4.651 Lecture 22: Identity Politics and Political Art

MIT 4.651 ART SINCE 1940 LECTURE NOTES Week 13/Lecture 22: Identity Politics and Political Art decades discussed: 1970s-1990s terms: Identity politics I. Radical ‘70s politics: Black Panthers, Grey Panthers, “women’s lib,” Weathermen, “Symbionese Liberation Army,” Art Worker’s Coalition (1960s-70s), Indian Activism (1960s-70s) – all forecasting identity politics of 1980s and ‘90s , which segues into institutional critique (Guerrilla Girls, Act Up, Silence=Death etc.) II. Political Interventions in and out of the museum A) Museum as fortress or bunker; permissible performers B) Hans Haacke and “systems” art (compare Beuys’s “social sculpture”) 1. out of process, earthworks 2. still requires the museum or gallery (compare w/ later postmodernism) III. African American identities: complicating modernism A) out of conceptualism: Adrian Piper (philosopher, performance artist, from 1970s) B) working with the legacy: painting/ quilts/ fetish shrines/ documentary 1) May Stevens (political pop) 2) Faith Ringgold (subversive assemblage) 3) Bettye Saar (the power of the fetish) 4) Carrie Mae Weems (a searing documentary gaze) C) resisting the Man: David Hammons (installations and performances, from 1970s) D) conceptualism redux: 1990s stars 1) Fred Wilson (museum critique) 2) Glenn Ligon (black “Jasper Johns,” black as metaphor and lived reality) 3) Lorna Simpson (the “Cindy Sherman” archivist of black female identity) E) a place for formalism? Martin Puryear IV. “Speaking Truth to Power” A) First peoples/ Native Americans 1) inhabiting the ethnographic present: early Jimmie Durham 2) deconstructing the categories: later Durham 3) James Luna (institutional critique) B) AIDS Demo-graphics Collectives: Act Up, Gran Fury, Silence=Death C) Krzysztof Wodiczko, “projecting” the urban subconscious D) Guerrilla Girls, from protest to art to politics selected images on verso MIT 4.651 ART SINCE 1940 LECTURE NOTES SELECTED IMAGES Gordon Bunshaft + SOM, Hirschhorn Museum, 1974 Gilbert & George, Singing Sculpture, 1970 Haacke, Condensation Cube 1963 Haacke, Shapolsky et al.: Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, 1971 Haacke, Oil P ainting/ O elgem alde..., 1982 (ongoing) Piper, Catalysis (performance, NYC transit system) 1970 Piper, Vanilla Nightmare, 1986 Piper, Out of the Corner, 1990 Stevens, Big D add y Pap er Doll, 1970 Ringg old, Flag for the Moon: Die Nigger 1969 Saar, Liberation of Aunt Jemima, 1972 W eems, Kitchen Table series, 1990 W eems, In These Islands (appropriated 19 th c. pho to) 19 94-5 Hammons, Injustice Case 197 3 (body p rint) Hammons, Nap T apestry, 1978 Hammons, High er Goals 1986 Hammons, Bliz-aard B all Sale, 1983 W ilson, Guarded View, 1991 W ilson, Metalwork, 1992 from “Mining the Museum” Ligon, Untitled 1990 Ligon, Notes on the Margins of the Black Book, 1991-93 Simp son, Guarded Conditions 1989 Simp son, She 1992 Puryear, Self 1978 Durham, Bedia’s Stirring Wheel, 1984 Durham, Self-Portrait, 1986 Durham, Catskill Giveaway, 1990 Luna, The Artifact Piece, San Diego Museum of Man, 1986, also 1990 W odiczko , Projections: The Border on San Diego Museum of Man, 1988 Silence=Death Project poster, 1986 “Gra n Fury” collective, H e K ills M e poster, 1987 Guerrilla G irls, Do Women have to be Naked to get into the Met Museum? 1989