Global Contemporary Art

• Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Bilbao Museo

• 1997

• Located in Bilbao, Spain

• Frank Gehry

  • Canadian-American architect based in Los Angeles

  • Developed his design using CATIA CAD program that enabled him to create powerfully organic, sculptural structure

• Titanium, glass, and limestone

  • Complex steel skeleton, covered by thin skin of silvery titanium that shimmers gold depending on time of day and weather conditions

• From river side, building resembles a boat, referencing Bilboa’s past as a shipping commercial center

• Guggenheim Bilbao was also part of ambitious urban renewal program

  • City of Bilbao was aging port and industrial center

  • City had entered period of significant decline during the 1980’s

• Zaha Hadid, MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts

• 2009

• Located in Rome, Italy

• Zaha Hadid

  • one of most important architects of 20th and 21st centuries

  • Born in Baghdad, Iraq and raised in London (Iraqi-born, British-based architect)

  • Was first woman to win architecture’s highest prizes (the Pritzker and the Royal Institute of British Architects Royal Gold Medal)

• Glass, steel, and cement

• Constantly changing interior and exterior views

• Internal spaces covered by a glass roof

  • natural light admitted into the interior

  • Walls flow and melt into one another, creating new and dynamic interior spaces

• Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Gates

• Christo and Jeanne-Claude insist that their artistic creations designed to inspire “joy and beauty” rather than to explore deep messages

  • Their art has not purpose except to be a work of art

• 7,503 “gates” of free-standing saffron colored fabric panels

  • Framed all the pathways in Central Park, New York City

  • 16-foot-tall gates formed a continuous river of color

  • Covered 23 miles of footpath

  • Temporary installation, left up for 16 days

  • After exhibition closed, material were recycled

• Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial

• 1982

• Located in Washington, D.C.

• Black granite → has highly reflective surface so viewers can see themselves in the etched-in names of the veterans

• Jean-Michel Basquiat, Horn Players

• 1983

• Located in Santa Monica, California

• Jean-Michel Basquiat

  • Brooklyn-born

  • Raised in middle-class comfort, but rebelled by quitting high school and leaving home to become a street artist

  • For 3 years, covered walls of lower Manhattan with short and whity philosophical texts signed with the tag “SAMO” (Same Old Sh*t)

  • Wanted to make “paintings that look as if they were made by a child”

  • Began his career as graffiti artist when he was 17

  • Was invited to participate in TIMES SQUARE SHOW in June 1980

  • Economic prosperity fueled booming art market as the number of New York galleries soared from 73 in 1970 to 450 in 1985

  • His paintings expressed vibrant artistic spirit → new and younger generation of affluent art buyers favored the emotionally charged paintings

• Acrylic and oil painstick on canvas panels

• Strongly emotional Horn Players portrays legendary jazz musicans Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie

  • Urgent paint application and hurried lettering conveys his dedication to jazz

  • Passionate determination to foregroun African-American subjects in an unsettling way

  • Crosses out some of the words in his artwork to bring more of viewer’s attention to them 

• Song Su-nam, Summer Trees

• 1983

• Located in British Museum, London

• Song Su-nam

  • Song’s interest in Western abstraction and the formal properties has led art historians to attribute the inspiration for his work to American artists like Morris Louis (Pungent Distances)

• Ink on paper (Indian ink on Korean paper)

  • To choose medium of ink on paper was important for artist, who was leader of Korea’s “Sumukhwa” (Oriental Ink Movement of the 1980s)

  • Sumukhwa → Korean pronunciation of Chinese word for “ink wash painting” (also called “literati painting”)

  • Sumukhwa provided Song and his circle with a way to express Korean identity

• Summer Trees may reference a traditional theme → group of Pine trees can symbolize a gathering of friends of upright character

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Androgyn III

• 1985

• Located in Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

• Magdalena Abakanowicz

  • Polish artist

  • In 1960s and 70s, created radical sculptures from woven fibre

    • Were soft, not hard; ambiguous and organic

    • Towering works that hung from the ceiling and pioneered new form of installation → became known as Abakans

• Burlap, resin, wood, nails, and string

• Abakanowicz draws on her personal history, but sculptures possess ambiguity that encourages multiple interpretations that speak broadly to human experience

• Artwork alludes to brutality of war and totalitarian state

  • Body is a husk without arms, legs, or head

  • Expression of suffering, both mournful and disturbing

• Sexual characteristics minimized to increase universality of the figure

  • Title of artwork is Androgyne → androgynous figure: one that is neither male nor female

• Xu Bing, A Book from the Sky

  • 1987-1991

  • Located in Madison, Wisconsin

  • Xu Bing

    • Chinese-born artist, U.S. resident

  • Installation

  • 400 handmade books placed in rows on the ground

    • Uses traditional Asian wood block techniques

    • Many of the Chinese characters are inventions of the artist and have no meaning

  • Artist was inspired by Marcel Dúchamp and Andy Warhol

• Jeff Koons, Pink Panther

  • 1988

  • Located in Museum of Modern Art, New York

  • Jeff Koons

    • Pennsylvania-born artist

  • Glazed porcelain 

    • More than 3 feet tall made of porcelain, a material more commonly used as knick-knacks (small, decorative, and often inexpensive object) than sculpture

  • Artwork depicts Jayne Mansfield → popular screen star and one of the early Playboy Playmates

  • Work exists as commentary on celebrity, romance, sexuality, commercialism, stereotypes, pop culture, sentimentality

    • Artifically idealized female form

    • Tender delicacy of the panther’s gesture

• Cindy Sherman, Untitled #228

  • 1988-90

  • Completed while living in Rome

  • Untitled #228 is part of her series of photographs called History Portraits

  • Draws upon Renaissance and Baroque images of Judith with head of Holofernes

    • Book of Judith (included in some Bibles) discusss the devout widow Judith, a heroine who saves the Israelites from a conquering Assyrian general by befriending him and visiting his tent one night while he’s drunk

    • She takes advantage of his unfit state and decapitates him

    • Assyrians, shocked by assassination of their leader, retreat, allowing Israelites to be saved

• Faith Ringgold, Dancing at the Louvre from the series The French Collection, Part 1

  • 1991

  • Faith Ringgold

    • Her story-quilting technique is important to meaning in her work

    • Creates central image using acrylic paint on canvas, reflecting her knowledge of western art history in both style and subject matter

    • Then, surrounds painting with patchwork cloth border that includes her hand-written text

  • Acrylic on canvas with fabric borders

  • Draws on tradition of African-American quilt making combined with heritage of African textiles to paint significant statements about race in America

    • Typical of much postmodern art, Ringgold’s work appropriates recognizable imagery and alternative artistics practices to offer critical cultural commentary

    • Challenges viewers to consider expectations of gender and race & traditional expectations and values of what art might be

    • Through image and text, writes history to make a place for women like herself in its historical development

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People)

• 1992

• Locate in Norfolk, Virginia

• Oil and mixed media

• As a response to 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival to North America in 1992, artist created large mixed-media canvas called Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People)

• Array of objects sardonically (sarcastic) representing Indian culture in eyes of Europeans

  • Sports teams, Indian-style knickknacks like tomahawks, dolls, and arrows

• Layered images, paint, and objects on surfaces of canvas, suggesting layers of history and complexity

  • Divided into 3 large panels, triptych (three part) arrangement is reminiscent of medieval altarpiece

  • Covered the canvas in collage with newspaper articles about Native life cut out from her tribal paper “Char-Koosta,” photos, comics, tobacco and gum wrappers, fruit carton labels, ads, and pages from comic books

  • All feature stereotypical images of Native Americans

  • Mixed collaged text with photos of deer, buffalo, and Native men in historic dress holding pipes with feathers in their hair and an image of Ken Plenty Horses (a character from Smith’s earlier pieces)

Emily Kngwarreye, Earth’s Creation

• 1992

• Located in Norfolk, Virginia

• Emily Kngwarreye

  • Australian aborigine artist

• Oil and mixed media

• Simulates the color and lushness of the “green time” in Australia after the rains when the outback (the vast, remote, interior of Australia) flourishes

• Four panels, eleven meters wide (around 36 feet)

• Patches of bold yellows, greens, reds, and blues seem to bloom like lush vegetation over large canvas

Shirin Neshat, Rebellious Silence (From the Woman of Allah Series)

• 1994

• Located in New York

• Photo by Cynthia Preston

• Shirin Neshat (artist)

  • Iranian-born artist, raised in the U.S.

  • Explores how Iranian Women are stereotyped in the West, claiming that their Islamic identities are more varied and complex than is frequently perceived

• Ink on photograph

• Chador → type of outer garment → only face/hands exposed

  • Keeps women’s bodies from being seen as sexual objects

  • Although woman wears chador in photo, she looks directly and definately out of the photograph at us, meeting and returning our gaze

    • She challenges us to acknowledge her as an individual as a strong and beautiful woman but simultaneously and paradoxically prompts us to see her as a stereotypical Iranian woman in the chador

• Poem on face written in Farsi, the Persian language; poem expresses piety

  • Poem by Iranian women who writes poetry on gender issues

• Black and white photograph

• Gun divides body into lighter and darker sides, adds ominous tension to the work

• Image of obedient right-minded woman ready to die for faith or an expression of female oppression?

• Neshat confronts our prejudice while also raising questions about the position of women in contemporary Iran

Pepón Osorio, En La Barberia no se Llora (No crying allowed in the barbershop)

• 1994

• Pepón Osorio

  • Puerto-Rican born artist living in New York 

• Mixed media installation

  • Large installation recreating the center of Latino male culture: the barbershop

• Challenges viewer to question issues of identity, masculinity, culture, and attitudes

• Video screens on the headrests depict men playing, a baby being circumcised, and men crying

Michel Tufferey, Pisupo Lua Afe (Corned Beef 2000)

• 1994

• Mixed media

• Tufferey comments on some on Polynesia’s major ecological and dietary problems resulting from increased modernization

  • Changing eating habits, for example, afforded corned-beef the status of food staple and ritual gift

Naum June Paik, Electronic Superhighway

• 1995

• Located in Smithsonian American Art Museum

• Naum June Paik

  • Korean-born artist who lived in New York City 

• Mixed media

  • Neon lighting outlines the fifty states (Alaska and Hawaii are on the sides)

    • Neon lighting symbolizes motel and restaurant signs

• Each state has a separate video feed (313 monitors)

• A camera is turned on the spectator and its TV feed appears in the monitors for New York State

  • Turns the spectator into a participant of the artwork

• Paik’s work generally described as celebrating the fact that “electronic superhighway” allows us to communicate with and understand each other across traditional boundaries

  • Can be read as posing some difficult questions about how that technology is impacting culture

• Physical scale of work and number of simultaneous clips makes it difficult to to absorb any details, resulting in “information overload”

  • Visual tensions between static brightness of the neon and dynamic brightness of the screens points to a similar tension between national and local frames of reference

Bill Viola, The Crossing

• 1996

• Video and sound installation

  • Room-size video installation that comprises a large two-sided screen onto which a pair of video sequences is simultaneously projected

  • Each open in the same fashion: a male figure walks slowly towards the camera, his body dramatically lit from above so that it appears to glow against the video’s stark-black background

  • After several minutes he pauses near the foreground and stands still, faces forward, staring directly into the lens, motionless

Mariko Mori, Pure Land

• 1998

• Located in Los Angeles, California

• Mariko Mori

  • Japanese artist best known for her sculptures, videos, photographs, installation, digital imagery, and performanec pieces, often involving surreal/science fiction-like objects and imagery

  • In her videos and performances, Mori appears costumed as sexy cyborg, pop star, mermaid, futuristic goddess

  • Relates her work to photographic practice of Cindy Sherman

• Color photograph on glass

• Artist uses a creative interpretation of traditional Japanese art forms → animated figures of aliens play musical instruments on clouds

• Mori herself is the guise of a deity (the essence of beauty and harbinger of prosperity and happiness)

  • By taking on this ancient persona, Mori dissolves her own identity and is transformed into elegant Tang lady and goddess of fortune while simultaneously performing welcoming role of Amida Buddha

  • Her enlightened self-representation descends to guide the viewer into a “Pure Land of Perfect Bliss” of her own creation

• Jewel symbolizes Buddha’s universal mind

• Artist seeks to lead the viewer into her immersive paradise → message is enlightenment is for all

Kiki Smith, Lying with the Wolf

• 2001

• Kiki Smith

  • Fascinated by intimate relationships with nature & feminist approaches to narrative

  • Many of her works from this period feature female protagonist who is based on Little Red Riding Hood and Sainte Geneviéve, the Patron Saint of Paris

• Ink and pencil on paper

• This artwork is one in a short series of works done between 2000 and 2002

• Illustrates women’s relationships with animals, drawing from representations found in visual, literary, and oral histories

• Female strength emphasized in woman lying down with the wild beast

  • Wolf seems tamed by woman’s embrace

  • Wolf is seens as a traditionally evil or dangerous symbol, but clearly not here in artwork

• Smith shares a story that is normally violent with a kind of tenderness that is characteristic of her overall aesthetic

• THEME: the human body

Kara Walker, Darkytown Rebellion

• 2001

• Located in Luxembourg

• Kara Walker

  • California-born, New York-based, African American artist

• Cut paper and projection on wall

• Installation

• Brilliant pattern of colors washes over a wall full of silhouettes enacting a dramatic rebellion, giving the viewer the unforgettable experience of stepping into a work of art

• Ensemble is made up of over a dozen characters, plays out a nightmarish scene on a single plane

  • One figure stands upright over his severed limb

  • A teenager holds a flag that resembles a colonial ship sale

  • A woman with a bonnet and voluminous hoop skirt may be attacking a smaller figure on its back, perhaps a crying baby

Yinka Shonibare, The Swing (after Fragonard)

• 2001

• Located in London

• Yinka Shonibare

  • British born of Nigerian decent

• Mixed media

• Life-size headless mannequin

  • Dress made of African print fabric

  • Headless figure: guillotined (executed by decapitation) by the French Revolution

• Mimics Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Swing 

  • Oil on canvas

  • 1767

  • In Wallace Collection, London

• Likely a reference to use of guillotine during Reign of Terror in 1790s, when members of French aristocracy were publicly beheaded

• Artist invites viewers to consider increasing disparity between economic classes today, especially with growing culture of paranoia, terror and xenophobia in global politics since 9/11

El Anatsui, Old Man’s Cloth

• 2003

• El Anatsui

  • African artist

  • Career was forged during utopia of mid-centry African independence movement

  • His work always engaged his region’s history and culture

• Aluminum liquor bottle caps and copper wire

• Artist’s choice of discarded liquor bottle caps as medium has to do with their formal properties and historical associations

  • Bottle caps signify a fraught history of trade between Africa and Europe

Julie Mehretu, Stadia II

• 2004

• Located in Pittsburgh

• Julie Mehretu

• Ink and acrylic on canvas

• About being in a large stadium, important athletic championship

  • Reflecting chaotic and energetic behavior of crowds

  • Matching clothing and painted faces of spectators wearing team colors with flags and banners

Wangechi Mutu, Preying Mantra

• 2006

• Located in Brooklyn, New York

• Mixed media on mylar

Doris Salcedo, Shibboleth

• 2007-2008

• Located in London

• Installation

Ai Weiwei, Sunflower Seeds (Kui Hua Zi)

• 2010-2011

• Located in London

• Ai Weiwei

  • Chinese artist & activist

  • Chose to link sunflowers was because of their role in Chinese communist propagand during his childhood

    • When Ai was growing up, he remembered propaganda posters featuring Mao Zedong or Chairman Mao with a face acting as the sun while sunflowers leaning up towards him represented citizens of the People’s Republic of China

  • In his artwork, relates sunflower seeds back to poverty of his childhood

• Installation containing millions of individually handcrafted ceramic pieces resembling sunflower seeds

  • Seeds symbolically represent an ocean of fathomless depth

  • Each seed is made in Jingdezhen, city known for its porcelain production in Imperial China

• 600 artisans worked for two years, each seed hand-printed

• sunflower seeds were eaten as a source of food during famine era under Mao Tze-tung

• Ideology of Chairman Mao → he was the sun, his followers were the seeds

  • “Sunflowers supported the revolution spiritually and in material ways”

  • The seeds represent optimism during difficult times

• Ai relates his artwork to individual people

  • The way they can easily become lost when absorbed into a large mass

  • Although seeds might all look similar from a distance, highly skilled craftsmen made each one by hand, carefully sculpting and painting them over many hours to look like real sunflower seeds

  • By drawing attention to the individual amongst the crowd, Ai reflects on dangers of conformity and censorship in modern China and the way political bodies can easily lose sight of indivudal’s nuanced seeds

• Originally could talk on installation but viewing was then limited to sidelines due to harmful ceramic dust

Deconstructive architecture

• Emerged in the 1990’s

• Architects deliberately disturb traditional architectural assumptions about harmony, unity, and stability to create “decented,” skewed, and distorted designs

Triptych

a single work of art divided into three distinct panels or sections

Assemblage

The combining of objects into works of art done by sculptors on occasion

Earthwork

A large outdoor work in which the earth itself is the medium

Installation

Temporary work of art made up of assemblages created for a particular space, like an art gallery or a museum

Kitsch

Something of low quality that appeals to popular taste