Andrea Fraser

Last updated
Andrea Fraser
Entrevista amb Andrea Fraser.jpg
Fraser in 2016
Born1965 (age 58–59)
Billings, Montana, United States
NationalityAmerican
EducationSchool of Visual Arts, New York, Whitney Independent Study Program
Known for Performance art
Notable workMuseum Highlights (1989), Official Welcome (2001), Little Frank and His Carp (2001), Untitled (2003), Projection (2008), Not Just a Few of Us (2014), Down the River (2016), 2016 in Museums, Money, and Politics
MovementFeminist
AwardsNational Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship (1991), Anonymous Was A Woman Fellowship (2012), Wolfgang Hahn Prize (2013), Oskar Kokoschka Prize (2016)

Andrea Rose Fraser (born 1965) [1] is a performance artist, mainly known for her work in the area of Institutional Critique. Fraser is based in New York and Los Angeles and is currently Department Head and Professor of Interdisciplinary Studio of the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles. [2]

Contents

Early life and career

Fraser was born in Billings, Montana and grew up in Berkeley, California. [3] She attended New York University, the Whitney Museum of American Art's Independent Study Program, [4] and the School of Visual Arts. [5] Fraser worked as a gallery attendant at Dia:Chelsea. [6]

Fraser began writing art criticism before incorporating a similar analysis into her artistic practice. [7]

Work

Fraser was co-organizer, with Helmut Draxler, of Services, a "working-group exhibition" that has been conceived at Kunstraum of Lüneburg University and toured to eight venues in Europe and the United States between 1994 and 2001. [8]

Museum Highlights (1989) involved Fraser posing as a Museum tour guide at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1989 under the pseudonym of Jane Castleton. [9] During the performance, Fraser led a tour through the museum describing it in verbose and overly dramatic terms to her chagrined tour group. For example, in describing a common water fountain Fraser proclaims "a work of astonishing economy and monumentality ... it boldly contrasts with the severe and highly stylized productions of this form!" Upon entering the museum cafeteria: "This room represents the heyday of colonial art in Philadelphia on the eve of the Revolution, and must be regarded as one of the very finest of all American rooms." [9] The tour is based on a script culled from an array of sources: Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment ; a 1969 anthology of essays called "On Understanding Poverty"; and a 1987 article in The New York Times with the headline "Salad and Seurat: Sampling the Fare at Museums.” [10]

In Kunst muss hängen ("Art Must Hang") (Galerie Christian Nagel/Cologne, 2001)—featured in Make Your Own Life: Artists In & Out of Cologne - Fraser reenacted an impromptu 1995 speech by a drunk Martin Kippenberger, word-by-word, gesture-for-gesture.

For Official Welcome (2001)—commissioned by the MICA Foundation for a private reception—Fraser mimicked "the banal comments and effusive words of praise uttered by presenters and recipients during art-awards ceremonies. Midstream, assuming the persona of a troubled, postfeminist art star, Fraser strips down, [...] to a Gucci thong, bra and high-heel shoes, and says, I'm not a person today. I'm an object in an art work." [11]

Her videotape performance Little Frank and His Carp (2001), [12] shot with five hidden cameras in the atrium of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, [13] targets architectural dominance of modern gallery spaces. Using the original soundtrack of an acoustic guide at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, she "... writhes with pleasure as the recorded voice draws attention to the undulating curves and textured surfaces of the surrounding space" [11] which she takes literally in an "erotic encounter". Fraser's sexual display towards the architecture reveals the irony of the erotic words used on the audio tour to describe the museum's structure. [14]

In her videotape performance Untitled (2003), 60 minutes in duration, Fraser recorded a hotel-room sexual encounter at the Royalton Hotel in New York, with a private collector, who had paid close to $20,000 to participate, [15] "not for sex, according to the artist, but to make an artwork." [16] According to Andrea Fraser, the amount that the collector had paid her has not been disclosed, and the "$20,000" figure is way off the mark. Only five copies of the 60-minute DVD were produced, three of which are in private collections, one being that of the collector with whom she had had the sexual encounter; he had pre-purchased the performance piece in which he was a participant. The contractual agreement, arranged by Friedrich Petzel Gallery, was proposed by Fraser as an assertion against the commoditization of art. Although critiqued both within and outside of the art world for prostituting herself, Fraser problematizes whether selling art to collectors in of itself is a form of prostitution. [17]

Fraser's video installation Projection (2008) stages a psychoanalytic session in which the viewer is addressed as analyst, patient and voyeuristic spectator. The work is based on the transcripts of real psychoanalytic consultations, adapted into twelve monologues and alternated so that Fraser plays the roles of both analyst and patient. Looking directly into the camera, Fraser creates the effect of interacting with the image on the opposite wall but also with the viewer in the middle of the room, who becomes the object, or ‘psychoanalytic screen’, of each projection. [18]

Fraser's performance piece, Not Just a Few of Us (2014), performed for Prospect.3 explores the desegregation struggles in New Orleans. [19]

Teaching

Fraser has taught at University of California, Los Angeles, the Maine College of Art, Vermont College, the Whitney Independent Study Program, Columbia University School of the Arts, and the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. [5]

Exhibitions

Fraser's work has been shown in public galleries including the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1989); the Kunstverein München, (Germany, 1993, 1994); the Venice Biennale (Italy, 1993); the Sprengel Museum (Hannover, Germany, 1998); the Kunstverein Hamburg (Germany, 2003); the Whitechapel Art Gallery (London, England, 2003); the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (2005); the Frans Hals Museum (Haarlem, The Netherlands, 2007); and the Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2009). [5] In 2013, a major retrospective of her work was organized by the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, in conjunction with her receipt of the Wolfgang Hahn Prize. [8]

Collections

Fraser's work is held in major public collections including the Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Fogg Museum, Cambridge; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the Tate Modern, London. [5] [20]

She presented a lecture as part of the "Art and the Right to Believe" lecture series through the Visiting Artists Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in February, 2009.

Recognition

Fraser has received fellowships from Art Docent Matter Inc., the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art, the National Endowment for the Arts, and New York Foundation for the Arts. [5] [8] She also received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2017). [19] In December 2019 she was the subject of a significant article in The New York Times. [21]

Notes

  1. ↑ Phaidon Editors (2019). Great women artists. Phaidon Press. p. 143. ISBN   978-0714878775.{{cite book}}: |last1= has generic name (help)
  2. ↑ "UCLA Department of Art - Faculty". www.art.ucla.edu. Archived from the original on 9 July 2017. Retrieved 12 June 2017.
  3. ↑ Three Histories: The Wadsworth According to MATRIX 114 Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford.
  4. ↑ "Spotlight: Andrea Fraser - Arts - The Harvard Crimson". www.thecrimson.com. Retrieved 12 June 2017.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Andrea Fraser: Boxed Set, February 11 — April 4, 2010 Archived May 5, 2012, at the Wayback Machine Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge.
  6. ↑ Evans, S. (2009). Beyond the Turnstile. AltaMira Press. p. 104. ISBN   978-0759112216
  7. ↑ La, Kristie T. (30 March 2010). "Spotlight: Andrea Fraser". The Harvard Crimson.
  8. 1 2 3 Andrea Fraser - Professor, New Genres Archived 2017-07-09 at the Wayback Machine UCLA.
  9. 1 2 Fraser, 2005
  10. ↑ Martha Schwendener (February 9, 2012), At the Mausoleum, Art About Art Houses The New York Times .
  11. 1 2 Pollack, 2002
  12. ↑ "Little Frank And His Carp (2001)". Youtube.com.
  13. ↑ Martin, Richard. "Andrea Fraser Little Frank and his Carp 2001". tate.org.uk. TATE. Retrieved March 7, 2015.
  14. ↑ Martin, Richard. "Little Frank and His Carp: Summary". Tate.
  15. ↑ Trebay, 2004
  16. ↑ Saltz, 2007
  17. ↑ "Andrea Fraser". The Brooklyn Rail. October 2004. Retrieved 2018-11-20.
  18. ↑ Andrea Fraser, 28 October 2013 – 31 August 2014 Tate Modern, London.
  19. 1 2 "Andrea Fraser :: Foundation for Contemporary Arts". www.foundationforcontemporaryarts.org. Retrieved 2018-04-19.
  20. ↑ tate.org: Andrea Fraser's works in the collection.
  21. ↑ Lescaze, Zoë (3 December 2019). "Have We Finally Caught Up With Andrea Fraser?". The New York Times.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Hall (video artist)</span> English artist

David Hall was an English artist, whose pioneering work contributed much to establishing video as an art form.

Hans Haacke is a German-born artist who lives and works in New York City. Haacke is considered a "leading exponent" of Institutional Critique.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vija Celmins</span> Latvian-American visual artist

Vija Celmins is a Latvian American visual artist best known for photo-realistic paintings and drawings of natural environments and phenomena such as the ocean, spider webs, star fields, and rocks. Her earlier work included pop sculptures and monochromatic representational paintings. Based in New York City, she has been the subject of over forty solo exhibitions since 1965, and major retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Currin</span> American painter

John Currin is an American painter based in New York City. He is most recognised for his technically proficient satirical figurative paintings that explore controversial sexual and societal topics. His work shows a wide range of influences, including sources as diverse as the Renaissance, popular culture magazines, and contemporary fashion models. He often distorts or exaggerates the erotic forms of the female body, and has stressed that his characters are reflections of himself rather than inspired by real people.

In art, institutional critique is the systematic inquiry into the workings of art institutions, such as galleries and museums, and is most associated with the work of artists like Michael Asher, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Andrea Fraser, John Knight (artist), Adrian Piper, Fred Wilson, and Hans Haacke and the scholarship of Alexander Alberro, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Birgit Pelzer, and Anne Rorimer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">My Barbarian</span>

My Barbarian is a Los Angeles based collaborative theatrical group consisting of Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade. The trio makes site-responsive performances and video installations that use theatrical play to draw allegorical narratives out of historical dilemmas, mythical conflicts, and current political crises.

Idelle Lois Weber was an American artist most closely aligned with the Pop art and Photorealist movements.

Peter Ford Young is an American painter. He is primarily known for his abstract paintings that have been widely exhibited in the United States and in Europe since the 1960s. His work is associated with Minimal Art, Post-minimalism, and Lyrical Abstraction. Young has participated in more than a hundred group exhibitions and he has had more than forty solo exhibitions in important contemporary art galleries throughout his career. He currently lives in Bisbee, Arizona.

Adriana Varejão is a Brazilian artist. She works in various disciplines including painting, drawing, sculpture, installation and photography. She was an artist-in-resident at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 2004. Varejão lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.

James Welling is an American artist, photographer and educator living in New York City. He attended Carnegie-Mellon University where he studied drawing with Gandy Brodie and at the University of Pittsburgh where he took modern dance classes. Welling transferred to the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California in 1971 and received a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. in the School of Art. At Cal Arts, he studied with John Baldessari, Wolfgang Stoerchle and Jack Goldstein.

Jordan Wolfson is an American visual artist who lives in Los Angeles. He has worked in video and film, in sculptural installation, and in virtual reality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simone Leigh</span> American artist from Chicago (born 1967)

Simone Leigh is an American artist from Chicago who works in New York City in the United States. She works in various media including sculpture, installations, video, performance, and social practice. Leigh has described her work as auto-ethnographic, and her interests include African art and vernacular objects, performance, and feminism. Her work is concerned with the marginalization of women of color and reframes their experience as central to society. Leigh has often said that her work is focused on “Black female subjectivity,” with an interest in complex interplays between various strands of history. She was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023.

Andrea Büttner is a German artist. She works in a variety of media including woodcuts, reverse glass paintings, sculpture, video, and performance. She creates connections between art history and social or ethical issues, with a particular interest in notions of poverty, shame, vulnerability and dignity, and the belief systems that underpin them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julia Stoschek</span> German socialite and art collector (born 1975)

Julia Stoschek is a German socialite and art collector.

Danielle Dean is a British-American visual artist. She works in drawing, installation, performance and video. She has exhibited in London and in the United States; her work was included in an exhibition at the Hammer Museum focusing on new or under-recognized artists working in Los Angeles.

Hannah Black is a British visual artist, critic, and writer. Her work spans video, text and performance.

Virginia Jaramillo is an American artist of Mexican heritage. Born in 1939 in El Paso, Texas, she studied in Los Angeles before moving to New York City. She has exhibited in exhibitions internationally since 1959.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Egan Frantz</span> American artist

Egan Frantz is an American artist. He is known for producing large-scale, abstract paintings wherein passages of vivid color stand out sharply against measured visual fields.

Robert Strawbridge Grosvenor is an American contemporary sculptor, installation artist, and draftsman. He is known for his monumental room installations, which border between sculpture and architecture. Grosvenor is associated with minimalism.

Carmen Papalia is a blind artist from Vancouver, British Columbia. His practice focuses on "creative wayfinding", the use of alternative modes of navigation without visual cues. Papalia is known for his performances. This includes a performance in Santa Ana, California where Papalia was guided only by a marching band playing predetermined audio cues for physical obstacles and navigation. Papalia also conducts non-visual walking tours for sighted people. His ongoing Open Access project works towards guidelines for engagement with diverse audiences.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.