- Andrea Fraser
Andrea Fraser (sometimes known by her
stage name , Jane Castleton) is a New York-based performance artist, mainly known for her work as an institutional critique artist.Life and work
Andrea Fraser was born in 1965 in Billings, Montana, USA.
Fraser's brand of performance during the 1990s popularized the institutional critique art movement, a loosely-formed artistic practice meant to critique the very institutions that are involved in the sale, display, and commerce of art. Arguably Fraser's most famous performance, "Museum Highlights" involved Fraser posing as a Museum tour guide at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1989 under the pseudonym of Jane Castleton.cite book
last = Fraser
first = Andrea
authorlink = Andrea Fraser
title = Museum Highlights
publisher = MIT Press
date = 2005
location = Massachusetts]During the performance, Fraser led a tour through the museum describing it in verbose and overly dramatic terms to her chagrined tour group. For example, in describing a common water fountain Fraser proclaims "a work of astonishing economy and monumentality ... it boldly contrasts with the severe and highly stylized productions of this form!" Upon entering the museum cafeteria: "This room represents the heyday of colonial art in Philadelphia on the eve of the Revolution, and must be regarded as one of the very finest of all American rooms."
Fraser's work typically analyzes the politics, commerce, histories, and even the self-assuredness of the modern-day art museum, including the hierarchies and the exclusion mechanisms of art as an enterprise. Fraser's performances, despite having serious undertones, are often presented in a humorous, ridiculous, or satirical manner.
In "Kunst muss hangen (Art Must Hang)" (2001) - featured in [http://www.icaphila.org/exhibitions/past/ownlife.php Make Your Own Life: Artists In & Out of Cologne] - Fraser reenacted an impromptu 1995 speech by a drunk
Martin Kippenberger , word-by-word, gesture-for-gesture.For "Official Welcome" (2001) - commissioned by the MICA Foundation for a private reception - Fraser mimics the effusions offered at art awards ceremonies, while stripping down to bra and thong and concluding, "I am not a person today. I'm an object in an art work".
In her videotape performance "Untitled" (2002), Fraser recorded a hotel-room sexual encounter with a private collector, who had paid close to $20,000 to participate. [Guy Trebay, [http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/13/magazine/13ENCOUNTER.html?ex=1402459200&en=aa724398866c64a5&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND "Sex, Art and Videotape"] , "The New York Times", June 13, 2004.]
Her work is held in the collection of the
Tate . [ [http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=9439&page=1 tate.org] ]Notes and references
External links
* [http://www.petzel.com/artists/andrea-fraser/ Andrea Fraser at Friedrich Petzel Gallery]
* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_7_90/ai_88582353 Baring the Truth... (Barbara Pollack in "Art in America", July 2002)]
* [http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10453 "Museum Highlights - The Writings of Andrea Fraser" (ed. Alexander Alberro, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2005)]
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