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hello I'm John David Ebert and welcome
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to the welcome to the first class of the
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sixth week in our lecture course on
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understanding contemporary art hmm
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hitherto we have followed a path that is
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moved from America we started with New
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York City which indeed has been the
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center of the art world at least the
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contemporary art world throughout the
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50s in the 60s but we saw there as we
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moved across to the continent that it
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was rivaled in Germany by Dusseldorf and
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Vienna more so the Dusseldorf than
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Vienna but that Dusseldorf was a
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suitable rival for it at just about the
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same time but that Rome too was also in
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the field here as one of the rivals with
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the sort of proto Arte Povera artists as
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well as our tape over itself which
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eventually produced great artists like
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pianist [ __ ] Ellis and Paris we found to
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be provincial eyes during the epoch of
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contemporary art with the with a few
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exceptions Christian Bolton's keeping
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one of them one of the great artists of
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contemporary art and now we're moving
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back to the Anglo world to Great Britain
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and where we find with London a very
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different spirit I think than what we
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found on the continent there's something
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that unites all of those continental
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artists together a sense that meaning
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matters since that meaning is something
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there's a desperate search for new
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signifiers amongst the artists of both
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Dusseldorf whether we think of Joseph's
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voice or whether we think of Vienna's
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Kanellis trying to piece back together
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the fragments of the memory and
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Mediterranean of the ancient Greek world
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there is a sense that the past matters
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and meaning is one of the main concerns
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that unites the Continental artists of
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the contemporary art world this is not
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the case in London London found itself
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for the most part a provincial backwater
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when it came to contemporary art
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immediately after the war with a few
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exceptions such as Francis Bacon whose
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work we'll look at next and Lucian Freud
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and David Hockney these are artists who
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are great singularities unto themselves
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they're sort of lone icons who function
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as worlds unto themselves but they're
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not really part of much in the way of a
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movement nothing really happens in the
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way of putting Britain on the map of
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Contemporary Art until we get to the
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late 80s and early 90s with the so
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called y bas the young British artists
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all of whom tended to cluster around
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Damien Hirst Damien Hirst all these
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artists came out of Goldsmith's College
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and
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Hirst announced them in an exhibition
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that he entitled freeze that was an
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exhibition that was held in 1988 at an
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empty warehouse is sort of London Port
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Authority warehouse that was empty in
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the interior which was designed to
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resemble a charles saatchi gallery a
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great deal of the money that's
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associated with the ybs came from
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Charles Saatchi is one of the great
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patrons of the yba is the young British
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artists who all came out of this group
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and sixteen of them exhibited it alone
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along with Damien Hirst at this
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exhibition which essentially functioned
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in a way that was analogous to Germano
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Chile's exhibition held in Genoa in 1967
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that put arty poeta on the mouth this is
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the exhibition in 1988 the freeze
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exhibition that puts Britain on the map
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as one of the great rivals to New York
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now for being a center of Contemporary
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Art so now we're going to look at this
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art and what we'll find is that the
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artist is very different it mocks the
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very process of meaning-making
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itself it's an art that is obsessed with
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shocking and it's absolutely obsessed
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with upsetting people and I think that
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it tends to put the process of upsetting
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and shocking and thumbing its nose at
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the bushwa as more of a concern than the
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actual process of looking for new
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meaning itself as we'll see
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freeze magazine came out of this which
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was founded by Amanda sharp and met slot
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over in 1991 it came out of this and The
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Frieze Art Fair that is still held
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annually starting around 2003 was
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associated with this and of course the
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Tate Modern opens up in 2000 on the
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wings of all of this money coming in now
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with Sachi and these new artists there's
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a new confidence now that causes Tate to
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open up this new great building the Tate
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Modern in 2000 and so Britain is now a
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going concern in the contemporary art
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movement so let's look at a few of these
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images here let's go back to the frieze
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exhibition in 1988 organized by Damien
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Hirst this was one of his his
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contribution to the exhibition Hurst's
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boxes from 1988 it's almost a kind of
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three-dimensional ization of a Mondrian
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painting and interestingly these are
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these little semiotic units we'll see
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when we look at Damien Hirst's work what
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his grid of semiotic units represents
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and why it's it's significant
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this is the painting that gave the
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exhibition its name by Matt Collishaw
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bullet hole
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it's a freeze-frame and that gave the
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exhibition its name taken from a
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pathology manual even though it's called
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bullet hole it was actually a wound
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inflicted by an ice pick on an
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individual that he has blown up to a
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grid of 15 canvases and deliberately set
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out once again to shock Sara Lucas was
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also present at that exhibition although
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not this work this is a later work from
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1993 a self-portrait with mug Sara Lucas
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is here she was obsessed in a series of
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portraits as well as doing installations
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and other things with deconstructing
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gender gender roles and stereotypes she
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portrays herself in a very masculine way
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here Tracey Emin was also one of the
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protagonists of the freeze exhibition
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although this is her most famous work
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and it's a later work this is my bed
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from 1998 in which Tracey him and simply
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put her bed into an exhibition and
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called it a work of art very
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controversial and it's become one of the
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iconic images that's associated with the
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sort of aggressiveness and in-your-face
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nough sub the YB A's
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Angus Fairhurst was also present at that
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exhibition although not with this work
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this also is a later work of his from
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2003 a couple of differences between
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thinking and feeling to Farrah's
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committed suicide in 2008 this is an
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image I think it's a bronze sculpture of
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a gorilla that's a kind of displaced
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castration motif and though these
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artists were not present at the original
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freeze exhibition this is there are main
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players in the yba movement Jake and
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Dinos Chapman this is one of their
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images that forms a dialogue with
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Francisco Goya as various horrors of war
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actions that he did about the Peninsular
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war right around 1800 this is great
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deeds against the dead of 1994 which
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essentially is a three dimensional
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ization of one of Quays edgings and
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comments upon it it's a
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three-dimensional ization but also a
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scaling down to it of the level of toys
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and action figures and I think in the
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work of Jake and Dinos Chapman we can
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see there's a kind of scaling down of
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art to the level of train sets and toys
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and action figures this is another one
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of their images this is hell of 2000
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which is a direct dialogue with Peter
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Bruegel's triumph of
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from around 1,500 and it shows the
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horrors of war but it ruptures the the
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you can't take it seriously
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unfortunately because they've put a
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series of Ronald McDonald images hanging
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from crosses and so it's as though
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they're just saying no we're just
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kidding but this isn't to be taken
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seriously at all this is a work that's
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designed to rupture art to make fun of
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art and to make fun of the very attempt
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of art to make sense out of meaning
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itself and so I think we can see that
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with the YB A's we've got a very
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different spirit in London from what
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went on on the continent this is an art
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that is making fun of art that is ironic
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that is full of jokes and pranks it's
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taken the sort of Duchamp Ian's spirit
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that we also saw with Piero Manzoni of
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the pre Arctic puppet a movement to its
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extreme utmost extent we have
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essentially I think in this art of world
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of do territorial eyes signifiers that
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have broken free from any of the
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cultures original like kana types and
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because they don't refer back to any
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transcendental signified Zora kana types
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that structure and control meaning they
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are self referential they simply refer
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to themselves there are no other
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structuring ikono types and there's a
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nihilism and a world weariness that
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prevails in this art I think it's an art
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of de territorial eyes signifiers that
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have escaped capture by any apparatus of
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semiotic capture that control the
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meaning whatsoever and so there's sort
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of the the YB A's are basically obsessed
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with making fun of art's ability to make
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sense out of contemporaneity this isn't
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the first time this has happened in art
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I think if we look back at the
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Hellenistic world we find similar
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developments went on there in the second
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century BC this is boy struggling with a
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goose where we have aesthetically
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trivial and insignificant works there
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also here we have boy representing with
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goose and we have a sense of the
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prevalence there too of kitsch and a
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sense of joke enos and art not taking
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itself seriously
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here's dwarfed from the same period of
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dwarf sculpture and we have the Kitsch
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of this work that's simply an image of a
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realistic image of a hound of mulashi
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and hound from roughly the same period
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also merely naturalistic and
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aesthetically trivial
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here's another work of a goat just
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purely realistic statement of a goat
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there too we had an art of de
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territorial eyes signifiers that had
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come broken free from all the cultural
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mythological iconic types that
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originated the image making processes in
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the artworks themselves to begin with so
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there are two we had a world 'less art
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because similar circumstances prevailed
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there that too was an age of money and
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capital and finance in which the
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individual had come unplugged from the
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polis and because the individual it
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didn't matter where the individual was
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born money what mattered was where you
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were at in terms of the economic
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hierarchy how much money you had and
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that determined your place in that world
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so the individual had come unplugged
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from the city in that age it was a world
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lessard of territory alized world lists
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signifiers also of high to gearing
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things that had come unglued from being
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and become mere objects also an age of
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vast institutions and libraries and
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museums and the complete ISM of
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collecting and creating complete
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collections of art and age of the making
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of copies as a vast industry lots of
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ontological characteristics prevailed
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during the epoch of Hellenistic art as
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prevailed today is it's a very similar
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development but I think that everyone
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agrees more or less that the yba
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movement I think is pretty much
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exhausted itself it's its wine its wound
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down I think it's done it's had its 15
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minutes we do have some new exciting
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British artists though that are coming
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on scene in the wake of all this I think
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this is Emma tooths painting the captive
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from 2012 which is a work that deals
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with meaning and in a very strong sense
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that this is an image that reworks
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Joseph Wright of Darby's image the
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captive of the captive down in the
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dungeon who is painted in the pose of
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Michelangelo's Adam just before Adam is
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touched by the spark of God and the
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upraise knee of Adam invites comparison
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with the ancient image of the earth god
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GEB whose upraised knee was the symbol
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of the pyramid itself but here we have
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today's contemporary protagonists of
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contemporaneity is not engaged in
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building anything he's become a prisoner
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of the new Aladdin's cave of Adorno's
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culture industry has been captured by
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the image phantoms of the television set
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that he's stuck in front of and the
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spark of God here has been replaced by
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the spark of the remote control there's
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lots of meaning going on in embassies
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canvasses very exciting artwork this is
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another one
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from Earth Bacchus which is a dialogue
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with Caravaggio's Bacchus the modern
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version of Bacchus is served a territory
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alized working-class man with a beer
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instead of a glass of wine and here we
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have one more of hers ecce homo a recent
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image of hers from 2013 ecce homo is
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behold the man when Christ is taken out
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to be crucified here the crossed hand
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suggests the image of the cross and this
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this is an image that breathes the
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spirit of violence you sense that this a
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man contains violence implicitly within
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him he could be part of one of Britain's
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hoodlum cultures that have caused so
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much trouble their violence is about to
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break out here we get the sense but
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there's a dialogue with the image
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vocabulary of the West into this work
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that I find very refreshing after the
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the desert of vacation and wasteland of
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the Y bas also we have Chris Boyd who is
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a new artist who is coming along this is
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his book of dari Cebu which is an image
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that I used for the cover of my art
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after metaphysics book the image of the
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volcano here refers to the kinds of
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volcanoes that Boyd encountered growing
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up in the Philippines so there's that
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but it also refers back to the kinds of
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heavy 12-pound giant volumes the book as
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work of art that was made during the
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Middle Ages in which we would have a
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very heavy cover with encrusted gems and
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transcendental signified like images of
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the crucifixion that would be on the
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center here all of that is gone and all
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it's left although all that's left now
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is a semiotic vacancy that Chris paints
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here that challenges us to fill in with
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a quest for new signifiers that will
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point and create two new signified this
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is his glitch Christ which is a sort of
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CGI reworking chris is a multimedia
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artist he does traditional sculpture as
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well as video art this of the quality
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and caliber I think of Bill viola
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here's a clip from one of his videos
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this is a clip from a video that he's in
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it's a work in progress right now called
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dead room which is a video that shows a
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man consuming a sacramental meal of
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beetles the beetle was the symbol in the
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ancient world amongst the ancient
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Egyptians of regeneration and so the
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beetle becomes a sacrament here that
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regenerates the individual it opens up a
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portal as though it were a sort of
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sacrament like a magic mushroom or
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ayahuasca or something of that nature
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that opens up
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a portal to the electronification of the
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astral plane which will open up a quest
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for new signified chris is looking for
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new signified and the electronic version
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of the astral plane that his video is
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opening up here is essentially opening
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up the losing Ataris plane of
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consistency of the territory lies
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signifiers when an artist now has to go
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out and look for those signifiers in
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that world find them pull them together
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hybridize them and create meaning and
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not simply give up and despair and so
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that's a quick flyby view of the young
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British artists and next we'll look at
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the works of damien hirst but first
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before we get to damien hirst I want to
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look at do a flyby overview of the works
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of Francis Bacon Hurst's one of the key
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artists who influenced the work of
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damien hirst
