Il s'agit de voir: The early work of Daniel Buren.
Item
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Title
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Il s'agit de voir: The early work of Daniel Buren.
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Identifier
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AAI3249921
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identifier
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3249921
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Creator
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Farrell, Jennifer.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Romy Golan
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Date
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2007
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Art History
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Abstract
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This dissertation examines the early work of Daniel Buren in relation to the social, political, and cultural context from which it emerged. In the mid-1960s, French art institutions and artistic production were in crisis. Major exhibitions showcased artists of the Ecole de Paris, an action that indicated a desire to retreat into past glories and that further marginalized young artists. It was in 1964, in this moment of stagnation and dissatisfaction that Buren, a recent student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, began exhibiting in official competitions. One year later, he adopted the fabric with vertical stripes measuring 8.7-centimeters wide, alternating white with color. This material, along with striped paper, became what he called his "visual tool"---the instrument with which he made his work.;Buren is best known for using the striped material to create in situ works that operate as a form of institutional critique. Such a reading limits the discourse on his work and allows his earlier pieces to be viewed as distinct from his later production. I argue that his desire to investigate the relationship between art and its context emerged as a reaction to the profound social, political, and economic changes that affected France in the 1960s and that the institutions that most informed him were not the museum and gallery as broadly defined, but rather those he encountered as a young man and the conservative art that they supported. This establishes the beginning of his engagement with institutions as earlier and more expansive in scope. An examination of diverse and often ignored influences, such as Mexican muralists, the Soviet avant-garde, and progressive French cinema of the 1960s also reveals connections between early pieces and later projects, as do links with contemporary French literary and cultural theorists, such as Roland Barthes and Pierre Bourdieu, who, like Buren, investigated the construction and influence of cultural institutions. Ultimately, Buren's project was not simply a negation---the end of painting---but rather an attempt to create a new form of art through paintings, demonstrations, and writings that would be critical, self-reflexive and revealing of its own institutions.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy Restricted.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.