Modern in Fort Worth opens 'Disappearing-California, c. 1970: Bas Jan Ader, Chris Burden, Jack Goldstein'

The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Thursday, March 28, 2024


Modern in Fort Worth opens 'Disappearing-California, c. 1970: Bas Jan Ader, Chris Burden, Jack Goldstein'
Chris Burden, Three Ghost Ships, 1991. Installation view, Places with a Past: New Site-Specific Art in Charleston, Spoleto Festival, Charleston, South Carolina, May 23–August 14, 1991. Three Micro 16 sailboats, one equipped with navigational satellite system, robotic sail and rudder controls, concept drawing. Each boat, 276 × 192 × 72 inches. Nicolas Berggruen Charitable Foundation © 2018 Chris Burden / licensed by The Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.



FORT WORTH, TX.- The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth presents the exhibition Disappearing-California, c. 1970: Bas Jan Ader, Chris Burden, Jack Goldstein. These three artists shared a common interest in themes of disappearance and self-effacement, which manifested in works that were daring and often dangerous. Responding to the social and political circumstances of their time and the nascent field of feminist art, the artists used "disappearing" as a response to the anxiety of the 1970s. This major exhibition, curated by Philipp Kaiser for the Modern, reveals a fascinating intersection between major figures at a critical turning point for Southern Californian art.

In 1971, Chris Burden disappeared without a trace for three days and never revealed where he had gone. Disappearing, like his other spectacular performative actions of the early 1970s, is characterized by its concise simplicity and great urgency, and the work quite literally articulates the scope of this exhibition: around the same time the three artists Bas Jan Ader (1942-1975), Chris Burden (1946-2015), and Jack Goldstein (1945-2003) performed, reflected on, and celebrated various ways of disappearing via completely different means and distinct modes of expression. All simultaneously active in Southern California, they were not part of a particular grouping, nor were they close friends. Rather, their shared interests and approaches to artmaking speak to a specific artistic milieu of the 1970s and represent a vernacular California conceptualism.

The exhibition Disappearing-California, c. 1970 directs its gaze at the overlaps, feedback, and doubling among the three artists' works and inquires into their causes and motives. For instance, Jack Goldstein questioned his subjective presence as an artist with manifold radicality in performances, films, photographs, and installations. Only a few months after he, in 1972, buried himself alive during a performance so that only his heartbeat could still be seen as a blinking red light, Chris Burden, hidden under a tarp and marked with bright flares, mimicked an accident victim in the middle of La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles. Bas Jan Ader, whose body of work was often described as a reckoning with failure, articulated from the beginning a specific interest in his own disappearance. Ader staged his own disappearance in a poetic and romantic way in film, slide, and photographic works. His tragic last piece, In search of the miraculous, 1975, ended in disaster: the artist vanished while crossing the Atlantic in a small sailboat.

The reasons why the three artists devoted themselves with great intensity to disappearing are multilayered and cannot be simplified to merely a morbid tendency, though death is obviously omnipresent as a motif. On the one hand, the brutality of the Vietnam War, still in full swing in the mid-1970s, was a real disaster, specifically for young men who faced the draft. Death in war was an especially felt presence in Southern California, with its highly developed military infrastructure. At the same time, in Disappearing it becomes clear how radically the artists advanced the dematerialization of the art object and questioned their own status as the-artist-as-subject. The disappearance of the artist and the death of the author, as the literary theorist Roland Barthes proclaimed in the late 1960s, resounds in the three artists' work, which also has a deep fascination with the sublime and romanticism.

In addition to the contexts above, it is telling that Ader, Goldstein, and Burden engaged with the theme of disappearance right at the moment that feminist art became institutionalized in California. The Feminist Art Program was established at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia in 1971, and perhaps these male artists engaged with disappearance in response to the rise of women artists, consciously or not.

This exhibition thematizes the many implications of disappearing in the early 1970s and presents the bodies of work of three prominent California artists in full scope. With more than 40 objects - films, photographs, slide installations, objects, records, paintings, and three immersive installations - across 13,000 square feet of exhibition space, Disappearing focuses on one of the most interesting historical moments of California art.

A richly illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition and will include an essay by Philipp Kaiser.










Today's News

May 11, 2019

Secret chamber uncovered 2,000 years on at Nero palace

One of Rufino Tamayo's last paintings to highlight Sotheby's May offerings of Latin American Art in New York

"Butcher" album sells for £180,000 alongside other items of iconic Beatles memorabilia at Julien's Auctions

Works by Helen Frankenthaler on view at at the Palazzo Grimani in Santa Maria Formosa

Peabody Essex Museum debuts first exhibition of the Lynch Collection of American Art

Fondazione Prada opens major retrospective dedicated to Jannis Kounellis following his death in 2017

Ingenious gadgets, real-world quandaries at Washington's all-new Spy Museum

The sixth edition of GLASSTRESS returns for the 58th Biennale di Venezia

Christie's announces highlights included in the various owner Design auction

Time, Forward! A project by Omar Kholeif, Maria Kramar and V-A-C opens at the Venice Biennale

N.C. Wyeth and Cecilia Beaux lead American Art & Pennsylvania Impressionists Auction at Freeman's

Pavilion shines a spotlight on Singapore's music appreciation history

The Barber Institute of Fine Arts acquires Greyhound with Puppies by Joseph Gott

Exhibition of works by Evariste Richer opens at Emmanuel Barbault

Painting and performance at The Merchant House: Pino Pinelli, Elsa Tomkowiak and Mary Sue

P·P·O·W opens a show of works by Carolee Schneemann's beloved feline companion, La Niña

French MPs debate law on speedy Notre-Dame restoration

In Iraq, religious rap meets a chorus of controversy

Modern in Fort Worth opens 'Disappearing-California, c. 1970: Bas Jan Ader, Chris Burden, Jack Goldstein'

First Pacific Northwest solo exhibition for Oscar Tuazon opens at Bellevue Arts Museum

Malta in Venice offers multi-sensory exhibit on migration and displacement

Pete Howard joins Heritage Auctions as Entertainment & Music Consignment Director

Seema Rao to join Akron Art Museum as Senior Experience Officer

Colnaghi celebrates the timeless appeal and enduring legacy of the Grand Tour




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful