EXAM 3 SLIDES Flashcards
Au Damien Hirst
“For the Love of God”
2007
Platinum, Diamonds, human teeth (Multimedia)
American ?
Worth 50 million dollars
Platinum and diamond skull sculpture with the materials worth 14 million pounds
Skull dates about 1720-1710 man, purchased from taxidermist.
32 platinum plates make up this sculpture. With – diamonds and real teeth put back in.
name comes from his mother’s exclamations when he came up with new ideas for artworks.
Combines the imagery from classic memento mori with Aztec and Mexican decorative traditions.
The forhead diamond inspired by thog the mighty from a comic he used to read as a child
Jeff Koons
“Two Ball 50/50 Tank”
1985
Glass, Steel, distilled water, and two basketballs
American
Created for his first solo exhibition and part of his “equilibrium” works.
Tanks and vitrines in this exhibit are rather minimalist, but he said they were to keep things new. Likes clean.
Pristine-ness of his object he says are to convey economic stability—keep from being associated with things that are degrading, part of economic instability in real life.
Not about the type of object, but the brand and type of object of desire. Brand fetish not functionality drives consumer desires.
Jeff Koons: best known for his reproductions of banal art on large and permanent scale. His works have also sold for ridiculous amounts of money. Set record for high auction in 2012. His orange balloon dog sold for 58.4 million. Became the highest price for living artist work. Has had a long career—became known in 80’s. After art school, works at MOMA, and starts working in wall street.
His early works were ready-mades. Extension of duchamps
His first important body of works were Pre-New, and New. Elevating everyday objects to desirable objects…interested in “newness”
In the later 80s moves away from the readymades and moves to sculpture.
Has kind of a rose-tinted view of the world that can be seen referenced in works such as his Made In Heaven series and the…series. In contrast, think of Puppy!
Works are intensely labored to make it look like human hands weren’t involved. Hired experts to make things.
Zeroes in on kind of middle class values and makes them into things that turn high art.
2013 generated over 17 billion dollars within contemporary art world…39% increase over 2012. Even though art sales soared, who is buying it? Rich people!
Booms but also crashes in the art world, 2008-9 in particular Koons and such halved in value.
Gran Fury
“The Government has Blood On its Hands”
1988
Poster
American Group of Artists
Made by the Gran Fury collective—refers to the lack of support an intervention on the part of the government (particularly NY city) on the issue of aids.
Back story: responding to July 19th 1988 NY city commissioner of health suddenly halved the # of aids sufferers in NY. This threatened to reduce funding for aids services in the city.
Thompson Square Park riots.
This and others like it were pasted up in the city.
FDA was taking a long time in approving treatments for AIDS so ACT UP targets the FDA too. And this poster is the one that they chose to use for their campaign…
Reproduced on lots of different objects.
Zoe Leonard
“Strange Fruit” (For David)
1992-1997
Multimedia installation
American
American photographer
She also speaks to the question of how to represent the loss of a loved one.
David Wojnarowvicz was a long time friend of hers.
She was a memer of ACT UP and other activist organizations
Fruit skins that she saved and then sewed back together with wire and thread
Making an analogy between the persecution of black men in the south, and gay people in the time of her work.
Makes it in a way as a coping mechanism. When eating she would save the skins and sew them back up, understandably a futile effort, as the fruit would never be made whole again. An allegory to the artist.
Part of her project is documenting the decay of the project. –all that is left is the photographs.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
“Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA)”
1991
Candy
American
Produced interactive installations
Candy represents the bodyweight of his partner Ross at the time that he died.
Ephemeral piece, the visitor was invited to take the candy and interact through consumption.
Dwindling mass mimics the wasting body.
Faith Ringgold
“Flag for the Moon”
1967-69
–?
American
Known for her patchwork story quilts a lot.
Trying to portray her relationship with the flag (country) as a black woman in America at the time
Idea that the flag is not neutral, that we are not all equal under the flag—
Paired with Jasper Johns, Flag—his is not neutral either—red scare references, paranoia, artists being suspected of being communists, homosexuality discrimination.
The moon reference prob refers to the planting of the flag into the moon-moon landing.
H. Rap Brown Die Nigger Die 1969—Referring to the extreme violence subject to as a black male during this time
Uses the flag to critique social and governmental inequity.
Fred Wilson
“Mining the Museum”
1992
Slave manacles placed in metalwork display
American
One of his intervention series.
Simply rearranges display cases—not making anything new, does so to draw attention to overlooked history.
This one @ Maryland Historical Society—incorporated into a case of silver, shackles that were elsewhere located.
Doesn’t change the title of Metalwork on the display, merely adds the other metal: shackles, and changes the way you look at the exhibit, who owned the stuff, were they slaveowners?
Carrie Mae Weems
“Untitled (Man Reading Newspaper)” From the Kitchen table series
1990
Photograph
American
Grew up as daughter of Mississippi sharecroppers—moves to San Francisco—becomes politically active. Later gets MA.
Photography mainly. Uses text and language in conjunction with images.
Interrogating lingering racism.
This one looking at race and gender together.
Intention to go beyond the prevalent discourse in the 1990 about male gays.
Puts self in series of 20 photos, with 15 texts appears in 5 alone.
Some with other women, some with man.
Explores a range of lfe’s experiences.
Human experience. Not just from vantage of female, but also A. American POV
Trying to make a broad picture of what it’s like to be a person, and the subject happens to be an A. American.
Lorna Simpson
“The Waterbearer”
1986
Silver Gelatin Print
American
Images and text to address issues of identity and gender.
Explores the way that people, particularly Black women, are stereotyped, typed in images etc.
How much depends on context, power of it.
Text is so ambiguous. Opens up and enriches the image.
Showing some futility, pouring the gathered water out on the ground and discounted memory.
Work is inetnionally left open ended—viewers left to draw own conclusions.
Yinka Shonibare
“Untitled, from the Effnick series”
1997
Color Print
American
Born Nigeria, raised in London.
Inserts himself in this series,
Asks questions about art, history, nationality.
He is interested in race, gender, nationality.
Kara Walker
“Camptown Ladies”
1998
Cut Paper and Adhesive on wall
American
Takes things that have happened in the past and constructs a fiction to contain them in her silhouettes.
Jockey riding the back of a young African American woman, holding a carrot in front of her face.
Never outright condemns the stuff in her images.
Visually appealing yet terrible subject matter.
Grotesque in subject.
Like Raushenburg, viewer is incorporated into the scenes.
Longing for romanticized and homogenous past in the use of the silhouettes…
Criticizing the consumption and idealization of the past.
People can take the works incorrectly, miss a lot of the point, leaves it too ambiguous.
“dangerous” because of the ambiguity, what does the viewer bring with it and how that affects the way in which it is understood.
Yasumasa Morimura
“Portrait (Fugato [twin])”
1988
Photograph
Japanese
Japanese performance artist and photographer.
He is the model in his photographs. This one is referencing Manet’s Olympia 1863.
Posing is important in his work
Done a lot with the ideas of passing. Done a lot to make people think about gender and racial prejudice.
Makes this painting around the same time that feminist art historians are examining works like Olympia for her active role in the painting. And questioning the relationship between the two figures in the painting.
Looking at Yasumasa’s Aisan male body in the image, he both passes and does nt pass…things that look similar to and differ from Olympia.
He plays the role of both women in his image.
Another of his self protraits are “Self Portrait [Actress] After Vivien Leigh, and Self Portrait [Actress] Marilyn Monroe” Notice the interest is in the actress, rather than the character—interest in the actress (the methods or effort taken to assume that role)
The self portraits confurse boundaries and are more about portraits of what the viewer deems signifiers about gender etc.
Catherine Opie
“Bo, From the Being and Having Series”
1992
Photograph
American
In her portrait series we see masculine portraits of her friends—gay, lesbian, transgendered indviduals.
When these were first shown, they were shocking in he early 90s art circles—represented a culture not normally seen in galleries.
Many of the portraits include facial hair and names tht don’t do much to decode…
Costume photography been around a wihle…she gives it a queer twist here.
This image is a self portrait, troubling the ideas of gender …under the moustache we see a little of the netting that holds the moustache…an allusion to the masquerade.
Her image seems playful, absurd, etc in the same image. All 12 in the series become delicate, almost fragile in the setting….her title has to do with what is ascribed at birth and what is adopted through personal actions etc.
Nikki S. Lee
“The Lesbian Project”
1997
Photograph
Korean American
Series of photographs
Explores gender, identity, and masquerade.
Korean born artist. Nikki S. Lee is the name she adopted when she moved to America. Mixture of Korean and American Identity.
She appears as herself but disguised in costume, often in makeup or adopts the clothing of a certain subgroup or culture, maybe makeup to change her racial appearance.
Photographs in all sortso of cultural/social communities.
Also aware of her own identity and presuppositions as a Korean in America.
She would dress up, introduce herself as an artist, then spend weeks with the group and have friends take pictures with an ordinary camera when she cues.
She integrates so thoroughly sometimes it is hard to tell who she is.
Electronic date in the corner gives scientific authenticyt to the works, or makes it seem like just an ordinary shot.
Adopts the visual signifiers of groups to criticism and admiration.
