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Parallel of Life & Art.
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Parallel of Life & Art.
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Description
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Larger image may be viewed by UofL faculty, staff, and students only (log-in required using ULink username/password) at:
http://echo.louisville.edu/login?url=http://vrc-web.louisville.edu/Jpegs/820/826-16.jpg
Title
Parallel
of
Life
&
Art
.
Creator
Independent Group (British group of artists, active ca. 1952-1955)
Date
September-October 1953
Cultural Context
British
European
Theme
Exhibitions (events)
Installations (visual works)
Photographs
Reproductions
Art objects (object genres)
Works of art
Art (fine art)
Arts (broad discipline)
Visual arts
Photojournalism
Technology
Natural sciences
Science
Culture
Analogy
Mass media
Mass production
Figurative art
Figures (representations)
Front views
Sculpture (visual work)
Statues
Heads (representations)
Architecture (object genre)
Interior views
Interior walls
Walls
Ceilings
Views from below
Architectural elements
Windows
Draperies (curtains)
Curtains
Subject
Exhibitions
Art exhibitions
Photographs
Reproductions
Art objects
Art
Photojournalism
Science
Sculpture
Heads (Anatomy)
Architecture
Interiors
Walls
Ceilings
Architectural elements
Windows
Draperies
Description
Photograph
of
exhibition
installation
,
ICA
(Institute
of
Contemporary
Arts)
,
London
,
September-October
1953
; "In this
early
Independent
Group
exhibition
photographs
of
varying
sizes
were
attached
to the
gallery
walls
.
Others
were
suspended
by
wires
from the
ceiling
.
Analogies
were
set
up
between
various
structures
deriving
from
technology
,
science
,
art
, and the
natural
world
.
Revisiting
the
spirit
of the
'New
Vision'
photography
of the
1930s
,
which
had been
associated
pre-eminently
with the
Bauhaus
teacher
László
Moholy
Nagy
, the
exhibition
helped
broaden
attitudes
towards
visual
culture
in
Britain.
"
(Caption
,
p.97)
; "The
IG
came
together
in
London
through
the
ICA
(Institute
of
Contemporary
Arts)
.
Founded
in
1946
by
British
advocates
of
Surrealism
such
as
Roland
Penrose
and
Herbert
Read
, this
institution
was
identified
with
mainland
European
experimentation
as
opposed
to the
Neo-Romantic
and
realist
currents
in
1950s
British
art
. The
IG
constituted
a
loose
alliance
of
artists
,
architects
,
photographers
, and
art
and
design
historians
who
, with the
ICA's
encouragement
,
organized
a
highly
eclectic
program
of
lectures
in
1952-5
on
topics
such
as
helicopter
design
,
science
fiction
,
car
styling
,
advertising
, and
recent
scientific
and
philosophical
thought
.
[…]
The
IG's
academic
latitude
was
underpinned
by a
radical
belief
that
'culture'
should
connote
not the
heights
of
artistic
excellence
but
rather
a
plurality
of
social
practices
. They
therefore
identified
themselves
with
capitalism's
cultural
consumers
. The
main
critic
in the
group
,
Lawrence
Alloway
,
argued
against
humanist-led
values
of
uniqueness
in
favor
of a
'long
front
of
culture'
characterized
by a
continuum
of
artefacts
from
oil
paintings
to
'mass-distributed
film
and
group-oriented
magazines'
. This
openness
to
culture
at
large
informed
the
first
IG
usages
of the
term
'Pop'
around
1955
.
[…]
The
IG's
breadth
of
reference
was
dramatized
in
two
early
events
. The
first
,
now
accorded
an
originary
mythic
status
, was a
Surrealistic
epidiascope
lecture
delivered
in
1952
by the
Scottish-born
sculptor
Eduardo
Paolozzi
which
galvanized
colleagues
with its
flood
of
heterogeneous
imagery
from
pulp
and
commercial
sources
. The
materials
shown
, a
set
of
collages
with the
generic
title
'Bunk'
, were not
even
considered
'art'
by
Paolozzi
until
1972
when
they were
incorporated
into
silkscreen
designs
. The
second
event
was the
exhibition
'Parallel
of
Life
and
Art'
, the
beginning
of an
important
sequence
conceived
by
IG
members
,
installed
at the
ICA
in
1953
by
Paolozzi
in
collaboration
with the
architects
Alison
and
Peter
Smithson
and the
photographer
Nigel
Henderson
. This
consisted
of
dramatic
non-hierarchical
juxtapositions
of
photographs
from
sources
as
diverse
as
photo-journalism
and
microscopy
.
Although
Fine
Art
images
were
included
(Pollock
,
Dubuffet
,
Klee)
, they were
clearly
reproductions
,
submitted
to a
form
of
cultural
leveling
by
means
of a
common
grainy
texture
.
[…]
This
exhibition
subordinated
the
authentic
artistic
gesture
to the
principle
of
reproducibility
.
It
therefore
dramatically
expanded
art's
parameters
while
fuelling
the
destabilizing
of
authorial
agency
[…]
. The
IG's
immediate
inspirations
were
books
such
as
Amedée
Ozenfant's
Foundations
of
Modern
Art
(1928)
or
Siegfried
Giedion's
Mechanization
Takes
Command
(1947)
which
were
prized
for their
photographic
juxtapositions
of
art
and
technology
rather
than their
modernist
rhetoric
.
However
, the
IG's
acknowledgement
of
photography's
ubiquity
brought
them
close
to the
conclusions
of the
Marxist
critic
Walter
Benjamin
,
who
, in the
1930s
, had
analyzed
photography's
societal
role
in
undermining
authorial
'origins'
. In his
seminal
essay
,
'The
Work
of
Art
in the
Age
of
Mechanical
Reproduction'
,
Benjamin
argued
that the
'auras'
art
objects
once
possessed
by
virtue
of their
specific
locations
or
'cult
value'
had
'withered
away'
in
mass
society
at the
hands
of
reproductive
technologies.
"
(Excerpt
,
pp.95-98)
Location Depicted
London (England)
England
Great Britain
United Kingdom
Material
Photographs
Reproductions
Mixed media
Technique
Photography
Photographic techniques
Photographic processes
Work Type
Installations (visual works)
Exhibitions
Art exhibitions
Source
Hopkins, David. After Modern Art: 1945-2000. Oxford History of Art. Oxford; New York: Oxford UP, 2000. (p.97, fig.46)
Rights
Photograph reproduced in Hopkins courtesy: Tate Gallery Archive.
Digital Publisher
University of Louisville Department of Fine Arts/Allen R. Hite Art Institute Visual Resources Center
Format
image/jpeg
Digital File Name
VRC
826-16.jpg
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Parallel of Life & Art. 
