Scene of the Crime: Exhibition held at Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center on July 23-October 5, 1997 - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262680998 ISBN 13: 9780262680998

Publisher: Mit Pr, 1997

Synopsis

Due in large part to the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building, the crash of TWA Flight 800, and the O. J. Simpson trial, the once-arcane field of forensics has taken hold of the popular imagination. Scene of the Crime, which accompanies an exhibition of the same name organized by UCLA at the Armand Hammer Museum and supported by the Fellows of Contemporary Art, considers the art object as a kind of forensic evidence. Like the chalk outline of a murdered body, certain works of art invoke off-screen drama, prior trauma, or a history redolent of criminality, violation, or mysterious turbulence. From the evidentiary traces presented in these exhibits, the viewer is prompted to reconstruct behavior, motivations, and events. This forensic approach emphasizes the viewer's role as investigator while underscoring the cluelike and contingent status of the art object.

The book is not about works of art that simply document criminal acts. Rather, it is about a strain of art that presents the art object as a clue to absent meanings or actions. From seminal works by Ed Ruscha, Bruce Naumann, Barry Le Va, and David Hammons to recent works by Paul McCarthy, Sharon Lockhart, James Luna, and Anthony Hernandez, this art declares that it is about more than meets the eye, raising the suspicion that a significant segment of contemporary art is concerned with forensic strategies and demands an investigative approach.

Artists:
Terry Allen, D-L Alvarez, John Baldessari, Lewis Baltz, Uta Barth, Nayland Blake, Chris Burden, Vija Celmins, Bruce Conner, Eileen Cowin, John Divola, Sam Durant, Vincent Fecteau, Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose, Janet Fries, David Hammons, Richard Hawkins, Anthony Hernandez, Alexander Jason, Mike Kelley, Ed and Nancy Kienholz, Barry Le Va, Sharon Lockhart, James Luna, Monica Majoli, Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan, Paul McCarthy, Richard Misrach, Bruce Nauman, Robert Overby, Nancy Reese, Michelle Rollman, Ed Ruscha, Alexis Smith, George Stone, Jeffrey Vallance.

About this title

About the Author

Ralph Rugoff is an independent curator and critic, and the author of Circus Americanus and coauthor of Paul McCarthy. Peter Wollen is Professor of Film at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of many books on art history and film theory. Anthony Vidler has taught at Princeton University, UCLA, and Cornell University and is the author of many books on architectural theory and history, including The Architectural Uncanny (MIT Press, 1992).

Reviews

These two erudite catalogs, accompanying summer exhibitions on opposite coasts, look beyond the diverse contemporary works in the shows to examine pop-cultural and social manifestations of their related themes. If, as one writer here suggests, "Freud's case studies stand alongside the best of Poe," then Gothic's ruminations on our romanticized notions of the strange, horrific, and violent are the perfect complement to Rugoff's dissection of our mania for clinical forensics. Gothic is the more systematic in its endeavor to bring in non-art expressions; noted scholars and critics offer very readable chapters on the gothic novel, the gothic spirit in rock music, "Industrial Gothic," early gothic films, and the current cinematic revival. An introductory essay discusses the art in the show, while a short story by Dennis Cooper and "Reflections on the Grotesque" by Joyce Carol Oates round out the text. In addition to film stills and other documentary illustrations, fine color plates of around 50 works by some of the last decade's biggest names?Cindy Sherman, Gary Simmons, and Robert Gober among them?are sprinkled throughout the book. Rugoff takes on a more specialized topic, what he calls the "forensic aesthetic," and though his time frame is greater?encompassing art from the last 30 years?he has limited his study to California-based artists. Intertwining such themes as "forensic photography, deteriorated architecture, and the banalization of melodrama," the three essays here will be more challenging to the lay reader. Again, leading names?Baldessari, Nauman, Ruscha?are among the 36 artists included here. Gothic is highly recommended to both public and academic libraries with an interest in either cultural studies or contemporary art. Scene will make an excellent complement in academic art libraries.?Eric Bryant, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Mit Pr
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262680998
• ISBN 13: 9780262680998
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 165
• Editor: Ralph Rugoff