John A. Tyson is a specialist in modern and contemporary art. Tyson’s recent scholarship has addressed art in the Cold War era, text and image interactions, multiples and print portfolios, parallels between vanguard art and cinema, and modernism in Washington, DC. His dissertation research explored the relationship between Hans Haacke’s works and concurrently emerging forms of performance, technology and politics. He is presently developing a book on Haacke’s art in the age of globalism. He is the President of the Society of Contemporary Art Historians (SCAH) Address: United States
This essay focuses on the important role of weather and weather metaphors within the oeuvre of Ha... more This essay focuses on the important role of weather and weather metaphors within the oeuvre of Hans Haacke. See https://www.dukeupress.edu/nervous-systems
Editor's note for the Society of Art Historians Foreign Language Index 2 (2022), co-edited with J... more Editor's note for the Society of Art Historians Foreign Language Index 2 (2022), co-edited with Jacob Stewart-Halevy. If you would be interested in serving as an indexer for a future issue, please get in touch. See also Scahweb.org
Locating Sol LeWitt (https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300246049/locating-sol-lewitt), 2021
This essay addresses the systems explored in Sol LeWitt's photobooks as well as the (social) netw... more This essay addresses the systems explored in Sol LeWitt's photobooks as well as the (social) networks threaded through them. It treats all such publications by LeWitt--with the notable exception of Autobiography (1980), which has been analyzed by other authors (DiBenedetto and Weinberg).
Routledge Companion to African American Art History (ed. Eddie Chambers), 2019
Essay addressing the important position of Washington, DC in the development of American modernis... more Essay addressing the important position of Washington, DC in the development of American modernism, specifically related to Black artists.
Small publication with Spectacle Box (spectaclebox.net) for CameraWorks (exhibition with photos b... more Small publication with Spectacle Box (spectaclebox.net) for CameraWorks (exhibition with photos by Todd Forsgren, Michael Meyer, and Marc Redford) at RotterdamPhoto Festival, 2018.
This essay explores parallels between the film "Far from Vietnam" and contemporary art made in th... more This essay explores parallels between the film "Far from Vietnam" and contemporary art made in the United States. Artists and filmmakers approached social and political issues using similar strategies.
This essay examines Twombly's cardboard engravings, contextualizing them historically and in term... more This essay examines Twombly's cardboard engravings, contextualizing them historically and in terms of the artist's career. I read this body of prints through the writings of Georges Bataille and the lens of queer theory.
This essay analyses David Medalla and Paul Keeler's Signals Gallery and Signals Newsbulletin, pri... more This essay analyses David Medalla and Paul Keeler's Signals Gallery and Signals Newsbulletin, primarily focusing on the latter. I argue that the publication functioned as a second platform for presenting art and ideas, which given the range of the polyglot Signals Newsbulletin, was of equal or greater importance than the gallery. It borrowed strategies from experimental poetry and newspapers alike to disseminate new knowledge and works of art. Signals Newsbulletin provocatively sets advanced art from Latin America, Europe, and the United States into a genealogy of "Constructivism"--linking producers of the present with those of the Soviet avant-garde. Historically contextualizing the vanguard publication, I explore the ways it confounded Cold War-era binaries between north and south and east and west. Importantly, the broadsheet produced and imaged a global network of collaborators and readers.
A chemical bond consists of "a strong force of attraction holding atoms together in a molecule or... more A chemical bond consists of "a strong force of attraction holding atoms together in a molecule or crystal, resulting from the sharing or transfer of electrons." We might think about this structure as an apt metaphor for the shared concerns—both aesthetic and political—in the experiments of European filmmakers and visual artists based in America in the 1960s. Vanguard European cinema and American art blossomed concurrently during this decade. The creative strategies and the issues these filmmakers and artists grappled with, and reacted to, are many times isomorphic and convergent. The 60s saw the rise of numerous transatlantic tendencies. Conceptual art, minimalism, land art, and pop art were not solely American phenomena, although their practitioners were in some cases concentrated in the United States. Antonioni’s Red Desert (1964), Godard’s Pierrot le Fou (1965), and the collectively directed Loin du Vietnam (1967) have much in common with the aforementioned artistic developments. Confirming this cross-pollination, critics at the center of the art world, such as Annette Michelson, regularly wrote about cinema in art periodicals during this time. While these cultural producers (artists in America and European filmmakers) were separated by an ocean and by media, their outputs clearly resonate. Transatlantic bonds—parallel modes and methods—unite European cinema and contemporary art in America.
In winter and spring 2016, the Whitney Museum of American Art presented Open Plan, an innovative ... more In winter and spring 2016, the Whitney Museum of American Art presented Open Plan, an innovative five-part exhibition comprised of a mix of new and historic projects. The iterations progressed with a definite rhythm; austere projects with sober, restrained palettes alternated with more ebullient and colorful selections. Distributing curatorial authority, Open Plan united an ensemble cast for the following program: A sonic work by Andrea Fraser, curated by Scott Rothkopf and Laura Phipps; a painted environment created by Lucy Dodd, curated by Christopher Lew; projected photographs by Michael Heizer, curated by Donna De Salvo, Melva Bucksbaum, and Carol Mancusi-Ungaro; an exhibition of Cecil Taylor’s documents, curated by Jay Sanders and Lawrence Kumpf, accompanied by performances by the jazz musician; and a presentation of a filmic FBI file by Steve McQueen, curated by Donna De Salvo with Christie Mitchell.
This article contextualizes Jayson Musson's internet video performances as the character Hennessy... more This article contextualizes Jayson Musson's internet video performances as the character Hennessy Youngman--a remix of Henny Youngman, hip-hop, and high art discourse--within his broader oeuvre. I analyze the way Musson's work performs an interrogation of what Maurizio Lazzarato terms “immaterial labor.”
This essay focuses on the important role of weather and weather metaphors within the oeuvre of Ha... more This essay focuses on the important role of weather and weather metaphors within the oeuvre of Hans Haacke. See https://www.dukeupress.edu/nervous-systems
Editor's note for the Society of Art Historians Foreign Language Index 2 (2022), co-edited with J... more Editor's note for the Society of Art Historians Foreign Language Index 2 (2022), co-edited with Jacob Stewart-Halevy. If you would be interested in serving as an indexer for a future issue, please get in touch. See also Scahweb.org
Locating Sol LeWitt (https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300246049/locating-sol-lewitt), 2021
This essay addresses the systems explored in Sol LeWitt's photobooks as well as the (social) netw... more This essay addresses the systems explored in Sol LeWitt's photobooks as well as the (social) networks threaded through them. It treats all such publications by LeWitt--with the notable exception of Autobiography (1980), which has been analyzed by other authors (DiBenedetto and Weinberg).
Routledge Companion to African American Art History (ed. Eddie Chambers), 2019
Essay addressing the important position of Washington, DC in the development of American modernis... more Essay addressing the important position of Washington, DC in the development of American modernism, specifically related to Black artists.
Small publication with Spectacle Box (spectaclebox.net) for CameraWorks (exhibition with photos b... more Small publication with Spectacle Box (spectaclebox.net) for CameraWorks (exhibition with photos by Todd Forsgren, Michael Meyer, and Marc Redford) at RotterdamPhoto Festival, 2018.
This essay explores parallels between the film "Far from Vietnam" and contemporary art made in th... more This essay explores parallels between the film "Far from Vietnam" and contemporary art made in the United States. Artists and filmmakers approached social and political issues using similar strategies.
This essay examines Twombly's cardboard engravings, contextualizing them historically and in term... more This essay examines Twombly's cardboard engravings, contextualizing them historically and in terms of the artist's career. I read this body of prints through the writings of Georges Bataille and the lens of queer theory.
This essay analyses David Medalla and Paul Keeler's Signals Gallery and Signals Newsbulletin, pri... more This essay analyses David Medalla and Paul Keeler's Signals Gallery and Signals Newsbulletin, primarily focusing on the latter. I argue that the publication functioned as a second platform for presenting art and ideas, which given the range of the polyglot Signals Newsbulletin, was of equal or greater importance than the gallery. It borrowed strategies from experimental poetry and newspapers alike to disseminate new knowledge and works of art. Signals Newsbulletin provocatively sets advanced art from Latin America, Europe, and the United States into a genealogy of "Constructivism"--linking producers of the present with those of the Soviet avant-garde. Historically contextualizing the vanguard publication, I explore the ways it confounded Cold War-era binaries between north and south and east and west. Importantly, the broadsheet produced and imaged a global network of collaborators and readers.
A chemical bond consists of "a strong force of attraction holding atoms together in a molecule or... more A chemical bond consists of "a strong force of attraction holding atoms together in a molecule or crystal, resulting from the sharing or transfer of electrons." We might think about this structure as an apt metaphor for the shared concerns—both aesthetic and political—in the experiments of European filmmakers and visual artists based in America in the 1960s. Vanguard European cinema and American art blossomed concurrently during this decade. The creative strategies and the issues these filmmakers and artists grappled with, and reacted to, are many times isomorphic and convergent. The 60s saw the rise of numerous transatlantic tendencies. Conceptual art, minimalism, land art, and pop art were not solely American phenomena, although their practitioners were in some cases concentrated in the United States. Antonioni’s Red Desert (1964), Godard’s Pierrot le Fou (1965), and the collectively directed Loin du Vietnam (1967) have much in common with the aforementioned artistic developments. Confirming this cross-pollination, critics at the center of the art world, such as Annette Michelson, regularly wrote about cinema in art periodicals during this time. While these cultural producers (artists in America and European filmmakers) were separated by an ocean and by media, their outputs clearly resonate. Transatlantic bonds—parallel modes and methods—unite European cinema and contemporary art in America.
In winter and spring 2016, the Whitney Museum of American Art presented Open Plan, an innovative ... more In winter and spring 2016, the Whitney Museum of American Art presented Open Plan, an innovative five-part exhibition comprised of a mix of new and historic projects. The iterations progressed with a definite rhythm; austere projects with sober, restrained palettes alternated with more ebullient and colorful selections. Distributing curatorial authority, Open Plan united an ensemble cast for the following program: A sonic work by Andrea Fraser, curated by Scott Rothkopf and Laura Phipps; a painted environment created by Lucy Dodd, curated by Christopher Lew; projected photographs by Michael Heizer, curated by Donna De Salvo, Melva Bucksbaum, and Carol Mancusi-Ungaro; an exhibition of Cecil Taylor’s documents, curated by Jay Sanders and Lawrence Kumpf, accompanied by performances by the jazz musician; and a presentation of a filmic FBI file by Steve McQueen, curated by Donna De Salvo with Christie Mitchell.
This article contextualizes Jayson Musson's internet video performances as the character Hennessy... more This article contextualizes Jayson Musson's internet video performances as the character Hennessy Youngman--a remix of Henny Youngman, hip-hop, and high art discourse--within his broader oeuvre. I analyze the way Musson's work performs an interrogation of what Maurizio Lazzarato terms “immaterial labor.”
Universitas. Las artes ante el tiempo: XXIII Congreso Nacional de Historia del Arte. Universidad de Salamanca 17 al 20 de mayo, 2021, 2021, ISBN 978-84-7797-673-8, págs. 1823-1826, 2021
The Society of Contemporary Art Historians’ un-CAA panel brings together Nic Aziz (New Orleans Mu... more The Society of Contemporary Art Historians’ un-CAA panel brings together Nic Aziz (New Orleans Museum of Art), Tatiana Flores (Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey), Pablo Helguera (New School; formerly Museum of Modern Art, NYC), and Christine Y. Kim (Tate Modern) to reflect on recent dynamics and share their experiences navigating our present neoliberal waters through different channels, in order to explore the field’s systemic crises alongside viable, collectivist modes of resistance, such as distributed self-organizing, resource sharing, and mutual-aid networks.
American Art in the Sixties Symposium at Texas A&M, 2020
This paper analyzes a series of Hans Haacke’s artworks realized at transnational shows held in Me... more This paper analyzes a series of Hans Haacke’s artworks realized at transnational shows held in Mexico, Canada and Argentina between 1968 and 1971. I set Haacke’s environmental projects in a continuum with his broader oeuvre and argue that they engage in “systems politics”: the identification and interruption of normally naturalized systems. For instance, Haacke’s Wind Room (1968), which he realized for Willoughby Sharp’s Cinetismo: Esculturas electrónicas en situaciones ambientales (1968), employed fans to subtly intervene in the ecology of the Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Arte at the Universidad Autonóma de México (UNAM). The exhibition formed part of the “cultural Olympics” accompanying the Mexico City Games. The electric grid, a source emphasized by the exhibition’s Spanish-language title, powered Wind Room’s air flows. As Haacke wrote in September 1967, his works register and intervene in institutional environments: viewers “see the frame” and become “part of a larger system.” Moreover, by dissolving the art object into the surrounds, his artwork—and others in Sharp’s show—rejected the program of the 18 monumental modernist sculptures commissioned for the Olympic Freeway. Following George Flaherty, concurrent anti-government student protests at UNAM amplified the kinetic works—inflecting them with activist energy and rendering them “forcefully communicative.” Tracing Haacke’s artistic dialogue with the various sites and curators, including Sharp, Lucy Lippard and Jorge Glusberg, I explore the global networks in which ideas and art circulated; I attempt to contextualize his critical projects and enrich the history of advanced art in the Americas.
A sparsely written cross-country movie with a Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on extravagant motorcy... more A sparsely written cross-country movie with a Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on extravagant motorcycles,” is how critic Manny Farber describes Dennis Hopper’s film Easy Rider on the pages of Artforum in 1969. Farber’s words signal ways that the figure of Don Quixote gets invoked to describe cultural texts engaging with mobility and the American landscape: the poetic wanderings and romantic sensibility of Miguel de Cervantes’s classic character were viewed as paralleling the activities of artists and filmmakers in the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, the creation of the United States Interstate Highway System in 1956 helped spur a fascination with freedom from fixed destinations and voyaging to remote locations. In addition to road movies, land art, a contemporaneous form of creation driven by a related impulse for (westward) travel, was described in similar terms. These large-scale sculptural interventions (which were often documented cinematically) were seen as translations of Cervantes to the North American context too.
Projects by visual artists Robert Smithson and Mary Miss were seen as multiply “quixotic”—both in terms of creation and reception. Their unconventional temporal construction and locations off the beaten path were a factor for this framing; moreover, following the critic and art historian Robert Pincus-Witten, the experience of spectatorship, increasingly oriented toward phenomenology, was also best grasped as a quixotic enterprise. Artworks converted viewers into poetic drifters. Smithson had read Don Quixote and appreciated Arnold Hauser’s interpretation of Cervantes’s writing as rejecting notions of the work of art as “indivisible and unalterable whole, made all of a piece.” Drawing on the discursive field around projects by the likes of Miss, Smithson, and Hopper, I will trace the afterlives of Don Quixote. My paper will explore ways Cervantes’s texts illuminate American culture in the mid-twentieth century.
In his classic 1972 Artforum essay, critic Lawrence Alloway described the art world as a network.... more In his classic 1972 Artforum essay, critic Lawrence Alloway described the art world as a network. Taking cues from Alloway’s observation about the nature of art production in the 60s and 70s, John A. Tyson proposes that the era’s portfolios of printed multiples can be understood as networked coproductions. In this lecture, Tyson historically contextualizes a selection of collective projects from the National Gallery of Art’s holdings: Walasse Ting’s “1-Cent Life” (1964), the Wadsworth Athenaeum’s “X + X (Ten Works by Ten Painters)” (1964), curated by Samuel Wagstaff Jr.; gallerist Leo Castelli’s multimedia “Ten from Leo Castelli” (1968), William Copley’s serial, boxed magazine S.M.S. (February-December, 1968); and, finally, Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.)’s “The New York Collection for Stockholm” (1973). These portfolios consist of works in a variety of traditional and nontraditional artistic media—from poetry to silkscreen to plastic sculpture and even a vinyl record. As signaled by Nam June Paik’s Untitled print from E.A.T.’s portfolio, the notion of broadcasting information with art—evoking televisual connotations of “network”—was of concern to many. While scaled to tabletops, these multiples had a wide range of distribution: how they respectively negotiate concerns for materiality as well as desire for decentralization and dematerialization merits further analysis.
This paper explores aspects of the careers of James A. Porter and Loïs Mailou Jones. These notabl... more This paper explores aspects of the careers of James A. Porter and Loïs Mailou Jones. These notable Washington-based, African American artists still are not adequately recognized in the terrain of modern American art. I will historically contextualize their outputs within modernism’s new modes of representation (styles, subjects, or media) and presentation (institutions, collections, and histories). Beyond art-making, these Howard University professors engaged in important pedagogical and scholarly endeavors: Porter published his seminal study, Modern Negro Art (1943), as well as numerous articles and essays. Jones ran the “Little Paris Studio” group. Writing in the 1930s, Porter stated: “We can have American art in the collective sense only. Its features must be heterogeneous.” Looking back on her variegated career, Jones affirmed: “I am an American artist. I want to be recognized as an American artist”; she too did not believe that national or racial identity should be bounded or limit the range of styles in which she worked. In her bold, modern canvases, the versatile artist marshalled elements then considered proper to craft and design in order to transcend traditional fine art. Conversely, in more naturalistic compositions, like Mob Victim (1944), she translated Alain Locke’s philosophy into paint. Porter is probably most well-known for his contributions to art history. As in his scholarship, his oeuvre contains serious considerations of the black subject; nonetheless, his work is not limited to this topic. Indeed, both Jones and Porter were masters of portraiture and landscape. Their depictions of the Caribbean and France sent spectators’ gazing outward to sites where race relations markedly differed. Further indicating their modernity, both artists dialogued with vanguard photographic strategies in their artwork. Considering the theories undergirding their practice, I assess ways that Jones and Porter enabled the black Atlantic to flow into the American scene.
Seth Siegelaub notoriously quit art in 1972. However, the same interest in documents and informat... more Seth Siegelaub notoriously quit art in 1972. However, the same interest in documents and information transmission that led Siegelaub to promote conceptualism drove his subsequent activities. Among his endeavors after art was the direction of a tautologically named institution, the Center for Social Research on Old Textiles (CSROT), which amassed a collection of 690 woven works. Textiles had long fascinated Siegelaub; he exhibited rugs alongside advanced art in his first gallery. In 1997, Siegelaub published a guide to textile literature: the Bibliographica textilia historiæ—an illustrated, polyglot document of documents and documentary system. Suggesting continuities in his taste for aesthetics of information, Siegelaub illuminates the bibliographic entries with figures. These include frontispieces, charts, fabric motifs, and an eighteenth-century diagram of square weaving patterns, which strikingly resembles Sol LeWitt’s Drawing Series (1968) from Siegelaub’s Xerox Book. CSROT and the Bibliographica—with its outmoded title and delight in book design—though franker, evoke the faux-institutions and printed matter of Belgian conceptualist Marcel Broodthaers. The Bibliographica’s introduction outlines Siegelaub’s understandings of textiles: material relates to material conditions; we must study the textiles of all classes—not just those of elites. He emphasizes fabric’s interwoven history with technology, economics, semiotics, architecture, and even zoology (underscored by a spider diagram). Often marginalized in institutions, textiles are particularly rich documents: unlike most media, they are forms of data transfer that are functional and beautiful. This paper will explore Siegelaub’s collecting, curating, promoting, and publishing, contending that the distinctly coded practices are in fact all documentary enterprises.
This study focuses on digital platforms that present art and art history in provocative new ways:... more This study focuses on digital platforms that present art and art history in provocative new ways: the Walker Art Center’s Walker Living Collections Catalogue (WLCC) and Triple Canopy (CCC). These expanded e-journals reward and hone viewers’ capacity for word-image analysis. WLCC juxtaposes texts and moving images; the temporality of performance and new media art is not suppressed in the documentation—a marked distinction from printed matter. CCC catalyzes non-linear reading with texts that are nodes in rhizomatic networks. CCC and WLCC invert norms of illustration: texts often illustrate images. The platforms’ words and pictures are examples of “supplements”: they each constitute “a surplus, a plenitude enriching another plenitude” (Derrida). Furthermore, the two projects constitute meta-media: they are nourished by older forms, even as they reimagine them. These publishing systems supplement and change the shape of art and art history—publicizing new ideas, expanding research possibilities, and extending the reach of our field.
This paper will explore the intersections of biopolitics and meteorology in the oeuvre of Hans Ha... more This paper will explore the intersections of biopolitics and meteorology in the oeuvre of Hans Haacke. Haacke’s well-known Condensation Cube (1963-65), a Plexiglas box with a small amount of water that condenses and evaporates in response to environmental conditions in the gallery (including the body heat of visitors) was originally titled Weather Cube. He produced variations on the same concept throughout the sixties, such as Condensation Wall (1967) and Condensation Floor (1963). Concurrently he explored various poetic uses of weather balloons interacting with their surrounds—most notably MIT Sky Line (1967)—which collide political and meteorological demonstrations. Haacke’s recent Weather, or Not (2009-10) saw the artist altering the conditions of art reception by leaving the gallery windows open for the duration of his midwinter exhibition at X Initiative. Inside the installation he reprised Recording of Climate in Art Exhibition (1969-70), a work consisting of a thermograph, barograph, and a hydrograph employed as readymades. Using these instruments, which are commonly found in galleries, Haacke monitors the institution and to a certain extent co-opts the position of conservator. The artist’s “weatherworks” teach multiple lessons: they show that humans are part of the environment; the projects moreover question and reveal the “natural” conventions of institutions—particularly the costly climate control—thus, suggesting that museums are implicated in politics and economics (for Haacke, weather is an allegory for both—indeed, all rely on forecasting). Given the artist’s at times antagonistic occupation of institutions and his interrogation of the status quo, Haacke might be considered an artistic “weatherman”—the nom de guerre adopted by the radical wing of Students for a Democratic Society. Via a close analysis of Haacke’s works, I will consider how they sit at the crux of systems esthetics and systems politics.
In c.1960 art galleries on both sides of the Atlantic increasingly became sites where audiences e... more In c.1960 art galleries on both sides of the Atlantic increasingly became sites where audiences experienced explosions of sensory information; visitors were prompted to engage with lights, sounds, reflective materials, or moving objects. This paper will trace intersections between discrepant strands of kinetic art made by Lygia Clark and Hans Haacke, arguing that projects by these artists should be considered “corporeal kineticism.” Employing bodies in space (rather than solely space-age gadgets), they “reprogram” galleries: spectators often turn into performers. I will historically contextualize Clark and Haacke’s provocative, multivalent artworks, exploring their relation to ludic activity, systems theory, and other newly emerging artistic forms.
Clark produced numerous therapeutic artworks that were intended to be handled by spectators; many were designed to provoke human interaction. Clark’s Bichos (Critters) (1960-66), geometric metal plates hinged together, enable viewers to intervene in the exhibition system. Gallery-goers play with the objects in order to compose and curate the art. Her Dialogue Goggles (1968), conjoined twin glasses, which forced users to negotiate with one another at a fairly intimate proximity, catalyzed constantly improvised bodily action. The critic Guy Brett traces a relationship between Lygia Clark’s performed, ephemeral, mobile artworks and automated tech-art. Both newly emergent art forms constantly come into being and hence, exist over time—disrupting prior models of spectatorship they are neither eternal, nor instantaneously consumed by an all-knowing eye (think here of Michael Fried’s “presentness is grace”).
Photoelectric Viewer-Programmed Coordinate System (1968), a site-specific installation by Haacke, parallels Clark’s works. The “hardware” of Haacke’s environment consisted of 28 evenly-spaced light bulbs, photoelectric cells and infrared beams, spectators, and, finally, the interior of The Howard Wise Gallery in New York. Providing constant haptic feedback, when viewers’ bodies intercept the corresponding invisible beams, bulbs illuminate the gallery, making its contents—particularly beholders—visible. The lights continually reflecting their presence, users perform together, creating constantly-shifting group portraits on the walls of the white cube. Photoelectric is at the crux of technological determinism and determined technology: users both program the work and are programmed themselves. I will explore the ways that Haacke’s environment and Clark’s artistic props activate the senses and as well parallel then-contemporary dance and radical politics, forms in which process (as well as participation) was increasingly valued over final product.
Programming and reprogramming the institution
Photoelectric Viewer-Programmed Coordinate System ... more Programming and reprogramming the institution
Photoelectric Viewer-Programmed Coordinate System (1968) is a site-specific installation by the German-American artist Hans Haacke. The “hardware” of the installation consisted of 28 evenly spaced light bulbs, photoelectric cells, and infrared beams; spectators; and, finally, the interior of the Howard Wise Gallery. Providing constant haptic feedback, when viewers’ bodies intercept the corresponding invisible beams, bulbs illuminate the gallery, making its contents—particularly the beholders—visible. The lights continually reflecting their presence, users perform together, creating constantly shifting group portraits on the walls of the white cube. Haacke’s project was already a collaboration before the spectators ever arrived: between the “enlightened” gallerist Howard Wise and Haacke, in which expensive real estate (on Manhattan’s 57th Street) was provided over time, without any sales; between Haacke and Wise and Standard Instruments Corp., New York, the firm that provided the hardware; and even between the aforementioned parties and Garson-Bergman, the engineering firm that actually built the installation. I hold that Photoelectric exceeds taxonomies in a productive fashion. The installation Photoelectric parallels then-contemporary dance and radical politics, forms in which process (as well as participation) was increasingly valued over final product. I historically contextualize Haacke’s provocative, multivalent environmental artwork, exploring its relation to ludic activity, cybernetics, systems theory, and newly emerging artistic and performative forms. Finally, I consider Photoelectric to be at the crux of technological determinism and determined technology: users both program the work and are programmed themselves.
Hans Haacke is known for a “political” brand of institutional critique. However, he was also one ... more Hans Haacke is known for a “political” brand of institutional critique. However, he was also one of the first contemporary artists to create artworks using live animals. Haacke’s animal artworks provoke couplings between spectator, context, and components; they posit some parity between beholders and work as well as confront the epistemological divide between human and animal. Tautoloigcally titled artworks like Chicks Hatching (1969) or Ten Turtles Set Free (1970) assault notions of art objects as static and unchanging. Moreover, unlike Duchampian readymades--in which objects loose prior functionality--the components of Haacke’s pieces retain their animality after becoming art. Eating, breathing, shitting, living beings manifest corporeal unruliness that cannot be totally governed or interpreted--arguably both duties of the museum (and zoo). Haacke’s animal art further interrogates the conventions of institutions, even catalyzing structural change: the museum becomes a showcase for “caring for animals”--as conservation of animal-art requires feeding and cleaning, prompting curators or guards to become zookeepers. Staging interspecies encounters, Haacke ultimately raises questions of not just of relational aesthetics but of animal ethics. Beholders must determine where they stand (ethically and spatially): Do they approach, in order to set the creatures into motion? How much interaction is desirable or correct?
This paper will propose a critical return to the vision of the art history propagated by Alain Lo... more This paper will propose a critical return to the vision of the art history propagated by Alain Locke in The Negro in Art. Following Edward Said's call to “'think contrapuntally,” The Negro in Art prompts us to see African American art existing along parallel and intersecting trajectories with the rest of Western art. The numerous black-and-white images and dearth of text lend the volume the feel of an exhibition catalogue. The graphic design decisions serve tactical purposes: the color line is partially effaced and, moreover, readers are presented with a technology that prompts the mental imagery of a “real” show. If it is by the dissemination of reproductions and the placement on the walls of “great” institutions that artworks enter the canon, then we must see Locke's text as a rhetorical move to accelerate the presence African American artists and the black subject within a wider narrative of art.
In winter and spring 2016, the Whitney Museum of American Art presented Open Plan, an innovative ... more In winter and spring 2016, the Whitney Museum of American Art presented Open Plan, an innovative five-part exhibition comprised of a mix of new and historic projects. The iterations progressed with a definite rhythm; austere projects with sober, restrained palettes alternated with more ebullient and colorful selections. Distributing curatorial authority, Open Plan united an ensemble cast for the following program: A sonic work by Andrea Fraser, curated by Scott Rothkopf and Laura Phipps; a painted environment created by Lucy Dodd, curated by Christopher Lew; projected photographs by Michael Heizer, curated by Donna De Salvo, Melva Bucksbaum, and Carol Mancusi-Ungaro; an exhibition of Cecil Taylor’s documents, curated by Jay Sanders and Lawrence Kumpf, accompanied by performances by the jazz musician; and a presentation of a filmic FBI file by Steve McQueen, curated by Donna De Salvo with Christie Mitchell.
ZERO: Countdown to Tomorrow, 1950s - 60s Text by Valerie Hillings, Daniel Birnbaum, Edouard Derom... more ZERO: Countdown to Tomorrow, 1950s - 60s Text by Valerie Hillings, Daniel Birnbaum, Edouard Derom, Johan Pas, Dirk Pörschmann, Margriet Schavemaker. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2014. 244 pages. From October 10, 2014 to January 7 2015, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York presented the exhibition ZERO: Countdown to Tomorrow, 1950s - 60s. It was the first large scale historical survey in the United States of the work of the German Group Zero, whose core members included Otto Piene, Heinz Mack and Günther Uecker, along with thirty-seven other artists that the exhibition curator, Valerie Hillings, calls the “ZERO network."
Concise, critical reviews of books, exhibitions, and projects in all areas and periods of art his... more Concise, critical reviews of books, exhibitions, and projects in all areas and periods of art history and visual studies
Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 2, no. 2 , 2016
In winter and spring 2016, the Whitney Museum of American Art presented Open Plan, an innovative ... more In winter and spring 2016, the Whitney Museum of American Art presented Open Plan, an innovative five-part exhibition comprised of a mix of new and historic projects. The iterations progressed with a definite rhythm; austere projects with sober, restrained palettes alternated with more ebullient and colorful selections. Distributing curatorial authority, Open Plan united an ensemble cast for its programs.
Krista A. Thompson Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice Du... more Krista A. Thompson Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice Durham: Duke University Press, 2015. 368 pp.; 143 color ills. Paperback $26.95 (9780822358077)
Although popular culture and its incidental pleasures are constantly consumed, such things are no... more Although popular culture and its incidental pleasures are constantly consumed, such things are not usually assessed with the same meticulous and critical lenses trained upon other forms of culture. Indeed, despite the victories of cultural studies, there is still less ink spilt (or keys tapped) on close academic analyses of pop culture than objects classed as “art.” Carol Magee’s Africa in the American Imagination is a welcome—and exemplary—exception to the rule (though certainly scholars such as Sidney Kasfir have addressed similar pop-cultural topics [Sidney Littlefield Kasfir, African Art and the Colonial Encounter: Inventing a Global Commodity, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007]). Magee’s book undertakes detailed and nuanced readings of representations of “Africa” in American popular culture of the past twenty years, considering their connotative and denotative meanings. Magee notes that satisfactions associated with a casual consumption of “Africa” can become “both a point of entry and stopping point,” that is, smoothly consumed without the interruption that critique might bring (11). Her subject of inquiry matters; for, as she further affirms, “popular culture teaches and contests ideas, passing them on and/or overturning them” (11). While some of the examples she discusses have provoked a certain amount of outcry or garnered media attention, they have largely not been subjected to the kind of rigorous scholarly analysis Magee provides.
Abstract
Hans Haacke: Beyond Systems Aesthetics
By
John Alistair Tyson
This dissertation expand... more Abstract Hans Haacke: Beyond Systems Aesthetics By John Alistair Tyson
This dissertation expands the purview of scholarship on the work of the conceptual artist Hans Haacke. Well known for his commitment to politics and social justice, Haacke is one of the pioneers of institutional critique (a subcategory of conceptualism that attempts to illuminate the ways that art institutions affect the value and meanings of the objects they contain). My project examines a range of artworks produced from the early sixties until the present. Haacke’s long artistic trajectory is typically viewed through a narrow scope. Artworks created before 1969 and after c.1975 generally receive limited attention. Rejecting previous narratives of a complete break in Haacke’s oeuvre in 1969 with his initial pieces incorporating text, I explore continuities between the artist's earlier and later works. I argue that much of Haacke's art reflects a “systems esthetic,” a concept developed by the critic Jack Burnham, his friend and frequent interlocutor in the sixties and seventies. In systemic works, the artist locates objects, spectators and institutions within interconnected circuits. Moreover, I develop new interpretative approaches uniting Haacke's oeuvre in other ways. Drawing upon the ideas of J. Hillis Miller, I describe his work as both pedagogic and “parasitic” (antagonistic and nourished by host institutions). Furthermore, I examine how the artist’s projects activate audiences, often provoking them to become performers. Haacke’s projects typically reprogram art institutions. By transmitting more information about their workings, prompting a shift in modes access, and enabling more active visitor participation, his artworks make art galleries and museums more democratic.
My introduction and first chapter address the intellectual and cultural milieu in which Haacke was creating artworks in the sixties and seventies, analyzing the turn towards artwork as system and the definitions of systems esthetics. The first chapter considers Haacke’s early participatory works in relation to “ludic idiocy”—charges that such projects mentally castrate the viewer, inscribing him or her into a system of technologically determined control. I focus on the radical potential of adult play within the sixties and historically contextualize the ludic artworks made at the time. The second chapter is dedicated to the analysis of Photoelectric Viewer-Programmed Coordinate System, a kinetic-light installation that was hosted by The Howard Wise Gallery in 1968. I consider the work’s relationship to a wide range of inter-media practices and developing notions of “theater.” The third chapter, “Performing Conceptual Art,” explores the way that apparently strictly conceptual art projects can possess bodily materiality and relate to developments in performance. Showing Haacke’s oeuvre in a new light, I analyze his site-specific sound piece On Sale at Foundation Maeght and the installation The Key to an Integrated Lifestyle at the Top. In the final chapter, I consider the effects of censorship and role of mechanical reproduction and writing in Haacke’s oeuvre: often texts become sites of exhibition.
FLI is a perennial journal of the Society of Contemporary Art Historians (SCAH). Each edition com... more FLI is a perennial journal of the Society of Contemporary Art Historians (SCAH). Each edition compiles summaries of the most compelling scholarship on contemporary art in languages beyond English (see https://scahweb.org/Foreign-Language-Index). The third issue of FLI, edited by Paloma Checa-Gismero, Alice Heeren, and John A. Tyson, will be the first with a specific focus: contemporary art history from the hispanophone and lusophone worlds.
University Hall Gallery, UMass Boston
November 14, 2022–February 18, 2023
Equals 6: A Sum Effect... more University Hall Gallery, UMass Boston November 14, 2022–February 18, 2023
Equals 6: A Sum Effect of Frank Bowling’s 5+1 reprises Bowling's 5+1 with the dual aim of paying homage to the original as well as redressing some of its shortcomings, which have become more clearly visible in our present moment: the iteration at University Hall Gallery at UMass Boston presents works by women artists and Queer male artists. Like 5+1 in 1969, the exhibition focuses on what Bowling calls “Black artistic endeavor”—as this might be understood in the 21st century. Thus, Equals 6 proposes expanded definitions of abstraction, suggesting the term could encompass language, video representations and social systems, in addition to non-figurative works of art. Also, in keeping with the original, the show aims to connect art of the highest quality made by contemporary Black artists with the student body of a public university; in addition to being the primary audience, students have importantly contributed texts for wall labels. The exhibition is organized by Assistant Professor of Art History John A. Tyson and Gallery Director Sam Toabe. It features artworks by Dell M. Hamilton, Glenn Ligon, Steve Locke, Julie Mehretu, Destiny Palmer and Howardena Pindell.
In celebration of Women's History Month (March), please join us for dynamic conversation about wo... more In celebration of Women's History Month (March), please join us for dynamic conversation about womenhood, labor, class, economy, and immigration between artist Elena del Rivero and artist Juana Valdés. The conversation is planned in conjunction with the installation Home Address by Elena del Rivero being presented at the Hispanic Society Museum & Library in collaboration with the Consulate General of Spain and Henrique Faria / New York. Born in Spain, Elena del Rivero's Home Address poetically transfers often-overlooked or underestimated textiles from the kitchen into the public sphere. With del Rivero's flags the artist aims to spark collective conversations, woven from manifold perspectives, about civics and aesthetics. Born in Cuba, Juana Valdés is currently a Vilcek Artist Research Fellow at the Hispanic Society. Her multidisciplinary art practice explores issues of transnationalism and labor, and analyzes and decodes experiences of migration as a person of Afro-Caribbean heritage. In Valdés's new series of ceramic pieces entitled Colored China Rags, Bone China is used for its history of trade between Europe and Asia and its ever-shifting value as a commodity. These works bring into consciousness past histories in present day experiences that engage social justice to question economic inequalities due to race, class, and gender prejudices.
WHAT: An informal conversation about the challenges of constructing a global history of art
WHEN... more WHAT: An informal conversation about the challenges of constructing a global history of art WHEN: Tuesday, March 29th at 4:30pm EST https://lesley.zoom.us/j/96645812226 Meeting ID: 966 4581 2226 Passcode: 775533
Summary of most compelling foreign-language scholarship compiled by the indexers of the Society o... more Summary of most compelling foreign-language scholarship compiled by the indexers of the Society of Contemporary Art Historians (SCAH). If you would be interested in serving as an indexer for a future issue, please get in touch. See also Scahweb.org
FLI is a perennial produced by the Society for Contemporary Art Historians. The journal publishes... more FLI is a perennial produced by the Society for Contemporary Art Historians. The journal publishes English abstracts and glosses of the most noteworthy recent foreign language scholarship. Issue 1 covers primarily essays written by authors based in the Northern Hemisphere.
The fate and format of the undergraduate art history survey course has been the subject of much r... more The fate and format of the undergraduate art history survey course has been the subject of much recent debate. How are Boston-area institutions responding to challenges and creating change? Workshop your ideas with colleagues at our informal spring roundtable event.
Public conversation about topics in and around the Whitney Independent Study Program between Hans... more Public conversation about topics in and around the Whitney Independent Study Program between Hans Haacke, Gloria Sutton, John A. Tyson, and Sam Toabe.
January 14 - March 8, 2019//
Organized by Assistant Professor of Art John A. Tyson and Gallery D... more January 14 - March 8, 2019//
Organized by Assistant Professor of Art John A. Tyson and Gallery Director Sam Toabe, From Theory to Practice: Trajectories of the Whitney Independent Study Program is the first exhibition to survey the impact of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program on contemporary art. This exhibition will bring together works by faculty and participants of various generations, illuminating common theoretical influences as well as shared artistic tactics and techniques.//
Participating Artists: Gregg Bordowitz, Matthew Buckingham, Mark Dion, Brendan Fernandes, Victoria Fu, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Renée Green, Hans Haacke, K8 Hardy, Jenny Holzer, Every Ocean Hughes (f.k.a. Emily Roysdon), Alfredo Jaar, Mary Kelly, Sowon Kwon, Liz Magic Laser, Glenn Ligon, Park McArthur, Pope.L, and Martha Rosler
CAA 2018
Today art historians typically understand constructivism to be limited to Soviet cultura... more CAA 2018 Today art historians typically understand constructivism to be limited to Soviet cultural production from the years following the October Revolution. However, in the 1960s, the taxonomy was far more flexible and referred to artists of various generations and nationalities. George Rickey’s widely read Constructivism: Origins and Evolution (1967) groups together all manner of works that are geometric in form, modular in construction, and often kinetic. Major “constructivist” exhibitions, like the Albright-Knox’s Plus by Minus: Today’s Half Century (1968) and MoMA’s The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age (1968), showed works by contemporary artists alongside those of the historical avant-garde. Beyond the US, David Medalla and Paul Keeler viewed the Latin American artists in their London-based Signals Gallery (1964-66) as heirs to the constructivist tradition too. Naum Gabo (more than Aleksandr Rodchenko or Vladimir Tatlin) was cast as the movement’s key progenitor; artists who might seem worlds apart now—from Lygia Clark to Larry Poons to Hans Haacke—formed part of a common field. Building on Maria Gough’s “Frank Stella is a Constructivist” (2007) and Hal Foster’s “Some Uses and Abuses of Russian Constructivism” (1990), this panel will importantly flesh out scholarship. Contributors will explore alternative perspectives on cultural production in the 1960s (and after) in order to enrich understandings of twentieth-century art. What neglected connections can transnational constellations of “constructivism” reveal? What are the implications of adopting and adapting of “Soviet”-coded forms during the Cold War? How might “constructivism” enable a redrawing of art world boundaries?
The Washington Renaissance: “Discrepant Modernism” in the Nation’s Capital handout for CASVA-Cura... more The Washington Renaissance: “Discrepant Modernism” in the Nation’s Capital handout for CASVA-Curatorial-Conservation-Education Meeting (9/22/2016),
Meteorology, the science of atmospheric conditions and phenomena—especially related to weather—em... more Meteorology, the science of atmospheric conditions and phenomena—especially related to weather—emerged as an area of study in the seventeenth century. Weather reports have regularly appeared in newspapers since the late 1800s. With the rise of the ecology movement in the 1960s, weather's intersections with other systems became an ever more urgent issue; calls to recognize our embeddedness in the atmosphere came soon after space travel enabled its first images to circulate. This panel will analyze artistic corollaries to meteorology, a field with a history deeply intertwined with modernity's...
Text accompanying artworks by Elizabeth Allison, Mary Askander, Michael Capobianco, Rose Deler, A... more Text accompanying artworks by Elizabeth Allison, Mary Askander, Michael Capobianco, Rose Deler, Asano Gomez, Eva Velasco in exhibition held at CCNY (March 7 – 18).
Resúmenes de las ponencias y comunicaciones presentadas en el XXIII Congreso Nacional de Historia... more Resúmenes de las ponencias y comunicaciones presentadas en el XXIII Congreso Nacional de Historia del Arte, que se celebrará de modo virtual en Salamanca, del 17 al 20 de mayo del 2021.
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Articles and Essays by John A Tyson
The 60s saw the rise of numerous transatlantic tendencies. Conceptual art, minimalism, land art, and pop art were not solely American phenomena, although their practitioners were in some cases concentrated in the United States. Antonioni’s Red Desert (1964), Godard’s Pierrot le Fou (1965), and the collectively directed Loin du Vietnam (1967) have much in common with the aforementioned artistic developments. Confirming this cross-pollination, critics at the center of the art world, such as Annette Michelson, regularly wrote about cinema in art periodicals during this time. While these cultural producers (artists in America and European filmmakers) were separated by an ocean and by media, their outputs clearly resonate. Transatlantic bonds—parallel modes and methods—unite European cinema and contemporary art in America.
The 60s saw the rise of numerous transatlantic tendencies. Conceptual art, minimalism, land art, and pop art were not solely American phenomena, although their practitioners were in some cases concentrated in the United States. Antonioni’s Red Desert (1964), Godard’s Pierrot le Fou (1965), and the collectively directed Loin du Vietnam (1967) have much in common with the aforementioned artistic developments. Confirming this cross-pollination, critics at the center of the art world, such as Annette Michelson, regularly wrote about cinema in art periodicals during this time. While these cultural producers (artists in America and European filmmakers) were separated by an ocean and by media, their outputs clearly resonate. Transatlantic bonds—parallel modes and methods—unite European cinema and contemporary art in America.
Projects by visual artists Robert Smithson and Mary Miss were seen as multiply “quixotic”—both in terms of creation and reception. Their unconventional temporal construction and locations off the beaten path were a factor for this framing; moreover, following the critic and art historian Robert Pincus-Witten, the experience of spectatorship, increasingly oriented toward phenomenology, was also best grasped as a quixotic enterprise. Artworks converted viewers into poetic drifters. Smithson had read Don Quixote and appreciated Arnold Hauser’s interpretation of Cervantes’s writing as rejecting notions of the work of art as “indivisible and unalterable whole, made all of a piece.” Drawing on the discursive field around projects by the likes of Miss, Smithson, and Hopper, I will trace the afterlives of Don Quixote. My paper will explore ways Cervantes’s texts illuminate American culture in the mid-twentieth century.
Writing in the 1930s, Porter stated: “We can have American art in the collective sense only. Its features must be heterogeneous.” Looking back on her variegated career, Jones affirmed: “I am an American artist. I want to be recognized as an American artist”; she too did not believe that national or racial identity should be bounded or limit the range of styles in which she worked. In her bold, modern canvases, the versatile artist marshalled elements then considered proper to craft and design in order to transcend traditional fine art. Conversely, in more naturalistic compositions, like Mob Victim (1944), she translated Alain Locke’s philosophy into paint. Porter is probably most well-known for his contributions to art history. As in his scholarship, his oeuvre contains serious considerations of the black subject; nonetheless, his work is not limited to this topic. Indeed, both Jones and Porter were masters of portraiture and landscape. Their depictions of the Caribbean and France sent spectators’ gazing outward to sites where race relations markedly differed. Further indicating their modernity, both artists dialogued with vanguard photographic strategies in their artwork. Considering the theories undergirding their practice, I assess ways that Jones and Porter enabled the black Atlantic to flow into the American scene.
The Bibliographica’s introduction outlines Siegelaub’s understandings of textiles: material relates to material conditions; we must study the textiles of all classes—not just those of elites. He emphasizes fabric’s interwoven history with technology, economics, semiotics, architecture, and even zoology (underscored by a spider diagram). Often marginalized in institutions, textiles are particularly rich documents: unlike most media, they are forms of data transfer that are functional and beautiful. This paper will explore Siegelaub’s collecting, curating, promoting, and publishing, contending that the distinctly coded practices are in fact all documentary enterprises.
The artist’s “weatherworks” teach multiple lessons: they show that humans are part of the environment; the projects moreover question and reveal the “natural” conventions of institutions—particularly the costly climate control—thus, suggesting that museums are implicated in politics and economics (for Haacke, weather is an allegory for both—indeed, all rely on forecasting). Given the artist’s at times antagonistic occupation of institutions and his interrogation of the status quo, Haacke might be considered an artistic “weatherman”—the nom de guerre adopted by the radical wing of Students for a Democratic Society. Via a close analysis of Haacke’s works, I will consider how they sit at the crux of systems esthetics and systems politics.
Clark produced numerous therapeutic artworks that were intended to be handled by spectators; many were designed to provoke human interaction. Clark’s Bichos (Critters) (1960-66), geometric metal plates hinged together, enable viewers to intervene in the exhibition system. Gallery-goers play with the objects in order to compose and curate the art. Her Dialogue Goggles (1968), conjoined twin glasses, which forced users to negotiate with one another at a fairly intimate proximity, catalyzed constantly improvised bodily action. The critic Guy Brett traces a relationship between Lygia Clark’s performed, ephemeral, mobile artworks and automated tech-art. Both newly emergent art forms constantly come into being and hence, exist over time—disrupting prior models of spectatorship they are neither eternal, nor instantaneously consumed by an all-knowing eye (think here of Michael Fried’s “presentness is grace”).
Photoelectric Viewer-Programmed Coordinate System (1968), a site-specific installation by Haacke, parallels Clark’s works. The “hardware” of Haacke’s environment consisted of 28 evenly-spaced light bulbs, photoelectric cells and infrared beams, spectators, and, finally, the interior of The Howard Wise Gallery in New York. Providing constant haptic feedback, when viewers’ bodies intercept the corresponding invisible beams, bulbs illuminate the gallery, making its contents—particularly beholders—visible. The lights continually reflecting their presence, users perform together, creating constantly-shifting group portraits on the walls of the white cube. Photoelectric is at the crux of technological determinism and determined technology: users both program the work and are programmed themselves. I will explore the ways that Haacke’s environment and Clark’s artistic props activate the senses and as well parallel then-contemporary dance and radical politics, forms in which process (as well as participation) was increasingly valued over final product.
Photoelectric Viewer-Programmed Coordinate System (1968) is a site-specific installation by the German-American artist Hans Haacke. The “hardware” of the installation consisted of 28 evenly spaced light bulbs, photoelectric cells, and infrared beams; spectators; and, finally, the interior of the Howard Wise Gallery. Providing constant haptic feedback, when viewers’ bodies intercept the corresponding invisible beams, bulbs illuminate the gallery, making its contents—particularly the beholders—visible. The lights continually reflecting their presence, users perform together, creating constantly shifting group portraits on the walls of the white cube. Haacke’s project was already a collaboration before the spectators ever arrived: between the “enlightened” gallerist Howard Wise and Haacke, in which expensive real estate (on Manhattan’s 57th Street) was provided over time, without any sales; between Haacke and Wise and Standard Instruments Corp., New York, the firm that provided the hardware; and even between the aforementioned parties and Garson-Bergman, the engineering firm that actually built the installation. I hold that Photoelectric exceeds taxonomies in a productive fashion. The installation Photoelectric parallels then-contemporary dance and radical politics, forms in which process (as well as participation) was increasingly valued over final product. I historically contextualize Haacke’s provocative, multivalent environmental artwork, exploring its relation to ludic activity, cybernetics, systems theory, and newly emerging artistic and performative forms. Finally, I consider Photoelectric to be at the crux of technological determinism and determined technology: users both program the work and are programmed themselves.
Hans Haacke: Beyond Systems Aesthetics
By
John Alistair Tyson
This dissertation expands the purview of scholarship on the work of the conceptual artist Hans Haacke. Well known for his commitment to politics and social justice, Haacke is one of the pioneers of institutional critique (a subcategory of conceptualism that attempts to illuminate the ways that art institutions affect the value and meanings of the objects they contain). My project examines a range of artworks produced from the early sixties until the present. Haacke’s long artistic trajectory is typically viewed through a narrow scope. Artworks created before 1969 and after c.1975 generally receive limited attention. Rejecting previous narratives of a complete break in Haacke’s oeuvre in 1969 with his initial pieces incorporating text, I explore continuities between the artist's earlier and later works. I argue that much of Haacke's art reflects a “systems esthetic,” a concept developed by the critic Jack Burnham, his friend and frequent interlocutor in the sixties and seventies. In systemic works, the artist locates objects, spectators and institutions within interconnected circuits. Moreover, I develop new interpretative approaches uniting Haacke's oeuvre in other ways. Drawing upon the ideas of J. Hillis Miller, I describe his work as both pedagogic and “parasitic” (antagonistic and nourished by host institutions). Furthermore, I examine how the artist’s projects activate audiences, often provoking them to become performers. Haacke’s projects typically reprogram art institutions. By transmitting more information about their workings, prompting a shift in modes access, and enabling more active visitor participation, his artworks make art galleries and museums more democratic.
My introduction and first chapter address the intellectual and cultural milieu in which Haacke was creating artworks in the sixties and seventies, analyzing the turn towards artwork as system and the definitions of systems esthetics. The first chapter considers Haacke’s early participatory works in relation to “ludic idiocy”—charges that such projects mentally castrate the viewer, inscribing him or her into a system of technologically determined control. I focus on the radical potential of adult play within the sixties and historically contextualize the ludic artworks made at the time. The second chapter is dedicated to the analysis of Photoelectric Viewer-Programmed Coordinate System, a kinetic-light installation that was hosted by The Howard Wise Gallery in 1968. I consider the work’s relationship to a wide range of inter-media practices and developing notions of “theater.” The third chapter, “Performing Conceptual Art,” explores the way that apparently strictly conceptual art projects can possess bodily materiality and relate to developments in performance. Showing Haacke’s oeuvre in a new light, I analyze his site-specific sound piece On Sale at Foundation Maeght and the installation The Key to an Integrated Lifestyle at the Top. In the final chapter, I consider the effects of censorship and role of mechanical reproduction and writing in Haacke’s oeuvre: often texts become sites of exhibition.
November 14, 2022–February 18, 2023
Equals 6: A Sum Effect of Frank Bowling’s 5+1 reprises Bowling's 5+1 with the dual aim of paying homage to the original as well as redressing some of its shortcomings, which have become more clearly visible in our present moment: the iteration at University Hall Gallery at UMass Boston presents works by women artists and Queer male artists. Like 5+1 in 1969, the exhibition focuses on what Bowling calls “Black artistic endeavor”—as this might be understood in the 21st century. Thus, Equals 6 proposes expanded definitions of abstraction, suggesting the term could encompass language, video representations and social systems, in addition to non-figurative works of art. Also, in keeping with the original, the show aims to connect art of the highest quality made by contemporary Black artists with the student body of a public university; in addition to being the primary audience, students have importantly contributed texts for wall labels. The exhibition is organized by Assistant Professor of Art History John A. Tyson and Gallery Director Sam Toabe. It features artworks by Dell M. Hamilton, Glenn Ligon, Steve Locke, Julie Mehretu, Destiny Palmer and Howardena Pindell.
WHEN: Tuesday, March 29th at 4:30pm EST
https://lesley.zoom.us/j/96645812226
Meeting ID: 966 4581 2226 Passcode: 775533
Organized by Assistant Professor of Art John A. Tyson and Gallery Director Sam Toabe, From Theory to Practice: Trajectories of the Whitney Independent Study Program is the first exhibition to survey the impact of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program on contemporary art. This exhibition will bring together works by faculty and participants of various generations, illuminating common theoretical influences as well as shared artistic tactics and techniques.//
Participating Artists: Gregg Bordowitz, Matthew Buckingham, Mark Dion, Brendan Fernandes, Victoria Fu, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Renée Green, Hans Haacke, K8 Hardy, Jenny Holzer, Every Ocean Hughes (f.k.a. Emily Roysdon), Alfredo Jaar, Mary Kelly, Sowon Kwon, Liz Magic Laser, Glenn Ligon, Park McArthur, Pope.L, and Martha Rosler
Today art historians typically understand constructivism to be limited to Soviet cultural production from the years following the October Revolution. However, in the 1960s, the taxonomy was far more flexible and referred to artists of various generations and nationalities. George Rickey’s widely read Constructivism: Origins and Evolution (1967) groups together all manner of works that are geometric in form, modular in construction, and often kinetic. Major “constructivist” exhibitions, like the Albright-Knox’s Plus by Minus: Today’s Half Century (1968) and MoMA’s The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age (1968), showed works by contemporary artists alongside those of the historical avant-garde. Beyond the US, David Medalla and Paul Keeler viewed the Latin American artists in their London-based Signals Gallery (1964-66) as heirs to the constructivist tradition too. Naum Gabo (more than Aleksandr Rodchenko or Vladimir Tatlin) was cast as the movement’s key progenitor; artists who might seem worlds apart now—from Lygia Clark to Larry Poons to Hans Haacke—formed part of a common field. Building on Maria Gough’s “Frank Stella is a Constructivist” (2007) and Hal Foster’s “Some Uses and Abuses of Russian Constructivism” (1990), this panel will importantly flesh out scholarship. Contributors will explore alternative perspectives on cultural production in the 1960s (and after) in order to enrich understandings of twentieth-century art. What neglected connections can transnational constellations of “constructivism” reveal? What are the implications of adopting and adapting of “Soviet”-coded forms during the Cold War? How might “constructivism” enable a redrawing of art world boundaries?