Friday, December 12, 2014

Joachim Schmid is an Artist Who Finds and Publishes Other People's Photos

JOACHIM SCHMID

As it happens, a German artist named Joachim Schmid spends six hours a day perusing and grabbing images from Flickr, using them to illustrate his own artist books under the title Other People’s Photographs. When I asked him why, he told me: “I do it so that you don’t have to.” In the process of saving me the trouble, he also provides a kind of anecdotal, surrealist ethnography of global photography today. Again, it has become a truism to remark on the refashioning of privacy in our digital age, with social media stretching the word “friend” to include a vast array of relative strangers. Schmid’s unauthorized publication of Flickr photographs merely extends this array to comprise discriminating denizens of the art and book-collecting world. His website discusses Other People’s Photographs:
Assembled between 2008 and 2011, this series of ninety-six books explores the themes presented by modern everyday, amateur photographers. Images found on photo sharing sites such as Flickr have been gathered and ordered in a way to form a library of contemporary vernacular photography in the age of digital technology and online photo hosting. Each book is comprised of images that focus on a specific photographic event or idea, the grouping of photographs revealing recurring patterns in modern popular photography. The approach is encyclopedic, and the number of volumes is virtually endless but arbitrarily limited. The selection of themes is neither systematic nor does it follow any established criteria—the project’s structure mirrors the multifaceted, contradictory and chaotic practice of modern photography itself, based exclusively on the motto “You can observe a lot by watching.”
Joachim Schmid - Buddies

Joachim Schmid - Airline Meals

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

IRVING PENN PORTRAITS

Rudolf Nureyev, New York, 1965
Truman Capote, New York, 1948
I have known about Penn from forever ago. Just now I am truly appreciating his portraits of people. Not the fashion but just the intense and well-lit portraits. Love the composition and the way they LOOK.

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Andre Breton - Founder of Surrealism

Andre Breton by Man Ray, 1930
French writer & poet, 1896-1966. Participated in Dada. Later founded the Surrealist movement in 1924.

 "In The Manifesto of Surrealism he issued in 1924, Breton defines surrealism as "pure psychic automatism". Automatism and the automatic: the photomaton was a readymade surrealist photography that removed the conscious, controlling mind of the photographer and took a stream of images too quickly for the sitter to compose her or himself in any but the most basic ways. The close range of the portraits and the flat background add to the sense of being surprised, taken aback, even abused, that we feel after sitting for a strip of passport pictures. The brutality that makes photomaton portraits uncomfortable makes them, for the surrealists, insightful." Jonathan Jones 2004


The photo booth came to Paris in 1928.
Francis Lewis by Andy Warhol, 1966

Andre Breton in Photo Booth

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

"INVENTING VIVIAN MAIER" by ABIGAIL SOLOMON-GODEAU

A GOOD READ --- 
INVENTING VIVIAN MAIER by Abigail Solomon-Godeau

I watched the new film Finding Vivian Maier by John Maloof this week at FilmScene in Iowa City. Seeing it and talking to friends about it, I was reminded of my first encounter with the photographer's work.

In 2013, I spent one week in Chicago during the month of October. My six photography students and I took the megabus from Iowa City and stayed at Cornell College's newly acquired house in north part of the city. The week was filled with many viewing pleasures and among them we saw two Vivian Maier exhibitions. The first was at the Chicago History Museum. Her images were "blown" up in various sizes on poster-like boards, strung up on cables. MORE HEREI happened to meet the speaker there, Richard Cahan who is one of the authors of Vivian Maiers, Out of the Shadows; he told us to visit a small gallery nearby with a quite large and very impressive body of work by Vivian Maier. This was by far and beyond a beautiful and beautifully presented exhibition of gorgeous hand-made silver gelatin prints. So glad to have seen it! 

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Introducing the Anti-Filter: The Rise of the White Border on Instagram

Introducing the Anti-Filter: The Rise of the White Border on Instagram

The Atlas Group - LET'S BE HONEST. THE WEATHER HELPED

http://www.tba21.org/collection/artist/577/artwork/290


The collection of documents archived by Walid Raad and The Atlas Group is a mixture of uncovered and constructed evidence whose authenticity, authorship and even dates are constantly subject to doubt. In blurring the line between historical facts and constructed narratives, Raad investigates how the history of Lebanon – and specifically the long violent period of the Civil Wars – is written and represented. In Let’s Be Honest. The Weather Helped I, Raad records the locations of bullet holes with colored dots on a series of black and white photographs. The colors of the dots correspond to the colors of the bullets’ tips, which he later learned are color-codes devised by manufacturing countries to mark their cartridges.

An-My Lê: "29 Palms" | Art21 "Exclusive"

AN-MY LE -- Small Wars

In her recent photographic series Small Wars and 29 Palms, Vietnamese American artist An-My Lê delves into Americans' complicated relationship with war by turning her lens on two of the less familiar sides of conflict: reenactment and rehearsal, respectively. With a style that mirrors documentary photography, Lê depicts Vietnam War reenactors staging theatrical battles in the forests of Virginia and soldiers at the Twentynine Palms, California, military base training for the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — warlike activities without the mortal dangers of war. This exhibition unites 47 large-format, black-and-white pictures from the two series, offering a novel perspective on military engagements that maintains a deliberate ambiguity.

Source: http://www.sfmoma.org/exhib_events/exhibitions/300#ixzz30Hl6yPc2
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art


SMALL WARS link youtube

An-My Le -Small Wars: Explosion, 1999-2002

Patrick Hogan

How do you read this work? Where do you think it fits in Lucy Soutter's book Why Art Photography?
http://patrickhogan.ie/still/

Bio

Patrick Hogan is an Irish photographic artist. He currently lives and works in the south-east of Ireland. He is the winner of the Dublin Gallery Of Photography Artist Award 2011 for his project ‘Solitary, Half Mad’, a photographic short story about isolation in rural Ireland. He was also shortlisted for the Winter Solo Show Award, 3rd Ward Gallery in New York in 2010. He is currently taking part in the photographic project ‘Graphic Intersections V. 02′. He completed two International artist-in-residence programs in Iceland in 2009. He self-published his first photographic book in 2010. He will be exhibiting nationally and internationally throughout 2011.


Interview with Patrick Hogan

Patrick Hogan

What is Conceptual Photography? (part 1)

Lucy Soutter @ Open Eye Gallery, 20 April 2013

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Why do YOU go to Work?

Why do you work? To get more stuff, or to help improve the world?
Ford is banking on the latter to resonate with idealistic consumers across America and really anyone who was put off by a crassly materialistic ad Cadillac released during the Olympics in February. In case you missed it, the original “Poolside” ad featured Neal McDonough lecturing about the supremacy of the American work ethic as he surveys his pool, strides through his expansive house, slips on a suit, and then revs up his Cadillac

Artist Talk: Lorna Simpson via The Walker Art Center

Lorna Simpson

Lorna Simpson. Easy to remember. 2001

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

!WOMEN ART REVOLUTION official trailer





You will recognize some of these ARTISTS.

ART & REVOLUTION : The Women in America were just waiting to be released.

Monday, April 7, 2014

LIVE ART - "Concert for Dogs"

The Intermedia Art class will present a night of LIVE ART -- "Concert for Dogs" on Tuesday evening

April 8th, 2014 at 7:30pm in the Commons at 

Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa. 

  • It will be a night to remember...!

Thursday, April 3, 2014

PATTY CHANG -- In LOVE With


In Love With (Patty Chang) by MiShorts

Performance Art Primer on TATE

Performance Art Primer: Frank Skinner, comedian and art lover, schools us on the history of performance art, including Dada, dance and death-defying installations.

Performance Art asks important questions. It is a social critique. 

WATCH.

fluxus festival 1962





PLEASE WATCH THIS VIDEO. AS WE PREPARE FOR OUR 'CONCERT FOR DOGS' WE MUST THINK ABOUT CONTINUITY, RISK, IDEAS, SPECTACLE, SOUND, GESTURE AND TIME. FLUXUS ART LIKES TO MAKE FUN OF HIGH ART. IT IS CHALLENGING HIGH ART. ARTISTS USED SCORES AND PERFORMED SOLO AND COLLABORATIVELY.

PERFORMANCE ART IN THE 1950S THRU THE 1970S USED THEIR BODIES DIRECTLY IN ACTIONS/GESTURES TO ASK QUESTIONS, EXPLORE, TRANSFORM. PLEASE RESEARCH SEVERAL ARTISTS' WORKS --- AND SPEND TIME CONSIDERING/ ANALYZING THEIR INTENTIONS AND HOW THE ARTIST PERFORMED THE WORK.

Using your body as the ART is about duration (time) and PRESENCE. You must have a firm intention.

What you do - the work, the gesture, the action - should convey meaning. YOU ARE THE OBJECT.




Ana Mendieta

Ana Mendieta studied at the University of Iowa in the what is now called Intermedia Art program with Hans Breder. We have a beautiful book in our library about  her and her provocative work.


New Exhibition/blog --- on Huffington Post.


The Haunting Traces Of Ana Mendieta Go On View 

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Jim Dine - The Smiling Workman 1960

In Catalysts, we look at how Homage to New York took place at the same time as the early Happenings were exploding on the scene in downtown New York, a notorious avant-garde movement led by painters and theater artists, most notably Allan Kaprow, Robert Whitman, Claes Oldenburg, and Jim Dine. Dine, in his 1960 performance, The Smiling Workman, took the sensory nature of multimedia to heart, drinking a bucket of paint on stage while emoting on the tribulations of life, love and existence.


Jim Dine, The Smiling Workman 1960

Intermedia Students at Laurie Anderson Show at the Englert Theatre

Intermedia Now! Cornell College art students attend Laurie Anderson Lecture @ Enlert Theatre, Iowa City, Iowa
What a special evening! In Iowa City at the Englert Theatre, my class and I were so lucky to see and hear Laurie Anderson talk about her life and her art, her work. Stories.... it was an honestly open and compelling lecture about who she is as a person, how ideas come to her, how she doubts herself as an artist, so inspiring and oh so real.

Friday, March 28, 2014




Joan Jonas on Feminism





We have not explored Joan Jonas' work in class, however, she is in the text. I think some of you may like her video/performance work. 

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Chris Burden Documentary on UBU.COM

http://www.ubu.com/film/burden_newport.html


Chris Burden - Through The Night Softly (1973)


Chris Burden uses 10 second TV spots to disrupt complacent television viewers. 

In 1973 Chris Burden conceives the work Through the Night Softly, to be inserted during 10 seconds amongst the regular Tv advertisements, "4 times a week for 4 weeks".

Yves Klein. Anthropométrie de l'époque bleue (1960) black & white

Blue Women Art - Yves Klein (1962)





Klein directs them from afar with his "creative genius". This was originally done in 1960. This performance was in 1962.

Yves Klein's Anthropometries 1960

Performance artist Nate Hill talks about the White Power Milk project 07...

Marina Abramovic on FEAR

"What you are afraid of is exactly what you are supposed to do. When you do things you like, you never change."


The Other: "Rest Energy", 1980 - Marina & Ulay

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Marina Abramovic on Rhythm O, 1974

Marina Abramovic on Rhythm 0 (1974) from Marina Abramovic Institute on Vimeo.

BED PEACE starring John Lennon & Yoko Ono

Artist's Shit 1961 - Piero Manzoni

TATE - Piero Manzoni and his Artist's Shit

Artist's Shit 1961, Piero Manzoni

Allan Kaprow - How to Make a Happening

Who Is Allan Kaprow?

TATE and Performance 101 -- Alan Kaprow and the Happening

Kaprow may have made the term, and the idea of blurring the boundary of art and life, popular but he was the first to admit that he wasn’t the only one or the first working in this way.
The happening had its roots in Hugo Ball’s Dada Cabaret Voltaire,Surrealist performances and the Italian Futurists in the early years of the twentieth century. Creating art out of life was first proposed as the gesamstkunstwerk (total art work) by Richard Wagner (yes, Wagner the opera composer) in the Art-Work of the Future in 1849-50.

John Baldessari Will Not Make Any More Boring Art

John Baldessari

Born 1931 - USA
Throughout his career, John Baldessari has defied formalist categories by working in a variety of media—creating films, videotapes, prints, photographs, texts, drawings, and multiple combinations of these. In his use of media imagery, Baldessari is a pioneer "image appropriator," and as such has had a profound impact on post-modern art production. Baldessari initially studied to be an art critic at the University of California, Berkeley during the mid 1950s, but growing dissatisfied with his studies, he turned to painting. Inspired by Dada and Surrealist literary and visual ideas, he began incorporating photographs, notes, texts, and fragments of conversation into his paintings. Baldessari remains fundamentally interested in de-mystifying artistic processes, and uses video to record his performances, which function as "deconstruction experiments." These illustrative exercises target prevailing assumptions about art and artists, focusing on the perception, language, and interpretation of artistic images. These demonstrations provide an introduction to the major preoccupations of Baldessari's work, and the linguistic and aesthetic philosophies that inform it.
We have a dvd (and books) in the library about him with some of his video work included. PBS has a very good film online to watch about him and his work: http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/john-baldessari

A Brief History of John Baldessari

A Short Video About Sadie Benning



Video above is a biography of Sadie and is created in the style she became very well known for using a Fisher Price Pixelvision toy camera. The bio below was taken from Video Data Bank. You can view short clips of Sadie's work online http://www.vdb.org/artists/sadie-benning

Sadie Benning

Born 1973 - Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Sadie Benning is a lesbian videomaker who began making videos when she was 15-years old, using a Fisher Price Pixelvision toy camera. Benning's early works were made in the privacy of her childhood bedroom, using scrawled and handwritten text from diary entries to record thoughts and images that reveal the longings and complexities of a developing identity. Evoking in turn playful seduction and painful honesty, Benning’s floating, close-up camera functions as a witness to her intimate revelations, and as an accomplice in defining her evocative experimental form. Her work emerges from a place half-innocent and half-adult—with all the honesty, humor, and desperation of a personality just coming into self-awareness, trapped and uneasy. Her more recent work moves beyond the Pixelvision camera and into animation, film and installation.
Sadie Benning is a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

William Pope.L -- Performance Art / Community / WORK

WILLIAM POPE.L -- Wants Cleveland to PULL

http://www.coolcleveland.com/blog/2013/06/video-william-pope-l-wants-cleveland-to-pull/

“Art has utility,” he said. “In museums, it’s muffled, it’s protected. By taking it outside of its protective context, like a ball, you can get more out of it. It’ll get scuffed up, but you can fix it with duct tape.”

William Pope.L
Beginning in the late '90s, William Pope.L famously crawled along 22 miles of sidewalk, from the beginning to the end of Broadway—Manhattan's longest street—wearing a capeless Superman outfit with a skateboard strapped to his back. In varying fits and starts, the performance, titled The Great White Way, 22 Miles, 9 Years, 1 Street, took nine years to complete, with each installment lasting as long as Pope.L could endure the knee and elbow pain (often about six blocks). It is among 30-plus "crawl" pieces that he has performed over more than three decades of work as an artist. (taken from Interview Magazine

In PULL! - A truck weighing 10 TONS, 25 miles, east side to west side, 3 days will be PULLED by community members in Cleveland. Theme of project is WORK. Make people think about Work and Pulling Together. A testament to the power of shared labor. 

Pope.L and SPACES have solicited photographs and stories regarding work from Clevelanders from diverse economic and racial backgrounds. Photographs and images have also been created at six community workshops in various Cleveland neighborhoods. The photographs will then be woven together with black and white images from Cleveland’s history into a long video that will be projected onto a screen on the back of a mobile truck. 

Pull! took place June 7-9 of 2013, as part of the 25th anniversary of the Cleveland Performance Art Festival. 

Performance Art / Contemporary Art

GREAT links, photographs, video, etc. http://www.marthagarzon.com/contemporary_art/category/performance-art/

Rebecca Horn, Finger Gloves 1972

Rebecca Horn, Pencil Mask 1972

Rebecca Horn (not in photo) Overflowing Blood Machine 1970

Friday, March 21, 2014

Atsuko Tanaka, Guitai Group, Japan

Atsuko Tanaka, Electric Dress (1956)
Born in Osaka, Japan, in 1932, Tanaka was a member of the Gutai Art Association, the major experimental postwar Japanese art movement founded by a group of young artists in Ashiya in 1954. She was best known for sculptural installations made from non-art materials, such as Electric Dress (1956), a wearable sculpture made of flickering light bulbs painted red, blue, green, and yellow. When originally worn, the sculpture both made the body the center of artistic activity and masked it in a mass of light and color. This work, along withWork (Bell) (1955)—made of twenty electric bells connected by one hundred feet of electrical cord and a switch that viewers can press to activate a line of ringing sound—are prime illustrations of Tanaka’s interest in the application of intangible materials in art, namely electricity, and Gutai’s overall reaction to a modernizing Japan.

Shigeko Kubota, Japanese Artist, Vagina Painting 1965 (Flux Festival)

Shigeko Kubota, Vagina Painting 1965
Shigeko Kubota performed her Vagina Painting on 4 July 1965 at Cinemateque, East 4th Street New York during Perpetual Fluxus Festival.
In an act both evocative and critical of action painting, Kubota attached a paintbrush to the back of her short skirt and squatted to make painterly marks on a large piece of paper on the floor. In this way Kubota challenged the assumptions still prevalent in the art world at the time which connected masculinity with creative genius. This work is one of many feminist takes on abstract expressionism, a genre characterised by macho male practitioners.
Kubota’s work was part of the Fluxus movement, an international network of artists, composers and designers, including Yoko Ono and George Maciunas, noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines. Fluxus takes its name from the latin word meaning ‘flow’ and is indebted to the Japanese movement Gutai which emphasized the artist’s body, gesture and the beauty of destruction and decay. (Taken from Perform Feminism)

Adrian Piper - MYTHIC BEING

This work from 1973 explores the artist's fascination with issues of identity including gender and race. This video documents her process and performance. She dresses as a man, goes into the street and experiences being a male rather than a female. How does one's gender inform who we are and how we are viewed?


Adrian Piper from Mythic Being, 1973



Wednesday, March 19, 2014