Humanity’s self-image was redefined in the modern era not by art but by the mass medium of photography. Take for example the photograph from the American Civil War reproduced here (click image left). Previously artists had mythologized war as heroic due to the fact that their patrons were the ones who waged the wars. But the photographs of carnage during the American Civil War (1861-65) represent one of the first occasions when the general population could begin to see war and human behaviour from a much more pragmatic and demythologised perspective.
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The sculpture and graphic work in the KW Institute aspect of the 5th Berlin Biennial was unimpressive, and I will demonstrate this with some images in a later post. But in these initial posts I will treat the more interesting aspects of what I saw at the Biennial. In the KW Institute the more involving work consisted mostly of video and photography. By photography I mean Kohei Yoshiyuki’s Park series taken between 1971-79, documenting sexual encounters in Tokyo’s Shinjuku, Yoyogi and Aoyama parks. (more…)
Austrian artist Elke Krystufek reinforces, or enforces, her insertion into the Symbolic Order by creating a seemingly endless stream of self-portraits and autobiographical narratives using a collage of photographs, drawings, paintings, performances and installations. In her frenetic and obsessive process of multi-mediated cross-referential self-representation Krystufek breaks visual conventions regarding the representation of the female body. The aggression evident in her work not only reflects Cindy Sherman’s grotesque period but is also a critical reflection upon the Viennese Actionists: Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Günter Brus, Hermann Nitsch, Otto Muehl und Adolf Frohner. (more…)
The 51st Venice Biennale, 2005, commissioned a work from Breitz and she created the double video Father + Mother, 2005. The two video installations were exhibited in totally blacked out rooms conjoined by light and sound trapping doors. Each piece consisted of six wall-embedded monitors in a sculptural semi-circular array. In each work Breitz took six films that dealt with issues concerning mother or fatherhood and extracted scenes in which the principal actor makes significant statements to camera. (more…)
In Ahtila’s works we discover a remarkable instance of the conflation of a literary subjectivity with visual creativity. By literary subjectivity I mean one less inclined towards self-obsession than with intersecting self-insight with knowlege of others in order to formulate narratives about people, which is something art is not very good at in comparison with literature. The object of this account of Ahtila’s work is the large survey exhibition of Ahtila in Tate Modern 2002. (more…)
Ellen Gallagher is of interest particularly if we compare her aesthetic strategy to that of her predecessors. Essentially Gallagher takes advertisements and deconstructs them but she does so in a way that is very different from earlier work by artists such as Hans Haacke and Barbara Kruger, and the fundamental difference in her work is due to its autobiographical dimension and its focus on the issue of racial identity. (more…)
Nan Goldin, Rise and Monty on the lounge chair, NYC, 1988. From the series Ballad of Sexual Dependency. Colour print, silver dye bleach (Cibachrome) process, 39.4 x 59.7 cm. George Eastman House, Still Photograph Archive© Nan Goldin
Nan Goldin is best known for her snapshot-like representations of people she knows including herself, but the impact of her work arises out of the fact that she lives within a fringe subculture in which social conventions can be deconstructed. Goldin notes, for example, that her work is ‘very political … it is about gender politics. It is about what it is to be male, what it is to be female, what are gender roles…Especially The Ballad of Sexual Dependency [which] is very much about gender politics, before there was such a word, before they taught it at the university.’ (in Mazur 2003). But perhaps the reason why she has become celebrated as a fine artist is due to the autobiographical character of her work. (more…)
Sarah Lucas’ work operates with a casual post-feminism that contrasts with the more ardent womens’ art of the 1970s or even the theoretical rigor of the 1980s epitomized by Barbara Kruger. Lucas’ work is political in the sense that she espouses a British working class aesthetic. Indeed the YBA (Young British Artist) phenomenon in general took up what might be called ‘tabloid culture’ with something akin to affection. (more…)
Humanity’s self-image was redefined in the modern era not by art but by the mass medium of photography. Take for example the photograph from the American Civil War reproduced here (click image left). Previously artists had mythologized war as heroic due to the fact that their patrons were the ones who waged the wars. But the photographs of carnage during the American Civil War (1861-65) represent one of the first occasions when the general population could begin to see war and human behaviour from a much more pragmatic and demythologised perspective.
