Bay Area Conceptualism: Two Generations Bay Area Conceptualism
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BAY AREA CONCEPTUALISM: TWO GENERATIONS BAY AREA CONCEPTUALISM: TWO GENERATIONS Curated by Nayland Blake HALLWALLS September 15 - November 10, 1989 Copyright @ 1992 Hallwalls, lnc. and respective contributors. Hallwalls Contemprary Arts Center is a non-Profitorganization with programs in the Visual Artsl Performance, Filml Videol Musicl Literaturel and Pub~ic-accessCable T.V.. All selections published with permission of their authors. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without wriiten permission from the authorl Ha~hval~slInc./ except for review purposes. HALLWALLS Contemporary Arts Center 700 Main Streetl 4th Floor Buffalol NY 14202 (7161854-5828 ISBN 0-936739-01-0 This exhibition and the accompanying catalog were funded in part with public funds from the Museum Program of the National Endowment for the Artsl a federal agencyl and the Visual Arts Program of the New York State Council on the Arts. Additional support for the catalog was provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Design & typography: shwflaloflpress, 41 5 Norwood Ave./ Buffalol NY 14222 Introduction ESPITE THE NEAT formulation of this The Bay Area has been a curious exhibition's title! the history of cross between backwater and safe conceptual practice in the Bay harbor for the arts over the past two Area has been rich and nearly decades. The various schools of continuous for twenty years. ~evelo~in~abstract and figurative painting have out of out of !happenings1 and avant- ceased to dominate. In addition! garde ideas in literature! film and video! there has been a marked increase in Bay Area conceptualism assumed a form the number of alternative arts spaces that has been at once less rhetorical and and artists1 organizations. For the more direct than that of New York. Since most part these have served to foster the early Seventies the Bay Area has been a vigorous environment for experi- home to a number of artists who have mentation in the field! particularly in consistently worked to expand the param- video! installation and performance. eters of art making and to blend the Indeed! many of the artists men- various tendencies prevalent in the com- tioned below have worked at one munity. For the most complete documenta- time or another in all of the of these tion of the dozens of artists who worked in areas. While this was seen as a this field during this period the reader is dated holdover at the beginning of referred to Suzanne Foley's accompany- the decade! it now makes clearer the ing text for the exhibition "Spacel Time! affinities between artists working in Sound1' held at the San Francisco Museum the Bay Area and those in Western of Modern Art in 198 1 . Europe. The lack of market scrutiny for both communities has actually made it possible to expand the issues ad- dressed within the conceptual tradition, as well as to incorporate the discourses of contemporary theory. Now that the art world is re-examining the terrain of conceptualism it is clear that its attention will have to turn to one of its most prolific sources, the West. -Nayland Blake T IS PARTICULARLYappropriate for In all of the stormy discussions Hallwalls to host this exhibition with about who and what constituted and the added participation of New continues the tradition of conceptual Langton Arts, for these institutions art, one of the few points on which wereI founded to address one of the key most everyone agrees is that since conceptual art insights: that one of the Duchamp there has been a track of basic subject matters for contemporary work which does not take for granted art is the art apparatus of reception, the nature of art in the world. In fact. distribution and promotion created since as Mary Anne Staniszewski has the second world war. Hallwalls and written in Flash Art, it takes a "critical New Langton Arts were founded by and ironic relation to its status as artists, in part, to confront and make aesthetic practice." This is wholly visible this system and further, for them to apart from work which continued the act as their own producers, critics, Modernist tradition of what is often ".=- dealers and administrators. In fact, Tom derisively referred to as morphological i Marioni, one of the first generation artists pursuits: coming up with different included in this exhibition, founded the looks, shapes, colors, and materials Museum of Conceptual Art with himself for work (i.e. paintings and sculptures) as its sole staff member. But how else which did not question the nature of does his work and that of his colleagues what creating art objects means. Kos, Fox and Ireland compare to the The earliest work of Paul Kos, Tom international movement? Marioni and Terry Fox in the late sixties was contemporaneous with the inherently non-commercial art projects explosion of work being done in such as Ireland's deconstruction of his Europe and New York. (David Ire- own nineteenth-century house. This work land's major projects occur slightly embraced the widespread disdain for later, beginning in 1976.) What was creating marketable objects-Marioni being discussed on the East Coast and has reiterated that it was important at in Europe then had substantial impact that time to make an anti-materialist here, but was also ameliorated by statement-but the rigor of the strictest distance and inclination, if not sheer conceptualist formulations never held personality, and by Bay Area influenc- sufficient appeal for these artists. As es as diverse as the radicalism associ- wary as others of image-making's com- ated with resistance to the Vietnam plex difficulties, they chose actions over War; the Beat Era and its subsequent text as their form. While elsewhere it was Hippie and drug cultures; Bay Area understood that selfhood and creativity Funk School attitudes; Fluxus West; were not a factor of mind apart from and Asian influences, among others. culture, these artists retained belief in All these influences came to be incor- personal expression, albeit by a self porated into a unique amalgam known whose cultural codes and contexts were in a shorthand way as Conceptual Art, under extreme scrutiny. which included sculptural actions, The end product of all the above performance, the incorporation of listed influences was a body of works sound as sculpture, installations, and which had to do with personal experi- 10 ence and transcendence; sensory, bodily two prominent examples. The latter contact with elemental forces; and an works are relics of performances of interest in place, and that place's history. some ninety minutes each wherein the While avoiding an art based on person- artist plays silverplated wire drum ality, the four artists were romantically brushes on sandpaper; the drawings involved in the personal, in life and are silver records of gestural actions, work. As Suzanne Foley wrote in a 1981 suggesting in appearance to Marioni catalog essay for the San Francisco the flight of birds. Birds, flight and Museum of Modern Art, "The strongest astronomy are, in fact, repeated themes characteristic of Bay Area conceptual art in Marioni's work, as are the use of is its interface with everyday life." yellow lighted installations and the Tom Marioni's contribution to this reference to specific geographical sites. exhibition, Drum Brush Drawings (1 972- Marioni's use of found object assem- 77), results from one of Marioni's ongo- blage in a more polished fashion than ing interests, which he in fact shares with most practitioners of that form anticipat- Fox and Kos: sound and music and their ed the current generation of neo- possible incorporation into visual arts. conceptualists' work. Finally, of course, Marioni is a trained percussionist and he he is most identified as the artist who has found over his career that it was insisted on incorporating the social, possible to combine his musicianship both in a broad sense-the inclusive, with his art, including performances with beer drinking, populist public events- drumming and drawing by drumming as and in the narrow art world sense-the clubby, elitist, gossip and shoptalk definitively solve problems and move on scene equally vital to the profession- to the next during a career selling the self-consciously into his art process. latest line, Tom Marioni more closely Marioni sees his drum brush drawings resembles an itinerant peddlar of new as having six elements: drawing, as and used goods with a cartful of images discussed above; painting because of and practices, any one of which may the physicality of his "practiced reappear when he reaches under its tarp. marks"; writing, both because of their When in 1970 Terry Fox, invited to primitive talk/drumming reference to do a piece for the University Art Museum, language and their status as "automat- Berkeley, chose to perform Defoliation ic writings;" music because the drum- wherein he blowtorched all the flowers in ming is accomplished on an amplified the Museum's precious garden lunch sounding board; craft, in that he sees space, he was directly addressing the himself inventing a craft of "immaterial fact of Vietnam to the privileged. For Fox, picture" making; and sculpture, be- this was a powerful yet transitional event, cause that is how he approaches the taking him from his one-man guerrilla world, and what ties all the pieces theater (and Paris '68)origins into a together: "the relationship of elements second body of works concerned with in space and time." The poignancy such themes as transcendence, finding a and enhanced power of these themes metaphysical unity with nature and accumulated through time is Marioni's consciousness through extremely long signature material. While many artists meditative or ritual pieces, and the presence and nature of the body.