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3/20/2008
PINO PASCALI-ALEXANDER IOLAS
Andy Warhol-Μέγας Αλέξανδρος-Αλέχανδρος Ιόλας
Είναι η τελευταία λέξη της Μόδας στη Νέα Υόρκη ο "Μέγας Αλέξανδρος"
στην Νέα Υόρκη.
στην Νέα Υόρκη.
Είναι στη Μόδα και τα ρούχα του Αντι Γουόρχολ με τα καμουφλάζ θέματα από τον "Μυστικό Δείπνο" και τις "Στάμπες " του.
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Description of Burton Andy Warhol Last Supper Hooded Jacket - Men's: |
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| Burton teamed up with the Andy Warhol foundation to create the Burton Men's Andy Warhol Last Supper Hooded Jacket. With this snowboard jacket, everyone will be staring at your chest, and not just because you're ripped and a park-and-pipe God. The Last Supper Hooded Jacket features a high-definition art print that looks like nothing else on the hill. Of course, Burton didn't forget to give this winter jacket snowboarding functionality. The jacket's 10K-rated laminate fabric keeps snow and wind out, while lightweight Thermacore insulation provides the warmth for frigid February powder days. Burton even gave the Last Supper Hooded Jacket quilted satin lining, so it feels luxurious when you wear it over a t-shirt on the street. Two handwarmer pockets, a goggle pocket, and a pass pocket make sure you don't leave any necessities in the car. |
![‘Fellatio’ by Andy Warhol [1978]](http://bibimydarling.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/aalx001407-fellatio-by-andy-warhol-1978b.jpg)
Andy Warhol grave
St. John the Baptist Cemetery
Route 88 and Connor Road
Pop artist and avant-garde filmmaker Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh; he grew up in the East End neighborhood of Oakland (3252 Dawson Street), attending Schenley High School. A devout Byzantine Catholic, he is buried in his family’s plot in this church cemetery. At his grave site, mourners have been known to leave flowers in Campbell’s soup cans, to honor the memory of one of his most famous artworks.
Claimed as a queer artist, Warhol was in fact enigmatic about his personal life and seems to have been primarily asexual. Graduated from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1949, Warhol moved to New York and achieved fame first as a commercial artist. His silkscreens of Campbell’s soup cans and of Marilyn Monroe in the early 1960s launched his pop art career. Later, he directed such underground films as My Hustler (1965) and Chelsea Girls (1966). Others films, such as Trash, Flesh, and Women in Revolt, were made by director Paul Morrissey and produced by Warhol at his studio, a Manhattan loft called “The Factory,” and gave prominence to such drag queens as Holly Woodlawn and Candy Darling.
In 1968, Warhol’s life was almost cut short when Valerie Solanis, a violent lesbian who authored the “SCUM Manifesto” (Society for Cutting Up Men), shot him. Following his recovery, Warhol became more reclusive and abandoned directing, having already experienced significantly more than the “15 minutes of fame” he said everyone would one day enjoy. He died unexpectedly following a routine gall bladder operation, on Feb. 22, 1987, 20 years ago this week. The Andy Warhol Museum, 117 Sandusky Street, opened in Pittsburgh in 1994.
LEONOR FINI-ALEXANDER IOLAS
Leonor Fini
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Biography:
Born in Buenos Aires, 1907, to an Argentine father and an Italian mother, the life of Leonor Fini began in utter turmoil. Her parent's strife ridden marriage ended before Fini was a year old. After their divorce, Fini's mother gathered up Leonor and their belongings and returned to Italy.
Settling in the northern Italian city of Trieste Fini's mother began a peaceful new life. This was soon over as her ex-husband travelled to Italy to kidnap Leonor and take back to Argentina. With no help from local authorities, and no legal protection against such actions, Fini's mother nonetheless outwitted her estranged husband. For six nightmare years she disguised Leonor as a boy whenever they ventured out of the house. As absurd as this may seem, it worked. Her husband gave up his mission and returned to Argentina, never to be seen again.
Fini's career also began in a traumatic way. In her early teens she suffered an eye disease that forced her to wear bandages on both eyes. Living in a world of darkness for quite some time, she had little to do but develop her inner vision. She spent her days and visualizing fantastic images, and after her recovery, decided to become an artist.
As she did with everything , Fini pursued art with passion, determination, and conviction. She visited museums regularly, and studied renaissance masters, Mannerism, Romanticism and the Pre Raphaelites. Instead of busying herself with the usual juvenile concerns, Fini immersed herself in her uncle's large collection of art books. Consequently, her talent grew rapidly and at the tender age of seventeen, Fini had her debut exhibit in a Trieste gallery. More amazing, word of her talent reached Milan, a major Italian art center. The city's upper eschalon loved Fini's work and commissioned portraits by the young master. This early display of talent earned her the friendship of renowned Italian artists such as Funi, Carra, and Tosi.
Her early induction to Europe's plethora of avant garde movements caused her to mature quickly in originality, philosophical development, and personality. It also inspired her trademark sense of autonomy and non-conformism which she embraced with the same passion as she did with art.
Her eccentric persona and flamboyant dress was rivalled only by Dali. This was not posturing showmanship but a form of integral surrealist expression that uses the entire body as theatre to protest against conventional society.
She was only eighteen when Fini arrived in Paris, but her art quickly found its way into galleries. Art writer/curator Whitney Chadwick says of this period in Fini's life:
- "In Paris she became a legend almost overnight. When one of the Surrealists saw a painting of hers in a Paris gallery in 1936 and sought out its creator, she arranged a rendezvous in a local cafe and arriveddressed in a cardinal's scarlet robes, which she had purchased in a clothing store specializing in clerical vestments. 'I liked the sacrilegious nature of dressing as a priest, and the experience of being a woman and wearing the clothes of a man who would never know a woman's body.' "
For her, surrealism was beyond manifestos and theories. In the sexual realm, she found the group homophobic and misogynist despite its endeavors to idealize women and liberate sexual desire without the interference of morality. John B.Myers, a gallery dealer who documented his experiences with surrealists, wrote of this double standard:
"The sexuality in which he (Breton) was involved was rigorously against what he considered perversion. For example, he detested male homosexuality to the point where he once threatened to expel a member of the surrealistmovement if he didn't get married. On the other hand, voyeurism and lesbianism disturbed him not at all..."
(Myers 1969, 11-12)
Fini was not without ideological contradictions of her own. Despite her denial of being a surrealist, she adhered to many of surrealism's tenants. In fact they played an integral role in her quest to envision a "new woman". For instance, Fini claimed to use images from her subconscious, adopted Georges Bataille's philosophy of a return to the mythological, spiritual and visionary aspects of primal cultures.
She founded her methodology on surrealism's tenant of delving into the self and described herself as living a life in revolt. She used surrealism as both a weapon against the onslaught of prehistoric social conventions and a tool for constructing a modern society that allowed female participation in existence. According to art writer/educator Julie Byrd:
- "Profound belief in the ability to shape the exterior world according to one's desire is rare among women of Fini's generation. Cultivating her own individuality, she placed her own freedom and autonomy to a degree that seems the embodiment of the surrealist ideal, but that was, in fact, equalled by few surrealists."
Refusal to consider herself a surrealist and her willingness to nonetheless align herself with the movement was never an issue with the Surrealists. It was not unusual for the group to seek allies and sympathizers from non-members and similar revolutionary movements. Picasso and Giacommetti were among these allies, however their affiliations were temporary and sporadic.. She was perhaps the only outsider who consistently kept close to the group.
Fini's extensive oeuvre has been an invaluable contribution to the development of a modern feminine consciousness, but her version differed somewhat from the other women surrealists. In contrast with Remedios Varo's ideal woman, Fini's was not cerebral, mystical or ironic but authoritarian, sensual, and governed by passion. She portrays them in an almost Amazonian sense: as goddesses, warriors, and voluptuaries.
Compared with Tanning and Carrington, Fini's art did not symbolically transfer female sexuality onto childhood, she placed it within the adult realm. There is none of the resentment toward masculinized society that appears in the other surrealist women's art. Neither is there the subliminal but ubiquitous sense of determinism that underlies much of their work. Varo and Kahlo, depict the masculine position as arbitrary. Fini was too insolent for such kindness.
Her work simply ignores or reduces the masculine position to insignificance. Whereas most of the other surrealist women's art contains statements about female sexuality, Fini's is more a proclaimation and celebration of it. The women in her art are at once beautiful and alluring, yet powerful and threatening, embodying not only a female sexuality but that which had been thought of as exclusively male. In that sense, Fini envisioned a historically unique--and prophetic-- feminine sexual duality absent from the other surrealist women's constructs.
After WWII, Fini's career expanded. She designed theatre sets and costumes, and did book illustrations. Her work has been exhibited in major galleries and museums throughout the world. Although the surrealist moniker followed her until her death in 1996, she always rejected categorization of any kind. She changed styles often and employed various techniques and media as if to shrug off her tenacious image as a "woman surrealist".
Her efforts had no affect on the public or the academia and perhaps never will. It is almost impossible to consider her life and her art without proclaiming her a surrealist--an extraordinary one at that.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
1929 Galerie Barbaroux, Milan
1932 Galerie Jacques Bonjean, Paris
1934 Galerie Les Quatre Chemins, Paris
1936 Julien Levy Gallery, New York, with Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico, Paul Eluard
1939 Julien Levy Gallery, New York
1942 Galerie Indermauer, Zurich
1945 Studio La Finestra, Rome
1946 Galerie Vendome, Paris
1947 Hugo Gallery, New York
1948 Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
1948 Mid-Twentieth Century Art Gallery, Los Angeles
1948/9 Maisons des Loisirs, La Louiére, Belgium
1950 Galerie Vendome, Paris
1951 Galleria dell'Ala Napoleonica, Palazzo Reale, Venice
1952 Galleria Chiurazzi, Rome
1954 Lausanne Palace, Lausanne, France
1957 Galerie de la Gravure, Paris
1957 Galleria Galatea, Turin
1960 Kaplan Gallery, London
1963 Alexander Iolas Gallery, New York
1965 Les Fleurs de Mal, Wittenborn Gallery, New York
1967/8 Galeria Iolas, Milan
1968 Galleria Dantessca, Turin
1968 Galeria Iolas-Velasco, Madrid
1969 Galerie Brockstedt, Hamburg
1969 Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne
1969 Galerie Lambert Monet, Geneva
1970 Galerie, Iolas, Geneva
1970 Centro Internazionale d'Arte, "Il Poliedro", Rome
1972 Lambert Monet Graphiques, Genva
1972 40 Lithographs, Galerie Lambert Monet, Geneva
1972/3 Retrospective, Seibu Museum of Tokyo; Hanshin Museum of Osaka; Fukuoka Museum; Hiroshima Museum; Museum of the Prefecture of Kanazawa, Japan
1973 Les Petites Filles Modéles, Galerie Art et Valeur, Paris
1974 Galerie Husstege, Amsterdam
1975/6 Sultanes et Magiciennes de Mille et Une Nuits, Galerie Altman Carpentier, Paris
1977 Le Concile d'Amour, Galeria Furstenberg, Paris
1978 Fetes secretes Galerie Proscenium, Paris
1978/9 Fruits de la Passion, Galerie Proscenium, Paris
1979 Solomonie la Possédée et Roméo et Juliette, Galerie Jacques Carpentier, Paris
1979 Le Temps de la Mue, Galerie Bosquet, Paris
1981 Museum villa Franz von Stuck, Munich
1982 Les Petites Enseignes pour la Nuit, Galerie Proscenium, Paris
1983 Retrospective, Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna, Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrare
1983 Carmilla, Galerie J.F. Gobbi, Paris
1985/6 Retrospective, Musée d'Art Sogo de Yokohama; Musée d'Art Daimaru d'Osaka; Musée, municipal d'Art de Kitakyushu; Musée d'Art Moderne d'Hokkaido à Sapporo, Japan
1986 Rétrospective, Musée du Luxembour, Paris
1986/7 Leonor Fini/Les Fleurs du Mal de Baudelaire, Galerie Bosquet, Paris
1988 Baudelaire, Galerie Carpentier, Paris
1989 Mussavi Gallery, New York. Mussavi Gallery, Southampton, NY
1991 Gouaches pour le theatre, Galerie Procenium, Paris
1992 Les Passagers, Galerie Dionne, Paris
1992 Leonor Fini: The Artist as Designer, CFM Gallery, New York
1993 Depth Set Free, Alliance Francaise, San Francisco
1994/5 Oeuvres recentes, Galerie Dionne, Paris
1997 Les Somnambules—In Memorium Leonor Fini, Galerie Dionne, Paris
1997 La Vie Idéale, CFM Gallery, New York
1997/8 Leonor Fini, peintre du fantastique, Retrospective, Panorama Museum, Bad Frankenhausen, Germany
1999 Celebrating Leonor Fini, CFM Gallery, New York
2000 Autoportraits, Galerie Minsky, Paris
2000/1 Les Premiéres Années à Paris 1931-1934, Galerie Minsky, Paris
2001 Aquarelles, Galerie Minsky, Paris
2005 Leonor Fini, Bunkamura The Museum, Tokyo; Daimaru Museum, Osaka;The
Museum of Modern Art, Gunma; Nagoya City Art Museum, Nagoya
Selected Group Exhibitions
1924 Trieste, exposition (Leonor Fini's first group exhibition at age seventeen)
1929 Ile Mostra del Novecento Italiano, Palazzo della Permanente, Milan.
1929 Galleria Milano, Milan.
1931 Glaspalast, Munich.
1933 Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, with Tosi, Sironi, de Chirico, de Pisis, Carrà, Severini, Campligli, Janvier
1936 The International Surrealist Exhibition, New Burlington Galleries, London
1936 Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism, Museum of Modern Art, New York
1939 Meubles surrealistes, Galerie Droin, Place Vendome, Paris with Eugéne Berman, Max Ernst, Valentine Hugo, Meret Oppenheim
1940 Julien Levy Gallery, New York
1942 New York Objects, Drawings, Photographs, Paintings, Sculpture, Collages, Art of This Century Gallery (Peggy Guggenheim), New York.
1942 An Exhibition by 31 Women, Art of This Century Gallery (Peggy Guggenheim), New York
1947 Galerie Nina Dausset, Paris; with Stanislao Lepri, Cocteau, Berard
1948 Venice Biennale
1950 Le Monde imaginaire, La Fenetre de Paris, Paris; with Max Ernst, Stanislao, Lepri, Paul Delvaux
1953/4 Futuristas y Artistas Italianos de Hoje, The Second Bienniale of São Palo, Brazil
1955 Exposition d'Artistes étrangers resident en France, Petit Palais, Paris; with Campigli, Severini, Tamburi
1955 Chats, Galerie de Seine, Paris; with Fougita, Picabia, Valentine Hugo, Stanislao Lepri
1957 Bosch, Goya, et le Fantastique, Galerie des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux
1959 Masques, Musée Guimet, Paris
1961 The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Plazzo Venier dei Leoni, Venice
1961 L'Apocalypse, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris: Palais de Savoie, Aix-les-Bains
1962 Surrealismus, phantastische, Malerei der Gegenwart, Kunstlerhaus, Vienna
1963 L'Apocalypse. Palais Barberini, Rome
1963 Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, Salon de Mai
1965 Acquisitions de Musée de 1955 à 1965, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris
1966 Surrealism: A State of Mind, 1924-65, University of California Art Gallery, Santa Barbara
1967 Le Muse inquietanti: Maestri del Surrealismo, Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna, Turin
1968 The First International Exhibition of Erotic Art, Lund's Konsthall, Lund
1969 The Surrealists, Byron Gallery, New York
1972 Galerie Iolas, Paris; with Victor Brauner, Max Ernst, and Magritte
1973 Erotic Art, The New School Art Center, New York
1976 Librairie-Galerie des Arts, Nancy, to benefit Amnesty International
1976/7 Women Artists, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; University Art Museum, The University of Texas at Austin; Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburg; The Brooklyn Museum, New York
1979 Salvador Dali et Leonor Fini, Galerie Fürstenberg, Paris
1982/3 Paul Eluard et ses amis peintres 1895-1952, Musée national d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
1984 Artistic Collaboration in the Twentieth Century, Hirshorn Museum, Washington, D.C., with Joseph Cornell
1986/7 Women Artists of the Surrealist Movement, Baruch College Gallery, New York; Fine Arts Center Gallery, SUNY Stony Brook
1987 Jean Paul Guibbert: Amis Images et de l'autre Côté des Objets, Petit Foyer, Musée d'Art moderne Centre Georges Pompidous, Paris
1991 Accrochage surréaliste—cent queues ni têtes, Isidore Ducasse Fine Arts, New York
1991 Images of the Sphinx, CFM Gallery, New York
1995 Art Americas, CFM Gallery, Miami
1997 Floating images of women in art history, from the Birth of Feminism toward the Dissolution of Gender, Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, Tochigi, Japan
1998 Leonor Fini and Salvador Dali, CFM Gallery, New York
1998 Peggy Guggenheim : A Centennial Celebration, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
1998/9 Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
1998/9 Mirror Images: Women, Surrealism and Self-Representation, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Miami Art Museum, Florida; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California
1999 Surrealism: Two Private Eyes / The Nesuhi Ertegun and Daniel Filipacchi Collections, Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York
2000/1 Surrealism, Nassau Couny Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York
2001 Leonor Fini and Her Contemporaries: Surrealism Through the Eyes of Women Artists, Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco
Σπένσερ Τούνικ - Ο Γυμνός Κόσμος του....
Τον παρακολουθώ τα τελευταία 10 χρόνια.
Στο Άμστερνταμ φωτογραφήθηκα γυμνός και εγώ.
Απλά τον εκτιμώ.
From 1992 onwards, Spencer Tunick photographs increasing numbers of nude people, initially in New York, but soon also in diverse urban settings in the Americas, Europe and Australia. These 'nude happenings' have been widely commented in the media. Nudes in the city, and in such huge numbers at that: that certainly cannot go unnoticed...
No doubt, Spencer Tunick pushes the boundaries. Ever since it developed in the second half of the nineteenth century in remote places, nudism knew to conquer the more accessible beaches from the sixties onwards, where there is no longer any serious resistance against increasing degrees of nudity - at least in the Western World. Things are different when it comes to public places in an urban context, where men spends his productive time. There, clothes remain obligatory, even when the temperature raises to intolerable levels - and that is why the city has become the stage for all kinds of new forms of exhibitionism (see "Uncovered' by Jordan Matter). As soon as lingerie saw the light of day, many a human creature discovered the thrill of wearing it underneath working apparel or, conversely, of being naked underneath clothes. Others enjoy denudating themselves or making loving in places where they can be watched without being easily disturbed, as before the windows of their appartment, alongside roads or in fast moving cars. A particular variant is the fad of 'streaking', which became increasingly popular in the seventies in places where there are lots of people, like on campuses, parks or hotels, preferably when there are also cameras around, as with sport manifestations. Figures like Mark Roberts specialised on streaking during sport events and became world famous. Equally world famous became Spencer Tunick with still another variant: 'mass streaking' on an up to now unprecedented scale.
TRANSGRESSION?
All eyes can see 'how a country can be free and treat the naked body as art. Not as pornography or as a crime, but with happiness and caring.”
Spencer Tunick
The increase in scale has not the effect one might expect. To begin with, it bereaves the undertaking of one of its most important charms: the effect of surprise. It is impossible to summon up hundreds or thousands of people without making agreements about where and when, and these cannot possibly be kept secret. With, as a further consequence, that the authorities are not only to be informed, but have to lend their cooperation as well, especially since there are photos to be made, which requires the necessary preparatory logistics. Spencer Tunick has been warned: initially, when he still worked on a modest scale, he repeatedly had collisions with the authorities and even had to spend some time in jail. But things are different when we are dealing with a mass event: the degree of transgression diminishes when the number of participants increases. It is not difficult to scorn an individual for some 'perversion', but that is no longer possible when hundreds or thousands indulge in the forbidden pleasures. It suffices to compare with nudism or naturism: when everybody is naked, the nude is bereft of all its titillating allure. Not unjustifiably do many participants - wholly in tune with nudists - declare that they are surprised about the naturalness with which they experience their nude status in such a huge crowd. Which only betrays that their real expectations were opposite. No wonder that many a participant in Spencer Tunick's projects retains the sweetest remembrances of his participation - the feeling of reassuring normalcy inclusive. The ambivalence of such mitigated - if not neutralised - transgression is eloquently contained in a phrasing of a participant to the project in Bruges: 'Spencer Tunick is liberating mankind of its self-imposed prison of clothes'.
But such rather transparent ambivalence is only to be heard off-stage. In the official discourse, the erotic component of the original streaking is empathically denied. Thus, BBC News quotes University lecturer Fiona Jamieson from Newcastle: 'The photos are of nude people, but there is nothing sexual about it.' And, on occasion of an interview of Spencer Tunick, 'The Telegraph' declares: 'Spencer Tunick's studio walls are plastered with his photographs of naked people, but there is none of the jaunty, dirty feel of the girly calendar you might find on a car mechanic's wall'. And in the already mentioned BBC News, Spencer Tunick himself declares: 'There is a sensual element to it, but it's not a sexual experience.' The emphasis with which it is denied that there possibly could be an erotic component, cannot but remind again of the statements with the same intention, of which the literature of nudists and naturist brims over.
BODY SCULPTURE
"I just create shapes and forms with human bodies.
It's an abstraction, it's a performance, it's an installation".
Spencer Tunick
The neutralising move is only completed in that Spencer Tunick proceeds to sell his already neutralised form of streaking as... a form of art! Often, it is museums or galleries (among them Saatchi & Saatchi) which take the initiative. Spencer Tunick likes also to pose as a photographer. No doubt, the taking of photographs is an essential part of Spencer Tunick's undertaking, were it alone for the fact that only thus can the event be witnessed by a much larger public. But, even though the C-prints are sold for a cool 4.500 Euro, that does not prevent them from being only interesting from a mere documentary point of view, not as artistic photos. We are dealing here with mere instrumental mimesis, not otherwise than is the case with most photos of happenings or land art. That is probably why others focus on the event rather than on the document. And here also, they borrow their terminology from the realm of art: there is talk of 'installations' or of 'nude-happenings'. And, because these phenomena have only a peripheral status in the world of art, still others prefer to speak of 'Body sculptures': sculptures made with bodies instead of marble or bronze. In the same vein, Spencer Tunick inscribes himself in the tradition of 'land art': just like land art transforms a natural environment through natural materials, just so is an urban environment transformed through the use of naked bodies... In the same breath, naked bodies in an urban environment are reduced to mere neutral materials in the hands of an 'urban artist'...
The disguise as art is not just a pretext. In Düsseldorf, Spencer Tunick had a 'body sculpture' piled up in front of Rubens' 'Venus and Adonis', and on the Piazza Navona in Rome, the mass of bodies is emphatically photographed against the background of the sculptures of the fountains. The gesture is not new. During the summer of 2006, Jan Fabre had the attributes and video-tapes of his poor performance with Marina Abramowich exhibited in the prestigious Rubens Hall in the Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, as if we were dealing here with comparable items, let alone comparable quality...
Let us therefore phrase it unambiguously: Spencer Tunick's performances have nothing to do with art. There is never talk of mimesis, but always of displayed reality - in case: bodies that are staged like otherwise on a catwalk, although with Spencer Tunick, they wear no clothes. And that Spencer Tunick's bodies are arranged in larger compositions, does not alter their status as real things: also flowers in a vase are displayed reality, and they are not transformed into art in that they are arranged. Besides, Spencer Tunick's arrangements are not precisely interesting. Masses are either randomly distributed like spontaneous masses in streets or on squares, or they are organised in rather elementary patterns, like those of Nero in the Coliseum or those of Hitler's military parades on the Zeppelinfeld. In the majority of his 'installations' - and hence also in his photos - Spencer Tunick relies on similar, rather poor compositions. There are only few attempts to proceed to more sophisticated arrangements, as when he aligns his bodies to environmental formations, like in Black Rock Desert (Nevada 2000) or in Spence Hot Springs (New Mexico 2001). But precisely then, the lack of compository sophistication only catches the eye in comparison with what great artists like Rubens knew to realise - would Spencer Tunick have the guts to pile up his bodies in front of the 'Fall of the Angels' in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (see picture above this article)? Granted, it would turn out to be rather impossible to realise compositions like those of Rubens in the real world with real bodies. But is that not precisely the reason why mimesis is superior to reality?
That Spencer Tunick nevertheless succeeds in selling his projects as art, can only be understood when we remind of the fact that the art world itself has opened the doors wide for all kinds of related, but nevertheless totally different activities. More precisely in matters of streaking, the trend was set with the introduction of the happenings in the sixties. These provided the incrowd, that meets in galleries on occasion of vernissages and finissages, with more appropriate entertainment than the artworks, that, after all, are merely hanging there on the walls. In those galleries, the happening developed into all kinds of 'performances'. The galleries themselves were thereby transformed into stages for primitive forms of theatre, if not for the real world as such. Such metamorphosis was all the more charming since it could pass for a revolution in the plastic arts: the so-called 'transition from art to life'. In that, under the guise of art, many things are allowed that are forbidden in the real world, it was obvious to endorse such formal revolution with a moral revolution - especially since the number of visitors only increased in accordance with the degree of transgression - say with the introduction of some sadism or eroticism (Nitsch, Schwarzkogler...).
NEITHER ART NOR TRANSGRESSION
And that cannot but remind us of the fact that it is not only the nature of art that is denied here, but in the first place the nature of the undertaking that is posing as art. For, it is not only the emphatically denials of the 'sexual nature' of Spencer Tunick's installations that neutralise the in essence transgressive nature of streaking. Also nudity itself is neutralised in that it is reduced to a mere element in an abstract composition. In that respect, it speaks volumes that a visit to the official website of Spencer Tunick confronts you, not with the nude in public urban space, but with the invitation of indicating the tint of your skin on the palette of colours that Spencer Tunick will soon use to make his next 'body sculptures'...
Notwithstanding, we cannot but harbour the necessary sympathy for this new form of mass entertainment: I prefer to see a stream of nudes in the city than a holy procession of flagellants. I welcome the rays of the sun, even when they come to us through the veil of an artistic mist. And even that mist is not to be scorned. That it is disguised as art, made it possible that meanwhile thousands and thousands of mortals, who perhaps wanted, but did not dare to break through the daily drudge by proceeding to the transgressive act of streaking, could indulge en masse in these forbidden pleasures with the good conscience of having taken their part in a new revolution in art - if not of having become living sculptures themselves, and being thus immortalised by a world-famous artist on a photo signed by the master himself as a reward and a proof of their participation in the revolution and their metamorphosis into artworks.
That is why we willingly - although with some tongue in cheek - join the call in The Times Online: 'Do you have naked ambition? Then bare it and become a living artwork. Go starkers for culture'...
Στο Άμστερνταμ φωτογραφήθηκα γυμνός και εγώ.
Απλά τον εκτιμώ.
| SPENCER TUNICK 'BODY SCULPTURES' |
From 1992 onwards, Spencer Tunick photographs increasing numbers of nude people, initially in New York, but soon also in diverse urban settings in the Americas, Europe and Australia. These 'nude happenings' have been widely commented in the media. Nudes in the city, and in such huge numbers at that: that certainly cannot go unnoticed...
No doubt, Spencer Tunick pushes the boundaries. Ever since it developed in the second half of the nineteenth century in remote places, nudism knew to conquer the more accessible beaches from the sixties onwards, where there is no longer any serious resistance against increasing degrees of nudity - at least in the Western World. Things are different when it comes to public places in an urban context, where men spends his productive time. There, clothes remain obligatory, even when the temperature raises to intolerable levels - and that is why the city has become the stage for all kinds of new forms of exhibitionism (see "Uncovered' by Jordan Matter). As soon as lingerie saw the light of day, many a human creature discovered the thrill of wearing it underneath working apparel or, conversely, of being naked underneath clothes. Others enjoy denudating themselves or making loving in places where they can be watched without being easily disturbed, as before the windows of their appartment, alongside roads or in fast moving cars. A particular variant is the fad of 'streaking', which became increasingly popular in the seventies in places where there are lots of people, like on campuses, parks or hotels, preferably when there are also cameras around, as with sport manifestations. Figures like Mark Roberts specialised on streaking during sport events and became world famous. Equally world famous became Spencer Tunick with still another variant: 'mass streaking' on an up to now unprecedented scale.
TRANSGRESSION?
All eyes can see 'how a country can be free and treat the naked body as art. Not as pornography or as a crime, but with happiness and caring.”
Spencer Tunick
The increase in scale has not the effect one might expect. To begin with, it bereaves the undertaking of one of its most important charms: the effect of surprise. It is impossible to summon up hundreds or thousands of people without making agreements about where and when, and these cannot possibly be kept secret. With, as a further consequence, that the authorities are not only to be informed, but have to lend their cooperation as well, especially since there are photos to be made, which requires the necessary preparatory logistics. Spencer Tunick has been warned: initially, when he still worked on a modest scale, he repeatedly had collisions with the authorities and even had to spend some time in jail. But things are different when we are dealing with a mass event: the degree of transgression diminishes when the number of participants increases. It is not difficult to scorn an individual for some 'perversion', but that is no longer possible when hundreds or thousands indulge in the forbidden pleasures. It suffices to compare with nudism or naturism: when everybody is naked, the nude is bereft of all its titillating allure. Not unjustifiably do many participants - wholly in tune with nudists - declare that they are surprised about the naturalness with which they experience their nude status in such a huge crowd. Which only betrays that their real expectations were opposite. No wonder that many a participant in Spencer Tunick's projects retains the sweetest remembrances of his participation - the feeling of reassuring normalcy inclusive. The ambivalence of such mitigated - if not neutralised - transgression is eloquently contained in a phrasing of a participant to the project in Bruges: 'Spencer Tunick is liberating mankind of its self-imposed prison of clothes'.
But such rather transparent ambivalence is only to be heard off-stage. In the official discourse, the erotic component of the original streaking is empathically denied. Thus, BBC News quotes University lecturer Fiona Jamieson from Newcastle: 'The photos are of nude people, but there is nothing sexual about it.' And, on occasion of an interview of Spencer Tunick, 'The Telegraph' declares: 'Spencer Tunick's studio walls are plastered with his photographs of naked people, but there is none of the jaunty, dirty feel of the girly calendar you might find on a car mechanic's wall'. And in the already mentioned BBC News, Spencer Tunick himself declares: 'There is a sensual element to it, but it's not a sexual experience.' The emphasis with which it is denied that there possibly could be an erotic component, cannot but remind again of the statements with the same intention, of which the literature of nudists and naturist brims over.
BODY SCULPTURE
"I just create shapes and forms with human bodies.
It's an abstraction, it's a performance, it's an installation".
Spencer Tunick
The neutralising move is only completed in that Spencer Tunick proceeds to sell his already neutralised form of streaking as... a form of art! Often, it is museums or galleries (among them Saatchi & Saatchi) which take the initiative. Spencer Tunick likes also to pose as a photographer. No doubt, the taking of photographs is an essential part of Spencer Tunick's undertaking, were it alone for the fact that only thus can the event be witnessed by a much larger public. But, even though the C-prints are sold for a cool 4.500 Euro, that does not prevent them from being only interesting from a mere documentary point of view, not as artistic photos. We are dealing here with mere instrumental mimesis, not otherwise than is the case with most photos of happenings or land art. That is probably why others focus on the event rather than on the document. And here also, they borrow their terminology from the realm of art: there is talk of 'installations' or of 'nude-happenings'. And, because these phenomena have only a peripheral status in the world of art, still others prefer to speak of 'Body sculptures': sculptures made with bodies instead of marble or bronze. In the same vein, Spencer Tunick inscribes himself in the tradition of 'land art': just like land art transforms a natural environment through natural materials, just so is an urban environment transformed through the use of naked bodies... In the same breath, naked bodies in an urban environment are reduced to mere neutral materials in the hands of an 'urban artist'...
The disguise as art is not just a pretext. In Düsseldorf, Spencer Tunick had a 'body sculpture' piled up in front of Rubens' 'Venus and Adonis', and on the Piazza Navona in Rome, the mass of bodies is emphatically photographed against the background of the sculptures of the fountains. The gesture is not new. During the summer of 2006, Jan Fabre had the attributes and video-tapes of his poor performance with Marina Abramowich exhibited in the prestigious Rubens Hall in the Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, as if we were dealing here with comparable items, let alone comparable quality...
Let us therefore phrase it unambiguously: Spencer Tunick's performances have nothing to do with art. There is never talk of mimesis, but always of displayed reality - in case: bodies that are staged like otherwise on a catwalk, although with Spencer Tunick, they wear no clothes. And that Spencer Tunick's bodies are arranged in larger compositions, does not alter their status as real things: also flowers in a vase are displayed reality, and they are not transformed into art in that they are arranged. Besides, Spencer Tunick's arrangements are not precisely interesting. Masses are either randomly distributed like spontaneous masses in streets or on squares, or they are organised in rather elementary patterns, like those of Nero in the Coliseum or those of Hitler's military parades on the Zeppelinfeld. In the majority of his 'installations' - and hence also in his photos - Spencer Tunick relies on similar, rather poor compositions. There are only few attempts to proceed to more sophisticated arrangements, as when he aligns his bodies to environmental formations, like in Black Rock Desert (Nevada 2000) or in Spence Hot Springs (New Mexico 2001). But precisely then, the lack of compository sophistication only catches the eye in comparison with what great artists like Rubens knew to realise - would Spencer Tunick have the guts to pile up his bodies in front of the 'Fall of the Angels' in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (see picture above this article)? Granted, it would turn out to be rather impossible to realise compositions like those of Rubens in the real world with real bodies. But is that not precisely the reason why mimesis is superior to reality?
That Spencer Tunick nevertheless succeeds in selling his projects as art, can only be understood when we remind of the fact that the art world itself has opened the doors wide for all kinds of related, but nevertheless totally different activities. More precisely in matters of streaking, the trend was set with the introduction of the happenings in the sixties. These provided the incrowd, that meets in galleries on occasion of vernissages and finissages, with more appropriate entertainment than the artworks, that, after all, are merely hanging there on the walls. In those galleries, the happening developed into all kinds of 'performances'. The galleries themselves were thereby transformed into stages for primitive forms of theatre, if not for the real world as such. Such metamorphosis was all the more charming since it could pass for a revolution in the plastic arts: the so-called 'transition from art to life'. In that, under the guise of art, many things are allowed that are forbidden in the real world, it was obvious to endorse such formal revolution with a moral revolution - especially since the number of visitors only increased in accordance with the degree of transgression - say with the introduction of some sadism or eroticism (Nitsch, Schwarzkogler...).
NEITHER ART NOR TRANSGRESSION
And that cannot but remind us of the fact that it is not only the nature of art that is denied here, but in the first place the nature of the undertaking that is posing as art. For, it is not only the emphatically denials of the 'sexual nature' of Spencer Tunick's installations that neutralise the in essence transgressive nature of streaking. Also nudity itself is neutralised in that it is reduced to a mere element in an abstract composition. In that respect, it speaks volumes that a visit to the official website of Spencer Tunick confronts you, not with the nude in public urban space, but with the invitation of indicating the tint of your skin on the palette of colours that Spencer Tunick will soon use to make his next 'body sculptures'...
Notwithstanding, we cannot but harbour the necessary sympathy for this new form of mass entertainment: I prefer to see a stream of nudes in the city than a holy procession of flagellants. I welcome the rays of the sun, even when they come to us through the veil of an artistic mist. And even that mist is not to be scorned. That it is disguised as art, made it possible that meanwhile thousands and thousands of mortals, who perhaps wanted, but did not dare to break through the daily drudge by proceeding to the transgressive act of streaking, could indulge en masse in these forbidden pleasures with the good conscience of having taken their part in a new revolution in art - if not of having become living sculptures themselves, and being thus immortalised by a world-famous artist on a photo signed by the master himself as a reward and a proof of their participation in the revolution and their metamorphosis into artworks.
That is why we willingly - although with some tongue in cheek - join the call in The Times Online: 'Do you have naked ambition? Then bare it and become a living artwork. Go starkers for culture'...
3/19/2008
Keith Haring - Alexander Iolas
Πόσο τυχερός είμαι Θεέ μου, που ο αγαπημένος μου Keith, μου έχει κάνει tatoo στον δεξί αστράγαλο με βελόνα καινούργια που είχε αγοράσει ο Andy Warhol, τον Νοέμβριο το 1986 στο Factory στη Νέα Υόρκη...
Keith Haring
A pure product of pop culture -- punk, New Wave, hip-hop, graffiti and break dance -- Keith Haring belongs to a group of young artists who nourished music and art in New York during the 1980s. Keith Haring was driven by a fervent desire to communicate. His work -- built from an iconic language of signature lines and symbols -- continues to reach out to the broadest of audiences, dissolving the boundary between fine art and popular culture, between the gallery and the street. his own vocabulary made of very simple figurative signs: hearts, babies, dogs and various silhouettes that take on thousands of different meanings depending on how he put them together. The rest is history.
Biography
May 4, 1958 - February 16, 1990 At the age of twenty-five, Haring had already invented a gripping, universally recognized visual language, accessible as much to neophytes as to connoisseurs. Six years later, he was dead, his blinding fame coinciding with the progression of the disease that killed him in 1990, at the age of thirty-one. Haring never hesitated to become involved in humanitarian causes: the fight against discrimination, drug abuse, illiteracy and AIDS. Knowing that he was HIV-positive, Keith also organized exhibtions and performed at Club 57, in the basement of a church at 57 Saint Mark's Place. He participated in the Times Square show, an important exhibition of new art held in New York City, and made the first drawings with flying saucers; animals and human images that recur in the subway drawings. Haring wanted to demystify art at any cost and make it universally accessible; this led him to create countless graffiti.The drawings in the Subway were quite simple - pyramids, flying saucers, human figures, winged figures, television sets, animals, and babies. Soon the baby with rays all around it became a kind of signature, and the people of New York who rode the subways began recognizing these drawing, although they had no idea who made them.
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