HART161. Quiz 3 Key Terms

Sony Portapak

The first mass-produced portable video camera, invented in 1967. Encouraged artists to experiment with new approaches and technologies. Pioneered video art. Possessed the aesthetics of television.

Bruce Nauman, Walking with Contrapposto, 1968

Chroma Key Effect

A post-production film technique in which a specific color (historically blue and green) is removed from video, allowing for the substitution of a different background or footage. Developed in the early 1900s and popularized around the 1960s-1970s. New technique for emerging video artists.

Peter Campus, Three Transitions, 1973

Narcissism

Coined by Rosalind Krauss in her 1976 essay discussing Video art, Narcissism refers to the psychological state in which one withdraws attention from the external and turn their focus towards the self. Video as a medium, with its capacity for immersion, projection, and mirroring, amplifies this genre.

Vito Acconci, Centers, 1971

Sound Art

Rising to popularity during the 1950s and 1960s (but with deeper roots in early 1900s Italian Futurism), Sound Art is art that utilizes both sound as its medium and its subject (as inspired by Brandon LaBelle). David Toop has also defined sound art as sound combined with visual practices. There are enormous overlaps with video art and performance art. Sound artists are often interested in complicating the boundary between noise and music.

Alvin Lucier, I am Sitting in a Room, 1969.

John Cage, Water Walk, 1959.

Historical Canon

Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?

Often considered the first major work of feminist art history, Linda Nochlin’s 1971 “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” text asks and explores its titular question against the backdrop of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the US and the UK. Nochlin argues that there is no distinct “feminine” style that makes women artists a unique type of “great.” Nochlin discusses the nude as an example of the institutional barriers which have prevented women from achieving “artistic greatness.”

Womanhouse

White Supremecy

Racialization

Racialization refers to the processes by which a group of people becomes defined by their “race.” It begins by assigning racial meaning to people’s identities and enactment of social hierarchy, which promotes systemic racial inequalities on all levels of institutional structures. In art, racialization has close ties to Lacan’s concept of the “Gaze,” in which the possibility of being watched by the Other (the racialized subjects) unnerves and destabilizes white identities. Many contemporary Black artists are interested in interrogating and reclaiming the racializing gaze.

Betye Saar, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, 1972

The Gaze (Lacan)

Double Consciousness (Dubois)

Coined by African American sociologist W.E.B. Dubois in his seminal text, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Double-consciousness refers to the psychological state of internal “twoness” experienced by African Americans due to their racialized devaluation in a pre-dominently white society. This “twoness” emerges from the fact that African Americans are forced to not only view themselves through their own lens, but also through the prejudiced lenses of White people around them. It creates tension, having to look at one self through the eyes of others.

Faith Ringgold, American People Series #17: The Artist and His Model, 1966

The People’s Flag Show and the Judson 3

The People’s Flag Show was a 1970 exhibition hosted at the Judson Memorial Church and curated by Jon Hendricks, Jean Toche, and Faith Ringgold. In response to the Supreme Court case on a gallerist for flag desecration, they invited artists and community members to submit “flag works” to challenge repressive laws. They were arrested the night before the show’s closing and became known as the Judson 3.

Marc Morrel, Caisson, 1966

Faith Ringgold, Black Light Series, 1969

The Black Arts Movement

Postmodernism

First popularized around the 1970s, Postmodernism can be understood as a reaction to the utopian idealism and rational values of Modernism. It is born out of skepticism and challenges the idea of universal certainties. Postmodernist art advocates for the concreteness of individual experiences rather than abstract principles, often embracing complex (even contradictory) layers of meaning and exhibiting self-awareness of style. (interrogation of masternarratives or historical canon) It has roots in Dada, pop art, neo-expressionism, and feminist art in its anti-authoritarian and free nature. Lacan contributes to this by questioning rational and irrational.

Robert Venturi, Vanna Venturi House, 1966

International Style

Metanarrative/masternarrative