Nizan Shaked
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781784992750
- eISBN:
- 9781526128171
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784992750.003.0003
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This chapter takes a close look at Adrian Piper’s transition from Conceptual Art to conceptualism, in the context of Conceptual Art’s canonical interpretations. I observe that her contribution was ...
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This chapter takes a close look at Adrian Piper’s transition from Conceptual Art to conceptualism, in the context of Conceptual Art’s canonical interpretations. I observe that her contribution was focused specifically on questions of mediation—the mediation of content by materials, forms, and language—later considering the mediating power of race, gender and other forms of apparent difference. From the application of analytic thinking to the work of art, she extended her enquiries to the dynamic relationship between the various elements of the artwork, such as object, author, body, self, circulation, and audience reception. Piper’s use of the autobiographical tone and the body arrived chronologically after an extended period of preoccupation with the context of the art object, its circulation and reception, and general inquiries into the nature of time and space through a focus on media and mediation. In accordance with this sequence of development, I propose to read her later work in the same way, always first as Conceptual, onto which we can then apply the political question. To enter the work through its analytic base is to read it on the terms of its making, not the subject position of its maker.Less
This chapter takes a close look at Adrian Piper’s transition from Conceptual Art to conceptualism, in the context of Conceptual Art’s canonical interpretations. I observe that her contribution was focused specifically on questions of mediation—the mediation of content by materials, forms, and language—later considering the mediating power of race, gender and other forms of apparent difference. From the application of analytic thinking to the work of art, she extended her enquiries to the dynamic relationship between the various elements of the artwork, such as object, author, body, self, circulation, and audience reception. Piper’s use of the autobiographical tone and the body arrived chronologically after an extended period of preoccupation with the context of the art object, its circulation and reception, and general inquiries into the nature of time and space through a focus on media and mediation. In accordance with this sequence of development, I propose to read her later work in the same way, always first as Conceptual, onto which we can then apply the political question. To enter the work through its analytic base is to read it on the terms of its making, not the subject position of its maker.
Nizan Shaked
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781784992750
- eISBN:
- 9781526128171
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784992750.003.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
The introduction addresses two intersecting trajectories in American art between the late 1960s and the early twenty-first-century century. On the one hand, it traces the ways in which disciplinary ...
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The introduction addresses two intersecting trajectories in American art between the late 1960s and the early twenty-first-century century. On the one hand, it traces the ways in which disciplinary Conceptual Art, with a capital “C”, expanded into the diverse set of practices that have been characterised generally as conceptualism. On the other hand, it shows how the expansion of a critical conceptualism has been strongly informed by the turbulent rights-based politics of the 1960s. Initially, first generation Conceptual artists responded to preceding art movements within disciplinary boundaries, examining the definition of art itself and engaging abstract concerns. Artists then applied the basic principles of Conceptual Art to address a range of social and political issues. This development reflects the influence of Civil Rights, Black Power, the student movement, the anti-war movement, second wave feminism, and the gay liberation movement. Central in the American context, the multiple identity-based mobilisations that came to be known as “identity politics” were further articulated in the 1970s. The artists addressed in this book: Adrian Piper, Joseph Kosuth, David Hammons, Renée Green, Mary Kelly, Martha Rosler, Silvia Kolbowski, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Lorna Simpson, Andrea Fraser, Hans Haacke, and Charles Gaines expanded the propositions of Conceptual Art.Less
The introduction addresses two intersecting trajectories in American art between the late 1960s and the early twenty-first-century century. On the one hand, it traces the ways in which disciplinary Conceptual Art, with a capital “C”, expanded into the diverse set of practices that have been characterised generally as conceptualism. On the other hand, it shows how the expansion of a critical conceptualism has been strongly informed by the turbulent rights-based politics of the 1960s. Initially, first generation Conceptual artists responded to preceding art movements within disciplinary boundaries, examining the definition of art itself and engaging abstract concerns. Artists then applied the basic principles of Conceptual Art to address a range of social and political issues. This development reflects the influence of Civil Rights, Black Power, the student movement, the anti-war movement, second wave feminism, and the gay liberation movement. Central in the American context, the multiple identity-based mobilisations that came to be known as “identity politics” were further articulated in the 1970s. The artists addressed in this book: Adrian Piper, Joseph Kosuth, David Hammons, Renée Green, Mary Kelly, Martha Rosler, Silvia Kolbowski, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Lorna Simpson, Andrea Fraser, Hans Haacke, and Charles Gaines expanded the propositions of Conceptual Art.
Nizan Shaked
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781784992750
- eISBN:
- 9781526128171
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784992750.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
The synthetic proposition: Conceptualism and the political referent in contemporary art examines the impact of Civil Rights, Black Power, the student, feminist and the sexual-liberty movements on ...
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The synthetic proposition: Conceptualism and the political referent in contemporary art examines the impact of Civil Rights, Black Power, the student, feminist and the sexual-liberty movements on conceptualism and its legacies in the United States between the late 1960s and the present. It focuses on the turn to political reference in practices originally concerned with philosophically abstract ideas, and traces key strategies in contemporary art today to the reciprocal influences of conceptualism and identity politics, movements that have so far been historicized as mutually exclusive. It demonstrates that while identity-based strategies were particular, their impact spread far beyond the individuals or communities that originated them. Commencing with the early oeuvre of Adrian Piper, a first generation Conceptual artist, this book offers a study of interlocutors that expanded the practice into a broad notion of conceptualism, including Joseph Kosuth, David Hammons, Renée Green, Mary Kelly, Martha Rosler, Silvia Kolbowski, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Lorna Simpson, Hans Haacke, Andrea Fraser, and Charles Gaines. By turning to social issues, these artists analyzed the cultural conventions embedded in modes of reference and representation such as language, writing, photography, moving image, or installation and exhibition display.Less
The synthetic proposition: Conceptualism and the political referent in contemporary art examines the impact of Civil Rights, Black Power, the student, feminist and the sexual-liberty movements on conceptualism and its legacies in the United States between the late 1960s and the present. It focuses on the turn to political reference in practices originally concerned with philosophically abstract ideas, and traces key strategies in contemporary art today to the reciprocal influences of conceptualism and identity politics, movements that have so far been historicized as mutually exclusive. It demonstrates that while identity-based strategies were particular, their impact spread far beyond the individuals or communities that originated them. Commencing with the early oeuvre of Adrian Piper, a first generation Conceptual artist, this book offers a study of interlocutors that expanded the practice into a broad notion of conceptualism, including Joseph Kosuth, David Hammons, Renée Green, Mary Kelly, Martha Rosler, Silvia Kolbowski, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Lorna Simpson, Hans Haacke, Andrea Fraser, and Charles Gaines. By turning to social issues, these artists analyzed the cultural conventions embedded in modes of reference and representation such as language, writing, photography, moving image, or installation and exhibition display.
Hertha D. Sweet Wong
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469640709
- eISBN:
- 9781469640723
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469640709.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
Cheyenne conceptual artist Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds makes word paintings, abstract paintings, and public art installations. This chapter considers Heap of Birds’s focus on memory, history, and ...
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Cheyenne conceptual artist Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds makes word paintings, abstract paintings, and public art installations. This chapter considers Heap of Birds’s focus on memory, history, and community as central to his self and community-formulation. Through his artwork using image and text, he contributes to the ongoing project of decolonization: making visible a history of Native erasure and appropriating settler-colonial discourses of place and time, first steps in articulating a contemporary, collective, and sovereign Native identity.Less
Cheyenne conceptual artist Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds makes word paintings, abstract paintings, and public art installations. This chapter considers Heap of Birds’s focus on memory, history, and community as central to his self and community-formulation. Through his artwork using image and text, he contributes to the ongoing project of decolonization: making visible a history of Native erasure and appropriating settler-colonial discourses of place and time, first steps in articulating a contemporary, collective, and sovereign Native identity.
