X-Screen: Film Installations and Actions in the 1960s and 1970s - Softcover

Branden Joseph; Liz Kotz; Pamela Lee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3883757616 ISBN 13: 9783883757612

Publisher: Walther Konig, Koln, 2004

Synopsis

For several years now, film and video have determined contemporary art and exhibitions on a scale unheard of since the 1960s and 1970s, but rarely have these roots themselves been explored. X-Screen presents a comprehensive historical analysis of expanded forms of filmic projection, arranging a complex constellation of films, performances, and installations according to three categories. First is an exploration of the expansion of the field of projection, understood as part of Happenings, as well as Fluxus and Pop performances. Work by Robert Whitman, Carolee Schneemann, and USCO is discussed. Second is an interrogation of the screen in terms of media analysis, anti-illusionism, or institutional critique in the context of Structural Film and Conceptual art. Film installations and multiple projections are especially relevant here, including work by Valie Export, Michael Snow, and Peter Weibel. And third is a consideration of post-minimalist explorations of the relationship between the media image and physical space, as seen in the work of Dan Graham, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, and others.

About this title

About the Authors

Belgian painter, sculptor, printmaker, draftsman, filmmaker and poet, Marcel Broodthaers was born in Brussels in 1924. With no artistic training, he turned to visual art in 1964 as an ironic gesture, and spent the 11 remaining years before his death in 1976 establishing himself, in more than 70 one-man exhibitions, as an artist of influential attitude and approach.

Born in Urbana, Illinois, in 1942, Dan Graham worked as a gallery and art critic before embarking on his artistic career in 1965. Over the years, he has received numerous public commissions in Europe as well as the United States, including the Children's Pavilion (1989), designed in collaboration with Jeff Wall, and the Rooftop Urban Park Project (1991), a permanent sculptural installation on the roof of the Dia Center in New York. He currently lives and works in New York.

Joan Jonas was born in 1936 in New York, where she currently lives and works. She received an M.F.A. in Sculpture from Columbia University, New York, in 1965. Her first performance retrospective was at the Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (1979) and her first US retrospective was at the University Art Museum, Berkeley (1980) (Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, 1981). She has exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Institute of the Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; The Kitchen, New York, and Pat Hearn Gallery, New York. Jonas has had major retrospectives at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1994), and Galerie der Stadt, Stuttgart, Germany (2000), and was represented in Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany (2002).

Born in 1941 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Bruce Nauman has been recognized since the early 1970s as one of the most innovative and provocative of America's contemporary artists. Nauman finds inspiration in the activities, speech, and materials of everyday life. Confronted with 'What to do' in his studio soon after graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1964 with a BFA, and then the University of California, Davis in 1966 with an MFA, Nauman had the simple but profound realization that "if I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product." Working in the diverse mediums of sculpture, video, film, printmaking, performance, and installation, Nauman concentrates less on the development of a characteristic style and more on the way in which a process or activity can transform or become a work of art. A survey of his diverse output demonstrates the alternately political, prosaic, spiritual, and crass methods by which Nauman examines life in all its gory details, mapping the human arc between life and death. The text from an early neon work proclaims: "The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths." Whether or not we--or even Nauman--agree with this statement, the underlying subtext of the piece emphasizes the way in which the audience, artist and culture at large are involved in the resonance a work of art will ultimately have. Nauman lives in New Mexico.

Born into a diplomatic family in 1929 in Stockholm, Sweden, Claes Oldenburg lived in the United States and Norway before settling in Chicago in 1936, and becoming a citizen in 1953. He studied Literature and Art History at Yale University and Studio Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1956, he moved to New York and met several artists making early Performance work, including George Brecht, Allan Kaprow, George Segal and Robert Whitman. Oldenburg soon became a prominent figure in Happenings and Performance art during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Over the past three decades, his work has been the subject of many solo exhibitions, including at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Oldenburg lives in New York.

Edition details

• Publisher: Walther Konig, Koln
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3883757616
• ISBN 13: 9783883757612
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 216
• Editor: Matthias Michalka, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig