Tag: Trace

Nan Goldin, Photographing to Remember

In 1979, Nan Goldin began showing a series of slides in public. Photos of her friends, her lovers, herself. Bodies in unmade beds, made-up faces in smoky bars, embraces in tiny kitchens, gazes lost in bathroom mirrors. The series is…

Bob Flanagan, Living His Pain as a Work of Art

Bob Flanagan was born in 1952 with cystic fibrosis. At the time, children with this disease generally did not survive past adolescence. Flanagan lived to be 43. It was not a medical miracle… it was, according to him, a decision.…

Joseph Beuys, Every Human Being Is an Artist

In 1974, Joseph Beuys locks himself in a New York gallery for three days with a wild coyote. No audience, no performance in the spectacular sense… just a man, a felt blanket, a cane, copies of the Wall Street Journal…

On Kawara, the Date as a Work of Art

On January 4, 1966, On Kawara paints a canvas. Grey-green background, white letters, rigorous typography: JAN. 4, 1966. Nothing else. No composition, no expressive gesture, no visible signature. Just the day’s date, hand-painted with almost mechanical precision. He stores the…

Sophie Calle, the Art of Following Others

In 1979, Sophie Calle follows a stranger in the street. She doesn’t know him. She won’t speak to him. She photographs him from a distance, notes his movements, reconstructs his day. When he disappears into the metro, she loses him……

Roman Opalka, Counting Until Death

In 1965, Roman Opalka begins painting numbers. 1, then 2, then 3… on a black canvas, in white, by hand, with a fine brush. He calls it a “detail”. Each painting is a detail of a single, infinite project that…

Some Artists Who Inspired OuViePo’s Constraints

OuViePo’s constraints are not invented ex nihilo. Each one is linked to an actual artistic practice, a documented gesture, a work that showed it was possible. Here are some of the artists who made all of this imaginable. It all…