Sketch One & Response to Kaprow Reading

Andrea Zittel, Personal Panel Uniforms, 2004

Liubov Popova textile, c.1924

William Morris textile, c. 1885

The two pieces of art that I looked at were from William Morris (Arts & Craft Movement) and Liubov Popova (Constructivist), I saw the principles of these two works combined in contemporary artist Andrea Zittel's Personal Panel Uniforms.

The Arts & Craft movement was reacting against the mass production of created by the industrial revolution, and sought to create unique work and meaningful labour for the craft people.

Liubov Popova and the Constructivists were interested in the ability to produce multiples using machinery. Especially since the use of machinery would allow the worker to have more free time in which to experience life. The Constructivists saw the human body as a sort of machine, and Popova sought to create clothing that negated gender (as machinery did work without gender). She sought to cover the human body in geometry so as to detract from the symbols of gendering.

Andrea Zittel's work grew out of the work of these two movements. For each season she created a simple uniform that was made out of rectangles. She wanted outfits that would be attractive and versatile for everyday use. The project grew out of her observations and budgetary needs. She worked in an art gallery and needed to dress well, however was unable to afford more than one high end outfit. In our society it is frowned upon to wear the same outfit for multiple days. So, she sought to create outfits that could be worn for an entire season, with slight modifications to change the look.

My sketch takes on the form of a constructivist poster.

Kaprow Reading Response:

What Kaprow describes as nonart is what I believe to be outsider art—art that doesn’t conform to the capitalist ventures of artistic institutions. For him, nonart forecasted the end of art and the artist in the traditional sense where a product would be the outcome of an artist’s efforts. With the advent of video art, the nonart pieces that Kaprow describes can be documented. And it is these surviving documents that allow scholars to examine the work. As this type of work didn’t fall into any other category of our classified world, it has been adopted by the art world—in a similar way that the technological innovation of photography eventually fell into the hands of art historians. It is naïve to think that there is a pure art that is not affected by sources outside of an artist’s practice. Artists visualize their interactions with the world around them—allowing for spectators to question and examine their own being.

In the last couple of decades, less traditional artists have fought their way into fine art faculties to allow for the further development of nonart. After several years of digesting new manners of art production, artistic institutions accepted nonart as a valuable practice to support and display. As the world became mechanized it was no longer acceptable to the artist to simply produce renditions of the world around them, leading them to new media in which to experiment.

As a scholar of contemporary art history, I believe that it is essential not to discount new forms of art. Artists react to their culture and implement the new technical innovations developed in their time. It is the groundwork laid by earlier generations of artists that allow for the progress of present generations.