Contemporary art allows for a multitude of different ways of expressing identity, human form and figure. Ranging from explicit to abstract, numerous artists have attempted to imitate the complexities of the human figure, and in the creation process, they must deliberate on what they believe are the most crucial conceptual elements of the human identity necessary for inclusion in their work. Upon reading Pamela M. Lee’s “Love and Basketball”, and David Joselit’s “Painting Beside Itself”, I can begin to understand the range of ways in which artists express the human form.

“Love and Basketball” examines the changing face of contemporary art in New York City during the 1980’s through a controversial Koons exhibit titled Made in Heaven. Debuted in the popular Sonnabend Gallery, Koons displays large, sexually explicit canvases of his Italian wife Ilona Staller and himself engaging in sexual acts. “The work’s principal aim, Koons said, was to “communicate with people” and free his audience from middle-class guilt in the process” writes Lee (Lee 220). Claiming to liberate people from any shame associated with the sexual nature of human life, Koons is attempting to use the nude human form to liberate society from certain boundaries rooted in a history of sexual repression.

(Jeff Koons, Made in Heaven exhibition)

Although his mission may seem noble, his exhibit was met with criticism, not just in regards to its vulgar nature, but also on its lack of political awareness. Lee writes “[P]erhaps our uneasiness stemmed from where such pictures sat with the times. here was a married couple aggressively flaunting the privilege of their sexuality during the AIDS crisis, a moment when the disease was casually referred to as “gay cancer”. Meanwhile Staller’s hyperbolic femininity her perpetually slack mouth and impossibly white hair- could only provoke at a time when the terms race, class, and gender stood as shorthand for the ideological stakes of postmodernism and the politics of representation. The peculiar heartlessness of the images and their actors- their blithe indifference to such contemporary events or critical phenomena- channeled a different kind of message. Koons and Staller appeared uncanny and waxen, as if performing simulacral sex” (Lee 220). Perhaps they were blind to the luxuries of their sex lives, especially during the height of AIDS. Or perhaps they wanted to focus on the concept of sexuality in relation to humankind, free of any political statements.

While Koons is as explicit as one can get when depicting human form, the works discussed in “Painting Beside Itself” are remarkably abstract. These works are meant to represent an ingenious deconstructed composite of the creative human form. The piece begins with the questions “How does painting belong to a network?” (Joselit 125). This social network, postulated by Joselit, involves the interactions between multiple humans through the artistic medium. For example, there is the original painter, who creates the work. From this work springs a network of all the viewers, the future pieces, and future artists inspired by the works. She continues with “If, for Koether, “painting” functions as the nodal point of performance, installation, and a figurative style of gestural reenactment on canvas, for Prina, “painting” marks the intersection of the artist’s oeuvre (as inventory or body of work), the object’s format (its size and contour), and a non-objective style of reenactment on paper. The flavor of Exquisite Corpse is thus dramatically different from Lux Interior, but they share the same project: to visualize the transitive passage of action from a painting out to a social network (or body), and from this network back onto painting. As Prina declares, “I entitled the Manet project The Exquisite Corpse because it seemed necessary to see a complete body of work, in relation to his body and to my body…” (Joselit 130-131).

Pictured below is Prina’s Exquisite Corpse, a visual embodiment of Manet as both man and artist. His works are pictured on one canvas by a selection of monochrome sepia ink drawings, which together form an overall embodiement of who Manet was both creatively and as a person, as well as his impacts on others.

 

(Stephen Prina, Exquisite Corpse: The Complete Paintings of Manet)

Takashi Murakami is a world-renowned artist from Japan, known for his bizarre combination of both human and animal to create unique figures. Using vivid colors, an animation style that is not quite anime, and a two-dimensional style, Murakami uses his strange figures to make commentary on contemporary Japan and the world.

(Takashi Murakami, Chaos)

Murakami talks about a “super flatness” that has enveloped the planet, a flatness that is meant to signify the spread of globalization and the export of American culture across the planet. He literally incorporates this flatness into his humanoid figures, which are primarily two-dimensional. With this increase in globalization, Murakami makes it purposefully difficult to place the animation styles behind his figures, eluding to an increasingly homogeneous global art scene.

Catherine Opie, queer activist, is pictured below with her piece titled Self-Portrait cut into her back. Her medium is her own flesh, literally using the human figure as a canvas. This is fitting for her message, a message of strength, pride, and perseverance regarding her identity as a queer woman. With her message inscribed on her back, she will live with this concept of who she is for the rest of her life, which implies how concrete this concept of identity is in her mind.

(Catherine Opie, Self-Portrait)

 

 

The explosion of new mediums in the contemporary art landscape has broadened the definition of what composes art. One of the mediums that pushes this definition to its very limits is performance art. This bizarre, often uncomfortable, eye-catching form has its merits, one of the most important being its ability to give the viewer a more immersive individual experience. All art engenders an emotional response in the viewer, no matter how insignificant or how meaningful. What is so unique about the performance medium is that the audience has a direct (oftentimes nonverbal) dialogue with artist, and has a collective experience, as a member of a larger audience or group.

The incredibly unique experience of participating in performance art as an audience member can inspire additional works of art. A primary example of this is with Didier Morelli’s imitation of William Pope.L’s “Crawl” series.

(Houston Crawl, William Pope.L)

(Five Dollar Crawl After William Pope.L, Didier Morelli)

Performance art seems to have a unique set of nuances specifically linked to the medium. Inspired by the To Carry the Archive With Us reading, I conclude that the levels of performance art are split into three roles: primary artist, “(re)visioning artist”, and audience. The primary artist creates a piece, which like any other work of art, is rooted in an emotion, a memory, an urge to express oneself. The primary artist performs their idea for an audience, who forms individual memories and collective memories based upon the interactions with both artists and other audience members. The audience who experiences the debut of this performance piece might be so inspired by what they experience, they will go out and create a “(re) performance” of the work. William Pope.L would be considered the primary artist in this case, creating a work in which he crawled around a variety of urban locations. An audience followed, forming their own opinions on the meaning behind his work through their firsthand experiences of his work and through their interactions with fellow audience members.

If a viewer were to form a composite of their experiences that was compelling enough to create an imitation, they would be considered a “(re)visioning artist”. This creates a second level of depth to performance art. Based upon the primary artist’s ideas, this interpretation carries a unique incorporation of the second artist’s ideas in collaboration with the original. Although Pope.L and Didier are a part of different demographics, the reactions received by the audience are surprisingly similar, proving that this revision is rooted in a similar vein of creativity and experience. Schotzko writes”Though the tension established between Pope.L and the angry spectator in the context of Tompkins Square Crawl was a product of the racial politics Pope.L makes explicit throughout his work, their fraught exchange emerges, not unlike our class’ commitment to Didier during his crawl, from a place of concern, of care, even- a place in which, as Didier was (re)visioning his own body through the specter he enacted of William Pope.L’s as he carried Pope.L with him, we too (re)visioned ourselves, our role in this (re)performance through our mutual concern for and care of Didier.” (Schotzko 56).

Another example of this original and (re)visioned set of works is Jay-Z’s performance piece at the Pace Gallery in New York. In his piece, Jay-Z performs his song “Picasso Baby” for a 6 hour stint in front of a small crowd. Pictured below is his interaction with a potential inspiration for the piece, infamous performance artist Marina Abramovic.

(Jay-Z Performs his song “Picasso Baby” Live for 6 Hours with Marina Abramovic)

Abramovic is well-known for her extreme works in which she pushes her body to its physical limits. Upon reflecting on her oeuvre and the nature of Jay-Z’s exhausting performance, it makes a lot of sense why she is a guest at this performance. Whether Jay-Z is intentionally (re)visioning Ms. Abramovic’s works, or he believes his performance is entirely original, his performance is rooted in many concepts of the medium pioneered by Ms. Abramovic.

Although many performance pieces can follow this similar trajectory of original inspiration and (re) visioned inspiration, some of the more daring pieces do not fit this cycle. Zhang Huan’s Angel, for example, finds inspiration in a daring political dissent of Huan’s native China’s government. First shown in the National Art Gallery in Beijing, Huan is doused in imitation blood and dismembered doll parts, and attempts to reassemble the doll while sitting on a white canvas. His commentary on China’s one child policy, which required forced abortions for many expecting women, was not taken lightly by the government, who quickly shut the exhibit down. This could be a reason for the lack of copycat performance pieces based on Huan’s works.

 

(Angel, Zhang Huan)

Identity is one of the most, if not the most, crucial elements in art. Even the most abstract forms of self-expression are rooted in the many layers of identity that compose the artist and their history. Black identity’s reflection in art has historically been based on the struggles African Americans have had with slavery, racism, and the achievement of civil rights. Often times these struggle has been reflected through a male-dominated, heteronormative lens, leaving out groups such as black women, and the black LGBTQ community. However, the emergence of “post-black” art has changed how black artists reflect upon their identity and choose to incorporate this identity into art.

This transformation is best summed up in Murray’s piece on Mickalene Thomas, an esteemed black female artist. Murray writes “Golden described post-blackness as a type of cognitive dissonance, whereby emergent African American artists produce work about blackness but simultaneously seek to transcend limitations often imposed by race” (Murray 10). I find this “dissonance” both fascinating and difficult to comprehend in practice. Although it makes perfect sense that a new generation of black artists, especially women and LGBTQ members, would want to escape the confines of previous black identity, it seems very difficult to reframe black identity while maintaining the same level of immense collective pride that was experienced during the civil rights era. How can these two goals be achieved simultaneously?

(Kendrick Lamer, Kehinde Wiley) 

Murray elaborated on the subject. “What strikes me as more urgent, however, is that post-blackness represents a crisis in black art production that issues from a desire to be liberated from racial polemics, nostalgia, and belongingness, while trying to negotiate a voracious market demand for the black body” (Murray 10). Not only does the post-black movement need to overcome their identities of the past, but additionally, they need to deal with the so-called “market demand” for black bodies, a demand that could be rooted in past identities of blackness, identites that need to be left behind due to their limiting nature.

Identity is a crucial aspect of being human, and is especially important for artists who want to accurately reflect on their lives and struggles. Many black artists found themselves in a type of identity crisis, where they had little control over their own narrative, a narrative rooted in a long history of pain and oppression. Additionally, this transformation from original black identity, to post-blackness, must have been an anxiety inducing shift in mentality, as black artists have shed years of tradition, nostalgia, and history, for an unknown future in the post-black landscape.

But this shift was definitely a positive one for young black artists. Murray writes on the topic: “Post-blackness resonates because it articulates the frustrations of young African American artists (the post-civil rights generation) around notions of identity and belonging they perceive to be stifling, reductive, and exclusionary. For many, blackness is a nationalist cultural politics that produced a set of values and visual expressions overly concerned with recovering black male dignity- by advocating for traditionally heterosexual archetypes of patriarchal strength, domination, and virility. Post-blackness can also be understood as issuing from a general attitude of ambivalence toward compulsory solidarity, insularity, and intracommunity demands to maintain a sense of racial pride” (Murray 9). In this transformation, young artists could finally get a platform that would help them express their true identities. This platform provided the marginalized groups (women, LGBTQ) within an already marginalized group (African Americans), with the freedom to express their identities in any way they pleased, free of the shackles of race.

Mickaline Thomas is a prime example of a post-black artist. Thomas’s works are solely focused on the black feminine, with vivid patterned backgrounds and defiant female subjects. In the untitled piece shown below, the female gaze is directed away from the viewer, the woman has a look of genuine happiness on her face, and the background is exploding with colorful, and seemingly traditional, patterns. “In Thomas’s paintings, the black female body is often alone, isolated, a sight of viewing pleasure, but also impudent and disobedient” (Murray 14). In the end, the woman in the painting maintains her agency and pride as a woman, as she directs her gaze away from the viewer.

(Mickaline Thomas) 

KaraWalker is another female post-black artist, famous for her silhouette pieces as well as her complex, political ink pieces. Pictured below is her drawing titled “Christ’s Entry into Journalism” containing a smattering of characters and situations from a variety of events in black history in America. Images of slavery and the Ku Klux Klan collide with police brutality and modern political commentary involving Donald Trump. This jumble of depictions puts old struggles alongside new ones. The story remains the same throughout time, and Walker seems to be bridging this gap with her canvas. Included in her works are a variety of female characters, who provide the commentary that, yes, black women were alongside black men in their struggles for freedom. They too, played a crucial role in the fight. Walker is proud of her identity, both as an African American and as a woman.

(Christ’s Entry into Journalism, Kara Walker)

The era of “post-historical art”, as described in Arthur C. Danto’s book titled After the End of Art, is truly a turning point in the evolution of expression. He marks a period in which “Painting had died through its own historical self-fulfillment” (137), creating a void in a cultural world largely dominated by this treasured medium. What killed the painting? Chances are it was the photograph, which could outcompete any painter in terms of accuracy. The photograph also caused damage to the reputation of the museum, long known as a place where one could view original copies of their favorite pieces of art. The increasingly popular photographic medium, however, called into question the purpose of the museum as a place for seeing original works, as photographic prints are all considered “copies” and there isn’t technically an original (besides film negatives). Overall, the photograph caused an upset in the art world, engendering a variety of responses from both artists and institutions.

There were numerous reactions to the death of painting in the artistic community, the most compelling, in my opinion, being the rise of neo-expressionism. To combat the mechanical accuracy of a photograph, the painter reframed themself as a master of human expression. Danto elaborates further on this when he writes “I suppose neo-expressionist painting was one answer. Since that narrative had ended, why not, forgetting about the economic account, simply use painting as a means for self-expression?” (141). The focus on self-expression put painting back in the running against photography, as it highlighted the human quality of painting, which always led to a unique, expressive outcome. One of my favorite artists, Jean Michel Basquiat, arose during this movement, and was incredibly famous for putting raw, human emotion into his works. Pictured below is Basquait’s piece titled Cabeza, and one can see the impressive amount of feeling he expressed through the medium.

(Cabeza, Jean Michel Basquiat)

The death of painting opened the floodgates for a profusion of new, more experimental mediums. In the process, the definition of art grew out of its classical confines and some began to question the very idea of expression. Danto describes some of these new mediums including “installation, performance, video, computer, and various modalities of mixed media, not to mention earthworks, body art, what I call “object art” and a great deal of art that had earlier been invidiously stigmatized as craft” (136). In our second reading, we begin to explore some of these mediums, focusing on the intersection of performance pieces, language, and photography.

Liz Kotz writes about these new mediums in her piece titled “Language Between Performance and Photography”. In her piece, she describes Joeseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs, a piece utilizing three different mediums to represent a chair. I found this piece fascinating both in its deconstructionist style, and in its ability to make the viewer actually question the purpose and definition of art. Kotz writes “As the combination of three equal parts, a photograph, an object, and a text, these works are statements of fact, not simply about external reality, but about the means to represent it” (8). She continues with “[the piece] causes the viewer to reflect on the conditions of representation of this or any object, and on art in general” (9).

Clearly, Kosuth’s work makes the viewer question the various means of representation, as he has expressed the same concept through three very different mediums. Is there a point to this redundancy? Is there an artistic quality to this piece? Burning questions like these are an essential part of the experience, and must be posed.  Although the viewer may not think this is beautiful (I don’t necessarily consider this work beautiful), there is no denying the reflection that occurs as a result of experiencing this work.

(One and Three Chairs, Joseph Kosuth)

Jenny Holzer’s selection of works titled Truisms are another example of this genre of art. The pieces that encompass this series all contain pithy sayings that Holzer came up with. They are often displayed in busy public settings, and are meant to create dialogue with the viewer. They often express strong opinions, and many of them are personal accounts. In her work pictured below, she writes “Private Property Created Crime” in Time Square. Her commentary on capitalism in an increasingly commercialized, and simultaneously crime ridden, neighborhood of Manhattan would definitely spark conversation amongst pedestrians. Again, the results of viewing this work seem to be reflection and a whole lot of questions.

(Truisms, Jenny Holzer) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The art of the 1970s reflected rapidly changing political and cultural climates. Issues regarding gender, conflict, poverty, urban life and the environment were all addressed in pieces from the 70s. However, unlike other artistic periods, the 70s was home to a variety of counter-culture movements that made artists question the very institutions that housed their art, as well as the works they created. The Avant Garde’s push against institutionalized art, the growing popularity of minimalism, and the rise of performance art were all elements of this growing artistic revolution. Additionally, the 70s saw the convergence of feminism and the world of art. The impact of this convergence influenced both subject matter and the artists of the time, opening the doors for a larger female presence in the field.

First we must examine the decades leading up to this era to understand the rise of this counter-culture and these changes in artistic thought. Through the Abstract Expressionism movement of the 1950s and the Pop Art movement of the 1960s, the classical definition of an art piece began to dissipate. Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock relied more upon their physical movements in the creation process instead of seeking to create a specific symbolic piece. Pop Art icons such as Andy Warhol borrowed liberally from commercial iconography, creating works that further widened the definition of art. These two periods transformed the definition of a typical artist, pushing modern artists to adopt a variety of new mediums and methods.

(Campbell’s Soup Cans, Andy Warhol)

Then came the 1970s, a time in which artists were bent on completely transforming the field from the ground up. Gathercole describes this new energy when he writes “Jencks noted an ‘open pluralism, both political and cultural’ as ‘on of the great accomplishments of the 1970s’” (Gathercole 61). “Cultural pluralism” is what made this period so diverse, as groups of people who were passionate about specific issues banded together to form these countermovements, which would, in turn, impact every facet of the art world. 

As mentioned previously, one countermovement that was popular at the time was a push against the art institutions. Artists’ discontent with these institutions seemed to stem from a perception that museums were being mismanaged and that they water down many of the political points found in the works. Pictured below is Hans Haacke’s artistic rendition of his problems with the art institutions. In a piece titled Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Time Social System, Haacke exposes the leadership of the museum by exhibiting their dubious business moves in the slums of New York. Through this piece he not only provides a commentary on the darker side of the institutional world, but also shows the city’s impoverished citizens as being helplessly taken advantage of by these wealthy art directors.

(Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Time Social System, Hans Haacke)

The Art Workers’ Coalition formally announced their discontent with museum management when they released a list of changes they deemed necessary for the system. Required changes included “artists should form a one-third part of boards of trustees in museums”, “admission should be free”, and “gender equality must be achieved in exhibitions, collection policy, and staffing” (Gathercole 66). The creative minds of the time recognized the commodification of art, which pushed many of their works into the luxury market. This was not satisfactory for many, especially the artists who provided commentary on social issues through their works. In order to reign in this commodification, they attempted to exert control on the institutions and demanded free admission as well as a larger presence of artists in leadership. In my opinion, this movement clearly demonstrates the viewpoints that many artists share: art should not ever be elitist, and is for everyone’s enjoyment.

The 1970s also saw the imperative convergence of feminism and art. This convergence was most certainly a reaction to an art world that was dominated primarily by white males. Artists like Judy Chicago emerged with controversial, but necessary works such as The Dinner Party (pictured below). This piece provides a table setting for 39 important female figures from history, excluding any male influence from the imagined dinner conversations. As feminism grew increasingly relevant in the current events of the 1970s, it only makes sense that they would be reflected in the works of artists, and have a lasting impact on the field.

(The Dinner Party, Judy Chicago)