Earthworks

Smithson, Spiral Jetty• 1969-1970• Sought to illustrate the “ongoing dialectic” in nature between

constructive forces and destructive forces• 1,500 ft spiraling stone and earth platform extending into the

Great Salt Lake in Utah• Lake recalls both the origins of life in the salty waters of the

primordial ocean and also the end of life• Abandoned oil rigs that dot the shoreline suggested prehistoric

dinosaurs and some vanished civilization• Spiral- most fundamental shape in nature, dialectical (shape that

opens and closes, curls and uncurls endlessly)• Smithson ordered no maintenance be done on the work

Christo, Running Fence

• 1976• 24 ½ miles long, 18 feet high nylon fence that crossed two

counties in northern California and extended into the Pacific Ocean (location chosen for aesthetic reasons as well as to link urban, suburban, and rural spaces)

• Jeanne-Claude and Christo like to reveal the beauty in various spaces

• Fence broke down social barriers among supporters such as students, ranchers, lawyers, and artists

• The work remained in place for 2 weeks and then was taken down

Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial

• 1982• The Mall, Washington DC• Abstract and intimate conjoined with basic ideas of minimal

grandeur of long, black granite walls and row upon row of engraved names

• Statement of loss, sorrow, and the futility of war• Timeless monument to suffering humanity, faceless in sacrifice• Subject of controversy due to Minimalist style• Competition for commission• Not only reflects faces of visitors but also reflects Washington

Monument (reminds viewer of sacrifices made in defense of liberty throughout history of US)

Photo Realism

Feminist Art

Betye Saar, Liberation of Aunt Jemima

• 1972, Mixed media• Her assemblages show political militancy rare in postwar American art• Appropriates the derogatory stereotype of the cheerfully servile “mammy”

and transforms it into an icon of militant black feminist power• Background papered with smiling advertising image of Aunt Jemima• Notepad holder in the form of Aunt Jemima• Broom whose handle is pencil for the notepad• Rifle• In place of the notepad is a picture of another jolly mammy holding a crying

child identified by the artist as a mulatto (both black and white ancestry)• Clenched fist in front of her stands for Black Power• Armed Jemima liberates herself not only from racial oppression but also from

traditional gender roles that had long relegated black women to such subservient positions as domestic servant or mammy

Faith Ringgold

• African American artist (born 1930) who drew on traditional American craft of quilt making and combined it with rich heritage of African textiles to create memorable statements about American race relations

• Put paint on soft fabrics rather than stretched canvases• Framed images with decorative quilted borders• Quilts narrated by women and usually address themes

related to women’s lives• Messages are reminders to the viewer of the real social and

economic limitations that African Americans have faced through American history

Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party• 1974-1979• Painted porcelain, needlework• Composed of a large, triangular table (each side stretching 48 feet) which rests on a triangular

platform covered with 2,300 triangular porcelain tiles• Triangle- symbol of equalized world sought by feminism, one of the earliest symbols of women• Porcelain “Heritage Floor” bears the names of 999 notable women from myth, legend, and

history• Thirteen place settings along the side of each triangle each represent a famous woman• Each place setting features a 14-inch-wide painted porcelain plate, ceramic flatware, ceramic

chalice with gold interior, embroidered napkin all on a runner• Most plates feature abstract designs of female genitalia because, Chicago said, “that is all [the

women at the table] had in common…They were from different periods, classes, ethnicities, geographies, experiences, but what kept them within the same combined historical space” was the fact of their biological sex

• Women had been “swallowed up and obscured by history instead of being recognized and honored” (represented by plates)

• Wanted to raise awareness of the many contributions women have made to history, thereby fostering women’s empowerment in the present

Cindy Sherman

• Made a series of works beginning in the late 1970’s in which she posed herself in made-up self settings that quote well-known plots of old movies

• All her works examine the rolls that our popular culture assigns to women, and Sherman shows that she understands them all very well and she plays them willingly

• Her personality is the sum of all the movies that she has seen, and she does not know where the real Cindy Sherman starts and the one derived from movies stops

Barbara Kruger

• Born 1945• More militant point than Cindy Sherman with slightly different

media• Work quotes magazine advertising layouts (catchy photograph

and slogan inscribed)• Slogan talks back to the viewer with a confrontational sentence

that sounds feminist• Not an “original” piece of graphic design that can be

reproduced• Worked in other public media, including billboards and bus

shelter posters, implanting her subversive messages directly into the flow of media and advertising

Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith, The Red Mean: Self Portrait

• 1992• Acrylic, newspaper collage, and mixed media on canvas, 92”x60”• Native American• “Made in the USA” above an identification number• Central figure quotes Vitruvian Man, but message is autobiographical• Silhouette placed inside the red X that signified nuclear radiation• Alludes both to the uranium mines found on some Indian

reservations and also to the fact that many have become temporary repositories for nuclear waste

• Background- collage of Native American tribal newspapers• Includes her ethic identity and life on the reservation as well as the

history of Western art

1990’s-2000’s

Rachel Whiteread, Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial

• 2000• Steel and concrete, Vienna, Austria• Urges us to take a fresh look at everyday

things by making casts of them• Turns negative spaces into concrete blocks• ONLY INFORMATION GIVEN IN BOOK; PIECE

NOT DISCUSSED

El Anatsui, After Kings• 2005• Aluminum (liquor bottle caps) and copper wire• 88” x 70”• Gathered several thousand aluminum tops, flattened them, and

stitched them together with copper wire to form large wall pieces• Tops were chosen not only because they were plentiful but also for

symbolic meaning (“To me, the bottle tops encapsulate the essence of the alcoholic drinks which were brought to Africa by Europeans as trade items at the time of the earliest contrast between these two people….”)

• Changes garbage into a form that resembles a traditional kente cloth from the Ahsanti culture of Ghana (originally for nobility only explains the title of the work)

Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway: Continental US

• 1995• Closed-circuit installation with 313 monitors, neon, steel structure, color and

sound• “as collage technique replaced oil paint, the cathode ray [television] tube will

replace the canvas”• Strongly influenced by John Cage• Worked with live, recorded, and computer-generated images displayed on video

monitors of varying sizes, which he often combined into sculptural ensembles• Site specific• Featured a map of continental US outlined in neon and backed by video monitors

perpetually flashing with color and movement and accompanied by sound• Monitors display images reflecting the states culture and history• Exception: state of New York, whose monitors displayed live, closed-circuit images

of the gallery visitors, placing them in the artwork and transforming them from passive spectators into active participants