themes of

contemporary art
~------------- --- ---- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - '

visual art after 1980

JEAN ROBERTSON
HERR ON SC HOOL OF AR T AND DESIGN
IN DIANA UNI VERSITY - PURDUE UN I V ER S ITY INDIANAP OLIS

CRAIG McDANIEL
H ERRO N SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN
IN DI ANA UNIVERSITY-PURDUE UN IVERS IT Y I NDIANAPOLIS

New York Oxfo r d

OXFORD UNIVER SIT Y PRESS

1-1 Cai Guo-Qiang I inopportune : Stage One, 2004
Nine cars and sequenced multichannel light tubes. Dimensions variable. Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Robert M. Arnold, in honor of the
75th Anniversary of t he Seattle Art Museum , 2006 . Exhi bit ion copy installed at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2008.
Photograph The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Photo by David Heald.
 CHAPTER ONE

the art world expands

n our travels and visits to exhibitions of contemporary art over the past several years,
I
we've encountered many unusual and challenging works of art. Here is a sampling:
Inopportune: Stage One (2004) [1-1] by Cai Guo-Qiang, an installation showing
nine identical white cars suspended in midair and positioned to create the impres-
sion of successive stages of a car flipping over in an explosion from a car bombing,
while long tubes radiating colored light burst out in all directions from the win-
dows (seen in the mid-career survey of the artist 's work shown at the Guggenheim
Museum in New York City in 2008).
Your Blind M ovement (2010) by Olafur Eliasson filled a sequence of rooms with
thick, swirling neon-colored fog, immersing and disorienting visitors, who lost all
bearings (seen in the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin).
Urban Light (2008) by Chris Burden, consisting of 202 restored cast iron vintage
street lamps arranged like a small grove of trees in a public plaza facing Wilshire
Boulevard in Los Angeles; the installation emits a luminous glow in the evening
(seen in front of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art).
The Eighth Day (2001) [color plates 20 and 21], a "transgenic" artwork by Eduardo
Kac, brought together living, bioengineered, glow-in-the-dark mice, plants, and
fish and a biological robot ("biobot") in an environment housed under a clear four-
'foot-diameter Plexiglas dome (seen at the Institute for Studies in the Arts, Arizona
State University, Tempe). 1
An impressively large painted triptych by Li Tian Yuan (2001), based on a satel-
lite image, shows progressively closer views of the artist and his infant son on the
Great Wall of China (included in an international exhibition of art dealing with the
interface of art and science at the National Museum, Beijing, China) .
A re-creation of Gino de Dominicis's .controversial 1972 Second Solution of
Immortality: The Universe Is Immobile, staged by the Wrong Gallery, situated a
woman with Down syndrome in a nearly empty gallery, where she sat staring at a
simple arrangement of symbolic objects (seen at the 2006 Frieze art fair in London,
7
 where the stillness of the performance piece stood in stark contrast to the frenetic
sensory overload elsewhere at the fair). 2
As these examples hint, the world of contemporary art is rich, diverse, and unpre-
dictable. Although painting, photography, sculpture, drawing, and the crafts still attract
a large number of practitioners, these familiar forms of art no longer subsume the field.
Film, video, audio, installation, performance, texts, and computers are common media
today, and artists are often fluent in several media. Artists freely mix media, or they
may practice a medium with a long lineage in an unconventional way, such as making
paintings that look like pixilated computer im;ges or drawing with unconventional
materials such as chocolate syrup.
Contemporary art is in flux. Old hierarchies and categories are fracturing; new tech-
nologies are offering different ways of conceptualizing, producing, and showing visual
art; established art forms are under scrutiny and revision; an awareness of heritages
from around the world is fostering cross-fertilizations; and everyday culture is provid-
ing both inspiration for art and competing visual stimulation. The diversity and rapid
8 transformations are intriguing but can be daunting for those who want to understand
Cf)
contemporary art and actively participate in discussions about what is happening.
u Along with the dynamic nature of contemporary art, content matters. Looking
c
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Q. back at the history of modern art, it is debatable whether the idea of "art for art's sake"
x
w truly took over the thinking of modernist theorists and artists. But certainly there
u
were periods in the twentieth century, especially just after World War II, when critics
(famously the American Clement Greenberg, who died in 1994) and some influential
......,
...... avant-garde artists advocated formalism, an emphasis on form rather than content
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Q) when creating and interpreting art. Those invested in formalism were and are con-
~
t--- cerned mainly with investigating the properties of specific media and techniques, as
well as the general language of traditional aesthetics (the role of color or composition,
for instance). But formalism is inadequate for interpreting art that expresses the inner
visions of artists or art that refers to the world beyond art. When pop art appeared in
the 1960s, with its references to cartoons, consumer products, and other elements of
shared culture, the limitations of formalism became evident, and a broader range of
theories surfaced, including postmodernism, poststructuralism, feminism, and postco-
lonialism, as we discuss later in this chapter.
Throughout the period we discuss-1980 to the present-artists have engaged
deeply with meaningful content. Artists active after 1980 are motivated by a range
of purposes and ideas beyond a desire to express personal emotions and visions or to
display a mastery of media and techniques. Political events, social issues and relations,
science, technology, mass media, popular culture, literature, the built environment, the
flow of capital, the flow of ideas, and other forces and developments are propelling art-
ists and providing content for their artworks.

Overview of History and Art History 11980-2011

The past three decades have been eventful in virtually every area of human activ-
ity, including politics, medicine, science, technology, culture, and art. In the 1980s, fax
machines and compact disc players entered widespread use, the first laptop computers
were introduced, and early cellular telephones became available. Also in the 1980s, for
 the first time in the United States, a woman was appointed to the Supreme Court, a
woman traveled in space, and a woman headed a major party ticket as a candidate for
vice president. The Berlin Wall was dismantled and Germany reunified in 1989, presag-
ing the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.
In the 1990s .numerous controversies raged over threats of global warming and
genetic engineering of plants and animals, and a sheep was successfully cloned in
1997. Also in the 1990s a brutal civil war led to the breakup of Yugoslavia into sev-
eral independent republics, ethnic massacres devastated the African state of Rwanda,
and nationalist conflicts broke out in the new states gf Georgia and Azerbaijan in the
former Soviet Union. Early in the 1990s apartheid officially ended in South Africa.
By the mid-1990s, the Internet system linked millions of users. In 1995, the Federal
Building in Oklahoma City was destroyed by American terrorists.
The 2000s so far have been extremely violent. In September 2001 the World Trade
Center in New York was destroyed and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., attacked by
Islamist terrorists. The United States-led invasion of Afghanistan commenced later
that fall, and in 2003, the United States led an invasion of Iraq that toppled the gov-
9
ernment of Saddam Hussein. Civil unrest and even open warfare have plagued many
regions, including the Darfur region of Sudan, Jewish and Palestinian settlements in
the Middle East, and Chechnya, on the border of Russia. A wave of protests and upris-
ings in the Arab world began in late 2010 (including in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria,
and Yemen). Food shortages and famines, infectious diseases such as bird flu, rising
costs of oil, and increasing evidence of climate change offer a bleak outlook to people
worldwide, especially in the poorest nations. Meanwhile new economic powerhouses,
including China and India, are exerting influence on the global economy. Technological
changes continue to have a social impact, including new medical and scientific dis-
coveries, new forms of instant communication such as text messaging and tweeting,
electronic books, and other growing capabilities and influence of computer and com-
munications technologies.
The demographics of various parts of the world have changed dramatically since
1980. Just in the United States, "the U.S. experienced a profound demographic shift
in the 1980s, with an influx of over 7 million immigrants from Latin America, the
Caribbean, and Asia. By 1990, 25 per cent of Americans (population 247 million)
claimed African, Asian, Hispanic, or Native American ancestry." 3 Every year, across
the globe, the uprooting of vast numbers of people occurs in response to wars, fam-
ines, ethnic violence, and economic pressures and opportunities. Alterations in national
boundaries and distributions of power are commonplace. According to studies, "Since
1960, more than half of the world's 195 countries have been born-or reborn." 4
The art world itself underwent major changes during the period covered in this
text. Major art centers lost some of their dominance as art activities became more
decentralized. The changed artistic landscape led to a significant cross-fertilization
of ideas among locations across the globe. Although New York City remained a pri-
mary destination on the contemporary art world map, other urban centers-including
London, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Shanghai, Dubai, Mumbai, Istanbul, Berlin, Sao Paulo,
and Johannesburg-ratcheted up their support and presentation of new art to such a
degree that anyone who expected to remain knowledgeably informed felt pressure to
research current activities in these locations.
 The art scene exploded after 1980, with a marked increase in artists, dealers,
collectors, publications, and exhibition spaces. The formation of new institutions,
as well as new or revamped facilities at existing institutions, expanded the number,
size, and quality of locations where the latest in visual art could be seen by a grow-
ing public, including tourists seeking entertainment. Of these projects, several are
notable not only for offering intriguing possibilities for the exhibition of art but
also because the architectural structures assert themselves as works of art in their
own right. Topping the list in terms of publicity were the Guggenheim Museum's
new branch in Bilbao, Spain (1997), designed by architect Frank Gehry, and the
spectacular transformation of an enormous power station along the Thames River in
London into Tate Modern (2000). 5 Other notable new venues include MASS MoCA
(Massachusetts Museum of Contempqrary Art, 1999), which offers a vast 100,000
square feet of exhibition space in a converted nineteenth-century factory building
in North Adams, Massachusetts, and the more modestly scaled but boldly designed
Wexner Center (1989) on the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus, a
project by Peter Eisenman.
10
The fortunes and misfortunes of contemporary artists take shape, to a large degree,
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within the sphere of the commercial galleries that present new art. Reputations are
c built by the support of prominent gallery dealers and the approval of the critics, cura-
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x tors, and collectors who carefully monitor and judge the quality of the art featured in
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'"O highly publicized exhibitions. During the era, there were frequent shifts in the zones of
concentrated art activity (such as the reduction of galleries located in New York's SoHo
area and the dramatic influx of galleries into the historic meatpacking district known as
Chelsea by the mid-1990s), as well as numerous gallery openings and closings, which
reflected fluctuations in national economies. The rise of neo-expressionism in the early
1980s, for instance, was tied to a boom in the U.S. stock market, whereas an economic
recession later in the decade was responsible in part for retrenchment and attention to
more modestly scaled artistic projects. In the first decade of the twenty-first century
the art market boomed again, and grandiose projects were under way once more, until
another, even larger recession started in 2008. All of this, of course, is not without
precedent. General forces at work in society, including politics, demographics, and eco-
nomics, have always influenced the history of art.
In addition to an enormous range of activities, including exhibitions, perform-
ances, film and video screenings, and lectures, presented by public institutions within
facilities devoted to contemporary art, the contemporary period witnessed a surge of
public art-visual arts activities in public settings, such as city streets, plazas, parks,
airports, and commercial facilities, as well as in more transitory locations such as bill-
boards and magazine pages. A spectacular recent example of public art, Charles Ray's
Boy with Frog (2009), is an eight-foot-tall sculpture installed on the tip of an island at
the southern entrance of the Grand Canal in Venice [1-2] . Designed for that prominent
site, the sculpture displays the artist's characteristic combination of conceptualism and
humor. The dazzling white finish of the fiberglass sculptur.e refers to the long tradi-
tion of marble sculpture in Italy; the white color of the sculpture also makes the fig-
ures look ghostly, otherworldly. The larger-than-life boy, who is on the cusp between
adolescence and manhood, dangles a goliath frog. His pose suggests he has just fished
the frog out of the nearby water and now is pausing to consider its form and its fate.
Viewing the sculpture, we wonder whether our lives bear a closer resemblance to the
 11

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 frog's or to the boy's. Or is it that we resemble neither? They remain there unchanging,
while we pass by momentarily, only to vanish into thin air.
Public dollars funded many public art activities (although not Ray's sculpture),
a fact that turned out to be something of a double-edged sword. The support of con-
temporary art with government dollars was a crucial means of enlarging the funds
available to artists and institutions; in the United States and Britain such support was
often a percentage of the amount budgeted for new government-funded public con-
struction projects. The use of public dollars increased attention to contemporary public
art (taxpayers were interested in knowing how.their money was being spent), but the
increased attention also resulted in more controversy whenever a vocal core trum-
peted their outrage over a specific project. Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial
(1981- 84), located on the Nati.anal Mall in Washington, D.C.; Richard Serra's Tilted
Arc (1981), installed in a public plaza near a government office building in Manhattan;
and Mark Quinn's Alison Lapper Pregnant (2005), a monumental sculpture of the
nude, pregnant body of disabled artist Lapper (born with no arms and shortened legs),
displayed on the fourth plinth in London's Trafalgar Square, are examples of public
12
art projects that galvanized public opinion, both pro and con. The Vietnam Veterans
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Memorial ultimately was embraced even by its original opponents. A more conserva-
c tive outlook prevailed for Tilted Arc: Serra's work was removed in 1989 after a lengthy
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>< legal battle. Quinn's sculpture was always intended to be temporary (the fourth plinth
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only eighteen months.
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In the United States, art by feminists, artists perceived to be unpatriotic or sacri-
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I- and 1990s over public funding and freedom of expression. Highly publicized contro-
versies accompanied a traveling exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe in
the early 1990s that included some photos showing homosexual activities. Piss Christ
(1987) by Andres Serrano, a photographic image of a plastic crucifix submerged in urine,
was deemed blasphemous by some religious spokespersons. The offer in 1990 by femi-
nist artist Judy Chicago to donate her monumental collaborative creation The Dinner
Party (1979) to the University of the District of Columbia was blocked by conservative
members of Congress who called the work pornographic because some interpreted the
imagery as representing female genitalia. 6 The exhibition Sensation, showing works by
young British artists, caused a furor and media frenzy when it opened at the Brooklyn
Museum in 1999, with much of the attention centering on Chris Ofili's painting The
Holy Virgin Mary, which featured a black Madonna decorated with resin-covered
lumps of elephant dung. Also under pressure from Congress, the National Endowment
for the Arts (NEA) eliminated fellowships to individual artists in 1995.
Political considerations influenced some contemporary artists to engage in institu-
tional critiques. Such critiques took aim both at art institutions- with artists attempt-
ing to reveal how museums, commercial galleries, and other organizations control how
art is produced, displayed, and marketed-and at institutions within the wider society;
for example, feminists critiqued the social structures and hierarchies that limit female
potential. Politically motivated art projects were particularly prevalent in the late 1980s
and the first half of the 1990s.
 Activist art addressed social realities heard and seen in the news and experienced
directly by the artists involved. Art about AIDS provides a key example. AIDS began
its destructive growth in the early 1980s, when the disease was first recognized and
named. In the 1980s, before treatments had been developed and refined, an AIDS diag-
nosis was like a death sentence. "Life was lived with that bell tolling all the time,"
recalls writer Stephen Koch. 7 The association of AIDS with homosexual men at that
time brought forth a wave of virulent homophobia. In response to the crisis and to
massive losses from AIDS within the arts community, numerous artists, including
David Wojnarowicz, Keith Haring, and the art collective known as Gran Fury, put their
art in the service of AIDS activism. Other arenas that provided serious political content
for contemporary art included feminist politics and issues of race, homelessness, corpo-
rate capitalism, consumerism, and militarism ..
In the past decade there has beeri something of a stalling of artistic political activ-
ism. Although survivors of the culture wars and occasional younger artists still court
controversy (sometimes for shock value more than for ideological reasons), many
more artists want to engage the public rather than challenge social and political insti-
13
tutions and practices. A notable trend is the supersizing of art, found in the produc-
tion of spectacular, often highly crafted and technically complex works that require -1
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The history of contemporary art is not entirely a story of young artists bursting :::J
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onto the scene with new ideas. Although many previously unknown artists emerged
after 1980, the presence and influence of older artists was important as well. For exam-
ple, Joseph Beuys died in 1986, Andy Warhol in 1987, Louise Nevelson in 1988, Roy
Lichtenstein in 1997, Agnes Martin in 2004, Allan Kaprow and Nam June Paik in 2006,
Robert Rauschenberg in 2008, and Louise Bourgeois in 2010. Most of these were mak-
ing vital work up until their deaths, so that even an art movement such as pop art,
which we normally associate with the 1960s, was evolving within the ongoing produc-
tion of the oeuvres of Warhol and Lichtenstein. A retrospective exhibition of work by
Bourgeois toured internationally in 2008-09, when the influential artist was ninety-
six years old and still active.
Themes of Contemporary Art is not a chronological survey. The history of art
over the past thirty years is fantastically rich and involves many diverse stories, moti-
vations, influences, ideas, and approaches. Attempting to map recent art into a tight
chronological structure of movements or even of collections of major artists would
be premature and, in fact, would misrepresent the contemporary period. Whereas
the art world before 1980 is distant enough that we can perceive some sequence of
trends (really multiple intersecting and interacting trends), more recent art practices
are much more pluralistic and amorphous in character. Many of the artists we dis-
cuss are in mid-career and still defining their practices. As artist Haim Steinbach said
(remembering the 1980s, although his statement applies to the entire contemporary
period), "I see [the period] as an archipelago, in which different things were going on,
 on different islands. They were going on concurrently but not always moving in the
same direction." 8

Traditions Survive, New Trends Arrive

If we cannot place contemporary art into neat compartments or a series of movements,
we can still make a few broad observations about developments and tendencies in art
since 1980.
Painting didn't die in contemporary art, despite predictions to the contrary made
in the 1970s. Indeed, painting enjoyed somethi~g of a rebirth in the United States in
the early 1980s, during the heyday of neo-expressionism, "an international movement
dominated by oversized canvases and emotional gestures, and by a bustling commercial
market." 9 Young Americans making bold, gestural paintings, including Julian Schnabel,
David Salle, and Eric Fischl, were celebrated and compared to dramatic painters who
had emerged in Europe in the 1970s, such as the German neo-expressionist Anselm
Kiefer. Although it was enormously popular, neo-expressionism had its detractors, who
14 saw the artists as opportunists who simulated emotion in order to appeal to the mar-
U) ket. By 1990, the neo-expressionist momentum had died down, but in its wake paint-
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c ing continued to attract critical attention, although with some rising and falling in its
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a. influence (especially when examined on a regional basis) and changes in the concerns
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of its practitioners. Neo Rauch, who was born in 1960 in Leipzig, East Germany, has
...... gained great notoriety in the twenty-first century as an oil painter who continues the
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grand tradition of large~scale history painting. Rauch's ambiguous narratives, layered
...... imagery, and appropriated styles conjure up a range of historical influences and refer-
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I- the neo-expressionism of the generation just before him [1-3]. Additionally, like many
acclaimed painters working currently, Rauch's paintings critique the art of painting,
cleverly manipulating painting's language of representation.
Like other traditional media, such as drawing and sculpture, the practice of paint-
ing saw its boundaries stretched and took on new life in the contemporary period.
What defines a painting? Can we still recognize one when we see one ? Thousands
upon thousands of paintings are created each year in the familiar portable, rectangular,
paint-on-canvas format. But exciting work has pushed painting into areas in which it
embraces unconventional materials and often overlaps with sculpture and installation
art. For example, Fred Tomaselli makes "paintings" that are collages of plants, pills
(over-the-counter and prescription), insect wings, and catalog clippings [color plate 22].
Kara Walker cuts silhouettes from paper to make large-scale murals [5-13]. Guillermo
Kuitca and Fabian Marcaccio, two artists from Argentina, exemplify the push to open
the venerable queen of the arts up to new possibilities that embrace the third dimension.
Kuitca has painted maps on full-size mattresses, while Marcaccio trusses his paintings
at odd angles between the walls and floor. Brazilian Adriana Varejao assembles wall-
based reliefs using tiles, oil, and foam [5-11].
Photography became a player. Even as brushy neo-expressionist painting garnered
headlines, the 1980s saw a rising tide of photo-based art. Artists had used photography
as a medium from its officially announced invention in 1839, but it was in the 1980s
that photography really escaped its secondary status and "moved to the very centre of
 15

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avant-garde art practices ... , rivalling painting and scu lpture in size, spectacular effects,
market appreciation, and critical importance. " 10 Large-scale color printing of photo-
graphs became feasible for the first time in the early 1980s, propelling the interest
of museums and collectors. Photography also exerted a noticeable influence on other
form s of art, particularly some genres of pain ting, which som etimes seemed to be play-
ing catch -up in striving to create a convincing illusion of the way the world "really"
(i.e., pho tographically) looks.
Photography also expanded its own boundaries as artists gave free rein to experi-
mentation, adopting new tech nologies such as the computer and hybridizing with other
forms of art, including installation and performance. More and more photographers
tu rned to elaborate fabricatio ns, constructing staged scenes that they then photographed
or manipulating and altering camera images after shooting. The widespread leap into
digital photography in the twenty-first cen tury facilitated and accelerated the manipula-
tion of photographs, with computer programs such as Photoshop replacing the hands-on
darkroom procedures needed to alter ana log negatives. An example of photograph y's
use as a tool for fabricating convincing portrayals of imaginary realms is Japanese pho-
tographer Yashio Itagaki's concoction Tourists on the Moon #2 (1998) [1-4].
16 1-4 Yoshio ltagaki I Tourists on the Moon #2, 1998
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Triptych, color photograph, 40 x 90 inches
"'O CREDIT: Courtesy of the artist and Jack the Pelican Presents, New York
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Sculpture as an art form widely expanded its sphere of influence, and the range
of content and forms within the genre expanded as well. In the 1970s, du ring the
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sculpture emphasized simplifi ed abstract volumes (what some critics referred to as
.s::. " primary structures"). In the 1980s, and extending into the present, sculptors dra-
I-
matically broadened the forms, techniques, and materials they selected. In addition
to creating sculptures from traditional materials, such as bronze, marble, and wood,
artists made sculptures from a wide array of m ateria ls as well as found objects.
For example, American sculptor Petah Coyne has incorporated a wide array of both
traditional and nontraditional materials into her distinctive suspended sculptures,
including ribbons, tree branches, shackles, hat pins, taxidermy ani mals, and chicken
wire fencing. To create Untitled #695 (Ghos t /First Communion) [1-5], Coyn e com -
bined an antique chain hoist, forged links and hooks, rope, wire, shaved hair, chicken
and tomato wire fencing, ca ble, cable nuts, acrylic polymer emulsion, acrylic paint,
black sand, and shackles. British sculptor Tony Cragg became known in the 1980s for
his wall-mounted, multipart figurative sculptures created by ar ranging found plas-
tic objects (e.g., packaging materials, throwaway plates, and plastic con tainers), often
all of the same color, into pictographic patterns. Furthermore, while sculptors con-
tinued to carve, cast, and construct discrete, uni que objects, others expanded their
practice so that sculpture overlapped with other art form s. Artists such as Robert
Gober [9-8] in th e United States and Dinos and Jake Chapman [5-3] in England pro-
duced works that incorporated multiple sculptural objects within their multimedia
installations.
The ready-made became the remix. Early in the twentieth century Dada artist
Marcel Duchamp famously exhibited unaltered found objects such as a u rinal and a
snow shovel as what he called ready-mades, or found sculptures. Numerous artists
 17

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Mixed media
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 since have experimented with found objects and images, including other Dada artists,
the surrealists, the so-called junk sculptors of the 1950s, pop artists, and a range of art-
ists interested in techniques of assemblage or the conceptual implications of the ready-
made. Performance artists likewise have mixed everyday movements, sounds, props,
and behaviors with more conventionally theatrical elements.
In the 1980s, in line with then up-to-the-minute theories of postmodernism, visual
artists adopted appropriation as an approach to using ready-made objects and images.
Appropriation artists comb both art history and vernacular culture for found objects,
styles, images, subjects, and compositions and Jecombine details borrowed here and
there into eclectic visual pastiches. Schlock and kitsch borrowings are readily combined
with details from high art, architecture, and design.11
American Jeff Koons references the slick refinement and packaging of mass-
produced consumer products in "the creation of his art. Koons's gleaming Rabbit (1986)
[1-6] is an appropriation of a novelty Mylar balloon, which the artist had cast in pol-
ished stainless steel. Koons knowingly fuses, and confuses, commercial glitz with the
polished forms of earlier modern art and the everyday subjects of pop art sculptures.
18
Like many of his other sculptures in which the artist appropriates actual consumer
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objects (e.g., kitsch statuary, toys) and remakes them in a new medium as highly crafted
c luxury objects for wealthy collectors, Koons's Rabbit appears to warmly embrace our
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zation devoid of deeper meaning.
In the twenty-first century new terminology has begun to emerge to capture
expanded practices and ideas around the concept of the ready-made. Borrowed from
hip-hop culture and the world of music, the terms sampling and remixing are some-
times substituted for the older terms appropriation and collage. The use of such terms
recognizes that found object practices now encompass the new media and data net-
works of the digital age, which give artists instant access to an endless supply of images,
sounds, and data, as well as the tools to recombine and reconfigure them at will. What
this all means for the future of artistic production and the value of old and new media
is open to debate.
Sound infiltrates the visual arts. Referring to art practices that take listening and
hearing as the main focus, sound art has become an increasingly important genre within
the visual arts. Susan Philipsz won England's 2010 Turner Prize for her sound installa-
tion Lowlands (which played overlapping recordings of the artist singing three differ-
ent versions of an ancient Scottish lament), the first time a work of sound art won this
important prize. Although Lowlands has no visual component, other works of sound
art often take a hybrid form that combines visual and aural components. There are
many overlaps and interconnections with experimental music. Sound art can involve
any theme, although we give the genre special attention in chapter 7, "Language." 12
New media attract artists. Video (and audio) technology attracted experiment-
ers within the field of art, notably Nam June Paik, as soon as it became available in
the 1960s. During the 1990s, video became a prominent medium, in part because its
time-based character supports a renewed interest in telling stories in art and exploring
narrative structures. Also in the 1990s, numerous artists adopted digital technologies
as small, powerful computers became affordable and software programs facilitated
sophisticated graphic manipulations. Artists used digital tools both in the service of
traditional media, designing the structure for a sculpture on a computer, for instance,
1-s Jeff Koons I Rabbit, 19as
Stainless steel
41x19 x 12 inches
CREDIT: The artist
 and as a new formal and conceptual arena in itself. With the widespread use of DVD
recording technology in the early 2000s, artists-and t he gallery system that derives
its profits from the sale of artworks-gained an important means of controlling the
sale of video and computer artworks in limited editions to collectors. Of course, DVDs
are easily copied, and in spite of copyright protection, bootleg versions of artists' orig-
inal recordings are now traded and downloaded on the Internet and viewed on sites
such as YouTube.
Meanwhile, fast-paced developments in digital video production and editing,
holography, light art, and interactive computer sites have spawned new arenas for
artistic exploration. These new media have also spilled over into the practice of other
media; for example, new m edia are often incorporated into installation and perform-
ance art events. 13
Virtual reality blurs boundaries. The blurring of the boundaries of fact and fab-
rication is epitomized by the development of virtual reality as a field of investigation.
/1
The term virtuality refers to an image or space that is not real but appears to be. In
our own time, these include cyberspace, the Internet, the telephone, television and vir-
20 tual reality." 14 Virtual reality proper generally refers to a simulated, computer-generated
u
<fl environment. A viewer wears special goggles and earphones and interacts with the envi-
c ronment by moving his or her head or manipulating controls. Throughout the 1980s and
ro
Cl.
x early 1990s, the promise of virtual reality outstripped the actual achievement, but since
w
u then advances in software and technology have made forays into virtual reality more
satisfying for viewer and artist/ designer alike. Work in virtual reality has been conducted
...... mainly in the realm of computer gaming, but visual artists are beginning to experiment
....
<{ with visual reality in ways that are expanding the boundaries of contemporary art .
Q)
..s:: New technologies produce new paradigms. Today, digital technologies have the
I- potential to alter images dramatically. Paradigms of the nature and structure of percep-
tion and conception are shifting. Particularly in the last half of the period this book cov-
ers, the availability of personal computers and the increasing sophistication and ease of
using computer graphics programs are bringing about "a t ransformation in the nature
of visuality probably more profound than the break that separates mediaeval imagery
from Renaissance perspective," in the words of art historian Jonathan Crary.15 We are
experiencing an epochal shift from an analog world, a world of everyday perception, to
a digital world rendered in binary code.
The computer stores vast quantities of detailed information digitized into a binary
code. It enables an image of any subject to be manipulated, duplicated, transformed,
and transmitted to a degree that is unpreceden ted in human history. Digital images of
subj ects both real and imaginary can look so convincing that the distinction between
the actual and the made-up is almost impossible to detect. At the same time, unlike
early viewers of photographs, today's audiences know that images are manipulated
and manufactured all the time; they allow themselves to suspend disbelief in order to
enjoy the illusion of reality. As a culture embracing and immersed in new media, we
appear on the verge of a general willingness to suspend disbelief in the paradigm of a
singular reality.
In addition to enabling rapid, radical manipulation of imagery, the computer now
makes possible the almost instantaneous dissemination of images and data of all kinds.
Since the mid-1990s, the growth of t he Internet and World Wide Web has allowed users
 to transmit and receive images and other information within virtual space instantly all
over the world. The meteoric rise in the use of digital technologies that connect wide
numbers of users in networks of social media is affecting the art world. Blog web-
sites, including Twitter, link the audience for art and enable unprecedented numbers
of people to interact and function as populist art critics sounding off on any and all
topics. Moreover, the digitalization of information is a powerful force in speeding u p
the sharing of artist-generated projects in all media, as well as the appropriation by
computer-savvy artists of information streams from other arenas of culture. In our role
as viewers we no longer are dependent on being in aspecific place. We can plug into
the Web or into our computer's memory anywhere we have access. Acknowledging
this trend, the Whitney Museum included Internet art for the first time in its Biennial
Exhibition in 2000. 16
Vast quantities of images and data are flowing from every source imaginable-
science, art, advertising, news, entertainment, governments, and, increasingly, ordinary
citizens (using personal digital cameras, cell phone cameras, scanners, and webcams).
Enormous digital databases are replacing physical archives (the latter ranging from
21
libraries to family photo albums). The creative exploration and manipulation of digital
databases as virtual structures is now central to the practice of an increasing number
of new media artists. Their practice can resemble that of a virtual architect-reconfig-
uring an existing built structure (the database) in order to accentuate or reveal new
properties and ideas. ~
In addition t o the accelerated exchange of information and images, another sig-
...,
0
0.
nificant quality of global visual culture is the uniformity of imagery that is dis- rrl
x
seminated by the mass m edia. Through this process, many people share an identical -0
Ol
storehouse of mediated experiences. Such high uniformity of memory never occurred ::J
0.
(/)
prior to the invention of the Internet, television, radio, cinema, and photography.
With each new technological breakthrough, the capacity of pop culture to overwhelm
the sphere of private experience expands. Today's mass m edia information culture
is channeled into formats that tend to homogenize the presentation of information.
Contemporary artists, however, have found ways to counteract this phenomenon. For
example, David Byrne, widely known as a musician, utilizes Microsoft's PowerPoint
software to produce imaginative illustrations and animation that are a far cry from
the staid sameness of most PowerPoint presentations seen in the business or aca-
demic world.17
Although the languages of digital media are in their infancy, they are bound t o
have a radical impact on visual art as the twenty-first century continues to unfold.
Artists who are concentrating on this area are pioneers in helping us to confront
what it means to live in a world of accelerated information flow from multiple chan-
nels and to find ourselves entranced by manufactured virtual worlds. Meanwhile,
many of the most interesting critical theories of the twenty-first centu ry-evolving
from the emerging disciplines of new media and visual culture studies-take on the
expanding varieties and sites of artistic practices as key areas of analysis. Already the
paradigm that advancing technologies produce a heightening of homogenization is
challenged: when there were only three primary television networks in the United
States, the commonality of television viewing among the population increased. Now,
with the exponential increase in television networks, as well as the rise of alternative
 media, there is less likelihood that an y of us is tuned in to the same programming as
our neighbors.

A Spectrum of Voices Emerges

In the United States in the period from the late 1960s to the star t of the 1980s, the
rebellion s and successes of the women's m ovement and the civil rights movement
influenced art by opening up the stage to more voices. These newly visible participants
brought new ideas to the field, as well as expanding ideas about means, medi a, and
techniques for expressing those ideas. Since 1980 the highly visible activism of LGBT
artists has added m ore voices to the mix. Although they have yet to achieve full equal-
ity in terms of income, influence, prestige, and recognition, women and minority art-
ists in the West have become empowered and have had a major impact on who makes
art, what art is about, and how art is viewed and interpreted. Artists of color, women
artists, and LGBT artists have been at the heart of discussions abou t contemporary art
in the 1980s, 1990s, and today. The collective imagination of what is possible in art has
22 opened up to acknowledge diversity.
(/) Over the past t hirty years, artists have become more consciou s of diversity inter-
"O
c nationally as well as in their midst. For example, beginning abou t 1980 the U.S. art
ro
0.
x world once again turned its attention to artistic developments in Europe. Subsequently,
w
"O
as a result of shifts in national borders, regimes, and political and economic structures,
'-
0
artists from all over the world have become widely known in Western Europe and
5....., North America, often because they have emigrated, contributing to their visibility.
'-
<( Artists and audiences outside the West likewise are paying attention to develop-
Q) ments both within and far beyond th eir borders. New collectors and art dealers are
..c
f- emerging all over the world, pulling the focus from Europe and the United States as the
centers of gravity. From 1980 onward, with increasing complications, artists in Africa,
South Am erica, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific are gaining visibility on a world stage.
At the same time, national and region al issues are complicated by global connections:
diasporas connecting local communities with kin communities elsewhere in the world,
shared inheritance of language or religious identity across borders, networks forged
by mass media and new communications technologies, and the broader geopolitics of
national and international politics and conflict s. We live in an internationalized world,
in which people with different cultural knowledge are meeting, mixing, and negotiat-
ing histories, defini tions, and boundaries. Artists use visual means to convey positions
or paradoxes about where cultures draw boundary lines and what belongs on one side
or the other.
To cite just one example of a complicated path followed by a contemporary artist:
Cai Guo-Qiang was born in Q uanzhou City, China, in 1957 and grew up during t he
Cultural Revolu tion. He studied stage design in Shanghai before moving to Japan in
1986. In 1995 he relocated again to N ew York City. His art production includes large-
scale drawings, installations, and performance even ts and has involved gunpowder,
fireworks, Chinese herbal medicines, computers, and vending machines, among many
other materials and means. Cai's elaborate installation Cultural Melting Bath, which
has been installed in various loca tions, including the Queens M useum in New York
in 1997 [1-7], provides a symbol of the therapeutic cultural mixing Cai hopes that his
 23

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1-7 ca i GLI o-Q ian g I Cultural Melting Bat h: Projects for the 20th Century, 1997
First rea lized August 1997 at Queens Museum of Art, New York.
18 Ta ihu rocks, hot tub with hydrothera py jets, bathwater infused with herbs, banya n tree root,
translucent fabric, and live birds. Dimensions varia ble.
Various ven ues. Collection du Musee d 'art contemporain de Lyon.
Insta l lation view at Quee ns Museum of Art, 1997
CRED IT: Photo by Hiro I hara, courtesy of Cai Studio
 art fosters. The installation includes a Chinese rock garden, banyan tree roots, and a
Western-style hot tub infused with Chinese medicinal herbs, in which a multicultural
array of museum visitors are invited to bathe together. A controversial artist in China
for many years, today Cai travels frequently back to China to work, and he served as
art director of visual and special effects for the opening and closing ceremonies for the
2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. His mid-career survey, which included his dra-
matic installation Inopportune: Stage One [1-1 ], toured internationally and was at the
National Art Museum of China during the Olympics.

Globalization
Awareness of international developments in art has made the art world more dynamic
and complex. But internationalism is not an unequivocal good, particularly when art
production comes under market pressure from international institutions and corpora-
tions that support the production and display of contemporary art. Increasingly, the
world is becoming linked by a global economy, a development that is affecting the pro-
24
duction and reception of art. Consumer capitalism, especially the approach developed
Cf)
-0
most aggressively in the United States, made huge strides during the contemporary
c period in extending its reach to global markets. The collapse of the communist sys-
ro
0..
x tem in the former Soviet Union and the economic rise of countries of the Pacific Rim,
w
especially China with its steps toward a more capitalist-style economy, have opened up
portions of the world that had been significantly insulated from capitalist business prac-
......, tices. Meanwhile, multinational corporations and supranational economic institutions
I.....
<( such as the World Bank and World Trade Organization (WTO) are engaged in activities
Cl)
..c that sometimes support and sometimes are in conflict with national interests. Systems
I- of power now make up a globalized network that is not centered in any one country.
The emergence of a linked global society (linked both technologically and eco-
nomically) has not resulted in international unity and worldwide equality; indeed, it
is highly questionable whether any institution operating on a global scale can possibly
represent the political, cultural, or aesthetic interests of the diverse individuals in all
countries. According to Stuart Hall, "you see massive disparities of access, of visibility,
huge yawning gaps between who can and can't be represented in any effective way." 18
The global economy has affected the entertainment and culture markets.
International art fairs and biennial and triennial international contemporary art sur-
vey exhibitions have proliferated and are held in numerous cities on every continent
(at least eighty-five locations by 2005), to the point at which they are nearly impossible
to keep up with. 19 Geographic mobility has become important, and artists, gallery deal-
ers, critics, and collectors who have the resources to participate in international events
increase their visibility and influence. The directors and curators who select artists and
orchestrate the international events have remarkable status and power.
In addition to globalized markets, the emergence of new telecommunications
technologies, specifically the continued spread of television throughout the world and
the rapid development of the computer and the Internet for both personal and busi-
ness use, has significantly promoted globalization. At the same time, not every person
everywhere has access to computers and the Internet, and new technologies reinforce
privilege and power for those who are well connected to the flow of information.
 Besides issues of access and visibility, another issue is the potential for h om og-
enization of culture. One could argue that globalization is dehumanizing people and
leveling out differences becau se it is bringing the sam e con sumer products, images, and
information to everyone all over the world. In terms of art, critic Julia A. Fenton asks,
"Has the explosion of international art expositions around the world, and the mobility
of artists from all cultures (either through the high art m arket or the internet) served
to erase the particular in favor of the general- in style, content and theory? Do for-
mal considerations again become primary when we have obliterated cultural bounda-

ries and posited a new universality ?" 2 Critics observe, for instance, that expensive but
repetitive video and multimedia installations are ubiquitous in international surveys
because they are eye-catch ing while also portable and reproducible.
At the same time, many artists continue to produce art whose materials, techniques,
subjects, and forms appear to relate to local histories and identities. Such expressions of
cultural difference often are genuine and can serve as a form of resistance to globaliza-
tion by disrupting standardization. H owever, som e of this kind of art is a simulation
of cultural difference, promoted by international capitalism because it is marketable.
25
Fredric Jameson, an importan t Marxist theorist, has pointed out th e many contradic-
tions in globalization, such as the argument about w hether globalizing economic forces
prefer to market cultural sameness or difference. Jameson further poin ts out the irony
that nationalism, once seen as drivi ng European colonialism, is today espoused as a
model by form erly colonized people who want to resist forces of globalization.21 Gilane ~
0
Tawadros states, "The idea o f n ation continues to grip our collective imagination, Q..
equally in the art gallery as on the football pitch. Nationality remains an important rri
x
vehicle for expressing a shared identity, whether real or imagined." 22 uQl
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(/)

Theory Flexes Its Muse Ies

The relationship of current art to theory can be a source of consternation, especially
for those who are relative n ewcom ers to the field. Artists-and students studying
studio art-often wonder, Why do I need to kn ow a bout theory? Can ' t I j u st make
m y art, and doesn't it m ean what is visibly there, without the need for explanation?
Viewers of art likewise may subscribe to the belief that theory is not necessary for
appreciation- as in the oft repeated assertion, " I don' t know much about art, but I
know what I like."
Theoretical frameworks may prove vexing to the uninitiated, bu t numerous artists
and critics active since 1980 have been h eavily invested in theory and critical analysis.
In the wake of Conceptual art, art became increasingly theoretical and idea-driven and
began to sprout difficult and obscure branches. The direct embrace of theory seemed to
crest midway through this period; by the early 1990s influential art graduate schools
in Europe and the United States were advocating the acquisition of theoretical knowl-
edge and teaching analytical and interpretative skills. Discussing Master of Fine Arts
degree programs in the United Sta tes, writer and curator Bennett Simpson maintained,
"Employing conceptual, post-minimal, video and performance artists from the six-
ties and seventies, schools such as CalArts, UCLA, Art Center, Yale and the Whitney
Museum's Independent Study Programme tended to privilege intellectual and critical
study over the more traditional t rai ning in manual skills like drawing, figure pain t-
 ing and sculpture. 'Knowledge work' became detached from its antecedent, technical
work." 23 (Although today technical skill and refined production values have become
priorities again for many of the best known artists' creations, often these are made by
assistants working for the artist or his or her institutional sponsor.)
What is theory and what is its function? Although delving deeply into art theory
can seem daunting, becoming acquainted with basic theoretical concepts is valuable for
anyone who strives to learn about the world of contemporary art. In fact, a key pur-
pose of theory is to assist in learning about art. Feminist art historian Hilary Robinson
defines the term theory as "a set of ideas and knowledge that can be used in analysis."
Robinson's definition combines two central factors. First, Robinson emphasizes that a
theory is (or is on the way to becoming) a coherent, cohesive, and systematic arrange-
ment of thoughts. Second, a theory in art has a function: a theory is a formulation of
related ideas "that can be used in analysis." 24
In our view, art theory is a conscious, deliberate thoughtfulness about art; theory
offers an interconnected set of assumptions, hypotheses, and predictions about possible
meanings, purposes, and judgments of art. Theory provides an intellectual lens through
26 which we interrogate the practice of art; theory activates a mode of thinking about art,
(/)
-0
providing us with a purposeful set of questions that frames our engagement.
c Complicating matters, the 1970s and 1980s saw the dramatic rise in prominence
ro
0.
x of various writings on culture and other fields of intellectual discourse, such as film
w
and literary studies, linguistics, and history, and in turn the discussion and deploy-
>--
0 ment of a broad spectrum of these writings in the analysis of contemporary visual art.
5 Fundamental issues about the meaning and purpose of art were explored and debated .
......
>--
<!: Should art be politically motivated and directed? Is art always political, even when
<l>
..c the artist doesn't believe he or she does this purposely? A theoretical manifestation of
I- this stance may claim that art is most effective when it challenges conventional ways
of thinking in order to effect social change. Is an aesthetics that focuses centrally on
beauty too restrictive? Momentum built, and some strands of theory gained power
and excitement as intellectual energy concentrated, especially around the work that
was anchored in the theoretical writings of key twentieth-century French intellectuals
and noteworthy precursors from both Europe and the United States (such as Walter
Benjamin, a German intellectual who made notable contributions in a wide range of
fields, including philosophy and literature).
Concepts from a range of theoretical perspectives, including postmodernism, semi-
otics, poststructuralism, feminism, and postcolonialism, to name several of the most
influential, were applied with increasing frequency in the analysis of contemporary art
and, in turn, helped shape the creation and reception of art produced since 1980. The
theoretical critique of the period examined many arenas of visual culture, including
the structure and biases of art history; the politics and practices of museums, galleries,
and festivals; the nature and operation of art-market economics and how reputations
are built; the visual means through which mass media influence ideas and taste; and
the representation in visual media of all kinds of identities revolving around gender,
race, sexuality, age, religion, and nationality. We discuss theories in more depth as they
become relevant in different thematic chapters. In the present volume, we focus prima-
rily on theories that gained prominence and power during the contemporary period.
Here we provide just a brief overview.
 Postmodernism became a catch-all term. The term postmodernism cropped up in
art criticism in the 1970s but became more commonly used in the 1980s. Writers and
thinkers engaged with postmodernism include Jean-Fran~ois Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard,
Julia Kristeva, Charles Jencks, and Umberto Eco. The term is vague and open ended,
initially implying an opposition to some of the tenets of modernism, including mod-
ernists' confidence in social and technological progress, faith that history unfolds in a
rational, linear direction, and belief in individual self-determination. Postmodernists are
skeptical about progress, tend to be anti-elitist (for example, embracing kitsch as readily
as the art of museums), think that the forms of culture are hybrid, eclectic, and hetero-
geneous rather than pure and easily defined and contained, and believe that individuals
are inevitably molded by culture. (Prior to postmodernism, various artists, including the
Dadaists and many Surrealists, also were interested in kitsch.) Postmodernists believe we
are all prisoners, to some degree, of'identities constructed for us by artistic and popular
media, among other cultural influences. Moreover, the contemporary world is becoming
increasingly more artificial because secondhand images filtered through television, film,
and other media now substitute for direct experiences and exert a powerful influence on
27
how we perceive and understand the world. In addition, more and more mediated images
and experiences are manufactured illusions with no basis in tangible reality-simulacra, -l
:::r
to use Baudrillard's term. Baudrillard, according to art historian John Rajchman, "took ct>
)>
the words 'simulation' and 'simulacrum' to describe the 'Beaubourg effect'-no longer ....
.......
able to distinguish model from copy, we had lost any sense of reality, leaving us only
with 'irony,' hyperrealism, kitsch, quotation, appropriation." 25
There is no single style associated with postmodernism; instead, any and all styles
and visual vocabularies are valid, and pluralism rules. However, appropriation became
a frequent strategy used by postmodernists. Most postmodern appropriationists mine
the distant and recent past with little historical consciousness of what visual represen-
tations meant in their own past context. Postmodernists often quote from the past and
vernacular culture with an attitude of irony or even parody.
Many artists use appropriation uncritically, simply adopting the approach as a con-
temporary artistic fashion. But some artists attend to the conceptual implications of the
ready-made, using found objects and appropriated styles and images as a means to raise
philosophical questions about whether it is possible for artists to be original or express
authentic feelings and beliefs. Such artists include German Gerhard Richter, the former
Russian team Komar and Melamid, and American Cindy Sherman. The most politi-
cally motivated appropriationists, including American Sherrie Levine, also challenge as
elitist the modernist identification and celebration of a handful of supposedly innova-
tive artists. By appropriating, such artists imply that originality does not matter.
Although influential in the 1980s and 1990s, today the term postmodernism has
become such a generalized catchall term for so many different trends and ideas that
the term has lost nuance and functionality. Moreover, many people disavow the term
as dualistic and as keeping Western aesthetics in the center by implying a dialectical
relationship with modernism for all c:ountertrends.
Art is understood as a kind of language. Influenced by the ideas of Swiss lin-
guist Ferdinand de Saussure and the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce,
both active in the late nineteenth century, complex permutations of semiotics (the sci-
ence of signs) were applied to the visual arts in the late twentieth century. Whereas
 linguists analyze the structure of (verbal) language, semioticians open up virtually any
field of human activity as a potential subj ect for an analysis of the signs that function
within that field. Clothing styles, rules of etiquette, codes of conduct for men and for
women-all of these and countless other realms of experience can be analyzed in terms
of semiotics. Scholars of visual culture have been especially eager to adopt and adapt
semiotics to their field.
As scholars (and artists) surmised, all of the arts also function on the basis of the
conventional use of signs, and so semiotics is a powerful tool for the analysis of the
practice of art. Art topics such as styles of renresentation, the rules of linear perspec-
tive, and the metalanguage of various media (painting, for instance, signals "tradition "
in a way that video does not) are ripe for analysis through the magnifying glass of
semiotics. For example, Cal Lane has developed a process of cutting industrial metal
with a welding torch to create lace patterns in automobile fenders, garden shovels [1-8],
Dumpsters, and other found objects. In terms of semiotics, lace making is understood
as a feminine textile practice used for domestic purposes, whereas metal cutting signals
a traditionally masculine skill used to make tools and machines. Lane, who is female,
28 creates semiotic dissonance by mixing the two.
(/)
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Theories associated with poststructuralism are closely identified with postmod-
c ernism and semiotics. What poststructuralism added to the mix was the concept that
m
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x the underlying structure of a language or any other symbolic system is not fixed and
w
-0
permanent. 26 With individual variations, these poststructuralist thinkers argued that
any symbolic system or cultural artifact (for example, a language, a work of literature,
a painting, a social system)-what they called a text-can be shown to have internal
contradictions and hidden ideologies. Through this perspective, the culture we live in,
like any culture, can be seen as a forest of signs; the meaning of these signs around us
shift, sometimes in subtle ways and sometimes in dramatic turns, as competing ide-
ologies negotiate and at times struggle mightily, always reaching for the upper hand.
Whoever gets to determine what images and signs represent, what images and signs
are made, and what images and signs are seen controls in no small measure the ongoing
production, meaning, and maintenance of culture.
Poststructuralists use a strategy developed by French philosopher Jacques Derrida
known as deconstruction to analyze visual and verbal texts. Deconstruction looks at
a text or symbolic system in terms of the underlying worldview that gave rise to it,
exposing contradictions and hidden biases in order to challenge the validity of the
worldview as well as the text. Derrida also argued that the meanings of texts are
unstable because different readers (or viewers, in the case of visual texts) bring their
own worldviews to their reading and looking, which skew interpretation. No text has
any single, correct interpretation; meanings change with the reader, the time, and the
context.27
According to postmodernists and poststructuralists, truth and reality are not as
truthful and real as they may seem; in fact, there are many truths and many realities.
All truths and realities are rdative and contingent, constructed by culture, depend-
ent on context, and subject to negotiation and change; none is inherent in the natural
order of things. Moreover, today the contradictions are more apparent because the
cultural landscape is filled with texts that express competing worldviews, simultane-
ously available and bleeding over into one another's domains because of the rapid
 29

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1-8 CaI Lane I Shovels, 2005

Materials: Plasma cut steel
CREDIT: Courtesy of Foley Gallery

flow of information from numerou s sources constantly bombarding us. These texts
interact and compete with one another (creating a co ndition of intertextuality, to use
the t erm favored by Derrida and Roland Barthes, another influential French theorist).
Poststructuralist thinkers believe that the onslaught of information in our m edia-
sa turated society has made it impossible for any single worldview to dominate. Instead,
boundaries and divisions between categories of all kinds are eroding. In par ticular, the
dualities, or binary pairs, so common in Western thinking and culture no longer are
convincing as polar opposites. Male and female, gay and straight, white and black,
public and private, painting and sculpture, high art and low art-distinctions between
 these and other categories dissolve in a postmodern world and the elements merge
into hybrids.
Feminism and postcolonialism offer bolder, broader perspectives.The perspectives
of feminism and postcolonialism have profoundly affected contemporary visual culture.
Feminists and postcolonialists challenge artists, art historians, critics, and audiences to
consider politics and social issues. Feminists look at experience from the perspective of
gender and are particularly concerned with ensuring that women have the same rights
and opportunities as men. Feminist theoretical critiques analyze hierarchical structures
that contribute to male dominance, what fe!llinists call patriarchy; that is, the cul-
tural beliefs, rules, and structures that reinforce and sustain masculine values and male
power. A key area of feminist analysis in the visual arts is the gaze, a term used to refer
to how categories of people are stereotyped in visual representations by gender, race,
sexuality, and other factors.
Postcolonialists are interested in cultural interactions of all kinds (in politics, eco-
nomics, religion, the arts, philosophy, mass media, and so on) among peoples of differ-
ent nations, regions, and communities. Postcolonialists examine how peoples' histories
30
and identities demonstrate the economic, political, social, and psychological legacy in
(/)
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particular locations of colonialism, which oppressed indigenous peoples and resulted
c: in hybridity and syncretism, or a mingling of peoples and cultures. They also ana-
ro
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x lyze migrations and displacements of peoples (diasporas and nomadism, to use two of
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the current terms) and highlight the diversity of cultures that coexist in contempo-
rary communities. Postcolonialists' attention to the visual cultures of Africa, Asia, the
....., Americas, and the Pacific has helped foster the internationalization of the contempo-
......
<( rary art world .
<l.l
..c: Many different theories have influenced feminism and postcolonialism, and ideas
f- and positions are constantly mutating. 28 The perspectives are usually multidisciplinary,
drawing from literature, history, sociology, anthropology, and other disciplines. Since
/1
1980 critics and artists have used deconstructive strategies to analyze, or decode, "
how power functions to limit the achievements and potential of women and postcolo-
nial people around the world. Feminists and postcolonialists have applied other theo-
ries as well, including Marxism and psychoanalysis, and have contributed theories of
their own. Postcolonialists have promoted the use of theoretical models that attempt to
understand the visual arts of various cultures on their own terms rather than in com-
parison with art traditions in Europe and the United States.29
The theories just discussed, as well as others not discussed, such as Marxist and
psychoanalytic theories, permeate the production, reception, and interpretation of con-
temporary art. But the explicit embrace of theory has not been constant over the past
three decades, and its influence is often diffuse and unacknowledged rather than sys-
tematic. For example, there has been a widespread cultural backlash against feminism;
as a result, younger women artists are often reluctant to call themselves feminists, even
when their art and ideas support feminist tenets.
Artists' attention to theory seemed to wane after 1990, and the debates of the
previous decade over modernism, postmodernism, and poststructuralism died down.
According to curator Toby Kamps, in "an ideologically uncertain moment, artistic
strategies of the 1980s-appropriation, critiques of commodification, deconstruction-
seemed empty or calculating. Instead, artists took up accessibility, communication,
 humor, and play. As a style, Postmodernism, positing stylistic eclecticism, social criti-
cism, and end-of-history irony, appeared bankrupt; as an attitude, however, it was the
definitive zeitgeist. The art of the 1990s, with its interest in complexity, multivalency,
and ambiguity, mirrored an uncertain, transitional period." 30
Although in general over the past fifteen years artists seem less committed to
strong political positions and not as well versed in academic theories, this does not
mean that art has lacked meaningful content. To the contrary, a preoccupation with
deep moral and ethical questions and resonant themes, such as political agency, spir-
ituality, beauty, violence, sexuality, transience, extinction, memory, and healing, is a
powerful current in the most recent art. The real world is treacherous and volatile.
According to Richard Cork, the question posed by Joseph Beuys's 1985 work The End
of the Twentieth Century still resonates: " Is [our era] about to terminate prematurely
in a nuclear apocalypse, or will it be succeeded by an era which asserts a less destruc-
tive set of values ?" 31 Or as Homi K. Bhabha wrote: "The '80s inaugurated a dream of
difference which is now being haunted by horror and doubt: abhorrence of the 'deterri-
torialized flows' of global terror networks; doubts about the feasibility of global politics
31
with the increase in 'homeland' security and international surveillance; doubts about
preemptive strikes; doubts about war; doubts about our rights and responsibilities for -i
::r
the world and ourselves. What happened to the dream ?" 32 Cl)

-
)>
We end this section with an extended example in which we unpack some of the .....
complexities of how actual artists have engaged with theory in their creative practice.
Our example addresses contemporary artists who knowingly engage with the language a.
of abstract art in a semiotic manner. rn
x
Abstraction is intimately associated with the high modernism of the twentieth u(I)
century in Western art, which is often targeted and devalued in contemporary the- ::J
a.
ory. The "heroic" generation of post-World War II American abstract painters, including (f)

abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock, believed fervently in art as self-expression

and maintained that artists should work intuitively as much as possible, relying on the
subconscious to stimulate vital, uncensored gestures and marks. They believed that
every artist has a unique, "authentic" touch, as identifiable as a person's handwriting,
which will emerge if the artist creates in a free process. They also believed that recep-
tive viewers have a visceral response to the resulting paintings, echoing the passion
of their creator. In contrast, many in our current age are skeptical that genuine self-
expression is possible and argue that our "individual" expressions and responses are
really just reflections of cultural conditioning. Maybe at one time a painter could make
a fluid gesture that was sincerely free, but today's painters must be self-consciously
aware that a gestural style is supposed to be a sign of freedom, and thus they can no
longer make gestures in a spontaneous, unself-conscious manner.
Artists today who engage with abstraction in a semiotic way might adopt char-
acteristics of the abstract expressionists or Minimalists precisely because they know
those devices have become conventions that a knowledgeable audience recognizes. One
artist might make obviously contrived ges_tures to subvert the notion of painting as
spontaneous expression; another artist might choose a grid or another convention of
geometric abstraction to critique an earlier generation's dreams of social utopia and
"encode" a warning about ideological rigidity. For example, American painter Peter
Halley has used rectangular motifs reminiscent of Piet Mondrian and other painters
 of geometric abstraction to design images that hint at diagrams for a network of pas-
sages, perhaps in a prison ward or underground bunker. American Rachel Lachowitz's
lipstick-coated copies of Minimalist sculptures mock the supposed "masculine" objec-
tivity and logic encoded in those impersonal, hard-edged structures. Lachowitz's choice
of lipstick as an art material signals, in semiotic terms, a conscious application of femi-
nist theory into the arena of art world politics. Her choice is additionally inflected with
humor and irony, a sign that, in the end, she realizes her action will probably have little
consequence.
Is abstract art a worn-out style from the.. past? Even in the face of skepticism, some
contemporary artists choose to work abstractly with heartfelt commitment rather than
irony. Those who argue that art is valuable when it provides a focus for perception and
contemplation often prefer abstractio.n. The reductions of abstraction yield a strong
contrast to the visual overload of mass-media images. And without recognizable images
or narrative to occupy their thoughts, viewers are not distracted from the immediate
sensory experience of looking. Today's artists who are sincere about abstraction are
not necessarily returning to the abstract expressionists' notion of abstraction as self-
32
expression. As painter Laurie Fendrich writes, abstraction "is also about ideas-the
(f)
u complex struggle between order and chaos, for example, or how the flux of the organic
c world modifies the rigor of geometry." 33 Abstract painting can serve as an antidote to
ro
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u

Social Experience as Art

Critical theory is constantly undergoing transformation and negotiation, particularly
as novel forms of art take the stage. In the twenty-first century, one of the areas of
theory that has gained traction concerns art that invites participation by viewers, par-
ticularly social interactions. According to scholar Claire Bishop, the term work of art
may not even be appropriate for these kinds of activities. Bishop says that participatory
art projects are "less likely to be 'works' than social events, publications, workshops or
performances.... The intersubjective space created through these projects becomes the
focus-and medium-of artistic investigation."34
Many critics and curators use the term relational aesthetics for the analysis of
art focused on interhuman relations, adopting the expression advocated by influen-
tial French critic Nicolas Bourriaud in the mid-1990s.35 Bourriaud, according to Nadja
Rottner, applied the term to a particular group of artists "and what he considers their
novel approach to a socially-conscious art of participation: an art that takes as its con-
tent the human relations elicited by the artwork." Relational art's boundaries expand
to include the lived, sensory experiences of viewers interacting with other people
and perhaps with the artist in a shared social situation. The ability to promote the
social situation is much more important than any tangible objects or images an art-
ist might create or employ. Rottner explains, "For Bourriaud, the relational artist is a
social engineer, who establishes 'situations' to be used, rather than objects to be con-
templated .... Intersubjectivity and conviviality are Bourriaud's two key concepts. He
argues that we should not judge the physical manifestation of a relational work aes-
thetically, but only its 'formation' of intersubjective interchange between people (that
is, the work's social effects are more important than its appearance) ." 36
 Other critics, including Bishop, have critiqued aspects of Bourriaud's formulation
because he does not envision a political dimension to relational art. These critics advo-
cate participatory art that engages in institutional critique and aims to improve soci-
ety. Meaning is elaborated collectively rather than by means of individual responses. 37
Forerunners of this point of view include Marxist-influenced critics earlier in the
twentieth century, such as Walter Benjamin, as well as Guy Debord, a key figure in
the Situationist International in the late 1950s and 1960s, who called for the construc-
tion of participatory situations ultimately to construct a classless society beyond the
bonds of religion and capitalism.
Cai's Cultural Melting Bath [l-7], discussed earlier, provides one example of rela-
tional art. The conviviality among the bathers sharing the tub is the central aspect of
the art, rather than the tub itself ~s a physical, sculptural entity. A more intense ver-
sion of interhuman exchange occurred in Serbian Marina AbramoviC's The Artist Is
Present (2010) [color plate 1], performed by the artist in the central atrium of New
York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) every day the museum was open for two and
a half months. (A retrospective exhibition with the same title was on view elsewhere in
33
the museum.) The artist sat under bright lights for hours at a time, facing one visitor
after another seated across a long table, her steady gaze unwavering. Abramovic was
committed to her sustained presence as a form of physical endurance, while each visi-
tor was free to decide how long or short a duration to sit opposite the artist. The social
exchange between artist and viewer involved what critic Jorg Heiser calls "delegated
action." According to Heiser, in this form of exchange the artist gives up control over
meaning. He explains, "This term ['delegated action'] makes clear that besides a rela-
tionship being established, there is also sharing or total relinquishing of responsibility
for actions, handing over partial control either to the participants or to the process
itself." 38
In some instances of relational art, the artist is not involved as an active participant
in the social encounter. British-German artist Tino Seghal engineers encounters in art
exhibition spaces that are an extreme version of this type. For instance, in a project
that gained much attention at the Guggenheim Museum in 2010, Seghal offered The
Progress, delegating responsibility for encounters to "interpreters" (as Seghal calls
them) who engaged museum visitors in conversation while walking up the museum's
famous spiral ramp. (There were no images or objects on display, and the artist was
not present.) In succession, a young child, adolescent, adult, and elderly person would
engage the visitor in a discussion of the idea of progress. Seghal does not permit official
documentation of his works; the only residue is located in the memory of the interpret-
ers and visitors and in art criticism.39
Our brief foray into the terrain of relational aesthetics is intended to suggest that
it is valuable for anyone who wants to engage deeply and richly in contemporary art
to gain an increasing fluency in the theories that are currently prominent in the work
of influential artists, scholars, and critics. Even the beginning art student and viewer of
art should bear in mind that all theory.stems from the thinking of engaged people. It is
not a privileged activity open only to a small band of the initiated. Your own theoreti-
cal musing about the purposes, values, and meaningfulness of works of art can develop
cogency. There is a close connection between theories and values, but they are not
the same. If someone writes that art is always political (that all artistic production is
 implicitly or explicitly ideological), then a theoretical idea is being advanced. If some-
one writes that art should be political, then a criterion of evaluation is being advanced.
Testing your ideas in the context of actual works of art, as well as in dialogue with
others who are equally engaged in thinking and looking at art, can provide you with a
rich framework for helping to shape your view of art that you have known for a long
time, as well as art you are meeting for the first time. Our words of advice are to remain
flexible as you continue encountering new forms of thought-and that, ultimately, is
what both works of art and theories are: forms of thought.

Art Meets Contemporary Culture

One of the leitmotifs of art over the past hundred years has been the blurring of
distinctions between the realin of art and other categories of culture. In the contem-
porary period, the dissolution of boundaries between art and life has continued in a
number of directions. There continues to be cross-fertilization between high and low
art. The use of found objects and the ready-made, along with appropriation and remix-
34 ing of images and styles, remain significant directions, frequently involving borrow-
(fl ings from consumer and popular culture. For example, the creative use of comic book
"'O
c and cartoon imagery and styles has become a thriving subculture of visual culture as
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w Popular culture, including television, films, rock music, and video games, has a
"'O
powerful influence on artists. At the same time, art more and more appears to be in
competition with the bold graphics, seductive objects, and lively stories of commerce
and entertainment. Some artists adapt by making art that has become more like enter-
tainment, adopting strategies of display and production from popular culture, install-
ing multimedia spectacles in exhibition sites, crossing over into the domains of film,
music, and fashion, and serving professionally as consultants and even entrepreneurs
in commercial enterprises such as restaurants and magazines. Criticizing the trend,
photographer Jeff Wall said, "I think a new kind of art has emerged since the '70s,
a kind that is easier to appreciate, more like entertainment, more attached to media
attitudes... . It's much closer to entertainment and depends on production value and on
spectacle in a way that serious art never did before."4-0
Distinctions between art and the larger visual culture are dissolving and even dis-
appearing. Artists bring non-art experiences into the sphere of art; they also introduce
art into the larger visual culture. Artists mingle their works with other products of
visual culture by choosing not to limit their display opportunities to art venues only.
Artists, according to curator Benjamin Weil, "have been exploring approaches akin to
an ambient strategy, focusing on ways to insert their projects within the chaos of an
overmediated public sphere. Billboards, usually designed to advertise commercial prod-
ucts, have been used by artists such as the late Felix Gonzalez-Torres to ' sell' ideas.
Marquees of abandoned theaters are ideal surfaces for the placement of inconspicuous
messages; stickers, posters, and other forms of street culture become compelling instru-
ments in the hands of artists." 41
The pervasiveness of new information and communication technologies, which
have been embraced enthusiastically by people around the world, is a powerful influ-
ence on the production of contemporary art in countries from Korea to Brazil. Not
 only do we live in a new world of greatly expanded information, but also the struc-
ture of information has changed dramatically. The decentralized Internet of Google,
YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter is vastly different from the world of phys-
ical libraries, handwritten diaries, and printed books, newspapers, and encyclopedias.
The Internet is bringing us closer to the concept of a universal library/ marketplace
where one can search for scholarly articles, news, recipes, past acquaintances, maps,
weather reports, medical information, pornography, consumer products, and trivia or
watch video on almost any subject imaginable, in formats from movies to television
programs to live footage from webcams that orginary people have installed in their
"private" living spaces. The creation of knowledge is social because anyone can add
to the flow of information. For instance, Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia begun in
2001, had nineteen million articles written collaboratively by volunteers around the
world by 2011.
The term rhizome was used conceptually by French philosophers Gilles Deleuze
and Felix Guattari in their book A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
to describe nonhierarchical knowledge networks that allow for multiple entry and exit
points. 42 They borrowed the term from the botanical rhizome, a category that includes 35
ginger, some species of iris and ferns, and similar plants that send out horizontal stems
and shoots from their nodes. Deleuze and Guattari used the term to characterize
research and thought that is interconnected but has no beginning and end, has no set
pathways through the system, resists rigid organization and dominating ideas, and has
the capacity to link together heterogeneous elements. Cartography, which allows you
to enter a map from any point rather than follow a set path, is a long-standing example
of a rhizomatic system. Rhizome theory has gained currency in cultural discourse
because so many of today's systems of representing and interpreting knowledge are
fluid, nonhierarchical, nonlinear, and decentered. Computer-based information tech-
nology, notably the World Wide Web, is a prime case of a rhizomatic model of knowl-
edge. Any bit of information exists within an enormous network: anyone can enter the
information stream anywhere and move among multiple pathways by links, creating a
synthesis of potentially unlike elements; anyone can search, duplicate, manipulate, add
to, or transmit information.
British artist Keith Tyson's monumental artwork Large FieldArray 43 (2006-2007)
[1-9] is rhizomatic in structure and conception.The sculpture comprises three hundred
modular units, most formed from polystyrene into approximately two-foot cubes; the
cubes are arranged into a grid occupying both the floor and walls of a gallery when
installed. Each highly crafted unit is unique and references something recognizable
from the natural world, science, popular culture, consumer products, art history, or a
range of other sources. Individual sculptures include an airborne skateboarder, fungi,
stacked cans of beer, a volcano, a model of the Hoover dam, a man spanking a boy with
a belt, a square patch of cornfield, a rainbow over a jackpot, and an elaborate house
of cards, as well as appropriations from other artists, including Claes Oldenburg, Jake
and Dinos Chapman, and Yves Klein. A visitor can move through the cubes on the
floor via multiple pathways of his or her own choosing: forward, sideways, diagonally.
Although Tyson fosters certain associations through his choices for juxtapositions of
individual sculptures, ultimately each visitor is responsible for imagining his or her
own visual, psychological, and philosophical connections and meanings among the
36
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1-9 Keith Tyson I Large Field Array, 2006-2007

Installation view at PaceWildenstein, New York. September 7-0ctober 20, 2007
Photography by Ellen Labenski, courtesy The Pace Gallery

disparate units. A kind of three-dimensional analog version of an online encyclopedia,

Large Field Array proposes that everything can be linked witho ut the control or sin-
gularity of a hierarchical structure. Tyson said that Large Field Array is a celebration
of our transition from an industrial to an information age. "[We] embrace complexity
as a positive force. We can trust the rhizome to look after itself.... The system will take
care of itself. And I think we are more capable- this generation is more capable-of
trusting the dynamic, than any other generation before us. 1144
New rhizomatic artworks such as Tyson's emphasize abrupt juxtapositions, link-
ing, fragm enta tion, and multiplicity. They require new forms of visual literacy, ask-
ing their audiences to cross borders between genres and subjects and to make a leap
of fai th that connections exist even though the web of knowledge is too large and
complex for anyone to master. Tyson's artwork, assembling three hundred sculptures
into one cohesive installation, embodies a reconnoitering of reality from the diverse
perspectives represented (including pop culture, science, religion, history, politics, and
sexuality). Tyson's Large Field Array implies that no one field of knowledge can pro-
vide all the information or answers or frame the most probing questions.
In a similar spirit, Themes of Contemporary Art is a reconnoitering mission
through the past thirty years of art. We end by reasserting this chapter's initial premise:
content matters, even if the meanings are open-ended. It is with this fundamental idea
in mind that we turn to an examination of contemporary artworks that embody eight
resonating and interlinked themes: identity, the body, time, memory, place, language,
science, and spirituality.

Notes
1. We discuss this installation in a profile on Eduardo Kac after chapter 8, "Science." For
additional information, see Eduardo Kac's website at www.ekac.org or the published book about
the project, The Eighth Day: The Transgenic Art of Eduardo Kac (Tempe: Institute for Studies in
the Arts, Arizona State University, 2003).
2. Co-curators for the Wrong Gallery exhibition were curator Massimiliano Cioni and art-
ist Maurizio Cattelan.
3. Erika Doss, Twentieth-Century American Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 37
p.203.
4. Betsy Towner, "In 50 Years ... A Whole New Map," AARP Bulletin, November 2010, p. 43.
5. We discuss an ongoing series of large-scale installations in the Turbine Hall at the
Tate Modern in a profile after chapter 6, "Place." In its first decade, the Tate Modern exceeded
original projections for the number of visitors, and a new extension building is planned to open ~
0
in 2012.
6. In 2002, The Dinner Party was acquired by the Brooklyn Museum of Art, where it now
is on permanent view in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.
7. Stephen Koch, "Andy Warhol, 1928-1987," Artforum, April 2003, p. 94.
8. Haim Steinbach, "Haim Steinbach Talks to Tim Griffin," interview by Tim Griffin,
Artforum, April 2003, p. 230.
9. Neal Benezra and Olga M. Viso, Distemper: Dissonant Themes in the Art of the 1990s
(Washington, D.C.: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, 1996),
p. 10. An exhibition catalog.
10. Doss, Twentieth-Century American Art, p. 217.
11. Artists working with appropriation in the 1980s and after include Sigmar Polke in
Germany, Jeff Koons, Mike Bidlo, and Louise Lawler in the United States, Carlo Maria Mariani in
Italy, and Wang Guangyi in China.
12. There were precursors of sound art dating back to the early twentieth century, including
some of the Italian Futurists. More recent pioneers include Pauline Oliveros, Vito Acconci, Terry
Fox, and Keith Sonnier. These and other artists were represented in the 1983 exhibition Sound/
Art ~t the Sculpture Center in New York City, which featured the first documented use of the term
sound art in the United States.
13. Some active practitioners within the expanding field of new media include Rebecca Horn,
Jon Kessler, Alan Rath, Laurie Anderson, Margot Lovejoy, Pipilotti Rist, Mariko Mori, Jeffrey
Shaw, Ben Rubin, and Michal Rovner.
14. Nicholas Mirzoeff, An Introduction to Visual Culture (London and New York: Routledge,
1999), p. 91.
15. Quoted in Liz Wells, Photography: A Critical Introduction (London and New York:
Routledge, 1997), p. 257.
16. In the age of mechanical reproduction, such processes as photolithography allowed news-
papers and magazines to duplicate and disseminate images. The electronic age, however, is differ-
ent in degree as well as in kind from preceding eras, as imagery is now sent around the world at
the speed of light.
 17. For descriptions ofByrne's work, see David Byrne, Env isioning Emotional Epistemological
Information (New York: Steidl and Pace-McGill Gallery, 2003).
18. Quoted in Stuart Hall and Michael Hardt, "Changing States: In the Shadow of Empire,"
in Gilane Tawadros, ed., Changing S tates: Contemporary Art and Ideas in an Era of Globa lisation
(London, Institute of International Visual Arts, 2004), p. 133. Much of the preceding discussion is
indebted to Hall's arguments.
19. See the map "Biennial and Triennial International Contemporary Art Surveys Worldwide,"
in Universal Experience: Art, Life, and the Tourist's Eye (Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art;
New York: Distributed Art, 2005), pp. 204-205.
20. Julia A. Fenton, "World Churning: Globalism and the Return of the Local," Art Papers
25 (May/June 2001): p. 11.
21. See Fredric Jameson, "Globalization as a Philosophical Issue," in Fredric Jameson and
Masao Miyohsi, eds., The Cultures of Globalization (Post-Contemporary Interventions)
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), pp. 75-76.
22. Tawadros, Changing States, p. 71.
23. Bennett Simpson, "Pushing an Open Door: The Artist as Culture Broker," in Mark
Sladen, ed., The Americans: New Art (London: Booth-Clibborn Editions, 2001), p. 296. An exhibi-
tion catalog.
38 24. Hilary Robinson, "Introduction: Feminism-Art-Theory-Towards a (Political) Histori-
ography," in Robinson, ed., Feminism-Art-Theory: An Anthology 1968-2000 (Malden, Mass.:
(f)
-0
Blackwell, 2001), p. 1.
c 25. John Raj chman, "Unhappy Returns," Art/arum, April 2003, p. 61. "Beaubourg" is a nick-
cu
0.. name for the Centre Georges Pompidou, a cultural center that opened in Paris in 1977.
x
w 26. Influential theorists of poststructuralism include the French intellectuals Michel Foucault,
Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, and Jacques Lacan.
27. See chapter 7, "Language," for further discussion of poststructuralism.
..._, 28. The many feminist thinkers who have influenced the visual arts include Julia Kristeva,
..__
<( Luce Irigaray, Helene Cixous, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Craig Owens, Laura Mulvey, Lucy
Q) Lippard, and Griselda Pollock. Thinkers associated with postcolonialism include Homi K. Bhabha,
.c
I- Edward Said, Rasheed Araeen, Paul Gilroy, and Olu Oguibe. Intellectuals involved with both femi-
nism and postcolonialism include bell hooks, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, and Ella Habiba Shohat.
29. See chapter 2, "Identity," and chapter 3, "The Body," for further discussion of feminism
and postcolonialism.
30. Toby Kamps, "Lateral Thinking: Art of the 1990s," in Kamps, ed., Lateral Thinking: Art
of the 1990s (La Jolla, Calif.: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 2002), p. 15. An exhibition
catalog.
31. Richard Cork, "The End of the Twentieth Century," in Breaking Down th e Barriers: Art
in th e 1990s (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 628.
32. Homi K. Bhabha, "Making Difference," Art/arum, April 2003, p. 76.
33. Laurie Fendrich, Why Painting Still Matters (Bloomington, Ind.: Phi Delta Kappa
Educational Foundation, 2000), p. 16.
34. Claire Bishop, "The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents" in Margriet
Schavemaker and Mischa Rakier, eds., Right About Now: Art and Theory "6ince the 1990s
(Amsterdam: Valiz, 2007), pp. 59- 60.
35. Bourriaud's influential writings on this topic are collected in Nicolas Bourriaud, Esthetique
relationelle (Dijon, France: Les Presses du reel, 1998). Translated by Simon Pleasance and Fronza
Woods with the participation of Mathieu Copeland as Relational Aesthetics (2002).
36. Nadja Rottner, "Relational Aesthetics," in Grove Art Online (Oxford University Press,
2011) at http://www.oxfordartonline.com. Artists championed by Bourriaud include Rikrit
Tiravanija, Vanessa Beecroft, Philippe Parreno, Pierre Huyghe, Angela Bulloch, and Carsten Holler,
among others.
37. For example, see Grant Kester's formulation of what he terms dialogical aesthetics in
Grant H. Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in M odern Art (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2004).
 38. Jorg Heiser, All of a Sudden: Things That Matter in Contemporary Art (Berlin: Sternberg
Press, 2008), p. 260.
39. Other examples of relational art include projects by Carsten Holler and Andrea Zittel;
Zittel's work is analyzed in the Profile following chapter 6, "Place."
40. Jeff Wall, "Jeff Wall Talks to Bob Nickas," interview by Bob Nickas, Artforum, March
2003, p. 87.
41. Benjamin Weil, "Ambient Art and Our Changing Relationship to the Art Idea," in
010101: Art in Technological Times (Sa n Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2001),
pp. 58-59. An exhibition catalog.
42. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateau_s: Capitalism and Schizophrenia,
trans. by Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).
43. The title of Tyson's artwork, Large Field Array, makes reference to the Very Large Array
(VLA), an astronomy observatory located in a barren stretch of the New Mexico landscape. VLA's
power as a scientific research instrument-an outlook c:m the cosmos-stems from the holistic
gathering of information from the twenty-seven large independent radio antennae (each arm is
thirteen miles in length) that are arranged in an enormous Y-shape configuration.
44. Keith Tyson quoted in an online interview, "Keith Tyson-Large Field Array, Part 2," a
tabblo by Gerardfotografeert, accessed June 27, 2008, http://www.tabblo.com/studio/stories/view
/255949/ ?nextnav=favs&navuser=233142. 39

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