Media Art (1992)
Excerpt fr. John A. Walker’s Glossary of Art, Architecture & Design since 1945, 3rd. ed.
artdesigncafé | café library | Published 25 June 2011
This text is an excerpt from Walker’s 1992 glossary previously published by Library Association Publishing, London.
Media Art
All art is embodied in a physical medium (intermediate agency or substance) of some kind, consequently the term “Media Art” could be regarded as superfluous and uninformative. However, in the twentieth-century the word “media” has come to refer to those systems of mass communication and distribution— television, films, paperbacks, records, posters, magazines, etc.— which dominate the culture of developed nations. Technological progress in these fields has meant an increase in the number of media available to modern artists. They can now make art using photography, film, video, computers, copying machines and so forth.
Marshall McLuhan regarded the mass media as global extensions of our senses and consciousness which in turn influenced our view of the world (his concept of media was very broad: it included clothes, the motor car and money). The development of the mass media since the invention of photography in the 1840s has had an immense impact on the fine arts. Indeed, some theorists argue (e.g. Walter Benjamin) that the status and function of the fine arts have been fundamentally changed as a result (the story is too complex to recount here). A great deal of interaction has also taken place; e.g. pop artists ransacked the mass-media for images and the mass-media in turn made use of pop art. A key feature of the mass-media is their relay function: probably more people experience the fine arts at second-hand through the mediation of the reproductions, cinema, radio and television than through first-hand contact in galleries.
The term “Media Art” has been employed in various senses: (a) to mean the work of commercial artists, illustrators, photographers and graphic designers employed by the mass culture industries; (b) the work of politically motivated artists who seek to turn the mass media against themselves (e.g. Thomas Albright used it in this sense to refer to the group Sam’s Cafe— Marc and Terri Keyso, David Shine— engaged in “media inversion” activities in the early 1970s); (c) the work of fine artists who undertake some critique of mass-media imagery in their work (e.g. Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, and others); (d) work by artists committed to new media such as holography, lasers, computers, etc. Perhaps the term applies most to artists such as Laurie Anderson and Jamie Reid who comment on the mass-media and at the same time make use of them to reach large audiences.
A large-scale exhibition of American media-based art entitled Image world was organized by curators of the Whitney Museum during the winter of 1989-90. Exhibits were displayed inside the Museum but also outside in the streets of New York.
See also Book Art, Copy Art, Cross-Overs, Electronic Art, Magazine Art, Mass Art, Museum Without Walls, Pictorial Rhetoric, Political Art, Pop Art, Popular Art, Rock Art / Design / Fashion, Scratch Video, Video Art.
References and further readings
> Marshall McLuhan. Understanding media: The extensions of man. (Sphere Books, 1967).
> Thomas Albright. “Visuals”, Rolling Stone, (85), June 1971, pp. 36-7.
> Douglas Davis. “Media/art/media”, Arts Magazine, 46, Summer 1971, pp. 43-5.
> Jonathan Benthall. “The inflation of art media”, Studio International, 183(937), October 1971, pp. 124-6.
> Edward Booth-Clibborn (Ed.). European illustration ’74, ’75. (Constable, 1974).
> Gregory Battcock. “Les Levine: Media artist”, Domus, (560), July 1976, pp. 50-1.
> “Art and the media”, Documenta 6 catalogue. (Kassel, 1977).
> John A. Walker. Art in the age of mass media. (Pluto Press, 1983).
> Robert Pelfrey & Mary Hall-Pelfrey. Art and mass media. (New York, Harper & Row, 1985).
> J. Coldeway & others. (Eds.). European Media Art festival. (Osnabrück, Experimental Film Workshop EV, Film und Medienbüro Niedersachsen, EV, 1988).
> Marvin Heiferman & others. Image world: Art and media culture. (New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1989).
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