Contemporary art, the market/museum
Walker Evans, Alabama Tenant Farmer Wife and Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans → pictures generation (specific exhibition in 70’s and 80’s). Levine looking at a book and rephotographing them, photograph of a photograph. An act of appropriation (taking something into a new context) but also a meditation of the art market. The idea that images are commodities. Replacing the creative action, the selection and reframing, like the readymade practice.
Louise Lawler, Pollock and Tureen → photographs wealthy collector’s houses, juxtaposition of rich stuff they have. Idea of an interest in the space of the collector and wealthy, focused on the collection.
Contemporary art market was sky rocketing and impacts the way artists’ work. Warhol has his own market, artificially generated bubble owned by families that bid up the pieces at auction.
How do contemporary artists reflect upon their place in the art market?
→ your value goes up when in an exhibition. If you work and produce, there is a chance you uplift them in the market.
Maurizio Cattelan, Comedian → sold for $6.2 million by crypto currency. The picture is a joke, a banana that was duct taped. Satirical. Claiming its performance art because someone went up and ate it. Buying the concept, not the banana.
Some museums are founded by actual collectors, some are non-profit and some profit. The idea of museum vs. commercial space is getting muddled.
Fred Wilson, Mining the Museum, installation of Maryland Historical Society→ aiming to demonstrate politics of pinning museums. Collection of tobacco indians, facing backward to focus on the living individuals of native descendants. A series of pedestals and portraits of Henry Clay, Napoleon, Andrew Jackson and empty ones of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman. Showing what is not in museums, a critique. Metalwork as well, silver cups juxtaposed with manacles (metal slave shackles). Why is one art, why is one not?
Objects at NOMA…
Fred Wilson, The Mete of the Muse → Egyptian figure in black, the Roman in female nude in white. A lot of intervention in art history.
Fred Wilson, The Way the Moon’s in Love with the Dark → the chandelier. Black murano glass is difficult to find, in museum collections and critiquing the black individuals and the histories of glasses, where African artists aren’t included in the contemporary art canon.
Yinka Shonibare, The Swing vs Fragonard → issues of gender and class. How can you put it into a 3D model and a mannequin? We are cast as the male figures, headless. Giving complete agency over the figure. The outfit is also different, one is more african, brighter textiles.
Yinka Shonibare, Scramble for Africa → 14 chairs and 14 mannequins, table, Dutch wax fabric. The idea of who is going to control the continent of Africa vs. European powers. Ripping on headless figures, not actually thinking of what is beyond.
Afropolitan exhibition → all about African contemporary artists.
What are the main aspects and significance of Shonibare’s work? It is about deconstructing the stereotypes of Africa.