What Art
Is Online
Supplement to What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand (Open Court, 2000)
by Louis Torres & Michelle
Marder Kamhi
Appendix B - Part II
Artworld Buzzwords
The following list of artworld buzzwords and clichés supplements the original Appendix B [Part I] published in What Art Is. In most instances, one can safely infer that when these terms are used in criticism, the work in question is not art. Unless otherwise indicated, the emphasis in all cases is ours. For other examples, see Louis Torres, "Blurring the Boundaries at the NEA." Phrases and terms marked with an asterisk (*) also appear in the original appendix.
November 2007 - Entries added this month at challenge, experimental, explore, investigate, push, and question [search for each term, or scroll down to the
symbol].
appropriation
"Richard Prince: Appropriation artist." "The Influentials: Art," New York Magazine, 15 May 2006. See also Mia Fineman Slate quotation at "blur," 15 May 2006.
artist, the [the artist]
[Note: This term is often repeated in articles and reviews in place of specific terms such as "the photographer" or "the architect," or the person's name, as if to convince the reader that what the individual produces is, in fact, "art."]
"Because of the scale of the piece, 45 by 15 feet, the oregano ballast couldn't anchor the figures. The artist would have used so much oregano that the bulky bags would have overwhelmed the artwork." Alina Corday-Taylor, "Ernesto Neto's Work in Progress," Smithsonian, June 2002.
"The . . . scenarios are based on interviews conducted by the artist with women experiencing depression and psychotic episodes." Talya Halkin, "Small Housing & Big Sculptures in Chelsea," New York Sun, June 2002 [exact date unknown].
avant-garde
See discussion of this and related terms, with images of examples [more].
become art (see also consider Art, declare to be art, and establish as art, below, and elevate, Appendix B)
"There is, strictly speaking, no art in this exhibition, certainly no pure art . . . . The objects here confirm that design can rise to the level of art, through formidable concentration on its own purposes, materials and techniques." Roberta Smith, "A Bauhaus Couple [Josef and Anni Albers] Lived Their Less-Is-More Credo," New York Times, 1 October 2004.
"[Steve] Tobin [whose projects include making "sculpture" of bronzed animal bones, a forest floor, tree roots, and African termite hills] calls what he does--turning aspects of nature into sculpture--'visual science.'" Amei Wallach, "Back to Nature," Smithsonian, June 2004.
"Avant-Garde Books Become Art at MoMA" (by David Grosz), New York Sun, 16 May 2002.
blur (push, ignore, etc.) the boundaries*
"Design art is an area which is exceedingly exciting because there is a blurring between the contemporary art market and the design market." Alexander Payne, worldwide director of design at the auction house Phillips, de Pury & Company, quoted in Wendy Moonan, "Where Modern Art and Furniture Profitably Meet" (antiques column), New York Times, 2 June 2006.
"Richard Prince: Appropriation artist. Blurred the line between ad icon and art object with his "Marlboro Men." "The Influentials: Art," New York Magazine, 15 May 2006.
"In 1983, [Prince] showed a group of photographs called Cowboys [Untitled: 1990, 1993, 1995] , in which he re-photographed Marlboro cigarette ads, cropping out the text and blowing them up to nearly life-size. These heroic images of Madison Avenue cowboys perfectly embodied the screwy zeitgeist of the Reagan years: a B-movie cowboy for president and a pill-popping first lady whose political mantra was "Just Say No." The "Cowboy" pictures made his name; their appropriations were like projections from inside the vaults of the cultural unconscious." Mia Fineman, "The Pleasure Principle: Richard Prince's Post-Pulp Art Takes a New Step," Slate, 30 October 2003.
"Elizabeth Murray (American, b. 1940) belongs to a generation of artists who emerged in the 1970s and whose exposure to Cubist-derived Minimalism and Surrealist-influenced Pop inspired experimentation with new modes of expression that would bridge the gap between these two historical models." [Source: Museum of Modern Art - # 1] "Murray continues to push the boundaries of traditional printmaking with three-dimensional, shaped, and collaged editions, underscoring the collaborative relationship between artist and master printer. [MoMA - # 2] "These works straddle the line between representation and abstraction, revealing how ordinary objects often serve as a point of departure for an artist's abstract vision, or, alternatively, how an artist's abstract forms may subtly suggest recognizable elements." [MoMA - # 3], 19 October 2005 - 9 January 2006 [see other links for respective dates].
"[Arthur Danto] seems most sympathetic to protean, jack-of-all-trades artists like [Gerhard] Richter, who makes a point of working in a variety of styles, or [Dieter] Roth, who purposely blurs the boundaries between art and refuse--creators, that is, who self-consciously parade their freedom in what Danto has identified as the age of freedom." Barry Gewen, "Art for Arthur's Sake," New York Times Book Review, 27 March 2005.
"There's not much doubt that the art world is a lot more porous than it used to be, open to all kinds of visual and not-so-visual activity previously considered beyond its borders." Roberta Smith, "Invading Genres Breach the Art World's Porous Borders," New York Times, 9 March 2005.
"An avant-garde work pushes the known boundaries of acceptable art sometimes with revolutionary, cultural, or political implications." Definition on website of National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., [accessed November 2004].
"The 13 artworks in No Boundaries: Fiber + Art lead us to the intersection of fine art and fiber art. Artists known primarily for their work with textiles are represented by painterly compositions or sculptural, three-dimensional objects, while painters, sculptors, and photographers find artistic expression through weaving and sewing. No Boundaries: Fiber + Art brings together objects from the Museum's textile art, Asian art, native art, and modern and contemporary collections." Description of the exhibition (6 November 2004 - 10 July 2005) on the website of the Denver Art Museum (see image there of Lucas/Rug, by the much-hyped Chuck Close).
"Blurring the boundary between landscape architecture and art, the Cornerstone Festival of Gardens is the first gallery of avant-garde landscape architecture in the United States . . . ." [This article also refers to "experimental landscapes."] Christopher Hall, "Avant-Green: Landscaping as a Fine Art," New York Times, 15 August 2004.
"The selected works in this latest exhibition [Corporal Identity: Body Language] demonstrate the new frontier of craft, decorative arts and design, where the boundaries among creative disciplines are becoming increasingly blurred. . . . This probing and experimental foray into the significance of the applied arts and design as they relate to the human body crosses traditional boundaries among the arts and embodies [the museum's] expanded mission: to explore the rich intersections of international craft, art and design." Website of the former American Craft Museum (or, it now insists on calling itself, the Museum of Arts & Design), 26 April 2004.
"Like many predecessors and contemporaries-- notably Robert Rauschenberg--[Dieter Roth] chose to emphasize the street over the ivory tower, the disorder of daily existence over the eternal verities. He crowded art and life together. . . . He was not an artist who tolerated boundaries, in time, place, or works of art." Peter Rainer, "Things Fall Apart," New York, 12 April 2004.
"'New art is always shocking,' says Lisa Phillips, director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and co-curator of a McCarthy retrospective in 2000, 'because you don't know what you're looking at. And that is the case with Paul McCarthy. If you had to say something was shocking about his work, it would not be the sex or the violence. It would be about the threshold between sanity and insanity. Its about boundaries being permeated and transgressed. It makes people nervous when there aren't any boundaries.'" Linda Yablonsky, "How Far Can You Go?" ARTNews, January 2004.
"'One of the jobs of an artist is to be careful where to draw lines,' [photographer Jeff] Burton says. 'Boundaries are made for the artist to test.'" Quoted in Linda Yablonsky, "How Far Can You Go?" ARTNews, January 2004.
"These [new] paintings . . . are sumptuous, absorbing, and masterful. . . . [Helen Frankenthaler] was once an artist pushing the boundaries of the language of painting." David Cohen, Gallery-Going, New York Sun, 15 May 2003.
"The Role of the Document" [a Continuing Education Course]. "Dialogue about the boundaries between art making and the documentation process." GuggenheimGuide (Exhibitions/Programs, Guggenheim Museum, New York City), May-June 2003.
"[The exhibition] 'Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism' . . . pulses with a heady sense of artistic breakthrough and derring-do. It initiates the viewer into a fulminating geometric universe suffused with mystical fervor and decorative punch that burst the boundaries of painting and drawing." Roberta Smith, "A Bombshell of Modernism Recaptured," New York Times, 13 May 2003. [For more images, see Suprematist Compositions.]
"During the last several years, [Richard] Tuttle has made series of pieces that walk the line between painting and sculpture: entire shows of vague, geometric forms depicted in thinly applied paint on modest squares of plywood--only steps away from what could have been produced by a child." Alex Mar, "Gallery-Going," New York Sun, 15 May 2003.
"I believe that there are sets of tendencies that art today is following. These are often best understood by looking at individual artists who exemplify them, and thinking about how these artists are stretching our understanding and definitions of art. Eleanor Hartley, "The Visual Arts: Blurring the Boundaries, U. S. Society & Values, April 2003.
"One reason that glass has made the jump from being perceived as craft to being perceived as art is the work of Dale Chihuly, who critics say pushed the boundaries of glassworking and, in his sculpture, blurred the line between decorative and fine art. . . . 'Boundaries between artists and craftsmen have melded considerably since the 1960's, when I began exhibiting,' Mr. Chihuly said. . . . David Revere McFadden [chief curator of the former American Craft Museum, now calling itself the Museum of Arts and Design] explained: . . . 'There's been such an eroding of the traditional borders between various fields that we decided it was a mistake to keep using [the term 'craft']." Stephen Kinzer, "The Luster of Glass Joins Art's Mainstream," New York Times, 28 April 2003.
"Seen together as a series, Ms. Leonard's small c-prints [photographs] straddle the line between the documentary impulse to preserve images of meaningful sites or objects and the conceptual thrust to create series that share a common formal or typological denominator of individual significance." Talya Halkin, Gallery-Going, New York Sun, 27 March 2003.
"Sharon Lockhart's work [such as Teatro Amazonas (1999)] walks the line between documentary and art film, between what's real and what's theater. . . . [Werner] Herzog himself is one of the all-time greats at walking the razor's edge between fiction and documentary--with daring and dangerous results." [Herzog, whose work inspired Lockhart's, is most renowned for his 1982 film Fitzcarraldo.] Alex Mar, Gallery-Going, New York Sun, 27 March 2003.
"Unerring and intuitive in their sense of color, shape and scale, [Rosie Lee] Tompkins's quilts are formidably joyful events that ignore the usual boundaries between cultures, histories and mediums." Roberta Smith, "Art in Review," New York Times, 1 November 2002.
"No Labels, No Boundaries: An Artistry of the Moment." Headline for article about Doug Aitken, a "multimedia artist" who is "one of his generation's most celebrated artists, working . . . in video, film, installation, photography, sound, artist's books or, more typically, some combination of these." Jeffrey Kastner, New York Times, 6 October 2002.
"The boundaries between art, design and craft have broken down. We view the word craft as a process of transforming materials, not a final object." Holly Hotchner, director, the American Craft Museum (New York City), quoted from her announcement of the institution's new name, the Museum of Contemporary Arts and Design. Carol Vogel, "In New Name, Museum Goes Contemporary," New York Times, 3 October 2002.
"Many contemporary artists, who have blurred the boundaries between not only high art and low art, but also art and other disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, have challenged both artistic process and artistic authority. Performing archeology [for example], Mark Dion's artistic process entails urban archeological digs in different parts of the world." Dipti Desai, "The Ethnographic Move in Contemporary Art: What Does it Mean for Art Education?" Studies in Art Education, Summer 2002, p. 320.
"I don't know how she happened to have a two-point trapeze bar, but she was always one to push boundaries." Nancy Smith, founder-director of the Aerial Dance Festival, quoted on Terry Sendgraff, who "invented" the genre of "aerial dance" in 1974.) Glenn Giffin, "Aerial Dance Festival Shows Off Emerging Art Form in Boulder [Colorado]," Denver Post, 7 August 2002.
". . . artists themselves have been pushing the boundaries of any . . . definition [of 'art'], challenging our preconceptions, and leaving most philosophers, psychologists and critics well behind--to say nothing of the general public. . . . Environmental art pushes the definitional boundaries by placing art outside the museum, in a (more) natural environment. Well known examples include earthworks, e.g., by Robert Smithson, and wrapped buildings by Christos [sic]." Joseph A. Goguen, "What Is Art?" Introduction to Art and the Brain, Part 2, Journal of Consciousness Studies, special issue, August/September 2000.
"Childhood, and the shifting boundary between documentary and art in the realm of photography, are also the subject of Beloved Child, an exhibition of works by the German artist Andrea Frank." Talya Halkin, "Children in Photography," New York Sun, 16 May 2002.
"The role of the contemporary artist in any culture is to push the boundaries of people's perceptions. . . . A truly vibrant, healthy, innovative culture needs these artists to be free." Michael Zerella, letter to the editor, New York Times, 16 February 2001.
boundaries
See blur, above.
but is it art?
(For examples and a brief discussion of this phrase--sometimes "Yes, but is it art?"--see "The Ubiquitous Question: 'But Is It Art?'" in What Art Is Online.)
cerebral
"Back at Dance Theater Workshop, only one choreographer showed signs of making the space work: the astute, visually oriented John Jasperse. In the stunning 'Just Two Dancers' . . . Mr. Jasperse, who has won international acclaim for his cerebral, moody choreography, surpassed even himself." Gia Kourlas, "Where Dance Is Moving: Off the Stage," New York Times, 27 July 2003.
challenge*
"Neon Templates of the Left Half of my Body, Taken at Ten Inch Intervals (1966; priv. col., see 1972 exh. cat., no. 17) and the colour photograph Self Portrait as a Fountain (1966; New York, Whitney) show [Bruce Nauman] first extracting strangely compelling neon forms from the contours of his body and, in the latter, whimsically challenging preconceived notions of the 'fountain.'" Artist Summary, Bruce Nauman, Artfact, accessed January 2006.
"When Bruce Nauman, Michael Snow and Peter Campus turned to video technology in the 1960's, they did so to challenge viewers' expectations by tipping them off balance, providing an ambiguous experience rather than a familiar one. / Mr. Nauman's 'Spinning Spheres' from 1970, for example, is a large, and, to that extent, immersive four-screen projection featuring a spinning steel ball. Its effect is truly dizzying." Michael Rush, "In Love with Reality Truly, Madly, Virtually," New York Times, 8 January 2006.
"Most mainstream ensembles are wary of new music and fearful of alienating subscribers who, it is assumed, like their music tried and true and resist challenging modern musical languages. . . . Ideally, mainstream ensembles must embrace rather than fear challenging works. . . . The small house for the Chamber Music Society's Birtwistle program grew smaller still as this gnarly and astringent music began, and a number of people truckled out. Still, those who stayed must have been provoked and engaged by the challenging music . . . challenging as "Pulse Shadows. . . . So the moral of today's sermon is that mainstream institutions . . . should embrace challenging works, sell them as sometimes discomforting experiences that can be exciting because they are discomforting. . . ." Anthony Tommasini, "Helping Music Audiences Get Beyond the Shock of the Contemporary," New York Times, 25 December 2004. For a critique of this article, see Louis Torres, "He Felt Like Shooting Himself," Aristos, August 2005.
"[Ben] Nicholson challenges the capacities of a flat surface with an architectonic approach that merges painting and carving. Color itself is handled as a form of relief. Areas of solid pigment advance from sections scraped back with renunciatory scruple [!], sometimes to the raw linen." Maureen Mullarkey, New York Sun, 16 September 2004. [A version of this review is on the writer's website, as "From Poetry to Pseudo-Politics."]
"Speaking at a National Campaign for the Arts conference at the Royal Festival Hall in London yesterday, [British Playwright David] Edgar said it was the responsibility of artists to challenge the country's great cultural institutions." Charlotte Higgins, "Outrage Is Central to Art, Says Dramatist," The Guardian (London), 22 June 2004.
"[Edgar said] 'If the arts are to have . . . centrality to our human experience . . . , then the inevitably patrician institutions that provide them need to be challenged and held to account by the spirit of provocation rather than flattened out by the market.'" Charlotte Higgins, "Outrage Is Central to Art, Says Dramatist," The Guardian (London), 22 June 2004.
"'The traditional narrative time-line,' wrote [Robert] Coover [an advocate of 'hypertext narrative'], who makes it clear that he has a personal investment in 'fictions that challenge linearity,' 'vanishes into a geographical landscape or exitless maze, with beginnings, middles and ends no longer part of the immediate display.'" Tim Parks, "Tales Told by the Computer," the New York Review of Books, 24 October 2002.
"The [art] museum is most provocative when it challenges our notion of art . . . with artwork that stretches the boundaries of . . . definitions." David Grosz, "Avant-Garde Books Become Art at MoMA," New York Sun, 16 May 2002.
"My goal as curator is to challenge our natural inclination to remain inflexible." Toby Devan Lewis, curator of corporate art for the Progressive Corporation, a Cleveland insurance company. Quoted by Tanya Mohn, "Office Artwork Brings Out the Critic in Employees," New York Times, 31 January 2001.
"Let us first consider 'found art,' also called 'readymade' art, which challenges the role of the artist as the constructor of art. An especially famous example is Duchamp's urinal [1917]. . . . Conceptual art challenges the materiality of art, by using physical forms that may themselves be relatively prosaic or even boring, such as hand-lettered posterboards, perhaps to suggest a concept, or a reconceptualization of an existing situation. In addition, there are traditions, such as performance art and body art, that give new roles to the artist, e. g., as part of the artwork, and also challenges current ideas about boundaries among various art forms, e. g., between theatre and visual art, or between music, literature and theatre." Joseph A. Goguen, "What Is Art?", Journal of Consciousness Studies, August/September 2000.
confront
See Force, below.
consider art (see also declare to be art and establish as art, below, become art, above, and elevate, Appendix B)
"The recent movement in contemporary site-specific art, however, has transformed not only what we consider art and the value we place on artistic authority, but more importantly, the entrenched belief in the artist as object maker." Dipti Desai, "The Ethnographic Move in Contemporary Art: What Does It Mean for Art Education?" Studies in Art Education, Summer 2002, 319.
contemporary
(Note: In common usage, the term contemporary means "of the present time." One might therefore expect that a museum or exhibition of contemporary art would include work by realist painters and sculptors working in traditional styles. Invariably, however, museums or galleries mean postmodern, or avant-garde, when they use contemporary in their name. Most art critics use the term in this sense. Often, collections and exhibitions of "contemporary art" include only works in such postmodern genres as "video art," "Internet art," "installation art," and "conceptual art," and no genuine painting or sculpture at all-- see Chapter 14, "Postmodernism in the 'Visual Arts,'" in What Art Is.)
cutting-edge*
"In the past few years, collectors have made a sport of sneaking in early to art fairs, where the real dealing gets done. Since 2003, the nada fair has been among the most tempting targets, with a mix of cutting-edge alternative galleries . . . and for-profit dealers." "The Influentials: Art," New York Magazine, May 15, 2006.
"The Department of Art is committed to cutting-edge professional art training within the context of a liberal arts university. Headed by a faculty of internationally recognized artists and theoreticians and complemented by a roster of distinguished visiting lecturers, the department provides a strong grounding in the principal art traditions and in the visual language of contemporary studio practice." UCLA, Department of Art, Undergraduate Degree Programs. (No college department of art is more radical than the one at UCLA. See, for example, the work of such faculty members as Nancy Rubins, a professor of "sculpture," and Paul McCarthy, a professor of "new genres" who has been described as specializing "almost exclusively in human degradation, mutilation, scatology and perversion." Representative images of his "work" accompany "The Mechanical Id," a review of a solo exhibition.)
"The Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum presents 80 cutting-edge artists and design firms in the exhibition 'National Design Triennial: Inside Design Now,' which runs to January 25, 2004." "Designer in the Hot Seat," Smithsonian, May 2003.
"Nowhere in the nation is there anything like Boulder's Aerial Dance Festival. It is unique. It is cutting-edge . . . this 'emerging art form.'" Glenn Giffen, "Aerial Dance Festival Shows Off Emerging Art Form in Boulder," Denver Post, 7 August 2002.
"Few cultural groups have done as much to make compelling public art possible as Creative Time. For 30 years, the nonprofit has commissioned and helped to fund daring works. The pieces they commission are deliberately 'temporary'--defying the cliché of public art as something that must be permanent as bronze. They have also demonstrated a predilection towards projects that allow artists to 'try something new.'" Alex Mar, Gallery-Going, New York Sun, 28 August 2003.
declare to be art (see also become art and consider art, above, establish as art, below, and elevate, Appendix B)
"When Carl Andre laid plates of steel on the floor, declared the work a sculpture and invited us to walk on it, asking that we be alert to how we felt in doing so, we and the gallery became integral to the art, which, in a sense, was incomplete on its own." Michael Kimmelman, "How Not Much Is a Whole World," New York Times, 2 April 2004.
difficult
"Dia:Beacon offers some of the most potent art experiences to be found anywhere, in some of the most well-considered settings. But it was conceived largely to present difficult work for long durations in one space. And for much of what it offers, difficult is the word." Richard Lacayo, "Let's Supersize It!" Time, 20 May 2003.
disrupt
"[The playwright David] Edgar said art 'has been properly concerned not to preserve national identity, but to question it . . . disrupting rather than confirming how we see the world.'" Charlotte Higgins, "Outrage Is Central to Art, Says Dramatist," The Guardian (London), 22 June 2004.
disturbing [disturb]*
"Quite possibly the most fascinating, beautiful, disturbing and difficult exhibition of the current season is the retrospective of Arshile Gorky's drawings at the Whitney Museum through Feb. 15." Karen Wilkin, "Beautiful, Disturbing and Difficult," Wall Street Journal, 28 January 2004. [See item on Gorky, "Notes & Comments," Aristos, February 2004.]
edgy
"As a group, the works in POPulence are celebratory and edgy." Current Exhibitions, Blaffer Gallery (the Art Museum of the University of Houston), June 25 - August 27, 2005.
"The other purchases [by the Seattle Art Museum] are edgier and, in some cases riskier. . . . Seattle sculptor and designer Roy McMakin [more] will explore the sculptural aspects of chairs and benches." Regina Hackett, "SAM Rounds Up Impressive Art to Launch Olympic Sculpture Park," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 15 September 2004.
"If the art world no longer possesses the kind of central, identifiable avant-garde that existed for much of the 20th century, there are nonetheless artists that dominate the international dialogue. Their often edgy, conceptual works are trumpeted in the pages of Artforum and Flash Art, spotlighted at the Whitney Biennial and Documenta and eagerly purchased by chic, attention-grabbing collectors." Kyle MacMillan, Critic-at-Large, "Unsung Botanical Art Enjoys Healthy Existence," Denver Post, 28 October 2002.
emerging art
See Cutting Edge (7 August 2002), above.
emerging artist
"A gantlet of paparazzi flanked the entrance to the Guggenheim on the night of the museum's annual Young Collectors Council gala last month. . . . After their initial milling about, the guests dropped off their cocktails and walked through a silent auction of works by emerging artists, which served as the focal point of the evening." Dana Vachon, "Darling, You Look Marvelous in Matisse," New York Times, 15 January 2006.
"The Museum of Arts & Design . . . , known for creating exhibitions that showcase emerging artists and new art forms, has joined with two German museums . . . to present Corporal Identity - Body Language. The exhibition, to be presented in the United States and Germany, intriguingly probes [see explore] contemporary attitudes toward the human body and the relationship between body and self." Website of the former American Craft Museum (or, it now insists on calling itself, the Museum of Arts & Design), 26 April 2004.
establish as art (see also declare to be art and become art, above, and elevate, Appendix B)
"[T]he International Center of Photography helped establish photography as an art form." Matthew Mirapaul, "Arts Online" column--"Concrete Dreams: Actual Museums to Hold Virtual Art," New York Times, 28 October 2002.
examine
"Although he was a formidable draughtsman, [Bruce] Nauman's neon works, films, videotapes, performances, installations, sculpted body parts and word plays at first seemed frustratingly art-less. His was an art of exploration: he used himself, his person and his witty brand of inquiry to examine the parameters of art and the role of the artist." Artist Summary, Bruce Nauman, Artfact, accessed January 2006.
experimental
"Elizabeth Murray (American, b. 1940) belongs to a generation of artists who emerged in the 1970s and whose exposure to Cubist-derived Minimalism and Surrealist-influenced Pop inspired experimentation with new modes of expression that would bridge the gap between these two historical models. In this context, Murray has produced a singularly innovative body of work. [Source: Museum of Modern Art - # 1], 23 October 2005 - 9 January 2006. "These works demonstrate the artist's experimentation with a wide variety of mediums and trace her exploration of both abstract motifs and playful depictions of domestic themes." [Source: MoMA #2]
"Blurring the boundary between landscape architecture and art, the Cornerstone Festival of Gardens is the first gallery of avant-garde landscape architecture in the United States . . . ." [This article also refers to "experimental landscapes."] Christopher Hall, "Avant-Green: Landscaping as a Fine Art," New York Times, 15 August 2004.
"Ping Chong, titan of the Asian-American experimental theater scene, sets his heart on the present, but he sets his gaze on the past. . . . In a pastiche of fiction and documentary, [he] explores [the] Congo's founding and the first time foreign interests slept through its slaughter." Helen Shaw, "Congo Line," New York Sun, 22 June 2004.
explore* (See also probe)
"'Crises' [choreographed by Merce Cunningham] consisted of a mutual exploration of personal space between [Rashaun Mitchell] and four women." Joel Lobenthal, "Malfunctioning eyeSpace," New York Times, 12 October 2006.
"Richard Prince: Appropriation artist . . . explored celebrity obsession long before Brangelina came to dominate the news cycle." "The Influentials: Art," New York Magazine, May 15, 2006.
"Although he was a formidable draughtsman, [Bruce] Nauman's neon works, films, videotapes, performances, installations, sculpted body parts and word plays at first seemed frustratingly art-less. His was an art of exploration: he used himself, his person and his witty brand of inquiry to examine the parameters of art and the role of the artist." Artist Summary, Bruce Nauman, Artfact, accessed January 2006.
"These works [by Elizabeth Murray] demonstrate the artist's experimentation with a wide variety of mediums and trace her exploration of both abstract motifs and playful depictions of domestic themes." [Source: Museum of Modern Art - #2], 19 October 2005 - 9 January 2006.
"The set of Dendron, a dance installation by Mark Jarecke, . . . was only the first step in [his] attempt to explore what it means to customize one's surroundings. (We're living in an MP3 generation.) Dendron completes a trilogy of dances that explore the relationships between architectural and emotional environments. The work was presented in the round, and audience members were given portable radios and headphones." Gia Kourlas, "Customizing the Audience Experience," New York Times, 12 February 2005.
"Many contemporary artists are exploring sound in their work or are using sound as a pure medium to create works that challenge our notion of what art is and should be. Sound art [cited in Appendix A--Part II, "New Forms of 'Art'"; see also multimedia art] demands a sensory reeducation; we may experience a disconnection as sound alters or disrupts our perception of space." "CAA Members' Exhibition at Consolidated Works in Seattle," CAA (College Art Association) News, January 2004.
"Matthew Barney's epic Cremaster cycle (1994-2002) is a self-enclosed aesthetic system consisting of five feature-length films that explore the process of creation." "Matthew Barney: The Cremaster Cycle," GuggenheimGuide (Exhibitions/Programs, Guggenheim Museum), May-June 2003.
"[Richard] Tuttle was a part of the Post-Minimalist movement of the 1960s and 1970s--these artists made use of simple, pathetic materials to explore space and mass." Alex Mar, "Gallery-Going," New York Sun, 15 May 2003.
"['Conceptual' photographer Daniele Buetti] intends to explore 'the process of identity formation by intervening in commercial advertising's commodification of the self." Daniel Kunitz, "Trendy Internationalism," New York Sun, 1 May 2003.
"Throughout his . . . career [as a sculptor], Muñoz was as adept with ideas and the written word as he was with his hands, producing images and objects that explore the techniques of observation and mental perception." "The Intrigue of Spanish Contemporary Artist Juan Muñoz Presented in Career Retrospective," News Release, The Art Institute of Chicago, 14 August 2002.
"Several of the show's . . . documentary films and videos--such as Amar Kanwar's stunning exploration of the Pakistani-Indian military frontier in Kashmir--are skillful, alluring, and notably uncomplaining." Peter Schjeldahl, "The Global Salon," The New Yorker, 1 July 2002.
"Follow the path of an ax-wielding sex doll. Crawl through a destroyed library. Enter a light tunnel. Notions of artifice and luxury are explored in an installation by Olaf Breuning, which turns the clichés of pleasure into art." Calendar, New York Sun, 5 June 2002.
"If art in the broadest sense peers into the mysteries of life, then an art dedicated to the structure of life itself is of momentous relevance. That imposing premise informs 'Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics,' an exhibition that opened in April at the University of Washington's Henry Art Gallery in Seattle." Steven Henry Madoff, "The Wonders of Genetics Breed a New Art," New York Times, 26 May 2002.
force (see also require)
Exposing the relational dynamics between experience, interpretation, and representation in the artwork, [J.] Brookner forces us to simultaneously confront ethnographic authority and artistic authority." Dipti Desai, "The Ethnographic Move in Contemporary Art: What Does it Mean for Art Education?" Studies in Art Education, Summer 2002, 314.
gallerist [defined]
"Larry Gagosian: Gallerist. The George Steinbrenner of dealers--he just keeps drinking up talent (John Currin and Paul Pfeiffer, lately), leaving less for everyone else." "The Influentials: Art," New York Magazine, 15 May 2006.
ground-breaking
[See innovative, 25 June - 27 August 2005, below.]
innovative
"[Elizabeth] Murray . . . has produced a singularly innovative body of work. Warping, twisting, and knotting her constructed canvases, she has given the elastic shapes of surrealism a space in their own image." [Source: Museum of Modern Art - # 1], 23 October 2005 - 9 January 2006.
A major contributor to the international art scene, [David] Pagel has curated innovative and ground-breaking exhibitions across America and Europe and has written regular columns for the LA Times and major art magazines such as Flash Art, Frieze, Art + Text, and Bomb. Current Exhibitions, POPulence (Blaffer Gallery)--the Art Museum of the University of Houston), 25 June - 27 August 2005.
invent (see also Reinvent)
"Spearheading the fourth annual event is Nancy Smith, who learned the art of low-flying trapeze as wedded to dance from Robert Davidson, who learned it from a student of Terry Sendgraff, who invented the genre in 1974." Glenn Giffen, "Aerial Dance Festival Shows Off Emerging Art Form in Boulder," Denver Post, 7 August 2002.
investigate
"From early architectural pieces that suggest a human presence to more recent installations that weave complex, enigmatic stories through the precise arrangement of figural groupings, Munoz's work investigates ambiguity and paradox and their psychological implications." "Art Institute Co-Publishes Book Documenting Works by Contemporary Spanish Artist Juan Munoz," News Release, The Art Institute of Chicago, 14 August 2002.
make a statement about
"Like [Andy] Warhol's own artworks, Mr. Hamilton's 'Polaroid Portraits' make a statement about the automation and demise of craftsmanship in art making in the age of mechanical reproduction. The portraits by John Lennon, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham [none by Hamilton himself] make the point that not only is one not obliged to produce one's own art works, but even being a visual artist is not a strict requirement. Hung together, these Polaroids appear exactly as Mr. Hamilton conceived of them--an amusing game in which the camera is a toy." Talya Halkin, Gallery-Going, New York Sun, 25 July 2002.
object (n.--also artifact)
(Note: Though this term is not, strictly speaking, a buzz word, we include it here to call attention to the practice of referring to utilitarian items such as baskets or clothing as "art." No work of art--a painting by Rembrandt, or a sculpture by Rodin, for example, is ever properly referred to as an "object," which usually connotes utility, or practical use.)
"A show of 200 Native American objects [baby carriers, pottery, etc.] . . . opens tomorrow at the National Museum of the American Indian." Grace Glueck, "Artifacts for Art's Sake: An Eclectic Array," New York Times, 23 April 2004.
outrage
"The playwright David Edgar has called for provocation and outrage to become central to the arts." "Outrage is Central to Art, Says Dramatist," The Guardian (London), 22 June 2004.
probe (See also explore)
"The Museum of Arts & Design . . . , known for creating exhibitions that showcase emerging artists and new art forms, has joined with two German museums . . . to present Corporal Identity - Body Language. The exhibition, to be presented in the United States and Germany, intriguingly probes [see also Explore] contemporary attitudes toward the human body and the relationship between body and self." Website of the former American Craft Museum (or, it now insists on calling itself, the Museum of Arts & Design), 26 April 2004.
progressive
"One of a few progressive artists to reinvent the figure and to assert the viability of narrative in contemporary art, Juan Munoz (1953-2001) gained international recognition for his extraordinary sculptural installations." "Art Institute Co-Publishes Book Documenting Works by Contemporary Spanish Artist Juan Munoz," News Release, Art Institute of Chicago, 14 August 2002.
provoke (provocative)*
"Still, those who stayed must have been provoked and engaged by the challenging music." Anthony Tommasini, "Helping Music Audiences Get Beyond the Shock of the Contemporary," New York Times, 25 December 2004. For a critique of this article, see Louis Torres, "He Felt Like Shooting Himself," Aristos, August 2005.
"The playwright David Edgar has called for provocation and outrage to become central to the arts." Charlotte Higgins, "Outrage Is Central to Art, Says Dramatist," The Guardian (London), 22 June 2004.
"He [Edgar] argued that the arts in this country had been at their most successful when the spirit of provocation was most alive--as in the late 1960s and early 70s, when the playwright Howard Brenton articulated his desire to piss in his audience's eyeballs and George Devine, artistic director of the Royal Court, talked of the 'fashionable assholes' who constituted his audience." Charlotte Higgins, "Outrage Is Central to Art, Says Dramatist," The Guardian (London), 22 June 2004.
"'Similarly, the myriad outreach departments, community companies and performance groups need to be released from their targets and tick-boxes and encouraged to provoke.'" David Edgar, quoted in Charlotte Higgins, "Outrage Is Central to Art, Says Dramatist," The Guardian (London), 22 June 2004.
"Renny Pritikin, the chief curator at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, who has shaped its provocative visual arts program since the center opened in 1993, has been laid off. . . . Pritikin . . . was widely respected by artists and curators, who admired his keen eye for contemporary art and willingness to blur the boundaries between so-called high and low art." Jesse Hamlin, "Yerba Buena Chief Curator, 8 Others Laid Off in Arts Center Shakeup," San Francisco Chronicle, 19 February 2004.
push
"[Frank Stella] has said of this working period [1958-1965], 'I was pushing abstract painting as hard as I could,' and he possessed a compulsion not to separate himself from his predecessors, but to bluntly interrogate [question] their subjective impulses and ultimately move painting forward." Alex Finkelstein, "Stella's Year of Magical Painting" (review of exhibition Frank Stella: Paintings 1958-1965), New York Sun, October 18, 2007.
push (press) buttons
"The new piece [of 'performance art,' by Marina Abramovic], with its innocent title, 'The House with the Ocean View,' on one hand and its nudity, knives, and punishing hunger fast on the other, presses buttons near and far." Steven Henry Maldoff, "A Viewable Feast, Enforced by Knives," New York Times, 10 November 2002.
push the envelope (see also blur the boundaries)
"In many parts [of the United States], what we do is not considered essential, and there is little support for artists who experiment with new ideas and materials or for art educators who embrace difficult content in their curricula. What people fail to recognize is that in art, just as in space or science, we cannot progress without pushing the envelope. . . . New knowledge, the future itself, exists at the boundaries and beyond. We must constantly move forward. We, too, must push the envelope if art education and our students are to soar in the 21st century." Pat Villeneuve, Editorial, "Pushing the Envelope," Art Education [published by the National Art Education Association], May 2003.
"Many times, art is meant to push envelopes and force people to think, feel or emote certain things." Kendra Mayfield, "Once It Was Atari, Now It's Art," Wired News, 19 July 2001.
question (raise questions, etc.)
"[Bruce Nauman's] was an art of exploration: he used himself, his person and his witty brand of inquiry to examine the parameters of art and the role of the artist. This questioning elicited strong emotional, physical and intellectual responses, and it often resulted in objects of formal beauty." Artist Summary, Bruce Nauman, Artfact, accessed January 2006.
"[The playwright David] Edgar said art 'has been properly concerned not to preserve national identity, but to question it . . . disrupting rather than confirming how we see the world.'" Charlotte Higgins, "Outrage Is Central to Art, Says Dramatist," The Guardian (London), 22 June 2004.
"Presented in a gallery at the Museum of Modern Art, [Gerhard] Richter's famous canvases based on photos of the Baader-Meinhof gang are meant to raise questions about the kinds of access photos give us to reality, and about how the act of painting can affect our readings of them." Blake Gopnik, "Journalism, Painting Itself into a Corner," Washington Post, 6 October 2002.
"The show contains approximately 60 food-related prints, drawings and sculptures by late artists Joseph Beuys, Dieter Roth and the young contemporary artist Sonja Alhauser--all German. While it may seem to border on silliness, the show raises serious questions about consumption, gratification, permanence, and preservation." "Eat Art," "Edible sculpture draws chocoholics and art lovers alike to a Harvard University museum," 12 December 2001.
quirky
"The end of [eyeSpace] . . . contained a very good duet between Daniel Squire and Julie Cunningham, with him supporting her rear end like a sling, which showed us Mr. Cunningham at the top of his game--precise, intricate, and quirky. Joel Lobenthal, "Malfunctioning eyeSpace" [choreography by Merce Cunningham], New York Times, 12 October 2006.
". . . Andrea Zittel, a 36-year-old New York installation artist . . . [and] a visiting artist at Yale University . . . has become internationally known for her quirky reinventions of domestic environments. One, a warren of 10 tiny stacking 'rooms,' was a playful comment on how people compartmentalize their lives. A floating concrete 'island' that she occupied for a month in the chilly waters off Denmark offered all the comforts of home in 450 square feet." Patricia Leigh Brown, "Fine Terrain for Scorpions and Artists," House & Home section, New York Times, 29 August 2002.
". . . Sarah Michelson has established herself as one of the contemporary dance world's most innovative spirits. As a performer during the later half of the 90's, she interpreted material that was rarely as interesting as her quirky style. . . . In the opening image [of 'Group Experience'], the dancers poised in a tight cluster faced the audience almost aggressively and assumed a relevé, standing on the tips of their toes for five minutes. . . . Though masked in casualness, Ms. Michelson's work is confrontational, with intentional awkwardness as a key ingredient." Gia Kourlas [dance editor of Time Out New York], "A Nonconformist with a Free-Flowing Fantasy," New York Times, 25 August 2002.
"[Mark Dion] is well known for his ecologically sensitive but conceptually quirky art, which is as much about culture as nature. . . . [His] compact, open-front cabin ['Urban Wildlife Observation Unit,' an 'open-air' 'public sculpture'] . . . is fitted out to track and record New York City flora and fauna, but it's really a reminder of how oblivious we are to the natural world in our midst. Pick up a copy of the free field guide that Mr. Dion has prepared for the occasion, and read its concise descriptions of the sparrows, pigeons and rats." Holland Cotter, "Rain or Shine, Residing Outdoors," New York Times, 9 August 2002.
raise questions (See question)
redefine (reinvent, etc.)
"One of the most important developments in contemporary art has been the slow disappearance of media in its [sic] pure form. . . . Responding to the age of technology and popular culture, artists are approaching film, video and photography as if they are holding a paintbrush; and as they incorporate every possible form of art in their work, they redefine the very idea of art." [Source and date unknown.]
"Struggling to unseat traditional notions of art and explore new visual language, these [Latin American abstract] artists produced a wide variety of avant-garde works: geometric and constructed paintings . . . sculptures composed of modules, planes, arcs and angles; free-form hangings; and assemblages of painted wood." Grace Glueck, "A Universe of Art, Centered in Boston," New York Times, 17 August 2001.
refuse (reject, etc.)
"[Cy] Twombly (born 1928) often scribbles obsessively on his drawings, and also often leaves half his pictures blank. There is a kind of power in the emptiness, in the refusal to make the drawings balance and cohere. The combination of their physical resemblance to children's art, or to the art of the insane, and their serious rejection of completeness, their commitment to the fragmentary, leaves a lingering anxiety in the work." Lance Esplund, "Scribbling Notes to Himself" (a review of Cy Twombly:Fifty Years of Works on Paper--at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, 27 January - 8 May 2005), New York Sun, 27 January 2005.
require (see also force)
"Minimalism established that art could require our conscious assimilation of it as such: place bricks in a gallery and turn them into something else, sculptural objects, with weight, color and shape, defining the room, if we choose to see them that way." Michael Kimmelman, "How Not Much Is a Whole World," New York Times, 2 April 2004.
risky
"Barbara Luderowski, head of the Mattress Factory, a cutting-edge installation-art venue, agrees [with Tom Sokolowski, director of the Andy Warhol Museum, that Pittsburgh is culturally too conservative]. 'We've been whacking our way through the forest of Pittsburgh conservatism. The Cultural Trust was basically dealing with vanilla boxes,' she says. 'Our success encouraged the foundations to support more risky endeavors.'" Carol Strickland, "From Rust Belt to Arts Mecca," Christian Science Monitor, 22 October 2004.
seductive*
[See "Subvert," 15 May 2006]
subvert
"Sherman's still making costumed self-portraits, taking cues from performance art, that subvert identity while indulging narrative and fantasy, a seductive and fresh mix. "The Influentials: Art," New York Magazine, 15 May 2006.
"[Conceptual artist Carey] Young explained to me the nature of her artistic interests, which are based on subverting some of the widespread practices of the business and legal worlds." Peter Aspden, "Caught in a Twilight of Ambiguity," Financial Times (London), 24-25 July 2004.
untitled
[Note: The most popular title in the history of modernist and postmodernist "art" is Untitled. Examples include Jackson Pollock's Untitled (c.1950), Untitled (c.1950), and Untitled (c.1950); Eva Hesse's Untitled (1964); and Donald Judd's Untitled (1970). Occasionally, a more conventional title is inserted parenthetically after Untitled, as in these works of "installation art": Untitled (One Hundred Spaces) (1995), by Rachel Whiteread, and Untitled (Kiddo) (1997-98), by Petah Coyne. A more modest recent example is Untitled [more] (2004), consisting of wire, wall, shadow, and pigment. At Artcyclopedia, search for the title Untitled for a list of representative works so titled--mostly from the twentieth century, and mostly not art by any objective measure. Our favorite is Senza titolo (Untitled) (1968), a piece consisting of granite, copper, wire, and lettuce, by Giovanni Anselmo. There is no need to view any of the rest unless you are so inclined--just scroll down through the list to see how ubiquitous the title Untitled really is.]
"[Tom Friedman's] most famous piece--"Untitled" (2000)--is [a] life-sized self-portrait as the victim of a motorcycle accident, made entirely out of colored construction paper, a virtuosic splatter of paper cut-outs on the floor." Alex Mar, Gallery-Going, New York Sun, 1 May 2003.
visual culture (or material culture)
"Visual Culture involves developing a critical framework for the understanding and discussion of those aspects of culture and society which involve any type of visual media--ranging from TV, advertising, and fashion, to architecture, photography, and painting." Judy Decker, "Visual Culture Defined," ArtsEdNet discussion list archive, 20 June 2001. [See also "Where's the Art in Today's Art Education?", What Art Is Online, November 2002, and "Rescuing Art from 'Visual Culture Studies,'" Aristos, January 2004]
(See also definitions of visual culture and material culture at ArtLex.)
*Phrases and terms that also appear in Appendix B [Part I] in What Art Is.
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