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Andrea Fraser

{{Short description|American performance artist (born 1965)}}

{{Infobox artist

| name = Andrea Fraser

| image = Entrevista amb Andrea Fraser.jpg

| image_size = 300px

| alt = Fraser interview at Ràdio web MACBA in Barcelona

| caption = Fraser in 2016

| birth_name =

| birth_date = {{Birth year and age|1965}}

| birth_place = Billings, Montana, United States

| death_date =

| death_place =

| spouse =

| field = Performance art

| training = School of Visual Arts, New York, Whitney Independent Study Program

| movement = Feminist

| works = Museum Highlights (1989), Official Welcome (2001), Little Frank and His Carp (2001), Untitled (2003), Projection (2008), Not Just a Few of Us (2014), Down the River (2016), 2016 in Museums, Money, and Politics

| patrons =

| awards = National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship (1991), Anonymous Was A Woman Fellowship (2012), Wolfgang Hahn Prize (2013), Oskar Kokoschka Prize (2016)

| elected =

| website =

| bgcolour =

}}

Andrea Rose Fraser (born 1965){{cite book |last1= |title=Great women artists |date=2019 |publisher=Phaidon Press |isbn=978-0714878775 |page=143}} is a performance artist, mainly known for her work in the area of institutional critique. Fraser is based in New York and Los Angeles and is a professor and area head of the Interdisciplinary Studio of the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles.{{cite web |title=Faculty |url=https://www.art.ucla.edu/faculty/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170709220939/http://www.art.ucla.edu/faculty/fraser.html |archive-date=9 July 2017 |access-date=16 January 2025 |website=UCLA Department of Art}}

Early life and career

Fraser was born in Billings, Montana and grew up in Berkeley, California.{{Cite web |title=Three Histories: The Wadsworth According to MATRIX 114 |url=http://www.thewadsworth.org/threehistoriesfraser/ |access-date=16 January 2025 |website=Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art |language=en-US}} She attended New York University,{{Cite web |title=Andrea Fraser |url=https://awarewomenartists.com/en/artiste/andrea-fraser/ |access-date=2025-01-16 |website=AWARE Women artists / Femmes artistes |language=en-US}} the Whitney Museum's independent study program,{{cite web |last=La |first=Kristie T. |date=30 March 2010 |title=Spotlight: Andrea Fraser |url=http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/3/30/fraser-art-institutional/ |access-date=16 January 2025 |website=The Harvard Crimson}} and the School of Visual Arts.{{Cite web |title=Exhibition: Andrea Fraser: Boxed Set |url=http://www.ves.fas.harvard.edu/fraser.html |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20140413000628/http://www.ves.fas.harvard.edu/fraser.html |archive-date=13 April 2014 |access-date= |website=www.ves.fas.harvard.edu}} Fraser worked as a gallery attendant at Dia Chelsea.{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/beyondturnstilem0000unse/ |title=Beyond the turnstile: making the case for museums and sustainable values |date=2009 |publisher=AltaMira Press |isbn=978-0-7591-1221-6 |editor-last=Holo |editor-first=Selma |location=Lanham |page=104 |editor-last2=Álvarez |editor-first2=Mari-Tere}}

Fraser began writing art criticism before incorporating a similar analysis into her artistic practice.

Work

Fraser was co-organizer, with Helmut Draxler, of Services, a "working-group exhibition" that was conceived at Kunstraum of Lüneburg University and toured eight venues in Europe and the United States between 1994 and 2001.{{Cite web |title=Faculty |url=http://www.art.ucla.edu/faculty/fraser.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20211008231613/https://www.art.ucla.edu/faculty/fraser.html |archive-date=8 October 2021 |access-date= |website=UCLA Department of Art |language=en}}

Museum Highlights (1989) involved Fraser posing as a museum tour guide at the Philadelphia Museum of Art under the pseudonym of Jane Castleton.{{cite book |last=Fraser |first=Andrea |url=https://archive.org/details/museumhighlights00fras |title=Museum Highlights |publisher=MIT Press |year=2005 |isbn=0-262-06244-5 |location=Massachusetts |url-access=registration}} During the performance, Fraser led a tour through the museum while describing it in verbose and overly dramatic terms to her tour group. For example, in describing a water fountain, Fraser proclaimed it "a work of astonishing economy and monumentality ... it boldly contrasts with the severe and highly stylized productions of this form!" The tour is based on a script that pulls from an array of sources: Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment; a 1969 anthology of essays called On Understanding Poverty; and a 1987 article in The New York Times with the headline "Salad and Seurat: Sampling the Fare at Museums".{{Cite news |last=Schwendener |first=Martha |date=9 February 2012 |title=At the Mausoleum, Art About Art Houses |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/arts/design/spies-in-the-house-of-art-at-the-metropolitan-museum.html |access-date=16 January 2025 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}

In Kunst muss hängen ("Art Must Hang") (Galerie Christian Nagel/Cologne, 2001), Fraser reenacted an impromptu 1995 speech by a drunk Martin Kippenberger, word-by-word and gesture-for-gesture.{{Cite web |title=Kunst muss Hängen |url=https://foundation.generali.at/en/collection/artworks/gf0030202000-2004-kunst-muss-haengen |access-date=16 January 2025 |website=Generali Foundation |language=en}}{{Cite web |title=Make Your Own Life: Artists In & Out of Cologne |url=https://www.thepowerplant.org/whats-on/exhibitions/make-your-own-life-artists-in-and-out-of-cologne |access-date=16 January 2025 |website=The Power Plant |language=en}}

For Official Welcome (2001)—commissioned by the MICA Foundation for a private reception—Fraser mimicked "the banal comments and effusive words of praise uttered by presenters and recipients during art-awards ceremonies. Midstream, assuming the persona of a troubled, postfeminist art star, Fraser strips down, [...] to a Gucci thong, bra and high-heel shoes, and says, I'm not a person today. I'm an object in an art work."{{cite journal |last=Pollack |first=Barbara |date=July 2002 |title=Baring the truth |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_7_90/ai_88582353/ |url-status=dead |journal=Art in America |issn=0004-3214 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050421131255/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_7_90/ai_88582353 |archive-date=21 April 2005 |access-date=}}

Her videotape performance Little Frank and His Carp (2001),{{Cite web |date=28 October 2014 |title=Little Frank And His Carp (2001) |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auOKsXnMmkg |access-date=16 January 2025 |website=YouTube}} shot with five hidden cameras in the atrium of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao,{{Cite web |last=Martin |first=Richard |date=April 2014 |title=Little Frank and his Carp |url=http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/fraser-little-frank-and-his-carp-t12324/ |access-date=16 January 2025 |website=Tate |publisher=}} targets the architectural dominance of modern gallery spaces. Using the original soundtrack of an acoustic guide at the museum, she "... writhes with pleasure as the recorded voice draws attention to the undulating curves and textured surfaces of the surrounding space." Fraser's sexual display towards the architecture reveals the eroticism of the words used on the audio tour to describe the museum's structure.{{Cite web|url = http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/fraser-little-frank-and-his-carp-t12324/text-summary|title = Little Frank and His Carp: Summary|last = Martin|first = Richard|publisher = Tate}}

In her videotape performance Untitled (2003), Fraser recorded a hotel-room sexual encounter at the Royalton Hotel in New York with a private collector, who apparently paid close to $20,000 to participate,{{cite news |last=Trebay |first=Guy |date=13 June 2004 |title=Sex, Art and Videotape |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/13/magazine/the-way-we-live-now-6-13-04-encounter-sex-art-and-videotape.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130910071959/http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/13/magazine/the-way-we-live-now-6-13-04-encounter-sex-art-and-videotape.html |archive-date=10 September 2013 |access-date=26 October 2013 |newspaper=The New York Times}} {{"'}}not for sex,' according to the artist, but 'to make an artwork.{{'"}}{{Cite web |last=Saltz |first=Jerry |date=13 February 2007 |title=Critiqueus Interruptus |url=https://www.villagevoice.com/critiqueus-interruptus/ |access-date=16 January 2025 |website=The Village Voice |language=en-US}} According to Andrea Fraser, the amount that the collector had paid her has not been disclosed, and the $20,000 figure is incorrect.{{Citation needed|date=January 2025}} Only five copies of the 60-minute DVD were produced, three of which are in private collections,{{Citation needed|date=January 2025}} one being that of the collector with whom she had had the sexual encounter; he had pre-purchased the performance piece in which he was a participant. The contractual agreement, arranged by Friedrich Petzel Gallery, was proposed by Fraser as an assertion against the commoditization of art. Although critiqued both within and outside of the art world for the nature of the video, Fraser problematizes selling art to collectors as potentially a form of prostitution.{{Cite web |last1=Bajo |first1=Delia |last2=Carey |first2=Brainard |date=October 2004 |title=Andrea Fraser |url=https://brooklynrail.org/2004/10/art/andrea-fraser |access-date=16 January 2025 |website=The Brooklyn Rail}}

Fraser's video installation Projection (2008) stages a psychoanalysis session in which the viewer is addressed as analyst, patient, and voyeuristic spectator. The work is based on the transcripts of real psychoanalytic consultations, adapted into twelve monologues and alternated so that Fraser plays the roles of both analyst and patient. Looking directly into the camera, Fraser creates the effect of interacting with the image on the opposite wall but also with the viewer in the middle of the room, who becomes the object of each projection.{{Cite web |last=Taylor |first=Rachel |date=November 2008 |title=Projection |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/fraser-projection-t12879 |access-date=16 January 2025 |website=Tate |language=en-GB}}

Fraser's performance piece, Not Just a Few of Us (2014), performed for Prospect.3, explores the desegregation struggles in New Orleans.

=Teaching=

Fraser has taught at University of California, Los Angeles, Maine College of Art & Design, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Whitney Independent Study Program, Columbia University School of the Arts, and the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.

Exhibitions

Fraser's work has been shown in public galleries including the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1989); the Kunstverein München, (1993, 1994); the Venice Biennale (1993); the Sprengel Museum (1998); the Kunstverein Hamburg (2003); the Whitechapel Gallery (2003); the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (2005); the Frans Hals Museum (2007); and the Centre Pompidou (2009). In 2013, a retrospective of her work was organized by the Museum Ludwig in conjunction with her receipt of the Wolfgang Hahn Prize.

Collections

Fraser's work is held in major public collections including at the Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Pompidou; Fogg Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum Ludwig; Museum of Modern Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Tate Modern.{{Cite web |last= |title=Andrea Fraser |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/andrea-fraser-9439 |access-date=16 January 2025 |website=Tate |language=en-GB}}

She presented a lecture as part of the "Art and the Right to Believe" lecture series through the Visiting Artists Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in February 2009.{{Cite web |last=Onli |first=Meg |date=12 February 2009 |title=Andrea Fraser Tonight at SAIC |url=https://badatsports.com/2009/andrea-fraser-tonight-at-saic/ |access-date=16 January 2025 |website=Bad at Sports |language=en-US}}

Recognition

Fraser has received fellowships from Art Docent Matter Inc., the Franklin Furnace Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, and New York Foundation for the Arts. She also received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant to Artist (2017).{{Cite web |title=Andrea Fraser |url=https://www.foundationforcontemporaryarts.org/recipients/andrea-fraser |access-date=16 January 2025 |website=Foundation for Contemporary Arts}} In December 2019, she was the subject of a major article in The New York Times.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/t-magazine/andrea-fraser.html|title=Have We Finally Caught Up With Andrea Fraser?|work=The New York Times |date=3 December 2019 |last1=Lescaze |first1=Zoë }}

Notes

{{Reflist|2}}

References

  • {{cite news |url=http://www.ktpress.co.uk/nparadoxa-volume-details.asp?volumeid=28 |title=Labour, Ethics, Sex and Capital On Biopolitical Production in Contemporary Art |last=Dimitrikaki |first=Angela |date=July 2011 |volume=28 |newspaper=n.paradoxa |pages=5–15}}
  • {{cite journal |last1=Sykes |first1=Rebecca |title=Andrea Fraser and the Psychoanalytic Character of Critique: From Normotic Performance to a Space of Play |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00233609.2020.1779807 |journal=Konsthistorisk Tidskrift/Journal of Art History |date=2 April 2020 |volume=89 |issue=2 |pages=79–99 |doi=10.1080/00233609.2020.1779807 |s2cid=221055844|url-access=subscription }}
  • {{cite journal |last1=Meyer |first1=James |title=The Strong and the Weak: Andrea Fraser and the Conceptual Legacy |url=https://direct.mit.edu/grey/article-abstract/doi/10.1162/1526381042464590/10437/The-Strong-and-the-Weak-Andrea-Fraser-and-the?redirectedFrom=fulltext |journal=Grey Room |date=1 October 2004 |volume= 17|issue=17 |pages=82–107 |doi=10.1162/1526381042464590 |s2cid=57569283|url-access=subscription }}
  • {{cite journal |last1=Cahan |first1=Susan E. |title=Regarding Andrea Fraser's Untitled |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10350330500487711 |journal=Social Semiotics |date=April 2006 |volume=16 |issue=1 |pages=7–15 |doi=10.1080/10350330500487711 |s2cid=145724947|url-access=subscription }}
  • {{Cite book |last=Fraser |first=Andrea |title=Whitney Biennial 2012 |publisher=Whitney Museum of American Art |year=2012 |editor-last=Sussman |editor-first=Elisabeth |pages=28–33 |chapter=There's No Place like Home |editor-last2=Sanders |editor-first2=Jay}}
  • {{cite journal |last1=Fraser |first1=Andrea |title=What's Intangible, Transitory, Mediating, Participatory, and Rendered in the Public Sphere? |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/778810 |journal=October |volume=80 |date=Spring 1997 |pages=111–116 |doi=10.2307/778810 |jstor=778810 |url-access=subscription }}
  • {{cite journal |last1=Batalion |first1=Judith |title=Towards a 'Depth Sociology' School of Acting: An Interview with Andrea Fraser |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10486801.2010.488837 |journal=Contemporary Theatre Review |date=August 2010 |volume=20 |issue=3 |pages=329–339 |doi=10.1080/10486801.2010.488837 |s2cid=191620411|url-access=subscription }}
  • {{Cite web |last=Doran |first=Anne |date=18 November 2019 |title='It's Important to Be Specific About What We Mean by Change': A Talk With Andrea Fraser |url=https://www.artnews.com/art-news/artists/its-important-to-be-specific-about-what-we-mean-by-change-a-talk-with-andrea-fraser-7467/ |access-date=16 January 2025 |website=ARTnews.com}}
  • {{cite journal |last1=Byrne |first1=Louis |title=Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser by Andrea Fraser, Alexander Alberro (Ed.) |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8357.2007.00767.x |journal=The Art Book |date=8 February 2007 |volume=14 |issue=1 |pages=40–41 |doi=10.1111/j.1467-8357.2007.00767.x|url-access=subscription }}

External links

  • [https://nagel-draxler.de/artists/andrea-fraser/ Andrea Fraser at Galerie Nagel Draxler]
  • [https://www.mariangoodman.com/artists/andrea-fraser/ Andrea Fraser at Marian Goodman Gallery]

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Category:1965 births

Category:Living people

Category:Institutional Critique artists

Category:American performance artists

Category:Performance art in Los Angeles

Category:American conceptual artists

Category:American feminist artists

Category:American women performance artists

Category:American women conceptual artists

Category:20th-century American artists

Category:20th-century American women artists

Category:21st-century American artists

Category:21st-century American women artists

Category:People from Billings, Montana

Category:Artists from Montana

Category:Artists from Berkeley, California

Category:New York University alumni

Category:School of Visual Arts alumni