scholarly journals Folds in the Fabric: Robert Morris in the 1980s

October ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 171 ◽  
pp. 77-114
Author(s):  
Kevin Lotery
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Robert Morris ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Anti Form

At the beginning of the 1980s, Robert Morris took a decisive and shocking turn. Abandoning the strategies of agency reduction, abstraction, and indeterminacy that had guided his practice since the 1960s, he began to make paintings instead. Architectural in scale and gaudy in their depictions of eviscerated human remains and post-apocalyptic landscapes, the new paintings trafficked in those myths of painting that Neo-Expressionism was just then resurrecting as bankable signs for a consumerist decade: expressivity, figuration, and narrative, among them. What, then, could unite the theorist of anti form—maker of the process-based, anti-object folds, tangles, and mounds of felt and thread waste—with the painter of the baroque, Neo-Expressionist daubs? This paper argues that the paintings of the 1980s, despite their seeming reversals, provide a key for understanding Morris's way of working from his earliest lead and felt projects forward. What they reveal, in short, is an oeuvre guided by a baroque logic of “the fold,” an aesthetic of non-invention that aimed, not at creating but at commandeering and multiplying, for better or worse, existing aesthetic and discursive structures, be they those of Conceptual art, post-Minimalism, or Neo-Expressionism.

Mobile Perception and the Automotive Prosthetic

Transfers ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charissa N. Terranova
Keyword(s):  
Urban Sprawl ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Robert Smithson ◽  
Martha Rosler ◽  
The World ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
And Linguistics

This essay focuses on a body of photoconceptual works from the 1960s and 1970s in which the automobile functions as a prosthetic-like aperture through which to view the world in motion. I argue that the logic of the “automotive prosthetic“ in works by Paul McCarthy, Dennis Hopper, Ed Ruscha, Jeff Wall, John Baldessari, Richard Prince, Martha Rosler, Robert Smithson, Ed Kienholz, Julian Opie, and Cory Arcangel reveals a techno-genetic understanding of conceptual art, functioning in addition and alternatively to semiotics and various philosophies of language usually associated with conceptual art. These artworks show how the automobile, movement on roads and highways, and the automotive landscape of urban sprawl have transformed the human sensorium. I surmise that the car has become a prosthetic of the human body and is a technological force in the maieusis of the posthuman subject. I offer a reading of specific works of photoconceptual art based on experience, perception, and a posthumanist subjectivity in contrast to solely understanding them according to semiotics and linguistics.

scholarly journals SPACE AS A CONTEXT IN DANIEL BUREN’S ART

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 301-322
Author(s):  
Tuğba RENKÇİ TAŞTAN
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
World Order ◽  
Art World ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Innovation Development ◽  
Traditional Art ◽  
The Social ◽  
Art Scene ◽  
The 1960S

20th century; it is a period in which two world wars took place and a new world order in human history occurred in many areas of innovation, development and transformation. After the war, the meaning, content and boundaries of art and the artist have been discussed, expanded and gained a new dimension and acceleration with the deep changes in the social, economic, political and cultural fields with the crisis brought on by the war. This complex period also manifested itself in the traditional art scene in France. The French artist Daniel Buren (b. 1938) has witnessed this process; by adopting the innovations in art with his productions, he has demonstrated his space-oriented conceptual works dating back to the present day in a period in which daily life accelerates with the mechanization of art practice and conceptual art movements are in succession. In this article, in order to comprehend the point of the artist and his productions from the beginning until today; the cultural environment in France after the World War II, the developments in the art world, the changes in the social field and the artistic dimensions of these changes are mentioned. The development and practices of the French artist Daniel Buren's artistic practice, policy, artistic attitude and style for the place, architecture, workshop and museum in the period from the second half of the 1960s to the present day are examined with examples with certain sources. In this context, the views and concepts that the artist advocates with his original productions are included. Finally, in the research, the evaluations were made in line with the sources and information obtained about the art adventure and development of the artist, and the innovations, contributions and different perspectives he offered about the art are discussed.

Brer Soul and the Mythic Being

2018 ◽  
pp. 76-98
Author(s):  
Tavia Nyong'o
Keyword(s):  
Performance Art ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The 1960S

Challenging accounts of black gender and sexuality that equate radicalism with misogynistic and patriarchal values, this chapter looks to the subversive cinema and performance art of the 1960s for prefigurations of the gender and sex nonconformity of today. Placing in counterpoint the theater and cinema of Melvin van Peebles and the performance and conceptual art of Adrian Piper, this chapter foregrounds the role of a funk epistemology in both cases. Contemporary queer and transgender art and aesthetics can only gain, this chapter argues, by acknowledging these works as sources of fabulation.

Robert Morris (1931–2018)

October ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 168 ◽  
pp. 166-176
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Working Relationship ◽  
Intensive Study ◽  
Robert Morris ◽  
Guggenheim Museum ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Two Bodies

This text, a series of reflections on the life and work of Robert Morris, draws from Jeffrey Weiss's long working relationship with the artist, which includes their collaboration on an intensive study project at the Guggenheim Museum. He gives chief consideration to two bodies of work: the Minimalist objects, conceived during the 1960s and refabricated throughout his life; and the Blind Time drawings, produced between 1973 and 2015. Weiss's account is based on a close consideration of material and technical concerns, which motivate speculations about the medium of time. Temporality is expressed in three ways: through strategic replication, which characterized the on-going production of “early” works; through the process of making, which is foregrounded in the drawings; and through the role of memory, a recurring thematic device in the practice overall.

Sites of Subjectivity: Robert Morris, Minimalism, and Dance

2004 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-130
Author(s):  
Virginia Spivey
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Object A ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Robert Morris ◽  
Dance Theater ◽  
Art Object ◽  
Visual Artist ◽  
The 1960S

Robert Morris's danceSite(Fig. 1) premiered in February 1964 at the Surplus Dance Theater in New York City. Choreographed and performed by Morris,Sitealso featured the visual artist Carolee Schneemann and several sheets of four-by-eight foot plywood. Although it may seem odd to include these wooden panels among the performers, they assumed an active role in the choreography. Ironically, it was Schneemann who provided the background scenery. Nude and covered in white paint, she sat motionless throughout the performance, recreating the pose and persona of Edouard Manet's famous 1863 painting ofOlympiawhile Morris manipulated the large wooden boards. In a graceful duet with inanimate partners, Morris spun the rectangular planes from a point on the ground, maneuvered them around his body, lifted them over his head, caressed their even form as he slowly moved his hand across one edge, and balanced the panels on his back as he moved across the stage. Not only did Morris never dance with Schneemann, he did not even seem to notice her.In a career spanning over forty years, Robert Morris has produced theoretical articles, paintings, videos, installations, and environmental art in addition to his work in dance; nevertheless, the American artist remains best known for his Minimalist sculptures of the 1960s (Figs. 2 and 3). Like the works of his colleagues Donald Judd and Carl Andre, Morris's spare, geometrical objects of that period were three-dimensional and called attention to issues of site and artistic context. They also resisted past artistic conventions based in subjective methods of composition, expressivity, and metaphor. Morris, however, distinguished himself among this group of visual artists by the emphasis he placed on the viewer's bodily relationship with the art object, a distinction that derives directly from his unique involvement in avant-garde dance.

scholarly journals Art as document: on conceptual art and documentation

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (6) ◽  
pp. 1149-1161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Berryman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Art History ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Material Base ◽  
History And Criticism ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Information Studies ◽  
The 1960S

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to bring the work of Seth Siegelaub (1941–2013) to the attention of document studies. Siegelaub was a pioneer of the conceptual art movement in New York in the 1960s, active as an Art Dealer, Curator and Publisher. He is remembered by art history for his exhibition catalogues, which provided a material base for intangible works of art. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a comparative approach to examine the documents of conceptual art, especially the exhibition catalogues produced by Siegelaub between 1968 and 1972. Drawing on literature from document theory and art history and criticism, it examines several of Siegelaub’s key exhibition catalogues and books. Findings Siegelaub’s theories of information have much in common with the documentalist tradition. Siegelaub’s work is important, not just for its potential to contribute to the literature of document theory. It also provides a point of dialogue between art history and information studies. Originality/value To date, the common ground between art and documentation has been explored almost exclusively from the perspective of art history. This paper is among the first to examine conceptual art from the perspective of document theory. It demonstrates potential for cross-disciplinary collaboration.

scholarly journals Easy but not weightless – Pop Art, conceptual art, and politics: the progressive art of Miklós Erdély and Tamás Szentjóby in the second part of the 1960s

KÜLÖNBSÉG ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Péter Kőhalmi
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Pop Art ◽  
The Political ◽  
Art And Politics ◽  
Art Scene ◽  
The 1960S

Miklós Erdély’s theory of freedom can be analysed from the perspective of his general thoughts on the dichotomy of life and freedom.  However, the article focuses on the problem of Erdély’s theory of freedom in the context of the political. If, as he claims, freedom exists in art, then what is the relation of his art to the political, the actual conditions of freedom? This question can only be explored if his work is seen in context, in the context of the contemporary art scene of the 1960s. The paper claims that in comparison with the early neoavantgard art of Szentjóbi Tamás and company, Erdély’s work is tame or easy but surely not weightless.

Conceptual and Performance Interventions

Collections ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 405-414
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Curatorial Practice ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Performance Interventions ◽  
The 1960S

Considers a variety of examples in which curatorial practice intersects and blurs with interventionism in art, including using billboards as a medium for artistic interference in public space (Shaked), translating and re-activating Regina Galindo's activist performances (Carolin), analyzing the overlapping and divergent agendas of conceptual art and curatorial practice in Zagreb and Paris during the 1960s and 1970s (Bago), and the “re-possession of perception” through curating carnival and procession (Tancons).

Conceptual Art and identity politics: from the 1960s to the 1990s

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nizan Shaked
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
New Left ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gay Liberation ◽  
Alternative Spaces ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Action Groups

This chapter asks how a precisely articulated set of practices, defined by artists in the 1960s as Conceptual Art, evolve into a broad notion of conceptualism, and how the latter had expanded into its present forms. It shows how, in the United States context, some of the most important strategies of conceptualism developed through the influence of contemporaneous politics, more specifically the transition from Civil Rights into Black Power, the New Left, the anti-war movement, feminism, and gay liberation, as well as what later came to be collectively named “identity politics” in the 1970s. A range of artists who have self-defined as conceptualists synthesised Conceptual analytic approaches with an outlook on identity formation as a means of political agency, and not as a representation of the self, a strategy that significantly expanded in the 1970s. Two major aspects of identity politics have impacted the field. The first, activist and administrative, consisted of protests against existing institutions, the developments of action groups and collectives, and the subsequent formulation of alternative spaces. The second was the bearing that it had on artistic strategy, form, and subject matter. This chapter focuses on practices that took a critical outlook on identity formation.

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