GLOBAL CONTEMPORARY
 (1980 C.E. TO PRESENT)

​VOCABULARY

abstract art
assemblage
action painting
avant garde
biomorphism
collage
contemporary art
cantilever
caprice
earthwork
installation
kitsch
kinetic art
popular culture
up-cycling
found object art
colonialism
ephemeral
banality
site-specific
​entrophy
appropriation
machismo
Pisupo
Fluxus
Pure Land
globalization
spliced images
​deconstructivist
CONTENT: What do you see?
FORM: The details (what you see more exactly). How the artist delivers the content.
CONTEXT: Everything NOT observable.
FUNCTION: The intended purpose of the work.

APAH 250 Artworks:

Installation
224. The Gates, Christo and Jeanne-Claude 
225. Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Maya Lin 
248. Shibboleth, Doris Salcedo 
238. Electronic Superhighway, Nam June Paik 
Identity
242. Lying with the Wolf, Kiki Smith 
243. Darkytown Rebellion, Kara Walker 
236. En la Barberia no se Llora (No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop), Pepon Osorio 
231. Untitled (#228), from the History Portraits series, Cindy Sherman 
232. Dancing at the Louvre, from the series, The French Collection, part 1; #1, Faith Ringgold 
Culture
235. Rebellious Silence, from the Women of Allah series, Shirin Neshat (artist); photo by Cynthia Preston 
237. Pisupo Lua Afe (Corned Beef 2000), Michel Tuffery 
244. The Swing (After Fragonard), Yinka Shonibare 
245. Old Man’s Cloth, El Anatsui 
233. Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People), Jaune Quick-to-See Smith 
234. Earth’s Creation, Emily Kame Kngwarreye 
229. A Book from the Sky, Xu Bing 
250. Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds), Ai Weiwei 
228. Androgyne III, Magdalena Abakanowicz 
226. Horn Players, Jean-Michel Basquiat 
230. Pink Panther, Jeff Koons 
247. Preying Mantra, Wangechi Mutu 
246. Stadia II, Julie Mehretu 
227. Summer Trees, Song Su-nam 
241. Pure Land, Mariko Mori 
239. The Crossing, Bill Viola 
Architecture
152. House in New Castle County, Robert Ventura, John Rausch and Denise Scott Brown 
240. Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Frank Gehry 
249. MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Zaha Hadid ​

What does “Global Contemporary” really mean? 

Global contemporary art is characterized by a transcendence of traditional conceptions of art. Global Contemporary art attempts to reach beyond the known, for art that elevates, transcending knowledge and experiences that escape our vocabulary and traditional senses. It is supported by technological developments and global awareness. Digital technology in particular provides increased access to imagery and contextual information about diverse artists and artworks throughout history and across the globe. In the scholarly realm as well as mainstream media, contemporary art is now a major phenomenon experienced and understood in a global context. 

CONTEXT

​Materials, tools, function, artistic training, style, and presentation are challenged. Questions about how art is defined, valued, and presented are provoked by everything from digital works to graffiti to online galleries and the decline in natural materials and traditional skills, and the predominance of disposable material cultures.
Diverse art forms are considered and include existential investigations, sociopolitical critiques, as well as reflections on the natural world, art’s history, popular and traditional cultures, and technological innovation.
Artists use appropriation and “mashups” to devalue or revalue culturally sacred objects, and to negate or support expectations of artworks based on regional, cultural, and chronological associations. Intended meanings are often open-ended and subject to multiple interpretations.
The iconic building becomes a sought-after trademark for cities. Computer-aided design impacts the diversity of innovative architectural forms.
Art history surveys have traditionally offered less attention to art made from 1980 to the present. While such surveys often presented contemporary art as largely a European and American phenomenon, contemporary art produced by artists of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the First Nations are receiving the same attention than work produced in Europe and the Americas.
The waning of colonialism, started by independence movements, shifts in the balance of power with the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the rise of China, and the development of widespread communication networks such as the Internet have all contributed to representations of the world that are global and interconnected rather than Eurocentric.
The art world has expanded and become more inclusive since the 1960s. Artists of all nationalities, ethnicities, and sexual preferences, as well as female artists, have challenged the traditional privileged place of white, heterosexual men in art history. This activism has been supported by theories (e.g., deconstructionist, feminist, poststructuralist, and queer) that critique perspectives on history and culture that claim universality but are in fact exclusionary.
​The worldwide proliferation of contemporary art museums, galleries, exhibItions, and print and digital publications has created diverse venues for the presentation and evaluation of art in today’s world. 

GET TO KNOW YOUR ARTISTS

ZAHA HADI

Picture

Named one of the most influential people by TIME in 2010
Just recently passed away March 31, 2016
  • Born in Iraq, British based
  • MAXXi National Museum

http://www.zaha-hadid.com/people/zaha-hadid/

Great article from The Guardian- highly recommended to read.
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/sep/08/zaha-hadid-serpentine-sackler-profile

FRANK GEHRY

Themes: Deconstructionist architecture (seems unstable based on design and materials "Frank Gehry was born Frank Owen Goldberg in Toronto, Canada on February 28, 1929. He studied at the University of Southern California and Harvard University. Gehry, based in Los Angeles since the 1960s, is among the most acclaimed architects of the 20th century, and is known for his use of bold, postmodern shapes and unusual fabrications. Gehry's most famous designs include the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Lost Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain." From http://www.biography.com/people/frank-gehry-9308278#later-life

JEAN CLAUDE & CHRISTO

Themes: Site art, environmental art "Christo and Jeanne-Claude were a collaborative artist duo known for their monumental environmental installations. Best remembered in the public’s mind for wrapping architecture and natural elements in fabric, their works were often unprecedented in scale, such as Running Fence down the California coast, and Wrapped Coast in Australia. Part of France’s New Realism movement, the artists’ temporary textile interventions required dedicated planning and execution through detailed drawings. . .Like his contemporary Arman, Christo used smaller found objects in his earlier works, wrapping cars or furniture, and gradually advancing to large-scale exhibitions once he began to collaborate with Jeanne-Claude. The pair emigrated to the United States in 1964, settling in New York, NY where Christo currently resides and works." From http://www.artnet.com/artists/christo-and-jeanne-claude/

MAYA LIN

Themes: nature, physiological environment, history, time​"Artist, designer and  environmentalist, Maya Lin interprets the natural world through science,  history, politics, and culture, creating a remarkable and highly acclaimed body  of work in art and architecture. Her works merge the physical and psychological  environment, presenting a new way of seeing the world around us.
. . .
Lin's art explores how we experience and relate to Nature, setting up a systematic  ordering of the land that is tied to history, memory, time, and language. Her  interest in landscape has led to works influenced by topographies and natural  phenomena."
http://www.mayalin.com

AI WEI WEI: SUNFLOWER SEEDS

Themes: propaganda, social justice, human rights, political activism, globalization, symbolism
  • Born, lives, and works in China
"A cultural figure of international renown, Ai Weiwei is an activist, architect, curator, filmmaker, and China’s most famous artist. Open in his criticism of the Chinese government, Ai was famously detained for months in 2011, then released to house arrest. “I don’t see myself as a dissident artist,” he says. “I see them as a dissident government!” Some of Ai’s best known works are installations, often tending towards the conceptual and sparking dialogue between the contemporary world and traditional Chinese modes of thought and production. For Sunflower Seeds (2010) at the Tate Modern, he scattered 100 million porcelain “seeds” handpainted by 1,600 Chinese artisans—a commentary on mass consumption and the loss of individuality. His infamous Coca Cola Vase (1994) is a Han Dynasty urn emblazoned with the ubiquitous soft-drink logo. Ai also served as artistic consultant on the design of the “Bird’s Nest” stadium for Beijing’s 2008 Olympics, and has curated pavilions and museum exhibitions around the globe." 
​From https://www.artsy.net/artist/ai-weiwei

KARA WALKER

Themes: Racism, African American racial identity, sexism, classism, culture, power, dominance
  • Born in Ca, raised in the south, New York based
  • Darkytown Rebellion (Cut paper and projection)
"The illusion is that most of my work is simply about past events, a point in history and nothing else," says Kara Walker about her subversive use of the traditional silhouette technique. The segment traces the evolution of Walker's work, from time spent in the studio to the artist's recent installations of projected light. "A lot of what I was wanting to do in my work and what I have been doing has been about the unexpected...that unexpected situation of wanting to be the heroine and yet wanting to kill the heroine at the same time." Projecting fiction into fact, Walker's art upsets the conventions of history and storytelling. From PBS: Art 21 Click the link or photo to watch the video

JAMES TURRELL: RODEN CRATER

Themes: Light, space, human perception
(The video on the right is another art installation to learn about. You should make a flashcard for the Roden Crater, video link below.)

From http://jamesturrell.com/about/introduction/
Click here to watch the video on the Roden Crater
"For over half a century, the American artist James Turrell has worked directly with light and space to create artworks that engage viewers with the limits and wonder of human perception. Turrell, an avid pilot who has logged over twelve thousand hours flying, considers the sky as his studio, material and canvas. New Yorker critic Calvin Tompkins writes, “His work is not about light, or a record of light; it is light — the physical presence of light made manifest in sensory form.”

JEAN-MICHELE BASQUIAT

Themes: Anatomy, artists (Picasso, Da Vinci), African American Musicians, farm satire
  • Born in Brooklyn of Puerto Rican and Haitian descent
  • Horn Players (Acrylic and oil on paintstick on three canvas panels)
Basquiat had a somewhat troubled childhood. At 15, he ran away from home and dropped out of high school as a sophomore. He worked to sell t-shirts and small time art post cards. In the 70s he became a popular artist and often collaborated with high profile artists such as Andy Warhol. He became addicted to heroine in the 80s and died of an overdose in 1988.
http://www.wikiart.org/en/jean-michel-basquiat
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-basquiat-jean-michel.htm

​SONG SU NAM

Themes: traditional art techniques that are modernized"Song Su-nam is one of the leaders of the 'Sumukhwa' or Oriental Ink Movement of the 1980s, based at Hongik University, Seoul. This movement shared the general feeling that it was necessary to 'recover' a national identity and began to concentrate on subtle tonal variations of ink wash, in an attempt to elicit an inner spirituality which was felt to be lost in a modern technological age." From The British Museum ​

XU BING

Themes: combining modern and traditional art forms, text, reliability of knowledge, futility of existence
  • Born in Chongqing, China (worked in the US for 18 years), currently lives in Beijing. 
  • Book from the Sky (mixed media installation)

"Pioneering Chinese contemporary artist Xu Bing creates powerful, poignant mixed-media installations, in which he subverts systems of language, upending expectations and perception. He explains that his works “are all linked by a common thread, which is to construct some kind of obstacle to people's habitual ways of thinking—what I call the ‘cognitive structures’ of the mind.” Trained as a printmaker, Xu is informed by the Cultural Revolution, Chan Buddhism, and his keen interest in the relationship between meaning and words, writing, and reading." From https://www.artsy.net/artist/xu-bing-xu-bing

http://www.xubing.com/index.php/site/texts/evolving_meanings_in_xu_bings_art_a_case_study_of_transference/
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Past exhibition at LACMA
Additional video to watch
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WANGECHI MUTU

Themes: violence of Colonial domination in Africa, female body, sexism, racism on a global scale
Wangechi Mutu observes: “Females carry the marks, language and nuances of their culture more than the male. Anything that is desired or despised is always placed on the female body.” Piecing together magazine imagery with painted surfaces and found materials, Mutu’s collages explore the split nature of cultural identity, referencing colonial history, fashion and contemporary African politics. In Adult Female Sexual Organs, Mutu uses a Victorian medical diagram as a base: an archetype of biased anthropology and sexual repression. The head is a caricatured mask – made of packing tape, its material makes reference to bandages, migration, and cheap ‘quick-fix’ solutions. Mutu portrays the inner and outer ideals of self with physical attributes clipped from lifestyle magazines: the woman’s face being a racial distortion, her mind occupied by a prototypical white model. Drawing from the aesthetics of traditional African crafts, Mutu engages in her own form of story telling; her works document the contemporary myth-making of endangered cultural heritage. 
*Quote from: Merrily Kerr, Wangechi Mutu's Extreme Makeovers, Art On Paper, Vol.8, No. 6, July/August 2004.
from http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/wangechi_mutu.htm

SHIRIN NESHAT

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Themes: women in art, female warriors, repressed Muslim communitiesShirin Neshat is an Iranian visual artist, filmmaker and photographer. Master of Arts and Master of Fine Arts at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2009 Silver Lion for best director at the 66th Venice Film Festival for her directional debut “Women Without Men”. The work of Neshat addresses the social, political and psychological dimensions of women’s experience in contemporary Islamic societies.

She was invited at the GLOBART Academy 2014 to open the festival with her speech "Voice of an Artist".
http://www.globart.at/?lang=en

ARTIST STATEMENT: http://signsjournal.org/shirin-neshat/

TED Talk: Art in Exile

JEFF KOONS

Themes:
  • Born in Pennsylvania, works in NYC and Pennsylvania.
  • Pink Panther

See a fun interview with one of Jeff Koon's assistants, Jeffrey Bennet. The class came up with questions and we were able to get a response about how Koons works. http://www.mchsapah.com/blog/thank-you-jeffrey-bennett

http://www.jeffkoons.com

DORIS SALCEDO

Themes: Discrimination, gap in relationships, racism, classism, the marginalized.
  • Lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia
  • ​Shibboleth (installation)
"Although elegiac in tone, her works are not memorials: Salcedo concretizes absence, oppression, and the gap between the disempowered and powerful. While abstract in form and open to interpretation, her works serve as testimonies on behalf of both victims and perpetrators. Even when monumental in scale, her installations achieve a degree of imperceptibility—receding into a wall, burrowed into the ground, or lasting for only a short time. Salcedo’s work reflects a collective effort and close collaboration with a team of architects, engineers, and assistants—and, as Salcedo says, “with the victims of the senseless and brutal acts” to which her work refers."
http://www.art21.org/artists/doris-salcedo

KIKI SMITH

Themes: storytelling, body images"Kiki Smith was born in 1954 in Nuremberg, Germany. The daughter of American sculptor Tony Smith, Kiki Smith grew up in New Jersey. As a young girl, one of Smith’s first experiences with art was helping her father make cardboard models for his geometric sculptures. This training in formalist systems, combined with her upbringing in the Catholic Church, would later resurface in Smith’s evocative sculptures, drawings, and prints. The recurrent subject matter in Smith’s work has been the body as a receptacle for knowledge, belief, and storytelling." From:
http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/kiki-smith

NAM JUNE PAIK

Themes: technology as a tool, maps and traveling"Nam June Paik transformed video into an artist’s medium with his media-based art that challenged and changed our understanding of visual culture. As Paik wrote in 1969, he wanted “to shape the TV screen canvas as precisely as Leonardo, as freely as Picasso, as colorfully as Renoir, as profoundly as Mondrian, as violently as Pollock and as lyrically as Jasper Johns.” The trajectory of his artistic practice is the subject of a current exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum which is aptly namedNam June Paik: Global Visionary. It was organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s senior curator for media arts and the leading expert on Nam June Paik, John Hanhardt. - See more at:https://www.arts.gov/photos/nam-june-paik-artist-who-invented-video-art#sthash.Q0yj0aNF.dpuf"
From: ​https://www.arts.gov/photos/nam-june-paik-artist-who-invented-video-art_

BILL VIOLA

​Themes: performance art, perception of the senses, human experiences, sacred space, religious influences
"Bill Viola (b.1951) is internationally recognized as one of today’s leading artists. He has been instrumental in the establishment of video as a vital form of contemporary art, and in so doing has helped to greatly expand its scope in terms of technology, content, and historical reach. For 40 years he has created videotapes, architectural video installations, sound environments, electronic music performances, flat panel video pieces, and works for television broadcast. Viola’s video installations—total environments that envelop the viewer in image and sound—employ state-of-the-art technologies and are distinguished by their precision and direct simplicity.... Viola uses video to explore the phenomena of sense perception as an avenue to self-knowledge. His works focus on universal human experiences—birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness—and have roots in both Eastern and Western art as well as spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism. Using the inner language of subjective thoughts and collective memories, his videos communicate to a wide audience, allowing viewers to experience the work directly, and in their own personal way."
http://www.billviola.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg19GwNCJU0
Start video at 5:28

JULIE MEHRETU

Themes: cities, entertainment, stadiums bringing people together
  • Born in Ethiopia, moved to US at age 6, lives and works in NYC
  • Stadia II (ink and acrylic on canvas)

​"Some days I’ll be engaged in painting, and make great headway, and then the next day I’ll come in and I have no access. You can have the whole day just feel like you’re spinning your wheels. But I think that’s part of the work—being in the studio, just looking at the work for a long time, and realizing the painting."
-Julie Mehretu
http://blog.art21.org/2009/10/01/meet-the-season-5-artist-julie-mehretu/#.VyDbWMe9jzI

http://www.pbs.org/art21/watch-now/segment-julie-mehretu-in-systems​

​FAITH RINGGOLD

Themes: quilting as a woman's art form"Faith Ringgold is one of America’s most gifted and generous visual storytellers. Though originally trained as a painter, she has worked to superb effect across media. Ringgold is best known for the painted story quilts in which she draws on African American folklore tradition, often to dramatize—to humanize—institutional and national histories. The quilts are dazzling in their brilliant colors, their patterns and their interplay of the visual and textual. Fierce strength, good humor, eros, heartbreak and perseverance abound. Born in 1930 in New York City, Ringgold is a daughter of the Harlem Renaissance and the artistic sister of Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence, James Baldwin and Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones)." From http://www.makers.com/faith-ringgold
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JUAN QUICK-TO-SEE-SMITH

Themes: Europeans invading the Americas, American Indian social issues (poverty, unemployment, disease, alcoholism)


"Jaune Quick-to-See Smith creates paintings and drawings that reflect her upbringing in a household where art and horses were equally important. In the initial stages of her career, Smith's painted landscapes inevitably contained a "portrait" of her horse Cheyenne shown with tepees, tools, pottery, and other Indian artifacts. Eventually Smith began to incorporate collage elements into her paintings, adding bits of calico and muslin fabric and wire mesh over which she lavished paint. The result was surfaces that acquired a texture and topography reminiscent of the landscapes she was depicting. Smith is part of the new generation of Native American artists who are helping to redefine their culture's relationship to contemporary American life and its problematic past. She lives and works in Albuquerque, in close proximity to the land that inspires much of her art."  From, http://www.americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artist/?id=4505

CINDY SHERMAN

Themes: Identity, classism"By turning the camera on herself, Cindy Sherman has built a name as one of the most respected photographers of the late twentieth century. Although, the majority of her photographs are pictures of her, however, these photographs are most definitely not self-portraits. Rather, Sherman uses herself as a vehicle for commentary on a variety of issues of the modern world: the role of the woman, the role of the artist and many more. It is through these ambiguous and eclectic photographs that Sherman has developed a distinct signature style. Through a number of different series of works, Sherman has raised challenging and important questions about the role and representation of women in society, the media and the nature of the creation of art." http://www.cindysherman.com

​http://www.pbs.org/art21/watch-now/segment-cindy-sherman-in-transformation_

MAGDALENA ABAKANOWICZ

Themes: identity
"Abanowicz being interested by the texture of matter, particularly the organic nature of her medium of choice. Abakans - made from dyed sisal fibre - with its multiplied organic nature - was shocking. At exhibitions they were suspended from the ceiling, unidentifiable monsters wrapped in canvas cloth. The artist broke with the tradition of flat surfaces of decorative textiles hung against the walls. Years later she wrote, "The Abakans irritated. They were untimely. There was the French tapestry in weaving, pop-art and conceptual art, and here there were some complicated, huge, magical (forms)..." http://culture.pl/en/artist/magdalena-abakanowicz

PEPON OSORIO

Themes: Contradictions, identity, masculinity, culture"Sculptor and installation artist, born in 1955 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 1975, Osorio moved to the South Bronx in New York City, where he enrolled at Lehman College and earned a degree in sociology. Following his graduation, he worked in the child abuse prevention unit of the Human Resources Administration, working primarily with the Latino community. Since 1985 Osorio has participated in visual arts projects that are testimonials to his immediate South Bronx community. He completed an M.A. degree at Columbia University in 1986 and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including grants and fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Lila Wallace Arts Partners International Artist Program." From http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artist/?StartRow=1&ID=6794

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/pepon-osorio

MICHEL TUFFERY

Themes: Polynesian heritage, canned meat, recycled materials
  • Born in New Zealand of Samoan, Cook Islands, and Tahitian descent
  • Pisupo Lua Afe (Corned Beef 2000), mixed media
"His art exceeds the boundaries of contemporary media, collaborating on site specific media installations that traverse cultural boundaries and defy concrete categorisation. His woodcuts, lithographs, drawings, paintings on tapa cloth and canvas, sculpture, emblematic carvings and performance art are the artistic offerings of a keen historian and active participator in contemporary culture." From http://www.micheltuffery.co.nz
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YINKA SHONIBARE

Themes: "Trained as a painter, Yinka Shonibare later moved on to photography, sculpture, installation and film. His work addresses issues of power in contemporary and historical culture. Shonibare sees areas of excess as a means to represent that power. The artist formulates relationships between classes, races and power structures using highly associative “African” fabrics (Dutch wax-printed cotton) to create clothing, rooms and environments. This type of fabric, popular in Africa, is often assumed to originate there. Actually, the material was developed in Indonesia, then exported to England and the Netherlands, then sold to African merchants. Like this fabric, Shonibare has moved between continents; born in London in 1962 to Nigerian parents, the family shortly thereafter moved to Lagos, Nigeria. Shonibare returned to England at age 16 to attend boarding school, followed by art studies in London, which is where he now lives and works." Read more at warhol.org:  http://www.warhol.org/education/resourceslessons/Yinka-Shonibare/#ixzz47WQVNEyw
​
​

EL ANATSUI

Themes: combining different cultural traditions, recycled art
  • Born in Ghana, spent most of career in Nigeria
  • Old Man's Cloth (aluminum liquor bottle caps and copper wire)
​"El Anatsui was born in Anyanko, Ghana in 1944. Many of Anatsui’s sculptures are mutable in form, conceived to be so free and flexible that they can be shaped in any way and altered in appearance for each installation. Working with wood, clay, metal, and—most recently—the discarded metal caps of liquor bottles, Anatsui breaks with sculpture’s traditional adherence to forms of fixed shape while visually referencing the history of abstraction in African and European art. The colorful and densely patterned fields of the works assembled from discarded liquor-bottle caps also trace a broader story of colonial and postcolonial economic and cultural exchange in Africa, told in the history of cast-off materials. The sculptures in wood and ceramics introduce ideas about the function of objects (their destruction, transformation, and regeneration) in everyday life, and the role of language in deciphering visual symbols." 
From http://www.art21.org/artists/el-anatsui
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d3RIE195JI

​http://www.voanews.com/content/african-artists-monumental-works-featured-in-new-york-city/1705036.html

MARIKO MORI

Themes: romanticized views of pop culture
  • Japanese artist
  • Pure Land (color photograph on glass)

"Mariko Mori’s diverse work, which has included video and photography, works on paper, sound, sculpture, and large-scale installations, explores the intersection between art and science, antiquity and modernity, and East and West. In her early work Mori explored urban cyberculture and kitsch, and used herself as a model in quirky photographs of fantastical Manga-inspired environments. More recently she created WAVE UFO (2003), her acclaimed capsule-shaped structure resembling a spaceship that exhibited at the 2005 Venice Biennale; visitors can enter attached to electrodes that gather brainwave data and turn it into real-time visualizations viewable on screens within the space. Mori has also examined Jomon and Celtic traditions and belief systems, fusing ancient symbols and rituals with advanced digital technologies in works such as Transcircle 1.1 (2004), a version of Stonehenge composed of glowing lights. Juxtaposing divergent cultures and disciplines such as Buddhism and science, or traditional tea ceremonies and Manga, Mori creates an aesthetic vocabulary that points simultaneously forward and backward." From https://www.artsy.net/artist/mariko-mori

EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE

"Although Emily began to paint late in her life she was a prolific artist who often worked at a pace that belied her advanced age. It is estimated that she produced over 3000 paintings in the course of her eight-year painting career — an average of one painting per day.
For virtually two-thirds of her life she had only sporadic contact with the outside world. It was not until she was about 80 that she became, almost overnight, an artist of national and international standing.
Her remarkable work was inspired by her cultural life as an Anmatyerre elder, and her lifelong custodianship of the women’s Dreaming sites in her clan Country, Alhalkere."
From http://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/utopia_the_genius_of_emily_kame_kngwarreye/emily_kame_kngwarreye

EXTRA ARTISTS THAT ARE SIGNIFICANT AND ABSOLUTELY WORTH KNOWING ABOUT BUT THEY WERE LEFT OFF THE OFFICIAL LIST.

​CHUCK CLOSE

"Chuck Close is globally renowned for reinvigorating the art of portrait painting from the late 1960s to the present day, an era when photography had been challenging painting's former dominance in this area, and succeeding in steadily gaining critical appreciation as an artistic medium in its own right. Close emerged from the 1970s painting movement of Photorealism, also known as Super-Realism, but then moved well beyond its initially hyper-attentive rendering of a given subject to explore how methodical, system-driven portrait painting based on photography's underlying processes (over its superficial visual appearances) could suggest a wide range of artistic and philosophical concepts. In addition, Close's personal struggles with dyslexia and subsequently, partial paralysis, have suggested real-life parallels to his professional discipline, as though his methodical and yet also quite intuitive methods of painting are inseparable from his own daily reckoning with the body's own vulnerable, material condition."
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-close-chuck.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZttkbmtqKo​
"I realized that to deal with your nature is also to construct a series of limitations which just don't allow you to behave the way you most naturally want to behave. So, I found it incredibly liberating to work for a long time on something even though I'm impatient. It did not seem like such a dichotomy or a denial of who I was. It seemed like I was taking care of who I was."
​-Chuck CLose

NICK CAVE

Themes: repurposing found objects, social justice
  • Born and works in Chicago
  • "Soundsuits"
"Nick Cave creates “Soundsuits”—surreally majestic objects blending fashion and sculpture—that originated as metaphorical suits of armor in response to the Rodney King beatings and have evolved into vehicles for empowerment. Fully concealing the body, the “Soundsuits” serve as an alien second skin that obscures race, gender, and class, allowing viewers to look without bias towards the wearer’s identity. Cave regularly performs in the sculptures himself, dancing either before the public or for the camera, activating their full potential as costume, musical instrument, and living icon. Cave’s sculptures also include non-figurative assemblages, intricate accumulations of found objects that project out from the wall, and installations enveloping entire rooms."
From https://art21.org/watch/art-in-the-twenty-first-century/s8/nick-cave-in-chicago-segment/
Watch the Art 21 episode (beginning of video to 14:00)

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SHEPARD FAIREY

"The first aim of phenomenology is to reawaken a sense of wonder about one’s environment. The obey sticker attempts to stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the sticker and their relationship with their surroundings."
From: obeygiant.com/propaganda/manifesto/