With the advent of post-modernism in the 1960's, the image became an integral facet of an artist's work. Minimalist sculptures of the 50's were colossal and monumental enough to perhaps even be considered architecture. They were built to not only withstand time, but completely ignore the role of photography in their documentation. The abstract expressionists painted on vast canvasses whose staying power and distribution of space within a gallery rivaled the French modern galleries that Ingres and Delacroix exhibited in.
In contrast, the most endearing facet of post modern art is that often, the artist seems to forget he or she should have their work hanging and documented within a gallery. Temporality became a fleeting, malleable quality of art that artists both strived to ignore and manipulated. While the artists strayed from gallery documentation of their works, photography became the primary source of documentation for many works. Thus, while their physical art today could be destroyed, re-arranged, and/or completely out of context, the
image conquers the art's primary mode of expression.
Jean Tinguely, Study for an End of the World, No. 2, 1962
Tinguely was a Swiss artist who moved to America to
create shambling mechanizations designed to destroy themselves in a
single performance. After an exhibition at MoMa in which his machine
didn't work the way he intended it to and slowly broke down over the
course of an hour and a half and
Study for the end of the world 1 where a dove was accidentally incinerated in the confusion,
End of the World 2is considered the first spectacle where every part of the performance
went according to the artist's plan. The machine was built specifically
to tear itself apart in the Nevada desert, mimicking the atomic bomb
tests that were taking place there at the time.
Removed from its symbolic status, the piece exists in a series of stills from an NBC broadcast documenting the event.
The first frame documents an image of Las Vegas, a city appropriate for the performance for its mechanized, overstimulating caricature of American life. The film reiterates the performative quality of the work by cutting to images of Tinguely walking around, marveling, and shopping around the city before moving to the desert.
By connecting the performance with various media documentations, from these photographs to the NBC video to various journalists filmed on site, Tinguely exploits media culture in order to emphasize the total obliteration of the actual piece of work and its translation on to the television screen. From the beginning then, Tinguely consciously considers the lasting life of
End of the World No. 2. Its documentation is carefully planned.
The components:
blue water tank with mechanized shaft
refrigerator decorated in feathers
toilet seat
motorized cart
shopping cart full of explosives
The cart rumbled toward the shopping cart, but ended up missing its
mark. A cement mixer began to rumble towards the scene, but got tangled
in wires. It's incredible to think that in all three of his death
machines, something invariably goes wrong with the process and the
machine sputters and barely works. This facet of Tinguely's art
instills more chaos within them, and takes from Tinguely a sense of
control over his art.
Yet eventually, the machine starts to whir and collapse as pyrotechnics erupt . In this image the water tank erupts into the atmosphere with a miniature mushroom cloud.
In the aftermath of the performance, the NBC documentation creates a vivid recollection of events. Included is not only the explosion, but the preparation, assembly, and false starts of the project. None of this could be translated if someone walked into the Nevada desert today and witnessed the scattered debris.
Carolee Schneeman, Eye body, 1962-3
Schneemann's
Eye Body project was a reaction to her perception and place within the Pop art movement. By including the female body in her composition, she aught to redefine the authority and role of the woman artist within modern culture. she describes the work as a set of "actions for camera." Schneemann wrote of the project that she wanted her body to "be combined with the work as an integral material a further dimension of the construction.... not only am I an image-maker, but i explore the image values of my flesh as material I choose to work with." The image was photograph by her friend, named Erro. What is Erro's authority in the image-making process? What is his authority within the art? Compare this image to a photograph of an architectural structure. Schneemann is just as much an architect of the space of the frame as any architect designs any building. Yet while an architect's work is designed to withstand time and double as a work of art and a livable space, Schneemann designs a carefully-propped space within her studio and then photographs her image within the frame. Thus Erro's authority is undermined by the work's loss of temporality.
Ghost Rev, 1965
Ghost Rev is described by Schneemann as a "kinetic theater space." Like Tinguely's performance,
Ghost Rev exists as a performance over time, in contrast to
Eye Body, which exists in reduced form as a single image. The performance is an interaction with video projection and Schneemann's own dancing body. Like
Eye Body, her bodily image is superimposed within the frame, but this time, it's a kinetic, performing image rather than a portrait.
Snows, 1967
in
Snow, another kinetic theater space, a montage of five films is is concentrically contained within an elaborate, dazzling stage of lights. The performance regarded the image of Vietnam within the framework of mass media. From its stage set up, the piece seems meant to be photographed. The image even depicts a man in the front row holding another camera. It is also wholly concerned with the reception of light, through the arena-like luminescent stage to the bright TVs. Schneemann's body seems forced upon the stage, noting her uncomfortable assimilation into her behemoth mock-up of mass culture.
On Kawara is a Japanese artist who worked in New york in the 1090's Among his most prolific work his his
Today series of paintings, in which he paints a canvas every day with the date in white over a black background. The seriality of the
Today series dissolves it from the conventionality of a dated art work: it's rather an open system of art, each day documented by a new painting. The multiplicity undermines the power of each individual painting, and they exist most powerfully when viewed together. Thus this studio snapshot serves as a powerful image that denotes the aesthetic of the project better than any individual painting could.
I Got Up, 1971
I'm Still Alive, 1978
I'm Not Going to Commit Suicide, Don't Worry, 1970
These postcards that Kawara sent to his friends are a more spontaneous and self-reflective interpretation of the
Today series aesthetic. They are more personal in two ways. Firstly, they come with short, cryptic messages which denote some aspect of the day: "I GOT UP AT 12:43 PM," "I AM STILL ALIVE," "I AM NOT GOING TO COMMIT SUICIDE DON'T WORRY." Secondly, their mode of observation is reduced from the gallery viewer to the recipient. The project translates the passage of time into the passage of visual space, and this visual space is completely reliant on photographs of letters in order to reach the mass public.
Eva Hesse
Eva Hesse was a prolific American painter and sculptor who famously died of brain damage at age 34. Her sculptures are fetishistic, provocative pieces meant to invade and question the idea of gallery space that include a wide range of materials from paper-mache to ropes to inner tubes. By dictating the allotment of gallery space, Hesse's works question the authority of a gallery designer over her work. Her sculptures are hung and positioned by herself, and stretch into the gallery space greedily. Hesse was extremely concerned about the reception and assembly of her pieces, and thus had many sculptures destroyed so they wouldn't be viewed out of context.
These photographs of Hesse's studio, then capture the rare interaction of the sculptures with each other. Since she died so young, and her artistic input was so critical in the arrangement of her pieces within a gallery space, these photographs document the artistic aesthetic of the artist by removing her works from the politics of the gallery and placing them withing a space of comfort.
Many of the sculptures in this image have been destroyed. Yet they exist in this photograph, comically hung in sequention. Their image becomes macabre when juxtaposed with both the death of the artist and the death of the individual object. The photograph considers these layers of death and combines them with the death of the gallery space in order to depict a scene which embodies spontaneity, unplanned composition, and unconscious arrangement. Thus this is the
most free depiction of of the artist's work, as it implies that the artist is still alive and working, the circumstances which she would have wanted her sculptures to be received under.
