The Nut Artmovement was an artistic movement centered in Northern California, that flourished primarily in the late-1960s and early-1970s.
The Nut Artmovement was an artistic movement centered in Northern California, that flourished primarily in the late-1960s and early-1970s.
The term "Nut Art" was coined by artist Roy De Forest (in conversation with writer David Zack) to describe an approach to art making which embraced humor along with the phantasmagorical. According to De Forest, Nut artists sought to create fantasy worlds reflective of their own quirks and eccentricities. As such, Nut Art placed a high degree of emphasis on evolving visions, of which specific artworks were produced as part of the ongoing process of self-definition, or in service to creating new personas and personal mythologies. [1] (Among these personas was that of Ralph "Doggy" Dinsmore, a persona used by De Forest.)
As with Conceptual art, the idea or underlying concept with Nut Art was paramount. [1] As a result, the creation of the Nut artist was not restricted by style or medium, allowing the movement to embrace emerging formats such as performance, text pieces, and appropriation, in addition to more traditional two and three dimensional mediums such as drawing, photography, and sculpture. Because of the emphasis on concept and satire, Nut Art welcomed contributions from participants without formal artistic backgrounds as well as those with advanced technical skill and training. [1] Nut Art also reflected the importance of process over product, which had been a central tenet of the Action painters a generation previous. [2]
Besides De Forest, other key practitioners of Nut Art included Robert Arneson, [3] Clayton Bailey (as well as Bailey's alter-ego Dr. Gladstone [2] ), Victor Cicansky (alter-ego Victor Ceramski), Robert Cumming, Lowell Darling, Betty G. Bailey, Jack Ford, David Gilhooly, Jerry Gooch, Linda Renner, Peter Saul, Sally Saul, Harold Schlotzhauer, Richard Shaw, Irv Tepper, Chris Unterseher, Peter VandenBerge, Franklin Williams, Maija Zack (alter-ego Maija Woof), and David Zack. [4]
David Zack, who was both a poet and an art critic, reviewed many of the group's exhibitions. [1]
The first major exhibition of Nut Art took place in 1972 at the University Art Gallery of California State University, Hayward. The show was co-curated by Clayton Bailey (then art faculty) and Gallery Director Irene Keil. [4] The show produced a catalog which included a preface written by De Forest. [1]
The year 1800 in art is often estimated to be the beginning of the change from the Neoclassicism movement, that was based on Roman art, to the Romantic movement, which encouraged emotional art and ended around 1850 and brought forth a new era of artistic exploration. Artists of that time departed from traditional norms, embracing fresh ideas and diverse subjects. This era blended classical principles with innovative concepts, capturing both contemporary life and historical stories. The art in 1800 set the foundation for later 19th-century movements, inspiring a new era of artistic creativity that continued to shape the course of artistic development for years to follow.
The Bay Area Figurative Movement was a mid-20th Century art movement made up of a group of artists in the San Francisco Bay Area who abandoned working in the prevailing style of Abstract Expressionism in favor of a return to figuration in painting during the 1950s and onward into the 1960s.
Robert Carston Arneson was an American sculptor and professor of ceramics in the Art department at University of California, Davis for nearly three decades.
Roy De Forest was an American painter, sculptor, and teacher. He was involved in both the Funk art and Nut art movements in the Bay Area of California. De Forest's art is known for its quirky and comical fantasy lands filled with bright colors and creatures, most commonly dogs.
David Gilhooly, was an American ceramicist, sculptor, painter, printmaker, and professor. He is best known for pioneering the Funk art movement. He made a series of ceramic frogs called FrogWorld, as well as ceramic food, planets, and other creatures.
Funk art is an American art movement that was a reaction against the nonobjectivity of abstract expressionism. An anti-establishment movement, Funk art brought figuration back as subject matter in painting again rather than limiting itself to the non-figurative, abstract forms that abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko were depicting. The movement's name was derived from the jazz musical term "funky", describing the passionate, sensuous, and quirky. During the 1920s, jazz was thought of as very basic, unsophisticated music, and many people believed Funk was an unrefined style of art as well. The term funk also had negative connotations because the word had an association with a foul odor. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Funk was a popular art form, mainly in California's Bay Area in the United States. Although discussed as a cohesive movement, Funk artists did not feel as if they belonged to a collective art style or group. This is because while its artists shared the same attitudes and created similar works, they were not necessarily working together.
Telematic art is a descriptive of art projects using computer-mediated telecommunications networks as their medium. Telematic art challenges the traditional relationship between active viewing subjects and passive art objects by creating interactive, behavioural contexts for remote aesthetic encounters. Telematics was first coined by Simon Nora and Alain Minc in The Computerization of Society. Roy Ascott sees the telematic art form as the transformation of the viewer into an active participator of creating the artwork which remains in process throughout its duration. Ascott has been at the forefront of the theory and practice of telematic art since 1978 when he went online for the first time, organizing different collaborative online projects.
William Thomas Wiley was an American artist. His work spanned a broad range of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, film, performance, and pinball. At least some of Wiley's work has been referred to as funk art.
The history of art in the San Francisco Bay Area includes major contributions to contemporary art, including Abstract Expressionism. The area is known for its cross-disciplinary artists like Bruce Conner, Bruce Nauman, and Peter Voulkos as well as a large number of non-profit alternative art spaces. San Francisco Bay Area Visual Arts has undergone many permutations paralleling innovation and hybridity in literature and theater.
American Figurative Expressionism is a 20th-century visual art style or movement that first took hold in Boston, and later spread throughout the United States. Critics dating back to the origins of Expressionism have often found it hard to define. One description, however, classifies it as a Humanist philosophy, since it is human-centered and rationalist. Its formal approach to the handling of paint and space is often considered a defining feature, too, as is its radical, rather than reactionary, commitment to the figure.
Lawrence Calcagno was a San Francisco Bay area abstract expressionist painter. He described his artistic motivation in the following words
New media art includes artworks designed and produced by means of electronic media technologies. It comprises virtual art, computer graphics, computer animation, digital art, interactive art, sound art, Internet art, video games, robotics, 3D printing, immersive installation and cyborg art. The term defines itself by the thereby created artwork, which differentiates itself from that deriving from conventional visual arts such as architecture, painting or sculpture.
The Candy Store Gallery introduced many important artists and styles of art, and was a leading showcase for the Funk artists of Northern California, United States.
Clayton George Bailey, was an American artist who worked primarily in the mediums of ceramic and metal sculpture.
Victor Cicansky, DFA is a Canadian sculptor known for his witty narrative ceramics and bronze fruits and vegetables. A founder of the Regina Clay Movement, Cicansky combined a "wry sense of style" with a postmodern "aesthetic based on place and personal experience". In recognition of his work, Cicansky was appointed member of the Order of Canada (2009) and the Saskatchewan Order of Merit (1997), and was awarded the Saskatchewan Lieutenant-Governor's Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts (2012), the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (2012), as well as the Victoria and Albert Award for Ceramic Sculpture. His work is found in the National Gallery of Canada, Gardiner Museum, Burlington Art Centre, Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, and the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (Japan).
Rene di Rosa was an American vintner and art collector.
Betty Graveen Bailey was an American multidisciplinary artist. She lived and worked in Contra Costa County, California, and was part of the Nut art movement.
Maija Peeples-Bright is a Latvian-born American and Canadian painter, ceramist, and arts educator. She is known as one of the pioneers of the Funk art movement in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s. Maija Peeples-Bright has gone by the names Maija Zack, Maija Woof, Maija Bright, and Maija Peeples.
Jim Melchert was an American visual artist, arts administer, and professor. He known for his ceramics and sculptures. Melchert was part of the Funk art movement.
Anthony 'Tony' Natsoulas is an American sculptor and contemporary artist. Numerous galleries and museums such as the Monterey Museum of Art, La Mirada, Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, and San Jose Museum of Art have exhibited Tony Natsoulas' work in the past; there are several large-scale pieces in public spaces.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)