JEAN CLAUDE & CHRISTO

Themes: Site art, environmental art

• Christo was born in Bulgaria

• Jean Claude was born in Morocco but of French descent

• http://christojeanneclaude.net

• SmartHistory (Mixed media installation)

"Christo and Jeanne-Claude were a collaborative artist duo known for their monumental environmental installations. Best remembered in the public’s mind for wrapping architecture and natural elements in fabric, their works were often unprecedented in scale, such as Running Fence down the California coast, and Wrapped Coast in Australia. Part of France’s New Realism movement, the artists’ temporary textile interventions required dedicated planning and execution through detailed drawings. . .Like his contemporary Arman, Christo used smaller found objects in his earlier works, wrapping cars or furniture, and gradually advancing to large-scale exhibitions once he began to collaborate with Jeanne-Claude. The pair emigrated to the United States in 1964, settling in New York, NY where Christo currently resides and works." From http://www.artnet.com/artists/christo-and-jeanne-claude/

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MAYA LIN

Themes: nature, physiological environment, history, time

• Born in Ohio

• From American Icons: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Long but you can listen to it in the car!)

• SmartHistory

​"Artist, designer and  environmentalist, Maya Lin interprets the natural world through science,  history, politics, and culture, creating a remarkable and highly acclaimed body  of work in art and architecture. Her works merge the physical and psychological  environment, presenting a new way of seeing the world around us.
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Lin's art explores how we experience and relate to Nature, setting up a systematic  ordering of the land that is tied to history, memory, time, and language. Her  interest in landscape has led to works influenced by topographies and natural  phenomena."
http://www.mayalin.com

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JEAN-MICHELE BASQUIAT

Themes: Anatomy, artists (Picasso, Da Vinci), African American Musicians, farm satire

• Born in Brooklyn of Puerto Rican and Haitian descent

• Horn Players (Acrylic and oil on paintstick on three canvas panels)

Basquiat had a somewhat troubled childhood. At 15, he ran away from home and dropped out of high school as a sophomore. He worked to sell t-shirts and small time art post cards. In the 70s he became a popular artist and often collaborated with high profile artists such as Andy Warhol. He became addicted to heroine in the 80s and died of an overdose in 1988.
http://www.wikiart.org/en/jean-michel-basquiat
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-basquiat-jean-michel.htm

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SONG SU NAM

Themes: traditional art techniques that are modernized

• Korean artist

• Summer Trees (traditional ink on paper)

"Song Su-nam is one of the leaders of the 'Sumukhwa' or Oriental Ink Movement of the 1980s, based at Hongik University, Seoul. This movement shared the general feeling that it was necessary to 'recover' a national identity and began to concentrate on subtle tonal variations of ink wash, in an attempt to elicit an inner spirituality which was felt to be lost in a modern technological age." From The British Museum 

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MAGDALENA ABAKANOWICZ

Themes: identity

• Born in Poland

• Androgyn III

"Abanowicz being interested by the texture of matter, particularly the organic nature of her medium of choice. Abakans - made from dyed sisal fibre - with its multiplied organic nature - was shocking. At exhibitions they were suspended from the ceiling, unidentifiable monsters wrapped in canvas cloth. The artist broke with the tradition of flat surfaces of decorative textiles hung against the walls. Years later she wrote, "The Abakans irritated. They were untimely. There was the French tapestry in weaving, pop-art and conceptual art, and here there were some complicated, huge, magical (forms)..." http://culture.pl/en/artist/magdalena-abakanowicz

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XU BING

Themes: combining modern and traditional art forms, text, reliability of knowledge, futility of existence

• Born in Chongqing, China (worked in the US for 18 years), currently lives in Beijing. 

• Book from the Sky (mixed media installation)

"Pioneering Chinese contemporary artist Xu Bing creates powerful, poignant mixed-media installations, in which he subverts systems of language, upending expectations and perception. He explains that his works “are all linked by a common thread, which is to construct some kind of obstacle to people's habitual ways of thinking—what I call the ‘cognitive structures’ of the mind.” Trained as a printmaker, Xu is informed by the Cultural Revolution, Chan Buddhism, and his keen interest in the relationship between meaning and words, writing, and reading." From https://www.artsy.net/artist/xu-bing-xu-bing

http://www.xubing.com/index.php/site/texts/evolving_meanings_in_xu_bings_art_a_case_study_of_transference/
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Past exhibition at LACMA
Additional video to watch

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