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Summary Themes of Contemporary Art - Chapter 5: Memory
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Summary of the handbook: Themes of Contemporary Art. Contains the entire chapter 5: Memory.
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Themes of Contemporary Art - Chapter 5: Memory- The theme of time is closely connected to the theme of memory. For example, the
sister-photoshoot by Nixon shows personal memories and the passing of time.
- Our memory filters and selects different events; some memories are quickly
forgotten.
- Doris Salcedo combines the idea of personal memory with how history in a larger
sense remembers the violent past of her country Colombia, in her installation
Atrabiliarios. Shoes are used as a means to identify remains. Human mourning is
revealed but the artist also shows the fragility of memory, which fades over time.
- Berlin is a city filled with memories from history. One of the most impressive public
artworks is Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe by architect Peter Eisenman.
- Memory is the larger conceptual container, and history is a subset of memory. Artists
in this chapter mainly focus on personal, subjective responses. But memory is
selective: some memories are chosen more often than others.
- Song Dong lived in the years of Mao Zedong in China. His father was imprisoned in a
re-education camp. His installation Projects 90 displays the complete contents of his
mothers’ home. The installation mourns for his father and art and life is blended.
- Memory is often a subject of research for many scientific fields.
Memory and Art History
- Memory is a central theme in art history.
- Visual art has long served the purpose of helping people remember important
people, places and events. Much of it is narrative in form. Most of these visual stories
were culturally shared ones, creating myths and religious stories.
- History painting = a term that was used from the 17th century to explain a grand style
of figure painting illustrating significant events from ancient history, religion or
literature.
- In the end of the 20th century, the works of the neo-expressionists revive the interest
in art about history, mythology and literature. Artists like Anselm Kiefer and Mimmo
Paladino who focused on their national histories and cultural origins.
- In contemporary art, many artists have revised certain history. Many artists have also
been interested in the history of art itself. the artist’s and viewer’s memory of art
itself: the recognition of a variation on a tradition.
- The desire to revive and revisit past styles has been persistent in art history. Artists
were proud to copy from precursors.
- The appropriation of styles, images and information from earlier periods has
resurged in recent decades. But this is different from earlier historicist approaches.
Contemporary artists draw visual ideas from many different sources mixtures.
Elements are borrowed in fragments and are mixed and layered.
- Literary critic Fredric Jameson’s concept of pastiche, referring to the eclectic
appropriation and recombination of past images became associated with much
postmodern art that arose in the 1980s. mixture of styles that reflect the past,
present and future coexist.
- If an artist quotes earlier works of art or images from popular culture, the viewer
who recognizes these quotations interprets the new work of art in part as an
exploration of the visual precedents.
, The Texture of Memory
- Memory is fundamental to our survival. Without the aid of record-keeping devices
like books, cameras, video recorders, etc, we would find it difficult to navigate
through life.
Memory is Emotional
- Memory constantly underpins our thoughts and emotions. Through memory, we
construct identity, purpose and meaning.
- Contemporary artists are highly interested in psychoanalytical ideas. Like Tracy Emin,
known for her confessional art, through which she reveals private details of her
troubled life. Like her installation Everyone I have Ever Slept With, which contains a
tent with the names of all her sleeping partners sewn in it. Her art can be discussed
as abject: a concept that explores a child’s inability to separate from its mother,
symbolized by bodily secretions and psychic conditions of trauma and repression.
Memory is Unreliable
- Memory is not a straightforward process that results in a trustworthy, unchanging
record of the past. We can interpret the same event differently and we also forget a
lot.
- Many artists who work with memory are interested in the unreliability and instability
of memory. William Kentridge’s charcoal drawings also address this topic: should one
remember and try to learn from the past or forgive, forget and move on? =
Production of memory.
Memory is Multisensory
- Smell, sound, taste and touch have a powerful effect on memory and on the
imagination, just as sight. Some visual artists capitalize on this phenomenon by
engaging more than one sense.
- For example, Bill Fontana makes acoustic sculptures using ambient sound effects
recorded at places of historical significance, like in Sound Island Paris.
- Multisensory artworks tend to be relational, inviting viewers to move around and
through them.
Strategies for Representing the Past
- Artists may draw on their own memories when they present both personal events
and historical events that they witnessed. Mainly they combine ideas and
information from a range of sources when they represent the past.
- Artists use many different strategies to represent the past. A few of them are
explored in this subchapter.
Displaying Evidence
- Anything from the past that still exists has special significance. It provides direct
evidence that the event or person in question really existed. A strategy here is to
appropriate and recycle found materials.
- Found objects, artifacts, relics, traces: used terms in this strategy.
- Recycled materials that are truly old are tied to the past in a direct way. Relics have
the power to evoke memories and temporal reflections.
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