The task of this dissertation is to assess the historical conditions that permitted Jenny Holzer to formulate a practice premised on language and conceptions of public space to break from historical avant-garde and neo-avant-garde practices. My aim is to demonstrate the recourses sought by Holzer—through language, collaboration, and form—to reveal the operations of repression at work in the public spaces of place and language in particular moments of crises at the end of a—and at the ruined start of a new—century: the economic collapse of the late 1970s, the AIDs crisis, and the wars on terror following the events of September 11, 2001. The exemplary projects that I study in this dissertation—from her Truisms posters in downtown Manhattan in the late 1970s, to her collaborative work with The Offices of Fend, Fitzgibbon, Holzer, Nadin, Prince, and Winters, to her work with electronic signs and stone sarcophagi to address the AIDS crisis at its most dire period in 1987-89, to her light projections whose moving impermanence reflect on the continuity of mourning as an activity—each demonstrate the impossibility of neutrality. Concentrating on works conceptualized for and realized (for the most part) in New York City over the course of a quarter century, my study uses the seeming consistency of geography, or at least the fixity of a longitudinal and latitudinal intersection, to indicate the seismic changes inflicted on the city and its residents by economic, legal, political, and violent actions—and, in the case of the AIDS crisis, criminal inaction. My dissertation argues that Holzer’s unflagging demonstration of threatened subjectivity is the necessary form of protest to an ever-more bureaucratized world. / History of Art and Architecture

The decentralization of cultural production in China coincided with the introduction of economic and political reforms in 1979. The subsequent shift from a system of state propaganda production towards a market-oriented dealer-critic system of cultural production required a wider range of expertise beyond deep knowledge of the Western modern art canon or domain expertise. This dissertation investigates how the field of contemporary Chinese art (CCA) is constituted and transformed through a division of labor that reflects varieties of expertise using empirical data from 89 in-depth interviews with leading cultural professionals working in the CCA field, historical archival records, and participant observation. The study revises the conventional conception that domain expertise consistently shapes cultural fields. The main finding is that the kinds of expertise used are associated with how the CCA field has developed over the past three decades. Cultural professionals mobilize non-cultural expertise as well as cultural capital to enlist international support for CCA, establish aesthetic value, and extend the boundaries of cultural organizations that filter and deliver CCA to a broad audience. These results reinforce the agency perspective in institutional studies. Individual actors drive change in the CCA field while being embedded within it. Overall, the transformation of the field of contemporary Chinese art encompasses pragmatic adaptations to environmental shifts in resource distribution, the availability of new technologies of cultural production, and wider political and economic transformations. / Sociology

Group Material's seventeen-year collaboration began in New York in 1979 through the artists' shared interests in collective, politicized practices and their immersion in a localized network of countercultural activities. While GM's cadre of participants shifted over time (from the dozen who launched its first year to a smaller core comprising Doug Ashford, Julie Ault, Mundy McLaughlin, Félix González-Torres, and Tim Rollins), its practice developed a consistent aesthetic vocabulary in dialogue with major figures of 1980s art and with an eye to 1960s conceptualism and the Soviet avant-garde. GM threw open the class coordinates of art's public and introduced a distinct set of responses to the central problematics of 1980s art: the debates over representation, appropriation, painting, public space, and activism. / History of Art and Architecture

This study critically reviews four works of the artist Joanna Rytel with the intention to find out if and how she is provocative. In order to do that I have studied the reactions on these works, mainly through press material, which differs from letters to the editors and comments posted on discussion forums that's also been used. My conclusion is that Rytel provokes not just because of her choice of subject, but because of her concept of 'art' doesn't agree with the general public's, i.e. 'art' is supposed to be something merely beautiful. The journalists sometimes seems provoked by Rytel's ability to draw attention and have claimed that to be her main aim.

Contemporary Lithuanian fine art is the art based on certain principles of thinking, new approach to meanings and functions of creation. The progress of art is induced by talented artists and looking at the contemporary Lithuanian fine art one can see how often for artists it is important not only to express themselves in artistic creation, but also be the bellmen of the society and talk about important subjects. The historic myths are the part of the old world, which is present in our culture: literature and fine art. Art of the old myths is the memory of the cultures, verbal expression and tradition. The theme of myths in art pieces helps the artist to talk about the problems within his interests as free and individual interpretation of the myths is the peculiarity of contemporary art. According to the artists the good art is such art, which keeps up with the times and manages to exercise the effect on the spectator and convince him/her. That is why a good artist uses the myths as a tool in his/her creation and via such old myths he/she manages to talk about the topical issues of today. As the myths have their own polysemous meaning, they do not need rationalistic interpretation. It is interesting and most of all – suggestive. The symbols of myths help the artists to express their ideas in a more purposeful way and they assist the spectators in better understanding of the piece of art, which already acquires literary connotation. The content of the art creations... [to full text]

This Thesis is concerned with how history is narrated in two selected works by the British artists, Tacita Dean and Jeremy Deller. Chapter one considers Deller's The Battle of Orgreave (2001), a reenactment of a violent miners' strike against Margaret Thatcher's government in 1984-1985. The reenactment brought together reenactment hobbyist and ex-miners to perform the events at Orgreave and created a discourse around the imagined historical role of the working classes. Chapter two examines Dean's book Teignmouth Electron (1999), which recounts the failed voyage of Donald Crowhurst, one of the contestants of the 1967 Golden Globe Race who committed suicide after developing 'time-madness' at sea. She offers the history of this individual as a point of entry into middle-class aspirations in England in the 1960s. Produced at the turn of the 21st century when Britain's New Labour government was instigating an image of a New Britain to match its bygone glory, both works look back to moments in the past that epitomize the decline of the country's old order. Unearthing instances of failure and defeat, each artist offers an alternative glance at Britain's past and present condition than the one promoted by New Labour.

This thesis argues that the environmental undertones of artists Edward Burtynsky’s and Olafur Eliasson’s work have clearly aligned them; however, the focus of my study is not an evaluation of the artists’ abilities to express environmental concerns, but rather an exploration of the effects of their representations on our understanding of the surrounding environment, and of the artists’ contributions toward a definition of Nature that now includes its own demise as a site of aesthetic pleasure. This study focuses on Olafur Eliasson’s New York City Waterfalls and on Edward Burtynsky’s Nickel Tailings photographs. Burtynsky’s Nickel Tailings photographs, among them in particular, his well known Nickel Tailings No. 34, depict a barren grey and black landscape centered primarily around an intensely coloured red and orange river of molten metal. Eliasson’s recent New York City Waterfalls consists of four artist-constructed waterfalls, ranging from 90 to 120 feet tall, located within the waters of Lower Manhattan, Governs Island, and beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. In his monumental New York City Waterfalls, Eliasson has made an intervention into the landscape that effectively works to contaminate the established aesthetic upon which it is based. In his monumental photographs, in contrast, Burtynsky does the opposite; he aestheticizes the contaminated. Here I would add that both artists have carefully called upon the elemental in order to reference the idea of wilderness or a “pure” form of Nature. Reference to the elemental in Nature—to air, water, and fire— has allowed these artists to challenge the viewer’s perception and experience of the nonhuman world. These manufactured landscapes are undeniably owned by humanity, yet is this the type of landscape we are comfortable to claim as our own? / Thesis (Master, Art History) -- Queen's University, 2011-12-03 14:03:08.43

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Increasingly, contemporary artists are invited to create artworks responding to and located in cultural heritage sites such as national parks, national monuments, historic landmarks, and historic buildings. This thesis examines the nature of contemporary art production, display, and encounter in cultural heritage sites. The research is directed by the question: What are the conditions of curating contemporary art in cultural heritage sites?   The analysis builds from the idea that the meeting ground of contemporary art and cultural heritage produces a curatorial zone, and explores the implications of the interplay between these two fields for curatorial labor in cultural heritage sites specifically. A set of conditions that are central to both curating and cultural heritage management forms the methodological starting point for a comparative analysis of ten contemporary art projects in cultural heritage sites, including one in-depth case study.   The comparative analysis reveals that this curatorial zone is characterized by conditions that arise from conceptual tensions between the fields of contemporary art and cultural heritage. Specifically, a set of conditions I have termed change, temporal, interpretive, site-specific, and instrumental conditions actively shape the act of curating contemporary art in cultural heritage sites.

Современное искусство, фотография, живопись. / Daugiausia dėmesio skirdama XX ir XXI amžiaus fotografijai ir tapybai, pasirinkau buvimo/nebuvimo temą. Mane domina vieneto buvimo santykis visuomenės kontekste. Ieškau skirtumų, panašumų, išraiškos bei priklausomumo priemonių tarp aukščiau pateiktų meno sričių. Fotografiją reprezentuoja Toddo Hido (Houses), Cindy Sherman (Untitled Film Still, History Portraits) ir Andrzejo Kramarzo (Things, Home – bendradarbiaujant su Weronika Łodzińska) pasirinkti kūriniai. Tapybos atveju nurodau į kūrinius: Franciso Bacono (Head I-IV, Study of Pope Innocent X by Velazquez, Three Studies a Portrait of Lucian Freud, Triptych Studies from the Human Body), Romano Opałkos (ОPALKA 1965/1-) ir Gerhardo Richtero (Mrs Wolleh with children, Nanni and Kitty, White). / Contemporary art, photography, painting.