Robert Hughes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roland Barthes and Us

 Welcome! In this class we will be working on term-long projects and looking at some of the ideas of Roland Barthes. Translations of ideas originally written in French. Even if we can't follow the words the tone of his speech is significant;

Here's a very friendly overview of the structuralist theory we will be exploring;

Tom Nicholas doesn't get to Barthes until 15 minutes into this video but the linguistic theory that informs structuralism is good background on the origin of Barthes' concepts.

Yvonne Rainer

 

Yvonne Rainer, 1964. Photograph Collection Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York

 "NO Manifesto"

 

Yvonne Rainer, “Trio A,” 1973.
Performed as part of “This is the story of a woman who…,” Theater for the New City, New York, 1973.
Performers: John Erdman and Yvonne Rainer.
Photo: © Babette Mangolte

 

 

 

Born to self-proclaimed 'radicals'.

Grew up in San Fransisco.

Somewhat directionless in early adulthood.

Moves to New York with painter Al Held.

Takes dance classes...faces various insulting comments by mentors.

Early 60s...Rainer focused on choreographing her own pieces, favoring everyday movements and the chance procedures innovated by Cage and Cunningham.

Makes a major contribution to dance over the next decade and continues to be an influential innovator.

Then...

"I made the transition from choreography to filmmaking between 1972 and 1975. In a general sense my burgeoning feminist consciousness was an important factor. An equally urgent stimulus was the encroaching physical changes in my aging body."

 A few minutes of Yvonne Rainer’s fourth feature-length film, Journeys from Berlin/1971 (1980);

 

See more here;

https://ubu.com/film/rainer.html

And again...

A return to dance in early 2000s.

Now still at it at age 85. Check this out!!!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/arts/dance/yvonne-rainer-do-it-yourself-coronavirus.html

 

ART 125/FIST 318 Jean-Michel Basquiat

“I don’t know how to describe my work. It’s like asking Miles, ‘How does your horn sound?’” - Jean-Michel Basquait

 

Jean-Michel Basquiat Liberty, 1982-83

It's the subconscious as conscious, and consciousness. It's like thinking about writing something, along with visuals, color, forms that are not the obvious choices, but the real ones. It's lettering, like in drafting, and with that special 'E', of some intention, because everything truly means something. Filling up all the space with a very lovely teetering balance. It is a horn, but on a 2D surface.

Jean-Michel Basquiat made pictures that sing like a horn.

 

 

 

 

 

Jean-Michel Basquiat, A Panel of Experts, 1982

 

 

ART 240 Brakhage's Mothlight as "Direct Cinema"

Here's the link to the article about this film.

https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-303014346/direct-cinema-j-hoberman-on-stan-brakhage-s-mothlight

Think about this use of cinematic technology. It's the actual thing as the film, but what you see is still  light. How can this change how we think about process? How may one subvert digital apparatus in a similar manor? How could electrical impulses be utilized in a more direct way?

ART 125/FIST 318 Meditations: Agnes Martin

Agnes Martin's paintings which utilize line, grid, and transparent layers of color that can be deceiving at first glance. Martin rejected the idea that art should be intellectual, and believed instead that art should come from spiritual inspiration. Her work is historically placed within the minimalist tradition (among other artists who created art using basic forms stripped down to their essentials) but on closer inspection, her paintings reveal the trace of the artist's hand.  The video below gives us a revealing glimpse at her meditative process of painting.

Agnes Martin, "Beauty is in Your Mind", Tateshots, 2015

Agnes Martin, Untitled (Image #4) 1998 

Agnes Martin, Untitled, 1960

Agnes Martin, Happy Holiday, 1999

ART 125/FIST 318 Nancy Spero's Transparency

Nancy Spero in her studio, age 82, 2008

 

 "The personal and the political are indistinguishable."

The use of transparency in Nancy Spero's work, via layered line drawings and sometimes transparent media, seems to allow us to 'see-through' to a certain truth. Repeated figures blend into one, the individual morphs into a collective whole, power through unity persists. 

As a socially concerned artist and early feminist, Spero was a member of several activist groups. The war in Vietnam was a primary concern portrayed in her War Paintings, 1966-1970.

Nancy Spero. Kill Commies / Maypole, 1967. Gouache and ink on paper; 36 × 24 inches.

"I don’t want my work to be a reaction to what male art might be or what art with a capital A would be. I just want it to be art." - Nancy Spero

Spero was interested in making art which expressed the idea that the female figure could not escape the scrutiny of the male gaze.  Inspired by imagery from ancient and classical art, which idealized the human form, she began to make works that were so expansive that some pieces could only be seen in peripheral vision.  She often placed her figures in the extreme corner of a composition or room, or places on a wall that would be considered out of the line of direct vision to the viewer.

 'The classical is so ostensibly timeless and beautiful and serene, you can’t see all the craft around it; you just see the surface thing," Spero says. "And so I disrupt that." Printmaking provided a flexible means for Spero to experiment with these ideas. "Each one is quite individual. And I can make another and another and another."

Nancy Spero, The Somnambulist, 1987

Nancy Spero, Mourning Women No.3, 1989

Nancy Spero, Artemis, Goddess and Centaur, 1983

"Although Spero’s work can be beautiful, that is not its primary goal. "A lot of my work has explosions of anger and violence," she says. “I want my work to be telling and strong, but not in a masculine sense. Strong,” she continues, “in that it has a certain message—and it can be a strong message.” 

Says artist Kiki Smith, “Nancy’s work is radical. For people of my generation, she and Leon (Spero's late husband, artist Leon Golub) were role models as artists. There are very few people who represent their social beliefs in their work and lives, and they are two people who embody that." 

-Phoebe Hoban, In Memoriam Nancy Spero, ArtNews, November 2009.