ArtSpeak by Robert Atkins

Author:Robert Atkins [Atkins, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780789260369
Publisher: Abbeville Publishing Group
Published: 2013-11-26T06:00:00+00:00

MONO-HA

Nobuo Sekine (b. 1942)

Phase–Mother Earth, 1968/2012

Earth and cement, cylinder and hole: 1061/4 × 865/8 (diameter) in. (270 × 220 cm), each

Blum & Poe, Los Angeles

Sekine soon met the Korean-born artist Lee Ufan, who became the theorist of the group, having studied both Zen and Western philosophy. He similarly juxtaposed elemental materials such as iron and rubber, or, evocatively, set a stone block on a sheet of glass, which it cracked. Both Sekine’s and Lee’s works are remarkable for the clarity of their intertwined concerns for artistic process, materiality, and time. Not all of the Mono-ha artists so fully shared these predilections, but all of them were interested in arranging or joining relatively unaltered materials.

Mono-ha was a loosely defined movement without a manifesto that might pin down the shared goals of its members in the short yet clearly defined moment of their association. Their considerable individual accomplishments aside, the historical position of the Mono-ha artists as a group remains ambiguous. Some regard their work as Japanese-inflected variants of an international impulse leading to Conceptualism, while, increasingly, many consider it the first instance of a wholly Japanese practice, one that younger artists would have to grapple with in the 1970s, even if most of them rejected the Mono-ha approach.TOP

Monster Roster. See CHICAGO IMAGISM

Mülheimer Freiheit

▶WHO Hans Peter Adamski, Peter Bömmels, Walter Dahn, Jiří Georg Dokoupil, Gerhard Kever, Gerhard Naschberger

▶WHEN 1979 to 1983

▶WHERE Cologne, Germany

▶WHAT Mülheimer Freiheit is the name taken by the six artists listed above after they jointly inaugurated a studio located at Mülheimer Freiheit 110, in Cologne, in 1979. (Freiheit happens to mean “freedom” or “liberation,” a coincidence the group appreciated.) Hans Peter Adamski, Peter Bömmels, Jiří Georg Dokoupil, and Gerhard Naschberger had met in New York during the mid-1970s, when Dokoupil was a student there. By the end of the decade all six of the artists in the group were living in Cologne.

Their artistic backgrounds were quite different and they never issued a manifesto, but they did share a belief in freedom of conceptual approach and style. This translated into collaboratively made works that were alternately EXPRESSIONISTIC, SURREALISTIC, and PRIMITIVE looking; that encompassed pirated elements from contemporary German painting; and that were arranged in informal INSTALLATIONS composed of paintings, objects, and wall drawings in random-looking configurations. Their first group show was held in the gallery of a local artists’ organization in 1980; it was quickly followed by an exhibition at the prestigious Paul Maenz Galerie, also in Cologne. They continued to exhibit together—holding their last group show in London in 1983—but increasingly Bömmels, Dahn, and Dokoupil also accepted offers for solo exhibitions.

Mülheimer Freiheit represents an influential middle ground between the CONCEPTUAL ART that dominated Germany during the 1970s and the NEO-EXPRESSIONISM (or Neue Wilde)—epitomized by the Berlin-based group Heftige Malerei (“violent painting”), including the painters Elvira Bach, Rainer Fetting, Karl Hödicke, Helmut Middendorf, and Salomé—which dominated the first half of the 1980s. By the late 1980s, northern European artists seemed generally to have rejected expressionism in favor of cool, conceptually oriented art forms.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.