scholarly journals Learning to Say No, the Ethics of Artist-Curator Relationships

Philosophies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
Mirjami Schuppert
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Curatorial Practice ◽  
The Many

The article suggests that the perceived ethics of curatorial practice are not often in balance with operative ethics, and analyses the problem by focusing on the curator-artist relationship. Contemporary art curators constantly find themselves in a situation where they have to choose between the needs of the few and the many. Counter-hegemony theory is used to examine the curator’s duty toward the many, while the reading of Jacque Derrida’s concept of responsibility toward an individual and Alain Badiou’s ‘singularity of situations’ suggest that the few are to be considered first. In this article, I suggests that curators could learn to say no in order to be able to balance these different demands.

Le fonti, i metodi e le narrazioni della storia della videoarte in Italia negli anni Settanta

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Parola
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Video Art ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Selection For ◽  
The Many ◽  
Art And Architecture ◽  
Selection Of

This essay derives from the primary need to make order between direct and indirect sources available for the reconstruction of the history of video art in Italy in the seventies. In fact, during the researches for the Ph.D. thesis it became clear that in most cases it is difficult to define, in terms of facts, which of the different historiographies should be taken into consideration to deepen the study of video art in Italy. Beyond legitimate differences of perspectives and methods, historiographical narratives all share similar issues and narrative structure. The first intention of the essay is, therefore, to compare the different historiographic narratives on Italian video art of the seventies, verifying their genealogy, the sources used and the accuracy of the narrated facts. For the selection of the corpus, it was decided to analyze in particular monographic volumes dealing with the history of the origins of video art in Italy. The aim was, in fact, to get a wide range of types of "narrations", as in the case of contemporary art and architecture magazines, which are examined in the second part of the essay. After the selection, for an analytical and comparative study of the various historiography, the essay focuses only on the Terza Biennale Internazionale della Giovane Pittura. Gennaio ’70. Comportamenti, oggetti e mediazioni (Third International Biennial of Young Painting. January '70. Behaviors, Objects and Mediations, 1970, Bologna), the exhibition which - after Lucio Fontana's pioneering experiments - is said to be the first sign of the arrival of videotape in Italy (called at the time videorecording), curated by Renato Barilli, Tommaso Trini, Andrea Emiliani and Maurizio Calvesi. The narration given so far of this exhibition appeared more mythological than historical and could be compared structurally to that of the many numerous beginnings that historiographyies on international video art identify as ‘first’ and ‘generative’. In the first part of the essay the 'facts' related to Gennaio ’70, as narrated by historiography on video art, are compared. In the second part the survey is carried out through some of the direct sources identified during the research, with the aim of answering to questions raised by the comparison between historiographies. Concluding, it is important to underline that the tapes containing the videos transmitted have not been found and seem to have disappeared since the ending of the exhibition. Nevertheless, the deepening of the works and documentation transmitted during the exhibition is possible thanks to other types of sources which give us many valuable information regarding video techniques and practices at the beginning of 1970 in Italy.

Contemporary Art

Art History ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry Smith
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Art World ◽  
Local Language ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Public Media ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Many

As an art-critical or historical category––one that might designate a style of art, a tendency among others, or a period in the history of art––“contemporary art” is relatively recent. In art world discourse throughout the world, it appears in bursts of special usage in the 1920s and 1930s, and again during the 1960s, but it remains subsidiary to terms––such as “modern art,” “modernism,” and, after 1970, “postmodernism”––that highlight art’s close but contested relationships to social and cultural modernity. “Contemporary art” achieves a strong sense, and habitual capitalization, only in the 1980s. Subsequently, usage grew rapidly, to become ubiquitous by 2000. Contemporary art is now the undisputed name for today’s art in professional contexts and enjoys widespread resonance in public media and popular speech. Yet, its valiance for any of the usual art-critical and historical purposes remains contested and uncertain. To fill in this empty signifier by establishing the content of this category is the concern of a growing number of early-21st-century publications. This article will survey these developments in historical sequence. Although it will be shown that use of the term “contemporary art” as a referent has a two-hundred-year record, as an art-historical field, contemporary art is so recent, and in such volatile formation, that general surveys of the type now common for earlier periods in the history of art are just beginning to appear. To date, only one art-historiographical essay has been attempted. Listed within Contemporary Art Becomes a Field, this essay (“The State of Art History: Contemporary Art” (Art Bulletin 92.4 [2010]: 366–383; Smith 2010, cited under Historiography) is by the present author and forms the conceptual basis of this article. Contemporary art’s deep immersion in the art market and auction system is profiled in the separate Oxford Bibliographies article Art Markets and Auction. This article does not include any of the many thousands of books, catalogues, and essays that are monographic studies of individual contemporary artists, because it would be invidious to select a small number. For similar reasons, entries on journals, websites, and blogs are omitted. A select listing of them may be found in Terry Smith, Contemporary Art: World Currents (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2011; Smith 2011 cited under Surveys). Books on art movements are not to be found because contemporary art, unlike modern art, has no movements in the same art-historical sense. It consists of currents, tendencies, relationships, concerns, and interests and is the product of a complex condition in which different senses of history are coming into play. With regret, this article confines itself to publications in English, the international language of the contemporary art world. This fact obscures the importance and valiance of certain local-language publications, even though many key texts were issued simultaneously both in the local language and English, and many others have subsequently been translated. In acknowledgment of this lacuna, a subsection on Primary Documents has been included.

scholarly journals The life of the line: A sketch by Paulo Mendes da Rocha for the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo

REVISTARQUIS ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniele Pisani
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Sao Paulo ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
São Paulo ◽  
Museum Of Contemporary Art ◽  
The Many ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Arte Contemporáneo

Resumen En oposición a la tendencia de considerar el dibujo arquitectónico como una simple fuente de información sobre el proyecto, o limitarse a contemplar su eventual belleza, este ensayo pretende analizar un boceto en su especificidad. Para hacer este tipo de experimento, el texto utiliza uno de los muchos bocetos realizados por Paulo Mendes da Rocha durante la preparación del proyecto para el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de la Universidad de Sao Paulo (1974-1975). El objetivo no es aislar artificialmente un dibujo entre los muchos otros que le dan una autonomía que no le es propia, sino adoptar un nuevo punto de vista, a través del análisis de un diseño dentro del universo de diseño específico del arquitecto brasileño.Abstract Against the tendency to consider the drawing in architecture as a simple source of information about the project, or simply to contemplate its potential beauty, this essay aims to analyse one it in its specificity. To carry out this experiment, the text uses one of the many sketches made by Paulo Mendes da Rocha during the preparation of the project for the Museum of Contemporary Art from University of São Paulo (1974-1975). The aim is not to artificially isolate one drawing among the many, giving it an autonomy that it does not possess, but to adopt a new point of view on the universe of the Brazilian architect.

scholarly journals Destellos de luz y sus ambivalencias simbólicas

AusArt ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-76
Author(s):  
Joaquim Cantalozella i Planas ◽  
Marta Negre i Busó
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Art Works ◽  
Electrical Devices ◽  
Light Darkness ◽  
The Many ◽  
Everyday Reality ◽  
Point Of Departure

La luz sugiere una imagen culturalmente construida, sus metáforas están tan arraigadas a nuestro pensamiento que se hace difícil ignorar el efecto que provocan. A causa de la carga cultural que posee, en una escenificación o representación, la luz alude a cierta mística o trascendencia; incluso siendo esta completamente artificial, sujeta a artefactos y bombillas. Podría decirse, pues, que en nuestra cotidianeidad electrificada, las luces que envuelven el entorno toman partido en este juego de significados. En la presente era de la tecnificación, la luz no parece haber perdido el menor ápice de su poder evocativo, lo cual es perceptible en muchas propuestas artísticas, cuyos enfoques ambivalentes redundan irónicamente en los grandes temas. Esto sucede porque muchas de ellas parten de un ideario desmitificador, para aplicar criterios diferentes tanto en la elaboración como en la recepción de las imágenes. Aun así, los significados tradicionales de la luz sobreviven en propuestas de muy distinta índole, ya sea en clave crítica o no. En el presente artículo, indagamos en las lecturas que suscitan obras realizadas mediante estos parámetros, aquellas que justamente se instalan en la contradicción y la aceptan como punto de partida.Palabras clave: LUZ; OSCURIDAD; ARTE CONTEMPORÁNEO; TECNOLOGÍA; INTERVENCIONES  Flashes of light and their symbolic ambivalence AbstractLight in art is essentially tied to culturally constructed images and its various metaphors are so enmeshed in human thought that their effect is difficult to ignore. Because of its cultural load, the light in any staging or representation invariably refers, however indirectly, to matters that are in some sense mystical and transcendent—even when it relies upon prosaic electrical devices or simple light bulbs. We might argue, therefore, that the many lights illuminating our electrified everyday reality also play their part in this game of meanings. Indeed, in today’s technified world, light does not seem to have lost even the slightest portion of its evocative potential. This is evidenced in the many art works whose intentional ambivalence casts a wry eye on the big issues they address and which set out to demystify their subject, applying novel criteria in how images are created and responded to. But it is also seen in the more traditional metaphors of light which still abound, critical or otherwise, in art works of very different kinds. This article examines the readings that emerge from artworks created with these parameters, the very ones that that are based on contradiction and accept contradiction as their point of departure. Key Words: LIGHT; DARKNESS; CONTEMPORARY ART; TECHNOLOGY; SITE-SPECIFIC

Brazilian Videodance

2016 ◽  
pp. 104-124
Author(s):  
Leonel Brum
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
First Century ◽  
New Work ◽  
Three Generations ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Many

This chapter reflects on some of the most important transformations that contributed to the development of Brazilian videodance. Proposing a feasible mapping of the many works considered to be the most emblematic in the last four decades, the study identifies three generations of creators, starting in the 1970s with Analívia Cordeiro, the next two decades with videodance festivals like Carlton Dance, and culminating in the twenty-first century with numerous artists, choreographers, and producers, and especially the project dança em foco. This videodance scene is in a constant process of transformation that needs to be investigated aesthetically, politically, and conceptually, in dialogue with ideas stemming from some of the most important Brazilian scholars in the areas of video and dance. This chapter also develops an approach to how videodance (re)invents the relation between video and dance with each new work, while additionally assessing how these works resonate within contemporary art contexts.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Baird N’Diaye ◽  
Olivia Cadaval ◽  
Sojin Kim
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Representation ◽  
Curatorial Practice ◽  
The Many

The volume editors frame and contextualize Smithsonian Folklife Festival history with attention to the role of curatorial practice in mediating and negotiating the concerns and interests of the event’s varied publics and stakeholders. The editors address how the articles create a step towards systematically examining institutional Festival principles and the particular curatorial process of the Festival, unpacking the challenges, responsibilities, and forms of conversation that cultural representation entails; the ideals upon which the Festival is based; and places of friction and contestation that arise among the many parties involved in producing it.

Teken onder weerstand: Over de tekenpraktijk van Matthew Barney en Michelangelo

Forum+ ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-54
Author(s):  
Senne Schraeyen
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Michelangelo Buonarroti ◽  
Current Series ◽  
Matthew Barney ◽  
Art Forms ◽  
The Many

Abstract Net zoals een kunstenaar als Michelangelo Buonarroti (1476-1564) zich profileerde als beeldhouwer, schilder, architect en poëet, laveert Matthew Barney (1967) moeiteloos tussen verschillende hedendaagse kunstvormen.Het oeuvre van de Amerikaanse kunstenaar Matthew Barney bestaat uit performance, fotografie, tekeningen, designobjecten en film. Niet toevallig werd hij in 1989 door een kunstcriticus omgedoopt tot “De Michelangelo van de genitale kunst”. Dit had niet alleen te maken met de vele naakte atletische lichamen in zijn oeuvre. De verwantschap tussen Barney (1967) en Michelangelo (1476-1564) is groter dan men zou verwachten. Senne Schrayen trekt in dit artikel een parallel tussen de lopende performancereeks Drawing Restraint (gestart in 1987) van Barney en de presentatietekeningen van Michelangelo uit 1532 vanuit een transhistorische invalshoek en met aandacht voor het maakproces van de tekeningen. Just as Michelangelo Buonarroti (1476-1564) worked as a sculptor, painter, architect and poet, Matthew Barney (1967) switches smoothly between various contemporary art forms. The oeuvre of this US artist includes performance, photography, drawing, design and film. Not coincidentally an art critic, writing in 1989, dubbed him 'The Michelangelo of genital art' and this was not just because of the many athletic nudes that people his oeuvre. The parallels between Barney (1967) and Michelangelo (1476-1564) are greater than one might think. In the article Senne Schrayen makes a comparison between Barney's current series of performances (started in 1987) called Drawing Restraint and Michelangelo's drawings of 1532 from a transhistorical perspective and giving close attention to the process of making the drawing.

scholarly journals Off-road and Off-beat: Gadael Lenin, American Interior and the Transnational Focus of Welsh Art Cinema

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-311
Author(s):  
Kate Woodward
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Art Cinema ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Cultural Forms ◽  
The Many ◽  
Film Making ◽  
Inclusive Form

This article focuses on two recent films from Wales, the feature film Gadael Lenin (1993) and the documentary American Interior (2014). Together, they are well placed to offer a rich interrogation of the many contrasting and contradictory aspects of contemporary art cinema. I argue that film production in Wales – despite the fact that the very concepts of Wales, Welsh cinema and Welsh film are highly complex, contested and shifting – has developed a distinctly transnational status which allows an interrogation of the national (in terms of Wales) but also of the interface between the national and the transnational. Set wholly and mainly outside Wales, with dialogue in Welsh as well as other languages, the films employ a comparativist agenda in order to internationalise the Welsh experience and demonstrate that it is within art cinema's reach to be both national and transnational, by addressing distinct, contrasting dimensions. While Gadael Lenin makes bold statements about the role of art in society, American Interior engages in a transmedial, multi-platform form of film-making which transcends boundaries and demonstrates the cultural potential of an expansive and inclusive form of culture making from Wales, one which reaches out globally and crosses national and cultural forms.

scholarly journals Reframing Innovation

Media-N ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-19
Author(s):  
Victoria Bradbury ◽  
Suzy O'Hara
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
New Media ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Maker Movement ◽  
Economic Production ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Maker Culture ◽  
The Many ◽  
Global Art

This paper outlines five presentations delivered by invited panelists during Reframing Innovation: Art, the Maker Movement and Critique, our New Media Caucus affiliated panel at the CAA Conference, February 2019, New York City. The panel developed from our co-edited volume, Art Hack Practice(forthcoming, Routledge) which investigates global art hacking practices employed by individuals and groups who are working within, around or against the phenomenon known as ‘maker culture’ as artists, designers, curators and historians. Each presentation offers a distinct account of contemporary art practices that reveal the many manifestations, characteristics and dialogs around current art hacking practices. By publishing these talks here, we aim to provide readers with new insights into projects that challenge perceived distinctions between sites of artistic and economic production by brokering new, direct ways of working between them, thereby challenging traditional understandings of the role and place of the art in society.

Exhibiting Parafictional Artists: Curatorial Approaches to Fiction and Authorship

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-71
Author(s):  
Emma Brasó
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Art World ◽  
Curatorial Practice

This article identifies and analyses parafictional strategies in artistic and curatorial practice. By examining exhibitions that have included artists working under fictitious identities from the mid-1990s to the present, I argue that they emerged in response to the conflictual demands of the art world. These case studies have been organized into three categories according to their main curatorial approach: projects in which artists remained anonymous or were asked to produce work under a purposely invented personality; exhibitions that turned the intersection of fiction and authorship into a theme to be researched; and curatorial initiatives that embraced the working logic of fiction in their own methodology. These strategies investigate how authorship, agency, style and self-promotion function in the contemporary art world.

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