6. Fracture

2020 ◽  
pp. 130-148
Author(s):  
Julian Stallabrass
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Digital Art ◽  
Art World ◽  
Global Event ◽  
Activist Art ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Event Driven ◽  
Internet Art ◽  
Technological Means

‘Fracture’ explains that in contemporary art, a profound rift has opened up between the marketized art directed at the super-rich, extravagantly expensive, and often familiarly standardized, and a world of artistic social activism. The restless, global, event-driven art world has become ever more environmentally damaging. It is thus unsurprising that art fairs have occasionally been the site of protest. One response was found in increasingly activist art practices of online art or Internet art. In digital art, the use of new technological means to make and distribute work came into conflict with the craft-based practice, patronage, and elitism of the art world.

scholarly journals Meanwhile in China … Miao Ying and the Rise of Chinternet Ugly

ARTMargins ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-57
Author(s):  
Ros Holmes
Keyword(s):  
World Wide Web ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Art World ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Vernacular Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
Internet Art ◽  
Online Culture

This article examines a series of internet artworks by the artist Miao Ying (b. 1985). Contextualizing her digital collages in relation to China's online culture and media spheres, it situates the contemporary art world's engagement with internet art in relation to anti-aesthetics and the rise of what has been termed Internet ugly. Interrogating the assumption that internet art emerging from China can only belatedly repeat works of Euro-American precedent, it argues that Miao's work presents a dramatic reframing of online censorship, consumerism and the unique aspects of vernacular culture that have emerged within China's online realm. Demonstrating a distinctly self-conscious celebration of what has often disparagingly been labeled The Chinternet, Meanwhile in China can be seen to emerge out of the broader contradictions of internet art practices that parody the relationships between The Chinternet and the World Wide Web, global capitalism and Shanzhai [fake or pirated] aesthetics, online propaganda and media democracy, and the art market's relationship to the virtual economies of an art world online.

Fred Forest's Utopia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael F. Leruth
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Second Life ◽  
Video Art ◽  
Art World ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
Modus Operandi ◽  
Interactive Communication ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Internet Art ◽  
The 1960S

This book introduces readers to the iconoclastic work of the French media artist Fred Forest. A pioneer in the fields of video art in the 1960s and internet art in the 1990s, and cofounder of the Sociological Art Collective (1974) and the Aesthetics of Communication International Group (1983), Forest is best known as an ironic media hijacker and tinkerer of unconventional interfaces and alternative platforms for interactive communication that are accessible to the general public outside the exclusive precincts of the art world. He has also made headlines as an outspoken critic of the French contemporary art establishment, most famously by suing the Centre Pompidou in 1994 over its opaque acquisitions practices. This book surveys Forest’s work from the late 1960s to the present with particular emphasis on his prankster modus operandi, his advocacy of an existentially relevant form of counter-contemporary art―or “invisible system-art”―based on the principle of metacommunication (i.e., tasked with exploring the “immanent realities” of the virtual territory in which modern electronic communication takes place), his innovative “social” and “relational” use of a wide range of media from newspapers to Second Life, his attention-grabbing public interventions, and the unusual utopian dimension of his work. Never a hot commodity in the art world, Forest’s work has nonetheless garnered the attention and appreciation of a wide range of prominent intellectuals, critics, curators, technology innovators, and fellow artists including Marshall McLuhan, Edgar Morin, Vilém Flusser, Abraham Moles, Jean Duvignaud, Paul Virilio, Pierre Lévy, Pierre Restany, Frank Popper, Harald Szeeman, Robert C. Morgan, Vinton Cerf, Roy Ascott, and Eduardo Kac.

Trends in the Art Criticism Development in the Context of Modern Art Market (on the Example of Kyiv Situation)

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olesia Sobkovych ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
Art Market ◽  
Art World ◽  
Opinion Formation ◽  
Art Business ◽  
Process Art ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Market Factors

In modern realities, the degree of culture dependence on economic factors is consistently high. It is confirmed by the art world that is more and more oriented towards the global art market, which sphere of interest is commerce that moreover envisages the establishment of communication and regulation of the relationship “artist-consumer / recipient”. Consequently, the art market (despite the differences in the logic of art dealings: the art market considers it as the means of profit making; criticism tends to clarify the artistic value according to the time period) has functions identical to artistic criticism, in particular, sociocultural and regulatory. They provide for / support the formation of the artistic expression value, its actualization and functioning in the cultural sphere of our time and, as a result, interest and the formation of demand for certain art practices and names. In addition, art criticism and the contemporary art market have a certain influence on the artists themselves: judgments of art criticism, the demand for some art practices and names in the art market are to particular extent guides for authors (those who do not exclude themselves from the art market), factors of influence on further transformations in their creative activity. These circumstances, firstly, allow us to consider the art market not only in the economic field (as an economic category), but also as an interdisciplinary phenomenon of great importance for culture; secondly, it rises the practical value of exploring the interaction issue of these institutions / subjects of the cultural process (art market and art criticism), the degree of their interdependence and disclosure, dictated by the art market changes in the art criticism activities, which will determine the role of the art market and art criticism in sociocultural field. It is necessary to note that the main trends in the development of art criticism in the context of the contemporary art market are its growing dependence on commercial factors, marketing, the significant decrease in serious non-biased materials expressing the independence of their authors’ views (detailed analysis and professional interpretation of the artistic processes). This niche is being actively filled by amateur publications, information genres and advertising materials. The depicted situation creates the preconditions for providing a significant role in the artists’ selection and attraction to the commercial sphere, and, finally, for the public opinion formation to the art business representatives; dominance in the news field of information highlighted from the favourable perspective for the main players of the art market, which satisfies their interests in their own promotion and contributes to their hegemony in the art space. This situation is caused, among others, by the lack of financial independence of the art criticism in Kyiv and it lack of demand at the national art market.

Screening Statues

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Jacobs ◽  
Susan Felleman ◽  
Vito Adriaensens ◽  
Lisa Colpaert
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Film History ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Experimental Art ◽  
Broad Scope ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Extensive Reference

Sculpture is an artistic practice that involves material, three-dimensional, and generally static objects, whereas cinema produces immaterial, two-dimensional, kinetic images. These differences are the basis for a range of magical, mystical and phenomenological interactions between the two media. Sculptures are literally brought to life on the silver screen, while living people are turned into, or trapped inside, statuary. Sculpture motivates cinematic movement and film makes manifest the durational properties of sculptural space. This book will examine key sculptural motifs and cinematic sculpture in film history through seven chapters and an extensive reference gallery, dealing with the transformation skills of "cinemagician" Georges Méliès, the experimental art documentaries of Carl Theodor Dreyer and Henri Alekan, the statuary metaphors of modernist cinema, the mythological living statues of the peplum genre, and contemporary art practices in which film—as material and apparatus—is used as sculptural medium. The book’s broad scope and interdisciplinary approach is sure to interest scholars, amateurs and students alike.

scholarly journals Contemporary Art Practice and Indigenous Knowledge

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-128
Author(s):  
Gerald McMaster
Keyword(s):  
Medicinal Plants ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Traditional Knowledge ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Art World ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Knowledge Practices ◽  
Communal Sharing ◽  
Cultural Hero ◽  
The Way

AbstractIndigenous artists are introducing traditional knowledge practices to the contemporary art world. This article discusses the work of selected Indigenous artists and relays their contribution towards changing art discourses and understandings of Indigenous knowledge. Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau led the way by introducing ancient mythos; the gifted Carl Beam enlarged his oeuvre with ancient building practices; Peter Clair connected traditional Mi'kmaq craft and colonial influence in contemporary basketry; and Edward Poitras brought to life the cultural hero Coyote. More recently, Beau Dick has surprised international art audiences with his masks; Christi Belcourt’s studies of medicinal plants take on new meaning in paintings; Bonnie Devine creates stories around canoes and baskets; Adrian Stimson performs the trickster/ruse myth in the guise of a two-spirited character; and Lisa Myers’s work with the communal sharing of food typifies a younger generation of artists re-engaging with traditional knowledge.

scholarly journals The Persistence of Primitivism: Equivocation in Ernesto Neto’s A Sacred Place and Critical Practice

Arts ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 111
Author(s):  
Camila Maroja
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Art History ◽  
Native People ◽  
Amazon Rainforest ◽  
Critical Practice ◽  
Sacred Place ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Environmental Work ◽  
Global Art ◽  
Venice Biennale

During the 2017 Venice Biennale, the area dubbed the “Pavilion of the Shamans” opened with A Sacred Place, an immersive environmental work created by the Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto in collaboration with the Huni Kuin, a native people of the Amazon rainforest. Despite the co-authorship of the installation, the artwork was dismissed by art critics as engaging in primitivism and colonialism. Borrowing anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s concept of equivocation, this article examines the incorporation of both indigenous and contemporary art practices in A Sacred Place. The text ultimately argues that a more equivocal, open interpretation of the work could lead to a better understanding of the work and a more self-reflexive global art history that can look at and learn from at its own comparative limitations.

Who (or What) is an AI Artist?

Leonardo ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Kieran Browne
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Art History ◽  
Art Market ◽  
Art World ◽  
Significant Disagreement ◽  
History And Theory

Abstract The mainstream contemporary art world is suddenly showing interest in “AI art”. While this has enlivened the practice, there remains significant disagreement over who or what actually deserves to be called an “AI artist”. This article examines several claimants to the term and grounds these in art history and theory. It addresses the controversial elevation of some artists over others and accounts for these choices, arguing that the art market alienates AI artists from their work. Finally, it proposes that AI art's interactions with art institutions have not promoted new creative possibilities but have instead reinforced conservative forms and aesthetics.

Made in Basel? A commentary on the contemporary art world in Asia

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-186
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Waters
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Art World ◽  
Sociocultural Perspective ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Recent Emergence ◽  
Made In

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the recent emergence of contemporary art in Asia from a macro, sociocultural perspective. Design/methodology/approach This commentary is based on secondary research and recent visits to contemporary art centres in major cities across Asia. Findings The author argues that contemporary art in Asia emerges by extension of the Western contemporary art world and suggests that more must be done if Asia is to create a contemporary art world that is both internationally recognised and distinct from its Western precedent. Originality/value This commentary debunks the hyperbole surrounding contemporary art in Asia as a regional phenomenon and provides a critical examination of the global (power) dynamics at play.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document