Time capsules: 1986-1990
In this second installment of "Time Capsules," David Rimanelli picks up where his March look at the first half of the decade left off, tracking the
David Rimanelli / ARTFORUM
Apr 01, 2003
In this second installment of "Time Capsules," David Rimanelli picks up where his March look at the first half of the decade left off, tracking the high (and low) points of 1986-90.
1986
JANUARY
Joseph Beuys, the artist/shaman/charlatan-take your pick-dies at age 64.
FEBRUARY
Sturtevant`s "comeback" show opens at White Columns, New York; Eugene Schwartz, the renowned collector of contemporary art, serves as curator. An appropriationist avant la lettre, Sturtevant began making copies after Stella, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, and Warhol in the mid-`60s; Warhol even lent her his screens. She finds a devoted advocate in critic/curator Christian Leigh.
Karen Finley`s Yams Up My Granny`s Ass opens at the Kitchen, New York. In what is perhaps her most notorious routine, Finley assumes the character of a drug addict who tortures and sexually abuses his grandmother on Thanksgiving. She then smears canned cooked yams over her buttocks.
APRIL
Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurs.
United States bombs Libya.
MAY
Thierry de Duve, "The Readymade and the Tube of Paint," Artforum: De Duve challenges that trite opposition between painting and the Duchampian legacy. "It may seem that the fact that painters do not grind their own pigments anymore is a mere consequence of the availability of industrially processed tubes of paint. Yet this fact is crucial in understanding the cultural changes that disrupted the tradition of painting . . ."
Zone 1/2 appears. The following year, the first Zone Books (ed. Jonathan Crary, Michel Feher, Hal Foster, and Sanford Kwinter) titles appear: Foucault/Blanchot and Pierre Clastres`s Society Against the State. The books, designed by Bruce Mau, are alluring physical objects, sensuous yet pointy-headed.
Reina Sofia opens in Madrid. The House of Bourbon continues its centuries-old tradition of artistic patronage, as Queen Sofia dedicates Spain`s preeminent museum of modern art.
JUNE
First Sonsbeek since 1971, curated by Saskia Bos, opens in Arnhem, Holland. Sculptures by 50 artists scattered around Park Sonsbeek. Many "outdoor" works are in fact sheltered within glass pavilions. Bos: "More than ever, today`s artworks are artificial products that are not suited to a natural environment, let alone being involved with it."
"Chambres d`amis," curated by Jan Hoet, opens in Ghent. The show includes installations and exhibitions in private homes by contemporary artists (from Carla Accardi to Gilberto Zorio).
Ernst Nolte`s "The Past That Will Not Pass: A Speech That Could Be Written but Not Delivered" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) ignites the "Historikerstreit" in Germany. Large public debate among historians spreads to include theorists, philosophers, and writers pitting the notion of the singularity of German guilt against the rightist idea that the 20th century witnessed a "global civil war" of comparable totalitarianisms.
Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges dies at age 86.
JULY
Mary Boone weds Cologne dealer
Michael Werner. Romance cements the Cologne-New York axis, as Boone mounts numerous shows of Werner associated artists (e.g., Lupertz, Baselitz, Polke).
SEPTEMBER
"Endgame: Reference and Simulation in Recent Painting and Sculpture," curated by Elisabeth Sussman, David Joselit, and Bob Riley, opens at ICA Boston. The October crowd meets neo-geo. Works by Sherrie Levine, Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach, Philip Taaffe, Robert Gober, et al. Notable in that the catalogue essays by Yve-Alain Bois and Hal Foster largely pan the work exhibited.
Museum Ludwig, founded by chocolate magnate and supercollector Peter Ludwig, opens in Cologne, fortifying the city`s flourishing gallery scene with a major institution devoted to postwar art.
OCTOBER
Keith Haring paints a mural on the Berlin Wall near Checkpoint Charlie. "It`s a humanistic gesture," Haring says, "a political and subversive act-an attempt to psychologically destroy the wall by painting it."
The neo-geo Fab Four-Jeff Koons, Peter Halley, Meyer Vaisman, and Ashley Bickerton-open at Sonnabend. The exhibition becomes one of the most widely discussed and hyped shows of the decade. Commodity critique in gleaming finish-fetish art objects. Kay Larson (New York magazine), among others, is unamused, decrying the show as "Cynical, consumerist art . . . the perfect mirror of its coked-up, sensation-seeking society." Pictured: Ashley Bickerton, Wall Wall #6, 1986, mixed media, 36 x 96 x 14``.
Spy magazine launches.
NOVEMBER
"Art and Its Double. A New York Perspective," curated by Dan Cameron, opens at the Fundacio Caixa de Pensions, Barcelona. A broad, 15-artist survey treating "Pictures," neo-geo, and appropriationist painting as interrelated phenomena, at a decidedly establishment venue. Like Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptualism before, much of this art finds its most enthusiastic audience (and collectors) in Europe.
Nan Goldin`s Ballad of Sexual Dependency exhibited at the Burden Gallery, New York, and simultaneously published as book by Aperture. This evolving slide show debuted in 1979 at the Mudd Club and subsequently made the rounds at various other hour-of-the-wolf venues. Goldin`s ecstatic/depressive paean to downtown sex, drugs, and dirty feet becomes available to a wide audience of avid consumers. Pictured: Nan Goldin, French Chris on the convertible, NYC, 1979, color slide. From The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.
Leaked report of arms sales instigates the Iran-Contra scandal.
ALSO OF NOTE
KEY SHOWS
* Eric Fischl, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Pictured: Eric Fischl, Birthday Boy, 1983, oil on canvas, 84 x 108``.
* Rodney Graham, Galerie Johnen + Schottle, Cologne (first solo show since 1979)
* Roni Horn, Galerie Maeght Lelong, New York (New York solo gallery debut)
* Fabrice Hybert, Maison de l`Avocat, Nantes (solo debut)
* Larry Johnson, 303 Gallery, New York (solo debut)
* Michael Krebber, Fettstrasse 7a, Hamburg (solo debut)
* Raymond Pettibon, Semaphore Gallery, New York (solo debut)
* Rick Prol, B-Side Gallery and Nada Gallery, New York
* David Robbins, Nature Morte, New York (solo debut) Pictured: David Robbins and Richard Prince, The Fifth Beatle, 1986, black-and-white photograph, 16 x 20``.
* David Salle, ICA, Philadelphia; traveled to Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, MOCA, Los Angeles, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and MCA, Chicago
* Lorna Simpson, Just Above Midtown Gallery, New York (solo debut)
* Meyer Vaisman, White Columns, New York (solo debut), Jay Gorney Modern Art, New York, and Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles Pictured: Meyer Vaisman, 1986. Installation view, Jay Gorney Modern Art, New YorK.
* Wallace & Donohue, Postmasters, New York (solo debut)
* "The Anticipated Ruin" (cur. Howard Halle; Gretchen Bender, Peter Nagy, Steven Parrino, et al.), The Kitchen, New York
* Bernd and Hilla Becher, Gunther Forg, Reinhard Mucha, Luhring, Augustine & Hodes, New York
* "Damaged Goods: Desire and the Economy of the Object" (cur. Brian Wallis; Judith Barry, Andrea Fraser, Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach, et al.), New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York
* "The Mirror and the Lamp" (cur. Michael Newrnan and Mark Francis; Richard Artschwager, Christian Boltanski, Tony Cragg, Gerhard Richter, David Salle, Cindy Sherman, et al.), ICA, London, and the Fruitmarket, Edinburgh
* IX Salao Nacional de Artes Plasticas (featured artists; Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica), Paco Imperial, Rio de Janeiro
* "Split Vision" (cur. Robert Mapplethorpe and Laurie Simmons; Alan Belcher, Robert Longo, Allan McCollum, et al.), Artists Space, New York
* "When Attitudes Become Form" (cur Bob Nickas; Richard Artschwager, Jennifer Bolande, Steven Parrino, Allen Ruppersburg, Philip Taaffe, Imants Tillers, Julia Wachtel, et al.), Bess Cutler Gallery, New York Pictured: "When Attitudes Become Form," 1986. Installation view, Bess Cutler Gallery, New York.
BOOKS
* Arthur C. Danto, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art
* Paul de Man, The Resistance to Theory [title essay, Yale French Studies 63 (1982)]
* Henry Louis Gates Jr., ed., "Race," Writing, and Difference
* Andreas Huyssen. After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism
* Tama Janowitz, Slaves of New York
* W.J.T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology
* A.L. Rees and Frances Borzello, eds., The New Art History
* Jacqueline Rose, Sexuality in the Field of Vision
* Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor`s Tale
FILMS
* Absolute Beginners, dir. Julien Temple
* Down by Law, dir. Jim Jarmusch
* Matador, dir. Pedro Almodovar
* She`s Gotta Have It, dir. Spike Lee
* Sid & Nancy, dir. Alex Cox
MUSIC
* Chicago House phenomenon first appears in music press
The Mekons, The Edge of the World
* Run-D.M.C., Raising Hell
1987
JANUARY
In his last opening, Andy Warhol debuts the Last Supper pictures at Alexander Iolas Gallery, Milan, across the street from the original at Santa Maria delle Grazie.
FEBRUARY
"Resistance (Anti-Baudrillard)" opens at White Columns, curated by Group Material. Works by Honore Daumier, Odilon Redon, George Grosz, John Heartfield, Leon Golub, Nancy Spero, Gretchen Bender, Barbara Kruger, Gerhard Merz, et al. The complaint is ostensibly not directed at Baudrillard himself but rather at the uses and abuses of his theories in the art world. Judith Barry: "Is the art world the most effective place for political action? Historically it hasn`t been." Peter Halley: "I think it is actually. . . . If you want to effect some sort of change . . . I think it`s as good a place as any to begin."
MARCH
"Silence = Death" stickers begin showing up around New York. Refers at once to the stigma surrounding aids and to the conspicuous silence of national leaders-Reagan didn`t mention the word until 1987. Designed by Ken Woddard, the stickers proliferate ominously. Almost simultaneously, ACT UP-AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power-forms. First action: Mar. 24 rally in front of Trinity Church, Wall St.
APRIL
John Dogg opens at American Fine Arts, Co. and 303. The artist`s name is widely regarded as a pseudonym for the collaborative efforts of Richard Prince and AFA director Colin de Land. (Other suspects: Collins and Milazzo, Gary Indiana, 303 Gallery director Lisa Spellman.) A show of tires configured as various deadpan artworks, all of them making (parodie?) reference to now fashionable appropriation art and commodity critique.
MAY
Barbara Kruger becomes the first female artist in Mary Boone`s stable; Sherrie Levine joins in September 1987. Their "defections" to Boone addle sensibilities preferring clear-cut distinctions between "political" art practices and filthy lucre.
"CalArts: Skeptical Belief(s)," curated by Suzanne Chez, opens at the Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago. Fifty-three artists-Barbara Bloom, Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein,
JUNE
Documenta 8, curated by Manfred Schneckenburger, opens in Kassel. Unlike Rudi Fuchs`s inchoate `82 show, the overriding theme is "art of social concern" rather than neoex ego. Installations and video very prevalent, by Jenny Holzer, Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Merz, Hans Haacke, Group Material, Marcel Odenbach, et al. Peter Fischli and David Weiss`s Filmzyklus uber Kettenreaktionen is a big hit.
"Skulptur. Projekte in Munster," curated by Kasper Konig and Klaus Bussmann, opens. Ten years after Bussmann`s first Munster show, this next installment includes works by 53 artists, among them Michael Asher, Giovanni Anselmo, Daniel Buren, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Fischli & Weiss, and Katharina Fritsch. Jeff Koons offers a solid stainless-steel copy of the city`s Der Kiepenkerl. The statue survived heavy Allied bombing, only to be destroyed by a tank. During the `50s, Munster, still largely in ruins, erected a bronze copy of the original. Koons kitsch meets Bavarian kitsch. Pictured: Katharina Fritsch, Madonna Figure, 1987. Installation view, Salzstrasse, Munster.
"Infotainment (18 Artists from New York)," a traveling group show of mostly Nature Morte and International With Monument artists, closes in Amsterdam after a two-year tour. Catalogue essays by David Robbins, George W.S. Trow, and Thomas Lawson. Media-savvy art with an autocritical yet insistently Pop vibe. Robbins: "To the children of Barthes and Coca-Cola, television affords the opportunity to monitor civilization from our bedrooms." Pictured: Gretchen Bender, Untitled (Revolution) (detail), 1985, laminated filmstrip, steel, and fluorescent lights, 72 x 72``. From the series "Total Recall."
AUGUST
Paul de Man`s articles for Le Soir come to light. The revelation that the dean of American deconstructivist criticism, who had died four years earlier, had written articles tainted by anti-Semitism for a right-wing Belgian newspaper during the war years provokes responses of disbelief and outrage. Aside from the legitimate questions raised by de Man`s wartime journalism, scholars with a grudge against the tremendous success of deconstruction attempt to discredit the entire movement as inherently "fascistic."
SEPTEMBER
Third Text begins publication. Edited by Rasheed Araeen, the journal focuses on visual arts, attempting to disrupt the idees recues of imperialism, colonialism, and "Third World" culture.
Paradise Garage closes. The King St. club reigned for years as the epicenter of the burgeoning house scene. Frequented primarily by gay blacks and Hispanics, it had at least one famous white regular: Keith Haring.
OCTOBER
Elizabeth Hess`s "Success! A Boone for Feminists?," Village Voice: Is the ascension of Levine and Kruger to Boone`s previously all-male stable good or bad for women artists and feminism? "Artists with disdain for success rarely have any," Hess opines. Unless perhaps you`re recently dead, e.g., van Gogh.
Dow crashes. Initial wave of fear that the flush art market will suffer a junk bond-style collapse subsides as money pours into art rather than the unstable stock market. The next two years witness the most profligate expenditures at auction to date.
NOVEMBER
Peter Hujar dies at ago 53. Although he produced only one book of photographs, Portraits in Life and Death (1976), Hujar`s work exerted tremendous influence on younger photographers of "alternative lifestyles" and the demimonde. Pictured: Peter Hujar, Self-Portrait, 1980, black-and-white photograph, 14 7/8 x 14 3/4``.
"Fictions," curated by Douglas Blau, opens at Kent Fine Art and Curt Marcus Gallery, New York. Paintings, drawings, and photographs roaming the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Romantic landscapes, images of scientific instruments and dissections, paintings by MarkTansey, Mark Innerst, and David Deutsch, and Cindy Sherrnan`s picture of the wannabe Hollywood starlet mingle elegantly on the walls. Blau describes the associative exhibition as an "archeological excavation." Pictured: David Deutsch, Untitled, 1981, ink on paper mounted on canvas, 24 x 48``. At the invitation of New Museum curator William Olander, Gran Fury installs Let the Record Show . . . in the museum`s Broadway storefront, indicting various right-wing figures for their indifference to the crisis or the satisfaction they take in it. SILENCE = DEATH GLOWS in neon over the whole.
DECEMBER
Anselm Kiefer retrospective, curated by Mark Rosenthal, opens at the Art Institute of Chicago (the exhibition travels to Philadelphia before closing at MOMA). As the decade wears on, Kiefer emerges as the big winner among German noo-expressionists.
ALSO OF NOTE
KEY SHOWS
* Jeanne Dunning, Feature, Inc., Chicago (solo debut)
* Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York ("The Ninth Street Show," portraits of surviving participants of Castelli`s 1951 exhibition)
* Andreas Gursky, Galerie Johnen + Schottle, Cologne (solo debut)
* Thomas Hirschhorn, Kaos-Galerie, Cologne (solo debut)
* Alfredo Jaar, Logo for America, One Times Square, New York
* Mike Kelley, Metro Pictures (exhibition) and Artists Space (performance), New York ("Plato`s Cave, Rothko`s Chapel, Lincoln`s Profile") Pictured: Mike Kelley, "Plato`s Cave, Rothko`s Chapel, Lincoln`s Profile," 1987. Installation view, Metro Pictures, New York.
* Martin Kippenberger, Galerie Max Hetzler, Cologne, Galerie Peter Pakesch, Vienna, and Metro Pictures, New York ("Peter") Pictured: Martin Kippenberger, "Peter," 1987. Installation view, Galerie Max Hetzler, Cologne.
* Christian Marclay, Clocktower, New York (solo debut)
* Tom Otterness, Brooke Alexander Gallery, New York
* Julian Schnabel, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; traveled to Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, SF MOMA, and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
* Cindy Sherman, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
* Kiki Smith, Piezo Electric Gallery, New York (solo debut)
* "Abstract Expressionism: The Critical Developments" (cur. Michael Auping), Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo
* "Art Against AIDS," various venues, New York
* "Avant-Garde in the Eighties" (cur. Howard Fox), Los Angeles County Museum of Art
* "Berlinart 1961-1987" (cur. Kynaston McShine), Museum of Modern Art, New York
* "Brennpunkt Dusseldorf 1962-1987" (cur. Stefan von Wiese; Beuys, Hesse, Immendorff, Morris, Paik, Palermo, Polke, Richter, Ruthenbeck, Sieverding, et al.), Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf
* "Latin American Artists in New York Since 1970" (cur. Jacqueline Barnitz; 38-artist survey), Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, University of Texas at Austin
* "L`epoque, la mode, la morale, la passion: Aspects de l`art d`aujourd`hui, 1977-1987" (cur. Bernard Ceysson, Alfred Paquoment, Bernard Blistene, Catherine David, Christine Van Assche; commemorates Pompidou`s 10th anniversary), Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
* "Les courtiers du desir" (cur. Howard Halle and Walter Hopps), Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
* " Modernidade: Art Bresilien du XXe Siecle"(cur. Aracy Amaral). Musee d`Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and Museu de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo
* "Out of the Studio: Art with Community" (cur. Thomas Finkelpearl and Glenn Weiss; John Ahearn, David Hammons, Ruben Ortiz-Torres, Tim Rollins, Meirle Ukeles, et al.), P.S. 1, New York
* "Perverted by Language" (cur. Bob Nickas; Jenny Holzer, Larry Johnson, Ronald Jones, Louise Lawler, Haim Steinbach, et al.), Hillwood Art Gallery, Long Island University, Greenvale, New York
* "Surveillance" (cur. Branda Miller and Deborah Irmas; Martha Rosler, Sam Samore, Julia Scher, et al.), L.A.C.E., Los Angeles Pictured: Julia Scher, Personal Reception Area (P.R.A.), 1987. Installation view, L.A.C.E., Los Angeles. Photo: Basia Kenton.
BOOKS
* Hans Belting, The End of the History of Art? [Das Ende der Kunstgeschichte, 1983]
* Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
* Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender
* Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia [Capitalisme et schizophrenie tome 2: Mille plateaux, 1980]
* Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason [Kritik der zynischen Vernunft, 1983]
* Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities
FILMS
* Films of the Brothers Quay, dir. Brothers Quay
* Full Metal Jacket, dir. Stanley Kubrick
* King Lear, dir. Jean-Luc Godard
* Robocop, dir. Paul Verhoeven
* Wall Street, dir. Oliver Stone
* Wings of Desire, dir. Wim Wenders
MUSIC
* Guns N` Roses, Appetite for Destruction
* Michael Jackson, Bad
* Speed Metal/Thrash phenomenon
1988
JANUARY
"Cultural Geometry," curated by Jeffrey Deitch, opens at the Deste Foundation, Athens. The show takes an internationalist view, integrating simulationist/neo-geo practices (understood primarily as an American phenomenon) with works by Europeans-John Armleder, Jan Vercruysse, Juan Munoz, etc. The catalogue, designed by Dan Friedman, is distinctive: Rather than the usual alteration of images and text, a kind of "visual essay" is constructed of the sort that is subsequently much imitated.
FEBRUARY
Supreme Court decides Flynt v. Falwell.
MARCH
Ida Panicelli`s first issue as Artforum editor: comprises projects by Enzo Cucchi, Rebecca Horn, Robert Longo, Lothar Baumgarten, Jenny Holzer, Dara Birnbaum, and Jannis Kounellis, and texts by Jonathan Borofsky, Nancy Spero, Joseph Kosuth, Tony Cragg, Vito Acconci, and Daniel Buren. Panicelli`s four-year editorial tenure is prescient regarding the global and sociopolitical concerns of the `90s. She also reveals herself to be a steadfast supporter of the legacy of arte povera.
Gerhard Richter begins painting his "Baader-Meinhof" series, "October 18, 1977." Exhibited the following year at Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld, and Portikus, Frankfurt (before traveling to London, St. Louis, and elsewhere), the paintings provoke intense debate in the German press. Pictured: Gerhard Richter, Plattenspleler (Record player), 1988, oil on canvas, 24 5/8 x 32 3/4``. From the series "October 18, 1977."
Sandra Bernhards one-woman show Without You I`m Nothing, cowritten by artist John Boskovich, runs for six months off-Broadway. Pictured: Sandra Bernhard and John Boskovich, Without You I`m Nothing, 1990, still from a color film in 35 mm, 89 minutes.
APRIL
"Altered States" opens at Kent Fine Art, curated by Rosetta Brooks, with concurrent issue of ZG magazine (interview with Paul Virilio, writings by J.G. Ballard, Vito Acconci, et al.). Techno-dystopia of the future/present.
MAY
Mike Kelley`s "Three Projects: Half a Man, From My Institution to Yours, Pay for Your Pleasure" opens at the Renaissance Society, University of Chicago. The last consists of 42 banners bearing quotations by famous artists, writers, philosophers, etc., averring the creative genius`s exemption from ordinary moral codes, culminating in a self-portrait by serial killer John Wayne Gacy as Pogo the Clown. Site-specific: When the work is shown at MOCA`S "A Forest of Signs," Kelley includes a drawing by LA Freeway Killer William Bonin instead.
Jean-Michel Basquiat found dead, at age 27, from a heroin overdose in the Great Jones St. loft he had rented from Andy Warhol. Friends of the artist maintain he was exploited, that his escalating drug use was ignored by interested parties, and that Warhol`s death the previous year had left him without anchor. Pictured: Jean-Michel Basquiat`s obituary, New York Times, August 15, 1988.
Paul Thek dies at age 54.
SEPTEMBER
"Impresario: Malcolm McLaren and the British New Wave," ourated by Paul Taylor, opens at the Now Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. Mixed-media installation designed by Judith Barry and Ken Saylor, featuring materials related to McLaren`s various fashion endeavors (e.g., Sex, the boutique he ran with Vivienne Westwood) and his musical enterprises (the Sex Pistols, etc.). Pictured: Malcolm McLaren, n.d.
OCTOBER
ACT UP, joined by the national ACT NOW coalition, closes down the Federal Drug Administration headquarters in suburban Washington, DC. More than 1,000 activists stage demonstrations that result in some 180 arrests. A historic event garnering international press coverage, the action demonstrates the lethargy of the bureaucracy in charge of testing possible aids treatments. Francois Mitterrand dedicates I.M. Pei`s pyramids at the Louvre after four years of controversy.
George Bush elected 41st president.
DECEMBER
ALSO OF NOTE
KEY SHOWS
* Ashley Bickerton, Sonnabend, New York (includes LED "price tag" works)
* John Boskovich, Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles (solo debut)
* Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Rastovski Gallery, New York (solo debut) Pictured: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled, 1988, framed photostat, 11 x 14``.
* Ilya Kabakov, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York (New York solo debut)
* Tadashi Kawamata, Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York
* Liz Larner, Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles (solo debut)
* Sally Mann, Marcuse Pfeiffer Gallery, New York (New York solo debut) Pictured: Sally Mann, Jessie Bites, 1986, black-and-white photograph. 20 x 24".
* Cady Noland, White Columns, New York (solo debut)
* Jorge Pardo, Bliss Gallery, Pasadena, CA (solo debut)
* Laurie Parsons, Loronce Monk Gallery, New York (solo debut)
* Richard Phillips, Holly Solomon Gallery, New York (solo debut)
* Marc Quinn, Jay Jopling/Otis Gallery, London (solo debut)
* Collier Schorr, Cable Gallery, New York (solo debut)
* Rosemarie Trockel, Kunsthalle Basel and ICA, London
* Rachel Whiteread, Carlisle Gallery, London (solo debut)
* Nayland Blake, Liz Larner, Richard Morrison, Charles Ray, 303 Gallery, New York
* "Brazil Projects" (cur. Alanna Heiss, Chris Dercon, et al.; Lygia Clark, Franz Krajcberg, Helio Oiticica, et al.), P.S. 1, New York
* "Democracy"(cur. Group Material; John Ahearn, Beuys, Halley, Faith Ringgold, Warhol, et al.), Dia Art Foundation, New York Pictured: Group Material, "Education and Democracy," 1988. Installation view, Dia Art Foundation. New York. Photo: Ken Schles.
* "The Latin American Spirit: Art and Artists in the United States, 1920-1970" (cur. Luis Cancel; 136-artist survey), Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York
* "Utopia Post Utopia" (Robert Gober, Richard Prince, Meg Webster, et al.), ICA, Boston Pictured, foreground: Meg Webster, Moss Bed, 1986-88. Background: Robert Gober, Untitled Door and Doorframe, 1987-88. Installation view, ICA, Boston.
BOOKS
* Steven Hawking, A Brief History of Time
* Gary Indiana, Horse Crazy
* Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism, and the Histories of Art
* Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
FILMS
* Damnation, dir. Bela Tarr
* Days of Eclipse, dir. Alexander Sokurov
* Dead Ringers, dir. David Cronenberg
* The Decalogue, dir. Krzysztof Kiesslowski
* Hairspray, dir. John Waters
* Working Girl, dir. Mike Nichols
MUSIC
* Pixies, Surfer Rosa
* Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
* Rave phenomenon throughout Europe
* Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation
* Sugarcubes, Life`s Too Good
1989
FEBRUARY
"Andy Warhol: A Retrospective," curated by Kynaston McShine, opens at Museum of Modern Art almost exactly two years after the artist`s death. Essays by Robert Rosenblum, Benjamin Buchloh, and Marco Livingstone. The show focuses on "canonical" works and stints Warhol`s activities beyond the fine arts.
Ayatollah Khomeini issues fatwa against Salman Rushdie.
Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan completed.
"Refigured Painting: The German Image 1960-88," curated by Thomas Krens, Michael Govan, and Joseph Thompson, travels to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, after opening at the Toledo Museum of Art. A Teutonic grab bag, ranging from Polke and Richter through neo-ex (Baselitz, Dokoupil, Petting, Hodicke, Immendorff, Lupertz, Middendorf) to Kippenberger, Georg Herold, and Rosemarie Trockcl. Savage critical reception, although Peter Schjeldahl manages a recuperative twist: "It`s a disaster worthy of an `I Survived . . . ` T-shirt and, as such, a must-see." The death knell of German neo-ex? Pictured: "Refigured Painting: The German Image 1960-88," 1989. Installation view, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Photo: David Heald.
MARCH
Howardena Pindell, "Art World Racism: A Documentation," New Art Examiner: Pindell, an artist, provides statistics concerning the severe lack of representation of artists of color in New York galleries and museums. "Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American artists are . . . with a few, very few exceptions systematically excluded."
Robert Mapplethorpe dies at age 42.
Exxon Valdez disaster.
APRIL
"Bilderstreit. Widerspruch, Einheit und Fragment in der Kunst seit 1960," curated by Siegfried Gohr and Johannes Gachnang, opens at the Koln Rheinhallen. Presenting a smorgasbord of artists (Balthus to Baldessari, Picasso to Prince, Schwitters to Schnabel), "Bilderstreit"-"picture fight"-is indeed a scrap, but not in the way the curators imagined. Many Cologne dealers sign a declaration attacking the exhibit`s "market-politics selection," referring especially to the preponderance of artists represented by Mary Boone and Michael Werner; German critics are virtually unanimous in pronouncing the show a disaster. The hostility drives Gohr from his position as director of the Museum Ludwig.
"A Forest of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation," curated by Ann Goldstein and Mary Jane Jacob, opens at Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Coming at the end of the decade, the broad survey of the "critical" art of the past ten years-i.e., "Pictures," neo-geo, etc.-accrues an inevitable valedictory air. Much of the work is photo-based, its background Conceptual. Many of the artists also display a marked feminist disposition. David Salle declines the invitation to Show. Pictured: Barbara Kruger, Untitled, 1989. Installation view, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
"Magiciens de la Terre," curated by Jean-Hubert Martin in collaboration with Mark Francis, opens at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. The show includes nearly 100 artists, half from the recognized "centers" of contemporary culture, half culled from the "margins." The first major exhibition to take "globalism" as its subject; nevertheless, it is criticized as "neo-colonialist," reiterating in a contemporary-art vein some of the complaints that greeted MOMA`S historical " `Primitivism` in 20th Century Art" in 1984. Pictured: Hans Haacke, One Day the Lions of Dulcie September Will Spout Water in Jubilation, 1989. Installation view. Centre Georges Pompidou. Paris. Photo: Hans Haacke.
New York senator Alfonse D`Amato presents Andres Serrano`s piss Christ to the us Senate. Serrano had received $15,000 from a grants organization funded partially by the National Endowment for the Arts.
"The Silent Baroque," curated by Christian Leigh, opens at Thaddaeus Ropac in Salzburg. Former Artforum reviews oditor-turned-independent curator Leigh`s most grandiose (preposterous?) statement. "My interest in the Baroque is as a social and cultural catalyst," he says. "My interest lies in those places where things that are different come together and resemble one another." Now that`s a lot of places. Very diverse group of some 50 artists and writers.
JUNE
The Corcoran Gallery cancels "Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment." As part of a protest against the cancellation, Krzysztof Wodiczko projects Mapplethorpe`s self-portrait on the museum`s facade. Throughout the summer, attacks on the NEA for its support of "pornography" escalate.
Daniel Libeskind awarded Jewish Museum commission in Berlin; the architect says that his design attempts "to make visible the invisible." After numerous postponements, the museum`s first exhibition opens in Sept. 2001.
Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History," published in the National Interest Fukuyama presents an essentially right-wing celebration of history`s putative terminus, as if the world had finally reached its appropriate telos; Alexandra Kojeve spins in his grave.
Tiananmen Square massacre.
AUGUST
Gerhard Richters Atlas exhibited at Lenbachhaus, Munich, before traveling to Cologne. Marks the first exhibition of this gargantuan photographic archive since the `70s.
SEPTEMBER
Jack Smith, director of notorious underground classic Flaming Creatures (1963), dies at age 57. Fanatically dedicated to `40s B-movie actress Maria Montez, he recuperated her ineptitude as a virtue: "The acting was lousy but if something genuine got on film why carp about acting-which has to be phony anyway-I`d RATHER HAVE atrocious acting." Pictured: Jack Smith, Untitled (tableau vivant), 1958-62, print from a 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 color negative.
Matthew Barney`s Field Dressing performance takes place at the Payne Whitney Athletic Complex at Yale, in Barney`s senior year at the university. Pictured: Matthew Barney, Field Dressing (orifill), 1989, video still. Production: Michael Rees.
OCTOBER
Gran Fury`s Control project appears in Artforum. Pointed juxtapositions of image and text, e.g., a picture of a masked scientist bending over a petri dish with a quotation by a Hoffmann-La Roche executive: "One million [People with AIDS] isn`t a market that`s exciting. Sure it`s growing, but it`s not asthma."
NOVEMBER
"Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing," curated by Nan Goldin, opens at Artists Space. The show addresses the massive losses from aids sustained within the arts community. A wide range of works, by David Wojnarowicz, Kiki Smith, David Armstrong, Greer Lankton, et al. Wojnarowicz`s incendiary catalogue text becomes the center of a huge media fracas as NEA head John Frohnmayer threatens to defund the exhibition.
"Image World: Art and Media Culture," curated by Lisa Phillips, John G. Hanhardt, and Marvin Heiferman, opens at the Whitney. Sort of a more inclusive New York pendant to "A Forest of Signs." TV, movies, ads-the "culture industry" as fodder for a generation of post-Pop/post-Conceptual artists often vacillating between critique and complicity. Call it "Richard Prince`s World." Pictured: Nam June Paik, Fin de Siecle II, 1989. Installation view, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
The Berlin Wall falls.
DECEMBER
Day Without Art organized by Visual AIDS. A wide variety of responses, from galleries closing their doors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art`s draping Picasso`s portrait of Gertrude Stein.
United States troops invade Panama.
ALSO OF NOTE
KEY SHOWS
* Marcel Broodthaers (cur. Michael Compton and Marge Goldwater; first US retrospective), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
* Tony Cragg, Tate Gallery, London
* John Currin, White Columns, New York (solo debut)
* Jeanne Dunning, Feature, Inc., New York (New York solo debut)
* Andrea Fraser, Philadelphia Museum of Art ("Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk")
* Jenny Holzer. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
* Gary Hume, Karsten Schubert Ltd., London (solo debut)
* Komar and Melamid, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York ("Bergen Point Brass Foundry, Bayonne")
* Sean Landers, Tom Solomon`s Garage, Los Angeles (solo debut)
* Donald Moffett, Wessel O`Connor Gallery, New York (solo debut)
* Vik Muniz. Stux Gallery, New York (solo debut)
* Cady Noland, American Fine Arts, Co., New York, Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, and Galleria Massimo de Carlo, Milan
* Tim Rollins/K.O.S. (cur. Gary Garrels), Dia Center for the Arts, New York
* Lorna Simpson, Josh Baer Gallery, New York (New York solo gallery debut)
* Philip Taaffe, Pat Hearn Gallery and Mary Boone Gallery, New York
* Tunga. Whitechapel Gallery, London
* Jeff Wall, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York (New York solo debut)
* "Against Nature: Japanese Art in the Eighties" (cur. Kathy Halbreich, Tom Sokolowski, Shinji Kohmoto, Fumio Nanjo; Kaoru Hirabayashi, Shoko Maemoto, Tatsuo Miyajima, Yasumasa Morimura, et al.), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
* "Art in Latin America: The Modern Era, 1820-1980" (cur. Dawn Ades and Guy Brett; 170-artist survey), Hayward Gallery, London
* Inaugural Istanbul Biennale
BOOKS
* Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project
* Pat Hackett, ed., Andy Warhol Diaries
* Cornel West, The American Evasion of Philosophy
FILMS
* City of Sadness, dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien
* Do the Right Thing, dir. Spike Lee
* Drugstore Cowboy, dir. Gus Van Sant
* Heathers, dir. Michael Lehmann
* Histoire(s) du Cinema, dir. Jean-Luc Godard
* Sex, Lies, and Videotape, dir. Steven Soderbergh
* The Unbelievable Truth, dir. Hal Hartley
MUSIC
* De La Soul, 3 Feet High and Rising
* Nirvana, Bleach
* N.W.A., Straight Outta Compton
1990
FEBRUARY
Keith Haring dies at ago 31
MAY
Van Gogh`s Portrait of Dr. Gachet sells at Christie`s for $82.5 million to a Japanese buyer, surpassing the previous record of $53.9 million for Irises at Sotheby`s throe years earlier. But many works from the Impressionist and modern sale go for around or below their estimates, and 24 fail to sell.
Gran Fury invited to show at Venice Biennale (The Pope and the Penis project, as members of the collective describe it). Commissioners of the Biennale refuse to assist in getting the project through customs. Finally, Gran Fury appears in the show. Censorship only aggrandizes their presence.
Jenny Holzer becomes the first woman from the US to win the Venice Biennale`s Golden Lion.
JUNE
Grants to "NEA 4"-Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, John Fleck, and Tim Miller-rejected. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, Republican from California: "It shouldn`t have been that difficult to reject sacrilegious and pornographic art. It is time we set some standards."
JULY
Critic Craig Owens dies at age 39. Beyond Recognition, his collected essays (Barbara Kruger, Jane Weinstock, Lynne Tillman, and Scott Bryson, eds.), appears two years later.
AUGUST
"Just Pathetic," curated by Ralph Rugoff, opens at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles. Work included by Mike Kelley, Cady Nolond, Jeffrey Vallance, Jessica Diamond, David Hammons, et al. Four months later, "Stuttering" (curated by Vik Muniz) opens at Stux Gallery, New York, with works by Muniz, Cary Lebowitz/Candyass, et al. Incipience of the "loser" or "abject art" trends of the early `90s.
Iraq invades Kuwait.
SEPTEMBER
Texte zur Kunst founded in Cologne by Isabelle Graw and Stefan Germer. The journal sedulously advocates critical theory (shades of the Frankfurt School) in its approach to contemporary art.
NOVEMBER
At Sotheby`s, fewer than half of the post-war works sell. Total sale: $19.8 million, a mere half of the low end of the presale estimate. Andre Emmerich: "I would expect that [prices] will be more sensible in the next series of sales in May. The craziness has gone out of the auctions." (Between 1990 and 1993, some 70 Manhattan galleries will close as a result of the dwindling market.)
Sigmar Polke retrospective, curated by John Caldwell, opens at SF MOMA. As the decade closes, an opportunity to examine in depth an artist who influenced divergent trends in contemporary art, on the one hand held up as an exemplar by Buchloh, on the other an all-too-obvious influence on Salle and scores of lesser figures. Pictured: Sigmar Polke, 1990. Installation view, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
ALSO OF NOTE
KEY SHOWS
* Candida Hofer, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York
* Cildo Meireles, "Mission/Missions (How to Build Cathedrals)," ICA, London; "Cinza," Museum of Modern Art, New York
* Juan Munoz, Renaissance Society, Chicago
* "Sigmar Polke: Fotografien`` (cur. Jochen Poetter), Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden
* Fiona Rae, Third Eye Centre, Glasgow (solo debut)
* Thomas Schutte, Kunsthalle Bern
* Jessica Stockholder, American Fine Arts, Co., New York Pictured: Jessica Stockholder, Flower Dusted Prosies (detail), 1992. Installation view, American Fine Arts, Co., New York.
* Carrie Mae Weems, "Calling Out My Name," CEPA Gallery, Buffalo; traveled to P.P.O.W., New York (solo gallery debut)
* "Paintball" (cur. Richard Prince; Prince, Pruitt/Early, Tom Henry III), 303 Gallery, New York, and Stuart Regen Gallery, Los Angeles
* "Transcontinental: Nine Latin American Artists" (cur. Guy Brett), Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, England
BOOKS
* Judith Butler. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
* Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century
FILMS
* Misery, dir. Rob Reiner
* Paris Is Burning, dir. Jennie Livingstone Pictured: Jennie Livingstone, Paris Is Burning, 1990. Production still: Michael Compte.
* Pretty Woman, dir. Garry Marshall
* Reversal of Fortune, dir. Barbet Schroeder
MUSIC
* Ice Cube, AmeriKKKa`s Most Wanted
* Yo La Tengo, Fakebook
SIDEBAR
Larry Johnson, Mike Kelley, Stephen Prina, Mark Stahl, James Welling, Christopher Williams, et al.-educated under the Conceptual-art dispensations of Michael Asher, John Baldessari, and Douglas Huebler. Pictured: "CalArts: Skeptical Belief(s)," 1987. Installation view, Renaissance Society, Chicago. Photo: Tom van Eynde.
Jeff Koons`s "Banality" show opens at Sonnabend, New York. Sculptures in porcelain and polychromed wood, reveling in kitsch sources. Like Sonnabend`s `86 neo-geo group show, Koons`s superdeluxe vulgarity incites lots of commentary, much disparaging. (Peter Schjeldahl: "To stroll through the Sonnabend Gallery today is to be gang-banged by a crew of inanimate demons." Sounds charming.) But the images are indelible, e.g., the white-and-gold Michael Jackson and Bubbles (Jackson`s skin: white). Pictured: Jeff Koons, Wishing Well, 1988, gilded mirror, 87 x 56 x 8``.
Andres Serrano, Piss Christ (detail), 1987, color photograph, silicone, Plexiglas, and wood frame, 60 x 40".
COPYRIGHT: Copyright Artforum Inc. Apr 2003. Provided by Proquest- CSA, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Only fair use as provided by the United States copyright law is permitted.
PROQUEST-CSA, LLC- MAKES NO WARRANTY REGARDING THE ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, OR TIMELINESS OF THE LICENSED MATERIALS OR ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED.
1986
JANUARY
Joseph Beuys, the artist/shaman/charlatan-take your pick-dies at age 64.
FEBRUARY
Sturtevant`s "comeback" show opens at White Columns, New York; Eugene Schwartz, the renowned collector of contemporary art, serves as curator. An appropriationist avant la lettre, Sturtevant began making copies after Stella, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, and Warhol in the mid-`60s; Warhol even lent her his screens. She finds a devoted advocate in critic/curator Christian Leigh.
Karen Finley`s Yams Up My Granny`s Ass opens at the Kitchen, New York. In what is perhaps her most notorious routine, Finley assumes the character of a drug addict who tortures and sexually abuses his grandmother on Thanksgiving. She then smears canned cooked yams over her buttocks.
APRIL
Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurs.
United States bombs Libya.
MAY
Thierry de Duve, "The Readymade and the Tube of Paint," Artforum: De Duve challenges that trite opposition between painting and the Duchampian legacy. "It may seem that the fact that painters do not grind their own pigments anymore is a mere consequence of the availability of industrially processed tubes of paint. Yet this fact is crucial in understanding the cultural changes that disrupted the tradition of painting . . ."
Zone 1/2 appears. The following year, the first Zone Books (ed. Jonathan Crary, Michel Feher, Hal Foster, and Sanford Kwinter) titles appear: Foucault/Blanchot and Pierre Clastres`s Society Against the State. The books, designed by Bruce Mau, are alluring physical objects, sensuous yet pointy-headed.
Reina Sofia opens in Madrid. The House of Bourbon continues its centuries-old tradition of artistic patronage, as Queen Sofia dedicates Spain`s preeminent museum of modern art.
JUNE
First Sonsbeek since 1971, curated by Saskia Bos, opens in Arnhem, Holland. Sculptures by 50 artists scattered around Park Sonsbeek. Many "outdoor" works are in fact sheltered within glass pavilions. Bos: "More than ever, today`s artworks are artificial products that are not suited to a natural environment, let alone being involved with it."
"Chambres d`amis," curated by Jan Hoet, opens in Ghent. The show includes installations and exhibitions in private homes by contemporary artists (from Carla Accardi to Gilberto Zorio).
Ernst Nolte`s "The Past That Will Not Pass: A Speech That Could Be Written but Not Delivered" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) ignites the "Historikerstreit" in Germany. Large public debate among historians spreads to include theorists, philosophers, and writers pitting the notion of the singularity of German guilt against the rightist idea that the 20th century witnessed a "global civil war" of comparable totalitarianisms.
Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges dies at age 86.
JULY
Mary Boone weds Cologne dealer
Michael Werner. Romance cements the Cologne-New York axis, as Boone mounts numerous shows of Werner associated artists (e.g., Lupertz, Baselitz, Polke).
SEPTEMBER
"Endgame: Reference and Simulation in Recent Painting and Sculpture," curated by Elisabeth Sussman, David Joselit, and Bob Riley, opens at ICA Boston. The October crowd meets neo-geo. Works by Sherrie Levine, Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach, Philip Taaffe, Robert Gober, et al. Notable in that the catalogue essays by Yve-Alain Bois and Hal Foster largely pan the work exhibited.
Museum Ludwig, founded by chocolate magnate and supercollector Peter Ludwig, opens in Cologne, fortifying the city`s flourishing gallery scene with a major institution devoted to postwar art.
OCTOBER
Keith Haring paints a mural on the Berlin Wall near Checkpoint Charlie. "It`s a humanistic gesture," Haring says, "a political and subversive act-an attempt to psychologically destroy the wall by painting it."
The neo-geo Fab Four-Jeff Koons, Peter Halley, Meyer Vaisman, and Ashley Bickerton-open at Sonnabend. The exhibition becomes one of the most widely discussed and hyped shows of the decade. Commodity critique in gleaming finish-fetish art objects. Kay Larson (New York magazine), among others, is unamused, decrying the show as "Cynical, consumerist art . . . the perfect mirror of its coked-up, sensation-seeking society." Pictured: Ashley Bickerton, Wall Wall #6, 1986, mixed media, 36 x 96 x 14``.
Spy magazine launches.
NOVEMBER
"Art and Its Double. A New York Perspective," curated by Dan Cameron, opens at the Fundacio Caixa de Pensions, Barcelona. A broad, 15-artist survey treating "Pictures," neo-geo, and appropriationist painting as interrelated phenomena, at a decidedly establishment venue. Like Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptualism before, much of this art finds its most enthusiastic audience (and collectors) in Europe.
Nan Goldin`s Ballad of Sexual Dependency exhibited at the Burden Gallery, New York, and simultaneously published as book by Aperture. This evolving slide show debuted in 1979 at the Mudd Club and subsequently made the rounds at various other hour-of-the-wolf venues. Goldin`s ecstatic/depressive paean to downtown sex, drugs, and dirty feet becomes available to a wide audience of avid consumers. Pictured: Nan Goldin, French Chris on the convertible, NYC, 1979, color slide. From The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.
Leaked report of arms sales instigates the Iran-Contra scandal.
ALSO OF NOTE
KEY SHOWS
* Eric Fischl, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Pictured: Eric Fischl, Birthday Boy, 1983, oil on canvas, 84 x 108``.
* Rodney Graham, Galerie Johnen + Schottle, Cologne (first solo show since 1979)
* Roni Horn, Galerie Maeght Lelong, New York (New York solo gallery debut)
* Fabrice Hybert, Maison de l`Avocat, Nantes (solo debut)
* Larry Johnson, 303 Gallery, New York (solo debut)
* Michael Krebber, Fettstrasse 7a, Hamburg (solo debut)
* Raymond Pettibon, Semaphore Gallery, New York (solo debut)
* Rick Prol, B-Side Gallery and Nada Gallery, New York
* David Robbins, Nature Morte, New York (solo debut) Pictured: David Robbins and Richard Prince, The Fifth Beatle, 1986, black-and-white photograph, 16 x 20``.
* David Salle, ICA, Philadelphia; traveled to Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, MOCA, Los Angeles, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and MCA, Chicago
* Lorna Simpson, Just Above Midtown Gallery, New York (solo debut)
* Meyer Vaisman, White Columns, New York (solo debut), Jay Gorney Modern Art, New York, and Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles Pictured: Meyer Vaisman, 1986. Installation view, Jay Gorney Modern Art, New YorK.
* Wallace & Donohue, Postmasters, New York (solo debut)
* "The Anticipated Ruin" (cur. Howard Halle; Gretchen Bender, Peter Nagy, Steven Parrino, et al.), The Kitchen, New York
* Bernd and Hilla Becher, Gunther Forg, Reinhard Mucha, Luhring, Augustine & Hodes, New York
* "Damaged Goods: Desire and the Economy of the Object" (cur. Brian Wallis; Judith Barry, Andrea Fraser, Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach, et al.), New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York
* "The Mirror and the Lamp" (cur. Michael Newrnan and Mark Francis; Richard Artschwager, Christian Boltanski, Tony Cragg, Gerhard Richter, David Salle, Cindy Sherman, et al.), ICA, London, and the Fruitmarket, Edinburgh
* IX Salao Nacional de Artes Plasticas (featured artists; Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica), Paco Imperial, Rio de Janeiro
* "Split Vision" (cur. Robert Mapplethorpe and Laurie Simmons; Alan Belcher, Robert Longo, Allan McCollum, et al.), Artists Space, New York
* "When Attitudes Become Form" (cur Bob Nickas; Richard Artschwager, Jennifer Bolande, Steven Parrino, Allen Ruppersburg, Philip Taaffe, Imants Tillers, Julia Wachtel, et al.), Bess Cutler Gallery, New York Pictured: "When Attitudes Become Form," 1986. Installation view, Bess Cutler Gallery, New York.
BOOKS
* Arthur C. Danto, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art
* Paul de Man, The Resistance to Theory [title essay, Yale French Studies 63 (1982)]
* Henry Louis Gates Jr., ed., "Race," Writing, and Difference
* Andreas Huyssen. After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism
* Tama Janowitz, Slaves of New York
* W.J.T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology
* A.L. Rees and Frances Borzello, eds., The New Art History
* Jacqueline Rose, Sexuality in the Field of Vision
* Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor`s Tale
FILMS
* Absolute Beginners, dir. Julien Temple
* Down by Law, dir. Jim Jarmusch
* Matador, dir. Pedro Almodovar
* She`s Gotta Have It, dir. Spike Lee
* Sid & Nancy, dir. Alex Cox
MUSIC
* Chicago House phenomenon first appears in music press
The Mekons, The Edge of the World
* Run-D.M.C., Raising Hell
1987
JANUARY
In his last opening, Andy Warhol debuts the Last Supper pictures at Alexander Iolas Gallery, Milan, across the street from the original at Santa Maria delle Grazie.
FEBRUARY
"Resistance (Anti-Baudrillard)" opens at White Columns, curated by Group Material. Works by Honore Daumier, Odilon Redon, George Grosz, John Heartfield, Leon Golub, Nancy Spero, Gretchen Bender, Barbara Kruger, Gerhard Merz, et al. The complaint is ostensibly not directed at Baudrillard himself but rather at the uses and abuses of his theories in the art world. Judith Barry: "Is the art world the most effective place for political action? Historically it hasn`t been." Peter Halley: "I think it is actually. . . . If you want to effect some sort of change . . . I think it`s as good a place as any to begin."
MARCH
"Silence = Death" stickers begin showing up around New York. Refers at once to the stigma surrounding aids and to the conspicuous silence of national leaders-Reagan didn`t mention the word until 1987. Designed by Ken Woddard, the stickers proliferate ominously. Almost simultaneously, ACT UP-AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power-forms. First action: Mar. 24 rally in front of Trinity Church, Wall St.
APRIL
John Dogg opens at American Fine Arts, Co. and 303. The artist`s name is widely regarded as a pseudonym for the collaborative efforts of Richard Prince and AFA director Colin de Land. (Other suspects: Collins and Milazzo, Gary Indiana, 303 Gallery director Lisa Spellman.) A show of tires configured as various deadpan artworks, all of them making (parodie?) reference to now fashionable appropriation art and commodity critique.
MAY
Barbara Kruger becomes the first female artist in Mary Boone`s stable; Sherrie Levine joins in September 1987. Their "defections" to Boone addle sensibilities preferring clear-cut distinctions between "political" art practices and filthy lucre.
"CalArts: Skeptical Belief(s)," curated by Suzanne Chez, opens at the Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago. Fifty-three artists-Barbara Bloom, Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein,
JUNE
Documenta 8, curated by Manfred Schneckenburger, opens in Kassel. Unlike Rudi Fuchs`s inchoate `82 show, the overriding theme is "art of social concern" rather than neoex ego. Installations and video very prevalent, by Jenny Holzer, Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Merz, Hans Haacke, Group Material, Marcel Odenbach, et al. Peter Fischli and David Weiss`s Filmzyklus uber Kettenreaktionen is a big hit.
"Skulptur. Projekte in Munster," curated by Kasper Konig and Klaus Bussmann, opens. Ten years after Bussmann`s first Munster show, this next installment includes works by 53 artists, among them Michael Asher, Giovanni Anselmo, Daniel Buren, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Fischli & Weiss, and Katharina Fritsch. Jeff Koons offers a solid stainless-steel copy of the city`s Der Kiepenkerl. The statue survived heavy Allied bombing, only to be destroyed by a tank. During the `50s, Munster, still largely in ruins, erected a bronze copy of the original. Koons kitsch meets Bavarian kitsch. Pictured: Katharina Fritsch, Madonna Figure, 1987. Installation view, Salzstrasse, Munster.
"Infotainment (18 Artists from New York)," a traveling group show of mostly Nature Morte and International With Monument artists, closes in Amsterdam after a two-year tour. Catalogue essays by David Robbins, George W.S. Trow, and Thomas Lawson. Media-savvy art with an autocritical yet insistently Pop vibe. Robbins: "To the children of Barthes and Coca-Cola, television affords the opportunity to monitor civilization from our bedrooms." Pictured: Gretchen Bender, Untitled (Revolution) (detail), 1985, laminated filmstrip, steel, and fluorescent lights, 72 x 72``. From the series "Total Recall."
AUGUST
Paul de Man`s articles for Le Soir come to light. The revelation that the dean of American deconstructivist criticism, who had died four years earlier, had written articles tainted by anti-Semitism for a right-wing Belgian newspaper during the war years provokes responses of disbelief and outrage. Aside from the legitimate questions raised by de Man`s wartime journalism, scholars with a grudge against the tremendous success of deconstruction attempt to discredit the entire movement as inherently "fascistic."
SEPTEMBER
Third Text begins publication. Edited by Rasheed Araeen, the journal focuses on visual arts, attempting to disrupt the idees recues of imperialism, colonialism, and "Third World" culture.
Paradise Garage closes. The King St. club reigned for years as the epicenter of the burgeoning house scene. Frequented primarily by gay blacks and Hispanics, it had at least one famous white regular: Keith Haring.
OCTOBER
Elizabeth Hess`s "Success! A Boone for Feminists?," Village Voice: Is the ascension of Levine and Kruger to Boone`s previously all-male stable good or bad for women artists and feminism? "Artists with disdain for success rarely have any," Hess opines. Unless perhaps you`re recently dead, e.g., van Gogh.
Dow crashes. Initial wave of fear that the flush art market will suffer a junk bond-style collapse subsides as money pours into art rather than the unstable stock market. The next two years witness the most profligate expenditures at auction to date.
NOVEMBER
Peter Hujar dies at ago 53. Although he produced only one book of photographs, Portraits in Life and Death (1976), Hujar`s work exerted tremendous influence on younger photographers of "alternative lifestyles" and the demimonde. Pictured: Peter Hujar, Self-Portrait, 1980, black-and-white photograph, 14 7/8 x 14 3/4``.
"Fictions," curated by Douglas Blau, opens at Kent Fine Art and Curt Marcus Gallery, New York. Paintings, drawings, and photographs roaming the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Romantic landscapes, images of scientific instruments and dissections, paintings by MarkTansey, Mark Innerst, and David Deutsch, and Cindy Sherrnan`s picture of the wannabe Hollywood starlet mingle elegantly on the walls. Blau describes the associative exhibition as an "archeological excavation." Pictured: David Deutsch, Untitled, 1981, ink on paper mounted on canvas, 24 x 48``. At the invitation of New Museum curator William Olander, Gran Fury installs Let the Record Show . . . in the museum`s Broadway storefront, indicting various right-wing figures for their indifference to the crisis or the satisfaction they take in it. SILENCE = DEATH GLOWS in neon over the whole.
DECEMBER
Anselm Kiefer retrospective, curated by Mark Rosenthal, opens at the Art Institute of Chicago (the exhibition travels to Philadelphia before closing at MOMA). As the decade wears on, Kiefer emerges as the big winner among German noo-expressionists.
ALSO OF NOTE
KEY SHOWS
* Jeanne Dunning, Feature, Inc., Chicago (solo debut)
* Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York ("The Ninth Street Show," portraits of surviving participants of Castelli`s 1951 exhibition)
* Andreas Gursky, Galerie Johnen + Schottle, Cologne (solo debut)
* Thomas Hirschhorn, Kaos-Galerie, Cologne (solo debut)
* Alfredo Jaar, Logo for America, One Times Square, New York
* Mike Kelley, Metro Pictures (exhibition) and Artists Space (performance), New York ("Plato`s Cave, Rothko`s Chapel, Lincoln`s Profile") Pictured: Mike Kelley, "Plato`s Cave, Rothko`s Chapel, Lincoln`s Profile," 1987. Installation view, Metro Pictures, New York.
* Martin Kippenberger, Galerie Max Hetzler, Cologne, Galerie Peter Pakesch, Vienna, and Metro Pictures, New York ("Peter") Pictured: Martin Kippenberger, "Peter," 1987. Installation view, Galerie Max Hetzler, Cologne.
* Christian Marclay, Clocktower, New York (solo debut)
* Tom Otterness, Brooke Alexander Gallery, New York
* Julian Schnabel, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; traveled to Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, SF MOMA, and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
* Cindy Sherman, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
* Kiki Smith, Piezo Electric Gallery, New York (solo debut)
* "Abstract Expressionism: The Critical Developments" (cur. Michael Auping), Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo
* "Art Against AIDS," various venues, New York
* "Avant-Garde in the Eighties" (cur. Howard Fox), Los Angeles County Museum of Art
* "Berlinart 1961-1987" (cur. Kynaston McShine), Museum of Modern Art, New York
* "Brennpunkt Dusseldorf 1962-1987" (cur. Stefan von Wiese; Beuys, Hesse, Immendorff, Morris, Paik, Palermo, Polke, Richter, Ruthenbeck, Sieverding, et al.), Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf
* "Latin American Artists in New York Since 1970" (cur. Jacqueline Barnitz; 38-artist survey), Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, University of Texas at Austin
* "L`epoque, la mode, la morale, la passion: Aspects de l`art d`aujourd`hui, 1977-1987" (cur. Bernard Ceysson, Alfred Paquoment, Bernard Blistene, Catherine David, Christine Van Assche; commemorates Pompidou`s 10th anniversary), Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
* "Les courtiers du desir" (cur. Howard Halle and Walter Hopps), Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
* " Modernidade: Art Bresilien du XXe Siecle"(cur. Aracy Amaral). Musee d`Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and Museu de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo
* "Out of the Studio: Art with Community" (cur. Thomas Finkelpearl and Glenn Weiss; John Ahearn, David Hammons, Ruben Ortiz-Torres, Tim Rollins, Meirle Ukeles, et al.), P.S. 1, New York
* "Perverted by Language" (cur. Bob Nickas; Jenny Holzer, Larry Johnson, Ronald Jones, Louise Lawler, Haim Steinbach, et al.), Hillwood Art Gallery, Long Island University, Greenvale, New York
* "Surveillance" (cur. Branda Miller and Deborah Irmas; Martha Rosler, Sam Samore, Julia Scher, et al.), L.A.C.E., Los Angeles Pictured: Julia Scher, Personal Reception Area (P.R.A.), 1987. Installation view, L.A.C.E., Los Angeles. Photo: Basia Kenton.
BOOKS
* Hans Belting, The End of the History of Art? [Das Ende der Kunstgeschichte, 1983]
* Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
* Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender
* Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia [Capitalisme et schizophrenie tome 2: Mille plateaux, 1980]
* Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason [Kritik der zynischen Vernunft, 1983]
* Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities
FILMS
* Films of the Brothers Quay, dir. Brothers Quay
* Full Metal Jacket, dir. Stanley Kubrick
* King Lear, dir. Jean-Luc Godard
* Robocop, dir. Paul Verhoeven
* Wall Street, dir. Oliver Stone
* Wings of Desire, dir. Wim Wenders
MUSIC
* Guns N` Roses, Appetite for Destruction
* Michael Jackson, Bad
* Speed Metal/Thrash phenomenon
1988
JANUARY
"Cultural Geometry," curated by Jeffrey Deitch, opens at the Deste Foundation, Athens. The show takes an internationalist view, integrating simulationist/neo-geo practices (understood primarily as an American phenomenon) with works by Europeans-John Armleder, Jan Vercruysse, Juan Munoz, etc. The catalogue, designed by Dan Friedman, is distinctive: Rather than the usual alteration of images and text, a kind of "visual essay" is constructed of the sort that is subsequently much imitated.
FEBRUARY
Supreme Court decides Flynt v. Falwell.
MARCH
Ida Panicelli`s first issue as Artforum editor: comprises projects by Enzo Cucchi, Rebecca Horn, Robert Longo, Lothar Baumgarten, Jenny Holzer, Dara Birnbaum, and Jannis Kounellis, and texts by Jonathan Borofsky, Nancy Spero, Joseph Kosuth, Tony Cragg, Vito Acconci, and Daniel Buren. Panicelli`s four-year editorial tenure is prescient regarding the global and sociopolitical concerns of the `90s. She also reveals herself to be a steadfast supporter of the legacy of arte povera.
Gerhard Richter begins painting his "Baader-Meinhof" series, "October 18, 1977." Exhibited the following year at Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld, and Portikus, Frankfurt (before traveling to London, St. Louis, and elsewhere), the paintings provoke intense debate in the German press. Pictured: Gerhard Richter, Plattenspleler (Record player), 1988, oil on canvas, 24 5/8 x 32 3/4``. From the series "October 18, 1977."
Sandra Bernhards one-woman show Without You I`m Nothing, cowritten by artist John Boskovich, runs for six months off-Broadway. Pictured: Sandra Bernhard and John Boskovich, Without You I`m Nothing, 1990, still from a color film in 35 mm, 89 minutes.
APRIL
"Altered States" opens at Kent Fine Art, curated by Rosetta Brooks, with concurrent issue of ZG magazine (interview with Paul Virilio, writings by J.G. Ballard, Vito Acconci, et al.). Techno-dystopia of the future/present.
MAY
Mike Kelley`s "Three Projects: Half a Man, From My Institution to Yours, Pay for Your Pleasure" opens at the Renaissance Society, University of Chicago. The last consists of 42 banners bearing quotations by famous artists, writers, philosophers, etc., averring the creative genius`s exemption from ordinary moral codes, culminating in a self-portrait by serial killer John Wayne Gacy as Pogo the Clown. Site-specific: When the work is shown at MOCA`S "A Forest of Signs," Kelley includes a drawing by LA Freeway Killer William Bonin instead.
Jean-Michel Basquiat found dead, at age 27, from a heroin overdose in the Great Jones St. loft he had rented from Andy Warhol. Friends of the artist maintain he was exploited, that his escalating drug use was ignored by interested parties, and that Warhol`s death the previous year had left him without anchor. Pictured: Jean-Michel Basquiat`s obituary, New York Times, August 15, 1988.
Paul Thek dies at age 54.
SEPTEMBER
"Impresario: Malcolm McLaren and the British New Wave," ourated by Paul Taylor, opens at the Now Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. Mixed-media installation designed by Judith Barry and Ken Saylor, featuring materials related to McLaren`s various fashion endeavors (e.g., Sex, the boutique he ran with Vivienne Westwood) and his musical enterprises (the Sex Pistols, etc.). Pictured: Malcolm McLaren, n.d.
OCTOBER
ACT UP, joined by the national ACT NOW coalition, closes down the Federal Drug Administration headquarters in suburban Washington, DC. More than 1,000 activists stage demonstrations that result in some 180 arrests. A historic event garnering international press coverage, the action demonstrates the lethargy of the bureaucracy in charge of testing possible aids treatments. Francois Mitterrand dedicates I.M. Pei`s pyramids at the Louvre after four years of controversy.
George Bush elected 41st president.
DECEMBER
ALSO OF NOTE
KEY SHOWS
* Ashley Bickerton, Sonnabend, New York (includes LED "price tag" works)
* John Boskovich, Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles (solo debut)
* Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Rastovski Gallery, New York (solo debut) Pictured: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled, 1988, framed photostat, 11 x 14``.
* Ilya Kabakov, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York (New York solo debut)
* Tadashi Kawamata, Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York
* Liz Larner, Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles (solo debut)
* Sally Mann, Marcuse Pfeiffer Gallery, New York (New York solo debut) Pictured: Sally Mann, Jessie Bites, 1986, black-and-white photograph. 20 x 24".
* Cady Noland, White Columns, New York (solo debut)
* Jorge Pardo, Bliss Gallery, Pasadena, CA (solo debut)
* Laurie Parsons, Loronce Monk Gallery, New York (solo debut)
* Richard Phillips, Holly Solomon Gallery, New York (solo debut)
* Marc Quinn, Jay Jopling/Otis Gallery, London (solo debut)
* Collier Schorr, Cable Gallery, New York (solo debut)
* Rosemarie Trockel, Kunsthalle Basel and ICA, London
* Rachel Whiteread, Carlisle Gallery, London (solo debut)
* Nayland Blake, Liz Larner, Richard Morrison, Charles Ray, 303 Gallery, New York
* "Brazil Projects" (cur. Alanna Heiss, Chris Dercon, et al.; Lygia Clark, Franz Krajcberg, Helio Oiticica, et al.), P.S. 1, New York
* "Democracy"(cur. Group Material; John Ahearn, Beuys, Halley, Faith Ringgold, Warhol, et al.), Dia Art Foundation, New York Pictured: Group Material, "Education and Democracy," 1988. Installation view, Dia Art Foundation. New York. Photo: Ken Schles.
* "The Latin American Spirit: Art and Artists in the United States, 1920-1970" (cur. Luis Cancel; 136-artist survey), Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York
* "Utopia Post Utopia" (Robert Gober, Richard Prince, Meg Webster, et al.), ICA, Boston Pictured, foreground: Meg Webster, Moss Bed, 1986-88. Background: Robert Gober, Untitled Door and Doorframe, 1987-88. Installation view, ICA, Boston.
BOOKS
* Steven Hawking, A Brief History of Time
* Gary Indiana, Horse Crazy
* Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism, and the Histories of Art
* Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
FILMS
* Damnation, dir. Bela Tarr
* Days of Eclipse, dir. Alexander Sokurov
* Dead Ringers, dir. David Cronenberg
* The Decalogue, dir. Krzysztof Kiesslowski
* Hairspray, dir. John Waters
* Working Girl, dir. Mike Nichols
MUSIC
* Pixies, Surfer Rosa
* Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
* Rave phenomenon throughout Europe
* Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation
* Sugarcubes, Life`s Too Good
1989
FEBRUARY
"Andy Warhol: A Retrospective," curated by Kynaston McShine, opens at Museum of Modern Art almost exactly two years after the artist`s death. Essays by Robert Rosenblum, Benjamin Buchloh, and Marco Livingstone. The show focuses on "canonical" works and stints Warhol`s activities beyond the fine arts.
Ayatollah Khomeini issues fatwa against Salman Rushdie.
Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan completed.
"Refigured Painting: The German Image 1960-88," curated by Thomas Krens, Michael Govan, and Joseph Thompson, travels to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, after opening at the Toledo Museum of Art. A Teutonic grab bag, ranging from Polke and Richter through neo-ex (Baselitz, Dokoupil, Petting, Hodicke, Immendorff, Lupertz, Middendorf) to Kippenberger, Georg Herold, and Rosemarie Trockcl. Savage critical reception, although Peter Schjeldahl manages a recuperative twist: "It`s a disaster worthy of an `I Survived . . . ` T-shirt and, as such, a must-see." The death knell of German neo-ex? Pictured: "Refigured Painting: The German Image 1960-88," 1989. Installation view, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Photo: David Heald.
MARCH
Howardena Pindell, "Art World Racism: A Documentation," New Art Examiner: Pindell, an artist, provides statistics concerning the severe lack of representation of artists of color in New York galleries and museums. "Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American artists are . . . with a few, very few exceptions systematically excluded."
Robert Mapplethorpe dies at age 42.
Exxon Valdez disaster.
APRIL
"Bilderstreit. Widerspruch, Einheit und Fragment in der Kunst seit 1960," curated by Siegfried Gohr and Johannes Gachnang, opens at the Koln Rheinhallen. Presenting a smorgasbord of artists (Balthus to Baldessari, Picasso to Prince, Schwitters to Schnabel), "Bilderstreit"-"picture fight"-is indeed a scrap, but not in the way the curators imagined. Many Cologne dealers sign a declaration attacking the exhibit`s "market-politics selection," referring especially to the preponderance of artists represented by Mary Boone and Michael Werner; German critics are virtually unanimous in pronouncing the show a disaster. The hostility drives Gohr from his position as director of the Museum Ludwig.
"A Forest of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation," curated by Ann Goldstein and Mary Jane Jacob, opens at Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Coming at the end of the decade, the broad survey of the "critical" art of the past ten years-i.e., "Pictures," neo-geo, etc.-accrues an inevitable valedictory air. Much of the work is photo-based, its background Conceptual. Many of the artists also display a marked feminist disposition. David Salle declines the invitation to Show. Pictured: Barbara Kruger, Untitled, 1989. Installation view, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
"Magiciens de la Terre," curated by Jean-Hubert Martin in collaboration with Mark Francis, opens at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. The show includes nearly 100 artists, half from the recognized "centers" of contemporary culture, half culled from the "margins." The first major exhibition to take "globalism" as its subject; nevertheless, it is criticized as "neo-colonialist," reiterating in a contemporary-art vein some of the complaints that greeted MOMA`S historical " `Primitivism` in 20th Century Art" in 1984. Pictured: Hans Haacke, One Day the Lions of Dulcie September Will Spout Water in Jubilation, 1989. Installation view. Centre Georges Pompidou. Paris. Photo: Hans Haacke.
New York senator Alfonse D`Amato presents Andres Serrano`s piss Christ to the us Senate. Serrano had received $15,000 from a grants organization funded partially by the National Endowment for the Arts.
"The Silent Baroque," curated by Christian Leigh, opens at Thaddaeus Ropac in Salzburg. Former Artforum reviews oditor-turned-independent curator Leigh`s most grandiose (preposterous?) statement. "My interest in the Baroque is as a social and cultural catalyst," he says. "My interest lies in those places where things that are different come together and resemble one another." Now that`s a lot of places. Very diverse group of some 50 artists and writers.
JUNE
The Corcoran Gallery cancels "Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment." As part of a protest against the cancellation, Krzysztof Wodiczko projects Mapplethorpe`s self-portrait on the museum`s facade. Throughout the summer, attacks on the NEA for its support of "pornography" escalate.
Daniel Libeskind awarded Jewish Museum commission in Berlin; the architect says that his design attempts "to make visible the invisible." After numerous postponements, the museum`s first exhibition opens in Sept. 2001.
Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History," published in the National Interest Fukuyama presents an essentially right-wing celebration of history`s putative terminus, as if the world had finally reached its appropriate telos; Alexandra Kojeve spins in his grave.
Tiananmen Square massacre.
AUGUST
Gerhard Richters Atlas exhibited at Lenbachhaus, Munich, before traveling to Cologne. Marks the first exhibition of this gargantuan photographic archive since the `70s.
SEPTEMBER
Jack Smith, director of notorious underground classic Flaming Creatures (1963), dies at age 57. Fanatically dedicated to `40s B-movie actress Maria Montez, he recuperated her ineptitude as a virtue: "The acting was lousy but if something genuine got on film why carp about acting-which has to be phony anyway-I`d RATHER HAVE atrocious acting." Pictured: Jack Smith, Untitled (tableau vivant), 1958-62, print from a 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 color negative.
Matthew Barney`s Field Dressing performance takes place at the Payne Whitney Athletic Complex at Yale, in Barney`s senior year at the university. Pictured: Matthew Barney, Field Dressing (orifill), 1989, video still. Production: Michael Rees.
OCTOBER
Gran Fury`s Control project appears in Artforum. Pointed juxtapositions of image and text, e.g., a picture of a masked scientist bending over a petri dish with a quotation by a Hoffmann-La Roche executive: "One million [People with AIDS] isn`t a market that`s exciting. Sure it`s growing, but it`s not asthma."
NOVEMBER
"Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing," curated by Nan Goldin, opens at Artists Space. The show addresses the massive losses from aids sustained within the arts community. A wide range of works, by David Wojnarowicz, Kiki Smith, David Armstrong, Greer Lankton, et al. Wojnarowicz`s incendiary catalogue text becomes the center of a huge media fracas as NEA head John Frohnmayer threatens to defund the exhibition.
"Image World: Art and Media Culture," curated by Lisa Phillips, John G. Hanhardt, and Marvin Heiferman, opens at the Whitney. Sort of a more inclusive New York pendant to "A Forest of Signs." TV, movies, ads-the "culture industry" as fodder for a generation of post-Pop/post-Conceptual artists often vacillating between critique and complicity. Call it "Richard Prince`s World." Pictured: Nam June Paik, Fin de Siecle II, 1989. Installation view, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
The Berlin Wall falls.
DECEMBER
Day Without Art organized by Visual AIDS. A wide variety of responses, from galleries closing their doors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art`s draping Picasso`s portrait of Gertrude Stein.
United States troops invade Panama.
ALSO OF NOTE
KEY SHOWS
* Marcel Broodthaers (cur. Michael Compton and Marge Goldwater; first US retrospective), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
* Tony Cragg, Tate Gallery, London
* John Currin, White Columns, New York (solo debut)
* Jeanne Dunning, Feature, Inc., New York (New York solo debut)
* Andrea Fraser, Philadelphia Museum of Art ("Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk")
* Jenny Holzer. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
* Gary Hume, Karsten Schubert Ltd., London (solo debut)
* Komar and Melamid, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York ("Bergen Point Brass Foundry, Bayonne")
* Sean Landers, Tom Solomon`s Garage, Los Angeles (solo debut)
* Donald Moffett, Wessel O`Connor Gallery, New York (solo debut)
* Vik Muniz. Stux Gallery, New York (solo debut)
* Cady Noland, American Fine Arts, Co., New York, Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, and Galleria Massimo de Carlo, Milan
* Tim Rollins/K.O.S. (cur. Gary Garrels), Dia Center for the Arts, New York
* Lorna Simpson, Josh Baer Gallery, New York (New York solo gallery debut)
* Philip Taaffe, Pat Hearn Gallery and Mary Boone Gallery, New York
* Tunga. Whitechapel Gallery, London
* Jeff Wall, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York (New York solo debut)
* "Against Nature: Japanese Art in the Eighties" (cur. Kathy Halbreich, Tom Sokolowski, Shinji Kohmoto, Fumio Nanjo; Kaoru Hirabayashi, Shoko Maemoto, Tatsuo Miyajima, Yasumasa Morimura, et al.), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
* "Art in Latin America: The Modern Era, 1820-1980" (cur. Dawn Ades and Guy Brett; 170-artist survey), Hayward Gallery, London
* Inaugural Istanbul Biennale
BOOKS
* Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project
* Pat Hackett, ed., Andy Warhol Diaries
* Cornel West, The American Evasion of Philosophy
FILMS
* City of Sadness, dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien
* Do the Right Thing, dir. Spike Lee
* Drugstore Cowboy, dir. Gus Van Sant
* Heathers, dir. Michael Lehmann
* Histoire(s) du Cinema, dir. Jean-Luc Godard
* Sex, Lies, and Videotape, dir. Steven Soderbergh
* The Unbelievable Truth, dir. Hal Hartley
MUSIC
* De La Soul, 3 Feet High and Rising
* Nirvana, Bleach
* N.W.A., Straight Outta Compton
1990
FEBRUARY
Keith Haring dies at ago 31
MAY
Van Gogh`s Portrait of Dr. Gachet sells at Christie`s for $82.5 million to a Japanese buyer, surpassing the previous record of $53.9 million for Irises at Sotheby`s throe years earlier. But many works from the Impressionist and modern sale go for around or below their estimates, and 24 fail to sell.
Gran Fury invited to show at Venice Biennale (The Pope and the Penis project, as members of the collective describe it). Commissioners of the Biennale refuse to assist in getting the project through customs. Finally, Gran Fury appears in the show. Censorship only aggrandizes their presence.
Jenny Holzer becomes the first woman from the US to win the Venice Biennale`s Golden Lion.
JUNE
Grants to "NEA 4"-Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, John Fleck, and Tim Miller-rejected. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, Republican from California: "It shouldn`t have been that difficult to reject sacrilegious and pornographic art. It is time we set some standards."
JULY
Critic Craig Owens dies at age 39. Beyond Recognition, his collected essays (Barbara Kruger, Jane Weinstock, Lynne Tillman, and Scott Bryson, eds.), appears two years later.
AUGUST
"Just Pathetic," curated by Ralph Rugoff, opens at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles. Work included by Mike Kelley, Cady Nolond, Jeffrey Vallance, Jessica Diamond, David Hammons, et al. Four months later, "Stuttering" (curated by Vik Muniz) opens at Stux Gallery, New York, with works by Muniz, Cary Lebowitz/Candyass, et al. Incipience of the "loser" or "abject art" trends of the early `90s.
Iraq invades Kuwait.
SEPTEMBER
Texte zur Kunst founded in Cologne by Isabelle Graw and Stefan Germer. The journal sedulously advocates critical theory (shades of the Frankfurt School) in its approach to contemporary art.
NOVEMBER
At Sotheby`s, fewer than half of the post-war works sell. Total sale: $19.8 million, a mere half of the low end of the presale estimate. Andre Emmerich: "I would expect that [prices] will be more sensible in the next series of sales in May. The craziness has gone out of the auctions." (Between 1990 and 1993, some 70 Manhattan galleries will close as a result of the dwindling market.)
Sigmar Polke retrospective, curated by John Caldwell, opens at SF MOMA. As the decade closes, an opportunity to examine in depth an artist who influenced divergent trends in contemporary art, on the one hand held up as an exemplar by Buchloh, on the other an all-too-obvious influence on Salle and scores of lesser figures. Pictured: Sigmar Polke, 1990. Installation view, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
ALSO OF NOTE
KEY SHOWS
* Candida Hofer, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York
* Cildo Meireles, "Mission/Missions (How to Build Cathedrals)," ICA, London; "Cinza," Museum of Modern Art, New York
* Juan Munoz, Renaissance Society, Chicago
* "Sigmar Polke: Fotografien`` (cur. Jochen Poetter), Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden
* Fiona Rae, Third Eye Centre, Glasgow (solo debut)
* Thomas Schutte, Kunsthalle Bern
* Jessica Stockholder, American Fine Arts, Co., New York Pictured: Jessica Stockholder, Flower Dusted Prosies (detail), 1992. Installation view, American Fine Arts, Co., New York.
* Carrie Mae Weems, "Calling Out My Name," CEPA Gallery, Buffalo; traveled to P.P.O.W., New York (solo gallery debut)
* "Paintball" (cur. Richard Prince; Prince, Pruitt/Early, Tom Henry III), 303 Gallery, New York, and Stuart Regen Gallery, Los Angeles
* "Transcontinental: Nine Latin American Artists" (cur. Guy Brett), Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, England
BOOKS
* Judith Butler. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
* Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century
FILMS
* Misery, dir. Rob Reiner
* Paris Is Burning, dir. Jennie Livingstone Pictured: Jennie Livingstone, Paris Is Burning, 1990. Production still: Michael Compte.
* Pretty Woman, dir. Garry Marshall
* Reversal of Fortune, dir. Barbet Schroeder
MUSIC
* Ice Cube, AmeriKKKa`s Most Wanted
* Yo La Tengo, Fakebook
SIDEBAR
Larry Johnson, Mike Kelley, Stephen Prina, Mark Stahl, James Welling, Christopher Williams, et al.-educated under the Conceptual-art dispensations of Michael Asher, John Baldessari, and Douglas Huebler. Pictured: "CalArts: Skeptical Belief(s)," 1987. Installation view, Renaissance Society, Chicago. Photo: Tom van Eynde.
Jeff Koons`s "Banality" show opens at Sonnabend, New York. Sculptures in porcelain and polychromed wood, reveling in kitsch sources. Like Sonnabend`s `86 neo-geo group show, Koons`s superdeluxe vulgarity incites lots of commentary, much disparaging. (Peter Schjeldahl: "To stroll through the Sonnabend Gallery today is to be gang-banged by a crew of inanimate demons." Sounds charming.) But the images are indelible, e.g., the white-and-gold Michael Jackson and Bubbles (Jackson`s skin: white). Pictured: Jeff Koons, Wishing Well, 1988, gilded mirror, 87 x 56 x 8``.
Andres Serrano, Piss Christ (detail), 1987, color photograph, silicone, Plexiglas, and wood frame, 60 x 40".
COPYRIGHT: Copyright Artforum Inc. Apr 2003. Provided by Proquest- CSA, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Only fair use as provided by the United States copyright law is permitted.
PROQUEST-CSA, LLC- MAKES NO WARRANTY REGARDING THE ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, OR TIMELINESS OF THE LICENSED MATERIALS OR ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED.
