Contemporary Art
conceptual art
Audience
Feminist art
Social/Political
Materials
Material Taken into Consideration
Mixed Media
Video/Sound
Art that required an actual presence:
-This work required an audience to function and activate
-If no person or audience was there it would not give anything to the audience
-This would be a characteristic of minimalist art that Fried considers to not be art
Work made for specific people
Audience that viewed the work in the specific moment: work that is temporary or can only be experienced once, can not be done again.
Short History on Minimalism:
-Objecthood (Not art according to Fried)
-Stirred away from traditional art
-Work created from idea that it did not resemble something else, in this case it was considered original, not overdone, and new.
-no clear meaning
Dan Flavin: 
Robert Morris
Traditional Use
Incorporates space: Art that extends past it's medium and affects the surroundings
Marking Time:
-Art made in prisons and produced by incarcerated people
-resources and material is limited and rights to work is limited
-unfair access to material and art
-work showcased to only benefit the system
Recorded
The Attendant
Kara Walker
Dean Gillespsie
Gilberto Rivera
-An Institutional Nightmare
Chris Ofili
Mickalene Thomas
Beteye Saar
Gu Tai work
Roberto Lugo
-Dan Flavin
-Robert Morris
-Krauss
Carolee Schneeman
Allan Kaprow
Carolee Schneeman
Len Leye
Megan Jones, Path of the Teabowl:
- the topic of cultural appropriation and idea of wether appropriation or appreciation is considered when making a tea bowl was considered
-Allowed for people to think and notice how the idea of tea bowls have changed and how they were for practical use and have transitioned to more aesthetic purposes - Brought light to making tea bowls for aesthetic purposes and showed that it does not mean appropriation.
Institutional Critique
Objecthood
Minimalism:
4 main components (According to Fried):
-Objecthood
-Durational, has a limited time in which it is seen compared to a painting that can be seen and relooked at as many times and as the audience wants
-Situational, rehires something (audience) to be in it's space to function
-meaning/concept is subjective and made to the viewer based on how it is viewed
-Theactrical
Performance
-Work is made up of neon lights
-Uses the space surrounding it, as light reflects and bounces off the walls
-Is not bound by a picture frame, and extends past the medium itself
-part of the minimalist art movement
-does not carry concept into it's work and is made up of the minimalist idea, having no direct origin/resemblance
-precursor of performance art
-1950's
involves the artist's body, more traditional to art than performance
-4 identical cubes that are made up of mirrors
-requires the audience to walk and interact around the space to activate and function
-Situational, and will hold a meaning to the audience once they begin to walk around, this will be different for everyone.
Porcelain clay, medium used in contrast to the surface treatment. Work illustrates the graffiti and the lower class, gentrified, and his upbringing.
Despite these artist believing that their work derives from nothing and resembles nothing, is the work they make possibly unconsciously still stemming from something? Looking at Dan Flavin's work it can be considered or related to something, to try and separate work and make no resemblance I personally think is impossible, as it still can be made out to be something.
Tony Smith
-Work uses large construction paper cut outs, cut outs are silhouettes and flat colors of either black or white
-The use of flat work brings meaning by illustrating the idea of racism, sexism, black history is a 2-D situation and is seen at surface level
-Object in space
-steel box
-no parts to whole
-relies on the viewer and the time and experience it is held
-work is not made by the artist themself, Smith's work is solely made and thought up by him but made by a company,
Is work like Tony Smith's considered art if he never had touched it? Is the idea and craft making enough to be considered a form of art?
Modern Scultprue:
-Autnomous (can exist without the audeince having to be there, the audeince does not need o interact for the work to function
-opposite of minimalist art
-considered to be art according to Fried
-Work is parts to whole, unity and harmony
-Work does not just sit and take up space as an object
According to minimalist artists, sculpture is unoriginal and not considered to be minimalist, but what about Sculpture in the expanded field?
Traditional painting along with using rhinestones and enamel on wood.
Rhinestones are used as as symbol for femininity, a source of material that is seen as cheap or tacky, but displays her models in a position of power.
-Mixed media piece, uses many mediums and items such as glitter, dung, paint, resin, map pins, and collage paper
The material use of collage paper and images of butts are used to display the sexualization of woman along with using elephant dung to connect to Zimbabwe
-made from federal prison uniform
-commisary paper
-floor wax
-acrylic paint
-uses material to break the rules and disobey the laws to show the separation of the system
Nikki Columbus Response:
-Repsonds to the Brooklyn Rail article
-disapproves of Guston's work and believes that it does not need to be presented as it is already widely known
-The problem is not the audience and controversy itself, but the institution of the art world and museum's system is the reason for Guston's work being displayed
-Inequlaity in POC and BIPOC workers with the showcasing of work and workers
made up of materials that are found in everyday use and objects such as popsicle sticks, cigarette foils and trash to talk about the institutions and the inequality provided with material and disproportionate privledge.
Franz Fannon: The Fact of Blackness
-Blackness is a concept that defines the role of slavery and separates colonized people from colonizers
-Colonization prevents the colonized to develop a sense of self
-mix of traditional with contemporary mediums of art
-film and painting
Yoko Ono
-Cut Piece
-Invovles the audience in which they participate with heperformance
-Audeince lines up to cut a piece of fabric from Yoko Ono's clothes
-the performance deals with sexuality, vulnerability, objectification and usage of woman in a sense of claiming a piece of fabric and a piece of her
Interior Scroll
-removes a scroll from her vagina front of an audience
-talks on the dominance and power of males and the view point of feminine art nothing taken seriously compared to male art
Including her limits
Uses many mediums and techniques in her work that each offer different meanings and contexts in her work
-In Black Girl's Window, work is assembled in a purposeful manner, uses printmaking, collage, and daguerreotype.
The piece represents life and death in the use of the daguerreotype of a skeleton and the cosmic sky, including moments of Saar's life that show death, but also include the lifestyle of other black people as well in the unequal treatments and racism.
Shartis
The use of video and imagery in Shartis' TOUCHING allows for sound and mood to develop from the flickering and physedelic effect. It distorts and displaces the viewer in a way that a still, traditional medium can not do.
-With many of Schneeman's works they had to be seen and experienced in the setting taken place to understand the full context and emotion happening, it was live, unedited, and in the moment. In few cases the experiences were video taped.
This brings the question of whether performance art can be understood after the event, if it can be brought back again through video and still leave the same impact. Is it object hood because it is theatre? Is the art made afterwards considered another piece aside from performance?
Brooklyn Rail Article:
-supports Phillip Guston
-Believes that work should be shown despite the concerns of racism and controversial topics around the subject matter
-Meuseum believes in changing and taking out Guton's work to add diversity and acknowledgment of POC artists as well.
-Meuseum disagrees as the intent of Guston's work does not intend to be racist
- I think that the acknowledgement of bringing in POC an BIPOC work is good as it leads to diversity, although it ignores heart of others that still have a voice to say and work for. What should the museum do to equally allow representation for both?
Work is documented and recorded but at the same time performed.
-Video recorded art
-work talks about the displacement and and power between white and black people.
-displays a traditional museum and dream like BDSM alternative
-example of Bell Hook's margins
Bell Hook's Margins:
-encourages to use the margin as a space of radical openness, see the margin in a helpful manner rather than a oppressing one.
-Margins is not a safe space to depend on
-Bell Hooks's idea of margin's is shown in The Attendant.
-The margin of white supremacy and power versus black people is shown in which there are workers vs museum visitors
-The dream vs. reality that shows follows the idea of margins being a personal vision of society
-where Black people have more power, (showing a dominant perspective, and white people being below and submissive)
-This idea that being non-japnese can leads to appropriation I think can be concerning in a way, as why is a specific vessel or piece so guarded by people that are not connected to the subject matter?
-Megan's show had tea-bowls that were also from China and Vietnam, she also had showed Matcha that is grown not just in Japan but parts of Vietnam as well, as this tradition of tea ceremonies is celebrated in other parts of the world as well, but are they appropriating tea bowls?
Flusser Form and Material:
-Theory and form is the material world
-Theory is more permanent than the material
- Material and immaterial is not opposites, because they rely on each other to exist