Neogeo (art)

Last updated

Neo-geo or Neo-Geometric Conceptualism was an art movement from the 1980s that utilizes geometric abstraction and criticizes the industrialism and consumerism of modern society. [1] The usage of the term neo-geo began when it was first used in reference to a 1986 exhibition at the Sonnabend Gallery in SoHo that included the artwork of Ashley Bickerton, Jeff Koons, Peter Halley and Meyer Vaisman. [2] According to artist Michael Young, Neo-geo artwork recognizes technology as both a promise and a threat. [2]

Contents

Naming

Curators, acquisitors, and artists within the movement could not come to an agreement on the name of the movement, leaving the world with more than one name for the art movement.

A pair of curators and writers, Tricia Collins and Richard Milazzo working together to create many Collins & Milazzo exhibitions felt that Post-Conceptualism was the best fitting term, as it highlighted the magnification of ideas. Many artists within the movement, such as Peter Halley, rejected the name “Neo-Geo” because it seemed too catchy and therefore consumerist. Halley preferred the term Simulationism because it referred technology replacing nature. [2] In the 1987 New York Times newspaper article, “What Do You Call Art’s Newest Trend: ‘Neo-Geo’...Maybe”, he explains that “air conditioning is a simulation of air; movies are a simulation of life; life is simulated by bio-mechanical manipulations”.

Eugene Schwartz dubbed the movement Post-Abstract Abstraction as it was for him a new version of 1960s abstraction that creates alternative meanings.

Peter Nagy wished for the movement to be untitled. He believed that once you give art a name, the movement is destroyed.

Some critics pondered whether the movement had enough originality to be singled out as its own movement, as it bore too many similarities to prior movements such as Geometric Abstract Art and Pop Art. [3]

Neogeo Research

Art historian and curator Amy L. Brandt provided the first comprehensive survey of neogeo artists that included Sherrie Levine, Allan McCollum, Haim Steinbach, Jeff Koons, Peter Halley, Ashley Bickerton, and Meyer Vaisman. Brandt focused on their artistic perspective, examining each artists' exposure to structuralism and poststructuralism theory. Other topics covered include East Village culture in the 1980s and the influence of postwar French theory. Brandt connected each artists' works to Pop Art, Minimalism, Neo-minimalism, Conceptualism, and the Pictures Generation group. [4]

Influences

Neo-geo artwork was influenced by earlier movements of the twentieth century, including minimalism, pop art, and op art. Additionally, ideas about postmodernism and hyperreality inspired those within the neo-geo movement. Many neo-geo artists were influenced by French thinker Jean Baudrillard. One of Baudrillard's arguments is that needs are constructed rather than natural. According to Tate, [5] Geometry was a way in which artists represented ideas like Jean Baudrillard's, with geometry as a metaphor for the modern world because shapes are constructed.

Early Artists

Early Artwork

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Postmodern art</span> Art movement

Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as intermedia, installation art, conceptual art and multimedia, particularly involving video are described as postmodern.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hard-edge painting</span> Movement in painting

Hard-edge painting is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas. Color areas are often of one unvarying color. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstraction, Op Art, Post-painterly Abstraction, and Color Field painting.

Dakis Joannou is a Greek Cypriot industrialist and art collector. He is considered to be one of the leading collectors of contemporary art in the world and is famous for acquisitions such as the Jeff Koons-designed yacht 'Guilty'.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Halley</span> American artist (born 1953)

Peter Halley is an American artist and a central figure in the Neo-Conceptualist movement of the 1980s. Known for his Day-Glo geometric paintings, Halley is also a writer, the former publisher of index Magazine, and a teacher; he served as director of graduate studies in painting and printmaking at the Yale University School of Art from 2002 to 2011. Halley lives and works in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neo-conceptual art</span> Art movement

Neo-conceptual art describes art practices in the 1980s and particularly 1990s to date that derive from the conceptual art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. These subsequent initiatives have included the Moscow Conceptualists, United States neo-conceptualists such as Sherrie Levine and the Young British Artists, notably Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin in the United Kingdom, where there is also a Stuckism counter-movement and criticism from the 1970s conceptual art group Art and Language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonathan Lasker</span> American abstract painter (born 1948)

Jonathan Lasker is an American abstract painter based in New York City whose work has played an integral role in the development of Postmodern Painting. He is represented by Greene Naftali Gallery, New York.

Ileana Sonnabend was a Romanian-American art dealer of 20th-century art. The Sonnabend Gallery opened in Paris in 1962 and was instrumental in making American art of the 1960s known in Europe, with an emphasis on American pop art. In 1970, Sonnabend Gallery opened in New York on Madison Avenue, and in 1971 relocated to 420 West Broadway in SoHo where it was one of the major protagonists that made SoHo the international art center it remained until the early 1990s. The gallery was instrumental in making European art of the 1970s known in America, with an emphasis on European conceptual art and Arte Povera. It also presented American conceptual and minimal art of the 1970s. In 1986, the so-called "Neo-Geo" show introduced, among others, the artist Jeff Koons. In the late 1990s, the gallery moved to Chelsea and continues to be active after Sonnabend's death. The gallery goes on showing the work of artists who rose to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s including Robert Morris, Bernd and Hilla Becher and Gilbert & George as well as more recent artists including Jeff Koons, Rona Pondick, Candida Höfer, Elger Esser, and Clifford Ross.

Ashley Bickerton was a Barbadian-born American contemporary artist. A mixed-media artist, Bickerton often combined photographic and painterly elements with industrial and found object assemblages. He is associated with the early 1980s art movement Neo-Geo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeff Koons</span> American sculptor and painter (born 1955)

Jeffrey Lynn Koons is an American artist recognized for his work dealing with popular culture and his sculptures depicting everyday objects, including balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror-finish surfaces. He lives and works in both New York City and his hometown of York, Pennsylvania. His works have sold for substantial sums, including at least two record auction prices for a work by a living artist: US$58.4 million for Balloon Dog (Orange) in 2013 and US$91.1 million for Rabbit in 2019.

Richard Milazzo is a critic, curator, publisher, independent scholar and poet from New York City. In the 1970s, he was the editor and co-publisher of Out of London Press. He is the co-founding publisher and editor of Edgewise Press. In the 1980s, under the rubric of Collins & Milazzo, he co-curated numerous Collins & Milazzo Exhibitions and co-wrote with Tricia Collins essays on art and art theory.

Neo-minimalism is an amorphous art movement of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It has alternatively been called Neo-Geometric or "Neo-Geo" art. Other terms include: Neo-Conceptualism, Neo-Futurism, Neo-Op, Neo-pop, New Abstraction, Poptometry, Post-Abstractionism, and Smart Art.

Haim Steinbach is an Israeli-American artist, based in New York City. His work consists of arrangements of everyday objects, presented in “Displays” and shelves of his own making.

Clarissa Dalrymple is an independent art curator who lives in New York, New York. Dalrymple is credited with having curated early exhibitions of contemporary artists in the United States including Christopher Wool, Ashley Bickerton, Collier Schorr, Haim Steinbach, Nayland Blake, Michael Joaquin Grey, Jorge Pardo, Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Gary Hume, Rachel Whiteread, Neo Rauch, Adam McEwen, Nate Lowman and Ryan Sullivan.

Steven Parrino (1958–2005) was an American artist and musician associated with energetic punk nihilism. He is best known for creating big modernist monochrome paintings that he violently slashed, torn or twisted off their stretchers. He died in a motorcycle traffic accident in Greenpoint, Brooklyn at the age of 46.

Tricia Collins is an American art critic, art gallerist and curator of contemporary art. She was half of the curatorial team Collins & Milazzo, with Richard Milazzo, who together co-published and co-edited Effects : Magazine for New Art Theory from 1982 to 1984. She later ran the art galleries Grand Salon, Tricia Collins Grand Salon, and Tricia Collins Contemporary Art in New York City until the year 2000.

Kevin Larmon is an American artist and was assistant monitor of painting at Syracuse University.

The Neo-Concrete Movement (1959–61) was a Brazilian art movement, a group that splintered off from the larger Concrete Art movement prevalent in Latin America and in other parts of the world. The Neo-Concretes emerged from Rio de Janeiro’s Grupo Frente. They rejected the pure rationalist approach of concrete art and embraced a more phenomenological and less scientific art. Ferreira Gullar inspired Neo-Concrete philosophy through his essay “Theory of the Non-Object” (1959) and wrote the “Neo-Concrete Manifesto” (1959) which outlines what Neo-Concrete art should be. Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, and Lygia Pape were among the primary leaders of this movement.

Grupo Frente was a group of Brazilian artists originated in Rio de Janeiro which existed from 1952-64. The group was led by Ivan Serpa, and was formed by artists such as Helio Oiticica, Aluisio Carvão, Lygia Clark, and Lygia Pape. Many of them studied under Ivan Serpa. Each of them came from different styles of art, but they all embraced the ideals of Concrete art, or what is now called geometric abstraction.

The Collins & Milazzo exhibitions were a series of art exhibitions curated by the team Tricia Collins and Richard Milazzo, mainly in New York in the mid-1980s to early 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suzanne Landau</span> Israel art dealer

Suzanne Landau is an Israeli art museum curator. She was appointed the Director and Chief Curator of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in August 2012. She had previously been Curator of Contemporary Art at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem starting 1982 and its Chief Curator of Fine Arts there from 1998. Since her appointment in Tel Aviv, she has organized for the museum the Friends of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Acquisition Committee for Israeli Art.

References

  1. ↑ "Neo-geo".
  2. 1 2 3 Williams, Tom (2011). "Neo-Geo". Oxford Art Online. 1. doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.t2214057.
  3. ↑ Glueck, Grace (July 6, 1987). "What Do You Call Art's Newest Trend: 'Neo-Geo' . . . Maybe". New York Times.
  4. ↑ Brandt, Amy L. (2014). Interplay : neo-geo [crossed out] neoconceptual art of the 1980s. Cambridge, Massachusetts. ISBN   9780262027533. OCLC   867001103.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  5. ↑ Tate. "Neo-geo – Art Term | Tate". Tate. Retrieved 2018-02-18.
  6. ↑ "Peter Halley - painting , installation , edition , biography , bibliography , writing". www.peterhalley.com. Retrieved 2018-02-18.
  7. ↑ "Jeff Koons Artwork: Encased - One Row". Jeff Koons. Retrieved 2018-02-18.
  8. ↑ "ultra red #2". Guggenheim. 1986-01-01. Retrieved 2018-02-18.
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.