Christian Boltanski
(born September 6, 1944 – in Paris to a Jewish father of Ukrainian heritage, and a Corsican mother.) He is a French photographer, sculptor, self-proclaimed painter, and installation artist.
Christian works with the ephemera of the human experience, dealing with questions of death, memory, and loss. Known for a body of work that may be considered an archive of our social, cultural, ethnic, and personal histories, Boltanski is one of France’s most widely exhibited living artists.
The systematic reconstruction of his own childhood and youth using documentary as well as fictive pictures became his point of departure. He uses a wide range of media such as film, video, performance, and photography. The combination of diverse media is also an integral aspect of his installations. These also create powerful ‘pictures’, in which Boltanski re-draws the past using all types of found objects. He recalls life-stories that have past and are only kept alive in one’s memory, regardless whether dealing with his own life or the life of others.
His numerous solo exhibitions include shows at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art & Design, in Kansas City, Missouri, and the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston. He has shown four times at the Venice Biennale. Boltanski is represented in New York by the Marian Goodman Gallery.
I really like his artwork and the way that he deals with various media. He is not afraid to experiment. The interesting fact about Christian is that he is self taught author who left school when he was 12 years old. In spite of this, he is really intelligent and interesting person whose quotes have partly influenced my life and artwork. The fact that he never studied at any art school, academy or university is probably the reason why he produces original pieces that are nothing like what we have seen before. He was not influenced by the flow of famous artists, he created his own stream. I like how he deals with phenomena of light and shadows. His installations are visually and psychologically very strong.
Here are some links to websites where you can check out some of his work. I strongly recommend to see the documentary (first link below) about his life and work: http://www.ubu.com/film/boltanski.html
I was doing some research after my last Friday’s performance. Some of you guys mentioned the Yoko ONO’s Cut Piece, so I decided to look at it because I didn’t know much about it.
It really does have a lot in common with my performance. Especially the part where she is allowing strangers to approach her with scissors, Ono said she hoped to show this is “a time where we need to trust each other.” Spectators walked away saying the message was clear. “Scissors usually have a violent connotation but she turns it around to make it peaceful. Yoko Ono’s performance successfully makes peace out of violence. She first performed her “Cut Piece” show in 1964 in Japan as a protest for peace (against Vietnam War). At the end of the show then, she stood naked on stage. What is interesting, not many people know that Yoko made this peace one more time after almost 40 years on. The artist again asked her audience to cut strips off her tight black top and long layered skirt, to send the cut-out pieces to a person they love. “Never forget love,” Ono said as she sat down on a stool on the stage of Paris’ Ranelagh theatre.
Although there is a difference between mine and her piece. While Ono wanted the audience to come up and cut away her clothing (cutting away parts that they didn’t like about her) I didn’t didn’t get completely naked and I my audience was nor given any instructions. I was just trapped, all wrapped up waiting. Waiting what will happen. There were knives on the floor which could be used either for hurting me or rescuing me. People walking by didn’t have to do anything, just walk away and leave me there as they found me.
Luckily enough, my audience was really emphatic and figured out what to do with the knives after a short time. They started cutting the strings and it didn’t take long and I was able to move, walk away when I was completely freed. This time, I didn’t have be tied too long. It would sure be interesting if I stood there for couple hours, or days. That would be a lot suffering for me as a performer. The time would make this peace more intense.
This piece can be interpreted in so many ways. I think that everybody can understand this performance really personally and we all find ourselves in a life situation like this. We all get somehow trapped, hopefully waiting for miracle or help provided by the others. And it is love that frees us!
It was a great experience for me as a performer. I wish I had a chance to do this performance again, in some public space.
http://www.digitalgirly.com/
Hi guys!
I was once wrote an assay about how women are viewed in today’s patriarchal society, where the visual culture is mostly rulled and led by men. As a result women are beeing viewed in the way that men like them the most – in the most representative possitions. Of course women make themselves a target of gaze by the way they dress, put on make up… They want to look good when they are being looked at.
Natasha Merritt is a really interesting artist, because she takes pictures of her body in a different way… The way she wants to be viewed. She rules the eyes of the the male audience, she shows what is important for her and not for the guys so much. Her photographs are so different. The angles that she uses allow us to see her how she really is, without correction and using too much airbrush. But still, her pictures are really strongly erotic and beautiful in some way. In this case, the difference between pornographic pictures and art is really small. It really depends on the point of view. She says that her sexual life and is the same thing, which is really interesting when you think about it. To me, art is always connected with some kind of passion, so this statement is really strong, even thought I think that my passion about art doesn’t necessary have to be sexual…
Otis is one of the most significant Slovak contemporary artists. He was born in 1946, he had studied at the same Joseph’s Vydra’s School of Applied Arts in Bratislava, at the same department as me, just a few decades earlier. Most of his friends were my teachers. I met him many times, talked to him and was trying to help him with making some of his artworks – as a small student job. He didn’t have time to make make all his ideas (he had students to do that for him). And I didn’t either, so some of the projects that I was working on for him stayed unfinished, which I feel really bad about. He is a wonderful optimistic quiet person that somehow became famous without university education. He has some really funny playful ideas whitch I consider to be a little dadaistic. He also does some performances in public places, leaving secret messages in streets, concerning some political issues especially in the era of communism. It was really dangerous to be a performance artist that time.
Laubert is most of all famous by systematic collecting, classification and organizing of most diverse things. The series of aesthetic „baroque chalices“, is configured from utilitarian objects, accidentally found or bought at bourse, antique shop, or bartered from other collectors. The series of photographs, quoting well known artistic works.
This is a great artist from Slovakia. He had too studied at the same art school as me.In recent years his distinctive approach to sculpture, object, installation, drawing, print, painting, action art, film, music, sound and word has attracted attention at many prestigious international art shows.
His work not only touches on very contemporary problems, such as erasing the boundaries between reality and fiction, memory and the present, but also on classic themes in art – the relation between inner and outer, the part and the whole. Typical of his work is a searching for a complexity of content expressed in a monumental and comprehensible language.
Matej Krén was born in 1958 in Trenčín. After graduating from the Applied Arts Secondary School in Bratislava he continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava from 1977-81, and from 1981-1985 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. As a student in Prague he successfully entered the International Student Exhibition in Kobe, Japan, where his work received the(1985). Before 1989 he participated in many unofficial exhibitions, such as Artprospekt, Posun artefaktu, Terén, etc.
Julius Koller
- a key figure within the conceptual art in Slovakia since the 1960′. Inspired by the “Duchamp lesson” prioritizing a direct connection of art and everyday life. Koller documents his own civil activities and selected life passages: reposing, walking, flying, etc. He entitled them as “anti-happenings” or “anti-enviroments”.
Really interesting contemporary artist, teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Slovakia, at the department of New Media, where I wanted to study, but I was not accepded… That broke my heart for at least 2years.
So if I was there she would be my teacher. She does some pretty amazing work.
Ilona Németh, an artist from Slovakia, has for the last 20 years explored concepts such as environment, interactivity, sound, womanhood, and memory, in works that use video, installation, physical audience experience, performance, sound, public art and objects. Inspired by everyday life
Nice working with you today and i had alot of fun, hope we can do it again sometime
Christian Boltanski
(born September 6, 1944 – in Paris to a Jewish father of Ukrainian heritage, and a Corsican mother.) He is a French photographer, sculptor, self-proclaimed painter, and installation artist.
Christian works with the ephemera of the human experience, dealing with questions of death, memory, and loss. Known for a body of work that may be considered an archive of our social, cultural, ethnic, and personal histories, Boltanski is one of France’s most widely exhibited living artists.
The systematic reconstruction of his own childhood and youth using documentary as well as fictive pictures became his point of departure. He uses a wide range of media such as film, video, performance, and photography. The combination of diverse media is also an integral aspect of his installations. These also create powerful ‘pictures’, in which Boltanski re-draws the past using all types of found objects. He recalls life-stories that have past and are only kept alive in one’s memory, regardless whether dealing with his own life or the life of others.
His numerous solo exhibitions include shows at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art & Design, in Kansas City, Missouri, and the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston. He has shown four times at the Venice Biennale. Boltanski is represented in New York by the Marian Goodman Gallery.
I really like his artwork and the way that he deals with various media. He is not afraid to experiment. The interesting fact about Christian is that he is self taught author who left school when he was 12 years old. In spite of this, he is really intelligent and interesting person whose quotes have partly influenced my life and artwork. The fact that he never studied at any art school, academy or university is probably the reason why he produces original pieces that are nothing like what we have seen before. He was not influenced by the flow of famous artists, he created his own stream. I like how he deals with phenomena of light and shadows. His installations are visually and psychologically very strong.
Here are some links to websites where you can check out some of his work. I strongly recommend to see the documentary (first link below) about his life and work:
http://www.ubu.com/film/boltanski.html
http://www.picsearch.com/search.cgi?q=Christian%20Boltanski&start=1&nav1
http://www.tate.org.uk/magazine/issue2/boltanski.htm
http://www.magical-secrets.com/artists/boltanski
I was doing some research after my last Friday’s performance. Some of you guys mentioned the Yoko ONO’s Cut Piece, so I decided to look at it because I didn’t know much about it.
It really does have a lot in common with my performance. Especially the part where she is allowing strangers to approach her with scissors, Ono said she hoped to show this is “a time where we need to trust each other.” Spectators walked away saying the message was clear. “Scissors usually have a violent connotation but she turns it around to make it peaceful. Yoko Ono’s performance successfully makes peace out of violence. She first performed her “Cut Piece” show in 1964 in Japan as a protest for peace (against Vietnam War). At the end of the show then, she stood naked on stage. What is interesting, not many people know that Yoko made this peace one more time after almost 40 years on. The artist again asked her audience to cut strips off her tight black top and long layered skirt, to send the cut-out pieces to a person they love. “Never forget love,” Ono said as she sat down on a stool on the stage of Paris’ Ranelagh theatre.
Although there is a difference between mine and her piece. While Ono wanted the audience to come up and cut away her clothing (cutting away parts that they didn’t like about her) I didn’t didn’t get completely naked and I my audience was nor given any instructions. I was just trapped, all wrapped up waiting. Waiting what will happen. There were knives on the floor which could be used either for hurting me or rescuing me. People walking by didn’t have to do anything, just walk away and leave me there as they found me.
Luckily enough, my audience was really emphatic and figured out what to do with the knives after a short time. They started cutting the strings and it didn’t take long and I was able to move, walk away when I was completely freed. This time, I didn’t have be tied too long. It would sure be interesting if I stood there for couple hours, or days. That would be a lot suffering for me as a performer. The time would make this peace more intense.
This piece can be interpreted in so many ways. I think that everybody can understand this performance really personally and we all find ourselves in a life situation like this. We all get somehow trapped, hopefully waiting for miracle or help provided by the others. And it is love that frees us!
It was a great experience for me as a performer. I wish I had a chance to do this performance again, in some public space.
http://www.a-i-u.net/cutpiece03_i.html
check out the u-tube videos- the cut piece is on there
http://www.digitalgirly.com/
Hi guys!
I was once wrote an assay about how women are viewed in today’s patriarchal society, where the visual culture is mostly rulled and led by men. As a result women are beeing viewed in the way that men like them the most – in the most representative possitions. Of course women make themselves a target of gaze by the way they dress, put on make up… They want to look good when they are being looked at.
Natasha Merritt is a really interesting artist, because she takes pictures of her body in a different way… The way she wants to be viewed. She rules the eyes of the the male audience, she shows what is important for her and not for the guys so much. Her photographs are so different. The angles that she uses allow us to see her how she really is, without correction and using too much airbrush. But still, her pictures are really strongly erotic and beautiful in some way. In this case, the difference between pornographic pictures and art is really small. It really depends on the point of view. She says that her sexual life and is the same thing, which is really interesting when you think about it. To me, art is always connected with some kind of passion, so this statement is really strong, even thought I think that my passion about art doesn’t necessary have to be sexual…
http://images.google.sk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.mattress.org/media/95.laubert.1%255B1%255D.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.mattress.org/index.cfm%3Fevent%3DShowArtist%26eid%3D16%26id%3D22%26c%3DPast&h=233&w=350&sz=12&hl=sk&start=5&sig2=AZE-vzK04vAgFDSEtade3Q&tbnid=nh0jvfUS_gW3tM:&tbnh=80&tbnw=120&ei=4DWRSJmlKZ3MggLLqdT3BQ&prev=/images%3Fq%3DOtis%2BLaubert%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Dsk%26sa%3DGOtis
Otis Laubert
Otis is one of the most significant Slovak contemporary artists. He was born in 1946, he had studied at the same Joseph’s Vydra’s School of Applied Arts in Bratislava, at the same department as me, just a few decades earlier. Most of his friends were my teachers. I met him many times, talked to him and was trying to help him with making some of his artworks – as a small student job. He didn’t have time to make make all his ideas (he had students to do that for him). And I didn’t either, so some of the projects that I was working on for him stayed unfinished, which I feel really bad about. He is a wonderful optimistic quiet person that somehow became famous without university education. He has some really funny playful ideas whitch I consider to be a little dadaistic. He also does some performances in public places, leaving secret messages in streets, concerning some political issues especially in the era of communism. It was really dangerous to be a performance artist that time.
Laubert is most of all famous by systematic collecting, classification and organizing of most diverse things. The series of aesthetic „baroque chalices“, is configured from utilitarian objects, accidentally found or bought at bourse, antique shop, or bartered from other collectors. The series of photographs, quoting well known artistic works.
Hey!
Especially Jordan, Meghan, check this out!
This is a great artist from Slovakia. He had too studied at the same art school as me.In recent years his distinctive approach to sculpture, object, installation, drawing, print, painting, action art, film, music, sound and word has attracted attention at many prestigious international art shows.
His work not only touches on very contemporary problems, such as erasing the boundaries between reality and fiction, memory and the present, but also on classic themes in art – the relation between inner and outer, the part and the whole. Typical of his work is a searching for a complexity of content expressed in a monumental and comprehensible language.
Matej Krén was born in 1958 in Trenčín. After graduating from the Applied Arts Secondary School in Bratislava he continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava from 1977-81, and from 1981-1985 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. As a student in Prague he successfully entered the International Student Exhibition in Kobe, Japan, where his work received the(1985). Before 1989 he participated in many unofficial exhibitions, such as Artprospekt, Posun artefaktu, Terén, etc.
Link to Matej Kren’s work
http://www.matejkren.cz/en/matej-kren/biography.php
Julius Koller
- a key figure within the conceptual art in Slovakia since the 1960′. Inspired by the “Duchamp lesson” prioritizing a direct connection of art and everyday life. Koller documents his own civil activities and selected life passages: reposing, walking, flying, etc. He entitled them as “anti-happenings” or “anti-enviroments”.
http://images.google.sk/imgres?imgurl=http://hidocu.net/27/img/27_2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://hidocu.net/27/about&h=274&w=350&sz=92&hl=sk&start=52&um=1&tbnid=3X1ksoYYEB0uyM:&tbnh=94&tbnw=120&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dperformance%2Bart%2Bslovakia%26start%3D36%26ndsp%3D18%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dsk%26sa%3DN
Ilona Nemeth
Really interesting contemporary artist, teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Slovakia, at the department of New Media, where I wanted to study, but I was not accepded… That broke my heart for at least 2years.
So if I was there she would be my teacher. She does some pretty amazing work.
Ilona Németh, an artist from Slovakia, has for the last 20 years explored concepts such as environment, interactivity, sound, womanhood, and memory, in works that use video, installation, physical audience experience, performance, sound, public art and objects. Inspired by everyday life