A Race)”
- Dieter Roth, 1970
- Foodstuff artwork
- 36 suitcases filled with cheese were placed in a museum, to be opened once a day.
- The exhibition had to be shut down as the maggots, flies, and stench made the room inpenetrable.
- Roth’s work mocked the absurdity of museums, and reflected his belief that art should die, like people do.
13
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“Mark”
- Chuck Close, 1978-79
- Photorealism
- His works have no symbolic meaning really, they just explore the composite nature of photography and life.
15
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“Shoot”
- Chris Burden, 1971
- Performance Art, had his friend shoot him in the arm, in a museum, in front of patrons.
- “Shoot” explores the nature of suffering by setting up extreme situations that he, himself, has to endure. Theoretically, a viewer can interrupt the work at any point, but usually they do not; thus, his work challenges viewers themselves to act - both within the sphere of his art and within the larger context of humanity in general.
- The artist wanted to portray the reality of pain to the audience at a time when people had become desensitized to the plethora of television images of injured and dead American soldiers in Vietnam and the general dominance of violence in media imagery.
- Burden also wanted to question the role of art itself.
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“Assassins”
- Antoni Tàpies, 1974
- These proto arte povera works were done in the memory of an art critic who loathed Tàpies.
- This work defiantly includes symbols of Catalan identity.
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“…Remote…Remote…”
- Valie Export, 1973
- Feminist Actionism/Video Art
- Export sits before an image of two children with a bowl of milk nestled between her legs. She is obsessively carving her cuticle and dipping her bloody fingers into the bowl of milk, polluting its pure whiteness.
- A criticism of actionism and of the penis. The children remind the viewer of reproduction. Her suggestion that the finger can become a phallic object mocks Freudian theory. Like much of her work, she shows a savage male instrument (her phallic finger) polluting a symbol of femininity (milk).
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“Breath 5”
- Giuseppe Penone, 1978
- Post-Arte Povera
- Reproduces a breath exhaled from the artists body, now materialized in clay.
- Penone was eager to blur the lines between the artist and the art.
- This piece is significantly more figurative than the conceptual art being produced in America at the time.
20
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“Woman Wearing a Mask”
- Joan Brown, 1972
- Bad Painting
- The modish black lace lingerie and high heels recalls advertising
- But the unpretentious style softens the blow of the feminist message
- The mask and the woman are painted in different styles, contributing to the painting’s “badness.”
21
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“Seedbed”
- Vito Acconci, 1972
- Performance Art: Acconci built a sculpture in a gallery for patrons to walk over. During the course of three weeks, he masturbated eight hours a day while murmuring sexually explicit fantasies about the viewers walking above him that were broadcasted for them to hear via a microphone.
- Super egotistical- Acconci is the producer and the receiver of the work’s pleasure.
- As was the norm during the 70s, blurred the lines between the viewer and the artist.
22
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“Einbetoniertes Buch”
- Wolf Vostell, 1971
- An Art Book
- A work that came out of the Fluxus movement.
- It represents elements of dadaism, and invites the reader to draw societal criticisms.
22
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“Spiral Jetty”
- Robert Smithson, 1970
- Environmental Art.
- Earthwork
23
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“Sweet Movie”
- Dušan Makavejev, 1974
- Avant-garde art house comedy-drama film
- The film follows two women: a Canadian beauty queen, who represents a modern commodity culture, and a captain aboard a ship laden with candy and sugar, who is a failed communist revolutionary.
- Intermixes Makavejev’s themes of the degradation of pure communism, the injection of Western values into it, and the effects of sexual repression on the personal, economic, and political lives of all people.
- The film was extremely controversial and nearly impossible to find, due to scenes of coprophilia, emetophilia, fondling, and footage of remains of the Polish Katyn Massacre victims.
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“Untitled (Pink Felt)”
- Robert Morris, 1970
- Minimalist sculpture
- The unimportant rorschach elements of minimalist sculpture are on full display here.
- It is merely large quantities of felt draped unceramoniously on the floor.
- The flexibility of the piece harkens to the fluidity of the human body.
26
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“Supermarket Shopper”
- Duane Hanson, 1970
- One of the few photorealistic sculptures.
- This artwork is important because it shows the consumerist mindset of “Buy, Buy, Buy!”
- This culture is very important for this time, and shows a change in culture and in artwork.
28
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“Reading Position for Second Degree Burn”
- Dennis Oppenheim, 1970
- Performance Art, Oppenheim laid in the Sun for five hours and allowed himself to be burned.
- An interesting take on the notion of color change, prevalent during more classical artistic eras.
- His body is the canvas and the UV Rays are his tools, it is also sensory (allowing him to feel the color red).
30
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“Mimesis”
- Giulio Paolini, 1975
- A representational take on the irreverant attitude towards art history that had become mainstream in the 1970s.
- Takes on notions of the double and the copy, calling into question the concept of reproduction and representation itself.
31
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“Mann & Frau & Animal”
- Valie Export, 1970-1973
- Feminist Actionism, a subgenre of actionism that involved the criticism of men.
- Video Art
- Depicts Export masturbating with a shower hose. As the orgasmic peak approaches the female moans become animal shrieks or the grunts of a possible male spectator and the vagina is overtaken by blackness, slime, and blood.
- The finale is the photograph of a vagina and the image of a bloody hand dripping onto the photo.
- The unadorned body is transformed into an image of a savage beast. Export explicitly comments on the cultural civilizing of female sexuality and, consequently, the construction of female representation.
32
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“Untitled (Rape Scene)”
- Ana Mendieta, 1973
- Performance Art
- While still a college student, Mendieta invited students into her apartment, and stayed motionless in this position for one hour.
- The piece was performed in response to the rape and murder of a fellow student.
- This piece harkens back to the days of the Aztecs, when blood symbolized power.
33
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“S.O.S. - Starification Object Series”
- Hannah Wilke, 1974
- Wilke merged her minimalist sculpture and her own body by creating tiny vulval sculptures out of chewing gum and sticking them to herself. She then had herself photographed in various pin-up poses, providing a juxtaposition of glamour and something resemblingtribal scarification.
- These poses exaggerate and satirize American cultural values of feminine beauty and fashion and also hint an interest in ceremonious scarification.
34
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“Rhythm 10”
- Marina Abramović, 1973
- Performance Art/Body Art
- Abramović explored rituals and repetition, playing a game where she rapidly tries to stab a knife between her fingers.
- Everytime she stabbed herself she would use a new knife.
- After cutting herself twenty times, she would try to repeat the exact motions she had just done (cutting herself in the same place at the same time) using only an audio recording of her own screams.
36
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“Unicorn”
- Rebecca Horn, 1970
- A body modification piece of artwork that is also a pun on the artist’s name.
- Designed to be worn, casts the human body in a new vantage point of artistry.
37
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“Yes COUM are Fab and Kinky”
- Genesis P-Orridge, 1971
- Of the COUM Transmission movement.
- An example of the artwork which P-Orridge produced to advertise his artistic-musical group; the primary image is of himself as a child.
- The COUM Transmission was a Viennese Action inspired music and performance group.
- This piece highlights their transgression.
38
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“People Looking at Blood Moffitt”
- Ana Mendieta, 1973
- Performance Art
- Mendieta poured blood and rags onto a sidewalk and photographed seemingly endless onlookers, until somebody acknowledged the rags.
- A striking piece done in response to a brutal rape case.
39
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“Pieta”
- James Albertson, 1976
- Bad Painting
- Cartoonish illustrating, mild irreverence towards Christian ideology.
40
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“Chaos I”
- Jean Tinguely, 1973
- Kinetic Artwork
- Designed to have a Jekyll and Hyde type disposition, with certain automated parts of the sculpture working at certain times.
41
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“Tourists”
- Duane Hanson, 1970
- Photorealistic sculpture
- Depicts two people who are instantly familiar, yet never represented in museums.
- Redefines the role of sculpture.
43
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“The Conditioning”
- Gina Pane, 1973
- The artist laid on a metal bedframe, over burning candles.
- Deemed by Marina Abromovic to be one of the seven most important performance art pieces ever.
44
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“Literaturwurst”
- Dieter Roth, 1961-1974
- An Artist’s book
- Made using sausage recipees, but replacing the meat with a book or magazine.
- Designed to put authors in their place by turning their works into mincemeat.
- Fitting with 1970s artistic irreverence.
46
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“Lips of Thomas”
- Marina Abramovic, 1975
- Performance Art, Abramovic engages in transgressive acts, such as carving a Star of David into her stomach.
- Abromovic whipped herself, until she was lying on an ice block bleeding to death- compelling the audience to take action.
- Abramovic is not only threatening the integrity of her body and, thus, destabilizing the binary opposition between inside and outside, but is also questioning the distinction between public and performer.
47
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“Imagen de Yagul”
- Ana Mendieta, 1974
- Mandieta uses her naked body to combine and connect with the Earth, morphing Land Art and Performance Art.
48
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“I Like America and America Likes Me”
- Joseph Beuys, 1974
- Conceptual, performance art
- Beuys flew to America, but could only see a small room filled with one coyote.
- Beuys spent his time with the coyote in the small room, with little more than a felt blanket and a pile of straw. While in the room, the artist engaged in symbolist gestures, such as striking a triangle and tossing his gloves to the coyote.
- At the end of the three days, the coyote, who had become quite tolerant of Beuys, allowed a hug from the artist, who was transported back to the airport via ambulance. He never set foot on outside American soil nor saw anything of America other than the coyote and the inside of the gallery.
- Pivotal for the reception of German avant garde art in the United States,
49
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“Female Sensibility”
- Lynda Benglis, 1973
- An art film
- Benglis, in a decidedly unsexy way, kisses and licks the face of a model.
- Benglis was widely condemned by her contemporaries during her career, this piece was intended to reclaim lesbianism from the male gaze.
50
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“Cretto”
- Alberto Burri, 1975
- This is another difficult to define work from Italy, coming off the heels of the Arte Povera movement.
- “Cretto,” one of Burri’s “cracked” paintings, depicts creviced earthlike surfaces that play with notions of trompe l’oeil.
51
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“Interior Scroll”
- Carolee Schneemann, 1975
- Notable Fluxus-influenced performance art
- Schneemann presented herself in an apron, stripped, covered herself in some black paint, struck action poses, and then read from her own book about feminism reclaiming art history.
- Following this, she dropped the book and slowly extracted from her vagina a scroll from which she read a criticism of sexism in art history.
- By placing the source of artistic creativity at the female genitals, Schneemann is changing the masculine overtones of minimalist art and conceptual art into a feminist exploration of her body.
52
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“Bella Abzug”
- Alex Katz, 1972
- Color lithograph
- Features Katz’s stylistic hallmarks- the influence of billboard advertising and the cropping of subjects to dramatic effect.
- Flat planes of color and banner-like lettering captures the political nature of Abzug’s persona.
