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

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.

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Fundamental Feedback: Öyvind Fahlström's Kisses Sweeter than Wine

ARTMargins ◽

10.1162/artm_a_00121 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 4 (3) ◽

pp. 17-39

Author(s):

Maibritt Borgen

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Mass Media ◽

Vietnam War ◽

Visual Art ◽

Pop Art ◽

Media Images ◽

Media Activism ◽

Concrete Poetry ◽

Multimedia Material ◽

The Vietnam War

The article analyzes Öyvind Fahlström's (1928–1976) performance Kisses Sweeter Than Wine, which took place as part of the festival 9 Evenings: art&engineering in New York (1966). It situates the performance's use of multimedia material as continuations of earlier investigations into manipulating language that played a central part in the artist's practice of both visual art and concrete poetry. It further argues that in Kisses Sweeter Than Wine such manipulations form a series of ruptures into the wider circulation of mass-media images, ruptures that locate Fahlström's use of media images in relation to both Pop Art and the beginning media activism under the Vietnam War.

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Small Fires Burning: Bruce Nauman and the Activation of Conceptual Art

October ◽

10.1162/octo_a_00316 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 163 ◽

pp. 21-48

Author(s):

Taylor Walsh

Keyword(s):

Vietnam War ◽

Contemporary Art ◽

Original Work ◽

Conceptual Art ◽

Black And White ◽

Static Images ◽

The Vietnam War ◽

Implicit Response ◽

Bruce Nauman ◽

Blind Spots

In 1968, a year of mounting opposition to the Vietnam War, a young Bruce Nauman laid waste to a work of contemporary art. His antagonism was unleashed on Various Small Fires (1964) by Ed Ruscha, a booklet of fifteen black-and-white photos of harmless, domestic-scaled flames. After ripping out and igniting each page, Nauman photographed and rebound the charred remnants to form a new text, Burning Small Fires. Here Ruscha's volume supplies the fodder for its own assault, as Nauman cannibalizes a work of Conceptual art to expose its limitations and blind spots. For although it has never been read as such, Nauman's book was a timely project: both an explicit dialogue with the work of a peer and an implicit response to the events of the day. While Ruscha's static images treat burning as “absolutely neutral”—an “introverted” and “meaningless” subject—Nauman restores the sense of ritual power that fire then held in the culture of protest. This essay measures the distance in tone and technique between the original work and its destructive double, as an early-1960s aesthetic of relentless banality gave way to more volatile forces.

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Из истории Людвиг Музеум – от коллекции к музею

Iskusstvo Evrazii [The Art of Eurasia] ◽

10.46748/arteuras.2021.01.012 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 164-175

Author(s):

E.V. Orlova

Keyword(s):

20Th Century ◽

Contemporary Art ◽

Art History ◽

Pop Art ◽

Avant Garde ◽

German Art ◽

The Status ◽

Museum Of Contemporary Art ◽

The 1960S

The article is devoted to the founding of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and presents an analysis of the process of building this museum of contemporary art in dynamics — from the beginning of the collection within the walls of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum to gaining the status of an independent exhibition giant. The study provides an overview of the collection and its sources, identifies individual significant works of art, accompanied by art history descriptions, and sets out the reasons and the chronicle of the separation of the Museum Ludwig from the Wallraf-Richartz Museum. The museum, established in 1976, presents German art from the first half of the 20th century, American and British pop art of the 1960s, Russian avant-garde, photorealism and contemporary art from the last third of the 20th century. It has departments of painting, sculpture, graphics and art photography. The role of the famous German patrons and collectors of Peter and Irene Ludwig in the formation and replenishment of the museum's funds is noted. Статья посвящена основанию Музея Людвига в Кёльне и представляет анализ процесса построения этого музея современного искусства в динамике — от начала формирования коллекции в стенах Музея Вальрафа-Рихарца до обретения статуса самостоятельного экспозиционного гиганта. В исследовании даны обзор коллекции и источники ее формирования, указаны отдельные крупные произведения искусства, сопровожденные искусствоведческим описанием, а также изложены причины и хроника выделения Музея Людвига из состава Музея Вальрафа-Рихарца. Вновь образованный в 1976 году музей представляет искусство Германии с первой половины XX века, американский и британский поп-арт 1960-х годов, русский авангард, фотореализм и актуальное искусство последней трети ХХ века. В нем созданы отделы живописи, скульптуры, графики и художественной фотографии. Отмечена роль известных немецких меценатов и собирателей Петера и Ирены Людвиг в формировании и пополнении фондов музея.

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