School Notes: School of Art
May/June 2014

At the nexus of dance and visual art

For two weekends this semester, Yvonne Rainer—dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker—was on campus giving lectures, screening two of her films, and leading workshops for students in a cross-disciplinary program organized by the dance studies program and the School of Art. A group of 12 undergraduate and graduate students from both the dance program and the School of Art took part in the workshops February 21–22 and February 28–March 1, working with Rainer as she developed ideas for her newest body of work. 

Talking about Jasper Johns

An exhibition at the 32 Edgewood Gallery this winter took the influence and enduring relevance of the American artist Jasper Johns as its guiding light for bringing together 20 artists working in a wide array of media. Featuring important recent work by Bruce Nauman, Thomas Demand, Rachel Harrison, and Raymond Pettibon, as well as rarely seen early video experiments by Nam June Paik, Reliable Tension; or How to Win a Conversation about Jasper Johns explored various aspects of Johns’s approach to art-making and the spirit of his notoriously elusive eloquence with critics. The material provided both muse and model for curator/artist John Pilson’s evocation of the tensions that evolve between media, cultural iconography, and the material languages that ultimately help to shape an experience of meaning while challenging our definitions of any art work’s subject.