Experimental Art Group discussion

Just a note about something I didn't mention earlier. I think members should feel free to post anything they want to about articles, artist's statements, pamphlets, etc. Of course, the material should have some relation to experimental art.

Hello. I just joined the Group. What kind of art would you say is "experimental"?

Hi! I'm happy to get a comment for the group. I guess I would say that all art that the artist thinks is experimental is experimental. I'd be a little weak on recognizing experimental art before the 20th century, although I'd say I can see it easily in such artists as El Greco, Goya, Turner, Monet and Manet. I'd say such movements as neo-impressionism, cubism, blue rider, futurism, expressionism and the abstracts around 1910 by Kandinsky and Malevich. Later, I'd see it in the abstract expressionists and Mark Rothko after World War II. Then there's the kind of experimentation that is opposed to the very idea of art — Marcel Duchamp, fluxus and Miro, who said that every thing it did was done in an effort to destroy art. In our time, I guess experimental art is most obvious in such phenomena as pop art, collage, happenings, performance art, conceptual art, installations. What do you think experimental art is? Do you have any particular reaction to my (very rough) comments?

Wow you made a very interesting recount of art movemens through history! I found it to be quite lucid. I agree with the names mentioned, altough I would maybe add Degas in those before the 20th century, and Picasso in those after.
I just finished a book by Paul Valery in which he says that Degas, almost at the same time as Manet, constitute the precursors of Impressionism.
I guess that the idea of experimental art in general is in connection with those avant garde movements of the end of the 19th century and the beginnings of the 20th, in a sense, that we can say that "this movement or those artists" have challenged an "objective standard" that has been established (or accumulated like dust). The method or way, of reinterpreting the boundaries of this or that art in itself, was attached to a quest of discovering new forms! Like the advent of Photography and cinema. Literature had to wait a little longer before Mallarme destroyed the book, and Joyce made it unreadable.
In our time, after Duchamp, I guess that experimental art is more about recontextualization, in which the work of art itself isnt the protaginist anymore. Its more about the relation between the work of art, the place and time in which it happens, and the observers which interact with it. I didnt read much about our time, yet I would think of name like: Boris Groys, Nicolas Bourriaud, Kenneth Goldsmith, for a more theoretical approach.
Sorry for this word - salad

I think this discussion is actually going on on two different threads. So let me right away put up the names of some texts that should be of interest to Sheldon, Ludwig and Agustina.

The discussion seems to be going in two directions: first, the destructions of old art forms and the creation of new art forms; second, the varieties of contemporary subjective and objective perceptions of art. There is some overlap here. As Ludwig puts it, "the work of art isn't the protagonist" in contemporary experimental art. The subject decides what the work of art is. He can make experimental art anti-art (Manet, Miro, Dadaists, punk) or the absence of conventional concepts of art or the absence of art entirely (certain "works" of conceptional art).

So anyway, these texts come right to mind:

Miro — Miro: The Masterworks (Masters of Art Series) by Georges Raillard. This book gives a good selection of Miro's statements about art, such as, I'm paraphrasing, I don't care what my art looks like as long as it's totally opposed to art. And if you get this book used, it's cheap, cheap, cheap.

Miro by Janis Mink. This is one of the small Taschen paperbacks on artists. It gives background info on Miro and a unique assortment of reproductions.

Dada: Paradox, Mystification, and Ambiguity in European Literature by Manuel L. Grossman. A thorough, readable examination of dadaist ideas about opposition to traditional concepts of art.

Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp by Pierre Cabanne. Duchamp was strident when it came to making art and living in a manner that worked against or played with traditional art. In this book, he calmly lays out a path for living in a marginal way; for not following conventional notions of how a person should live.

Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries by Tristan Tzara. Tzara takes the position that all art and all forms of organized human behavior are idiotic. It follows that it doesn't much matter what form art takes or doesn't take.

I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews by Kenneth Goldsmith. Warhol was famous for ignoring the distinction between subjective and objective. His position was that (again I'm paraphrasing) he was nothing more than his works of art, and more than that, he was nothing more than the surface of his works of art. In short, he felt that there was no substance to his subjectivity. He seems to have followed a subjective inclination by making art works that obviously say something about mass-produced consumer goods. But ultimately, he wants to downplay the subjective. It's as if he wants to say, "The artist doesn't exist and isn't special. Things exist. That's all."

Conceptual Art (Basic Art) by Daniel Marzona. This is another of the small Taschen paperbacks. It provides a great sampling of artists' statements about conceptual art. It also provides solid summaries of works in which artists try to abandon art altogether (for example, by simply having a conversation in front of an audience).

I'll try to come up with some other titles this weekend when I can get access to my home library.