1960s and 1970s Art

On April 8, 1976, a women’s cooperative comprising eleven members variously active in the field of art inaugurated a self-run art gallery in Rome’s city center, at Via Beato Angelico 18. Surprisingly, instead of showing works from the members’ own production, the inaugural exhibition of the Cooperativa Beato Angelico (CBA) brought a baroque artist before the public: Artemisia Gentileschi’s painting Aurora (ca. 1627) was installed on an easel and accompanied by a leaflet featuring archival and bibliographical references. Starting from this remarkable opening, this essay explores the CBA’s expository and archival practices, which were specifically directed at works by female artists past and present. Building on previous research on the cooperative and re-engaging with archival sources and oral memory, I newly focus on the temporal dimensions of the initiative’s activities. First, I unravel the ways in which the CBA participated in countering the structural imbalance of the art-historical canon – a concerted effort effected by the increasing popularization of feminist ideas in the art field at the time. Second, and more importantly, I argue that the cooperative’s distinctive handling of the temporary exhibition and the archive translated into a rejection of conventional models of history-writing. If read in relation to the questioning of chronological and dialectical notions of progress conceptualized in the ambit of 1970s separatist feminism, the CBA’s historiographical tactic – based on a non-linear interweaving of past and present positions – loses its apparent contingency and can instead be reassessed as a focused disruption of the continuum of men’s history. I conclude that women artists from different times, ‘presentified’ and re-signified in the CBA’s exhibitions and archive, thus came to embody feminist thinker Carla Lonzi’s idea of woman as the “unexpected subject”.

Up to now historical studies have thoroughly not investigated the cultural background and the early professional biography of the five painters Achille Bonito Oliva has includeded in the Transavant-garde (Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Nicola  de Maria and Mimmo Paladino) yet. The main obstacles to these studies go back to the birth of Transavant-garde. From one side, the documents concerning the past of the artists -those that would not justify the belated rehabilitation of the "traditional media"- were suddenly not taken into account; and, from the other side, it emerged a clear and schematic contrast between the Transavant-garde and the preceding experience of the Arte Povera and Conceptual Art through which the militant criticism interpreted this shift.
The essay focuses on the story of the two transavant-gardists, Paladino and de Maria, with the aim of reconstructing how they join from the end of the sixties up to 1977, the "Environment-Painting" (a form of expanded and wall painting, here cosidered as a preliminary step to the Transavant-garde). The historical investigation has taken up again this corpus of documents intentionally ignored, and it has focused on the experimental beginnings of the two artists -beginnings related to the envirnoment, the performance, and particularly the photograph.
Therefore, the essay tries to give a more complex interpretation of this corpus by comparing with the contrast suggested by the militant criticism and by founding out the continuity elements of painting, or the pictorial iconography, already present in the Italian neo-avant-garde (Arte Povera, Conceptual, etc...).

Ever since Linda Nochlin’s seminal essay asked Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists feminist scholars have undertaken the daunting task of re-positioning history’s forgotten women artists. Among them is Jann Haworth born in 1942 in Hollywood, California, whose early career emerged in the “swinging London” of the 1960s. There she encountered tutors like Reg Butler, who stated that he was certain that “the vitality of many female students derives from frustrated maternity…”  The fact that she was an American woman working in Britain creating soft sculptures, using materials that were often coded as feminine, doubly marginalized her work in the art historical record. My research closely examines the structures that contributed to her marginalization and works to re-position her within an expanded history of Pop Art.

"The life and work of Carla Lonzi (1931–1982) is inseparable from the cultural, political, and social history of Italy in the decades following the Second World War; she occupies a singular position, which today merits reevaluation. A reputed art critic of the 1960s artistic scene, both friend and collaborator of such figures as Carla Accardi, Luciano Fabro, and Jannis Kounellis, she wrote “Autoportrait” in 1969, a “love letter” to the artists and to creation, but also a farewell chorus to art criticism and the art world. The following year she founded Rivolta Femminile, an active feminist collective, thus becoming the central figure of Italian feminism.

This publication of “Autoportrait," translated into French for the first time, is accompanied by a foreword, and a critical and biographical structure by art historian Giovanni Zapperi, showing the singularity of Carla Lonzi’ s project. Made up of a series of recorded interviews, subsequently transcribed and recomposed to give birth to a particular textual montage, “Autoportrait” is an experimental attempt to reinvent art criticism thanks to a fragmentary discourse and an iconography in which reproductions of works mix with intimate images. An invaluable document on Italian art in the 1960s, “Autoportrait” is a polyphonic book, “a kind of maieutic banquet” to which Carla Lonzi invites us in order to rethink the production of discourse on art and artists."

Diese Chronologie stellt die feministische Kunstbewegung in der Zeitspanne von 1968 bis 1980 dar. Neben kunstspezifischen Daten werden gesellschaftspolitische Ereignisse angeführt.
Die Zusammenstellung soll einen Eindruck der Feministischen Avantgarde und der Frauenbewegung in den 1970er-Jahren vermitteln, erhebt jedoch keinen Anspruch auf Vollständigkeit.

Bağdat Avenue, which was a summer place on the Anatolian side of Istanbul until the mid-1950s started to transform into a permanent residential district after this date while construction activities accelerated and apartments were built in the region after the Condominium Law was enacted in 1965. The "1/5000 Bostancı Erenköy Zoning Construction Plan" was introduced at the end of 1972, which allows denser and higher construction in parcels except for the ones on the coast and Bağdat Avenue, so apartment designs started to change in the region. For this reason, the apartments built between 1965 and 1973 are regarded as important documents. They bear common characteristic features with their rational forms, large balcony and window openings, flowerpots, railings, sunshades, decorative wall panels, dynamic geometric façade compositions, and similar façade materials. These features emerge as important elements defining the urban character of the region. In this regard, questioning the authentic features, distinguishing them from the contemporaneous apartments in Turkey, and evaluating them in the context of the architectural tendencies of the era become important.
The aim of the article emerges as documenting the façade characteristics of the apartments built between 1965 and 1973 at Bağdat Avenue, evaluating their authentic characteristics within the context of world architecture as well as the architecture of Turkey. This evaluation enables to question whether they designate a defined urban identity to their region. Within the scope of the study, 15 buildings were selected and documented with photographs while building data were gathered from the Archives of Kadıköy Municipality. Façade characteristics of the selected apartments were analyzed and compared with the contemporaneous apartments in Turkey to determine the similarities and differences, and they were assessed in the context of the architectural tendencies of the era. The façade characteristics were studied under the titles: building mass features, characteristic architectural elements, and material features. The shaping of the mass and window openings; flowerpots, railings, sunshades, wall panels, and sculptural elements; usage of travertine, marble, wood, and metal; were examined under these headings. The analyses were assisted with figures and similarities as well as differences with other apartments were explained. In addition, the architectural elements were interpreted in relation to the contemporaneous architectural attitudes. The analyses led to the following inferences:
-Contrary to the central districts of Istanbul, these residences have lesser floors as well as wider windows and balconies displaying the summer resort characteristics of the area.
-Although they have common features with other apartments such as rational building mass, wide façade openings, stylized railings, and sculptural elements, they bear distinguishing characteristics such as dynamic compositions, flowerpots, sunshades, artworks, and different materials.
-These authentic features define an architectural language and constitute an urban character.
-Despite their rational planning, as a result of the dynamism and complexity of the façade, excess usage of flowerpots and sunshades, and geometric compositions, it can be assessed that Late Modern principles were adopted while Brutalism is also monitored in a limited sense.
-As the façades bear local elements like travertine cladding, sunshades, and wall panels, a regionalist attitude, which is employed together with universal architectural values, can be observed.
The apartments built between 1965 and1973 in Bağdat Avenue have dynamic façade compositions despite their rational masses while they bear local components. In this regard, these residences dwell upon assembling local circumstances with universal values and endeavor to make a connection with their place. They distinguish from other apartments with their dynamic façade compositions, employment of travertine and wood, excess usage of flowerpots or sunshades, usage of sculptural elements and artworks, and constitute an architectural pattern indigenous to the region, which makes them an important part of the urban characteristic of Bağdat Avenue. Within this study, it has been aimed to contribute to the literature by documenting the façade characteristics of the apartments constructed between 1965 and 1973 at Bağdat Avenue, which are architectural heritage in danger due to the urban transformation of the region. In addition, the apartments in question have been evaluated together with other examples from Turkey to exhibit their authentic features and have been discussed in the context of global architecture so that an evaluation can be made in terms of the contemporaneous architectural tendencies. These evaluations have been meant to exhibit the importance of these buildings within the architectural context.

With the advent of psychedelic rock the medium of choice of musicians is not strictly sonic anymore; musicians of the Sixties begin to show a vibrant vocation towards a wider, more complex and ductile interaction with art forms and the very concept of Art. In this brief era visual artists become interested in rock music, they start to produce art inspired by music and, viceversa, musicians become more and more involved in the visual aspect of their work. The mid and late Sixties then represent a period of seminal renaissance for Album Cover Art and Poster Art: LP covers strive to translate the message of the music they wrap in visual terms. Conversely, psychedelic rock tries to put the amazing visions triggered by psychedelic drugs into music. Focusing on posters, album covers and the innovative experimentations of light shows, this article brings to light an often unsung, but definitely essential, trait of psychedelic culture: its holistic and synesthetic disposition - a sort of mission: to bring art forms back together, to put Art in everyday life and in the lives of everyone. Psychedelic rock and psychedelic visual arts then become ideal platforms for an innovated and innovative language that does not indulge with art’s artificial categorizations, but embraces the synergetic possibilities of all its different forms.

In den sechziger Jahren wird der Film für viele bildende Künstler zur Ausdrucksform der Gegenwart. In welchem Verhältnis stehen die Filmexperimente zum künstlerischen Gesamtwerk, welchen Bedingungen unterliegt die Arbeit zwischen den Institutionen Kunst und Kino?
In einer exemplarischen Auswahl werden Filme von europäischen und amerikanischen bildenden Künstlern vorgestellt, die im weiteren Umfeld der Pop Art verortet werden können. Untersucht werden neben den Filmen und den Umständen ihrer Produktion und Aufführung auch die Wechselbeziehungen zwischen filmischen und künstlerischen Praktiken. Diese gegenstandsbezogene historische Darstellung ist eingebettet in grundlegendere theoretische Fragestellungen hinsichtlich der intermedialen Verfasstheit der popkulturellen Wende in der Kunst und ihrer bildwissenschaftlichen Konsequenzen.

"ABSTRACT: Les années 1960 et 1970 ont vu se développer un art de la contemporanéité faisant interagir l’œuvre d’imagination et l’intelligibilité de la société, souvent dans des actions collectives et interdisciplinaires. Ainsi les mouvements de contestation en faveur d’un nouvel équilibre mondial et sociétal apparaissent-ils comme le pendant politique de l’éclatement des catégories et des pratiques artistiques, et inversement. Ils inscrivent la perception de ces années-là comme celles d’une marche commune de l’avant-garde artistique et de l’avant-garde politique, c’est-à-dire des nouvelles manières d’intervenir dans le champ artistique et de celles qui, dans le champ du pouvoir, s’inscrivent en dehors des voies de la politique classique. Avec pour objet des œuvres issues des avant-gardes artistiques des années 1960 et 1970, les études de cas interdisciplinaires qui composent cet ouvrage reviennent sur ce parallèle afin de le questionner et d’examiner en détail les multiples interpénétrations qui se sont nouées entre art et politique à ce moment historique marqué par de profondes transformations socio-culturelles.

SUMMARY:
– Malika Combes/Igor Contreras Zubillaga/Perin Emel Yavuz : Avant-propos
– Sylvain Dreyer : Ouvriers et cinéastes (Franche-Comté, années 1960-1970)
– Giordano Ferrari : Compositeurs militants dans les avant-gardes de l’Italie des années 1960-1970. Quelques notes sur l’impact de l’engagement sur leurs œuvres
– Beate Kutschke : Le tournant prolétarien de Hans Werner Henze. Improvisation à la manière cubaine
– Malika Combes : La musique de La Chinoise. Marginalisation de la musique d’avant-garde dans le discours sur l’art et le politique
– Esteban Buch : L’avant-garde musicale en Argentine et les spectres du politique. Trajectoires de Gustavo Beytelmann
– Igor Contreras Zubillaga : L’ambiguïté politique de l’avant-garde artistique sous le franquisme. L’exemple du festival Encuentros de Pampelune (1972)
– Fabienne Dumont : Repenser l’art à partir d’une prise de conscience féministe élargie, et vice-versa ? Le projet d’émancipation collective de quelques plasticiennes des années 1960-1970 en France
– Ainhoa Kaiero : Récits électroniques et nouvelles politiques de l’identité dans l’œuvre de Laurie Anderson
– Perin Emel Yavuz : La politique de l’image aux confins d’une avant-garde qui ne dit pas son nom
– Fabien Danesi : Aere Perennius. La stratégie de Guy Debord après l’Internationale situationniste
– Jacopo Galimberti : Un révolté joyeux. Dieter Kunzelmann entre pornographie, parodie et politique "

If communication, reportage, description, and judgment are key elements of the receptive role played by art-critical publications, it’s important to acknowledge on specific occasions such journals also have a productive mediatory function, too. They don’t merely disseminate as if passively a pre-given situation, but may actively construct that situation, define its infrastructure and parameters, and do so whilst under the guise of reportage. In these cases art criticism becomes a dialectic of reception and production, both constituted by and constituting its objects of study.

This paper analyses the early years of the influential art journal October according to the thematic indicated above. Beginning in 1976, October established itself as  arguably the foremost art-critical voice of a burgeoning postmodernism. Significant essays published between 1976-1981 on the index, the expanded field of sculpture, allegory, and photography served as trajectories leading to a deeper understanding of postmodernism and an emergent generation of artists sceptical of their late-modernist inheritance. However, this paper contends that October didn’t merely report and analyse then-recent cultural developments, but actively contributed and constituted those developments through a dialogical relationship between critics and artists.

Therefore suggesting that any critical-historical reappraisal of postmodernism would be incomplete without apprehending October’s collaboration with artists in moving beyond late-modernism, this paper aims to demonstrate that much of our contemporary sense of what comprises postmodernism for the visual arts is fundamentally rooted in the intellectual positions advanced by October during 1976-1981. It shall, then, succinctly explicate key arguments vis-à-vis postmodernism established within the journal’s pages, thereby presenting the capability of the art press to intermingle the reception and production of emergent cultural hegemonies.

Televizijska drama (televizijski igrani film) San doktora Mišića, Radio-televizija Beograd, Srbija (SFRJ), 1973. Režija: Branko Pleša; TV adaptacija (scenarij): Branko Ivanda, prema noveli Ksavera Šandora Gjalskog; snimatelj: Branko Popović; glazba: Baronijan Vartkes; scenograf: Veljko Despotović; kostimograf: Branko Ćatović; glume: Ljuba Tadić, Milan Puzić, Voja Mirić, Janez Vrhovec, Dragomir Felba, Dragomir Lončar, Olga Spiridonović, Vasja Stanković, Blaženka Katalinić, Anita Ilić; trajanje 70 minuta; crno-bijela tehnika. Uvod 1 Branko Ivanda, istaknuti hrvatski filmski i televizijski redatelj te scenarist, napisao je televizijsku adaptaciju novele San doktora Mišića Ksavera Šandora Gjalskog, scenarij istoimene televizijske drame 2 , u režiji Branka Pleše, svestranog srpskog glumca, scenarista i (prvenstveno televizijskog) redatelja. Ivanda je kao književni predložak koristio novelu Ksavera Šandora Gjalskog i u svojoj televizijskoj drami Nocturno (1974), izvorno snimljenoj za Televiziju Zagreb, a prikazanoj u kinima u tehnološki prerađenoj verziji, pod naslovom Noć poslije smrti (1983). 3 No, za ovu se prigodu zanimljivijom temom ipak čini televizijska poetika drame San doktora Mišića (1973), snimljene u produkciji Televizije Beograd, u kojoj se u okvirima " novog " , televizijskog medija može locirati naslijeđe romantizma, shvaćenog i na tragu tumačenja romantizma kao epohe i na tragu definicija poetike ili poetika romantizma. Na samom početku vrijedi reći da, u govoru o poetici ove televizijske drame naglasak neće biti na distinkcijama pojedinih autorskih doprinosa i drugih silnica zaslužnih za nastanak drame, odnosno na redateljskoj, scenarističkoj, žanrovskoj i inoj sastavnici poetike, ali će se na neke od tih specifičnosti ipak 1 Zahvaljujem filmologu Tomislavu Šakiću za pomoć u pribavljanju vizualnog materijala, a komparatistici Cvijeti Pavlović za metodološke sugestije. 2 Drama je naziv za televizijski igrani film. Odrednica " televizijski " podrazumijeva i stilske konvencije (češći krupni plan, rjeđi total i slično). O oblicima filmskoga zapisa vidi: Peterlić, Ante, Osnove teorije filma, Zagreb, Hrvatska sveučilišna naklada, 1999. Kod televizije se u radu misli na inačice oblika filmskoga zapisa, premda bi teorijska dosljednost nalagala zasebno ime izražajnih sredstava televizije. 3 Novela se zove Notturno a drama Nocturno; usp. Gilić, Nikica, " Notturno: položaj novele i filma u mijeni stilskih formacija " , Komparativna povijest hrvatske književnosti. Zbornik radova I., ur. Duda, Dean et al., Split, Književni krug Split, 1999. I drama i novela mogu se, zbog motiva " lude ljubavi " prispodobiti nadrealizmu (Zlatno doba Luisa Buñuela iz 1930), ali su ipak sličnije manje radikalnim, nadrealizmu tek bliskim filmovima poput Petera Ebbetsona (1935) Henryja Hathawaya i izrazitije populističke Marijane moje mladosti (1955) Juliena Duviviera.

"Let’s suppose that ceramic art, done by artists who were clay handlers before anything else, got accepted as sculpture proper – that and nothing less. Would this redound to the credit of ceramics? I altogether doubt it."

– Clement Greenberg, “Status of Clay,” The Ceramics Symposium, Syracuse, New York, 1979

The purpose of this critical article is to analyse how and why the artist Heidi Bucher united built space, body and time through Häutungen (Skinnings). By charting her personal life, it has enabled me to recognise notable changes in her practice during times of emotional hardship which prompted her to return home to deal with feelings of absence and loss. Through her Skinnings, it provided a platform to reassume control in her life where art-making served as a cathartic process that led to the transformation of architectural space into something otherly. In doing so, she reconnected with a place of personal significance, liberated it from its' past hauntings and undermined patriarchal jurisdiction in domestic space. After years of obscurity, it is time to recognise Heidi Bucher for the work she did, both in her art practice in exploring historical-architectural space and commencing a feminist dialogue in Switzerland.

Robert Smithson’s text “The Monument” (ca. 1967) is an outline for an unrealized film, tracing the production and exhibition of his first Nonsite work. It reveals that archival material was an active element in Smithson’s practice, a material presence traversing archive and oeuvre, mirroring his theory of Site and Nonsite.

Taking an expanded definition of the word image as its point of departure this paper re-evaluates the nature of creative impulses in order to extend ways of looking at the relationships between material, pictorial and conceptual concerns in creative practice. The Latin root of image, imago, has manifold connotations including idea, image, echo and ghost, and is used to formulate a plural understanding of impulses as transformative and transitional. Imago becomes a placeholder for creative impulses, each connotation acting as a descriptor for different qualities. The variations between these types of impulse signal degrees of indeterminacy, partiality and certainty, providing an alternate way of looking at the roles of intuition, not-knowing and pre-conceived instructions. Focusing on the photo-books of artist Ed Ruscha, imago will be examined in the context of 1960s Conceptual Art as a way of reconciling the supposed incongruities between visual, material and conceptual concerns. Through the plurality of imago the significance of the printed form in Ruscha’s photo-books can be considered together with his focus on ideas, so that works such as Twentysix Gasoline Stations can be viewed as both printmaking and Conceptual Art. Bringing together imago with Liz Kotz’s understanding of Conceptual Art as constituting a particular logic of art-making rather than being defined by a specific type of outcome, Ruscha’s photoconceptual printmaking can be situated as both materially and conceptually involved. In this way the physical form of a printed book is more than just a container for an idea. Through the concept of imago this paper seeks to open understandings of conceptual artworks as materially and visually as well as conceptually driven, providing new ways of thinking about the role of impulses in creative practice.

Inspired by the idea of Leonard Bernstein’s (1918-1990) controversial theatre piece, *Mass* (1972), Paul Chihara (b. 1938) was prompted to compose a non-liturgical mass also, but to question religious practice more passively. Whereas secular culture and religious ritual clash in Bernstein’s *Mass*, Chihara strives for an empathetic blend of the two in *Missa Carminum: “Folk Song Mass”* (1975). Animated by his love for popularised folk music and informed by his Roman Catholic
education, Chihara’s admixture is also the first mass to explicitly parallel physical human love with
love of the divine. For Chihara, *Missa Carminum* “is prima[r]ily a love song: it is more Eros than Agape!” (Chihara 2011). In proposing a broad application of religion to encompass all of everyday life, yet remaining Christian in its caste, Missa Carminum is situated in the later stages of the metamorphosis of the
mass. Once an exclusively liturgical musical form, it was appropriated by composers who created religious music explicitly for secular venues from as early as the mid-nineteenth century. Drawing on music analysis and communications with the composer, this article explores Paul Chihara’s reconciliation of the opposing realms of the profane and the sacred in *Missa Carminum*. It also demonstrates *Missa Carminum’s* Christian foundations and its erotic aspects. Finally, it identifies a transformation in the composer’s theology, revealing a shift in emphasis from everyday life in the Kyrie, Benedictus and Agnus Dei movements of the earlier Missa Brevis version, to a strong focus on Christ in the two new movements – the Gloria and the Sanctus – of the full version.

Discussion of Robert Smithson's paintings of crucifixions 1960-1961.
Awarded the Silberger Prize for interdisciplinary cultural criticism from the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.  Due to copyright restrictions, I am unable to post this published text.  Obtain at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/845180

It has long been acknowledged that discursive structures became an especially prominent feature of artworks during the 1960s, with conceptualism being the chief exemplar of this tendency due to its textual forms. But what are we to make of Minimalism and its own fascination with the written word? As many scholars have noted, artists such as Donald Judd and Robert Morris drafted strongly programmatic essays that did not merely accompany their art practices but also sought to establish definitions for the Minimalist field as a whole as if its simplified forms required textual exposition. In that regard, Michael Fried’s decision to refer to Minimalism as ‘Literalism’ appropriately points in two directions: whilst mostly designating the literal or de-signifying utilization of materials, it also strikingly suggests a certain homology between the literal and the literary.

The aim of this paper is to explore what might be considered the crux of Minimalist criticism. By ‘crux’, my intention is partly to historicize the writing produced under the aegis of Minimalism as situated between an explanation of art and a fundamental discursivity as art—in other words, as partaking in the discursive character typical of conceptualism without being identical to it yet. In that regard, it raises the presence another of another crux: a crux interweaving artwork and criticism. This second crux complicates the traditional separation of artwork as production and criticism as evaluative commentary, thereby problematizing their categorical identities and the presumed temporal ordering that typically flows from artwork to criticism. By attending to figures such as Robert Morris, Donald Judd, Fried, and Stanley Cavell, this paper seeks to examine how the writings around Minimalism interpreted but also fundamentally and actively produced Minimalism, thus indicating how these artworks pinpoint a major third crux, this time situated within the history of art criticism.