Rosalind Krauss is an American art critic and a professor at Columbia University in New York City. In 1976 her bedroom looked like this. Mean. It was designed by the late Alan Buchsbaum (who died in 1987), and you can view some more of his excellent interiors here.
“Today, curating as a profession means at least four things. It means to preserve, in the sense of safeguarding the heritage of art. It means to be the selector of new work. It means to connect to art history. And it means displaying or arranging the work. But it’s more than that. Before 1800, few people went to exhibitions. Now hundreds of millions of people visit them every year. It’s a mass medium and a ritual. The curator sets it up so that it becomes an extraordinary experience and not just illustrations or spatialised books.”
Hans Ulrich Obrist discusses the art of curation in The Guardian.
Robert Longo, best known for his iconic late 1970s series Men in the Citiesis another visual artist who tried his hand at making music videos. He’s the guy behind New Order’s 1986 video for Bizarre Love Triangle (above) and even worked with angry ginge Dave Mustaine from Megadeth on their single Peace Sells (below).
Early in his career, Longo had his own band too. The artist was the lead singer of Menthol Wars, who performed in New York in the late 1970s. Below is their very excellent single Even Lower Manhattan, released in 1982 on a Terminal Records compilation called Cleveland Confidential.
In 1990 when Sonic Youth released their album Goo (that’s the one with the iconic Raymond Pettibon cover), they asked a bunch of artists and filmmakers to produce the accompanying music videos. One of the contributors was a young Tony Oursler (the inclusion of a toy panda with a human mouth in the video above is the giveaway I reckon…). He chose Tunic (Song For Karen) “…for its classic SY sound and tragic subject: the self destruction of mega-popstar Karen Carpenter”.
Pervy photographer Richard Kern had a go too. That’s his video above, for the track Scooter and Jinx.
Here’s footage of a show by Sarah Lucas at Tramway in Glasgow that contains, among other things, 2.5 metre long sculptural erections, smashed up cars and an enormous wanking hand. Lucas was interviewed about the exhibition – her first solo in Scotland – by Teddy Jamieson from the Herald Scotland. Describing her more prurient interests she stated: “I’ve always found the penis a really useful sculptural thing. I’ve always said, ‘When in doubt … knob.’”
(Also worth noting is Tramway’s commitment to video documentation of its exhibitions – an excellent resource for those unable to attend a show in the flesh).