Eighteen years have passed since Bruce Conner’s death, in 2008, aged seventy-four; ten since MoMA held its massive Conner retrospective. The countercultural polymath, known equally for his ragged combines (described by Philip Leider in Artforum as “hideous in the extreme”) and his seductive film collages, has been canonized, if the label befits a true iconoclast, for a long time. A new show at the Marciano Foundation in Los Angeles—located in a former Masonic temple, and showcasing the private collection of the co-founders of Guess jeans—is the latest test of Conner’s caustic sensibility.
Read MoreThe Beat Generation is currently having a moment in Los Angeles. Although the timing is partly coincidental, Marc Selwyn Fine Arts is exhibiting works on paper by Jay DeFeo, Parker Gallery and The Box are presenting a major Wally Hedrick retrospective, and Michael Kohn Gallery is showing Verifax collages by Wallace Berman and drawings by Bruce Conner. Conner was something of a renaissance man in that he was proficient in several mediums.
Read MoreThe title of the film conveys the dual meaning of the word—as both an accounting and a reverberant or explosive signal, echo or announcement of an event—and the film carries its full freight. The actual fragments of live radio broadcast transmissions that comprise the soundtrack are an accompaniment as much as reportage in the conventional sense.
Read MoreIt is difficult to categorize the boundary-breaking, multi-media trajectory of American artist Bruce Conner (1933 – 2008). Constant change and a wide-roving, obsessive curiosity are perhaps two constants in Conner’s work, which ranges from assemblage to drawing, painting and sculpture to conceptual art and experimental film.
Read MoreThe museum dove into its huge collection of art created since World War II and emerged with Crossroads: Carnegie Museum of Art’s Collection, 1945 to Now. The museum’s re-installed contemporary galleries will include about 150 paintings, sculptures, photographs, installations, and films, organized not chronologically, but under eight themes (or “chapters”). And the focus is on works that are either new to the museum or have not been shown in decades.
Read MoreMost of us might respond to the idea of a nuclear attack by diving under a nearby table. But ever since the first mushroom cloud entered our consciousness, many artists have taken a far more considered approach to the notion of human-triggered annihilation.
Read MoreA touching show by the late American artist Bruce Conner in an unfinished church is a highlight of the city's burgeoning art scene.
Read MoreAffiliated with California’s neosurrealist assemblage scene from the 1950s onwards but a mystic-minded outrider even there, Bruce Conner was determinedly elusive in life.
Read More“Bruce Conner: Out of Body” at Bellas Artes Projects, Outpost, Makati and Bagac, Bataan
Read MoreBELLAS ARTES PROJECTS IS PLEASED TO PRESENT BRUCE CONNER: OUT OF BODY, THE FIRST MAJOR PRESENTATION OF THE ICONIC AMERICAN ARTIST BRUCE CONNER (1933–2008) IN SOUTHEAST ASIA.
Read MoreBruce Conner in the 14th Biennale de Lyon, Floating Worlds with films CROSSROADS (1976) and EASTER MORNING (1966-2008).
Read MoreDelirious times demand delirious art, or so this exhibition proposes. The years between 1950 and 1980 were beset by upheaval. Around the globe, military conflict proliferated and social and political unrest flared.
Read MoreUnsettled amasses 200 artworks by 80 artists living and/or working in a super-region we call the Greater West, a geographic area that stretches from Alaska to Patagonia, and from Australia to the American West.
Read MoreThis piece brings us closer to the work of the American artist Bruce Conner, currently considered one of the most important artists of the American underground scene of the second half of the 20th century. The exhibition, which can be seen in the Reina Sofía Museum from February 21 to May 22, brings together about 250 works made in different media: film and video, painting, assemblage, drawing, engraving, collage,
Read More"BRUCE CONNER: IT'S ALL TRUE" (Museum of Modern Art, New York) MOMA delivered for Conner with this staggering retrospective that underscored the reciprocity between his moving-image and static work by giving seven films optimun projection within the 250-piece exhibition.
Read MoreBruce Conner (1933, McPherson, Kansas - 2008, San Francisco) is one of the most pre-eminent American artists from the second half of the twentieth century. This exhibition, the first to present his work in Spain, brings together more than 250 works which span his fifty-year career.
Read MoreI’ve always remembered a story my father used to tell me, about how my mother was arrested in North Beach, San Francisco in the late 1950’s for walking barefoot in public. “Howl”, City Lights Books, and Lenny Bruce were often mentioned in the same conversations. Those were days when society and government heavily censored people - their writing, speech, music, public activity, and art - primarily out of fear, fear of anything different or non-conformist.
Read MoreRealist. Surrealist. Hippie. Punk. Bruce Conner (1933-2008) was all of these and more. A Bay Area pioneer in experimental film, collage, photography, conceptual works, and paintings, Conner challenged the limitations of medium, genre, and style, constantly breaking new ground.
Read MoreIn an onstage conversation Wednesday, Oct. 26, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where Directors’ Circle donors were previewing “Bruce Conner: It’s All True,” it was emphasized that Conner, “the quintessential artist’s artist” by museum director Neal Benezra’s description, was a man of paradox.
Read More“WHAT A SHOW! WHAT A SHOW!” The reaction of the unseen, breathless, and elated MC at the end of Bruce Conner’s moving-image installation Three Screen Ray, 2006, is likely to be the exclamation of many a visitor exiting “Bruce Conner: It’s All True,” the revelatory retrospective of some 250 works currently installed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (through …
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