Earth Art

Smithson, Spiral Jetty, Great Salt Lake, Utah

• Used black rocks and earth from the site to create a coil 1500 feet long and 15 feet wide

• Stretches counterclockwise into the lake

• Dump trucks, a tractor, and front loaders used

• View of object changes depending on vantage point

• Viewer walks on a broad, flat avenue into the lake

• Desolate area of Great Salt Lake

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Surrounded Islands, Miami

• Floating material suspended over water surface around 11 islands near Miami

• Bright pink material in contrast with the cool greens and blues of the water and the island

• Temporary works extensively photographed and documented

• 6.5 million square feet of pink woven polypropylene fabric covering the surface of the water, floating and extending out 200 feet from each island into the bay

1983

Earth Art

Serra, Tilted Arc• 12’ high and 120’ long• Tilted and curved steel arc bisecting a plaza before a government

building• Erected 1981, but many claimed it inhibited access to the building• Removed in 1989• Serra claimed it was built with this site in mind and to move it would

be to destroy it• Meant work to be noticed, even intrusive, but also to match the

environmenthttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock/flashpoints/visualarts/tiltedarc_a.html

Serra, Tilted Arc•12’ high and 120’ long•Tilted and curved steel arc bisecting a plaza before a government building•Erected 1981, but many claimed it inhibited access to the building•Removed in 1989•Serra claimed it was built with this site in mind and to move it would be to destroy it•Meant work to be noticed, even intrusive, but also to match the environment

Modern Architecture

Utzon, Sydney Opera House, Sydney• Extremely difficult site in the middle of

Sydney harbor surrounded by water on three sides, with only one access road

• Actually three buildings, the Opera House is the second building; the others are the larger concert hall and the restaurant

• Independently woven cone shapes imitate soaring sails of boats in harbor

• Buildings set on large flat platform• Each arch is held down at base and fans

upwards• Spaces between arches filled with glass

to provide insulationTheaters in reverse: the back of the stage faces land, the front faces the harbor: people enjoy the harbor during intermission

Modern Architecture

Eero Saarinen, Trans World Airlines Terminal, Queens, New York (1956 – 63)

• Acts as a transition to the act of flying

• Building seems to be a giant bird about to land

• Sweeping use of concrete with big curving lines on interior and exterior

• Large windows contribute to feeling of light and airiness

• Y-shaped piers sustain building

• Sculptural sense in the creation of the work

Modern Architecture

Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building, New York

• “Less is more”

• International Style

• Tall lines push upward accentuating verticality

• Building set back on the plaza with symmetrical piers

• Opaque windows set behind vertical lines in a warm, amber tone

• Flanking fountains and pools are also strictly geometric in design

Modern Architecture

Rogers and Piano, Pompidou Center, Paris 1972 - 76• Natural extension of Bauhaus formula of skeletal

construction• Only the skeleton is seen, walls recessed• Functions of building are color-coded: red for

elevators and escalators, yellow for electric service, blue for air conditioning and ventilation and green for water service

Modern Architecture

Frank Gehry, Guggenheim, Bilbao, Spain

• Twisting, soaring metallic forms

• Overlapping arcs sweep across the façade

• Curving elements define space

• Round spaces have swirling effect on the interior

• Shows effect of using a computer on constructing buildings

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, by Frank Gehry, at Bilbao, Spain, 1997.

Feminism

Feminism is one aspect of the 1970s feminist movement that took center stage in American life

Judy Chicago, Dinner Party• Installation celebrating the achievements of famous women• Triangular table where dinner is prepared for 39 women in 3 groups of

13• Each has a table setting with a cup, flatware and a uniquely designed

plate which illustrates the guest’s achievements• Installation raised on a platform containing 999 other names• Vaginal elements strongly expressed

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #35• Poses herself in 69 scenes of black and white

prints• Seeks to understand the male fascination

with the female form as seen in the movies and in popular culture in general

• Since Sherman's characters in the Untitled Film Stills are not specified, the viewer is free to construct his or her own narratives for these women

• Sherman encourages our participation by suggesting, through the deliberate nature of her poses, that she is the object of someone's gaze

• Film stills are not isolated frames from movies but rather reenactments that are used to advertise a film

Feminism

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face) 1981 - 83

• Ready-made photograph

• Female bust of a classical face

• Words run vertically down left hand side in alternating black and white boxes

• Print is black on white shadowed boxes alternating with white print on black boxes

• Criticism of portrayal of women in print media

PostmodernismRobert Arneson, California Artist

• Self-portrait in a ceramic sculpture• Artist enshrined on a mock-pedestal, answering back

critics of his work• Pedestal overgrown with weeds, flaked plaster reveals

simulated marble base that is really a covering for common brick

• Smart, smug, hip artist knowingly confronts his critics• Stereotype of a Californian: pedestal has the artist’s

signature bricks, a marijuana plant, an empty wine bottle, a drawing of a Buddha and an etched graffito "No Nukes"

• Depicting himself as a typical California hippie, Arneson is dressed in a denim jacket with no shirt, arms crossed defiantly in front of him, wearing dark glasses.

Jeff Koons, Pink Panther, 1988

•Porcelain figure that glorifies mass culture

•Influence of Pop Art

•Koons advocates materialism and sexual bliss

•Part of the Banality series which consists of gigantic tchotchkes executed in polychromed wood and porcelain of which Pink Panther is a prime example

•Mating of actress Jayne Mansfield and a cartoon character in Pink Panther is an ironic statement of heterosexual pleasure and celebrity romance

•The passing and the ephemeral have no place in Koons’ art, so he makes indestructible totems to things that never lived and so cannot perish

Guerrilla Girls, The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist

•Anonymous artists who seek to promote women’s issues in art

•Satiric listing of “advantages”

•Challenges political, social and institutional biases against women

Video Art

Nam June Paik, Video Still from Global Groove• Video art• Broadcast in 1974 on television in New York• Paik’s multifaceted Global Groove became one of the most influential

and legendary examples of video art• Global Groove integrates and unites diverse elements — films and

videotapes by other artists, interviews and voiceovers (including appearances by Allen Ginsberg and John Cage), pop music (such as “Devil with a Blue Dress On” by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels), appropriated commercials and broadcast fragments — in a series of short segments driven by a rapid, energetic pace and comprehensive image processing

http://wiki.media-culture.org.au/index.php/Global_groove