Lamar Dodd School of Art Lecture: Nick Cave

Performance artist Nick Cave will speak at the Lamar Dodd School of Art tomorrow (Tuesday, September 21) at 5:30 p.m. in room S151. This event is part of the Visiting Artist and Scholar Lecture series. Cave is a professor and chair of the Fashion Department of the Art Institute of Chicago; he earned his BFA in 1982 from the Kansas City Art Institute and his MFA in 1989 at Cranbrook Academy of Art.

He is most famous for his Soundsuits. These elaborately decorated sculptures can be displayed as art objects in a museum or worn by dancers to create sound and movement within their performances. His works incorporate a variety of materials such as metal toys, fabric, and other found objects, even dyed human hair.



Cave’s work is represented by the Jack Shainman Gallery, and he has exhibited at Studio La Citta in Verona, Italy, the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Recently, Cave’s Soundsuits were featured in an eight-page spread in Vogue’s September 2010 issue.

Performance Art at AthFest

One week from today, GMOA will sponsor a work by performance and new media artist, Amelia Winger-Bearskin, as part of the AthFest lineup at the Rialto Room at Hotel Indigo, Friday, June 25. I couldn’t be more excited!

She’s now an assistant professor of studio art at Vanderbilt, but I first met Amelia when we were both in Austin for grad school. It was during a studio visit for a show I was curating for UT’s Creative Research Laboratory in 2007, and I was immediately taken with both the sophistication and accessibility of her work. I chose to include her video installation, Backup, which you can read about on her website (the essay first appeared in the catalogue for my show, Interchange, An Exhibition in Three Parts, and then as an entry for Art in the Age of the Internet at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York).

For AthFest, a performance seemed most relevant, and we decided on a piece she recently debuted at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville. Square Dance/Round Dance is an audience-interactive performance that references Winger-Bearskin’s unique cultural heritage with elements of traditional American square dancing and American Indian round dancing, combined with mysterious celestial lights and a dance club atmosphere. Her work often seeks to reveal the hidden support systems of arts and entertainment industries by investigating the parts that usually go unnoticed. In other words, she makes us see our world anew. For this performance, flashlights will be given to half the audience, who will then be given instructions in a manner akin to a square dance. Those who shy away from participatory art should not fear; we’ll need spectators, too.

If you’ve got an AthFest wristband, it’s free. Wristbands are available online (click here) for only $15, or at any number of stores around town. If you don’t have a wristband, you can also pay a cover at the door ($8 or $5 for Friends of the Museum—just show your membership card). The lineup also includes Wilma (9 p.m.), Caroline Aiken (10:30), and Lera Lynn (11:15). Amelia is on after Wilma. Please note that the Rialto Room only allows people 21 years of age and up, but I hope to bring Amelia back sometime during the regular school year, when we’ll feature something for all ages. We've also got a table at KidsFest, so stop by downtown on Saturday to make your own toy guitar!

Don't touch the art!

Most seasoned museum-goers have experienced the cautionary warning from a museum attendant after leaning in too close to scrutinize a painting or sculpture, and visitors would never dream of blatantly touching a work of art on display. These understood standards of behavior don’t seem to resonate with all viewers of performance art. The Museum of Modern Art’s “Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present,” on view through May 31, employs a number of nude performers to reenact pieces performed by Abramovic and others in the 1970s.

Having live beings on display as opposed to inanimate objects brings up interesting problems and issues. These performers are works of art for a short span of time and then return to being people. Their protection in the museum setting does not stem from the traditional fear of damage and need for preservation but from concerns of harassment, molestation and damage to their images. Violations by visitors range from inappropriate touching to photography of nude performers (which is forbidden) and stalking on social media such as Facebook. Performers are also subjected to degrading or inaccurate comments about their physical appearance. These interactions and accidents such as stumbling into participants or stepping on their feet usually cannot be prevented.

Despite the risks and discomfort, the performers are often exhilarated by their experiences and have, overall, a positive view of their involvement. An article in the New York Times provides accounts from performers who say “there are plenty of magical moments with strangers, including those who innocently touch bare skin, whisper ‘thank you’ or do improvisational little dances that have the usually stoic performers cracking up.”

One performer, Gary Lai said, “You get immediate feedback. You’re causing a definite reaction in the audience, different from the typical reaction you want in a regular stage performance. This is more about human nature.”

Photograph: Suzanne DeChillo,The New York Times

No touching!

Apparently, museum patrons need reminding of the same rules most strip-club patrons already know to be the case.

Vandalism or Art?

Which do you think Kevin Harman's piece of performance art, which involved him putting a pole through the window of a UK gallery, is? You can watch video at the link above. It's less dramatic than it sounds, due to the artist's decision to use a scaffolding pole rather than a brick and the window's thickness and presumably shatterproof glass, but it does raise interesting issues. Harman paid for the window in advance, which lends some credence to his argument, but it also doesn't seem that the gallery knew about it ahead of time. Do we have to choose? Don't you take the risk that you'll be charged for an act like this just as if you'd taken your clothes off in public or something comparable? Isn't the risk and transgression part of the art? Does art have to be art only, not overlapping with other categories of human behavior? Philosophical thoughts for your weekend.

Link

Ever since Roger Ebert's most recent go-round with thyroid cancer, he's lost the use of speech, which means that he probably writes more than ever. His wonderful blog on the Sun-Times Web site is a great resource for intelligent writing about movies, but it's equally so for intelligent writing about everything, including art. His recent post on artist Chris Burden's piece "Doomed," performed in 1975 and covered at the time by Ebert (this is a revisiting of the territory and his original article) is a great example: long form, reflective, considered and just generally worth the reading (as well as somewhat theological, as many of Ebert's posts have been lately).