Contemporary Art and the Problem of Music: Towards a Musical Contemporary Art

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
G. DOUGLAS BARRETT
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Absolute Music ◽  
Art Form

Abstract This article elaborates the art-theoretical concept of ‘the contemporary’ along with formal differences between contemporary music and contemporary art. Contemporary art emerges from the radical transformations of the historical avant-garde and neo-avant-garde that have led to post-conceptual art – a generic art beyond specific mediums that prioritizes discursive meaning and social process – while contemporary music struggles with its status as a non-conceptual art form that inherits its concept from aesthetic modernism and absolute music. The article also considers the category of sound art and discusses some of the ways it, too, is at odds with contemporary art's generic and post-conceptual condition. I argue that, despite their respective claims to contemporaneity, neither sound art nor contemporary music is contemporary in the historical sense of the term articulated in art theory. As an alternative to these categories, I propose ‘musical contemporary art’ to describe practices that depart in consequential ways from new/contemporary music and sound art.

scholarly journals What happened to aesthetics and art over the last 100 years?: Contradictions and antagonisms: Theory wars!

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-246
Author(s):  
Miško Šuvaković
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Art And Politics ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Minimal Art ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship

The subject of my paper is the dynamic and transformational relations between aesthetics and art from 1919 to 2019. The first problem to be discussed will be the relationship between art and politics at the Bauhaus and art institutes of the Soviet avant-garde. Next, I will point to differences in Marxist concepts of socialist realism and critical theory on modern culture and art. I will analyse the relationship between the concept of the autonomy of art, especially painting and minimal art. A comparison will be derived between anti-art (Dada, NEO-Dada) and anti-philosophy (Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jacques Lacan). I will highlight approaches from analytical meta-aesthetics to the interpretation of Duchamp's readymade, deriving a theory of art in conceptual art. Special attention will be paid to the "theoretical conflicts" between phenomenology and structuralism, as well as poststructuralism. I will conclude my discussion by identifying the "aesthetic condition" in relation to "contemporary art" (feminist, activist, political, ecological, participatory, and appropriative art). The aim of my discussion will be to highlight the character of modern and contemporary aesthetics in relation to art theory, by way of diagrammatic reflection on the binaries, differences, and reconstructions of dialectics.

Ryoki Ikeda and the Prioritising of Space over Time in Musical Discourse

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 378-384
Author(s):  
Adam Collis
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Music Practice ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Broadband Spectrum ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Musical Discourse ◽  
The Status ◽  
Nature Of Time ◽  
Over Time

No art form so rigorously organises time as music. Whereas all art in some sense exists in time, music could be said to be of time. This article, however, questions implicit assumptions about the fundamental nature of time to music. In contrast, an alternative approach to the discourse of composition and analysis is proposed in which space rather than time is privileged. Russolo, Stockhausen, Cage and Agostino Di Scipio are cited as historical precedents where the status of time in music is questioned but a more detailed consideration is given to Ryoji Ikeda, a contemporary sound-art practitioner who, it is argued, represents a turn towards the privileging of space in contemporary music practice. This article argues that an approach to composition that implicitly accepts the primacy of time tends to privilege sounds that are more easily described symbolically, such as notated pitched sounds or materials with clear spectromorphological design. In contrast, an approach that places greater concern with the work in space facilitates the greater use of materials that could be considered ‘noise’, in the sense of both a broadband spectrum and signal disruption.

The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Western Art

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Short Film ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Experimental Theatre

This book examines different kinds of analogies, mutual influences, integrations, and collaborations of the audio and the visual in different art forms. The contributions, written by key theoreticians and practitioners, represent state-of-the-art case studies in contemporary art, integrating music, sound, and image with key figure of modern thinking constitute a foundation for the discussion. It thus emphasizes avant-garde and experimental tendencies, while analyzing them in historical, theoretical, and critical frameworks. The book is organized around three core subjects, each of which constitutes one section of the book. The first concentrates on the interaction between seeing and hearing. Examples of classic and digital animation, video art, choreography, and music performance, which are motivated by the issue of eye versus ear perception are examined in this section. The second section explores experimental forms emanating from the expansion of the concepts of music and space to include environmental sounds, vibrating frequencies, language, human habitats, the human body, and more. The reader will find here an analysis of different manifestations of this aesthetic shift in sound art, fine art, contemporary dance, multimedia theatre, and cinema. The last section shows how the new light shed by modernism on the performative aspect of music has led it—together with sound, voice, and text—to become active in new ways in postmodern and contemporary art creation. In addition to examples of real-time performing arts such as music theatre, experimental theatre, and dance, it includes case studies that demonstrate performativity in visual poetry, short film, and cinema.

Music after the Fall

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Rutherford-Johnson
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Musical Composition ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cold War

By the start of the 21st century many of the foundations of postwar culture had disappeared: Europe had been rebuilt and, as the EU, had become one of the world’s largest economies; the United States’ claim to global dominance was threatened; and the postwar social democratic consensus was being replaced by market-led neoliberalism. Most importantly of all, the Cold War was over, and the World Wide Web had been born. Music After The Fall considers contemporary musical composition against this changed backdrop, placing it in the context of globalization, digitization, and new media. Drawing on theories from the other arts, in particular art and architecture, it expands the definition of Western art music to include forms of composition, experimental music, sound art, and crossover work from across the spectrum, inside and beyond the concert hall. Each chapter considers a wide range of composers, performers, works, and institutions are considered critically to build up a broad and rich picture of the new music ecosystem, from North American string quartets to Lebanese improvisers, from South American electroacoustic studios to pianos in the Australian outback. A new approach to the study of contemporary music is developed that relies less on taxonomies of style and technique, and more on the comparison of different responses to common themes, among them permission, fluidity, excess, and loss.

Pop as Translation Strategy: Makishi Tsutomu's Political Pop in Okinawa

ARTMargins ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 42-71
Author(s):  
Hiroko Ikegami
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Pop Art ◽  
Cocktail Party ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Japanese Imperialism ◽  
Translation Strategy ◽  
The Vietnam War

This essay makes the first sustained study of the Okinawan artist Makishi Tsutomu (1941–2015) who used American Pop Art vocabularies to describe the complex realities of US-occupied Okinawa. Focusing on his 1972 installation Commemorating the Reversion to the Great Empire of Japan, the essay examines the critical ambivalence of Makishi's Political Pop as a translation strategy. Despite his critique of both American and Japanese imperialism, Makishi was aware that Okinawa was inseparably entangled in it, especially in the context of the Vietnam War, which brought violence, but also economic benefits, to Okinawa. Despite his use of the American Pop idiom as a new lingua franca for contemporary art, Makishi's work did not reach either mainland or international audiences as the artist exhibited almost exclusively in Okinawa. By comparing Makishi's artistic strategies with those of a representative Okinawan novelist, Ōshiro Tatsuhiro, especially as articulated in his 1967 novella The Cocktail Party, the essay situates the significance of Makishi's project within the emerging discourse on the global neo-avant-garde.

On the “Odoresque” and “Aero-Perfumes”: Smell Related Neologisms in Avant-garde and Contemporary Art and Scholarship

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2021-2) ◽  
pp. 120-133
Author(s):  
Caro Verbeek
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Doctoral Dissertation ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The Hague

For her doctoral dissertation “In Search of Lost Scents,” art and scent historian Caro Verbeek (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Kunstmuseum, The Hague) collected olfactory neologisms or newly invented smell related words from (art) historical sources ranging from 1855 to 1975, which she categorised according to the themes poetry, mind, concepts, material and synaesthesia. Three never-before-published artistic illustrations by the author help establish a more embodied cognition of the meaning of some of these concepts, as including “smell images” is impossible. In addition, she has created a “synaesthetic odour wheel” based on literary sources (2021).

My Reference Is Prejudiced: David Lamelas's Publication

ARTMargins ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 31-62
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Quiles
Keyword(s):  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The West ◽  
Critical Mode ◽  
Written Responses ◽  
Art Form ◽  
West European

This article addresses David Lamelas's 1970 work Publication, arguing that it represents a subtle critique of the internationalization of conceptual art by a recent entrant into the West European milieu. Exhibited at Nigel Greenwood Gallery in London after the artist's 1968 relocation from Argentina, Publication consists of thirteen written responses to three statements about the possible use of “language as an Art Form” that were sent by Lamelas to international figures in conceptual art such Daniel Buren, Gilbert and George, Lucy Lippard, and Lawrence Wiener. A close reading of this and others of Lamelas's experiments works leading up to this moment reveals affinities with earlier artistic experiments in Buenos Aires, the artist's original context, that have anything but membership in a preexisting movement or the adoption of an established genre as their goal. Between the years 1965 and 1968, Lamelas was part of a group of artists associated with the Torcuato di Tella Institute and the writer Oscar Masotta, who advocated an analytical and antagonistic “dematerialization,” in which prevailing tendencies were to be systematically examined, voided from within, and superseded. In Buenos Aires, Lamelas experimented with breaking his works into sections as a way of calling attention to given objects of attention—a practice of “signaling” that is also present in Publication. Invariably, these works were positioned in critical relationship to those of his peers, applying Masotta's model to each new milieu. In what follows, I compare select works of Lamelas with his contemporaries in Buenos Aires and abroad between 1964 and 1970, contending that Publication represents one of the first appearances of a specifically Argentine, and highly critical, mode of conceptualism in the international art field.

Kazuo Ohno's World from Without and Within. By Kazuo Ohno and Yoshito Ohno. Translated by John Barrett. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004; pp. 344. $34.95 paper.

2005 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-317
Author(s):  
Kurt Wurmli
Keyword(s):  
Academic Research ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Research Centers ◽  
The West ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Art Form ◽  
The World ◽  
Inside View ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata are recognized as the most influential creators of the contemporary Japanese dance form known today as butoh. Since its wild and avant-garde beginnings in the late 1950s, butoh has evolved into an established and appreciated art form throughout the world. Despite its popularity and strong influences on the international modern dance world, butoh only recently became an accepted subject for academic research in Japan as well as in the West. With the new opening of butoh research centers and archives—such as the Ohno Dance Studio Archives at BANK ART 1929 in Yokohama, the Kazuo Ohno Archives at Bologna University in Italy, and the Hijikata Tatsumi Archives at Keio University in Tokyo—serious scholarly attention has been given to the art of butoh's founders. However, the lack of firsthand sources by butoh artists reflecting their own work still poses great limitations for a deep understanding of the art form. Kazuo Ohno's World from Without and Within is not only the first full-length book in English about the master's life and work, but also offers a rare inside view of butoh.

THE ISSUE OF CONTEMPORANEITY AS CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL TOTALITY IN THE WORKS OF BORIS GROYS

2021 ◽  
pp. 5-18
Author(s):  
Elena Y. Baboshko ◽  
◽  
Dmitriy V. Galkin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Will To Power ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Modernist Discourse ◽  
Selection Of

The authors refer the issue of definition of contemporaneity as cultural and historical totality basing on the research results of a well-known theorist Boris Groys. Analyzing the progress of his ideas, the authors conclude, that the philosopher’s considerable contribution to the science is composed of the next phase of the development of the thesis about the art language as the base of contemporaneity construction and of the “natural selection” of contemporary art structures. The latter is not simply reduced to the postmodern “polylogue” variant, but implies a kind of contemporaneity patterns niche and “stabilization”. The patterns naturally tend to become complementary due to simple juxtaposition/ overlay in general time context. According to the authors, this circumstance does not prevent them from being turned by different political forces into locally dominating contemporaneity patterns (as in the case of Gesamkunstwerk Stalin). Contemporary art provides simple experience, that helps to retain the illusion of single and seemingly total contemporaneity. B. Groys leads us to the thought that art provides conditions for generating a significant reflective distance in relation to different social and historical situations. The distance gives an artist the opportunity to consider the reality comprehensively, given the autonomy, through the art language. However, we believe, that the most important philosopher’s achievement is not only drawing parallels between cultural and social and historical processes, based on the concept of art strategies influencing the social dynamics. He also managed to approach one of the most significant issues in culture theory and history – the opportunity to define contemporaneity as cultural and historical totality. According to his modernity theory, the origin of contemporaneity is hidden in the avant-garde art manifestation. He interprets the utopic by its nature modernist discourse, applied in art practice, through Nietzscheian will to power as redefining the new age philosophy. This article aims to analyze the progress of the issue of contemporaneity in the works of B. Groys and to explicate the complexity of considering contemporaneity as cultural and historical totality. The authors believe that the thorough study of the phenomenon of total artwork (Gesamtkunstwerk) as a soviet Stalin project and critics’ opinion analysis helps to create arguments limiting the opportunity of considering contemporaneity as totality.

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