Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Jean Tinguely in Las Vegas

On Thursday our class will meet in conjunction with a group of architecture students from ETH in Zurich, Switzerland.  These students will be lead by two scholars, Philip Ursprung and Martino Stierli.

We will start the evening by meeting in the Donna Beam for an artist's talk by Noelle Garcia that will begin at 6pm.  Please note that we will NOT meet in the classroom at 5:30, and that instead of heading over to CBC A112, the second segment of our class will be held on Thursday in HFA 257.

We will head upstairs to 257 around 6:30.  I will introduce a video of a performance that Jean Tinguely conducted in Las Vegas in 1962 entitled Study for an End of the World.  Ursprung and Stierli will respond, and open up a discussion for all.

Tinguely is the most prominent Swiss artist to emerge in the second half of the 20th century.  He was a key participant in Nouveau Réalisme along with Niki de Saint Phalle, with whom he collaborated on the Las Vegas performance.  By the time of the Las Vegas performance, he was already quite famous for his metamatics (drawing or painting machines) and for his auto-destructive sculptures.  The most sensational and famous performance of an auto-destructive sculpture was the 1960 event Homage to New York, conducted in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art.

To prepare for Thursday's screening and discussion, please take some time to listen to a helpful lecture on Homage to New York given by scholar Kaira Cabañas.

2 comments:

  1. I am excited for this Thursday. Cant wait.

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  2. This will be a very interesting class, and I am very excited to hear Noelle Garcia talk about her artwork, which I find to be very rich with and infusion of her modern life and with her own Native American heritage.

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