Readings: Bruce Nauman- Hal Foster; The Kimbell's new Modigliani; Michelle White on "Between Land and Sea"

BRUCE NAUMAN- HAL FOSTER

• 1917: Marcel Duchamp- "art is whatever the artist names as such"

Bruce Nauman:

-"art was whatever an artist did in his studio"
-"art became more of an activity and less of a product"
-"failure is a persistent theme in Nauman"
-"relies on his own body, his presence is not guaranteed"/ "'withdrawal as an art form'"
-Retrospective @ MoMA "Disappearing Acts"- absence is conveyed
-favorite stand in for the figure = chair
-concern w "'underside and backside of things'" = central to early work =saw humanity as "steeped in misunderstanding and cruelty...aims to humanise us through the bits of our being that often seem the most inhuman"

1960s: Nauman, Serra, Hesse stressed process over product (led them to Jasper Johns)

-what they got from Johns:
   "foregrounded art as making...used simple devices like stencils and rulers"
   "'sometimes it's necessary to state the obvious'"/"meaning is never simple"
-Johns led Nauman to Duchamp (casts parts of the body)
   "there's a kind of restraint and morality in Johns' that [Nauman] admired" --> "transformed this sufferance into resistance: 'doing things you don't particularly want to do...to find out why you're resisting'" --> studio = stage for psyche turned inside out

• Nauman's motivation: anger & frustration... 1970s: work took on violent edge, "locates this aggression in humour and sexuality"
• early 1970s: "period of neo-imperial adventures under Reagan and Thatcher and authoriarian crackdowns" --> work w steel cages, claustrophobic corridors... oppressive sense of discipline and punishment, security and surveillance" --> shows thin line btwn perceptual experiment & behaviourist manipulation 

-psychic, political, technological, scientific = "all rooted in a fundamental splitting of the self"
-"our mirror image...is actually divided and alien, and that narcissism easily flips into aggression"

Video art
Rosalind Krauss: "aesthetics of narcissism"
Nauman: saw relay btwn camera & monitor, self and image as delayed & sometimes broken; explored breaking up of body & ego
compare to pollack's action & horizontal canvas- he dances around the canvas

• theatre of cruelty: "impotence triggers violence in a nihilistic way"

In class discussion: 

-action vs. performance

• Nauman's "Dance or exercise on the perimeter of a square"

-making a bad joke calling it square dance

-repetition & geometry

-Nauman has a studio & instead of just making art, he says anything he does in the studio is art (illogical step) --> creates possibility & a situation in which almost anything can be art, pushing boundaries, makes things visible as art

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THE KIMBELL'S NEW MODIGLIANI

Kimbell Art Museum director: Eric Lee 

• Kimbell’s recent acquisition of a rare Amadeo Modigliani sculpture, Head (c. 1913)

-only about 27 Modigliani sculptures survive

-gift from collector Gwendolyn Weiner

-first modern sculpture in the Kimbell’s collection

-round & elongated forms/heads (moved back & forth btwn the 2 styles)

-strong link btwn ivory coast work & Modigliani work (roundness)

-in addition to african masks, Modigliani looked at cycladic, greek, egyptian art

-resemblance to celtic head

-jacques lipschitz (about Modigliani): "taken w the notion that sculpture was sick...too much modeling in clay, too much mud... start carving again, direct carving in stone"

-chisel marks all over the sculpture, "look like three dimensional brushstrokes of cezanne"

-"stone itself made very little difference, the important thing was to give the carved stone the feeling of hardness"

-known as a painter now but considers himself a sculptor

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MICHELLE WHITE ON "BETWEEN LAND AND SEA"

• Michelle White's Menil exhibition “Between Land and Sea: Artists of the Coenties Slip”

-"looks at the early work of Chryssa, Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, Lenore Tawney, and Jack Youngerman, all of whom who lived in the Coenties Slip...neighborhood set apart from the rest of the Manhattan art world"

-considers moments of communication and influence

-Coenties Slip: lower seaport of lower Manhattan

-why did so many artists congregate there? it was removed & away from midtown & heterosexual environment; remove self from more mainstream trends & abstraction

-these artists were looking to natural world to derive abstraction; instead of removing nature, they were bringing it back in

teasel- Ellsworth Kelly, 1949

seaweed- lenore tawney, 1961
fiberwork
articulating aquatic plants by drawing w thread

horizon- agnes martin, 1960
language of landscape
tension btwn abstraction & representation
mountain-like forms

Rochetaillée- Jack Youngerman, 1953
light reflecting off the side of a rocky cliff
made in paris

rouleau blue- ellsworth kelly, 1951

• deriving abstract forms from looking out at the world

untitled- jack youngerman, 1955
tension btwn abstraction & figuration
natural forms seeping in

tablet #65- ellsworth kelly, 1960s

• images of brooklyn bridge; most of the artists' studios have view of the ocean & bridge

tablet #213- ellsworth kelly, 1950s

• document of tracing the origins of kelly's abstract paintings; forms are already invented & he's just seeking it out in the world

small white letters- chryssa
spent time w agnes martin
about how light moves across the surface
light reflecting off of water as an influence?

cycladic book no. 5- chryssa, 1955
white tablets

compare to:

the book- agnes martin, 1959
white forms seen as a book but also holes in brooklyn bridge

compare to:

coenties slip- robert indiana, 1960

GOG- robert indiana, 1960
came across brass stencils

gingko- robert indiana, 1959
gesso on board
gingko leaves
about relationship w ellsworth kelly