Sol LeWitt : Wall Drawings (1968 + )

Sol LeWitt is seen as the primary influence upon both the Minimal and Conceptual art movements in 1960s USA and wrote a manifesto for Minimal Art… which was not a long document.

Much of LeWitt’s art is superficially similar to the Suprematist aesthetics of Malevich, though these two approaches are ideologically at odds. Whereas Malevich used simple, non-representational geometrics to approach grand spiritual and social concepts, LeWitt attempted to create art that was nothing more than what the viewer directly experiences in their encounter with the work. This was the essence of Minimalism. LeWitt wanted art that referenced nothing but the work itself – a contained reality of the piece. Art that was not a symbol or indicator of something else, yet achieved the satisfying grace and gravitas of other ‘high art’.

Like Duchamp, LeWitt saw, not the end-product, but the concept behind the art as of prime importance and described the concept as a ‘machine’ that creates the art. He then became fascinated with the idea of transmitting the concept in a pure form which could then be interpreted and re-interpreted by others.

Gallery 2 of the Centre Pompidou-Metz during the 2012 Sol LeWitt retrospective
exhibition: Wall drawings from 1968 - 2007 (source: Wikimedia Commons)

In his series of wall drawings, which he began in 1968 and continued to develop until his death in 2007, he wrote sets of instructions which were sent to galleries where assistants or gallery staff would follow them, step by step, using various media to draw directly onto the walls in the exhibition space. Most of these wall drawings were created using a limited visual vocabulary of horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines, often in graphite pencil, sometimes using coloured crayons and inks. Some of these instructions were highly detailed containing dimensions and precise angles measured from defined points. Others were deliberately vague, such as Wall Drawing 103 the instructions for which were: “Not straight, vertical lines, from floor to ceiling, using as much wall area as is determined by the draftsperson.”

Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawings were installation art: they would vary from venue to venue depending upon the dimensions and shapes of the available gallery walls. Although the concept was clearly expressed, the results were adaptable and varied due to many factors including the size of the wall, the skill of the practitioners and their personal interpretation of the instructions. Small errors and inconsistencies would also occur during the execution of the drawings, and so the same concept could result in different outcomes each time. These works were also largely unsaleable, being drawn directly onto the walls, and were erased at the end of the exhibitions. However, anyone possessing the instructions could recreate them… You or I could have a Sol LeWitt Wall Drawing in our own homes on any available wall we wanted it – we just need the instructions expressing the concept and our own responses to that concept.

In some ways LeWitt removed the hand of the artist from the creative equation. His instructions still exist, although he does not, yet his works can be created anew and the resultant drawings can be considered as original now as they ever were.

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Excellent site hosted at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art presenting a retrospective of LeWitt's wall drawings. Plenty of images and info including an 'audio-tour' (free to download)...

Marcel Broodthaers: Musée d'Art Moderne, Départment des Aigles / Museum of Modern Art, Department of Eagles (1968)

The Tate has several works by Broodthaers in their collection, viewable on-line with accompanying text.

You can read the article Marcel Broodthaers, The Living Mirror, by Valery Oisteanu...

Robert Smithson: Spiral Jetty (1970)

Read the revised and expanded version of this article for free HERE

The official Robert Smithson site is an excellent resource...

Click on the image above for reviews or to buy this excellent book devoted to this hugely significant work

Click on the image below for more info or to by an insightful critique of Smithon's works...

Daido Moriyama: Stray Dog (1971)

Coming in at number eight in my Top Ten Pieces of Art, read my blog entry at I'M HOT GOAT...

Click image above for reviews or to buy this (region 1 NTSC) DVD documentary with narration by Moriyama about his approach and attitude to photographing the world...

Click on the image below for reviews or to buy this overview of his work

David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust (1973)

Click image above to buy CD of the album, 'The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars'

Click on the image below for info or to buy DVD movie of the historic 'last performance' of Ziggy...

Oscar Wilde said, “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

The character of Ziggy Stardust was created and played by David Bowie – a parallel personality that is both fictional and biographical. With the 1973 album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, Bowie examines the outsider role (roll) of rock stars, and other such artists: characters that exist in extremis for the vicarious enjoyment of the mass audience, an audience who may fantasise about living such a lifestyle, yet welcome the ultimate ‘morality-tale’ (self) destruction of such characters.

Ziggy has clear parallels with Thomas Jerome Newton, a character created by Walter Tevis in his 1963 novel, The Man Who Fell to Earth. This strong connection landed Bowie the starring role in Nicolas Roeg’s 1976 film adaptation of the book and music originally composed by Bowie with the film’s soundtrack in mind later appeared on his album, Low (1977).

In this way the concept of Ziggy Stardust can be seen as a result of creative collaboration and as part of a cycle that ‘feeds-back’ into complementing one of its influences. This is a fine example of Post-Modern cross-referencing and could also be seen as a near definitive work of Pop Art. The concept spans across different mass media – literature, popular music, theatre, cinema – and spills into the secondary cultural network of criticism, reportage and hype. Ziggy Stardust became established as a character of modern mythology.

In Bowie, the characters of Stardust and Newton instantly became fused and can be seen as facets of the same archaetype. Both characters become seduced by the excesses of the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle and are ultimately ‘loners’. It is ambiguous whether Ziggy Stardust is an alien from outer space or if he is, temporarily, the conduit for an extraterrestrial consciousness. Whichever he is, he is privy to the fact that the world will end in just five years time and chooses to communicate to the human race through the medium of pop, broadcasting a message of peace and harmony. There is hope that, even if the planet is doomed, its inhabitants could be redeemed before their demise.

Thomas Jerome Newton is definitely an alien who has been sent to Earth in a last-ditch attempt to save his own parched planet of Anthea. His mission is either to prepare the earth to receive his planet’s refugees, or construct space vessels capable of transporting much needed water back to his homeworld. He quickly builds an impressive business portfolio of cutting-edge technology companies and products, though also begins to realise that he will be unable to complete his mission. Poignantly, he writes songs and records groundbreaking electronic rock music that he hopes will carry his lyrics out into space where his distant family will, perhaps, hear his voice once more…

With Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie created the template for the Modern rock star. He was image-conscious in his public projection, utilising theatrical make up and costume design. His definitive manifestation of Glam Rock played with gender ambiguity and contrasted this with ‘cock-rock’ posturing. He changed the face of rock’n’roll, elevating it to an art form and setting a benchmark for those who were to follow, also foreshadowing important transmedia genres such as Cyberpunk and Futuregoth. Ziggy Stardust remains a pertinent multi-media ‘essay’ about ‘The Other’ and otherness.

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The artist's own website...
Lots of images and info also at David Bowie WonderWorld - an approved fan-run site.

Click on image below for info or to buy this richly illustrated book, written by Bowie himself...

David Bowie Is ...

The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, hosted a major retrospective exhibition based around the life and works of David Bowie (it ran from 23 March until 11 August, 2013) click here to find out more.

Joseph Beuys: "I Like America and America Likes Me" aka Coyote (1974 – 1976)

Click on image above for book info or to buy the book

Rated by many (this author included) as one of the most important works of twentieth century art, this is a complex piece that incorporates aspects of performance, installation, photography and conceptual art. Joseph Beuys was flown into the USA from Germany. Upon his arrival, he was wrapped in felt and carried from the plane on a stretcher into an awaiting ambulance that delivered him to the warehouse that was to become the René Block Gallery, in New York. Here he was gurneyed to a room on the second floor where a cage had been constructed. Beuys shared this cage with a wild coyote for three days, before being once again wrapped in felt and ambulanced back to the airport and carried onto his departure flight.

For this event, there was no audience, though a photographer recorded the situations throughout. After the event, a selection of these photographs were exhibited in galleries and later published in the book titled, Coyote (1976). So, where and when did the art happen? What is the actual art here? Is it the performance, the temporary installation, the photographs in the gallery, the internationally published book?

Beuys proposed that we never actually see art, we can only have an individual experience of it which may be triggered by the artefacts that represent it, amongst many other factors. Art itself happens in two places: the mind of the artist and the mind of the audience… For example, the fifteen years in the life of Leonardo Da Vinci, his thoughts and actions, comprise the art that the Mona Lisa is a record of, though the artefact is not per se the art itself, just a conduit from artist to audience where the art continues.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Beuys often produced Vitrines. These were glass cases in which he collected and displayed items used during his performances, objects that had become imbued with symbolic, ritual and personal meaning. Each Vitrine contained items that related to one another and combinations of these Vitrines were exhibited in galleries. These exhibitions presented items in the same way that museums present ancient artefacts or scientific specimens, and also resembled the altar reliquaries of saints found in some cathedrals.

Approaching Coyote as an aesthetic experience is rewarding enough, the black and white photographs are beautifully composed and technically adept, with well balanced formal elements and a lovely range of grey tones that lose no detail through white-out or shadow. As images alone, the piece is a Surrealist work of two non-contextual elements being brought together to create some sort of synthesis.

Coyote is an artwork that may be simple to describe, yet the meanings and interpretations seem endless. The use of an ambulance implies that there is an injury or sickness, though the patient it delivers becomes the shamanistic medicine man in a series of random and ritualistic interactions, with an animal, that could be a symbolic healing process. During the performance part of this work, the relationship between Beuys and the coyote changes. To begin with the animal mistrusts the human and there are many photographs of it shredding the heavy felt sheets that Beuys used to protect himself, or of Beuys using the shepherds crook to fend off the dog. Later they become accustomed to each others presence, and later still there are photographs of the two cuddling up and sharing food. Two elements, neither of which is in their natural environment, have been artificially brought together. The initial conflict is eventually resolved and a harmony is achieved. All this took place on a visit to America during which Beuys did not actually ‘set foot’ on the continent. He remained isolated and apart, the only thing of that land he directly experienced and interacted with was the coyote.

Beuys and the coyote could represent the human and its animal nature, the artificial and the natural, the immigrant and the native, the intellect and the emotions, the European and the American, almost any two things that have a potential to be in opposition or harmony... documented in  black and white.

This work is part of what Beuys termed the Extended Art of Social Sculpture. Part of this concept is that the work is extended by the viewers, who become participants in the creative act. His overall motivation was to create a continuum that allows people to exist as creative beings. So, the art of Coyote did not happen within that room, it was not recorded in the photographs, it is not in the pages of the book that commemorates the events. These things are like totems that Beuys, as shaman, presented in his ritual. The art did not happen, but continues to happen within the minds of those involved, which now includes you… 

MORE:

In-depth research article by Rachel Barker & Alison Bracker from Tate Papers #4

Walter De Maria: Lightning Field (1977)

Website for Lightning Field at the Dia Art Foundation

David Nash: Ash Dome (1977+)

In a private woodland location somewhere in Snowdonia, is a circle of twenty-two ash trees that have been growing under the gentle guidance of Nash for forty years. They have been bent in towards each other in a vortex that has now met to form a living dome. The dome creates a space that is only a little bit different from its surroundings, yet the sculptural intervention draws our attention to the natural processes and the passage of time. This is a sculpture that exists in the natural time scale, and changes through the years as trees record every growing season in their rings. This is art rooted in the landscape in the purist sense. It cannot be exhibited in galleries or sold by a dealer. It must remain where it was made as a permanent and ever-changing installation. Partly due to climate change, Ash Dome is currently under threat from the spread of ash-dieback.

David Nash works almost exclusively with wood. Usually, he carves the boughs of great trees that have fallen or that he manages to reclaim after they may have been felled to clear ground. He works with the forms already in the trees and has described his method as collaboration. When asked how long it takes to produce a piece of his artwork, he answers, “a hundred years or so,” including the time it has taken for the tree to grow.

His approach is one of truth to materials and he uses the properties of wood in the creation of his form. For example, he will carve deep parallel cuts into a column of wood and then kiln-dry the piece, causing the straight slices to curl and form waves. He uses fire to char the surface of some of his works, a process that both colours them and also preserves them. So, in his sculptures with living trees this truth to material is taken a step further and deals much more with the processes involved. These processes include his artistic guidance and intervention, as well as the biological processes of photosynthesis, respiration, transpiration and direct response to changes in environment and climate.

MORE:

David Nash talks about his work, including Ash Dome, in this interview at sculpture.org

David Nash: Wooden Boulder (1978+)

The year after he began Ash Dome, Nash set another radical work in motion, literally. He had started carving a very large oak where it had fallen in the highlands of Snowdonia. The location was not easily accessible and he had to consider ways of transporting the sculptures that he produced. This problem of practicality was the inspiration for a truly original piece of landscape art.

He carved a huge chunk of trunk into what resembled a large boulder and decided to set it in a mountain stream. He knew that the boulder would move downstream as the waters carried it. He also knew that the journey of this wooden boulder would be sporadic and directly affected by the levels of rainfall. It was heavy and needed considerable water to make it buoyant. The longer it sat in water, the more waterlogged it would become and less buoyant as a result. For the next quarter of a century the boulder would travel slowly but surely towards the sea, at the mercy of the elements. It was last sighted in March 2003 when the River Dwyryd carried it away. The journey of the boulder drew a line through the land and Nash maintained a relationship with the sculptural journey, tracking it and recording it in photographs, film and by producing his own drawings of the boulder as its situation changed.

With Wooden Boulder, Nash invented a new way for artists to work with the landscape. It is a drawing on a grand scale using the land itself as the canvas. The role of Nash, the artist, in this piece was as instigator and biographer. The art itself was part performance and as a result of its making, it disappeared, now existing only as documentation and concept.

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Click on image above for reviews or to buy book...

Click on image below for another, more recent, overview of the work of David Nash...

Andrei Tarkovsky: Stalker (1979)

'Stalker' is another film that made it into my personal Top Ten Pieces of Art, you can read my blog entry at I'M HOT GOAT...

Click image above for reviews and to buy DVD

or click below for box set also including 'Stalker'

Click image below to buy the book by Tarkovsky in which he discusses his cinematic approach...

Click the image below for a really good book that gives an overview of Tarkovsky's films and themes...

Click this link to read reviews or to buy one of the most beautiful books of polaroid photographs there has ever been... 'Instant Light: Tarkovsky Polaroids'

Andy Goldsworthy: Rain Shadows (1980s)

Some images of  Rain Shadows

and of Andy Goldworthy making a Rain Shadow 

at the Crichton University digital catalogue ...

Click on image above for book review or to buy the book.

or click on image below for DVD...

David Hockney: Photographing Annie Leibovitz While She's Photographing Me, Mojave Desert (1983)

You can see this photo-collage at the official David Hockney website

Howard Hodgkin: A Small Thing, But My Own (1985)

You will find an image of this work in the Chronology at the official Howard Hodgkin site...

Hodgkin’s vibrant and colourful paintings often seem to lift from the canvas or create tunnels deeper into them. They are concerned with mapping and environment, and can often be interpreted as loose landscapes rupturing the picture plane.

Hodgkin also incorporated frames as integral to overall composition, implying the frame is merely a boundary and, like the view through a window, there is more than immediately meets the eye, in terms of the real landscape beyond, in terms of emotional response and the memories that become associated with that moment and situation…

In some ways, each painting becomes a tangible record of those emotional responses and memories. Then, it could be argued that they are not abstract at all, but map-like visualisations of those things within us that would otherwise remain abstract.

MORE:

Howard Hodgkin resources at The Tate website

Short Q & A with Howard Hodgkin in The Guardian

David Lynch: Blue Velvet (1986)

One of my favourite films and it made it into my Top Ten pieces of art...
You can read my blog entry here.

David Lynch has an official website... (it can be a bit slow on some browsers, but worth the wait)

An 'academic' article about the film titled, Postmodernism and Authorship - part of a extended piece about the Films of David Lynch at the British Film Resource website.

This is a fairly comprehensive mini-site dedicated to Blue Velvet - this is in German...

Richard Wilson: 20:50 (1987)

Read my thoughts on this work at the I'M HOT GOAT blog, where it topped my top ten pieces of art...

Some good images of 20:50 at the Guardian website

Short article about the installation at the current loaction in the Saatchi gallery and some images of it in previous sites

Click on the image above for book reviews or to buy book

Richard Long: Body of Work (1989), also Walking in Circles (1991) and Walking the Line (2005)

Click on image above to buy Walking in Circles

Click on image below for Walking the Line

Go to the artist's official website for more info...

Antony Gormley: Field (1990 + )

Entry about the 2004 Field at the Tate website

The artist's website...

Click on image above for book review or to buy the book...

Rachel Whiteread: Ghost (1990)

In this breakthrough sculpture, Whiteread cast the interior of a room in plaster. What we see is a very familiar environment from a point of view we have never experienced. A negative space, or void, has been transformed into a positive form, monumental and completely new, yet strangely familiar.

The room, in a Victorian town house, was cast in sections based on golden ratio proportions and then these sections were reassembled in the gallery space. This builds upon Modernist concepts of the everyday object being re-presented as art. The viewer now sees a very accurate representation of a space, but is denied access to it. The empty space that we live in has been solidified into a barrier. It literally makes us see things from a new perspective, including representational art.

In 1993, Whiteread extended these concepts in House, when she used concrete to cast the entire interior of a mid-terraced townhouse in London’s Mile End. The row of houses was then demolished, leaving the monument standing. This work is profound in both its formal and poetic content.

Things that are ordinary, a fireplace, a window, plaster coving, electrical fittings, become strange and surreal. Rooms where families have grown up and lived and passed on since the Victorian era are both publicly displayed and made inaccessible. We can no more enter those rooms than we can enter those lives. The house, like the people who lived there are gone. The sculpture itself is now gone. It survived for nearly one year until it too was subsequently demolished.

The work now only exists through documentary evidence, such as photographs and written articles, and in the memories of those who walked past it. The people who inhabited those spaces, so similar to the spaces we inhabit, only exist in memory or as concepts. Yet how strange the interior appears when stripped of its shell and viewed from the outside – this is a broad and poetic metaphor alluding to the human condition. Whiteread has taken the age-old problem of representing something through surface alone, and literally turned the notion inside out.

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Article at the Washington National Gallery's website.

Damien Hirst: The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991)

Read the entry for Damien Hirst at The Artchive.

The artist's own website.

Click on the image above for book review or to buy the book

Marc Quinn: Self (1991 + )

Take a look at the artist''s own website.