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welcome to your first lecture on the 1980s
some of the main
concepts that i want you to take away from looking at the development
contemporary nineteen these sell it see
i'm just gonna run through these real quick post-modernism is eight general
term
attention can add it to you that we see
them in our office
uh... among artists
it really emergency believes strongly in the nineteen eighties
at post-modernism just refers to this kind of actor
modern dance and now modernism
into world art has a particular meaning
that is spam into conditioner account of general approach to art that emerges
in the late nineteenth early twentieth century
that is concerned with abstraction and formal questions about uh... making a
park itself
modernism
manifests itself in movements like
in the period we've been studying abstract expressionism or minimalism
era in which artists are
creating works of art that are
meant to be
non historical
non referential abstract concerned with that
creation art cell
uh... in that
post-modern period artist move away from that very sort of
christine formalism to uh... become
engaged with the part of that
past compost modernist are tends to be more
weight will
you can be very serious or can be carried jo ki
uh... it's much more engaged in uh...
generating
meanings outside of just the work itself and then we've got some readings and
postmodernism to do you and you'll see this as we look at partisans period how
you can see this shift from his modernist formalism too
a postmodern approach to making part
and that's a very important concept it's still really in playing the two thousand
sq
this idea that post-modern approach to making art
another thing that it becomes really important in the nineteen eighties is
questioning the gallery and museum system now we've seen some of this
before with early performance artist that chris burton who says you know
blvd
works of art that are meant to challenge the whole idea of the hierarchy of the
gallery and
this space that you know you're not supposed to violate right
interrupting a performance work of art things like that in the nineteen
eighties will see even more kenneth
explicit challenges to this idea that galleries and museums are the place
where art is supposed to happen
at corollary to that is this interest in the nineteen eighties as you know from
reading about on the shelf asked yet
in um...
the idea of the outsider artists now
there two tracks really in the nineteen eighties to becoming a famous artists
one is
the an f_a_a_ approach if you get in and i think it's been a school like yale
that's one way to become
known as an artist and get yourself into the gallery museum system another way
that becomes prominent needy sitting down you know this from reading about it
on the south
is this interesting
artists who
don't come from within that formal training system
again we've seen interest in the outsider before it mean if you think
back to him
did he say in the immediate post-world war two period who is interested in the
art of children and you see nanohub what so-called primitive cultures because
the idea being that these are people who haven't been corrupted by too much
formal training they r amp you are right there their artistic expression is
unneeded bite
that these filters that you learned when you go to art school and that's
something that in the nineteen eighties will
and shifts focus to really graffiti artist basket gets his name as a
graffiti artist also and keith haring who will look at this cut in the next
couple of lectures pat and in the year
the army to have many who can't come from outside the regular system
in aepickens a big issue in the eighties
to styles or isms that we will look at today
neo expressionism and you know dot dot these are two
assertive
working their ways of working and styles that we see emerging in the eighties
that ought to go along with all of this stuff
uh... now this last and i have your greed as good as a quote from a nineteen
eighties movie and ike
comic movie called wall street starring michael douglas in directed by oliver
stone
douglas plays this wall street reader you know this kind of it
epitome of it
nineteen eighties yuppie baby boomer making tons and tons of money
uh... and working as a professional and babies were really kind of weird
times socially and economically coming out of the nineteen seventies where you
have this
concern with identity and with civil rights and with them identity politics
and also the nineteen seventies more broadly speaking listening era in which
you had
a great deal of uh...
turmoil admit the seventy start out with you were still embroiled in a war in
vietnam
uh... then you have
richard nixon and his shenanigans being forced to resign from offices
blacks and
uh...
you have
uh... carter administration you have
and which is
which is plagued by problems with uh...
at a crisis in the oil markets there's a recent recession in the nineteen
seventies
lots and lots of good
so i think people had depended on since the nineteen fifties just started
factory as we see them many changes in the heart of the industry in the steel
industry
and by the end of the nineteen seventies means park
things are added
people are cynical
i would say you know people have given up on some of the idealism they have in
the sixties and seventies and that generation that was responsible for that
uh...
free love in the sixties and what not in the nineteen seventies the baby boom
generation has settled into adulthood and has decided to give up on the bull
no pursuing a better world and they
goto
they go to
and turn to sort of you know and making money and um... and um... to to hell
with their former idealism
so that i think is is this kind of interesting time
where with it
inauguration of ronald reagan in eighty you have
reading one against
you have and kind of conservative ascendancy you have a turn away from
social interests
you have a more uh...
uh... money or even two independent culture uh... you know that
a less
i would say a less serious a west ernest culture in the nineteen eighties
and that is something that i'm saying more generally but it also has some
implications
for the artwork
one of the things that's very distinctive about the art world at the
nineteen eighties is this is one of the first times we see
art being treated like a speculative commodity the way that people treat
barrels of oil or corn futures on uh... the tradingmarkets okay
so people by
works of art with the idea that they're going to increase in value and um... so
one of the things we have that we see happening with can jeffrey are
disappearing it is people
art collectors are out looking for the next hot
because if they can buy these guys in central mostly guys if they can buy them
while there
as still relatively unknown and then they break big in the art market than
they can make a ton of money
it's also we start to see the record breaking prices being paid for works
that part
at classic works apart
it's in the nineteen eighties that you have a japanese businessmen pain
that i think it was it was a record setting price at the time is about
thirty or forty million dollars for a band go painting
and that was you know shocking at the time but now of course that record has
even been broken some people pay astronomical sums of money for arts
starting early in the nineteen eighties this is when we see that seeped in
marketing
between art as
really a speculative money
and that is something that will of course the fact the way that heart
develops during this time period
now and probably really
example finding strands is one artist who has a very short and and fast
careers on the south asking that
as you can see died
really relatively young at the end of the nineteen eighty-seven ***
overdose sailed from sixty nineteen sixties nineteen eighty eight minutes
and photograph of there
john the shell bosque i came to you
prominence fire first as eight
graffiti artist and he started tagging buildings around town in the area of new
york city that was kind of an up-and-coming
art and neighborhood
and it got him attention
you know you he would
spray-paint these rather
and uh...
rather
enigmatic kinds of slogans on balls uh... outside and slug buildings around
lower manhattan
and same has
as a m uh... research he starts breaking this curfew graffiti
your some of the freezes and actually going to blackboard
film from downtown eighty-one up and tagging buildings
say no
as an escape clause sabo isn't and to playing cards
cmo
plus a few feet
say no it's an end to mind what's religion nowhere politics bogus last
so that these people
new year date you know little challenges to the art world and they get attention
and that is really what
gets his his name be i mean you have to think
this is a time when
hip hop is really like a brand new
musical form
uh... that's breaking on the scene
uh...
early graffiti artists early rap artists who sometimes are the same uh... early
d_j_s you know like at fab five freddie these are people who are just don't like
brand-new ding-*** you know that what nineteen twenty years old in nineteen
eighty and these are young kids who are out there
uh... and they're not part of the gallery see they're not part of the art
world percy their folks who are
perceived as being work
sounded edgy and street-wise and they had this real outsider appeal to you the
and galleries took to get them gallery
so here's bosque had in the late seventies early
eighties tagging in building uh... and that is a sort of
typical of cmo and
haven't seen the slogan in the work
the look at
here's another couple of pieces of his graffiti
and they're no longer expanding our list of his disappeared uh... but i mean it
since your photographs taken early on
uh... that scene
and here's an example of bosque hats paintings so he's working also as a
painter
at the same time that he's out generating buzz by doing this tagging of
buildings he becomes an um
the darling of an up-and-coming gallery director named mary boone and its
because she recognizes that there's a real potential here for an collectors to
to invite this kind of backed by the sky it's also because he becomes friends
with
indeed warhol
that back in nineteen eighty two that he is becoming
there that he becomes kind of you know
moved from the that margins to the center
so i just want to point out here a couple of things about his
his m_p_t_
basket feeding center the very large scale which we know from abstract
expressionism that's the sort of classic you know peter we maneuver
add the style of painting he does gets the nickname the yellow expressionism in
fact partly for the fact that you peeps these large canvases partly for the fact
that as you can see here
they are very
reminiscent of abstract expressionism and that they have a large abcam this is
very
schedule e orders and sort of uh...
and expressive we
applied paint
uh... in the case of bosque odd a little bit like early paintings by jackson
pollack you have these
rather iconic looking
figures placed in the paintings uh... boskin appeals to these
collector appeals to people in the early eighties too because he has paintings
look like a speedy his paintings look like they could have been
at word you know it looked like a child like uh... eh they have that kind of
outsider quality that untrained
quality that people really wiped me out
is it conundrum here because of course
bosque act
is deliberately painting in this trial he doesn't have training as an artist he
in fact had gone to a private school in uh... in new york city
he had grown up uh... in new york he was
edge into ends
beat so he has a background he knew what he was doing this stuff was not artist
created by accident
but this story that was developed around baski i is one of those kind of
outsider wild child you know and in fact people
were obsessed with the idea that he was black which he was and that he behaves
father was from haiti and so and you know there's this famous scene from an
interview or somebody asks him you know do the colors of your paintings come
from growing up you know what he said hard and
bit baskets like you know i'm an american i grew up here in new york city
just because my dad came from haiti does it mean that we had a bunch of you know
villeneuve flags around our house and his very frustrated by this
always the temps to label hand and
pigeon-hole him as being black
you know black artists so what does it mean to be a black artist and he would
say no i'm an artist can you talk about the anson artist
sandwiches of course also very different than the map recover artists of the
previous generation who were very concerned with this idea of pan african
isn't here bosque aren't just wants to be
in expressing himself
out so i think it was just a few more schemes
and so i don't have the title of this one here but i just wanted to show you a
couple so you get a sense of what boskin toward looked like
hi should tell you by the way that the speculation in baskets paintings and
mentioned that the art market in the eighties is very much about you know
investing for return
and bask in that died in haiti gave a drug overdose in in
media lee the prices of his paintings when up
by denying there by two thousand seven the record for a piece of work to buy at
fight
last year was and
at sea for may two thousand seven so not quite a year ago
and untitled bocce campaign from nineteen eighty one sold at sotheby's
for fourteen point six million
the previous record was an
at two thousand two
c_e_o_ of the painting actually owned by one of metallica's members
that was sold for uh... five-and-a-half million dollars cell from two thousand
two to two thousand seven his paintings have
uh... tripled in value basically nearly tripled in value
so again any missed their art market continues to be a kind of speculative
market place
uh... for works like this and because he died young and because he had this
persona that we think that when we think of the artist in his tortured you know
he had a kind of
uh...
tumultuous relationships with women internal to his relationships with his
gallery owners and you know he was at add at
and can get them
badboy wild child you know indicate of course the drug use and all that gets
glamorizing think a little bit
and he got treated as this kind of you know
humid fast died young left a good-looking corks and so then since
there's a limited reina limited number of his paintings out there because of
his early death and there
no work even that much more
the will decrease it
excellency here's another one of his paintings luna park from nineteen eighty
two and again
neo expressionism i just wanted you see this is march stick scale painting
uh... very expressive libra cially applied
in this case you have um...
very
i would say deliberately childlike looking to rinds and graffiti being
placed on the painting
one thing that really separates the neo expressionist from the abstract
expressionist is the inclusion of figures the inclusion of words as you
can see
of the inclusion of
implied near it isn't stories in
v's and paintings
another thing that will see with another neo expressionist we look at is
the inclusion of historical references this isn't what characterizes
post-modern art as opposed to modern art
the abstract expressionist would be classified as modernist since they're
very interested in formal qualities of painting
the idea of the work of art as a complete entity into u_n_ of itself
whereas these
post-modern artists
are not so concerned with that they make references to the outside world age of
our connections they tour on history they are
sometimes funny in playful and sometimes series
but always
having more content and meaning outside just repeating itself
he ran for example here in his horn players from nineteen eighty-three not
only do you have words included on here but you also have he's referencing
uh...
charlie parker who is known as the bird that's record apologies that charlie
parker's faintest
famous and
an album
and you've got mitzi dizzy gillespie referenced here you'd obviously got
uh... words you've got music you've got musical symbols
so this is a painting about more than just the painting itself and of course
it is that expresses style that me and its freshness style
with figurative imagery with words with references to the outside with the kind
of graffiti and then this very deliberately childlike looking drawing
and steer again hollywood africans here in nineteen eighty three he's dealing
with questions of representation
at in the representations av
and blacks in the movie so and can ants
it's an interesting
sipped brownfield modernist period to the post modernist period in this case
of course fast yet has
really engaged in this sort of
identity questions that we also saw the black arts
uh... another way that basket really because no one in famous it becomes part
of the inner circle of the art world is it he strikes up a friendship with andy
warhol in nineteen eighty two women named d
embarked on a series of collaborations in the eighties and this is one of their
collaborations where it starts out with any doing it will painting of the
paramount logo and then bosque outcomes and and over paints on top of that with
his own style
and they did a series of these kinds of p_d_'s and in fact you know
wall came under some criticism some people felt
that this is very opportunistic on were halls part you know that he saw that
this guy who's kid was the hot new young commodity and warhol is becoming sort of
lesson
less cutting adhesion so he
you know invites
bosque adding to his world so that he can feed off of his creative energy
at one interpretation of the same team
you know there is a certain
cynical feeling to the art world of the nineteen eighties and in fact and
there's a really great movie about him
about bosque at colleges bosque not directed by julius knipl new was
actually a felony of expressionist painter in a_b_c_'s gone on to become
quite prominent movie director both recently did that uh... diving bell and
the butterfly
uh... recommended if you're interested in this artist in this period it's a
very thoughtful and very
well done movies about the rise of
uh... sounds up asking out his relationship to his gallery owners
and gary directors and downs relationship to warhol
at any rate so there is you know warhol are any kind of part of the celebrity
world uh...
climbing onto baskets energy and his up-and-coming celebrityhood
and returning to your program
bosque not harming him and warhol armand hammer where again starts with warhol
painting and then passed yet comes in the book repeats it that hasn't stopped
this by the way subpoenaed sold for fourteen million dollars in may of last
year
self-test f_y_i_ so it's another example of that you can see
it is large-scale like abstract expressionism
but it is this meal expressions eating
okay i just mentioned julius knipl and want to show you a couple of his
paintings as well
doing sneargle becomes a friend of bosque at sarah coming up at the same
time
this is m
here is that he was also manhandled by the married in gallery
into bed he became that's really disney indiana so solo sail in nineteen seventy
nine
many was invited to participate in the venice biennale e which is a at buying
and selling every two years in venice in fact it's still very important so
where if you get invited to that the n_r_a_ you have made it
he so he's making a name for himself as a neo expressionist in again he's also
an example of postmodernism
soc naval here
has painted a picture that is uh... a subject that had
e is our historical had their lots and lots of
pictures of saint francis in ecstasy abner
in the desert
done throughout history so here's and saint francis by julius knipl
it's large-scale right it's a huge painting it's very rashi in the
background you can really see that thickly applied needs
that typical of day
neo expressionist
and here he's also included in this is what really made his name was this
twist online expressionist painting where
he has included
to make the surface texture the rocky texture of that uh... landscape that
scene francis isn't
he has included a bunch of broken
crockery on the surface of the painting
these large scale
plea paintings said i met her with
broken ceramic plates were something new and really got a huge
uh... a huge response from
the critical public in nineteen eighty citizens really what made stables name
these large scale
broken crockery expressionist paintings
it's me al its freshness because of the size and this
the that
surfaced texture
and uh... brassy nis and the general kind of energy of the paintings
it is post-modern because unlike a modernist painting here you've got and
art historical reference you've got
figurative imagery
not that kind of
self and close hermetic world of modernism here
there's just said ben
uh... what sixteenth-century painting of saint francis an axe to see just is a
comparison to say that you can see it's a it's unhistorical subject it's when it
goes way back in history of western art
he's included some of the same i cannot refuse here you can see
there was a stall on the right-hand side of the stable painting if you go back
you can see it quite clearly in there as the school resting on the table
enhancing francis's little bauer there
uh... that's the you know
in his rocky landscape that is this sort of
i cannot refute this image therapist this story that and stables referencing
has another example of samples early cain and uh... neo expressionist
painting this is his exile from nineteen eighty where he's literally quoting from
a karva g_o_p_ eating which i'm showing you gary isn't being sent on the right
hand side
that he's putting into this very large scale
painting that i have something in common with the you know abstract expressionism
in it
very brescia very thickly applied pete fairy expressionist equipping and then
you've got these large areas have just
abstract applications of
but unlike in a modernist painting here you also have
historical references figures you also have this kind of random looking doll
thats been incorporated into the and painting
you know uh... a little uh...
pop culture canyon image the never would have been part of
an abstract expressionist work
many resources seems to be taking a page from the
neo dot ac
movement and or either
is with guys like robert rousing bergman bird his canyon or exotic combine
painting some here you've got a couple of in we're sticking out of bed
and sticking out of the surface of the speaking
stable porter picture this a self-portrait in in the shadow he's
referring of course t_v_ warhol
z nineteen eighty seven painting of broken crockery
area i mean as you can see that today
materials bond elana at which is that
substance use to
filling
tracks in in and scratches and body of a car right
bundle plates in or elana wood panels so here it is eight makes it
unusual media
as well as figured petain units very
uh... expressionist style break that's being used herself
uh... that's
kind of jewish naval in it and not sell
since then as i mentioned he has gone on to in he's made millions and millions
and in he became one of the the big sellers in the nineteen eighties became
very wealthy
and kenneth catapulted into the jet set you know
friends of the andy warhol friends with all sorts of movie stars
uh... married to a supermodel
he now is a movie director and he just recently bought a place in in manhattan
and i just wanted to show you hear his after his building that he purchased in
and he's been renovating it he got in trouble with his neighborhood
association because he painted building this kind of haiti's pepto bismol pink
at which is obviously quite visible from wherever you are in the neighborhood
uh... but he's been able to keep it that pepto bismol color so
dissapoint i think it's interesting he'll he's is a little bit of an anzac
provocateur unite security people at that
he also
again has kind of become
since his debut is a new expression is he has become
they uh...
you know celebrity he's become a director he's can gone on to do all
these other things
and then okay so we wanted to me i'll express news and i just want to show you
via the preeminent neil dot eyes too emerges in the nineteen eighties in that
is this guy jeff
and like
stable since he and survived the nineteen eighties colin's has also
become
at incredibly he's one of the
i would say
uh... most expensive living artists he is
still working he is uh... still producing he's still collected
and he is also his earlier work in nineteen eighty cents records for
collectors to purchase them
out here is one of his early you know groundbreaking series if he does this is
that new hoover deadlock shampoo polish serious from the nineteen eighties
and where you can see
it's three purchase shampoo policy rs plexiglas to make the case again
fluorescent lights ins interspersed between each of the
sample policies
just from this course you should be able to recognize several influences on chat
means first of all i hope you recognize the ideas of marcel de south but the
notion of the purchase ready-made that you put into a new contacts and make
into a work of art
i'll be also recognize
we noticed some secondary influence of guys like
jasper johns you know with his bronze delightful
and of course our friend dan flavin p and minimalist artists who worked with
fluorescent lights so there's an interesting are historical references
even the of the twentieth century incase in
jeff kunz is
jeff kunz is installation here
uh... but he will keep
he will take this idea and then move it in two directions that people hadn't
gone before
for example
ab by the mid-nineteen eighties the n_b_a_ had become bought one of the top
three sports in america
and one of the you know
most-watched must attend a damn highest-grossing sports and this is
partly due to the influence of these really
famous players like magic johnson larry bird and particularly michael jordan who
by the eighties you know they have taken professional basketball to a new level
uh... and so here's *** incorporating
the ideas of the you know the importance of the n_b_a_ into his uh... or that the
prominent in the n_b_a_ and the money at the n_b_a_ into his work
so here's to bali equilibrium tank where you have
a couple of regulation n_b_a_ basketball suspended in a tank of liquid
he does this as a series in
d_-nineteen eighties and this is just you know that his and be a step is just
amin incredibly makes you know a huge splash in our world
this is a subject that hadn't really been part of the art world even with
these
seemingly very boundary breaking an hierarchy breaking artists like myself
who shop and uh... jeff kunz
or excuse me and them
and jasper johns and in he's taking this
breakdown between
art and that life
even farther you know bagundi also of course i mean this is an typically
nineteen eighties because n_b_a_ basketball has become
and huge celebrity culture and has become hugely uh... money generating
that he would turn to that as opposed to you
you know something else
is particularly
typical of the eighties
here's another one of his empty laboring tanks with the
at basketball suspended exactly in the middle
he also did at paintings there excuse me and works like this poster dynasty and
third and
uh... third street from nineteen eighty five it's just a free ninety poster that
he included in his exhibition so that you have
him taking low art
advertising art
and appropriating itm carling at his own so very much part of the neo dot i again
remember dot a
with marcel the shotgun and you've got a story johnson's
sixties fifties and sixties and he misses
reworking some of the ideas ab
found objects and chants and appropriation and the boundary between
high and low that
foods is working with me
he also does things like he has a
basketball bronze now he doesn't personally do this he you know sends a
basketball off to one of these companies that bronze is baby she is and they've
since they have been found a new technology
and is basically commissions for them to you create a bronze version of the
basketball
that he puts on display
effect that's true for a lot of comes as working comes up with the idea but he
doesn't executed usually cast
other people who are technicians in these various media uh... execute his
work for him
because of course use the idea got
another thing that comes does in the eighties that's very connected to the
post-modern idea is that he and does a series
uh... the banality series is a series of sculptures where he commissions uh...
companies that create stuff like the franklin mates to do
to do these objects for him so here is a painted wood sculpture
uh... fairly large a couple of
p_t_ knows that's fairly substantial
uh... wood sculpture
this is the assertive and mascot at his banality series them something that
spinoff is something that is you know its
dahmer everyday
commonplace
and it's easy
or katie
uh... and that's what he's got here dot showing in banality he's got to little
angels on either side
that looked like a mean this is kind of like something you might expect to see
in you know at grandma's collectible case next to the hummel figurines but
it's that twist on that because he got these things you don't expect to see
like there's a kidney
nineteen eighties tracksuit helping to push the pig forwarded needs to billy
joel's
uh... it's a pig dressed up with that
a ribbon around its neck you know the idea of that kind of crass
low brow stuff that's being dressed up in meeting to art so this is an
part of that
part of the post-modern
approach to making art is to embrace
all of our history to embrace of both
you know kind of the crappy
e cutesy stuff of everyday life as well as the inserted high-minded stuff of
modernism and put them all together
and so let me show you probably the most famous figure from his answer you
but now beats
series
now sorry there's none of you
so you can see that the other teams won the other side
and then it better view that kittens eighties tracksuit
this is probably the most famous and this is a sculpture that's actually
about three feet tall it's a large
uh... in this case
it's a plaster sculpture that's been heated and
gilded
this is his michael jackson and bubbles
uh... famously you know by the eighties any michael jackson had become the best
selling recording artists of all time but he had already started to exhibits
and strange behaviors the ads is catching convenient bubbles
and here jeff kunz has turned him into this subject of
large-scale sculpture which actually is referencing
classical argue the classical tradition that poses one that we would have expect
to see
from a figure on eight greek temple
had amidst culture you know how they
in the corners a pattern in sap nbct figures they can fit under the um...
those sloping of the the
group of the cabinet
so here you've got that kind of style and you've got that kind of them
uh... medium but then the subject is not good dot agree cod or a dying caller
something like that it's michael jackson right so this is the banality series
it's this
post-modern approach to making art
in here again
this would be something that he did not actually create himself he would have
commissioned the company or workshop to do this for him
the polly crimi here the multicolored meeting here
with the guilt thing on it is actually probably historically accurate to have
greek sculptures in the ancient period would have originally been painted so
just spend an interesting side there
this culture by the way sold a couple of years ago for pat i think it was about
ten million dollars so it has become a classic from the nineteen eighties and
again
trudeau's is one of the most expensive living artists out there is a often
settings
record-breaking prices and and in this case no exception
letter of his series that i uh... the nineteen eighties this is a stainless
steel version of zero coco sculptures so he had and eighteenth-century portrait
bust of a woman
that he
commissioned a company to create a stainless steel reproduction apso
just spin again very typical post-modernism taking historical
works of art and reworking them putting them into other media
it
in this case is one that was a famous adulterous technique news story was well
known in italy so he's taken out and turned it into this
turning to the sculpture
working with
the history of art
uh... not necessarily doing this himself you know i just think
if abstract expressionism is the kind of
poster child for modernism with those guys it was all about that touch of the
artists in the expression of the artist came with a post-modern artists
that's not it it all you know jeff kunz doesn't care if he ever personally
touches his sculpture it's the idea that he's
created that he uh... wants
that is important and it is
this um...
irreverence of tradition that is important to him
and this is a sink sample out that this should save eighteenth-century well no
that is a seventeenth century best and they've but this idea of these kind of
and market basket you could find that they're broke early here and he's taking
using instead reached
here's another of his series aired his banality series in the nineteen eighties
this is absolutely
portrait sculpture at his and white
whose name was done
uh...
gladwell nicknames like chico venus she was a pornstar in italian pornstar who
became a member of
parliament in vb tien parliament in the eighties and then married jeff
koontz and while they were married
uh... did a whole series of works at were about
her and a series of works that were about them and their sex life together
and services
his a in his banality series in the eighties it's her holding a stuffed
animal of the pink panther
it's very representational
it's very kind of kitty uh... it's very technical and his eighties work
hero and i said mentioned you have a couple of
here actually rather tame from this series today
and the jeff kunz made in heaven series that their little bit explicit to just
morning for you
and here
is jeff kunz it with his wife at the time what she kalina there dressed a
rather there
uh... referencing that idea of
traditional works of art but here it and of course including and more
sort of soft in this case stockport warren
aesthetic
writes no mixing high and low sacred profane
uh... and very much part of his post-modern addict into making part
he also does it not only large-scale photographs of the two of them in
various positions but this is that the two of them actually engaged in kuwait
is
uh... from a photograph he has been large-scale sculpture made and of the
two of them engaged in sex
and then he also has these class figurines made of the two of them from
this pack meeting happened series so it's again you know it's taking the low
in the higher the secret in the pristine and darien exalted in mixing them all
together
also
the doing uh... commissioning versions of these sculptures that are in
what are traditionally considered kind of you know keeps me ta like this class
and i think you read type of thing that you would expect to find in somebody's
curio cabinet
uh... these are all
typical of truth in the eighties and early nineties
becomes famous for doing this kind of
and series of sculptures where he's taken essentially what would be aid
an inflatable toys right at the when the animal about bunny
uh... u
very non serious very playful and child-like image and he's had a cast
in-stock in stainless steel so this would be
you know if you went up to it it looks sort of like it might be a mile or
balloon but it's actually a heavy
weighty stainless steel sculpture
uh... and again so playing with you're playing with
eight and playful kind of friendly and unpretentious low brow
imagery
uh... *** also in the nineties did a series of large-scale topiary sculptures
that is you know these big wire constructions
uh... there's one in front of the guggenheim museum in bilbao spain it's
called puppy and it's a big giant lake
two-story tall building size
uh... wire sculpture that's covered in flowers and it's shaped like a puppy
so nontraditional medium um... and very playful which is again typical kurds
identify colette this post-modern trend that emerges in the eighties
uh... despite these things being very chill kian playful and one night and day
childlike even they are really again you know very expensive very um... this sort
of top of the um... art market you know collectibles
yours and add something he's done where recently a series of a hundred
inflatable hopes in the lever house gallery in two thousand one
believer house itself is actually nikon of modernism so it's funny to have these
post-modernism artists display numeric
and ellis each scene link in santa monica so here is that these said no
inflatable water toys it's this area that's real close to the beach in santa
monica so appropriate to the area
balloon animals that have gotten purple with an inflatable batter an improved
toys that have gotten stuck in this chain link fence
he's also become of the darling of
uh... some of the major art collectors in the world this is actually that see
the plots a grassy is owned by the guy that owns
uh... the company that that makes louis vuitton luggage
it's called at the end groups very very them
wealth the art collectors so here is his giants
kind of candy heart hanging in lots of grassy in venice at recent spellcheck
thinks is from two thousand six
series continued in this mellowed where he makes these kind of pop culture
images that are in unexpected media
work very hard steel
and in
and and very excessive all very understandable you know not an
that formal kind of colton
and and abstract minimalism that something and
playful and and understandable
ten years ago
another example of that i get from the scene collector this is uh... floating
on a little
here uh... in venice
uh... his
ballooned dog magenta
which is being very large-scale stainless steel
version uh... any
one dot the animal child's way
uh... again so very much this
post-modern playful approach to making art not sincere is not so concerned with
you know that
thing itself
that with that making something that's
fine and and uh... playful and understandable
that very much
part of this whole
post-modern track
so again ami jete conceding classified as neo dot off for the purposes of the
cm
and i hope you get a sense of how he's also the exemplar of
postmodernism
he continues to work he continues to sell he continues to show
uh...
he by the way he ain't much equally nagged at getting divorced him one of
the things he said
at me i didn't hear the sun with what she could mean an end up getting custody
and you know in that whole painful process of divorce and custody
arrangements and whatnot he said
he wants his art
especially after you've gone through this very painful experience he really
wants his art to be something that people can just into a weight that it
ads to wait to people's lives
so anti-buchanan
lover guy likens arcade him i hope you understand assertive
what it is that a guy like but that i couldn't is doing and i think it's
interesting that one of the things he says
is not only does he do that wanna make a lot of money
which is certainly something he said early on but also that he
wants to bring
uh... enjoyment and joy to people when he does the likes to do our kids humane
and that's really double and that people can love
uh... that doesn't require you to go through some sort of new training to
understand i'm like i would say donaldson's jets minimalism for example
all here's just another example and this is from the lever house no so here you
know i purchased pants
matter
from a hardware store with this caterpillar and
inflatable toys stuck in itself
you know junkie
and understandable and really