Roy Colmer, Video Feedback, Cincinnati, Tape 1 and Tape 3, 1972, Videotape transferred to DVD on monitor, with sound, 80 mins., Collection of the artist, courtesy Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York. |
When Everything Mattered More than Ever Before: 1967-1975 |
Ree Morton, Untitled (Stretcher Piece), ca. 1971-73, Mixed media, 53.3 x 54.6 x 167.6 cm, Estate of Ree Morton; courtesy Alexander and Bonin, New York.
Yayoi Kusama, Self-Obliteration, 1967, Film transferred to DVD on monitor, with sound (23 mins.), Collection of the artist; © Yayoi Kusama, courtesy Robert Miller Gallery, New York.
Carolee Schneemann, Body Collage, 1967, DVD (3 min. 30 secs.), Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2008, Foto: Michael Benedikt; courtesy the artist. |
ZKM Museum In the late 1960s, New York's art world was an exciting place. New media such as performance and video art were being discovered and sculpture was rapidly developing in a variety of directions. High Times, Hard Times recalls this era's vibrancy and significance. Experimental, abstract painting played a major role and explored the medium's borders. The exhibition, which recounts the development from 1967 to 1975 in five different thematic blocks, collects approximately 50 works from 40 artists living and working in New York at the time. Yayoi Kusama, Alan Shields, Lee Lozano, Richard Tuttle, Mary Heilmann, and others evolved-influenced by the social transformation and burning political issues of the late 1960s and early 1970s — works that expressed joy, passion, anger, and the limits of imagination. At the same time, they expanded the conventional concepts of what painting could possibly mean. Nearly half of the abstract painters whose works are presented in High Times, Hard Times are women who were ignored by the influential art critics during their creative period. In the works of these women, the critics saw merely the production of an eccentric expression, and no renewal of the medium, per se. Afro-American artists, such as Al Loving, Joe Overstreet, Howardena Pindell, and Jack Whitten; as well as artists from abroad who lived for a time in New York (Yayoi Kusama, Blinky Palermo, César Paternosto, and Franz Erhard Walther), were likewise denied official recognition. The exhibition High Times, Hard Times shows images from a time of great transformation: the experiments with surfaces, the picture carrier, space; with installation, video, and performance thus surround and embody the liberal spirit of this era as well as painting's possibilities as medium. High Times, Hard Times promises the rediscovery of a forgotten slice of art history. Subsequent to MindFrames. Media Study at Buffalo 1973-1990, the ZKM | Karlsruhe is again devoting an exhibition to the examination of art's development and the influential trends in the 1960s and 1970s. The exhibition is curated by Katy Siegel, artistic advisor David Reed. High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975 is a traveling exhibition organized by iCI (Independent Curators International), New York. Katy Siegel is guest curator of the exhibition, and David Reed is her artistic advisor. Exhibition, tour, and catalogue were made possible by the support of the Peter Norton Family Foundation; the Dedalus Foundation, Inc.; the iCI International Associates; and the iCI Exhibition Partners Kenneth S. Kuchin, as well as Gerrit and Sydie Lansing. |
Dan Christensen, Pavo, 1968, Spray paint on canvas, 274.3 x 335.3 cm, Collection of the artist, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2008, photo: Tim Lee. |
