Art and social action

Art as Social Action
Dr Michael Paraskos

1. The linguistic message (text)
2. The literal message (or denoted image)
3. The symbolic message (or connoted image)
Roland Barthes
The Rhetoric of the Image
(1964)

In semiotic terms
TREE = ΔΕΝΤΡΟ =
=

Art and Language Group
The Art & Language group was founded by artists
Terry Atkinson (b. 1939), David Bainbridge (b. 1941),
Michael Baldwin (b. 1945) and Harold Hurrell (b.
1940) in 1966 while teaching art in Coventry.

Art and Language Group
= A PAINTING
(in semiotic terms)

Joseph Kosuth
Born in Toledo, Ohio, 1945
Moved to New York in 1965 and attended the Bew York
School of Visual Arts,
From 1971 he studied anthropology and philosophy at the
New School for Social Research, New York.
“The ‘value’ of particular artists after
Duchamp can be weighed according
to how much they questioned the
nature of art.”
Joseph Kosuth (1969)

Joseph Kosuth
One and Three Chairs
1965

Joseph Kosuth
One and Three Lamps
1965

Joseph Kosuth
One and Three Shovels
1965

Marcel Duchamp
In Advance of the Broken Arm
1916

National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Ken Turner
Street Happening (still from video)
Hamburg, 1970
If you can challenge the
idea as to what is a
painting, you can also
challenge the idea of what
is art.
Could anything be art if it
was presented by an artist
as art?
Could a strange seemingly
random event in the street
be art?

Stass Paraskos
Portrait of Robin Page
1965
Robin Page

Robin Page
Standing On My Own Head (film still)
1972
Robin Page
(1932 - 2015)
Page was a British born artist who, along with
artists such as Ken Turner, was central to the
development of happenings, street art and
performance as art. Like Turner he too began as
a traditional painter but moved into
performance and street art in the revolutionary
artistic atmosphere in British art schools in the
1960s.
For Page it was the freedom to experiment he
found at Leeds College of Art in the 1960s that
was important.

Robin Page
Merry Christmas ‘66
1966
Intended to he staged on the steps of Leeds
Town Hall on Christmas Day 1966, the
performance happening was moved inside
Leeds College of Art after the police objected
to Page lying naked in a public space.
Leeds Town Hall at that time was also the local
police headquarters.

Robin Page
Merry Christmas ‘66
1966

Robin Page
Throw it Away
1966
Throw it Away was a performance
event exploring the apparent
meaninglessness of art.
Passers-by in the main shopping
street in Leeds (called Briggate)
were handed leaflets with
instructions to throw the leaflet
away and forget about it.

National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Stass Paraskos
Lovers and Romances,
1966
With fellow Leeds artist Stass
Paraskos, Robin Page was also
instrumental in orchestrating a
notorious court case in which the
police were goaded into
prosecuting Paraskos for
exhibiting this painting on the
grounds of it showing male
nudity. The ensuing publicity led
to a change in the law governing
public exhibitions of art.

Robin Page
Untitled photogrpaph (Vietnam ‘66)
1966
Leeds newspaper reporting the
exhibition against the Vietnam War

Article on Robin Page
and the Destruction
in Art Symposium (DIAS) 1966
DIAS was held at the Africa Centre, in
Covent Garden, London

Article on Robin Page
and the Destruction
in Art Symposium (DIAS) 1966
DIAS was held at the Africa Centre, in
Covent Garden, London
Other participants included:
Gustav Metzger
Otto Mühl
(co-founder of Viennese Actionism)
Wolf Vostell
(Co-Founder of Fluxus)
Yoko Ono

Gustav Metzger
Born in Nuremburg in 1926, Germany, Metzger came
to Britain in 1939
FOUNDER OF AUTO-DESTRUCTIVE ART
Metzger invented the term Auto-Destructive Art in
the 1959 and publicly announced it in 1962 in an
article in Ark entitled
“Machine, Auto-Creative and Auto-Destructive Art”

Gustav Metzger
The Years Without Art
1977 to 1980,
1974
Sometimes also known
as the First Art Strike
“Artists engaged in political struggle act in two key areas: the use of their art for
direct social change; and actions to change the structures of the art world. It needs
to be understood that this activity is necessarily of a reformist, rather than
revolutionary, character. Indeed this political activity often serves to consolidate
the existing order
“The use of art for social change is bedevilled by the close integration of art and
society. The state supports art, it needs art as a cosmetic cloak to its horrifying
reality, and uses art to confuse, divert and entertain large numbers of people.
“The refusal to labour is the chief weapon of workers fighting the system; artists
can use the same weapon. To bring down the art system it is necessary to call for
years without art, a period of three years - 1977 to 1980 - when artists will not
produce work, sell work, permit work to go on exhibitions, and refuse collaboration
with any part of the publicity machinery of the art world. This total withdrawal of
labor is the most extreme collective challenge that artists can make to the state.
The years without art will see the collapse of many private galleries. Museums and
cultural institutions handling contemporary art will be severely hit, suffer loss of
funds, and will have to reduce their staff. National and local government
institutions will be in serious trouble. Art magazines will fold.”
Gustav Metzger, 1974

Viennese Actionism was a loose
grouping active from 1960 to 1971
Its main participants were Günter Brus,
Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch, and Rudolf
Schwarzkogler.
Hermann Nitsch’s stated:
Vienna Actionism never was a group. A
number of artists reacted to particular
situations that they all encountered,
within a particular time period, and with
similar means and results.

In June 1968 at the University of Vienna
Otto Mühl, Oswald Weiner and Gunter
Brus performed Art and Revolution

In June 1968 at the University of Vienna
Otto Mühl, Oswald Weiner and Gunter
Brus performed Art and Revolution
In this Mühl explored his own bodily
functions by urinating in front of the
audience, drinking his own urine,
inducing himself to vomit and finally
masturbating in front of the audience
onto an Austrian flag.
For this last act he was imprisoned for
six months

“Pure painting or the art of drawing
whose point of departure is based on
purely formal criteria is, in my opinion,
passé.”
- Otto Mühl
Opposed to the commodification
(commercialisation) of art
Taking a stand against what they see as
residual Nazi elements in post-war
Austrian society
Hostile to Capitalism (in effect
anarchists)

FLUXUS In 1967 Robin Page left Leeds to move to Germany
where he linked up with a group of artists who
called themselves Fluxus.
According to the art historian Hal Foster:
“Fluxus remains the most complex, and therefore widely
underestimated, artistic movement (or “non-movement” as
it called itself) of the early to mid-sixties.
“Fluxus saw no distinction between art and life, and believed
that routine, banal and everyday actions could be regarded
as artistic events, declaring that, ‘everything is art and
everyone can do it’.”
Stass Paraskos
Portrait of Robin Page (detail)
1965

FLUXUS Fluxus was announced by the
Lithuanian-born artist
George Maciunas (1931-1978) in 1963
Festum Fluxorum Fluxus, in
Düsseldorf.
“(Fluxus seeks to) purge the world of
bourgeois sickness, 'intellectual',
professional & commercialized culture
... PROMOTE A REVOLUTIONARY
FLOOD AND TIDE IN ART, ... promote
NON ART REALITY to be grasped by all
peoples, not only critics, dilettantes
and professionals ... FUSE the cadres
of cultural, social & political
revolutionaries into united front &
action.”

FLUXUS Fluxus was announced by the
Lithuanian-born artist
George Maciunas (1931-1978) in 1963
Festum Fluxorum Fluxus, in
Düsseldorf.
The early phase of Fluxus, often called
Proto-Fluxus, began in 1959 when a
group of artists who had met in John
Cage's class at The New School formed
the New York Audio Visual Group.
This group provided venues for
experimental and performance art.

FLUXUS
Yoko Ono
Born Tokyo 1933

Yoko Ono
(Japanese, born 1933)
Cut Piece
1964
Originally performed in Kyoto and later
reprised in New York, Tokyo and London

Yoko Ono
(Japanese, born 1933)
Cut Piece
1964
(New York)

Shigeko Kubota
(Japanese, 1937-2015)

Carolee Schneemann
Eye Body No. 4
1963
Eye Body is a series that consists of
thirty-six photographs of the artist in
an environment she created with
various objects such as broken
mirrors, dress mannequins, and
plastic tarps. To become a piece of the
art herself, Schneemann covered
herself in various materials including
grease, chalk, and plastic and created
thirty-six "transformative actions" in
the setting while a colleague
photographed her.

Carolee Schneemann
Meat Joy
1964
Meat Joy was first performed in
Paris, then filmed and
photographed at the Judson
Memorial Church, New York in
1964,. Nude men and women
dance and play with substances
including raw chicken, fish,
sausage, scraps of paper, and
wet paint.
This Dionysian-inspired ritualistic
rite was a "celebration of flesh
as material“ and was claimed by
Schneemann as a feminist act of
reclaiming the body as a site of
pleasure

Carolee Schneemann
Script from Kitch’s Last Meal (1973) and performance photographs of Interior Scroll (1975)

Marina Abramović
Born in Belgrade 1946
Her work explores
the participation of
observers, and
focuses on
“confronting pain,
blood, and the
physical limits of the
body.”

Marina Abramović
Rhythm O
1974

72 objects were placed on a table.
These included a rose, feather,
perfume, honey, bread, grapes, wine,
scissors, a scalpel, nails, a metal bar,
and a gun loaded with one bullet.

INSTRUCTIONS
There are 72 objects on the table that
one can use on me as desired.
Performance.
I am the object.
During this period I take full
responsibility.

“ What I learned was that... if you leave it up to
the audience, they can kill you.
“I felt really violated: they cut up my clothes,
stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person
aimed the gun at my head, and another took it
away. It created an aggressive atmosphere.
“After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and
started walking toward the audience. Everyone
ran away, to escape an actual confrontation.”
-Marina Abramović

Christopher Burden (1946 –2015)
Born in Boston, USA
Studied visual arts, physics and
architecture at Pomona College and Fine
Art at the University of California, Irvine

“I was asked to do a piece on a local television
station by Phyllis Lutjeans. After several proposals
were censored by the station or by Phyllis, I agreed
to an interview situation. I arrived at the station
with my own video crew so that could have my own
tape. While the taping was in progress, I requested
that the show be transmitted live. Since zhe station
was not broadcasting at the time, they complied. In
the course of the interview, Phyllis asked me to talk
about some of the pieces I had thought of doing. I
demonstrated a T.V. Hijack. Holding a knife at her
throat, I threatened her life if the station stopped
live transmission. I told her that I had planned to
make her perform obcene acts. At the end of the
recording, I asked for the tape of the show. I
unwound the reel and destroyed the show by
dousing the tape with acetone. The station manager
was irate, and I offered him my tape which included
the show and its destruction, but he refused.”
Christopher Burden
Still from TV Hijack
1972

“I was asked to do a piece on a local television
station by Phyllis Lutjeans. After several proposals
were censored by the station or by Phyllis, I agreed
to an interview situation. I arrived at the station
with my own video crew so that could have my own
tape. While the taping was in progress, I requested
that the show be transmitted live. Since the station
was not broadcasting at the time, they complied. In
the course of the interview, Phyllis asked me to talk
about some of the pieces I had thought of doing. I
demonstrated a T.V. Hijack. Holding a knife at her
throat, I threatened her life if the station stopped
live transmission. I told her that I had planned to
make her perform obcene acts. At the end of the
recording, I asked for the tape of the show. I
unwound the reel and destroyed the show by
dousing the tape with acetone. The station manager
was irate, and I offered him my tape which included
the show and its destruction, but he refused.”
Christopher Burden
Still from TV Hijack
1972

‘Yankees Go Home’
‘Straight Elections’
‘Quem Matou Herzog?’ or ‘Who Killed Herzog?’
Cildo Meireles
Insertions Into Ideological Circuits 2
1970

See Red was founded in 1974 in London by Julia Franco, Sarah Jones,
Suzy Mackie and Pru Stevenson

Its aim was:
“to combat images of the ‘model woman’ which are used to keep
women from disputing their secondary status.”

See Red was founed in 1974 in London by Julia Franco, Sarah Jones,
Suzy Mackie and Pru Stevenson

Judy Chicago (1939 - )
The Dinner Party
1974-79

Judy Chicago
The Dinner Party (detail)
1974-79

Judy Chicago
The Dinner Party (details)
1974-79

Guerrilla Girls is an anonymous group of
feminist, female artists devoted to fighting
sexism and racism within the art world.
The group formed in New York City in 1985
with the mission of bringing gender and
racial inequality into focus within the
greater arts community.
Guerrilla Girls
Do Women Have To Be
Naked To Get Into the
Met. Museum?
1989

Guerrilla Girls
Advantages of Being a
Woman Artist
1988

Guerrilla Girls
3 Ways to Write a
Museum Wall Label
Chuck Close
President Bill Clinton
1992

Art and social action

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