.jpg)
.svg)
![[CAPTURE]MOCA_GEFFEN(AITS)](http://web.archive.org./web/20110426143431im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ukw6oY3xlgU/0.jpg "[CAPTURE]MOCA_GEFFEN(AITS)")
As the Los Angeles Times declared, "There isn’t a city in America—not New York, not Chicago, not Houston, not San Francisco—where a more impressive museum collection of contemporary art can be seen."
The Grand Avenue location is used to display pieces from MOCA's substantial permanent collection, especially artists who did much of their work between 1940 and 1980. Included within the permanent collection are works by influential artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn, Greg Colson, Kim Dingle, Sam Durant, Sam Francis, Arshile Gorky, David Hockney, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Franz Kline, Roy Lichtenstein, Agnes Martin, Piet Mondrian, Kenneth Price, John McLaughlin, Robert Motherwell, Elizabeth Murray, Claes Oldenburg, Raymond Pettibon, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Mark Rothko, Julian Schnabel, George Segal, Joel Shapiro, Frank Stella, and Cy Twombly.
There is also an extensive set of rooms used to display temporary exhibits, usually a major retrospective of an important artist, or works connected by a theme.
===The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA=== While the Grand Avenue facility was being planned and under construction, MOCA opened an interim exhibition space called the "Temporary Contemporary" in the fall of 1983. The first public program was a commissioned collaboration, "Available Light" by Lucinda Childs, Frank O. Gehry and John Adams followed by the inaugural exhibition, "The First Show" curated by Julia Brown. The building had been originally constructed in the 1940s as a hardware store and subsequently used as a city warehouse and police car garage, the "TC," as it became informally known, is leased from the city for five years for $1 a year. Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad, MOCA's founding chairman from 1979 to 1984 and life trustee of the museum, offered $30 million in a staggered donation, $15 million as matching donations. An agreement with Broad was tentatively reached on December 18, but another possibility—a merger with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art—had not been ruled out. On December 23, the museum announced that it had accepted Broad's offer and would be making a number of significant changes to its leadership. Director Jeremy Strick will resign, and a new position of chief executive officer will be created for Charles E. Young, former chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles. Broad required compliance with strict financial terms, but did not demand Strick's resignation or Young's appointment as a condition.
Category:Museums established in 1979 Category:Contemporary art galleries Category:Museums in Los Angeles, California Category:Art museums in California Category:Modern art museums in the United States
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Dennis Hopper |
|---|---|
| Caption | Hopper in June 2008 |
| Alt | Dennis Hopper, with gray hair and a gray goatee, wearing a hat and sunglasses. |
| Birth name | Dennis Lee Hopper |
| Birth date | May 17, 1936 |
| Birth place | Dodge City, Kansas, U.S. |
| Death date | |
| Death place | Venice, California, U.S. |
| Death cause | Prostate cancer |
| Occupation | Actor, director, artist |
| Years active | 1954–2010 |
| Spouse | Brooke Hayward (1961–1969)Michelle Phillips (1970)Daria Halprin (1972–1976)Katherine LaNasa (1989–1992)Victoria Duffy (1996–2010) |
| Nationality | American |
He directed and starred in Easy Rider (1969), winning an award at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay as co-writer. "With its portrait of counterculture heroes raising their middle fingers to the uptight middle-class hypocrisies, Easy Rider became the cinematic symbol of the 1960s, a celluloid anthem to freedom, macho bravado and anti-establishment rebellion." Film critic Matthew Hays notes that "no other persona better signifies the lost idealism of the 1960s than that of Dennis Hopper."
He was unable to build on his success for several years, until a featured role in Apocalypse Now (1979) brought him attention. He subsequently appeared in Rumble Fish (1983) and The Osterman Weekend (1983), and received critical recognition for his work in Blue Velvet and Hoosiers, with the latter film garnering him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He directed Colors (1988) and played the villain in Speed (1994). Hopper's later work included a leading role in the television series Crash. Hopper was also featured in the 2010 animated film Alpha and Omega as an Alpha-wolf named Tony. This movie was his last as he died of Prostate Cancer before its release in September 2010.
Hopper was also a prolific and acclaimed photographer, a profession he began in the 1960s.
After World War II, the family moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where the young Hopper attended Saturday art classes at the Kansas City Art Institute. At the age of 13, Hopper and his family moved to San Diego, where his mother worked as a lifeguard instructor and his father was a post office manager (Hopper has acknowledged, though, that his father was in the OSS, the precursor to the CIA, in China with Mao). Hopper was voted most likely to succeed by his 1954 high school graduating class (Helix High School, La Mesa, California, a suburb of San Diego). It was there that he developed an interest in acting, studying at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, and the Actors' Studio in New York City (he studied with Lee Strasberg for five years). Hopper struck up a friendship with actor Vincent Price, whose passion for art influenced Hopper's interest in art. He was especially fond of the plays of William Shakespeare.
In his book Last Train to Memphis, American popular music historian Peter Guralnick says that in 1956, when Elvis Presley was making his first film in Hollywood, Hopper was roommates with fellow actor Nick Adams and the three became friends and socialized together. In 1959 Hopper moved to New York to study Method acting under Lee Strasberg at the Actor's Studio.
In a December 1994 interview on the Charlie Rose Show, Hopper credited John Wayne with saving his career, as Hopper acknowledged that because of his insolent behavior, he could not find work in Hollywood for seven years. Hopper stated that because he was the son-in-law of actress Margaret Sullavan, a friend of John Wayne, Wayne hired Hopper for a role in The Sons of Katie Elder. This role enabled Hopper to begin making movies again.
Hopper had a supporting role as "Babalugats," the bet-taker in Cool Hand Luke (1967). Hopper acted in mainstream films including The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) and True Grit (1969). Both of these films starred John Wayne, and in both Hopper's character is killed. During the production of True Grit, he became well acquainted with Wayne.
In 1968, Hopper teamed with Peter Fonda, Terry Southern and Jack Nicholson to make Easy Rider, which premiered in July 1969. With the release of True Grit a month earlier, Hopper had starring roles in two major box office films that summer. Hopper won wide acclaim as the director for his improvisational methods and innovative editing for Easy Rider. The production was plagued by creative differences and personal acrimony between Fonda and Hopper, the dissolution of Hopper's marriage to Hayward, his unwillingness to leave the editor's desk, and his accelerating abuse of drugs and alcohol.
In 1971, Hopper released The Last Movie. Expecting an accessible follow-up to Easy Rider, audiences were treated to artistic flourishes (the inclusion of "scene missing" cards) and a hazily existentialist plot that dabbled in non-linearity and the absurd. After finishing first at the Venice Film Festival, the film was dismissed by audiences and critics alike during its first domestic engagement in New York City. During the tumultuous editing process, Hopper ensconced himself at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, New Mexico, which he had purchased in 1970, for almost an entire year. In between contesting Fonda's rights to the majority of the residual profits from Easy Rider, he married Michelle Phillips in October 1970.
Hopper was able to sustain his lifestyle and a measure of celebrity by acting in numerous low budget and European films throughout the 1970s as the archetypical "tormented maniac", including Mad Dog Morgan (1976), Tracks (1976), and The American Friend (1977). With Francis Ford Coppola's blockbuster Apocalypse Now (1979), Hopper returned to prominence as a hypo-manic Vietnam-era photojournalist. Stepping in for an overwhelmed director, Hopper won praise in 1980 for his directing and acting in Out of the Blue. Immediately thereafter, Hopper starred as an addled short-order cook "Cracker" in the Neil Young/Dean Stockwell low-budget collaboration Human Highway. Production was reportedly often delayed by his unreliable behavior. Peter Biskind states in the New Hollywood history Easy Riders, Raging Bulls that Hopper's cocaine intake had reached three grams a day by this time period, complemented by an additional thirty beers, marijuana, and Cuba libres.
After staging a "suicide attempt" (really more of a daredevil act) in a coffin using 17 sticks of dynamite during an "art happening" at the Rice University Media Center (filmed by professor and documentary filmmaker Brian Huberman). and later disappearing into the Mexican desert during a particularly extravagant bender, Hopper entered a drug rehabilitation program in 1983. During this period, he gave critically acclaimed performances in Rumble Fish (1983) and The Osterman Weekend (1983).
It was not until he portrayed the gas-huffing, obscenity-screaming iconic villain Frank Booth in David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986) that his career revived. After reading the script, Hopper called Lynch and told him "You have to let me play Frank Booth. Because I am Frank Booth!" Hopper won critical acclaim and several awards for this role and the same year received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role as an alcoholic basketball lover in Hoosiers.
In 1988, Hopper directed the critically acclaimed Colors. He was nominated for an Emmy Award for the 1991 HBO films Paris Trout and Doublecrossed (in which he played real life drug smuggler and DEA informant Barry Seal). The same year he starred as King Koopa in Super Mario Bros., a 1993 critical and commercial failure loosely based on the video game of the same name. and Combat!.
Hopper teamed with Nike in the early 1990s to make a series of television commercials. He appeared as a "crazed referee" in those ads. He portrayed villain Victor Drazen in the first season of the popular drama 24 on the Fox television network.
Hopper starred as a U.S. Army colonel in the NBC 2005 television series E-Ring, a drama set at The Pentagon, but the series was cancelled after fourteen episodes aired in the USA. Hopper appeared in all 22 episodes that were filmed. He also played the part of record producer Ben Cendars in the Starz television series Crash.
Ostracized by the Hollywood film studios due to his reputation for being a "difficult" actor, Hopper eventually turned to photography in the 1960s with a camera bought for him by his first wife, Brooke Hayward. During this period he created the cover art for the Ike & Tina Turner single River Deep – Mountain High (released in 1966).
Hopper became a prolific photographer, and noted writer Terry Southern profiled Hopper in Better Homes and Gardens magazine as an up and coming photographer "to watch" in the mid 1960s.
He began working as a painter and a poet as well as a collector of art in the 1960s as well, particularly Pop Art. One of the first art works Hopper owned was an early print of Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans bought for $75.
In March 2010, it was announced that Hopper was on the "short list" for Jeffrey Deitch's inaugural show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA).
In April 2010, Deitch confirmed that Hopper's work, curated by Julian Schnabel, will indeed be the focus of his debut at MOCA.
In May 2010 it was announced that Hopper will be the subject of an upcoming biography by American writer Tom Folsom, Hopper: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. The subtitle is a direct reference to the Hunter S. Thompson book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
On the Gorillaz album Demon Days, Hopper narrates the song "Fire Coming out of the Monkey's Head."
Hopper had two granddaughters, Violet Goldstone and Ella Brill.
In 1999, actor Rip Torn filed a defamation lawsuit against Hopper over a story Hopper told on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Hopper claimed that Torn pulled a knife on him during pre-production of the film Easy Rider. According to Hopper, Torn was originally cast in the film but was replaced with Jack Nicholson after the incident. According to Torn's suit, it was actually Hopper who pulled the knife on him. A judge ruled in Torn's favor and Hopper was ordered to pay $475,000 in damages. Hopper then appealed but the judge again ruled in Torn's favor and Hopper was required to pay another US$475,000 in punitive damages.
According to Newsmeat, Hopper donated $2,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2004 and an equal amount in 2005.
Hopper has been honored with the rank of commander of France's National Order of Arts and Letters, at a ceremony in Paris.
Hopper supported Barack Obama in the 2008 US Presidential election. Hopper confirmed this in an election day appearance on the ABC daytime show The View. He said his reason for not voting Republican was the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate.
On March 23, 2010, Hopper filed papers in court alleging Duffy had absconded with $1.5 million of his art, refused his requests to return it, and then had "left town". In March 2010, a judge ruled that Duffy must stay at least away from Hopper.
On April 5, 2010, a court ruled that Duffy could continue living on Hopper's property, and that he must pay $12,000 per month spousal and child support for their daughter Galen. Hopper did not attend the hearing. On May 12, 2010, a hearing was held before Judge Amy Pellman in downtown Los Angeles Superior Court. Though Hopper died two weeks later, Duffy insisted at the hearing that he was well enough to be deposed. The hearing also addressed who to designate on Hopper's life insurance policy; it currently lists his wife as a beneficiary. A very ill Hopper did not appear in court though his estranged wife did – case BD518046. Despite Duffy's bid to be named the sole designee of Hopper's million-dollar life insurance policy, the judge ruled against her and limited her claim to one-quarter of the policy. The remaining $750,000 was designated to go to his estate.
On November 14, 2010, it was revealed that, despite Duffy's earlier assertion in her court papers of February 2010 that Hopper was mentally incompetent, and that his children had rewritten his estate plan in order to leave Duffy and her daughter, Hopper's youngest child Galen, destitute, that in fact Galen would be receiving the proceeds of 40% of his estate.
On September 30, 2009, news media reported that Hopper had been rushed to a New York hospital for an unspecified condition. Hopper, 73, was reportedly brought into an unidentified Manhattan hospital by an ambulance on September 28 wearing an oxygen mask and “with numerous tubes visible.” On October 2, he was discharged, after receiving treatment for dehydration.
On October 29, Hopper's manager reported that Hopper had been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. In January 2010, it was reported that Hopper's cancer had metastasized to his bones.
On March 18, 2010, it was announced that Hopper would be honored with the 2,403rd star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in front of Grauman's Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Surrounded by friends including Jack Nicholson, Viggo Mortensen, David Lynch, Michael Madsen, family and fans, he attended its addition to the sidewalk on March 26, 2010.
As of March 23, 2010, Hopper reportedly weighed only and was unable to carry on long conversations. According to papers filed in his divorce court case, Hopper was terminally ill and was unable to undergo chemotherapy to treat his prostate cancer. His lawyer reported on March 25 that he was dying from cancer.
Hopper died at his home in the coastal Los Angeles district of Venice on the morning of May 29, 2010 at the age of 74, due to complications from prostate cancer.
Hopper's funeral took place on June 3, 2010 at San Francisco de Asis Mission Church in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico. He was buried in Jesus Nazareno Cemetery, Ranchos de Taos.
The film Alpha and Omega, which was his last movie role, was dedicated in his memory.
Cannes Film Festival Awards
Directors Guild of America Award
Boston Society of Film Critics Awards
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards
National Society of Film Critics Awards
Writers Guild of America Award
;Articles by Hopper
;Articles about Hopper
Category:1936 births Category:2010 deaths Category:20th-century actors Category:21st-century actors Category:20th-century writers Category:Actors from Kansas Category:American film actors Category:American film directors Category:American screenwriters Category:American television actors Category:California Republicans Category:Cancer deaths in California Category:Deaths from prostate cancer Category:Kansas City Art Institute alumni Category:Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute alumni Category:People from Dodge City, Kansas Category:People from the Kansas City metropolitan area Category:People from San Diego, California Category:People from Taos County, New Mexico
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Takashi Murakami |
|---|---|
| Caption | Takashi Murakami at the Palace of Versailles 2010 |
| Birthname | Takashi Murakami |
| Birthplace | Tokyo, Japan |
| Nationality | Japanese |
This resulted in Superflat, the style that Murakami is credited with starting. It developed from Poku, (Pop + otaku). Murakami has written that he aims to represent Poku culture because he expects that animation and otaku might create a new culture. This new culture is a rejuvenation of the contemporary Japanese art scene. In interviews, Murakami has expressed a frustration with the lack of a reliable and sustainable art market in post-war Japan, and the general view of Japanese art as having a low art status. He is quoted as saying that the market is nothing but "a shallow appropriation of Western trends". His first reaction was to make art in non-fine arts media. Then he decided to focus on the market sustainability of art and promote himself first overseas. This marks the birth of KaiKai Kiki, LLC.
In 2008, Takashi Murakami made Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People" list, the only visual artist included.
Like Andy Warhol, Takashi Murakami takes low culture and repackages it, and sells it to the highest bidder in the "high-art" market. Also like Warhol, Murakami makes his repacked low culture available to all other markets in the form of paintings, sculptures, videos, T-shirts, key chains, mouse pads, plush dolls, cell phone caddies, and $5,000 limited-edition Louis Vuitton handbags. This is comparable to Claes Oldenburg, who sold his own low art, high art pieces in his own store front in the 1960s. What makes Murakami different is his methods of production, and his work is not in one store front but many, ranging from toy stores, candy aisles, comic book stores, and the French design house of Louis Vuitton. Murakami's style is an amalgam of his Western predecessors, Warhol, Oldenberg and Roy Lichtenstein, as well as Japanese predecessors and contemporaries of anime and manga. He has successfully marketed himself to Western culture and to Japan in the form of Kaikai Kiki and GEISAI.
Interviewer Magdalene Perez asked him about straddling the line between art and commercial products, and mixing art with branding and merchandizing. Murakami said,
"I don’t think of it as straddling. I think of it as changing the line. What I’ve been talking about for years is how in Japan, that line is less defined. Both by the culture and by the post-War economic situation. Japanese people accept that art and commerce will be blended; and in fact, they are surprised by the rigid and pretentious Western hierarchy of ‘high art.’ In the West, it certainly is dangerous to blend the two because people will throw all sorts of stones. But that's okay—I’m ready with my hard hat."
"Smooth Nightmare" is an example of a popular Murakami painting in the Superflat style. It exhibits one of his recurring motifs of the mushroom. The mushroom repetition is a good example of Murakami's work's connection with themes of the underground and alternative cultures.
In November 2003, ArtNews reported Murakami's work as being among the most desired in the world. Chicago collector Stefan Edis reportedly paid a record $567,500 for Murakami's 1996 "Miss ko2", a life-size fiberglass cartoon figure, at Christie's last May. Christie's owner, François Pinault, reportedly paid around $1.5 million in June to acquire "Tongari Kun" (2003), a fiberglass sculpture, and four accompanying fiberglass mushroom figures, that were part of an installation at Rockefeller Center. In May 2008, "My Lonesome Cowboy" (1998), a sculpture of a masturbating boy, sold for $15.2 million at a Sotheby's auction.
Murakami is credited in designing the album artwork for rapper Kanye West's album Graduation.
In September 2010 Murakami exhibited some of his works at the Palace of Versailles in France, filling 15 rooms with his sculptures.
Category:Japanese artists Category:1962 births Category:Living people Category:Otaku Category:Pop artists Category:Tokyo University of the Arts alumni Category:People from Tokyo Category:Contemporary artists
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Kaki King |
|---|---|
| Img alt | Kaki King playing a guitar. |
| Background | non_vocal_instrumentalist |
| Birth name | Katherine Elizabeth King |
| Born | August 24, 1979Atlanta, GeorgiaUnited States |
| Instrument | Guitar, lap steel guitar, drums, piano, vocals |
| Genre | Instrumental music, post-rock, jazz, one man band, shoegaze |
| Occupation | Musician, composer |
| Years active | 2001–present |
| Label | Velour, Sony |
| Url | Official site |
| Notable instruments | Ovation Custom Adamas Acoustic Guitar |
In February 2006, Rolling Stone released a list of "The New Guitar Gods," on which King was the sole woman and youngest artist. In addition to a 10-year career that includes five LP and two EP albums, King has also scored music for television and film. She worked alongside Eddie Vedder and Michael Brook contributing music for the soundtrack to Sean Penn's Into the Wild, for which King, Vedder and Brook were nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score.
Convinced that her break in music would come from drumming, King played in bands in high school with classmate Morgan Jahnig, who would later become the bassist of Old Crow Medicine Show. On graduating from The Westminster Schools in Atlanta in 1998, the two friends attended New York University. While there, King picked up the guitar again, and revisited the finger-style techniques that intrigued her as a child. From there, King played a few occasional gigs and busked in the New York subways.
After King appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Sony Records offered her a deal with Epic's Red Ink label. From there, King headed back into the studio to work on her sophomore effort, "Legs to Make Us Longer." King began to incorporate different instruments and sound effects into her album, such as looping and shoegazing, light drum work on "Doing The Wrong Thing" and her first incorporation of lap steel with "My Insect Life." Produced by David Torn, "Legs to Make Us Longer" was released on Red Ink Imprint on October 5, 2004 to strong reviews. In support of the album, King performed as an opening act for Eric Johnson during a leg of his 2005 tour, as well as completing her own nationwide and world tour.
Dave Grohl asked King to appear as a guitarist on the track "Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners" from the Foo Fighters' on their studio album Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, released on September 25, 2007. On November 18, 2007 she joined Dave Grohl on stage to perform the track at the O2 arena in London. Grohl highly praised King's performance:
King toured with the Foo Fighters on the Australian leg of the Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace tour. While on tour, King finished recording what became the Daysleeper EP. The EP was released in late 2007, after King had finished work with Robin Williams on August Rush, and with Eddie Vedder and Sean Penn on Into The Wild."
In the first half of King’s tour, she headlined at The Roxy LA and toured with The Mountain Goats, which led to the exclusive release of Kaki King and The Mountain Goats EP “Black Pear Tree.” While touring Australia in 2008, King filmed part of the music video "Can Anyone Who Has Heard This Music Really Be A Bad Person?" in Sydney. Directed by Michael Ebner, the rest of the video was completed in New York in 2009. After completing the last leg of her world tour, King decided to tour once again with a strictly acoustic show. Dubbed ‘The “No Bullshit” Tour,’ King did smaller shows throughout the US and UK that were specifically focused on acoustic works from her first albums along with stripped-down versions of her newer songs.
After completing her "No Bullshit Tour," King scored work on the independent film How I Got Lost, and started to record her next EP, titled "Mexican Teenagers EP." Recruiting her band that she used from Dreaming Of Revenge, King cut five new tracks for her new album.
As with her previous album, 2008’s Dreaming of Revenge, Junior was produced by Malcolm Burn and recorded at his studio in Kingston, New York. But in contrast to that record, which was marked by deep textures and layers as well as unusual instrumentation, Junior was specifically made with only three musicians in mind—in this case, King, multi-instrumentalist Dan Brantigan and drummer Jordan Perlson. The result was something more direct. “Prior to this I would have written a lot in the studio and played all the instruments myself,” King says. “This time, I really leaned on Dan and Jordan to help shape the songs and help me get the record written.”
King toured for five weeks in Europe in support of her LP Junior, on the Cooking Vinyl label. She later appeared as the Musical Guest on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, sitting in with The Roots as a part of the house band, and began a US-based tour.
When asked by Premier Guitar Magazine what her plans were after completing her tour, King responded "I’ve been on the road for four months straight. In another three weeks, we’ll be done with this tour. Honestly, that’s about as far as I can see."
King's fingerstyle playing combines fret-tapping with slap bass techniques, using the guitar for percussive beats, as well as sound layering and looping. Her playing style has been compared to Michael Hedges and Preston Reed, the latter of whom she explicitly cites as an influence.
Category:American rock guitarists Category:American female guitarists Category:American female singers Category:Female American rock drummers Category:Fingerstyle guitarists Category:Steel guitarists Category:American singer-songwriters Category:Musicians from Georgia (U.S. state) Category:Lesbian musicians Category:LGBT composers Category:LGBT musicians from the United States Category:People from Atlanta, Georgia Category:Living people Category:1979 births
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Dan Graham |
|---|---|
| Birthdate | March 31, 1942 |
| Birthplace | Urbana, Illinois |
| Nationality | |
| Field | Installation art, Sculpture, Photography, Writing, Video art, Performance art, Education, Art critic |
| Works | Performer/Audience/Mirror, Rock My Religion, Two-way Mirror Cylinder Inside Cube, Don't Trust Anyone Over 30, Yin/Yang |
Dan Graham (March 31, 1942, Urbana, Illinois) is a conceptual artist now working out of New York City. He is an influential figure in the field of contemporary art, both a practitioner of conceptual art and an art critic and theorist. His art career began in 1964 when he moved to New York and opened the John Daniels Gallery. Graham’s artistic talents have wide variety. His artistic fields consist of film, video, performance, photography, architectural models, and glass and mirror structure. Graham especially focuses on the relationship between his artwork and the viewer in his pieces. Graham made a name for himself in the 1980s as an architect of conceptual glass and mirrored pavilions.
Writer Brian Wallis has said that Graham’s works “displayed a profound faith in the idea of the present, [he] sought to comprehend post-war American culture through imaginative new forms of analytical investigation, facto-graphic reportage, and quasi-scientific mappings of space/time relationships.” Grahams work has been influenced by the social change of the Civil Rights Movement, The Vietnam War, the Women's liberation movement as well as many other cultural changes. These prolific events and changes in history affected the conceptual art and minimalist movements.
Minimalist art stripped art down to only its fundamental and bare essentials. Rarely were pictorial or illustrative imagery were seen in minimalist works. Minimalism focused on the experience the artwork created for the viewer. The artist purposefully disconnected himself from the artwork. Even in the face of a chaotic world, minimalism was a calm, cool, and stable art form. This minimalist aesthetic was seen not only in visual art but, throughout the art world in literature, music, architecture, and fashion. Dan Graham exhibited a predominately minimalist aesthetic in his earlier photographs and prints. His prints of numeric sequences, words, graphs, and graphics strongly reflect his minimalist qualities.
Graham’s later works have become very conceptual. Dan Graham has an extreme interest with interior and exterior space in the relation behavior of the viewer when the anticipated boundaries are changed. Dan Graham has not only been a participant in, but has also been a developer in the conceptual art movement. Conceptual art is more about the idea behind the work and the process of creating the work than the actual finished product itself. The concepts behind Dan Graham’s artworks engage the viewer in the artwork. His artworks explore architecture and space and the effect it has on the viewer.
The Lisson Gallery in London has been home to many of Dan Graham’s works. The Greek Meander Pavilion, Two Way Mirror with Lattice and Vines Labyrinth, Triangular Pavilion with Circular Cut-Out Variation C, and the Two Way Mirror and Hedge Labyrinth are among the collection. These works collectively summarize his career as a sculptural artist. Wooden lattice, mirror, glass, and steel are the materials most commonly used in his work.
In 1981, Dan Graham started work on a decade long project in New York City. The work Two-Way Mirror Cylinder Inside Cube and Video Salon was part of the Rooftop Urban Park Project. Graham worked on the piece in collaboration with architects Mojdeh Baratloo and Clifton Balch. This transparent and reflective pavilion transformed the roof of 548 West 22nd Street into a rooftop park. The pavilion captures the surrounding landscape and changes of light creating an intense visual effect with the sky. The Two-Way Mirror Cylinder Inside Cube and Video Salon has become one of his most well-known works throughout his art career.
The Children’s Pavilion (1989) is a very conceptual piece relating to the children of the nation. Even after numerous commissions in Europe, The Children’s Pavilion was actually the first piece he was commissioned to do in the United States. The piece is public building by Dan Graham and Jeff Wall. The Children’s Pavilion is a circular shaped room with an oculus that is both transparent and reflective at the top. Nine circular framed photographs of children belonging to many nationalities and ethnic backgrounds surround the room. The Children’s Pavilion is designed so the viewers on the outside of the building could look inside as well.
Dan Graham Pavilions : a guide edited by Josh Thorpe was published in 2009 by Art Metropole in Toronto.
The video Rock My Religion (1984) explores rock music as an art form and relates it to the development of the Shaker religion in America. The low quality image of the video is said to enhance the ideas within it. The video relates Rock and Roll to contemporary culture and the Shaker religion. It finds a way to draw a parallel between a Shaker family and the off balance family of rock. He observes the changes in beliefs and superstitions in the Shaker religion since the 18th century.
Another video of Grahams entitled Performer/Audience/Mirror explains the relationship between the audience and the performer. He demonstrates the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity. Graham stands in front of a mirrored wall facing the audience. He describes the audience’s actions to them then turns to face his reflection in the mirror. This subjective and then objective perception is part of what makes Dan Graham’s artwork one of a kind.
Category:1942 births Category:Living people Category:American artists Category:Conceptual artists Category:Postmodern artists Category:Contemporary artists Category:Artists from New York Category:Installation artists Category:Postmodernists Category:American art critics Category:Cultural historians
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
Category:1931 births Category:Living people Category:Japanese architects Category:University of Tokyo alumni Category:People from Ōita (city) Category:Recipients of the Royal Gold Medal
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
