Video Art (Chapter 2. Part 1)

Chapter 2- Video and the Conceptual Body

Keynotes from chapter

Robert Raushenberg was one of the earlier artists to guide art towards new frontiers. He did a piece with John Cage entitled Automobile Tire Print. This piece helped introduce the idea of the "everyday" as being art. The print from this project was created by covering the tire of Cage's Ford Model A tire with paint. They then drove over a row of papers laid out to make the print.

This idea of the "everyday" is also exemplified in Cage's 4:33 piece. In this work an audience awaits to hear the performance. A pianists sits down, opens the piano, and sits for 4 minutes 33 seconds. The piece becomes the sound of the environment all the persons in the room are sharing. Coughs, laughs, shuffling, all become part of the work which is about highlighting this concept of the everyday.

The Actionists were also important for video art in that they took their videos in a more dangerous direction with the intention to outrage the viewer. To give a better sense of dangerous, many their films involved the slaughtering of animals, or images of animals and people drenched in blood. Their movement helped push video art into more experimental realms and increased the boundaries of the movement.

Excerpts from the chapter

"In the early days of video 3 types of artist/ practitioners emerged: those who used video to create alternatives to television; activists drawn to the community and mass appeal of video technology; and artist who saw video as an extension of their artistic practice."

"...Intra-art issues began to dominate early on. They included ideas important to all artists of the mid 1960's and beyond: the dematerialized art object; time as a medium in art; use of industrial materials and technology in making art; the abandonment of traditional boundaries between painting and sculpture; the introduction of everyday objects into the work of art; the intermingling of several artistic disciplines, including painting, dance, sculpture, music, theater, photography and video."

"..What is essential to the practice of art is the motivating idea possessed by the artist that questions existing codes or expressions, both in the world of art and in the culture at large."

Artists to further investigate

Carolee Schneemann, Adrian Piper, Sophie Calle, VALIE EXPORT, Ulay, Robert Wilson, Martha Roser, Steve McQueen, Beryl Korot, Juan Downey, [FluxFilm]-Stan Brakhage, Kenneth Anger, Dick Higgins, Wolf Vostell, [Actionists]- Hermann Nitsch, Otto Muehl, Kurt Kren.