Marilyn Minter: Green Pink Caviar (Extra)

“In Green Pink Caviar Marilyn Minter continues her interest in blurring the boundaries between fine and commercial art. Minter directed her models to lick brightly colored candies while she shot photos from underneath a glass plate. The model’s tongues mixed the colorful sugar with saliva, slurping and pushing color across the glass surface to simulate painting. Driven by her fascination with the body, Green Pink Canvas sets the stage for chance to happen (www.greenpinkcaviar.com).”

In this video by Minter she directs other people who happen to be model’s to eat candy. Minter is using the model’s bodies as the art object instead of her own.

This video performance differs with the rest of the video-based performances in this exhibition because Minter is not using her own body, but rather the bodies of model’s who are under her direction. When an artist uses another person’s body instead of their own, they are opening up a whole new element, this being chance, unexpected things can happen when relying on other peoples bodies, but based upon the quote by Minter above, that element of chance is exactly what she wants.

Paul McCarthy: Black and White Tapes (Excerpt)

"Black and White Tapes is derived from a series of performances Paul McCarthy undertook in his Los Angeles studio from 1970 to 1975. Purposely created for the camera and performed alone or with only a few people present, these short performances use time based video performance to articulate both monitor and studio space.

In the first excerpt, which is featured in this exhibition, McCarthy paints a white line on the floor with his face/body, dragging his body from one end of the studio to the other. In doing so, McCarthy, creates a recognizable gesture, drawing a white line.

While he inserts his body into the process of painting, some think, may have been intended to parody work following minimalist views.

Later on in this video McCarthy continues to challenge viewers sense of physical space by “hanging” from the upper frame of the picture as he spits into an unseen microphone. McCarthy’s body art influences are taken from artist and filmmaker Carolee Schneeman. (www.vdb.com)."

McCarthy said that “Using the body as part of the ground of the painting was a compelling issue at the time. Related impulses can be seen in happenings of the early and mid-1960’s, which often fused audience and performers into the setting and action of the extended painting.”

The original total running time for this piece is 33:00, this is a 6:30 excerpt.

Pipilotti Rist: Be Nice to Me

"Elizabeth Charotte Rist was born in 1962 in Grabs, Sankt Gallen, in Switzerland. Since her childhood she has been nicknamed Pipilotti. The name refers to the novel Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren.

During her studies Rist began making super 8 films. Her works generally lasted only a few minutes, and contained alterations in their color, speed, and sound. Her works transmit a sense of happiness and simplicity. Some art critics generally regard Rist’s works as feminist (www.wikipedia.com)."

In this work titled Be Nice to Me Rist has an over abundance of make-up on her face and continues to smash and rub her face into a glass window, smearing the makeup and distorting her face, she explores feminity and the stereotypical image of a woman, she has too much makeup on, slightly resembling a hooker or prostitute, with blue eye shadow and all. She then smears her makeup and face on a glass window, which messes up her make up, which most women try so hard to perfect, her face also distorts into some not so “beautiful” or feminine expressions.
“…Her focus is video/audio installations because there is room in them for everything (painting, technology, language, music, movement, lousy, flowering pictures, poetry, commotion, premonition of death, sex and friendliness) – like a compact handbag (www.luhringaugustine.com).”

Dennis Oppenheim: Tooth and Nail: Film and Video

"Dennis Oppenheim has received international attention for conceptual performance, video, sculpture, installation, and land art. In the early 1970’s, Dennis Oppenheim was in the vanguard of artists using film and video to investigate themes relating body and performance (www.jazzloft.com)."

“In a sense, I am creating a system that allows the artist to become the material, to consider himself the sole vehicle of the art, the distributor, initially and receiver simultaneously. Understanding the body as both subject and object permits one to think in terms of an entirely different surface (Dennis Oppenheim, www.slought.com).”

This video is part of a much larger selection known as the Aspen Tapes, produced 1970 and 1974l. Oppenheim uses his own body as a site of experimentation. In this select work Oppenheim explores the boundaries of personal risk, bodily transformation, and interpersonal communication.

Hannah Wilke: Gestures

"Throughout her career, Hannah Wilke dealt with issues of feminism and femininity. She began her career as a sculptor during the 1960’s.
Wilke always appeared naked in her performances. Gestures consists of four segments in which segments in which Wilke stares directly in the camera. The artist rubs and pulls at her face, repeating a series of movements, which result in the same poses and facial expressions over and over again. There are extreme close ups. She kneads and pulls at her skin as if it were sculptural material. Often her gestures – rubbing her hands over her face, smiling so hard that she appears to be grimacing, sticking out her tongue, take on a loaded significance when seen in the context of her gender performance (www.artnews.org/gallery)."

In this video, Wilke is using her face as a pliable material in which she molds into different shapes and expressions. She is using her face as a canvas for this video titled Gestures. She is also a woman, and typically women wouldn’t necessarily stretch and distort their skin in the same manner as Wike. The face of a woman is usually seen as beautiful; women take the time put perfectly places makeup and do their hair. Never put the skin on their face through the torment that Wilke does.

Feminist art from the 70’s is in the art world is an interest but has always been an area that has been someone “embarrassing,” when received outside of feminist audiences.

“While Wilke’s statement that she wants to make objects rather than be one can be carried over to the use of her own body as a material, women artists using the female body always risk, regardless of humor, being accused of narcissim and not being taken seriously (www.artmonthly.com).”

Bruce Nauman: Pinchneck

Born in 1941 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Bruce Nauman studied mathematics and physics at the University of Wisconsin. In the late 1960’s Nauman earned a reputation as a conceptual pioneer in the field of sculpture. He produced his first videos in 1968.

Since the early 1970’s as one of the most innovative and provocative American contemporary artists, Nauman finds inspiration in the activities, speech, and materials of everyday life, including his own body.

“If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product (Nauman via www.pbs.org),”

"Nauman’s video based performance titled Pinch Neck from 1968 features close-cropped images of Bruce Nauman’s face framed by the bridge of his nose to his Adam’s apple by the width of his face. Within this frame Nauman, using his fingers, pinches his lips, pulls his lower lip; pinches his cheeks, pulls at his neck, accentuating the elastic element of his facial skin, much in the same way Hannah Wilke does in her video performance Gestures. He explores the skin on his face as an art object rather than a body part. He kneads his skin and pushes and pulls it to create different “gestures.” This video has an endurance element to it as well. Nauman is enduring the manipulation of his face, by himself (www.mellart.com)."

Nauman uses his body to explore the limits of everyday situations; Nauman explored video as a “theatrical stage and surveillance device” within an installation context.