Please note due date, not due before class this week but by Tuesday of next week (to compensate for the late posting).
1. First, as requested earlier, post your response to Peggy Awhesh's Martina's Playhouse.
Keller and Ward, "Matthew Barney and the Paradox of the Neo-Avant-Garde Blockbuster"
2. What has changed in the gallery art world that allows Barney to describe his work as “sculpture”? In other words, how has the definition of sculpture changed since the 1960s, and why?
Performance art has developed out of and in relation to sculptural practices –principally minimalism – leading to the destabilization of sculpture as an object (both physically and discursive).
Barney claims his performance and art as a “family of objects.”
3. Tricky but important question: Why was minimalist sculpture seen as a reaction against the “modernist hymns to the purity and specificity of aesthetic experience”? In other words: Why do they say that minimalist sculpture is post-modernist?
Minimalism issued a call to understand the experience of art as public, in the sense that viewers were to discover the meaning of the object in their interaction with its context.
A couple things, Modernist were more about exploiting their medium. And Post-modernism was opening the range of materials, artwork being about the process of art, not the end result, questioning the medium specifity and encouraging intermedia, questioning the role of the artist, and pastiche.
Star Wars is a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Cremaster is once upon a time in a gallery far, far uptown. (pastiche).
Minimalism encourages intermedia (“the family of objects”) and the process of the artwork as does post-modernism.
4. Describe the role of the body in the works of Vito Acconci and Chris Burden. You may wish to consult the following links to supplement the descriptions in the readings:
http://www.ubu.com/film/acconci.html
http://www.ubu.com/film/burden.html
Acconci felt the body is the source of minimalism. Ex. Seedbed (1972), masturbating 6 hours a day, two days a week. Burden is another artist whose transition into performance was mediated by minimalism, whose performance can be seen to be both enabled by and critical of minimalism. Ex. Slightly peculiar gym equipment (mistaken for traditional object sculpture). Burden put himself through a lot of pain for his art. Getting shot in the arm, pushpins stuck in his body by the audience, lying in bed for 22 days (others had to take care of his needs with no instructions).
Performance= endurance connected to physicality
Avant-garde = duration is purely temporal
Burden used his body and performance by sitting still atop a stool for forty-three hours until he fell. The audience was those in attendance (even if passer-bys) and secondary audience would experience his work in documentation.
5. In the opinion of the authors, what are the key differences between performance art of the 1960s/1970s and Barney’s Cremaster cycle? What do they mean by the term "blockbuster" in relation to the gallery art world?
In the 1960’s and 1970’s had a tension between presence and absence, between an event and it’s dispersal through time, so as to consider the relations between body and the way it is mediated. In Barney’s Cremaster, the body is akin more to the iconic status of the movie star’s on screen body, mythologizing system.
Barney insisted that the function of his films is “to generate sculpture.” Props and sets are relics of performance art. Climbing the walls of the Guggenheim was to remove the temple-like quality of museums, bringing the viewer from the status of pilgrim to that of patron.
It is rumored $8 Million was spent on making Cremaster, only grossing $515,000, yet is considered a success in the art world. Being a financial bomb puts it in the realm of an art success. With Barbara Gladstone Gallery refusing to discuss the film’s budget, it places the film in a realm of priceless and above such concerns. Also, Barney’s film is not distributed for or to the public, which is unlike most avant-garde film (they usually try to get anyone who is willing, to exhibit their film).
Hard Body Redux = Rambo, Die Hard, Terminator, Lethal Weapon, how much can they endure?
Walley, "Modes of Film Practice in the Avant-Garde"
6. What is meant by “mode of film practice”?
The two bodies of work tentatively identified thus far as “avant-garde cinema” and “artists film” are the two different modes of practice in the avant-garde. The term ‘mode of film practice’ refers to the cluster of historically bound institutions, practices and concepts that form a context within which cinematic media are used. These are defined by the formal and stylistic norms used to create the work.
Give two well known examples of non-experimental modes of film practice. Why does Walley argue that the concept of the mode of film practice can help distinguish between the experimental film and gallery art worlds?
It’s not just the production of the works that define wether is traditional (ha) avant-garde or a new form of art cinema, it is also the methods of distribution, exhibition, and reception of viewing that separate the two.
7. What are some of the key differences between the experimental and gallery art worlds in terms of production and distribution?
Avant-garde cinema is acollaborative, meaning the filmmaker controls every aspect of production from the initial conception of the film’s idea to post production, even sometimes being in the film itself. Their films are scarce due to budget. These works are more abstract. Avant-garde cinema, film is the artist’s primary and often sole medium.
Artist’s film is collaborative as we see in Matthew Barney’s Cremaster. Meaning they have many individuals such as cinematographers, editors, sound recordists, composers, etc., although a lot of the worker’s names are subsumed under the rubric of the auteur. Their films are limited in hopes of making it valuable due to scarcity. Because of the higher costs involved galleries sometimes contribute financially to the works. The works connote both narrative and illusionism. Film is but one medium of many to the artist.
White cube of the gallery
Sculptural Space
Mobile viewer
Enables freedom of choice and movement among viewers
Black box of the theatre
Film’s two dimension
Seated cinema spectator
Constriction of the viewer’s temporal and spatial experience
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