Luciano Fabro.
Traditional sculpture has such a little role in postmodernism that it
seems almost out of place when it does make an appearance. A rare
example is The Birth of Venus (fig.
1254)
by
Luciano Fabro (born 1936),
an original member of the Arte Povera
movement
who works in a wide variety of styles and techniques. The roughed-out
"figure" is attached like a misshapen cocoon to the eroded capital atop
the smooth column drums of contrasting color. What might she look like?
Unlike Michelangelo's Captive,
Fabro's Venus remains imprisoned within the
marble forever, with no more than the barest outlines to hint at her
possible shape. Curiously enough, the column more closely resembles a
statue, the Archaic Greek "Peplos" Kore in figure
155, than does this strange
appendage. Although some would deny it, The Birth of Venus is
clearly a post-modern work. What makes it so is the improbable
juxtaposition, which is a knowing misquotation of the past. Yet the
ironic takeoff is accomplished with all the gravity of an artist for
whom sculpture is both a living tradition and a dead language to be
revived—a
serious business that nevertheless does not preclude an element of
irreverence for this vestigial relic. The real surprise is that the
piece is so effective, for in its muteness it contains a spellbinding
mystery.
1254.
Luciano Fabro. The Birth of
Venus. 1992.
Onyx and marble, 263 x
70 x 118 cm.
Courtesy of Galerie Durand-Dessert, Paris
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Luciano Fabro
Luciano Fabro, (born Nov. 20, 1936, Turin, Italy—died June
22, 2007, Milan, Italy), Italian artist who was grouped with
the avant-garde Arte Povera movement, which emphasized
“poor,” or raw, materials, though Fabro never fully accepted
the characterization. Fabro’s best-known sculptural works
included Il buco (The Hole, 1963), a mirror with part of the
reflective backing scraped off; Sisifo (Sisyphus, 1994), in
which a cylindrical piece of marble leaves a pattern when it
is rolled through a rectangle of flour; his Piedi (Feet)
series, which include paws and claws made of such materials
as marble and bronze; and a series of reliefs in the shape
of the Italian peninsula. Fabro was the subject of a 25-year
retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in
1992, and in 2001 his work was featured in the traveling
exhibition “Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera, 1962–1972.”
Encyclopædia Britannica
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Luciano Fabro.
Demetra (Demeter)
1987
Luciano Fabro.
Clotheshanger of the North
1981
Luciano Fabro.
Italia d'oro (Golden Italy)
1971
Luciano Fabro.
La doppia faccia del cielo
1986)
Luciano Fabro.
Foot
1968
Luciano Fabro.
Computer
1990
Nam June
Paik.
Sculpture today descends mainly from the work of Joseph Beuys, who, with
Andy Warhol and John Baldessari, may be regarded as the patron saint of
post-modern art. The notes and photographs
that document Beuys' performances and installations hardly do them
justice. His chief legacy today lies perhaps in the stimulation he
provided his many students and collaborators. Among them was Nam June
Paik (1932-2006). The
sophisticated video displays of the Korean-born Paik fall outside the
scope of this book; but his installation with a Buddha contemplating
himself on television (fig. 1255)
is a memorable image uniquely appropriate to the
Information Age, in which the fascination with electronic media has
replaced transcendent spirituality as the focus of life.
1255. Nam June
Paik. TV
Buddha.
1974.
Video installation with
statue.
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
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Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik, (born July 20, 1932, Seoul,
Korea [now South Korea]—died Jan. 29, 2006, Miami Beach,
Fla., U.S.), Korean-born composer, performer, and artist who
was from the early 1960s one of postmodern art’s most
provocative and innovative figures.
Paik studied art and music history at the
University of Tokyo before moving to West Germany, where he
continued his studies (1956–58) at the University of Munich.
In the late 1950s, while working in West German Radio’s
electronic music studio in Cologne, Paik met American
avant-garde composer John Cage, whose inventive compositions
and unorthodox ideas had a major influence on the budding
artist. He also became involved during this time with the
group Fluxus.
Paik’s exhibition “Exposition of
Music/Electronic Television,” held in Wuppertal, W.Ger., in
1963, marked the first time anyone had used video as an
artistic medium. The next year Paik moved to New York City
and began a fruitful collaboration with cellist and
performance artist Charlotte Moorman. In a well-publicized
incident in 1967, Paik and a bare-breasted Moorman, playing
Paik’s Cello Sonata No. 1 for Adults Only, were arrested for
public indecency at the opening of his four-part Opéra
Sextronique. In the following years Paik made a number of
videos, including Global Groove (1973), and produced video
sculptures and installations. Among the most notable of
these were TV Buddha (1974), TV Garden (1974–78), and Family
of Robot (1986). In 1982 the Whitney Museum of American Art
held a large-scale retrospective of Paik’s work. Starting
with Good Morning, Mr. Orwell (1984), he produced a number
of groundbreaking live satellite-broadcast shows that among
other things emphasized the need for communication between
the East and the West through the exchange of art and
culture. He created The More the Better (1988), 1,003
television sets playing videos from a variety of artists on
Korean subjects, for the Olympic Games held in Seoul. In
1996 he suffered a stroke. Paik’s video opera performance
Coyote 3 (1997), at the Anthology Film Archives in New York,
featured a disconcerting mixture of multiple television
screens, laser lights, and smoke. From the late 1970s Paik
had divided his time between the United States and Germany,
where he taught at the Düsseldorf State Academy of Art.
Encyclopædia Britannica
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Nam June Paik.
Video Flag
Nam June Paik.
Skulptur Pre-Bell-Man vor dem Museum fur Kommunikation.
Frankfurt am
Main
Nam June Paik.
Family of Robot: Baby, 1986
Nam June Paik.
Untitled
Nam June Paik.
Electronic Superhighway
Nam June Paik.
Hacker Newbie
Nam June Paik.
In Flux House
Nam June Paik.
TV Cello
1971
Nam June Paik.
Global Encoder
Nam June Paik.
Techno Buddha
Nam June Paik.
The Chase Video Matrix (1992) at MetroTech, Brooklyn
Nam June Paik.
Vidiot Surfer
Robert Longo
The work of Robert Longo (born
1953)
is the direct outgrowth of his experience in performance
art. Longo addresses disturbing issues in his large tableaux. These
usually consist of wall pieces incorporating a variety of mediums,
sometimes sound as well, but may also extend into space, so that they
fall somewhere between assemblage and environments. Notable for their
formal elegance, they are produced with the aid of collaborators, though
the conception generally
remains his. The effect produced by these conflicting elements can be
unsettling, in keeping with the provocative subject matter. Longo's
characteristic theme is violence and alienation in the artificial world
of the urban middle class. The figure in Now Everybody (fig.
1256) is seen in a pose
inspired by discotheques that, upon closer inspection, is strangely
contorted, as if he had been shot or struck by an unseen force. He is
engaged, we realize, in the universal dance of death that belies his
sheltered life. Despite Longo's attempt to give the subject a larger
meaning, it seems strangely characteristic of the
1980s, a decade memorable chiefly
for its shallowness.
1256.
Robert Longo.
Now Everybody (For R. W Fassbinder).
1982-83.
Charcoal, graphite, and ink on
paper, 2.4 x
4.8 m; cast bronze, 201
x 71 x
114 cm.
National Gallery,
Budapest
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Robert Longo
Robert Longo (born January 7, 1953) is an
American painter and sculptor. Longo became famous in the
1980s for his "Men in the Cities" series, which depicted
sharply dressed businessmen writhing in contorted emotion.
Early life and education
Robert Longo was born in 1953 in Brooklyn, New York and
raised in Long Island. He had a childhood fascination with
mass media: movies, television, magazines, and comic books,
which continue to influence his art.
Longo began college at the University of
North Texas, in the town of Denton, but left before getting
a degree. He later studied sculpture under Leonda Finke, who
encouraged him to pursue a career in the visual arts. In
1972, Longo received a grant to study at the Accademia di
Belle Arti in Florence, Italy. Upon his return to New York,
Longo enrolled at Buffalo State College, where he received a
BFA in 1975. While at Buffalo State, he studied under, and
was likely influenced by art professor Joseph Piccillo. At
this time he was associated with artist Cindy Sherman, who
was also studying art at Buffalo State.
While in college, Longo and his friends
established an avant garde art gallery in their co-op
building, the Essex Art Center, which was originally a
converted ice factory; the gallery became Hallwalls
Contemporary Art Center. Through his gallery efforts, Longo
met many local and New York City artists. Longo eventually
moved to New York City to join the underground art scene of
the 1970s.
Artwork
Although he studied sculpture, drawing remained Longo's
favorite form of self-expression. However, the sculptural
influence pervades his drawing technique, as Longo's
"portraits" have a distinctive chiseled line that seems to
give the drawings a three-dimensional quality. Longo uses
graphite like clay, molding it to create images like the
writhing, dancing figures in his seminal "Men in the Cities"
series. One drawing from this series was used as the album
cover to Glenn Branca's album "The Ascension".
Working on themes of power and authority,
Longo produced a series of blackened American flags ("Black
Flags" 1989–91) as well as oversized hand guns ("Bodyhammers"
1993–95). From 1995 to 1996 he worked on his "Magellan"
project, 366 drawings (one per day) that formed an archive
of the artist's life and surrounding cultural images.
"Magellan" was followed by 2002's "Freud Drawings", which
reinterpreted Edmund Engelman's famous documentary images of
Sigmund Freud's flat, moments before his flight from the
Nazis. In 2002 and 2004 he presented "Monsters", Bernini-esque
renderings of massive breaking waves and "The Sickness of
Reason", baroque renderings of atomic bomb blasts.
"Monsters" was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial.
Longo had major retrospective exhibitions
at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1989 and the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 1990, a touring
exhibition throughout Japan in 1995, and more recently a
"Survey Exhibition 1980-2009," at Musee D'Art Moderne Et
D'Art Contemporain de Nice in France in 2009 and at Museu
Colecção Berardo in Lisbon, Portugal in 2010.
To create works such as Barbara and Ralph,
Longo projects photographs of his subjects onto paper and
traces the figures in graphite, removing all details of the
background. After he records the basic contours, his
long-time illustrator, Diane Shea, works on the figure for
about a week, filling in the details. Next, Longo goes back
into the drawing, using graphite and charcoal to provide
"all the cosmetic work".[3] Longo continues to work on the
drawing, making numerous adjustments until it is completed
about a week later.
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Robert Longo.
Untitled #33 (From the Men in the City Series)
1982
charcoal, graphite & ink on paper
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