"Marcel Duchamp (28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French/American artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art. He advised modern art collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and other prominent figures, thereby helping to shape the tastes of Western art during this period.
A playful man, Duchamp challenged conventional thought about artistic processes and art marketing, not so much by writing, but through subversive actions such as dubbing a urinal art and naming it Fountain. He produced relatively few artworks, while moving quickly through the avant-garde circles of his time".
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp)
Marcel Duchamp interviewed by Joan Bakewell. Originally produced as television broadcast by the BBC TV for the program 'Late Night Line Up' on 5 June 1968, on the occasion of Arturo Schwarz's lecture at the ICA, London.
source:
tout-fait. The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal Perpetual (2004).
FOUND OBJECT
John Cage “In A Landscape"
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer, philosopher, poet, music theorist, artist, printmaker,[1] and amateur mycologist and mushroom collector. A pioneer of chance music, electronic music and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century.[2][3] He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives.
John Cage "In A Landscape" (1948) Piano solo performed by Stephen Drury ... avant garde modern music 20th century
FOUND OBJECT
J. G. Ballard (1994)
This videointerview was recorded on the 10th may 1994 in Shepperton at JG Ballard's home by me, E. "Gomma" Guarneri, from Milano, and Matthew Fuller, londoner. As, with my publishing cooperative ShaKe, I had published the italian edition of "Re/Search JGB", I had the idea to pick up the phone, call JGB and ask him: "Can we come to see you?". That was the first time I talked with him. And he said yes, come now! In 30 minutes we took the train from Victoria and reached Shepperton. The first thing he did was to offer us a big glass of whisky. Because of it, and of course because of JGB magnetic presence I was totally out (you can notice that the videocam is not exactly stable). Berlusconi has been just elected, I was in my cyberpunk/techno phase and this is what happened. What a day. Thank you Jim! Questa videointervista è stata registrata il 10 maggio 1994 a Sheppertonn a casa di JG Ballard. Da me, E. "Gomma" Guarneri, Milano e Matthew Fuller, londinese. Con la mia casa editrice ShaKe avevo appena pubblicato l'edizione italiana di "Re/Search JGB" e mi è venuta l'idea di telefonare a JGB (il numero era sulla guida) e chiedergli: "Possiamo venire a trovarti?". Era la prima volta che ci parlavo. Ha risposto di sì e di andare subito! In mezz'ora abbiamo preso il treno a Victoria e abbiamo raggiunto Shepperton. La prima cosa che ha fatto è stata quella di offrirci un bicchierone di whisky. A causa di questo, e ovviamente, a causa della sua magnetica presenza, ero totalmente fuori (cosa che si capisce da come è instabile la telecamera). Berlusconi era appena stato eletto. Io ero in piena fase cyberpunk/techno. E questo è ciò che è successo. Che giornata. Grazie Jim! Per gli italiani: la traduzione la trovate sul sito shake.it
More Ballard (on his novels made into films …)
Ballard tratta di cinema, arte, media e politica: da Reagan a Schwarzenegger e Berlusconi, icone pop e conclude parlando della sua scrittura. L'intervista è stata realizzata a Shepperton il 19 febbraio 2004.
FOUND OBJECT
Janaina Tschäpe
Since 1997, Janaina Tschäpe has employed the female body as her muse, creating universes of polymorphous landscapes, embryonic forms and ambiguous characters. Tschäpe's drawings, photographs, films and installations seek to give form to the trance of art making, portraying not a dream world, but the sensation of being in one. Personal myths and memories are transformed into surreal images that escape rational explanation yet are universally identifiable.
For her Graphicstudio print projects and her video installation Blood, Sea at the USFCAM, Tschäpe worked with the professional mermaids at the Florida attraction, Weeki Wachee Springs. The mermaids performed while wearing underwater sculptural costumes designed by Tschäpe. At Graphicstudio, Janaina experimented with several printmaking techniques including lithography, photogravure, and direct gravure, to create six editions using images taken from her work at Weeki Wachee Springs.
Tschäpe was born in Dachau, Germany, and raised in São Paolo, Brazil. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Hochschule fur Bilende Kuenste, Hamburg and her Master in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts, New York. Tschäpe’s work has been shown in numerous exhibitions throughout the world including Tokyo, São Paloa, London, and Berlin. Recent projects include The 59th Minute with Creative Time in Times Square, New York, the Centre de Art a Albi in Tolouse, the Fotomuseum in Winthethur, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid.
Janaina lives and works in New York and Rio.
FOUND OBJECT
I. M. Pei on Louis I. Kahn
Video, Duration:3:17 min
Ieoh Ming Pei was born in China in 1917, the son of a prominent banker. At age 17 he came to the United States to study architecture, and received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from MIT in 1940. Upon graduation he was awarded the Alpha Rho Chi Medal, the MIT Traveling Fellowship, and the AIA Gold Medal. In 1942, Pei enrolled in the Harvard Graduate School of Design where he studied under Walter Gropius; six months later, he volunteered his services to the National Defense Research Committee in Princeton. Pei returned to Harvard in 1944 and completed his M.Arch in 1946, simultaneously teaching on the faculty as an assistant professor (1945–48). Awarded the Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship by Harvard in 1951, he traveled extensively in England, France, Italy and Greece. I. M. Pei became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1954.
In 1948, William Zeckendorf invited Mr. Pei to accept the newly created post of Director of Architecture at Webb & Knapp, a real estate development corporation, resulting in many large-scale architectural and planning projects across the country. In 1955 he formed the partnership of I. M. Pei & Associates, which became I. M. Pei & Partners in 1966, and Pei Cobb Freed & Partners in 1989. The partnership received the 1968 Architectural Firm Award of the American Institute of Architects.
FOUND OBJECT
Jenny Holzer on Meret Oppenheim’s “Object [lunch in fur]” (1936)
Video, Duration:2:00 min
A Swiss painter, sculptor, and photographer who came to Paris in the 1930s, Meret Oppenheim was regarded in artistic circles as the ideal Surrealist woman--a so-called femme-enfant whose lack of inhibitions and subversive behavior made her as much an object of desire and a muse as she was an artist in her own right.
First exhibiting with the other Surrealists at the Salon des Surindépendants in Paris of 1933, Oppenheim is today best known for her sculpture Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure) (1936), in which she covered a cup and saucer in fur. The result of a casual conversation with Picasso in which he noted that "anything" could be covered in fur, the work sabotages the utility of the items while imbuing them with an eroticism that both repels and attracts.
Oppenheim’s juxtaposition of unusual objects and materials mines the subconscious world of dreams, from which she drew much of her inspiration. (Her father, a doctor, had been a passionate adherent of Jung's philosophy.) Her later body of work consists of a varied output ranging from film scripts and poetry to costumes and masks. Today Oppenheim's legacy rests mainly on Object, now a cornerpiece of MoMA's collection, and her mythic status as a key figure in the male-dominated Surrealist movement.
FOUND OBJECT
Helen van Meene
Video, Duration:2:13 min
The young women in Hellen van Meene's extraordinary colour portraits are friends and acquaintances, people she has grown up with or encountered in her home town of Alkmaar in Holland. Children, pre-pubescents, teenagers and twenty-somethings: van Meene's subjects range in age. Sometimes a girl is photographed over time, and we see her growing up in front of the camera. There are curious, underlying tensions in the portraits - between vulnerability and composure, awkwardness and grace, intimacy and detachment, naturalness and artifice. The scene of each picture is set very carefully by the artist, as she chooses location and clothing, make-up and mise en sc?ne. These staged scenarios then contrast powerfully with the frank realism with which the girls are pictured. Always washed in a natural light, no attempt is made to disguise the physical imperfections of young girls becoming young women. Neither the 'natural' children of the Romantic tradition, who were painted in moments of perpetual innocence, nor the imaginary, perfect bodies of fashion and advertising photography, van Meene's young subjects exist in a state of psychological and physical individuality. Their eyes often averted from the camera, they appear self-absorbed, yet complicit in the process of being photographed. Though clearly contemporary portraits, many also conjure historical female archetypes, which accounts for their sometimes anachronistic, sometimes timeless, feel. A chubby girl in a bathtub, eyes downcast, lost in thought in a summer garden, could be Shakespeare's Ophelia by way of the pre-Raphaelite painter, Millais. A teenager adopts a contra posto pose for the camera, her raven tresses covering her nakedness like a young Godiva. A beatific, cropped-haired brunette in an orange flowered dress has the poise of a modern-day Jeanne d'Arc. Echoes of historical portraiture reverberate through the images - from Piero della Francesca to Breughel, from Dante Gabriel Rossetti to Vermeer - remaining skillfully implicit, rather than explicit. Hellen van Meene was born in Alkmaar in 1972, where she continues to live and work. She studied photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Her work was included in the group exhibition Scanning at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 1996, and she will be the subject of a solo exhibition at De Vleeshal, Middelburg in 2000. She is the winner of the prestigious 1999 Charlotte K?hler Prize. Kate Bush Senior Programmer Hellen van Meene has been financially supported by the Mondriaan Foundation Amsterdam, for the advancement of the visual arts, design and museums. Publication The exhibition is accompanied by a monograph co-published with De Vleeshal Middelburg and Galerie Paul Andriesse, Amsterdam. Available at The Photographers' Gallery Bookshop. Photographs from the exhibition are available for sale from Print Sales at The Photographers' Gallery.
(http://www.photonet.org.uk/index.php?pxid=172)
FOUND OBJECT
Francis Bacon - Documentary part 1/6
Video, Duration:9:37 min
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount of St. Alban, KC (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist and author. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Although his political career ended in disgrace, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific revolution.
His works established and popularized deductive methodologies for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method or simply, the scientific method. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today.
Bacon was knighted in 1603, created Baron Verulam in 1618, and Viscount St Alban in 1621; as he died without heirs both peerages became extinct upon his death.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon)
FOUND OBJECT
Cornelia Parker at the V&A
Video, Duration:3:06 min
Cornelia Ann Parker OBE (born 1956; Cheshire, UK) is an English sculptor and installation artist.
Parker studied at Gloucestershire College of Art and Design (1974–75) and Wolverhampton Polytechnic (1975–78). She received her MFA from Reading University in 1982, an honorary doctorate from the University of Wolverhampton in 2000 and the University of Birmingham (2005).
In 1997, she was shortlisted for the Turner Prize along with Christine Borland, Angela Bulloch, and Gillian Wearing (who won the prize). Cornelia Parker worked as a Professor of Conceptual Art at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where she conducts with Klaus Ottmann intensive summer seminars.
She engages in intervention with site-specific work, and is best known for large-scale installations such as Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991), where she had a garden shed blown up by the British Army and suspended the fragments as if suspending the explosion process in time. In the centre was a light which cast the shadows of the wood dramatically on the walls of the room.[2]
The Maybe (1995) at the Serpentine Gallery was a collaboration with actress Tilda Swinton, who lay, apparently asleep, inside a vitrine, while members of the public looked at her. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_Parker)
Artist Cornelia Parker discusses ideas around her practice.
The British sculptor discusses the place of design and objects in her work and everyday life, as well as the V&A's role as a resource for artists, designers and the general public.