Week two - Summer school continues

and the little ones also have produced wonders

Summer in the underground

We only have one of ours in at the moment (where are you Fionn?!).....but this one is not anyone,










It is a "slightly" impressive progress for the first week of summer Mr. Munnion!
I feel sorry for the Slade staff this year....
More to come next week.

Fluxus

Joseph Beuys
[title not known] 1963
Fluxus-Namensliste

Collage, ink and pencil on paper
support: 620 x 218 mm frame: 761 x 544 x 28 mm
on paper, unique


Fluxus
An international avant-garde group or collective founded and given its name in 1960 by the Lithuanian/American artist George Maciunas; originally for an eponymous magazine featuring the work of a group of artists and composers centred around John Cage. The Latin name means flowing. In English a flux is a flowing out. Maciunas said that the purpose of Fluxus was to 'promote a revolutionary flood and tide in art, promote living art, anti-art'. This has strong echoes of Dada with which Fluxus had much in common. The group coalesced on the continent, first in Germany where Maciunas worked for the US Army. Fluxus subsequently staged a series of festivals in Paris, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, London and New York at which activities included concerts of avant-garde music and performances often spilling out into the street. Almost every avant-garde artist of the time took part in Fluxus, such as Joseph Beuys, Dick Higgins, Alice Hutchins, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Ben Vautier, Robert Watts, Emmett Williams, and it played an important part in the opening up of definitions of what art can be that led to the intense and fruitful pluralism seen in art since the 1960s (see eg Conceptual art, Performance art, Film & Video art, Postmodernism). Its heyday was the 1960s but it still continues.


Fluxus was a network of international artists who collaborated in Europe, the United States and Japan from the 1960s to 1970s. This display focuses on its collective manifestations, through concerts, festivals and publications.

Characterised as being both in flux and between media, Fluxus began as an innovative series of concerts organised in 1962 by George Maciunas, a Lithuanian-born American graphic designer and architect. These Zen-like performances, influenced by experimental music and concrete poetry, developed into extended festivals and group activities, such as FluxSports and even a FluxMass. From simple events to collective games, Fluxus performances stress the interaction between the material and the intellectual, the private and the social. The event structure becomes a vehicle for playfulness, humour and open-ended speculation.

Fluxus set itself in opposition to the prevailing social, cultural and artistic climate, especially the seriousness of Abstract Expressionism. It developed a distinct political stance, bypassing the museum system through film, performance and publishing. As early as 1961, Maciunas had collaborated with the composer La Monte Young on an interactive book, An Anthology. From that period onwards, publications ranged from collective anthologies such as Fluxus 1 and the Fluxus newspaper V TRE to Fluxboxes, Fluxkits or the collected works of individual artists, which were intended to be open-ended.

Openness and the dissolution of boundaries between traditional art forms was key to Fluxus, which had a profound impact on the arts of its period and on subsequent generations, from the development of artists’ books, Minimalism and Conceptual art, to performance, music, film and video art.

Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys born 1921 [- 1986]
German sculptor, draughtsman, creator of action-performances, political leader and teacher. Born at Krefeld, but spent most of his early life in or near Kleve. In the Luftwaffe 1940-5, part of the time as dive-bomber pilot. Shot down over the Crimea in a snowstorm in 1943, badly wounded and looked after for some days by Tartars. Began to make watercolours and drawings of a highly individual kind. Studied 1947-51 at the Dusseldorf Academy under the sculptor Matar-23. His interest in Rudolf Steiner, Christianity, mythology, botany and zoology led him to evolve a rich and complex symbolism, including archetypal animal images of hares, sheep, swans, bees, etc. First one-man exhibition at the St-28dtisches Museum Haus Koekkoek, Kleve, 1961. Moved from Kleve to D-4sseldorf in 1961 and became professor of sculpture at D-4sseldorf Academy. Participated in the Fluxus movement from 1962 and started in 1963 to give action-performances using such elements as dead hares, fat and felt. Founded the Deutschen Studentenpartei als Metapartei in 1967 and the Organisation f-4r direkte Demokratie durch Volksabstimmung (freie Volksiniative e.V.) 1971, and expounded their principles in discourse-discussions. Conflicts with authority over his teaching methods culminated in 1972 in his dismissal from the D-4sseldorf Academy by the Minister of Science, followed by a strike of his students and widespread protests. Lives in D-4sseldorf.


The Table 1952

Pencil, watercolour and stamp on paper
support: 209 x 297 mm frame: 674 x 540 x 29 mm
on paper, unique

Published in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, pp.51-2

Things to see about street art

http://www.faile.net/site/
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/streetart/
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/streetart/interactive/index_bb.html
http://kids.tate.org.uk/games/street-art/


Blu

Based in Bologna, Italy, Blu makes very large-scale images of monsters and figures, often involved in scenes of barbarity. These have the look of cartoon creatures, or characters from Greek mythology. Drawing is integral to his work. He uses a very limited palette, which has the effect of highlighting his fascination with line and form. 'I use paint just to fill in the drawing,' he has said.

Blu sees buildings as 'sheets of paper' to sketch on. Due to their massive scale, his works often give the impression that the buildings they're painted on aren't quite big enough. What is unique about his work is his ability to doodle in a seemingly casual way on an epic scale. In terms of production, the work happens in two stages: first, he draws images in his sketch book but when he comes to working on the walls he often improvises something completely new.

His influences include underground and independent comic-book artists such as Robert Crumb, but he is also inspired by the fresco tradition of his native Italy and though it is quite removed from his practice, by the work of Gordon Matta-Clark. As Blu puts it: 'The way Matta-Clark used the building as a sculpture; it's something I try to imitate when I paint.'

www.blublu.org

Kurt Schwitters

Hello everybody,
It has been awhile, and I am sorry for the lack of updates recently, but here is some info on a very relevant artist to support the current GCSE printmaking and collage project. (text taken from Tate Online)

Kurt Schwitters 1887-1948

German painter, sculptor, typographer and writer. Born in Hanover. Studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Hanover 1908-9 and at Dresden Academy 1909-14. Influenced by Expressionism and Cubism 1917-18. In 1918 created his own form of Dada in Hanover called 'Merz', using rubbish materials such as labels, bus tickets and bits of broken wood in his collages and constructions. Friendship with Arp, Hausmann and van Doesburg. Published the first edition of Anna Blume (a collection of poems and prose pieces) in 1919 and the magazine Merz 1923-32. First one-man exhibition at the Galerie Der Sturm, Berlin, 1920. Began in 1923 to build fantastic Merz constructions in his house in Hanover (the first 'Merzbau'). Spent the summers in Norway from 1931 and emigrated in 1937 to Lysaker near Oslo. Fled to England in 1940, spent seventeen months in internment camps, then lived 1941-5 in London. Moved in 1945 to Ambleside in the Lake District. In the last months of his life, he began a further Merz construction in an old barn at Langdale. Died at Kendal.





(Relief in Relief) circa 1942-5

Oil on wood and plaster
object: 495 x 413 x 102 mm
relief



Initially associated with the irreverent Dada movement in 1920s Germany, Schwitters developed an interest in collage and the complex visual inventions this technique made possible. He coined the term MERZ to describe his highly idiosyncratic approach to making art. Schwitters stayed true to these principles even when he left Germany after the rise of National Socialism and emigrated to Britain. He often took months over his constructions, painstakingly searching for the appropriate elements. In wartime Barnes, where glossy magazines for his collages were scarce, the artist used driftwood from the Thames.




The Autumn Crocus 1926-8, reconstructed 1958
Die Herbstzeitlose

Painted concrete
object: 806 x 298 x 305 mm
sculpture

Transferred from the Victoria & Albert Museum 1983

T03766
In the 1920s, when the first version of this sculpture was made, Schwitters was exploring ways of combining geometric forms with more fluid, organic shapes. The sculpture twists upwards, suggesting the 'half spiral' that he identified as 'the most important of my forms'. This replica was made to stand as Schwitters' gravestone in Ambleside, in the Lake District, but the local vicar refused to have it erected. The title is a piece of wordplay. It identifies a favourite flower, but also one who 'does not live to enjoy the autumn of his days.'





Picture of Spatial Growths - Picture with Two Small Dogs 1920-39
Bild mit Raumgewächsen-Bild mit 2 kleinen Hunden

Mixed media collage on board
frame: 1155 x 863 x 131 mm support: 970 x 690 x 110 mm

This assemblage of discarded rubbish and printed ephemera was begun in Germany in 1920. In 1937, Schwitters fled Nazi Germany and went to Norway, where he added layers of Norwegian material: theatre tickets, receipts, newspaper cuttings, scraps of lace, and a box with two china dogs. The different layers of collage reflect the artist's journey into exile. Schwitters coined the term Merz to describe this form of art, which arranges the detritus of urban civilization in a highly ordered composition.
(From the display caption August 2004)


The Proposal 1942
Die Brautwerbung

Collage
support: 319 x 395 mm
on paper, unique

Accepted by H.M. Government in lieu of Inheritance Tax and allocated to Tate 2007

T12398
The Proposal takes its title from the nineteenth century lithographic illustration over which Schwitters pasted sections of a magazine advertisement. The high colour of the advertisement is set against the monochrome of the print. A conflict between a brash contemporary society and nineteenth-century restraint seems to be suggested. In other similar works Schwitters makes it clear that the contemporary vision being referred to is modern America. Knowing that Schwitters was an exile in wartime London when he conceived this image of prosperity makes it all the more poignant.

Year 8 Sculpture project

Year 8 has been working with cardboard and clay to produce sculptures of objects following a building process that is inspired on the work of Naum Gabo (see Naum Gabo post). Here are some examples of the sculptures and the beautiful watercolours they are also creating using Morandi as an inspiration.

On the 9th of March, early in the morning, this year 8 class dived into this task with admirable skill and concentration. More than admirable, it was, so far, never seen. Well done year 8!