Lawrence Weiner

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lawrence Weiner
TYPO London- Lawrence Weiner (6325139876).jpg
Laurence Weiner at the TYPO 2011 conference in London
Born (1942-02-10) February 10, 1942 (age 79)
Bronx, New York
NationalityAmerican
Known forConceptual art

Lawrence Weiner (born February 10, 1942) is an American conceptual artist. He is one of the central figures in the formation of conceptual art in the 1960s.[1] His work often takes the form of typographic texts, a form of word art.

Early life and career[]

Weiner was born in the Bronx, New York, the son of a candy-store owner.[2] After graduating from Stuyvesant High School at 16,[3] he had a variety of jobs—he worked on an oil tanker, on docks, and unloading railroad cars. After studying at Hunter College for less than a year, he traveled throughout North America before returning to New York.[4]

Work[]

Weiner is regarded as a founding figure of Postminimalism's Conceptual art, which includes artists like Douglas Huebler, Robert Barry, Joseph Kosuth, and Sol LeWitt.[5]

Weiner began his career as an artist as a very young man at the height of Abstract Expressionism. His debut public work/exhibition was at the age of 19, with what he called Cratering Piece. An action piece, the work consisted of explosives set to ignite simultaneously in the four corners of a field in Marin County, California. That work, as Weiner later developed his practice as a painter, became an epiphany for the turning point in his career.[6] His work in the early 1960s included six years of making explosions in the landscape of California to create craters as individual sculptures.[7] He is also known during his early work for creating gestures described in simple statements leading to the ambiguity of whether the artwork was the gesture or the statement describing the gesture: e.g."Two minutes of spray paint directly on the floor.." or " A 36" x 36" removal of lathing or support wall ..." (both 1968). In 1968, when Sol LeWitt came up with his Paragraphs on Conceptual Art, Weiner formulated his "Declaration of Intent" (1968):

1. The artist may construct the piece.

2. The piece may be fabricated.

3. The piece need not be built.

Each being equal and consistent with the intent of the artist the decision as to condition rests with the receiver upon the occasion of receivership.

Weiner created his first book Statements in 1968, a small 64-page paperback with texts describing projects. Published by The Louis Kellner Foundation and Seth Siegelaub, "Statements" is considered one of the seminal conceptual artist's books of the era. He was a contributor to the famous Xeroxbook also published by Seth Siegelaub in 1968. Weiner's composed texts describe process, structure, and material, and though Weiner's work is almost exclusively language-based, he regards his practice as sculpture, citing the elements described in the texts as his materials.[8]

An important aspect of audience participation in Weiner's work is site-specificity. In SOME LIMESTONE SOME SANDSTONE ENCLOSED FOR SOME REASON (1993) he recast the iron weighbridge of the Dean Clough carpet factory, incorporating the words of the title as an embossing inscription.[9]

Since the early 1970s, wall installations have been Weiner's primary medium, and he has shown at the Leo Castelli gallery. Nevertheless, Weiner works in a wide variety of media, including video, film, books, sound art using audio tape, sculpture, performance art, installation art, and graphic art. In 2007, he participated at the symposium "Personal Structures Time-Space-Existence" a project which was initiated by the artist . In 2008 an excerpt from his opera with composer Peter Gordon – The Society Architect Ponders the Golden Gate Bridge – was issued on the compilation album Crosstalk: American Speech Music (Bridge Records) produced by Mendi + Keith Obadike. In 2009 he participated in the art project Find Me, by Gema Alava, in company of artists Robert Ryman, Merrill Wagner and Paul Kos.

Exhibitions[]

Flakturm at in Vienna: Zerschmettert in Stücke (im Frieden der Nacht) / Smashed to pieces (in the still of the night) (1991)

A comprehensive retrospective of Weiner's nearly 50-year career was organized by Ann Goldstein and Donna De Salvo at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in 2007–2008. Major solo exhibitions of the artist's work have been mounted at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (1988/89), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (1990), Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (1991), Dia Center for the Arts, New York (1991), Musée d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux (1991/92), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1992), The Arnhem (Sonsbeek) The Netherlands (1993) Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1994), Philadelphia Museum of Art (1994), Museum Ludwig, Cologne (1995), Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin (2000), Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City (2004),Tate Gallery in London (2006), [10] The Jewish Museum, NY (2012), [11] Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2016), [12] and the Nivola Museum, Orani, Italy (2019).[13] He has participated in Documenta V (1972), VI (1977), and VII (1982), as well as the 2005 Venice Biennale, the Biennale de São Paulo in 2006, and the Venice Biennale and in 2013 with his work 'The Grace of a Gesture'.[14]

Select list[]

  • 10 October – 20 December 2015 WITHIN A REALM OF DISTANCE: Lawrence Weiner at Blenheim Palace at Blenheim Art Foundation, Oxfordshire[15]
  • 25 October 2014 – 19 April 2015 Straight Down to Below: Lawrence Weiner (part of Artist Rooms on Tour at Tate Modern and National Galleries of Scotland), , Northumberland, Scotland[16]
  • 26 September 2014 – 23 November 2014 Lawrence Weiner: All in due course at South London Gallery, London[17]
  • 21 September 2013 – 5 January 2014 – Lawrence Weiner: written in the wind, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
  • 2013 – MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona
  • March 1 – May 13, 2012 Lawrence Weiner: NO TREE NO BRANCH at The Jewish Museum, New York[18]
  • May 19 – June 19, 2010 Lawrence Weiner in the House of Art, České Budějovice, Czech Republic[19]
  • May 27 – July 19, 2008 Lawrence Weiner: Water in Milk Exists at Kino Mascotte, Basel[20]
  • November 15, 2007 – February 10, 2008 Lawrence Weiner: As Far The Eye Can See at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York[21]
  • March 22 – December 9, 2007 Lawrence Weiner: Inherent in the Rhumb Line at National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England[22]

Recognition[]

Among his many honors are National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships (1976 and 1983), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1994), Wolfgang Hahn Prize (1995), a Skowhegan Medal for Painting/Conceptual Art (1999), An Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA, (2013),[23] the Roswitha Haftmann Prize, Zurich, Switzerland (2015),[24] and the Aspen Award for Art (2017).[25] On the occasion of the Drawing Center's 2012 Spring Gala, where Weiner was being honored for his contributions to contemporary art, fellow artist Ed Ruscha and Mason Williams created a three-minute tribute in the form of a parody of Bob Dylan's legendary music video for "Subterranean Homesick Blues" with placards featuring Weiner text pieces like "stars don't stand still in the sky" and "water in milk exists."[26]

Books[]

  • 2010 : Skimming The Water – Menage A Quatre - Lawrence Weiner (Personal Structures Art Projects Number 01)
  • 2012 : GREEN AS WELL AS BLUE AS WELL AS RED. Brest: Zédélé éditions, Reprint Collection. (First edition : London: Jack Wendler, 1972.)

Personal life[]

Weiner and his wife Alice[27] lived on Bleecker Street for over thirty years before moving to his current residence and studio in the West Village,[28] in what was once an old laundromat built in 1910 and was transformed into a five-level town house designed by the firm LOT-EK in 2008.[29]

References[]

Weiner's At the Same Moment painted on pilings in the East River, as seen in 2011
Bibliography
  • Beate Reifenscheid und Dorothea van der Koelen; Arte in Movimento – Kunst in Bewegung, Dokumente unserer Zeit XXXIV; Chorus-Verlag; Mainz 2011; ISBN 978-3-926663-44-3
  • Alberro, Alexander; Zimmerman, Alice; Buchloch, Benjamin H.D. and Batchelor, David. Lawrence Weiner. London: Phaidon Press, 1998.
  • De Salvo, Donna and Goldstein, Ann (eds.) Lawrence Weiner: As Far as the Eye Can See. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2007.
  • Fietzek, Gerti and Stemmrich, Gregor. (eds.) Having Been Said: Writings & Interviews of Lawrence Weiner 1968–2003. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2004.
  • Schwarz, Dieter (ed.) Lawrence Weiner: Books 1968–1989. Köln / Villeurbanne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König / Le Nouveau Musée, 1989.
Notes
  1. ^ Artist Ranking: Top 100 Artists
  2. ^ Louisa Buck (November 19, 2012), Lawrence Weiner: man of his word The Art Newspaper.
  3. ^ Roberta Smith (November 16, 2007), The Well-Shaped Phrase as Art New York Times'.
  4. ^ Lawrence Weiner Archived 2012-02-07 at the Wayback Machine Guggenheim Collection.
  5. ^ Roberta Smith (November 16, 2007), The Well-Shaped Phrase as Art New York Times'.
  6. ^ Lawrence Weiner: En Route, February 24 – April 2, 2005 Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.
  7. ^ "DIA Center Bio". Archived from the original on 2010-06-20. Retrieved 2010-04-18.
  8. ^ Lawrence Weiner, October 19 – November 23, 2002 Archived December 31, 2010, at the Wayback Machine Regen Projects, Los Angeles.
  9. ^ Lawrence Weiner MoMA Collection, New York.
  10. ^ Lawrence Weiner Archived 2012-02-07 at the Wayback Machine Guggenheim Collection.
  11. ^ "Trilingual Lawrence Weiner on View at the Jewish Museum". 16 March 2012.
  12. ^ "Lawrence Weiner".
  13. ^ "Lawrence Weiner al Museo Nivola: l'Installazione dell'artista newyorkese". 25 June 2019.
  14. ^ "Lawrence Weiner: The Grace of a Gesture". Artsy. 2013-05-24. Retrieved 2017-07-11.
  15. ^ Foundation, Blenheim Art. "Lawrence Weiner". Blenheim Art Foundation.
  16. ^ "ARTIST ROOMS: Lawrence Weiner – London | Tate". 3 October 2015. Archived from the original on 2015-10-03.
  17. ^ http://www.southlondongallery.org/page/144/Lawrence-Weiner/1015. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  18. ^ "The Jewish Museum New York | Art Exhibition | Lawrence Weiner: NO TRE…". archive.is. 16 April 2013. Archived from the original on 2013-04-16.
  19. ^ "[:cs]LAWRENCE WEINER: ODEBRÁNO VĚTRU A PŘIKOVÁNO K ZEMI[:en]LAWRENCE WEINER: TAKEN FROM THE WIND AND BOLTED TO THE GROUND[:] on Artyčok". Artyčok. 24 May 2010.
  20. ^ "Water in Milk Exists | The Art Newspaper | Swiss Institute".
  21. ^ "LAWRENCE WEINER: Exhibition". whitney.org.
  22. ^ "Lawrence Weiner: Inherent in the Rhumb Line : New Visions : Art & New Visions : Explore online : RMG". 3 April 2012. Archived from the original on 2012-04-03.
  23. ^ "Commencement 2013: Honorary Degree Citations". www.gc.cuny.edu. Retrieved 2015-10-02.
  24. ^ "Lawrence Weiner receives 2015 Roswitha Haftmann Prize / Art Review". artreview.com. Retrieved 2015-10-02.
  25. ^ "Lawrence Weiner wins Aspen Award for Art". 24 February 2017.
  26. ^ Bill Power (May 1, 2012), How Do Artists Say I Love You? New York Times.
  27. ^ Karen Wright (January 17, 2014), In the studio: Lawrence Weiner, artist The Independent.
  28. ^ Geoff Manaugh (April 2010), Village People Dwell.
  29. ^ Thessaly La Force (February 14, 2011), Studio Visit: Lawrence Weiner The Paris Review.

External links[]

Retrieved from ""