Jeanne Lee's Voice

2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Porter
Keyword(s):  
Vocal Music ◽  
The Political ◽  
Art World ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Jazz History ◽  
Social Visions ◽  
The 1960S

This essay attempts to recuperate the legacy of Jeanne Lee, an important artist whose work has gone largely unnoticed by scholars, while simultaneously examining the broader social and cultural significance of her work. Using Lee’s 1979 performance of her poem “In These Last Days” as a point of reference, I explore her multidisciplinary artistic practice that extended the parameters of improvised vocal music. “In These Last Days” exemplifies a cultural politics that was both a product of the political moments in which she lived and her interactions with a variety of thinkers and artists. This piece helps situate Lee’s work within the post-nationalist and post-cultural nationalist imaginary —an ethical, political, and cognitive remapping of the world -- informing the creative work and social visions of other African American improvisers during the 1970s. The recording showcases the ways that her incorporation of elements from intermedia performance practices enabled her social vision while implicitly commenting upon the deracinating incorporation of improvisation by the avant-garde art world during the 1960s. Additionally, Lee’s performance of gender on the piece raises a host of issues pertaining to the terrain female improvisers had to negotiate in different improvising communities and ultimately disrupts the privileging of masculinity when defining improvisational artistry. I also consider the ways in which her work encourages us to rethink jazz history as field and method.

scholarly journals SPACE AS A CONTEXT IN DANIEL BUREN’S ART

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 301-322
Author(s):  
Tuğba RENKÇİ TAŞTAN
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
World Order ◽  
Art World ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Innovation Development ◽  
Traditional Art ◽  
The Social ◽  
Art Scene ◽  
The 1960S

20th century; it is a period in which two world wars took place and a new world order in human history occurred in many areas of innovation, development and transformation. After the war, the meaning, content and boundaries of art and the artist have been discussed, expanded and gained a new dimension and acceleration with the deep changes in the social, economic, political and cultural fields with the crisis brought on by the war. This complex period also manifested itself in the traditional art scene in France. The French artist Daniel Buren (b. 1938) has witnessed this process; by adopting the innovations in art with his productions, he has demonstrated his space-oriented conceptual works dating back to the present day in a period in which daily life accelerates with the mechanization of art practice and conceptual art movements are in succession. In this article, in order to comprehend the point of the artist and his productions from the beginning until today; the cultural environment in France after the World War II, the developments in the art world, the changes in the social field and the artistic dimensions of these changes are mentioned. The development and practices of the French artist Daniel Buren's artistic practice, policy, artistic attitude and style for the place, architecture, workshop and museum in the period from the second half of the 1960s to the present day are examined with examples with certain sources. In this context, the views and concepts that the artist advocates with his original productions are included. Finally, in the research, the evaluations were made in line with the sources and information obtained about the art adventure and development of the artist, and the innovations, contributions and different perspectives he offered about the art are discussed.

Flight into Tomorrow: Rethinking Artistic Practice in Estonia During the 1970s (Leonhard Lapin)

ARTMargins ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-162
Author(s):  
Mari Laanemets
Keyword(s):  
Pop Art ◽  
Living Environment ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The 1960S

This article observes how the new understanding of art which was introduced at the end of the 1960s by pop art influenced groups was pursued and radicalised in the second half of the 1970s, in a period generally referred to as the weakening of the avant-garde. It focuses on the texts by Leonhard Lapin, promoting art as a means of creating a new living environment. Taking Lapin's text as a framework, the author analyses the intervention in the official exhibition of monumental art in 1976.

Carla Bley

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy C. Beal
Keyword(s):  
American Music ◽  
Comprehensive Treatment ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Free Jazz ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Pink Floyd ◽  
Professional Control ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Music Distribution ◽  
The Hill

This is the first comprehensive treatment of the remarkable music and influence of Carla Bley, a highly innovative American jazz composer, pianist, organist, band leader, and activist. Giving attention to Bley's diverse compositions over the last fifty years spanning critical moments in jazz and experimental music history, this book provides a long-overdue representation of a major figure in American music. Bley is best known for her jazz opera “Escalator over the Hill,” her role in the Free Jazz movement of the 1960s, and her collaborations with artists such as Jack Bruce, Don Cherry, Robert Wyatt, and Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason. She has successfully maneuvered the field of jazz creating works that range from the highly accessible and tradition-based to commercially unviable and avant-garde. The book details the staggering variety in Bley's work as well as her use of parody, quotations, and contradictions, examining the vocabulary Bley has developed throughout her career and highlighting the compositional and cultural significance of her experimentalism. The book also points to Bley's professional and managerial work as a pioneer in the development of artist-owned record labels, the cofounder and manager of WATT Records, and the cofounder of New Music Distribution Service. The book shows Bley to be not just an artist but an activist who has maintained musical independence and professional control amid the profit-driven, corporation-dominated world of commercial jazz.

Performance as Social Resistance: Pussy Riot as a Feminist Avant-garde

2021 ◽  
pp. 026327642110327
Author(s):  
Ilaria Riccioni ◽  
Jeffrey A. Halley
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
General Public ◽  
The Political ◽  
Art World ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Resistance ◽  
Rock Group ◽  
Pussy Riot

This article describes the short but remarkable sociopolitical life of the Russian rock group Pussy Riot. The group became famous in 2012 not only for the political content of its performances but for its transgressive performativity: its violation of established public settings and its creation of disturbing anti-authoritarianism images of today’s official Russia. The analysis aims to establish Pussy Riot as part of an avant-garde movement and as a radicalization of the very idea of the avant-garde against the familiarity of the public aspect of everyday life. Public ‘normalcy’ reveals itself to be complicit in that what should be criticized is instead taken for granted, and legitimized. Pussy Riot is a new art avant-garde in terms of both how it relates to activism, social justice, feminism, and art, and to the general public, not only to the art world.

BREAKING THE INK – ABSTRACT INK ART IN MAINLAND CHINA

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Zhang Cziráková
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
High Standard ◽  
Abstract Art ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Art World ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Abstract Painting ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The 1960S

Chinese art is mostly presented at foreign exhibitions from a different perspective and abstraction is represented modestly or completely absent. However, abstract art, which to a greater or lesser extent based on the roots of Chinese semi-abstract tradition, finds its firm place in the works of Chinese artists in different countries or regions. After giving a fundamental analysis of the possible inspiration for abstract ink painting from Chinese art history, and modernist art movements in Taiwan and Hong Kong during the 1960s, which had a significant influence on the formation of modernism in mainland China, and the historical overview of Chinese avant-garde, such as the 85 New Wave, the author focusses on abstract ink art in mainland China. As far as the situation in abstract painting is concerned, all important movements, exhibitions are preceded chronologically. Artists' opinions on abstract painting, their contradictions and the questions that this work raises, are observed, too. Abstract ink painting began to develop with the influx of ideas of modernism in the 1980s, and it was in important factor during the movement of Experimental ink and wash movement in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century. This movement has organised exhibitions, conferences, publishes catalogues dedicated to the work of its representatives. Then the attention turns to other movements and individual artists devoted to abstract ink art. Some of the artists come to a greater extent from tradition; others try to escape the limitations of ink painting, more or less adhere to traditional Chinese art or calligraphic strokes and techniques. Some of them are more influenced by Western techniques or are attempting to synthesise. What is essential is that they create works that are often of a high standard and in their search, open new ways for Chinese ink painting in general. Special attention deserves the artists standing at the birth of the movement and to those who have so far significantly influenced the whole atmosphere in Chinese art world.

Sensation, Relation and Neoconcrete Poetics

2020 ◽  
pp. 62-99
Author(s):  
Rebecca Kosick
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Object Language ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

Chapter 2 discusses the 1960s interdisciplinary movement known as neoconcretism. It argues for a relational poetics in which language is plastic and what’s plastic is language. Analysing examples of poetry and art that either calls itself poetry or makes use of the book form – including poet Ferreira Gullar’s ‘Buried Poem’ (an underground poem-room that invites the ‘reader’ to enter), artist Lygia Pape’s Book of Creation (a language without words which the ‘reader’ can order) and artist Hélio Oiticica’s Secret Poetics (a lyric that stills the sensible for the ‘reader’ to perceive) – this chapter shows that language powerfully shapes the history of what neoconcrete artist Lygia Clark calls the ‘relational object’. Not just a score which would guide, from the outside, the co-creation of an object, language, in a relational poetics, joins the creator and participant in becoming the object created. This conclusion also points towards one way in which avant-garde experimentation (often accused of being apolitical) can engage the political sphere – by creating the opportunity for an engagé poetics that takes shape inside sensory engagement itself.

Cinema as Idea

2020 ◽  
pp. 439-521
Author(s):  
Jonathan Walley
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Delayed Response ◽  
Experimental Film ◽  
Art World ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Prior Art ◽  
Expanded Cinema ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

Chapter 6 considers works of expanded cinema that could be called “conceptual cinema.” “Conceptual,” here, refers to the belief that cinema among many avant-garde/experimental filmmakers and critics that cinema was ultimately a conceptual phenomenon, even when it took forms that seemed decidedly material. The term, or variants of it, was used in the 1960s and 1970s, often to refer to “imaginary” films, films planned or written but purposely never executed, and unprojected or unprojectable films. There are parallels between such conceptual cinematic works and conceptual art. In both cases, concepts, intentions, imagination, and discourse are taken to be as constitutive as art works as materials and physical processes. The objects of the film medium were, and continue to be, de-centered in favor of these less tangible, conceptual, or discursive dimensions of cinematic practice. While conceptual art will be a point of reference, chapter 6 will also show that a concept-based ontology of cinema emerged organically from within the history of avant-garde/experimental film. That is, it should not be thought of simply as a delayed response by filmmakers to prior art world developments, as if playing catch-up with their fellow artists.

scholarly journals Konstmässan och barn: Pilvi Takalas The Committee

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (118) ◽  
pp. 175-192
Author(s):  
Saara Hacklin
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Participatory Art ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Socially Engaged Art ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
The 1960S

Participation has become a popular strategy within contemporary art. Previously, it has been associated with avant garde art, yet nowadays it has become central strategy in the arts, often favored by politicians and other funders. As a result, participatory art finds itself in a strategy becomes unreflected. Phenomenology, and especially Maurice Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, has been mostly associated with the 1960s Minimalism, as it influencedAmerican artists to explore the position of the spectator and the lived experience of the artwork. However, as phenomenology was associated with modernism, it has been often deemed insufficient to address the political dimension of contemporary art from the late 1960s onwards. In order to find a way to connect the apolitical phenomenology of the 1960s minimalism to the political art of today, I discuss a case study of Pilvi Takala's (b. 1980) The Committee (2013). With this piece Takala won the Emdash prize at Frieze art fair in London. The work consisted of a simple gesture: in it she gave, 7.000 pounds, most of the production budget included in the prize to a group of children. The children could freely use the money as long as they made the decision together. The Committee brings together children and money at an art fair, using the strategies of socially engaged art. In the article I examine the piece from a phenomenological vantage point in order to understand the different levels of the work.

Reading Barthes, Again

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-42
Author(s):  
Victor Burgin ◽  
Sunil Manghani
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Art World ◽  
Medium Specificity ◽  
Zero Degree ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
As If

The exchange presented in this chapter between Victor Burgin and Sunil Manghani builds upon an earlier on, 'Reading Barthes', as presented in the volume Barthes/Burgin (Bishop and Manghani 2016: 73-89). The text is premised upon reading Barthes again, as in reflecting on what it has meant to engage with his work while addressing questions around the zero degree, specificities, responsibilities of form, and the political. By establishing a number of historical and critical interests, the exchange recounts how Burgin's sustained reading of Barthes begun in the 1960s long before many in the art world were familiar with the name. The dialogue covers a range of ideas and issues including medium specificity, the Neutral and the trope of 'as if' as common to both Burgin and Barthes work.

scholarly journals SPACE AS A CONTEXT IN DANIEL BUREN'S ART

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 301-322
Author(s):  
Tuğba RENKÇİ TAŞTAN
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
World Order ◽  
Art World ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Innovation Development ◽  
Traditional Art ◽  
The Social ◽  
Art Scene ◽  
The 1960S

20th century; it is a period in which two world wars took place and a new world order in human history occurred in many areas of innovation, development and transformation. After the war, the meaning, content and boundaries of art and the artist have been discussed, expanded and gained a new dimension and acceleration with the deep changes in the social, economic, political and cultural fields with the crisis brought on by the war. This complex period also manifested itself in the traditional art scene in France. The French artist Daniel Buren (b. 1938) has witnessed this process; by adopting the innovations in art with his productions, he has demonstrated his space-oriented conceptual works dating back to the present day in a period in which daily life accelerates with the mechanization of art practice and conceptual art movements are in succession. In this article, in order to comprehend the point of the artist and his productions from the beginning until today; the cultural environment in France after the World War II, the developments in the art world, the changes in the social field and the artistic dimensions of these changes are mentioned. The development and practices of the French artist Daniel Buren's artistic practice, policy, artistic attitude and style for the place, architecture, workshop and museum in the period from the second half of the 1960s to the present day are examined with examples with certain sources. In this context, the views and concepts that the artist advocates with his original productions are included. Finally, in the research, the evaluations were made in line with the sources and information obtained about the art adventure and development of the artist, and the innovations, contributions and different perspectives he offered about the art are discussed.

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