Description

Today video art is a dominant art form throughout the world; the technology first became available to artists in Western Europe and North America during the 1960s. This module will look at American art from the late 1960s in order to understand the way in which artists at the time used the new technology. The course will examine the differences between the medium of video and the various filmic technologies that preceded it and account for its popularity at the time.

We will think about differences in the way video works were displayed and distributed during the 1960s and today. The turn to video will be put into the context of the contemporary interest in medium specificity, the emergence of gallery-based performance, and the examination of space within sculptural practice. We will look at artists’ writings, critical work from the period, as well as recent scholarly work. 

This is a tightly focused course examining a small number of the most important artists from the period in some depth and from a number of different perspectives. This course should provide a basis for thinking about issues around gender, space, and the body that will prepare students for a variety of special subject options later in the degree.

Objectives

At the end of the module, students should:

• have acquired an in depth knowledge of video art in the USA between 1966 and 1975 and the ability to contextualise this practice amongst other types of work (conceptual art, performance, and sculpture) from the period
• have independently viewed many video works from the period in question
• be able to think critically about video as a medium for art making
• have a developed awareness of the problems inherent in using artists’ writings as source material
• begin to acquire confidence in using psychoanalytic terms used in the readings studied 

Preliminary Reading

• Paul Young and Paul Duncan, Art Cinema, (Cologne: Taschen, 2009)
• Tanya Leighton (ed), Art and the Moving Image: A Critical Reader, (London: Afterall and Tate, 2007)
• Stuart Comer, Film and Video Art, (London: Tate, 2008)
• Edward Shanken, Art and Electronic Media, (London: Phaidon, 2009)
• Michael Rush, Video Art, (London: Thames and Hudson, 2007)
• Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer, Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art, (London: Aperture, 2004)
• Michael Fried, ‘Art and Objecthood’ in Gregory Battcock (ed.), Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, New York, 1968.
• Robert Morris, ‘Notes on Sculpture 2’ in Gregory Battcock (ed.), Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, New York, 1968.
• James Meyer, Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties, Yale, 2001.
• Sally Banes, Democracy’s Body: Judson Dance Theatre 1962-1964, Duke, 2002.
• Sally Banes, Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance, Wesleyan, 1987.
• Yvonne Rainer, A Woman Who… Essays, Interviews, Scripts, Johns Hopkins, 1999.
• Dan Graham, Two Way Mirror Power: Selected Writings on His Art, MIT, 1999.
• Rosalind Krauss, ‘Video the Aesthetics of Narcissism’, October 1, Spring 1976.
• David Joselit, Feedback: Television against Democracy, MIT, 2007.
• Anne Wagner, ‘Performance, Video, and the Rhetoric of Presence,’ October 91, Winter 2001.
• Kathy O’Dell, Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art and the Art of the 1970s, Minnesota, 1998.
• Amelia Jones, Body Art: Performing the Subject, Minnesota, 1998.
• Johann Karl-Schmidt, Joan Jonas: Performances, Film, Installations, 1968-2000, Hatje Cantz, 2000.
• Joan Simon et al, In the Shadow of a Shadow: The Work of Joan Jonas, New York, 2010.
• Mary Ann Doane, ‘Film and the Masquerade: Theorising the Female Spectator’, Screen, 1982.
• Klaus Biesenbach, Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present, MoMA, 2009
• Bennett Simpson and Chrissie Iles (eds), Dan Graham: Beyond, LA MOCA, 2009.
• Anne Wagner, ‘Splitting and Doubling: Gordon Matta Clark and the Body of Sculpture’, Grey Room 14, Winter 2004.
• Avalanche (journal reprinted by Primary Information, 2010 – costs around £100 for the entire run – will need binding into a single volume)
• Radical Software (1970s journal available for free download)
• Benjamin Buchloh, ‘Structure, Sign, and Reference in the work of David Lamelas’ (1997) in Neo Avant Garde and Culture Industry, MIT, 2000.
• Sigmund Freud, ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’ (1914) in James Strachey (ed.), Standard Edition, vol. 14.
• Herbert Marcuse, ‘The Images of Orpheus and Narcissus’ in Eros and Civilisation, Boston, (1955), 1966.
• Gilles Deleuze, ‘Coldness and Cruelty’ in Masochism, Zone, 1991.
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, Routledge, 2002.
• Lynda Boose “Techno-Muscularity and the "Boy Eternal": from the Quagmire to the Gulf,” in Cultures of United States Imperialism, eds. Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease, Duke University Press, 1993.
• Julia Bryan-Wilson, Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era, Universty of California Press, 2009.
• Susan Jeffords,‘Debriding Vietnam: The Resurrection of the White American Male’, Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, no. 3 (Autumn 1988), 525-543.