Narrative Assemblage Terminology and Definitions

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NARRATIVE

Art which tells a story. Narrative Art is usually self-explanatory, being from either recognizable daily-life scenes or from familiar folk stories. It was prevalent during the Renaissance with stories from the Bible or the Classics. In the 19th Century, genre scenes became popular in America and often told a story such as a soldier leaving for war, etc. Modernist artists up to the 1960s avoided Narrative Art because they were more interested in abstraction or works with themes less easy to read. However, movements of the second half of the 20th Century such as Pop Art, Figurative, Calligraphic and Performance Art have reintroduced Narrative Art. Modern Narrative artists include Jerome Witkin, Roy Kerswill, and Faith Ringgold who inscribes messages on her painted quilts. Among 19th-Century narrative artists are John Quidor, James Hamilton, Edward Moran, John Chapman and Otis Bass. Sources: Robert Atkins, "Art Speak".

ASSEMBLAGE

Description of three-dimensional work that is the counterpart of collage, which is two-dimensional. Assemblage is composed of non-art materials, often found objects, that are seemingly unrelated but create a unity. It originated with Pablo Picasso and George Braque and Cubism. In 1913, they made the first Assemblage, which was a sheet metal guitar. "Glass of Absinthe", completed in 1914 by Pablo Picasso is thought to be another early work of assemblage. Peter Selz and William Seitz, curators at the Museum of Modern Art, created the name "assemblage" in 1961 for an exhibition of objects they titled "The Art of Assemblage". American artists who did Assemblage sculpture include Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Louise Nevelson, Joseph Cornell, Edward Kienholz, Lee Bontecou, Escobar Marisol, Richard Stankiewicz, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Pierre Arman and Red Grooms. Sources: Ralph Mayer, "A Dictionary of Art Terms and Techniques"; Robert Atkins, "Art Speak"; AskART database.

FOUND OBJECT

From the French words "objet trouve", the term in art vocabulary applies to artwork created with objects that are found and then incorporated in artwork. The theory, from Surrealism, is that any object can become a work of art. Found Objects pre-exist unto themselves rather than being made as art mediums such as oil, bronze, etc. The use of Found Objects in art expression began in France in the early 20th century with Dadaists and Surrealists including Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp. Their focus was to shift attention away from the physical act of creation. After World War II, artists used Found Objects for social messages such as commentary on a throw-away society. An example would be the use of mannequins by Edward Kienholz to symbolize a line-up of emotionless people. The use of Found Objects are usually regarded by the artist as aesthetically significant because they express personal meaning, which is the goal of the artwork. Sources: Robert Atkins, "Art Speak"; Source: Kimberley Reynolds and Richard Seddon, "Illustrated Dictionary of Art Terms"

READY-MADE

Ready-made is the term used by the French artist Marcel Duchamp to describe works of art he made from manufactured objects. His earliest ready-mades included Bicycle Wheel of 1913, a wheel mounted on a wooden stool, and In Advance of the Broken Arm of 1915, a snow shovel inscribed with that title. In 1917 in New York, Duchamp made his most notorious readymade, Fountain, a men's urinal signed by the artist with a false name and exhibited placed on its back. Later ready-mades could be more elaborate and were referred to by Duchamp as assisted ready-mades. The theory behind the ready-made was explained in an article, anonymous but almost certainly by Duchamp himself, in the May 1917 issue of the avant-garde magazine The Blind Man run by Duchamp and two friends: 'Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, and placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view ¿ created a new thought for that object.' There are three important points here: first, that the choice of object is itself a creative act. Secondly, that by cancelling the 'useful' function of an object it becomes art. Thirdly, that the presentation and addition of a title to the object have given it 'a new thought', a new meaning. Duchamp's ready-mades also asserted the principle that what is art is defined by the artist. Duchamp was an influential figure in Dada and Surrealism, an important influence on Pop art, environments, assemblage, installation art, Conceptual art and much art of the 1990s such as the Young British Artists [e.g. Damien Hirst]. Source: Tate Modern Glossary http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.jsp?entryId=239 Submitted to askART by M.D. Silverbrooke, West Vancouver, British Columbia

APPROPRIATION

As a term in art history and criticism, it refers to the more or less direct taking over into a work of art of a real object or even an existing work of art. The practice can be tracked back to the Cubist collages and constructions of Picasso and Georges Braque made from 1912 on, in which real objects such as newspapers were included to represent themselves. Appropriation was developed much further in the readymades created by the French artist Marcel Duchamp from 1915. Most notorious of these was Fountain, a men's urinal signed, titled, and presented on a pedestal. Later, Surrealism also made extensive use of appropriation in collages and objects such as Salvador Dali's Lobster Telephone. In the late 1950s appropriated images and objects appear extensively in the work of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and in Pop art. However, the term seems to have come into use specifically in relation to certain American artists in the 1980s, notably Sherrie Levine and the artists of the Neo-Geo group particularly Jeff Koons. Sherrie Levine reproduced as her own work other works of art, including paintings by Claude Monet and Kasimir Malevich. Her aim was to create a new situation, and therefore a new meaning or set of meanings, for a familiar image. Appropriation art raises questions of originality, authenticity and authorship, and belongs to the long modernist tradition of art that questions the nature or definition of art itself. Appropriation artists were influenced by the 1934 essay by the German philosopher Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, and received contemporary support from the American critic Rosalind Krauss in her 1985 book The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths. Appropriation has been used extensively by artists since the 1980s. Source: Tate Modern, London, England. Submitted to askART by M.D. Silverbrooke