art 315 Issues in Contemporary Art

Shoot. I paused the recording. Anyway. If you did the if you, if you look at that one article, it mentioned something about his background. Augustine’s background as a Jew from the Ukraine and his family fleeing, fleeing discrimination in the home country. So there was that aspect to it, but I ran across another okay. Sorry about that. I did run across another article that talked about his time as a youth in LA and interactions that he had as a Jewish teenager with the KKK. So it actually was not something that was outside of his life experience. I didn’t expect you to know that, but I thought I would share that if you weren’t aware of it. Okay. So anyway, last time we met, we talked about the 990 three Whitney Biennial. This idea of identity politics and the kind of controversy over politics and art versus aesthetics. For lack of a better, a better way to describe it. As I said, that 990 three Whitney was a real watershed moment in contemporary art because things changed quite a bit. After that. What I would say, actually, the way I would describe it is that artists following that Whitney, following that 93, Whitney became quite gun shy of expressing themselves in any way. That’s smacked identity politics. And I can actually attest to that as a graduate student at the time and how the climate kind of really changed. I’m not sure that it’s necessarily a bad thing. I don’t know that people were, were silenced. Although at the time, people were very much artists and other cultural workers were very much talking about a chilling effect in the art world. And the fact that artists, not just visual artists, were artists across all genres. Felt. Or less free to express themselves the way they want it. So I am going to show you my PowerPoint, which is relative to readings from or for tonight. Again, I like that image. So that the one article I gave you was called the mirror the other. And this image is a work by Lowry stoke Sims, barnacles by law we stoke Sims. And it refers to in psychology what is known as the mirror stage. So I don’t know if any of you have taken psychology classes or if you’re at all familiar with this. But the key here is this idea that as we develop as individuals, our first sense of individuality comes when we see a reflection of ourselves in the mirror this way, it’s called the mirror stage. The person who sort of named this and identified it and discussed it, is a French psychologist named Jacques Lacan LA CAN, and it’s called the mirror stage. In this particular piece, this photograph addresses that, this idea, the woman is saying, looking into the mirror, the black woman asked Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fineness of the mall? The mirror says, Snow White, you black *****, and don’t you forget it. So what the article talks about is this idea that we’re actually encountering a lot these days, which is that representation matters. And so to begin, I just want to talk about why representation matters. I mean, I think we have some obvious, obvious ideas as to why representation matters. But there are also kind of scholarly discussions about it. And one is this idea of the mirror stage, which is that the society around, around, around us helps inform who we see ourselves as, right, and how we define ourselves. And so it’s important that the society reflect us, meaning ourselves as individuals. In ways that actually derived from our experiences. Okay, So actually I’ll go back to the idea of the panopticon. Remember the, the, the prison guards in the center and then everybody, all the cells out to the periphery. So the idea is you don’t just have one source of information, but you have multiple sources that are allowing for a full a full sense of or a full range of information. We’d looked at. We looked at this piece. Actually, I think we, we we looked at this piece. And this is the same artist. Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m blanking on her name. Oh, actually because it’s two different RD. Sorry. So this is this is all Lowry stoked Sims. And then this is **** it. I’ll come back. I’ll, I’ll remember. Anyway. So you remember when we looked at this image, we talked about how the artist is offering us words with these images. And essentially asking us how the image affects how we, how we understand the word, right? Obviously implying slavery and such. Now this is a different artist and this is the name that I’m trying to remember. If she’s actually I’m Lorna Simpson. This is the thank you. Lorna Simpson did this piece called wigs. And what she’s doing, obviously, she’s showing hair pieces for African-American women or hair pieces African-American women wear. And the idea here, and what these artists are doing is dealing with this issue of representation right there, wanting to put images out there that affirm an African American identity. And then I went, oops, I put this, this image and just to remind you of the artists, Adrian Piper. Remember she did these drawings with ads from the New York Times playing on the idea of white people, sphere of black people. But the, the work that I wanted to show you is this piece of hers called my colleague white. And let me, I’ll give you a minute to read it while I yell at my dog, hang Okay. So I don’t know if you recall, but actually, I don’t think I have. Adrian Piper is mixed race. And so she’s fair-skinned and oftentimes people would just assume that she’s white. And that’s what she’s commenting on with this piece. Which is that like our basketball analogy. A women’s, women’s basketball and men’s basketball. There’s a white normative. So because she did not appear to people to be obviously black, they assume she was white. And then, as she says in her, in her card here, you know, that fact exposed to a lot of races kind of experiences. And so this is, like I said, the piece is titled my calling card, and it was an actual calling card that she carried with her that she would, she would give to people. This is a painting by someone whose work I enjoy. His name is Robert Scott. And this particular painting is called The Alabama. I don’t know if you guys pick up the reference. I hope you do because it’s very funny. This is a reference to Picasso’s painting. They, myself, Debbie knew, which was a sort of cubist painter portrait of these women. But anyway, cause Scott does these really interesting paintings and this is George Washington Carver crossing the Delaware. What calls God is doing with these, with these paintings. Again, with this idea of representation is, he is pointing out in a humorous way how African Americans have been systematically excluded from, from this history. So demos Aldebaran young, he’s obviously talking about contemporary art and the lack of African-American presence there. And then also the lack of African American presence in history. American American history. So the first article talks a lot about representation, about this based on this idea of the mirror image from the con. And then I also gave you, I don’t know why it keeps doing that. I gave you an article by Cornell West. If you’ve taken any kind of courses, you probably have heard of him. Or even if you watch CNN, he’s often the scholar that they go to to talk about race issues, African-American issues. Sorry. And so this is, this is the issue of representation that we’re talking about. And this is from 1990. So this is being written at the time of all of this kind of identity politics in Art, among other things, which we’re going to talk about. The Modern Black diaspora, problematic of invisibility. A nameless NAS can be understood as the condition, relative lack of black power to represent themselves, to themselves and others as complex human beings. And thereby the contest, the bombardment of negative degrading stereotypes put forward by white supremacist ideologies. I think an important aspect to note about this is the representation of themselves to themselves. So we’re not just talking about images that go out to the broader society, but it’s images that you see of yourself. And that’s where the very first image that I showed you about, snow White and the mirror is really kind of hard-hitting because it is reminding us that how we see ourselves has a lot to do with how society sees us, right? And then that is an important reason why all of these artists of color, women artists, gay artist, why they’re telling their stories is because they want, they want to represent themselves to themselves and to other people with the kind of complexity that they, that they embody. Not just these kind of stereotypes or simple ideas that we might see in the media. Anyway. So that’s kind of the gist of the Cornell West article, but obviously he goes much more in depth. There’s a history there. There’s a lot of other information behind the kind of main idea. And this is 0. This is a quote. You may have seen it. I think this came around came out around the time of George Floyd or Charlottesville. I’m not sure. But the idea of representation, especially like in the 990 three Whitney was not, I mean, granted, there was definitely Angry, Angry work in that 1993 Whitney. But the point I think of that anger was not necessarily directed at, you know, it wasn’t destruction. It wasn’t about destruction, it was about exclusion. And to represent oneself does not mean at the cost of someone else’s representation, right? And that’s why I feel like this. This quote is a good kind of summary of that representation question. Okay? So one of the things that we see around this time, lots of, lots of things are going on. So our I think it’s kind of like a flash point at this period in time. And it lets us see what is happening in one of the things that starts to occur as a level of censorship and a discussion of censorship. But actually, as I’m going to show you here, has occurred in the past. But I guess not really in a way that was conclusive because the issues were coming up again. So I’m showing you a conclusion from Roth v. United States. You can see is from 950 seven. And this was one of the major court cases that involved this idea of obscenity and defining obscenity and the relationship of obscenity to free speech, OK, to the First Amendment. And it’s very interesting, I don’t know if you all realize this. But the Supreme Court determined that it is within the purview of the government to determine or to decide what is obscene and therefore, what can be shared socially and whatnot. In this particular case, Roth v. United States, it had to deal had to do with materials being sent in the mail. And while the second sentence there. And then I’m going to go into the next case. The court determined that the test of whether materials were obscene was whether to the average person applying contemporary community standards. The dominant theme of the material as a whole, appealed to prurient interests. Meaning, what would your average person be offended right, by, by the content of this material? And if so, then it would be deemed obscene. So you can see that that’s a problem if you are not the average person, right? If you don’t fall into that realm of, you know, sort of average or normal. You know, what, what happens then? And here. So this is very specific history of the application of laws designed to suppress the, I’ve seen demonstrates convincingly that the power of government, the power of government can be invoked under them against great art or literature, scientific treatises or works exciting social controversy. Mistakes of the past prove that there’s a strong countervailing interests to be considered in the freedoms guaranteed by the first 14th Amendments. So, in other words, you know, these these are issues that can be can be brought to the court and can be considered at a federal and a federal level. Anybody happen to recognize this image? Do you know the artist? Nobody. It’s probably this image is less, it’s not wonder of his more famous images. Whereas this one is, anybody know the artist now? Or maybe you don’t know how to spell it. So this is Robert Maple Thorpe. And the reason that I’m showing you this in the context of obscenity and court cases, is that a very famous case occurred in the early nineties. I think it was actually 990 where the city of Cincinnati sued the Contemporary Art Center for exhibiting Robert Maple Thorpe work. And the thing is that Maple Thorpe. He was a photographer and you can see, I went into photography because it seemed like the perfect vehicle for commenting on the madness of today’s existed. So just like any other artist, he was addressing the times, the world around him. It’s just so happens that he was gay. He had later in life contracted aids that he, that he ended up dying of. But his work addressed his his world. And the bullwhip photograph was as much his world as the the Lily lily photograph. But at the time, people, enough people, at least in the city of Cincinnati, were concerned about the nature of the work and called it into question as I’ve seen. And so here I’m starting another case for you, Miller v. California. You can see from 1973. And this is very interesting. The standard that’s being set for how, you know, the log determines what is obscene or not. So it’s three there are three criteria. One we saw that comes from route Roth, whether the average person applying contemporary community standards would find that work taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest rate per year. It means, wow, what’s a good way? Distasteful isn’t really the right word for it. Prurient means like that it applies to really base kind of are more evil, evil propensities. Something like that. Be whether the work depicts are described in a patently offensive way. Sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, right? Because state law, state laws to prohibit certain sex acts like sodomy. And see whether the work taking us a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. So you can see there are real issues with the way these criteria are put forward. This idea of community standards and what is offensive. And then this idea of literary, artistic, political, or scientific value, right? That was the question that we, we looked at last time. This issue of quality, right? And so what was happening in the 1993 Whitney was that people were questioning the quality of the work. They were looking at the work and Saying it lacked what? Item C there says lack serious artistic value. And I think one of the things around that 93 Whitney is that because the criticisms of it were so vehement. They were so they were loud and they were everywhere. I think it really allowed people to feel free to condemn that type of work, or at least to criticize it. But as in the case with this Mapplethorpe exhibit, that criticism actually came to result in legal action, right? I mean, ultimately, the case was it wasn’t dismissed, but the jury found the Contemporary Art Center and the, and the curator not guilty. So I hesitate to say that more level heads prevail. And there was not there was not any obscenity. Identify or determine in this case. Okay. So another another artist whose work came up at this time. And I think at least one person mentioned this. Mentioned this in his, in his essay. This is undress Serrano. Whoops. Okay, Sorry, I don’t know what happened there. So people did not necessarily have an issue with this piece until they they saw the title of it. So Jack, you want to tell us what the title of this pieces? Yeah. It’s called His Christ. Christ. I mean, yeah. Okay. And why is it called Why is it called Christ? Because it is a large plastic container filled with the artist. And there’s a little plus that Jesus inside of it. Yes. Thank you. So I mean, you can, you can understand how this was offensive to Christians in particular, right? I mean, under Serrano actually did a whole series of work around or with bodily fluids. So this was not unique in that. But it was. It was controversial. And here’s, here’s his take on it. Since this work, since it works by the abstraction, I was also amazed and please if the fluids have life of their own, but when people ask why use fluids, first of all, I feel I’m painting with light and the fluids, besides being symbolic of life’s vital fluids loaded with meaning also give me beautiful light, right? So, I mean, there is this formal aspect to his work. Formal, as in the formal qualities of a work. The visual, the visual kind of physical qualities of it, right? But, you know, what people were seeing was an icon of their, of their faith being submerged in urine. And so that was that was controversial. It did not actually result in a court case like the Maple Thorpe exhibition did. But it was very controversial at the time. And I just don’t have it too. Show you this reference image. This is by the painter Paul Gauguin. And under Serrano talks about this as a kind of inspiration for his **** Christ image, which is, I think Gauguin actually titled this yellow Christ. So it is very clearly related. But again, this image does not have the same implications as, as the other one. But really if you want to go there, I mean, you can also question, you know, what our issue is with bodily fluids. Right? But I won’t I won’t engage that necessarily. Okay. So another thing that happens around this time is what has become known as the NEA. For the NEA, as you probably are aware, is the National Endowment for the Arts. And in 990, actually, I think it was maybe a little bit later, but in the early nineties, for performance artist Karen Finley, John Fleck, Holly Hughes, and Tim Miller were awarded individual artist grants by the National Endowment for the Arts. National Endowment for the Arts. However, let me get to my however, before I show you the images. However, the I can’t remember who initiated it. But there were conservative members in Congress who found out about the work. And I mean, probably the most famous of these was Jesse Helms from North Carolina. But what happened was these artists were awarded the grant and then Congress took them away. Jesse Helms and company said that the work was obscene, right? And we and we just looked at what the legal precedent was regarding obscenity. And they, they took the money, they took the grant money away from the artists. Now the artists in turn suit, right? They said we, you set out getting this money. A panel of experts, you know, Jerry, the work and decided it was it was worthy of NEA grant. And now you’re saying it’s not. So they sued. And then this is I’m just going to show you images of the artists. This is Holly Hughes. This is a piece by Tim Miller. This is John Fleck. And this is maybe the most notorious of the four, Karen Finley. Now the other three artists are all gay and their work performance artists. The other three are all gay and their work all addresses life as a gay person or aspects of gay life. And Karen Finley is a feminist activist. And this image is from the piece that was most discussed in this obscenity trial. And it involved her rubbing or coding her nude body in chocolate. So if nothing else, these congressmen lacked a sense of humor. But clearly they felt that this was against Community Standards of obscenity. And actually so this is just more information for you about what happened here. Three of the rejected artists or gain deal with homosexual issues in their work. The fourth, Karen Finley and outspoken feminist, the endowment had been under attack since 1989 for funding supposedly lewd work. For rejected artists have continually been singled out by conservatives in the past. The national campaign for freedom of expression, along with other groups, have rerouted NEA funds and other money to help support and fight for the artists. A spokesperson for the NEA said this would be a direct violation of grant regulations. So anyway, you can see. This was a petition by Karen Findley at all. The NEA for 1998. The short of it is that the artist did have their grant returned to them. So in court, they, they won. They won there. They won their case. However, the more consequential result of this case, which we live with today was the end of NEA funding for individual artist. Okay, that’s, that is a big deal. You know, those of you who are artists understand the importance of grant money to artists who need it to do work. And at the time, the National Endowment for the Arts was one of the major funders for individual artist. And then finally, this case, given all of the arguments and discussion around what is obscene, what is an obscene? They they just did not They just did not. The NEA actually agreed. They didn’t want to deal with it anymore. It’s just like, how can we, how can we support individual artists and then constantly be questioned and scrutinized for our decisions. So what happens now these days is that money, NEA funding now goes to organizations. And the organizations are then responsible for doling it out to appropriate recipients. So that is a very huge consequence of this climate in the arts at the time of the early 90’s. Again, keep in mind, I mean, we are talking about the Reagan era. So I mean, this was a very conservative time in anyways politics. And then here’s just an interesting quote from Karen Finley. Keep in mind too, that this is all very contrary to what the popular opinion of art is, right? At the time, or actually even maybe still. And then opinion of art has to do with modernism, right? And this kind of what is special about the artist and what is special about the work of art. And none of, none of this work or these artists fit into into that mold or conform to those ideas. So Howard presiding is a cultural, this, a cultural critic, is an art critic, writer about art. And this is the takeaway, his takeaway from the 990 three Whitney. To be irrelevant artist today it seems one must espouse a political ideology. This ideology must be the obvious subjective ones are. The shift has usually occurred at expensive, the formal, the formal being equated with the aesthetic. So really what happens at this time is that there’s very much a kind of false dichotomy established between form and content, right? Meaning this work that is regarded as identity politics is all content and no form. Because if it had formed that there would be aesthetic value to the work, right? But you know what really, getting back to the issue of representation, you know, what really is at stake here is what is considered aesthetic, right? When we have artists who are basically saying that there are other forms of aesthetics which may involve political ideology. But that view of aesthetics does not jive with popular ideas from modernism, which is still an overriding or overarching belief in what art is and should be. So again. So we have this kind of conflict, Our, this dichotomy between form and content. And if we go with that, form wins out basically. So I just wanted to wait, let me go back. This isn’t the best place for this slide. So Jesse Helms, I said was the senator that was spearheading a lot of this. But so these ideas. A form and content are, according to the Guerrilla Girls, are really kind of misguided. And into Guerrilla Girls Form date, they point out these statistics that show that while maybe this Whitney Biennial showcase a lot of, a lot of work that was regarded as political. By enlarge the art world is still a conservative place, right? And that’s why that’s what this Guerrilla Girls piece addresses. Okay, So obviously, one way that we can look at the change is to see what happens with the following Whitney in 995. And I think I did mentioned this last time that the following Whitney was much more conservative. I can’t remember where this came from. I don’t know if it was from the catalog, but yes. So we can oh, there it was from art form. No matter what you think about much of the work that’s talking about the 995 Whitney. The curator, Curtis, premised on art. Above all, looks good, right? So we’re talking aesthetics. This isn’t to say that brains and build your brand never come in the same package. But rather to observe that this bi-annual reinstates the old form versus content dichotomy. Given protests as a framework, there isn’t one piece in the biennial that angrily strives to make a marginalized voice heard that confronts, implicate, defeats or condemns. Right? So basically we’re going back to the way things work. Okay? I say, Okay, that you’ve said your piece. Now, let’s go back to our the way we we know I didn’t like it. And so yes, there was a ton of painting in this Whitney. And also, I don’t have the statistic in front of me. But there is a very interesting statistic about the age of the artist. The average age of the 990 three Whitney was like 27 or something. Yeah. Those were young artist. The average age in this 995 Whitney I think was like in the forties. So a lot of the artists were already pretty well established. And definitely the work. Is more kind of like art oriented for lack of a better expression. Anyway. So this is a painting by Katherine Katherine Murphy. We do I have all right. Never mind. I won’t go there. This is gosh, I don’t know how old she would’ve been in 1995, but this is a painter named Agnes Martin. Actually do really enjoy her work. Older artist, you can see abstract work. But into modernist fashion. She talks a lot about nature. And now natures and inspiration for what she dies. This is Bryce Martin. We get a lot of this kind of organic abstraction. This is Philip calf. He’s considered, or I guess his era of painting is called decorative painting. But not in a pejorative sense. And then this is sort of to my mind, the king of the organic abstraction is Terry winters. Back in the day he was really one of my painting heroes. This is not one of my favorite pieces of his. But these are all fairly large, large works me carrying winters as paintings. I like wall, wall size. Philip TAP also. This guy. You might see some of this work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Because he wears a crown. Now you threw me off site wildly. Site wildly. Has these huge abstractions. And he has the work in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It’s based on a Greek mythology. Okay, so just, I’m going to get back to Jack’s question about what makes cherry winners King. Abstract, organic, abstract expressionism. I think he, at the time, his name was synonymous with, with that kind of painting. I mean, I think when people talked about it, talked about kind of organic abstraction. He was, he was the man. And also, interestingly, graduate programs in art, MFA programs. I find often have types. And one of the, one of the types was this kind of organic abstraction. Allah, Terry Winters. And I would often see at least one of them and various MFA programs. So anyway, I’m not sure if that makes him king necessarily, but he was definitely definitely a force. Oh, and I love this because this artist, and I’m going to show you a couple of other artists also who were in both Whitney’s. So the 93 Whitney and this 95 Whitney. I can’t remember who helped me out last time. I think it was Adam. I showed a painting by Sue Williams, who’s this artist in 93 Whitney. She had these kind of kind of cartoony images, also text addressing issues around domestic abuse. And more broadly. No issues related to women. Now in 995, she’s back in the Whitney. So to Whitney’s in a row. But we have this work which is much more abstract in nature. So I actually don’t know anything about this piece. I mean, just looking at the at the imagery. It probably is not far removed from the concerned she’s had previously. It’s just that it’s less maybe in your face about it. This is Sue Williams. And I think that as a point to be taken when I talk about how things change after the 93 Whitney and this particular period in time. It’s not that identity politics per se goes anywhere or that any of these issues are not important to artist. But I think the way we see them portrayed and expressed is quite different. It is definitely less in your face. I think it requires a little more, a little more thought, perhaps, a little more knowledge to be able to approach the work. And that’s why I say myth, maybe not such a bad thing that we had this kind of change in the tides at the time. Because I don’t think the content has been devalued, but I do. Well. But that’s the conservative side of me. No, I can’t help but be an old modernist because that’s how, that’s how I’ve been educated in how I’ve been raised. Anyway for what it’s worth. This is great. Except I can’t remember her name now. I know her first name is Elizabeth. Mary’s. My me let me see if I can. I can. Okay. It’ll come to me. So this is really fascinating piece. You can see. I don’t know if you could tell, but so these are all mattresses and they’re like all tied up and then tied together and suspended in this space. But if you look carefully among the mattresses are cakes and donuts. So here’s cakes. Here. You see there’s a donut. And as you can see my cursor. But yes, so this …