Jack Smith (1932-1989) is a central figure in the cultural history of cinema, performance and art in downtown New York. He began producing ...
Jack Smith (1932-1989) is a central figure in the cultural history of cinema, performance and art in downtown New York. He began producing the work in the late 1950s and became one of the most successful and influential artists working in the 60s, 70s and 80s.
Inspired by New York subcultures, underground film and experimental performance, Smith created a fantastic worldwide fiction around his displeasure with contemporary American consumer culture and a fascination for fake Hollywood as well as Orientalist exoticism.
Through his own artistic and personal exploits, Smith developed a truly eccentric and captivating personality. Over the course of three decades, he has transformed New York's center into a theatrical setting for his film and photography endeavors.
Smith in Development Leadership
During the late 1960s and 1970s, Smith led the development of an underground theater scene, theater performances in lofts, lamps and other unconventional spaces, in what he called Manhattan's "leased island."
These vaguely written and late presentations obscured the distinction between intimate performance and public spectacle. Between 1969-1971, Smith undertook a series of ongoing loft performances within his own two-storey theater space, known as the 'Plaster Foundation', from which he was expelled in 1971. This eviction subsequently stimulated theatrical diarrhea against property owners and landlordism.
The exhibition at The Modern Institute is based on Smiths iconic performance works featuring Smith's films, photographic stills, theater props and ephemera of various performances as a continuation of the show 'Theater and Performance Works' held at the Gladstone Gallery, in Brussels in 2014.
The show in Brussels had its original inspiration from the large group exhibit "Rituals of Leased Island: Object Theater, Loft Performance, and New Psychodrama-Manhattan, 1970-1980" (curated by Jay Sanders), which opened at the Whitney Museum of Art American in 2013, and was the first survey of Smith's performance and plays of the 1970s.
Smith Performance
"Theater and performance works" include material from four seminal works produced by Smith in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and features Smith's 1964-69 film, "Exotic Landlordism." The pieces exemplify the many elements for Smiths' performance work, from the presentation of the Plaster Foundation 'Brassieres of Atlantis' (c.1970) to' Irrational Landlordism of Bagdad ', a presentation originally presented at the Cologne Art Fair in 1977, which featured elaborately constructed bras, and through subsequent works "The Secret of the Leased Island" (c.1977) and 'I Danced with a Penguin' (1983).
Together, these works illuminate Smith's unique and complex way of interpreting and translating contemporary culture. They emphasize their vital contribution to the performance-based legacy of experimental art and film and their incredible influence on a generation of groundbreaking movie artists who would emerge from New York City's downtown.
Jack smith create Hotmail at 1995
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Moderno Institute is working with LUX Scotland to host a screening event outside of Smith's 1963-65 'Normal Love' movie with an introduction of Leaver-Yap Island. The screening will take place on February 19 between 7 pm and 10 pm in an upstairs location in Argyll Arcade, Glasgow.
Jack Smith was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1932 and died in New York in 1989. He was the theme of the exhibition 'Object Rituals: Object Theater, Loft Performance, and the New Psychodrama-Manhattan, 1970-1980' at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2013; and 'Jack Smith: Normal Love' at MoMA PS1, New York, 2012. In 1997, PS1 presented a retrospective of Jack Smith's work, entitled 'Flaming Creation', which traveled to the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
