F*cking Cool Art by perkinss3398

F*CKING. COOL. ART.

Throughout my life, I have been inspired by everything that is organized and pleasing to look at. I love working with different materials and colors and how they can come together as one coherent piece. I thought being an artist meant that everything you made had to be lovely and pleasing to look at. I have been trained on how to design different materials into beautiful objects. One could categorize my work as “pretty” or “elegant”. My recent graphic design work is comprised of pastel colors, organized compositions, and beautifully placed text. I have always been fascinated by elegant publications, and often draw ideas from reading them. After studying abroad in Italy last semester, I look back on pictures, memories, and artwork that I saw there to help comprise my current work. As much as I love making beautiful things, it can be repetitive and uninspiring. I have made an oath to myself to expand beyond what I am comfortable doing, and breaking all the rules. I have curated a coffee table book that is filled with rebellious and explicit art, that is intended to make the viewer uncomfortable. I am curious about stepping beyond social norms. The chapter headings are conversation starters between readers or house-guests. Welcome to the anti-coffee table book.

This publication accompanies the exhibition Amateurs at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, on view from April 23 through August 9, 2008, in the lower of the Logan Galleries on the San Francisco campus of California College of the Arts. Editors: Sarah Perkins Authors: Sarah Perkins Catalog design: Sarah Perkins Copy editor: Sarah Perkins Director of publications: Sarah Perkins Project manager: Sarah Perkins Printer: Sarah Perkins Distribution: Distributed Arts Publishing Inc., New York © 2018 by Sarah Perkins, 1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco CA 94107. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner without permission. All images are © the artists, reproduced with the kind permission of the artists and/or their representatives. Photo credits: p. 10 (top): © 1963 Julian Wasser; p. 10 (bottom): courtesy the Andy Warhol Museum, © 2008 the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, a museum of Carnegie Institute, all rights reserved; pp. 11, 19: courtesy the artist and Gagosian Gallery. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders and to ensure that all the information presented is correct. Some of the facts in this volume may be subject to debate or dispute. If proper copyright acknowledgment has not been made, or for clarifications and corrections, please contact the publishers and we will correct the information in future reprintings, if any. ISBN 978-0-9802055-1-0

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1

Scream Your Favorite Swear 3 Times!!!

Picture the Person Next to You Ass Naked

MFK (Obama, Trump, Bernie)

Was the Virgin Mary Really a Virgin...?

CHAPTER 1

SCREAM YOUR FAVORITE SWEAR 3 TIMES!

“ That’s one of the reasons why the words started coming into my work in the first place. I began to feel very limited when I was making those early fiberglass pieces; I felt a real lack and i just didn’t know how to get the other things I was interested in — like reading and the way words function — into the work. You are supposed to be an artist and you think this is what art is over here, but you are really interested in all these other things that are taking up more and more energy. I just didn’t know how to integrate that energy until I was finally able to use it in the most obvious way possible by making a sign, and it felt good.”

Bruce Nauman Pay Attention 1973 Lithograph on paper 38 1/4 x 28 1/4 in

With Sophisticated Devices, a solo show at Sprueth Magers’ London gallery, American artist Jenny Holzer takes a zeitgeist-y journey to the center of personal fear and paranoia with a survey of her practice which encompasses spray paint canvases, granite benches, LED works, painted signs and cast plaques. The sparingly simple show (only ten or so pieces) confronts viewers’ emotions and experiences and plops horrible, devastating and downright frightful considerations into the otherwise ordinary or honorary, all with a sense of irony worth a look-see by any audience of wry Londoners. Holzer’s large spray paint canvases are the result of collaborations with New York graffiti artists Lady Pink and A-One and feature text from Survival, Holzer’s “series of cautionary texts” from the mid 1980s, in which each sentence instructs, informs or questions the ways an individual responds to his or her social, physical, psychological and personal environment. Perhaps these few canvas collabs in the show are its most effective pieces. Whereas her plaques and benches offer a wallop of contemplative whoa, they nonetheless soon yield “been there/done that” smirks with their wonky context. As for her LED streaming text works, these merely offer a practice in patience too easily shrugged off in today’s digital reality. But the Holzer and friends’ eerie spray painted scenes of green zombie-like victims of ambiguous malfeasance, they haunt and alarm and insist viewers to remember their mortality.

Jenny Holzer Someone wants to cut a hole in you 1981 Hand-Painted Enamel on Metal Sign 21 x 23 inches

CHAPTER 2

PICTURE THE PERSON NEXT TO YOU ASS NAKED

Andy Warhol Torsos and Sex Parts 1997 35mm Camera Polaroid Photo Paper 38 1/4 x 28 1/4 in

In the fall of 1977, Andy Warhol began work on two new series of artworks which would become known as Torsos and Sex Parts. While the Torsos paintings would quickly be praised for following in the “high art” style of classical nudes, the Sex Parts series from which Torsos was borne blurred the line between art and pornography.

In creating the artworks, Warhol was probably inspired by classical nudes and erotic art which have been depicted throughout history. Sexuality in artwork can be found as early as 35,000 BC in central Europe with the erotic sculptures of the Venus of Hohle Fels and later the Venus of Willendorf statuettes, all of which have enlarged breasts and well-defined genitalia. In addition, sexual acts were displayed on vases in Ancient Greece from the 6th Century BC with images of Zeus engaging with his male lover Ganymede, as well as scenes of coitus on Etruscan vases and erotic frescos uncovered in Pompeii. Classical nudes, some homo-erotic, are also present in works from the Renaissance, as witnessed in Goya’s Las Maja Desnuda and Titian’s Venus of Urbino. Warhol would have been taught about such historical works during his Art History classes at Carnegie Tech, and their impact is evident in this exhibition. The seed of the Torsos and Sex Parts series sprouted after a man approached Warhol boasting of his large penis. Warhol agreed to photograph the man’s genitalia and the photographs were placed in a box casually labeled “Sex Parts.” Later, Warhol noticed the wording of the box’s label and conceived the idea for a series of works based on the initial photographs. Subjects for subsequent photo shoots were recruited from gay bath houses by Halston’s boyfriend, the artist and window dresser Victor Hugo. The men were asked to relax, pose, or take part in various sexual activities while Warhol photographed them with a 35mm camera and a Polaroid Big Shot. According to associate Bob Colacello, when confronted on the explicit nature of the photographs sitting around the office Warhol responded, “Just tell them it’s art, Bob. They’re landscapes.”

The tamer images became the basis of the Torsos series, which was meant to be exhibited in museums, and which debuted at the Grand Palais in Paris in October 1977. The more sexually charged artworks were produced as the Sex Parts print portfolio and were intended to be purchased for private collections. But perhaps the underlying reason for their creation was as a tool for Warhol’s ultimate acceptance of his sexuality. Longtime assistant Ronnie Cutrone recalls: “… we always understood it was going to be one of those portfolios that would sit primarily in the back room; that it would take a certain type of collector to appreciate them… But Andy was Catholic and a homosexual…For years, the joke was that Andy called homosexuality a “problem.” Sex Parts was a final announcement or affirmation of his homosexuality.”

HEY SHITHEAD, KEEP READING!

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Kara Walker The Marvelous Sugar Baby 2014 Sugar, polystyrene, and plastic New York City

Born in 1969 in Stockton, California, Walker graduated from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991 and earned a Masters Degree in Art from Rhode Island School of Design in 1994. Since that time, she has created numerous installations of her life-sized silhouette cutouts and hundreds of drawings and watercolors in more than 40 solo exhibitions. Probably Walker’s most controversial work, however, is her first public sculpture project in 2014, A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, constructed at the one-time Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn, NY. This abandoned molasses-covered space echoing with history inspired Walker’s creation of a colossal sugar-coated sphinx. She dedicated this work “to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant.” The sphinx itself was demolished along with the building: the vast blocks of polystyrene foam under the sugar coating were cut up and cleaned and taken away for recycling. Walker is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” at 28 (one of the youngest-ever recipients), a spot on Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential list in 2007, and exhibitions at some of the most respected museums in the US. She currently lives in New York City, where she is associate professor of visual arts at Columbia University.

Yoko Ono Cut Piece 1964 Performance Art Carnegie Recital Hall, New York

In Cut Piece—one of Yoko Ono’s early performance works—the artist sat alone on a stage, dressed in her best suit, with a pair of scissors in front of her. The audience had been instructed that they could take turns approaching her and use the scissors to cut off a small piece of her clothing, which was theirs to keep. Some people approached hesitantly, cutting a small square of fabric from her sleeve or the hem of her skirt. Others came boldly, snipping away the front of her blouse or the straps of her bra. Ono remained motionless and expressionless throughout, until, at her discretion, the performance ended. In reflecting upon the experience recently, the artist said: “When I do the Cut Piece, I get into a trance, and so I don’t feel too frightened.…We usually give something with a purpose…but I wanted to see what they would take….There was a long silence between one person coming up and the next person coming up. And I said it’s fantastic, beautiful music, you know? Ba-ba-ba-ba, cut! Ba-ba-ba-ba, cut! Beautiful poetry, actually.”

Ono debuted Cut Piece in Kyoto, in 1964, and has since repriced it in Tokyo, New York, London, and, most recently, Paris in 2003. It is the realization of what she calls a “score,” a set of written instructions that when followed result in an action, event, performance, or some other kind of experience. As with most of her work—which also encompasses music, poetry, film, sculpture, installation, paintings, and events—the participation of others is often key. Equally conceptual and physical, Cut Piece relies upon audiences’ willingness to interpret and follow the instructions outlining their role. Though participatory art is now more common, Ono was among its pioneers. In works like Cut Piece, she invites viewers to become agents in the creation of art. In her score for Cut Piece, Ono writes: “Cut Piece First version for single performer: Performer sits on stage with a pair of scissors in front of him. It is announced that members of the audience may come on stage—one at a time—to cut a small piece of the performer’s clothing to take with them. Performer remains motionless throughout the piece. Piece ends at the performer’s

come on stage—one at a time—to cut a small piece of the performer’s clothing to take with them. Performer remains motionless throughout the piece. Piece ends at the performer’s option.” In a second version, Ono amended the instructions slightly, indicating that “members of the audience may cut each other’s clothing. The audience may cut as long as they wish.” Cut Piece has inspired numerous (often conflicting) interpretations, including those offered by the artist herself. In 1967, for example, she described it as “a form of giving, giving and taking. It was a kind of criticism against artists, who are always giving what they want to give. I wanted people to take whatever they wanted to, so it was very important to say you can cut wherever you want to. It is a form of giving that has a lot to do with Buddhism.…A form of total giving as opposed to reasonable giving….” In 1964, Ono published a selection of her instructions in a book titled, Grapefruit. They range from humorous to poignant, and include Cut Piece.

Ren Hang Journal of depression 2007 to 2016 Printed Book Journal Entries and Photography

Ren Hang would have turned thirty in March, 2017 had he not taken his life just a month before. Besides the dynamic body of photographic work he is most known for, Ren Hang also leaves behind ten years’ worth of poetry and an online diary of his struggle with manic depression. The first entry was dated June 2007, and the last entry September 2016. As many as sixty million people worldwide suffer from manic depression. On that scale, pain becomes more complicated and abstract. What is so powerful and moving in these exacting logs of the minutiae of his psychological state is to see and feel, so viscerally, that even when Ren Hang was furthest gone, he made real efforts to fight to live, to be honest with himself, to attempt to understand and contextualize his illness and his universe through the act of composition for as long as he could, even after the meaning of existence had become uncertain.

Suicide is never really a sudden sundering of the fabric of reality, although it might appear as such to others from the outside. Understanding the acute difficulty and banal rigor of the everyday struggle with mental health demystifies the abridged, romanticized mythos of the tortured artist departed from the world too soon, and the irresistible but irresponsible glamorization of suicide in relation to artistic genius. The unflaggingly distinct and original energy of Ren Hang’s words, poems, and photographs are an enduring testament to reckoning with the flux that is life itself: between “up on top” and “down below,” ardency and hysteria, being and nothingness, we must all fight hard to go on as best as we know how.

CHAPTER 3

VOTE MOTHER FUCKER!

MFK (OBAMA, TRUMP, BERNIE) GO!

In what might be the most ridiculous stunt ever pulled in the art world, a Banksy piece has, in a sense, self-destructed. Right in front of an audience of potential buyers and critics. A framed canvas version of Banksy’s Girl with Balloon was set to be auctioned at Sothebys in London. As the auction came to a close with a final bid of £860,000 (a little over $1.1 million), the print’s frame began… beeping. Then, whirring. Seconds later, the canvas slid through the bottom of the frame, now almost entirely shredded to nothing. The anonymous artist has long expressed a dislike of art galleries reselling their works, down to creating a piece featuring an audience of bidders battling over a print that reads, simply, “I can’t believe you morons actually buy this shit”. This seems to be Banksy’s latest way of expressing their discontent.

Of course, it’s easy to argue that the whole thing makes the piece even more desirable, because, well… art. If people with mountains of cash are buying art to have a ridiculously rare conversation piece that they hope others recognize, this one just rocketed up the list. It’s now that piece. Or technically those pieces, I guess. Curiously, the canvas didn’t make it all the way through the shredder — did it jam, or was that intentional? By leaving about 1/3 of the print in the frame, the shredded bits are left attached and dangling… thus preventing them from splitting the pile of shreds into 50 more auctions with everyone vying for a slice.

Banksy Girl With Balloon 2002 Signed Print Shredded Internally

Ai Weiwei Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn 1995 Digital Print in Three Parts (47.6 x 58.3 in.)

Artist, thinker, and activist Ai Weiwei was born in Beijing in 1957 and grew up in difficult circumstances. His father, the poet Ai Qing, was persecuted by the Chinese Communist government and exiled to a far western province. He was later hailed as a great national poet after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. In 1981 Ai moved to New York, where he studied visual art and began working as an artist. He also developed a deep appreciation of Marcel Duchamp’s “readymades”—found objects of everyday use elevated to the status of art—and their implied critique of cultural value systems. In 1993, upon learning that his father was ill, he returned to China.

3 4

One of Ai’s most famous pieces, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, incorporates what Ai has called a “cultural readymade.” The work captures Ai as he drops a 2,000-year-old ceremonial urn, allowing it to smash to the floor at his feet. Not only did this artifact have considerable value, it also had symbolic and cultural worth. The Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) is considered a defining period in the history of Chinese civilization, and to deliberately break an iconic form from that era is equivalent to tossing away an entire inheritance of cultural meaning about China.19 With this work, Ai began his ongoing use of antique readymade objects, demonstrating his questioning attitude toward how and by whom cultural values are created. Some were outraged by this work, calling it an act of desecration. Ai countered by saying, “Chairman Mao used to tell us that we can only build a new world if we destroy the old one.” 20 This statement refers to the widespread destruction of antiquities during China’s Cultural Revolution (1966–76) and the instruction that in order to build a new society one must destroy the si jiu (Four Olds): old customs, habits, culture, and ideas. By dropping the urn, Ai lets go of the social and cultural structures that impart value.

“It’s powerful only because someone thinks it’s powerful and invests value in the object.” —Ai Weiwei

Chris Burden Shoot 1971 Performance Art Film Santa Ana, California

American sculptor and performance artist, Chris Burden, who was known for his works in the extreme, passed away May 10, 2015. Many of his works were best described as “shocking”, and the radical nature of his work is what set him apart from other twentieth century American artists. His performance pieces were often depictions of violence in which he was always his own victim: he was crucified to a Volkswagen Beetle, had viewers push pins into his body, was kicked down two flights of stairs, and in the case of the piece being discussed, “Shoot” (1971), he was shot.

Burden’s work forces spectators through the shock of the lived imagery not only to review but deeply analyze their own moral selves, the profound nature of misery, and the undeniable reality of pain. In a time when society has become desensitized to the excess of violent imagery through the media, he pushes the audience to recognize the reality of suffering, agony, and desperation.

“Shoot” is 8 seconds of footage, filmed on November 19, 1971 in a gallery located in Santa Ana, California named “F Space.” With only a handful of his friends in attendance, he proceeded with the piece that he had already announced intention of to the editors of an art journal called Avalanche. With the small number of people in attendance he performed what was likely his most shocking of pieces. “Shoot” featured Burden, who was only 25 years old at the time, being shot in the arm at close range by a friend with a rifle. The danger in this piece was obvious, all it took was being off a few inches and Burden could have been killed. Even Burden wasn’t immune to the shock of being shot in the arm, as he quickly walks off screen. Burden implores viewers to listen to the sound of the empty shell as it collides onto the ground. The imagery of the shot man stumbling forward is one that is difficult to forget. The bullet was only supposed to graze Burden’s arm, but the shooter was slightly off target. The bullet went through his arm instead of grazing it. Although the film

was only eight seconds long, it burns itself into the mind of the audience breaking through desensitization that is felt by most indifferent viewers. Following the performance Burden and his friends were left to deal with the reality of a gunshot wound to the arm. They went to the hospital and had to explain the performance piece to the hospital staff that was left in disbelief. This part of the story is a reminder of the reality of Burden’s works, the reality of the violent brutality he was representing through the self-inflected violence and resulting injury. The piece is a reminder of the fundamental reality of our corporeal life, our corporeal reality. Reflecting that if the bullet had only moved a few inches in one direction Burden would have likely been killed and if it had moved a few inches in the other, he wouldn’t have been touched by the bullet. It brings us to the realization that the gun holder had Burden’s life in his hands, just as soldiers in Vietnam held lives in their hands, politicians held the soldiers’ lives in their hands, and so forth.

CHAPTER 4

WAS THE VIRGIN MARRY REALLY A VIRGIN...?

Piss Christ is a 1987 photograph by the American artist and photographer Andres Serrano. It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a small glass tank of the artist’s urine. The piece was a winner of the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art’s “Awards in the Visual Arts” competition, which was sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a United States Government agency that offers support and funding for artistic projects. The work generated a large amount of controversy based on assertions that it was blasphemous. Serrano himself said of the controversy: “I had no idea Piss Christ would get the attention it did, since I meant neither blasphemy nor offense by it. I’ve been a Catholic all my life, so I am a follower of Christ.”

Andres Serrano Piss Christ 1987 Cibachrome, Silicone, Plexiglas (65 x 45 1/8 in)

Erik Ravelo The Untouchables 2015 Human Installation / Photograph Panel CM Four-Color Printing

The image of an obese eight-year-old boy nailed to the back of Ronald McDonald is a provocative one, and is part of a series of photos that has managed to spark wide debate on sex tourism, obesity, war and other issues that plague children throughout the globe. In each photo the children are crucified on the shoulders of those who inflict harm on them, with each perpetrator turning their backs to their victims, symbolizing the common indifference we have when it comes to such pressing evils of the world. Since posting it the artist has received public backlash, and claims that even Facebook has attempted to “halt his likes at 18,000,” later having his account temporarily banned because it “infringes their conditions of use.” The images were labeled as ”harmful content,” though later reinstated due to overwhelming support from his open-minded fan base. But censorship is nothing new for artist Erik Ravelo, who was also the man behind the United Colors of Benetton’s Unhate campaign, which features photos of the world’s most powerful leaders full on getting hot and steamy. Yet the people who get upset by such photos, are often the ones who prefer to remain idle on such issues. No change was ever sparked by creating politically and culturally neutral, boring artwork. These images may be shocking perhaps, but are they really more shocking than the daily activities that torment our global community of children? The project does exactly what it intends to do – it invokes thought. Sometimes artwork invites your jaw to drop for a certain reason.

SEE YA BIATCH!