tune into http://www.weliveinpublic.com at 8pm ET friday 1/26/01 for
the Live Demonstration
this 'lecture' was written with weliveinpublic.com chatters in mind
(assumed to have minimal knowledge of art history), hence it's
simplistic content.
peace out
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(formatted for chat)
An Art History Lecture by T.Whid of MTAA (M.River & T.Whid Art
Assoc.) performed for the "Warhol Hijack"
This lecture is entitled "Conceptual Art in Relation to MTAA's Art Practice"
Lucy Lippard (noted art critic) describes conceptual art as
"[artwork] in which the idea is paramount and the material form is
secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious and/or
'dematerialized'".
Net art may be loosely defined as art which uses the internet as one
of it's primary components.
This art history lesson will begin with Marcel Duchamp, inventor of
the ready made.
Duchamp's work was one of the precursors of conceptual art.
Duchamp's place in the history of conceptual art is analogous to
MTAA's place in the history of net art.
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist who was active from the first
decade of the 20th century until the 1960s.
Marcel Duchamp liked to play chess. He sometimes preferred playing
chess to making art.
MTAA are American artists who are active right now (early 21st century).
MTAA like to play Quake. They sometimes prefer it to making art.
Duchamp invented the ready made.
MTAA invented the art movement known as Artainment.
(http://www.mteww.com/artain/)
A ready made is an art object that has been found or chosen by the
artist. The artist simply puts the ready made into an art context
such as an exhibition or gallery.
This may seem lazy or underhanded to someone who hasn't spent much
time thinking about art, but in practice this concept can be quite
explosive.
Some art historians group Duchamp with an art movement called DaDa.
DaDa was an art movement of the early 20th century that emphasized
the ridiculous or absurd as opposed to the logical or beautiful.
DaDa is sometimes attributed to artists' disillusionment with society
following World War I.
DaDa is sometimes thought of as anti-art.
Net Art is sometimes hard to understand in an art context at all.
Pop Art, when it first surfaced in the early 1960s, was called
Neo-DaDa. Andy Warhol was one of the first Pop artists.
Andy Warhol's use of soup cans and brillo boxes as subject matter is
what caused critics and historians to call his work Neo-DaDa.
Andy Warhol is quoted as saying that in the future everyone will be
famous for fifteen minutes.
MTAA are quoted as saying "Meaning in Misunderstanding", "The Art
Happens Here", and "Hey! Which one of you motherfuckers took my beer?"
But let's get back to Duchamp…
Duchamp quit art at different times throughout his career. At one
point he quit art to pursue a strategy for winning at roulette. He
issued a bond called the Monte Carlo Bond in order to fund his
research into his roulette strategy.
MTAA believe this entire episode in Duchamp's career was a statement
on the art market. Some collectors buy art in the hopes that it will
be a good investment. It's like gambling.
MTAA sell art websites over the internet for low prices, we hope that
collectors will gamble on our artwork. (We have discontinued this
offer http://www.mteww.com/websiteunseen/).
So on with history…
Artists didn't really respond to Duchamp's advances in art theory
until the 1960s.
MTAA expect that artists will be responding to our advances in art
theory later tonight.
Fluxus was one response to Duchamp's anti-art position.
Yoko Ono was a Fluxus artist until she became John Lennon's girlfriend.
Fluxus was an art movement that did away with the word art all
together, they called their activities Fluxus or Fluxism.
MTAA call their activities Artainment. (http://www.mteww.com/artain/)
Fluxus performances took the form of banal or everyday activities and
scripts which compose everyday activities like a music composition
composes music.
The Fluxus idea of composing everyday actions is related to John
Cage's musical compositions. We will not go into the influence of
John Cage on music, dance and art at this time.
Sol LeWitt is an artist who creates his work by composing instructions
and then having fabricators create the work in galleries or other
exhibition spaces.
Sol LeWitt's work mostly takes the form of wall drawings and sculptures.
MTAA's Direct To Your Home Art Projects (http://www.mteww.com/dyhap/)
used a similar strategy, but in a more networked and democratic
fashion.
In the early 1960s, artist Allan Kaprow invented an art form called
"Happenings".
MTAA, when in performance art mode, refer to their activities as
"Live Demonstrations."
In a Happening, a situation is created in which art activity takes
place. This activity evolved into Performance Art.
German artist Joseph Beuys is one of the most famous performance artists.
Beuys talked about "Social Sculptures", meaning "how we mold and
shape the world in which we live: Sculpture as an evolutionary
process; everyone is an artist."
The internet has made the creation of Social Sculptures something
that anyone can do.
Performance Artists use their bodies as the material of their
artwork. Performance art uses aspects of visual art, dance, and
theater.
MTAA consider Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol to be the German and
American sides of the same coin. That is, both artists used their
lives as the material for their art.
Josh Harris, the owner of http://www.WeLiveInPublic.com, will
contextualize the documentation of WeLiveInPublic within the art
historical discourse of Performance, DaDa, Fluxus, and Conceptualism.
MTAA will contextualize our Live Demonstration: "Conceptual Art in
Relation to MTAA's Net Art" within the art historical discourse of
Net Art and Artainment.
This concludes the lecture.
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