1980s-90s Flashcards
“Moxibustion”
- Judy Pfaff, 1994
- Pfaff is an installation artist whose work focuses on environmental concerns.
- “Moxibustion” is a scene of a colorful underwater garden.
- Her work creates a sense of narrative, although the installations appear random, the individual strands hang off one another in a way that suggests intricacy.
- Her works display the themes of order and disorder working together to create stability.
“Blow Job (The Three Little Boys)”
- Damian Loeb, 1999
- Late example of Appropriation Art, it was removed from a show because neither of the two composited images (the boys, or the blow job) were the property of the artist.
“Untitled (Portrait of Jennifer Flay)”
- Félix González-Torres, 1992
- Part of his Dateline pieces.
- The artist notes similar lists of dates and events related to the subject’s life, to compel the viewer to consider the relationships and gaps between the references.
“1991.6.1. Painting”
- Fang Lijun, 1991
- Cyncial Realism
- The men portrayed are confues and directionless, representing the malaise of Chinese youth culture at the time.
- The portrayal of monks as grinning fools is mocking the orthodoxy.
“House”
- Rachel Whiteread, 1993
- YBA
- A concrete cast of the inside of an entire Victorian terraced house.
“Not Pollock”
- Mike Bidlow, 1982
- Bidlow was significant in the Appropriation Art movement.
- This work is a fairly accurate replica of Pollock’s drip paintings.
- His work explores the very nature of originality, creative, and genius.
“Noel Rockmore”
- Noel Rockmore, 1994
- Although he practiced the old master style throughout his career, his final works adapted the cartoonish painting style that had become popular in the 90s.
- His “final self-portrait” is welling and intimate.
“New Star”
- Mark di Suvero, 1992
- Incorporates speed and technological aspects to the medium of sculpture, by using moving parts.
- “New Star” gyrates.
“Louvre Pyramid”
- I.M. Pei, 1989
- This building declares its identity as an abstract object first, then as a refined monument.
“Guggenheim Bilbao Museo”
- Frank Gehry, 1997
- Appearance of asymmetrical exterior with outside walls giving no hint to interior spaces.
- Irregular, random masses of titanium walls designed to catch the light.
- Sweeping curved lines.
- Example of deconstructionist architecture, a late-80s postmodern architectural movement. Buildings of this type seek to create a seeminly unstable environment with unusual spatial arrangements.
“Pink Panther”
- Jeff Koons, 1988
- Neo-Pop Art sculpture
- Part of his Banality series
- Most of Koons work he claims has no deeper meaning, however, this one has been interpreted as a send up of heterosexual relationships and the connectedness between heteronormativity and pop culture.
“Sniffy the Rat”
- Rich Gibson, 1989
- Transgressive performance art.
- He held a weight over a rat in a cage and threatened to release the weight, killing it.
- Gibson created a firestorm, eventually returned it to a pet store, where he announced to his audience that it had been sold as snake food.
“Venus”
- Vuk Ćosić, 1996
- Net.Art
- Places a classic work of art in a contemporary narrative., part of hi “History of Art for Airports”.
“Pink Connection”
- Robert Arneson, 1991
- Vulgor ceramic busts, such as this one, founded the ceramic Funk Art movement.
- Funk Art, with roots in 20s jazz, came back into vogue in the 90s.
“Programmed Machines”
- Maurizio Bolognini, 1992-97
- Post conceptual media art installation
- His work explores the potential and implications of new media technologies.
- “Programmed Machines” explores the possibility of delegating creative functions to generative devices.
- Introduces the concept of infinity.
- Focuses on disconnection between the artist and his work made possible due to new media.
“Action”
- FLUXUS Midwest, 1997
- These memorialize artist Jake Platt, who drew on artwork of Yoko Ono with a red marker.
“1957”
- Robert Combas, 1984
- Figuration libre, the prevailing movement in France during the 1980s.
- Very ugly, graffiti inspired style.
“Vanitas; Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic”
- Jana Sterbak, 1987
- The rotting meat implies death in relation to the piece being worn as a dress by a woman.
- The network of relations among the materials defines what she calls ‘states of being’ between freedom and restraint.
“XS: The Opera Opus”
- Rhys Chatham and Joseph Nechvatal, mid-1980s
- No wave avant-garde music and art performance
- Its theme was the excess of the nuclear weapon buildup of the Ronald Reagan presidency.
“Turning Point >8080
- Hanne Darboven, 1988-1989
- Conceptual Art
- Numbers were assigned to certain notes, and numerical series translated into musical scores.
- This artwork functions on visual, performance, and vocal levels.
“Piss Christ”
- Andres Serrano, 1987
- 1987 photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine.
- Very controversial in the United States.
- It has been assessed as criticizing the the cheapening of Christianity or Christian icons in contemporary culture.
“Test Site”
- Carsten Höller, 1998
- Relational aesthetics
- Large tubes serve a functional purpose, possibly
“Tense”
- Anya Gallaccio, 1990
- YBA installation
- The half ton oranges, plus the chic wallpaper, allude to the building’s past as a fruit warehouse and its future as a luxury condo.
“Untitled (1991)”
- Félix González-Torres, 1991
- One of González-Torres’s most recognizable works. A billboard sized photogrpah of an unoccupied bed, made after the death of his long-time partner from AIDS.
- It was erected in 25 locations in New York City.
“Mire G 96 (Kowloon)”
- Jean Dubuffet, 1983
- Dubuffet was a pioneer of 1980s graffiti art.
- His approach to aesthetics embraced a so-called “low art” and put forth a humanistic approach to painting.
“Pool”
- Jennifer Bartlett, 1983
- Barlett was a rather heavy handed narrative artist.
- “Pool,” just like many of her other works, explores multiple facets of a scene in serial images.
- This technique adds a deep layer to the narrative method by providing an in depth look into the chronology of a scene.
“Another Place”
- Antony Gormley, 1997
- Life size cast iron figures of the artist’s own body, facing the sea.
- The piece is taken as a very interesting spin on body art.
“45.”
- Georg Baselitz, 1989
- Various, almost comic, portraits of distorted and terrified women.
- The wood is violently scarred, Baselitz attacked the images with chisels and chainsaws, making the women look under fire.
- It was inspired by the bombing of Dresden.
“World Skin”
- Maurice Benayoun, 1997
- A virtual reality interactive installation.
- Immerses the viewers in a world of war, “World Skin” makes us think about the status of the image and the relationship between war and media. What is it that the photographers appropriate when they press the button?
“Responding to Art”
- Jubal Brown, 1996
- Art Intervention, and performance art.
- Brown vomited primary colors onto a Piet Mondrian painting.
“Form Art”
- Alexei Shulgin, 1997
- An interactive art work accessible online. Early example of Internet Art.
- Blank boxes and links lead the viewer around listlessly through random drawings.
- There is also a “Gomputer Game” which allows the viewer to make arbitrary choices to try and escape a strange setting, but will inevitably always end in a “You Lose” page.
“A Visit To / A Visit From / The Island”
- Eric Fischl, 1983
- This work depicts Fischl’s transition from questioning suburban life to exploring exotic locales.
- The same danger and enigma that lurk in his suburban paintings exist in his presentations of the Caribbean, Morocco, and India.
- This piece depicts affluent tourists basking in ignorance of the violent world that threatens the black working class.
- Storm clouds gathering link the two halves of the dyptech, this same storm brings death to the natives.
“Number Pieces”
- John Cage, 1987-1992
- Composed during the last years of his life.
- Each piece is named after the number of performers involved.
- Used Cage’s time bracket technique.
“SOD”
- Jodi, 1999
- An early, and seminal, work of game art.
- Jodi corrupted the files of Wolfenstein 3D, to create a game that is very basic and deconstructed in nature, with rules that make no intuitive sense.
“Galisteo Creek”
- Susan Rothenberg, 1992
- Rothenberg’s paintings, such as this one, depict a feathery dancer.
- In addition to being a narrative work, it is also autobiographical.
- She introduced imagery into minimalist abstraction, bringing a new sensitivity into figuration.
“Autel de Lycée Chases”
- Christian Boltanski, 1986-1987
- Boltanski is a French conceptual artist specializing in installations.
- His work frequently has to do with the Holocaust.
- “Chases School” shows photos of Jewish schoolchildren taken in Vienna as a forceful reminder of the Holocaust.
“The Story of One Who Set Out to Study Fear”
- John Baldessari, 1982
- This narrative photo sequence shows the contemporary tendency to combine images with text.
“A Cyber Feminist Manifesto for the 21st Century”
- VNS Matrix, 1991
- Pioneering work, blending the newly emerging world of net.art, with feminist artwork.
- They sought to claim the new technology from male hands, and use this new technological world as a place from which to recode social norms.
“Crash”
- Vito Acconci, 1985
- Neo-pop Art
- Most likely a largely aesthetic piece, which allows the audience to invent symbolism and intent.
- A bit neo-expressionist, a bit minimalist- altogether anachronistic.
“Vexation Island”
- Rodney Graham, 1997
- A looping film of a pirate who wakes up, and is then knocked unconscious by a falling coconut.
- Dryly funny conceptualist film.
“Food Diary”
- Vanessa Beecroft, 1994
- Neo-Conceptual, feminist, performance art
- Beecroft, a bullimic, assembeled a table of supermodels as she read aloud from her comprehensive eight year food diary.
- Mixed in with what she ate everyday were comments like, “fat slut” and “pig.”
- The performance was significant, as it marked the full acceptance of neo-conceptual art into respected museums.
“Heartbreak Hotel”
- Robert Colescott, 1990
- Cartoonish style, derived from the fringe elements of neo-expressionism
- His work transgressively satirizes the treatment of black people in America.
- This particular piece invokes themes such as jazz, racism, and rape.
- The title harkens to Elvis Presley, the original gentrifier of soul music.
“My Boyfriend Came Back from the War”
- Olia Lialina, 1996
- The work is an example of net.art, and interactive hypertext storytelling.
- When clicking hyperlinks in the work, the frame splits into smaller frames and the user reveals a nonlinear story about a couple that is reunited after a nameless military conflict.
“The Sound of Night (Il rumore della notte)”
- Mimmo Paladino, 1986
- This is a transavantgarde sculpture.
- Prehaps the most important example of such a sculpture to come out of that short lived movement.
“Michael Jackson and Bubbles”
- Jeff Koons, 1988
- Neo-Pop Art
- Part of his Banality series.
- Koons most symbolic work.
- Incorporates the famous pop star with Christian iconography to reflect Koons’s philosophy that art should reach as many people as possible, while also reprimanding America’s banal religious and celebrity culture.
“The Making of Genesis”
- Eduardo Kac, 1999
- New Media installation
- The entire text of the Book of Genesis translated into Genetic Code.
- The entire piece is turned on and off by viewers on a website.
“Object (with Flaw)”
- John Baldessari, 1988
- Represented a major shift in Baldessari’s approach to presentation, allowing a more complex relationship between his found imagery.
- The similarities qualify the conceptual art he was known for, creating a semblance of narrative in the photos.
- Baldessari expertly contrasts unrelated photographs to suggest a mysterious and/or ominous undercurrent.
“Tilted Arc”
- Richard Serra, 1981
- Site-specific, minimalist, post-modern sculpture.
- Makes the viewer aware of their existence. The sculpture changes in size and stature from every different perspective. The point was to make people more self-aware as they were in the plaze, an area which many quickly rush through.
“Execution”
- Yue Minjun, 1995
- Cynical Realism movement
- The laughing figures and the overall contradictory elements of the painting are hallmarks of 90s Chinese art.
“24 Hour Psycho”
- Douglas Gordon, 1993
- Gordon slowed down the film Psycho so that it would be 24 hours long.
- Introduces themes such as authorship, time, memory, and recognition.
- YBA
“Blue Books”
- Ida Applebroog, 1981
- A self-published series of five books.
- The books were filled with crudely drawn blue illustrations, that were also “blue” metaphorically.
- A self-aware example of neo-expressionism and postmodernism.
“Selections”
- Jenny Holzer, 1989
- Less conceptual than her earlier work.
- Holzer uses impersonal electric ribbon signs and banal truisms to construct a form of emotional theater that both mocks and combats the public’s apathy towards art.
“Momentum”
- Spencer Tunick, 1996
- Large scale installation photography.
- These grouped masses which do not underscore sexuality become abstractions that challenge or reconfigure one’s views of nudity and privacy.
“Bill Gaddis”
- Julian Schnabel, 1987
- These brash and tender plate paintings were the height of Schnabel’s popularity.
- They modified the Appropriation Arts movement, showing how someone elses work (plates) could be refashioned into something new.
- There is great sensitivity and delicacy in these works, which commemorate the dead, suggesting the fragility of human life.
“Legible City”
- Jeffrey Shaw, 1988-1991
- Participants peddle a bike through one of three metropolitan cities, where the buildings and sites are represented with words.
- Interactive New Media Art
“My Bed”
- Tracey Emins, 1998
- Another selfish Y.A.B. sculpture
- Emins claims the bed looks as it did during a period of time in which she was going through severe depression, it’s littered with menstrual stains and used condoms.
“26 October 1993”
- Henry Bond and Sam Taylor-Wood, 1993
- Young British Artist photography
- Asks the viewer to contrast the 60s with the 90s
“The Umbrellas”
- Christo and Jean-Claude, 1984-1991
- The couple set up yellow umbrellas in California and blue umbrellas in Japan.
- Their temporary art installations are said to contain no deep meaning, existing only for aesthetics.
“Woman Walks into Bar - Is Raped by 4 Men on the Pool Table - While 20 Men Watch”
- Sue Coe, 1983
- Sue Coe was a member of the narrative art movement.
- This piece memorializes an actual event that occured in 1983.
- Her work frequently highlighted the importance of feminism.
“GRAMMATRON”
- Mark Amerika, 1997
- Net Art, a website that brings the viewer through a hypertext tale.
- The story’s character’s name of Abe alludes to the medieval Jewish legend of the golem, a robotlike servant made of clay and brought to life, who is considered a prototype for man-machine myths.
“Reverse Television”
- Bill Viola, 1983
- A series of video portraits produced for broadcast television, of people sitting in their living rooms, silently staring at the video camera as though it were a television screen.
- They were meant to air in the place of a single commercial, so that viewers could ponder their own situations.