Topless Cellist

Topless Cellist

Author: Joan Rothfuss

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2014-09-12

Total Pages: 463

ISBN-13: 026202750X

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The first book to explore the extraordinary career of musician and performance artist Charlotte Moorman, whose work combined classical rigor, avant-garde experiment, and madcap daring. The Juilliard-trained cellist Charlotte Moorman sat nude behind a cello of carved ice, performed while dangling from helium-filled balloons, and deployed an array of instruments on The Mike Douglas Show that included her cello, a whistle, a cap gun, a gong, and a belch. She did a striptease while playing Bach in Nam June Paik's Sonata for Adults Only. In the 1960s, Moorman (1933–1991) became famous for her madcap (and often unclothed) performance antics; less famous but more significant is Moorman's transformative influence on contemporary performance practice—and her dedication to the idea that avant-garde art should reach the widest possible audience. In Topless Cellist, the first book to explore Moorman's life and work, Joan Rothfuss rediscovers, and recovers, the legacy of an extraordinary American artist. Moorman's arrest in 1967 for performing topless made her a water-cooler conversation-starter, but before her tabloid fame she was a star of the avant-garde performance circuit, with a repertoire of pieces by, among others, Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, John Cage, and Paik, her main artistic partner. Moorman invented a new mode of performance that combined classical rigor, jazz improvisation, and avant-garde experiment—informed by intuition, daring, and love of spectacle. Moorman's annual festival of the avant-garde offered the public a lively sampler of contemporary art in performance, music, dance, poetry, film, and other media. Rothfuss chronicles Moorman's life from her youth in Little Rock, Arkansas (where she was “Miss City Beautiful” of 1952) through her career in New York's avant-garde to her death from breast cancer in 1991. (Typically, she approached her treatment as if it were a performance.) Deeply researched and profusely illustrated, Topless Cellist offers a fascinating, sometimes heartbreaking, often hilarious story of an artist whose importance was more than the sum of her performances.


A Feast of Astonishments

A Feast of Astonishments

Author: Lisa G. Corrin

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780810133273

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"Published in conjunction with the exhibition 'A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde, 1960s-1980s,' Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, January 16-July 17, 2016; Grey Art Gallery, New York University, September 8-December 10, 2016; [and] Museum der Moderne Salzburg, March 4-June 18, 2017"--Title page verso.


Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik

Author: Melissa Chiu

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780300209211

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This new, fully illustrated catalogue on the celebrated progenitor of video art, Nam June Paik (1932-2006), brings together a host of scholars, artists, and Paik's own collaborators to illuminate the work of this innovative artist. An essay by curator Michelle Yun takes readers through Paik's highly original career, providing insight into his radical and witty experiments with technology, especially in relation to the body, which he viewed as vital platforms for the future of art, science, and popular culture. Scholars David Joselit and John Maeda contribute texts examining the artist's interest in new media and popular culture. A roundtable discussion with three of Paik's own artistic collaborators and contemporary artists' statements shed light on the collaborative process and Paik's enduring influence on artistic practice today. Drawing on the newly established Nam June Paik Archive at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, this book also features never-before-published primary sources that highlight Paik's prescient attitude towards the integration of increasingly indispensable technologies into modern life. Distributed for Asia Society Museum Exhibition Schedule: Asia Society Museum (09/05/14-01/04/15)


Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik

Author: Sook-Kyung Lee

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2020-02-04

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 3791359533

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Explore the ground-breaking work of 20th-century, avant-garde artist Nam June Paik, the pioneer of video art, and discover his impact on the digital age. Nam June Paik was one of the most presciently visionary artists of his generation, one who foresaw the ascendance of the screen in modern life, coined the phrase "electronic superhighway", and celebrated these developments with a humor and whimsy that counteracts some of the darker aspects of our technological age. This book features works from throughout Paik's five-decade career--from robots made from old TV screens to stills from his innovative video works and views of his renowned room-sized installations. Archival materials and excerpts of Paik's own writings offer a deeper understanding of the artist's extraordinary collaborative career. He had exchanges with avant-garde artists, musicians, and choreographers, including Charlotte Moorman, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Joseph Beuys, and members of the Fluxus movement. Essays explore how Paik influenced a global network of artists and pioneered a radical and cutting-edge art practice. They also consider how Paik's transnational approach to art presaged today's issues around borders, immigration, cultural appropriation, and nationalism. By envisioning a future that has become a reality, Paik's work--and its humanity, scope, and optimism--is perhaps more important than ever. Published with Tate


The Pain Journal

The Pain Journal

Author: Bob Flanagan

Publisher: Semiotext(e)

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13:

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Item is the journal of the final year of the life of Bob Flanagan and tells of his illness and his life with Sheree Rose.


Elephant Man

Elephant Man

Author: Bernard Pomerance

Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Published: 2007-12-01

Total Pages: 77

ISBN-13: 0802196012

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“An enthralling and luminous play” about the nineteenth-century man whose physical deformity doomed him to the life of an outcast: “haunting [and] splendid” (The New York Times). The Elephant Man is based on the life of John Merrick, who lived in London during the latter part of the nineteenth century. A horribly deformed young man, a freak attraction in traveling side shows, is found abandoned and helpless and is admitted for observation to Whitechapel, a prestigious London hospital. Under the care of a famous young doctor who educates him and introduces him to London society, Merrick changes from a sensational object of pity to the urbane and witty favorite of the aristocracy and literati. But his belief that he can become a man like any other is a dream never to be realized. After premiering in London, The Elephant Man went on to Broadway where it won the Tony for Best Play in 1979. It was later revived in a Broadway production starring Bradley Cooper. “TheElephant Man is a moving drama. Lofted on poetic wings, it nests on the human heart.” —Time Magazine


A Secret History of the Ollie

A Secret History of the Ollie

Author: Craig B. Snyder

Publisher: Pioneers of Skateboarding

Published: 2015-02-28

Total Pages: 912

ISBN-13: 9781930287006

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Every culture has a creation myth, and skateboarding is no different. The Ollie forged a new identity for skateboarding after its invention in the 1970s, and it lies at the root of nearly every significant move in street skating today. This groundbreaking no-handed aerial has also affected the evolution of surfing and snowboarding, and has left a permanent impression upon popular culture and language. This, then, is the story of the Ollie, the history and technology that set the stage for its creation, the pioneers who made it happen, and the skaters who used it to start a revolution.


Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik

Author: Sook-Kyung Lee

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781849766357

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Considered to be the founder of video art, Nam June Paik (1932- 2006) was a visionary artist who foresaw the importance of mass media and new technology, and its impact on visual culture. His cutting-edge, innovative, yet playfully entertaining work continues to be a major influence on art and culture to this day. This ground-breaking publication focuses on Paik's pivotal role in the cross-germination of radical aesthetics and experimental practices, emphasising his visionary insight and his pioneering role in the emergence and proliferation of performative and collaborative art practice. Bringing together works that span a fivedecade career, and including archival materials and excerpts of Paik's own writings, this book offers an in-depth understanding of the artist's innovative practice and his vision of a multidisciplinary future. His ideas such as 'Eurasia' and 'Electronic Superhighway', and his profound insight into a global age will be analysed in the context of transnationalism for the first time. In addition, texts will elaborate upon Paik's collaborations with other artists, musicians and choreographers, such as Charlotte Moorman, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Joseph Beuys and Fluxus, highlighting Paik's global trajectory and considerable impact on digital culture, which connect his art to a new generation.


100 Pioneering Women

100 Pioneering Women

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781855147461

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100 Pioneering Women presents a selection of images of remarkable women, who have defied the expectations of their gender and made extraordinary contributions to British life over the past four centuries. An introduction from the Gallery's Senior Curator of Eighteenth Century Collections considers the representation of women in the Collection and the efforts being made to redress historical imbalances through the acquisition of portraits of notable women from the last four centuries. Extended captions provide context about each sitter's life and work and remind us of the impact of women in spheres as diverse as politics, science and medicine, the arts, engineering and law. This book features some of the National Portrait Gallery's most famous sitters - Elizabeth I, writer and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft, scientist Dorothy Hodgkin and architect and businesswoman Zaha Hadid - as well as paintings and photographs of lesser - known women whose influence is equally significant. A recently acquired portrait of anti-FGM campaigner and psychotherapist Leyla Hussein, a bromide cabinet card of Helena Normanton, the first woman to practise as a barrister in England, and a self-portrait by Angelica Kauffmann, one of the founding members of the Royal Academy, are also included in this highly illustrated publication.


The Beautiful Warriors

The Beautiful Warriors

Author: Cornelia Sollfrank

Publisher:

Published: 2019-12-05

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 9781570273650

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The Beautiful Warriors: Technofeminist Practice in the 21st Century brings together seven current technofeminist positions from the fields of art and activism. In very different ways, they expand the theories and practices of 1990's cyberfeminism and thus react to new forms of discrimination and exploitation. Gender politics are negotiated with reference to technology, and questions of technology are combined with questions of ecology and economy. The different positions around this new techno-eco-feminism understand their practice as an invitation to take up their social and aesthetic interventions, to join in, to continue, and never give up. Contributions from Christina Grammatikopoulou, Isabel de Sena, Femke Snelting, Cornelia Sollfrank, Spideralex, Sophie Toupin, hvale vale, Yvonne Volkart.