Madeleine Newman
‘Art, when vital, is about setting the teeth on edge, of reminding us that we are alive for a span, and that the ugly and wholly unavoidable fact of death is never very far away. Art is about the beautiful. It is also about the nasty, the unpalatable.’ -Michael Glover
Rachel Whiteread - House, 1993
Tracy Emin - My bed, 1998
Michael Landy - Breakdown, 2001
Modernisms (Dada and Duchamp vs. Modernist painting)
Conceptual Art
Postmodernism
YBAs- Art in the 1990s
Art Now- Themes and Issues in Contemporary Art
Marcel Duchamp - Fountain, 1917
Sherrie Levine - Fountain after Marcel Duchamp, 1991
Modernism vs Postmodernism
- ‘High Modernist’ art aimed to ‘hunt’ art down to its medium
- new forms of abstract art
- abstract expressionism and post-painterly abstraction;
- ainters became interested in the characteristics of painting
- modernist painting was self-defining
Jackson Pollock - Action Painting
Mark Rothko - The Seagram Murals, 1958
Greenbeergian Modernism
- American art critic Clement Greenberg promoted the work of the modernist painters
- associated with a concept of Formalism/New Criticism - the dominant idea and criteria for ascribing value to modern art until the 1960s
Modernism to Postmodernism
'All Art (after Duchamp) is conceptual in nature because art only exists conceptually
'One will have to wait fifty or one hundred years to meet one’s real audience, but it is this audience alone that interests me'
Marcel Duchamp, 1955
Conceptual Art- 1960s/1970s
Dematerialisation - Lucy Lippard & John Chandler -‘The Dematerialisation of Art’ in Art International - February 1968
Conceptualism
- challenge to the ‘visual’ and the status of the art object
- systems, series and structures as concepts for art
- analytical art
- institutional critique and museum intervention
- global conceptualism
‘A work of art is a tautology in that it is a presentation of the artist’s intention, that is, he is saying that that particular work of art is art, which means, is a definition of art’ - Joseph Kosuth - Art as Idea as Idea, 1967
Art in the 1990's
the YBA's - Sarah Lucas, Marc Quinn, Damien Hirst
Concluding quote - ‘a worldwide system for the production, distribution and consumption of art on a spectacular scale….the art it shows, sells and talks about is non-medium specific ‘conceptual’ postmodernism…..the work of art is, in short, entirely dependent on the institution of the museum for its continued existence - inside the whale: an introduction to postmodernist art
Friday, 2 March 2012
Friday, 24 February 2012
Feminism
Madeleine Newman
Oxford Definition:
‘The advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes’
Tate Glossary: Feminist Art
‘May be defined as art by women artists made consciously in the light of developments in feminist art theory since about 1970’
1st wave feminism - 19th and 20th century
2nd wave feminism - late 20th Century 1960s-1980s
3rd wave feminism - 1980s- today?
Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex, 1949
Betty Friedan - The Feminine Mystique, 1963
Germaine Greer - The Female Eunuch, 197-
feminist art history & theory
- feminist analysis suggests that the art system and art history have institutionalised sexism, just as with society
- feminist analysis argues for a total re-evaluation and reinterpretation of art history
Griselda Pollock - Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology, 1981
Challenging traditions of representation and 'The Gaze"
‘Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at' - John Berger - Ways of Seeing, 1972
Who is looking?
Mary Kelly - Post Partum Document, 1973-79.
Challenging Institutions and Ideologies
The Guerrilla Girls
- formed in New York, 1980
- aim to expose discrimination in the art world
Defining feminism today - Tracy Emin, Sarah Lucas etc
Defining 'Post Feminism'
- not dealing with one perspective but many
- represents a shift in feminist theory from 1968 onwards
- pluralistic viewpoint/political position that argues feminism has achieved a deconstruction of patriarchal discourse.
- reaction to 2nd wave feminism.
Conclusions
- feminism is a response to society and culture.
- aims to highlight gender as a social construct
- set of ideas and perspectives about how we understand destabilise dominant ideologies in society and history
Oxford Definition:
‘The advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes’
Tate Glossary: Feminist Art
‘May be defined as art by women artists made consciously in the light of developments in feminist art theory since about 1970’
1st wave feminism - 19th and 20th century
2nd wave feminism - late 20th Century 1960s-1980s
3rd wave feminism - 1980s- today?
Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex, 1949
Betty Friedan - The Feminine Mystique, 1963
Germaine Greer - The Female Eunuch, 197-
feminist art history & theory
- feminist analysis suggests that the art system and art history have institutionalised sexism, just as with society
- feminist analysis argues for a total re-evaluation and reinterpretation of art history
Griselda Pollock - Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology, 1981
Challenging traditions of representation and 'The Gaze"
‘Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at' - John Berger - Ways of Seeing, 1972
Who is looking?
Mary Kelly - Post Partum Document, 1973-79.
Challenging Institutions and Ideologies
The Guerrilla Girls
- formed in New York, 1980
- aim to expose discrimination in the art world
Defining feminism today - Tracy Emin, Sarah Lucas etc
Defining 'Post Feminism'
- not dealing with one perspective but many
- represents a shift in feminist theory from 1968 onwards
- pluralistic viewpoint/political position that argues feminism has achieved a deconstruction of patriarchal discourse.
- reaction to 2nd wave feminism.
Conclusions
- feminism is a response to society and culture.
- aims to highlight gender as a social construct
- set of ideas and perspectives about how we understand destabilise dominant ideologies in society and history
Friday, 10 February 2012
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Dr Madeleine Newman
What is it?
A discipline founded by Freud
- a method of investigation focussing on the unconscious meaning of words
- psychotherapeutic model
Sigmund Freud 1856-1939
- Austrian Psychiatrist who revolutionised psychology
- office filled with antiquities from ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt etc
- moved to London to live and work for the last year of his life – resulted in Freud museum
- collection is important as it is linked to the idea of psychoanalysis itself as a kind of archaeology
Sexuality and Development
- Alfred Hitchcock – Spellbound, 1945
Studies on Hysteria
- 1885-1886 Freud worked in a French hospital with neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot working on their interest in neuroses
- Charcot also investigated hypnosis as a diagnostic tool
- Freud used hypnosis until 1896
- Josef Breuer developed the concept of catharsis – the location and replacement of a certain event in ones memory
- Albert Londe – photograph entitled hysterical yawning
(see powerpoint for dictionary definitions of neuroses and catharsis)
Repression
- Freud concluded that sexual emotions that were repressed could cause neurotic symptoms
- lead to investigations into sexual desire
Free Association
- the unconscious mind is seen to be a reservoir for repressed memories of traumatic events that continuously influence conscious thought or behaviour
- psychoanalysis seen as 'the talking cure'
Salvador Dali, Lobster Telephone, 1936
- according to the Tate gallery 'Lobsters and telephones had strong sexual connotation for him, he drew a close analogy between food and sex'
Paula Rego, The Family, 1988
The Three Stages of Infantile Sexuality
- psychoanalysis suggests that as children develop they sense data in the world around them by connecting their bodily sensations to emotions – fear, frustration, satisfaction, anger etc
- for the infant this would be the family unit – the mother as they develop and are weaned
3 Stages – Oral, Anal, Phallic
here the infant's sexual development related to changes in their own body – auto-erotisism
Mary Kelly, Post Partum Document, 1973 1979
The Oedipous Complex
- the concept of being in love with ones mother and jealous of their father
- early childhood emotional relations come into conflict wit each other, producing loving and hostile wishes
- on a basic level this is a desire for the death of the same sex parent and a sexual desire for that of the opposite
Louise Bourgeois - with Filette, photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1968
- The Destruction of The Father, 1974
The Structure of the Mind
The Unconscious
- created when a very young child's drives and instincts start to be disciplined by the cultural rules and norms of society
- the boundary between the conscious mind and the unconscious is breached – dreams, parapraxes etc
Mapping the Mind
- conscious, preconscious and unconscious also followed by the ego, id and super-ego
- Freud's conception of the human psyche in the iceberg diagram
(see vle for full descriptions on these)
Relationship with the external world
- Jacques Lacan – The Mirror Stage (self actualisation) and Lacanaian Psychoanalysis
The Gaze
Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still 6, 1977
Dreams/Surrealism
- ideas of dreams as 'disguised hallucinatory fulfillments of repressed wishes'
- dreams are a balance between censorship and expression
- 'The Dream-Work' – the process of understanding dreams and the metaphors and meanings then contain, this is in relation to 'the latent content' and 'the manifest content'
Automatic Writing
The Exquisite Corpse – method of combining words and images.
By Man Ray, Joan Miro and Ybes Tanguy
Paul Nouge, The Subversion of images, 1929-1930
images of sleepwalking, trance-like states and automatic writing in action
As a tool for analysis
- it becomes a critical perspective or tool for analysis within the remit of cultural theory
Conclusions
'For Freud, psychoanalysis is about memories, thoughts, feelings, fantasies, intentions, wishes, ideals, beliefs, psychological conflict and all that stuff inside what we like to call our minds' – Ward and Zarate
Dr Madeleine Newman
What is it?
A discipline founded by Freud
- a method of investigation focussing on the unconscious meaning of words
- psychotherapeutic model
Sigmund Freud 1856-1939
- Austrian Psychiatrist who revolutionised psychology
- office filled with antiquities from ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt etc
- moved to London to live and work for the last year of his life – resulted in Freud museum
- collection is important as it is linked to the idea of psychoanalysis itself as a kind of archaeology
Sexuality and Development
- Alfred Hitchcock – Spellbound, 1945
Studies on Hysteria
- 1885-1886 Freud worked in a French hospital with neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot working on their interest in neuroses
- Charcot also investigated hypnosis as a diagnostic tool
- Freud used hypnosis until 1896
- Josef Breuer developed the concept of catharsis – the location and replacement of a certain event in ones memory
- Albert Londe – photograph entitled hysterical yawning
(see powerpoint for dictionary definitions of neuroses and catharsis)
Repression
- Freud concluded that sexual emotions that were repressed could cause neurotic symptoms
- lead to investigations into sexual desire
Free Association
- the unconscious mind is seen to be a reservoir for repressed memories of traumatic events that continuously influence conscious thought or behaviour
- psychoanalysis seen as 'the talking cure'
Salvador Dali, Lobster Telephone, 1936
- according to the Tate gallery 'Lobsters and telephones had strong sexual connotation for him, he drew a close analogy between food and sex'
Paula Rego, The Family, 1988
The Three Stages of Infantile Sexuality
- psychoanalysis suggests that as children develop they sense data in the world around them by connecting their bodily sensations to emotions – fear, frustration, satisfaction, anger etc
- for the infant this would be the family unit – the mother as they develop and are weaned
3 Stages – Oral, Anal, Phallic
here the infant's sexual development related to changes in their own body – auto-erotisism
Mary Kelly, Post Partum Document, 1973 1979
The Oedipous Complex
- the concept of being in love with ones mother and jealous of their father
- early childhood emotional relations come into conflict wit each other, producing loving and hostile wishes
- on a basic level this is a desire for the death of the same sex parent and a sexual desire for that of the opposite
Louise Bourgeois - with Filette, photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1968
- The Destruction of The Father, 1974
The Structure of the Mind
The Unconscious
- created when a very young child's drives and instincts start to be disciplined by the cultural rules and norms of society
- the boundary between the conscious mind and the unconscious is breached – dreams, parapraxes etc
Mapping the Mind
- conscious, preconscious and unconscious also followed by the ego, id and super-ego
- Freud's conception of the human psyche in the iceberg diagram
(see vle for full descriptions on these)
Relationship with the external world
- Jacques Lacan – The Mirror Stage (self actualisation) and Lacanaian Psychoanalysis
The Gaze
Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still 6, 1977
Dreams/Surrealism
- ideas of dreams as 'disguised hallucinatory fulfillments of repressed wishes'
- dreams are a balance between censorship and expression
- 'The Dream-Work' – the process of understanding dreams and the metaphors and meanings then contain, this is in relation to 'the latent content' and 'the manifest content'
Automatic Writing
The Exquisite Corpse – method of combining words and images.
By Man Ray, Joan Miro and Ybes Tanguy
Paul Nouge, The Subversion of images, 1929-1930
images of sleepwalking, trance-like states and automatic writing in action
As a tool for analysis
- it becomes a critical perspective or tool for analysis within the remit of cultural theory
Conclusions
'For Freud, psychoanalysis is about memories, thoughts, feelings, fantasies, intentions, wishes, ideals, beliefs, psychological conflict and all that stuff inside what we like to call our minds' – Ward and Zarate