Contemporary Art

2. “My Bed”: Tracey Emin-1998
• My Bed is a work by the British artist Tracey Emin. First created in 1998, it was
exhibited at the Tate Gallery in 1999 as one of the shortlisted works for the Turner
Prize.[1] It consisted of her bed with bedroom objects in an abject state, and gained
much media attention. Although it did not win the prize, its notoriety has persisted.
• Description: The idea for My Bed was inspired by a depressive phase in the artist's life
when she had remained in bed for several days without eating or drinking anything but
alcohol.[2] When she looked at the vile, repulsive mess that had accumulated in her
room, she suddenly realised what she had created. Emin ardently defended My
Bed against critics who treated it as a farce and claimed that anyone could exhibit an
unmade bed. To these claims the artist retorted, "Well, they didn't, did they? No one
had ever done that before."[3]
• My Bed was bought by Charles Saatchi for £150,000 and displayed as part of the first
exhibition when the Saatchi Gallery opened its new premises at County Hall, London
(which it has now vacated). Saatchi also installed the bed in a dedicated room in his
own home.
• When it was announced, in May 2014, that the work was to be auctioned, David
Maupin, Emin's dealer in New York, described the £800,000 – £1.2 million estimate as
too low.[8]When auctioned by Christie's in July 2014, the piece was sold for a little over
£2.5 million.[9]

5. “Still Life With Tree”: Cornelia Konrads - 2008
• Who ever said that still lifes are only drawn? No one told Cornelia
Konrads if they did. This work, Still Life with Tree is an instillation for a
‘landscape marked by volcanic activity’. Made of wood, paint, and
slate tiles, it stands and speaks for itself

8. 8 April 2011

9. Karl Lagerfeld's latest collection... of Diet Coke
bottles
• Forget Ray Ban sunglasses or an oversized floppy hat, the ultimate designer
accessory you shouldn't be seen without this summer is... a bottle of Diet
Coke.
• The king of multi-tasking, Karl Lagerfeld, has found a space in his busy
schedule of designing, directing, acting, taking photos and launching hair
salons to create a second collection of limited edition bottles for Coca-Cola.
• Chanel's creative director is a big fan of the brand. He reportedly lost 90
pounds in 2001 by only drinking Diet Coke and eating steamed vegetables.

11. “SVAYAMBH”: Anish Kapoor 2007
• For his exhibition "Svayambh", Anish Kapoor has created an enormous, blood-red sculpture that glides
almost imperceptibly on tracks through the monumental spaces of the Haus der Kunst (House of Art). In
passing through the doorways from one room to another, the massive red block, reminiscent of a train,
leaves traces: a mixture of vaseline, paint and wax. This large, red mass, which sticks to the marble
doorways, reminds of compacted blood and evokes an almost apocalyptic image.
The sculpture has the same title as the exhibition: "Svayambh", a word which is derived from the Sanskrit
"Svayambhu(v)" meaning self-generated or auto generated. "Svayambh" is to be understood as a response
to the Haus der Kunst’s monumental architecture and stands in direct relation to a further site-specific work
– "Wound" – a slit of about 1,5 m that Kapoor carved directly into a wall in the exhibition. Images such as
these carry even greater connotations in a building with such a difficult history as the Haus der Kunst’s.
• In 1937, the Haus der Kunst (the first monumental propaganda building of the Third Reich) opened its doors
to the public with “The Great German Art Exhibition,” a show of Nazi-sanctioned art. In 1945, American
occupation forces used the Haus der Kunst as their canteen; it then became an exhibition space for artworks
left homeless through Allied bombing of the city’s museums. In the mid-1980s, Joseph Beuys’ At the End of
the Twentieth Century, an installation of basalt “logs,” clay and felt, brought connotations of regeneration
into the building’s interior spaces.2 In the new millennium, the Haus der Kunst has been home to a program
of changing exhibitions by contemporary artists.

14. “EYE OF THE YOUNG”: Julija Jankelaityte-2012
Julija Jankelaityte (JulijaJan) is a Lithuanian-born
photographer based in London whose work
focuses on self-portrait: "I easily find inspiration in
almost everything, but I think it is in the human
body where I find the most influences. , As it
influences the interaction with other objects,
colors and figures.Mind influences a lot as well.I
like the way it can be manipulated and confused.In
general, my greatest source of to objects that They
are strange . inspiration is the person's reactions "

17. Untitled (Styrofoam Cups), 2008 Tara Donovan
• American artist Tara Donovan uses all kinds of everyday household items, like
plastic cups, No. 2 pencils, or drinking straws, to create her visually complicated
and surprisingly complex sculptures. She doesn’t start with a design but, rather,
chooses to start with the object and let the material emerge organically into the
end result. She says, “In a sense, I develop a dialogue with each material that
dictates the forms that develop. With every new material comes a specific
repetitive action that builds the work.”
• Organized clusters of styrofoam cups held together with hot glue are the basis for
this piece called Styrofoam Cup Sculpture. The undulating clouds of synthetic
material, spanning twenty feet wide and six feet high, absorb and diffuse the light
in beautiful patterns that hang overhead. The Brooklyn-based artist considers
each piece to be only a temporary, site-specific construction. When visiting an
installation, viewers will find themselves surrounded by a powerful artwork that
challenges us to reconsider the basic functions of these everyday materials and to
see them in a new light.

21. BICYCLE WHEEL: Marcel Duchamp-1913
is the first of its kind. Marcel Duchamp brings the object of
daily life into the world of art and gives birth to what he calls
the " ready-made ". A bicycle wheel and a stool are assembled
on top of each other. They have lost their function of origin,
diverted, to compose a sculpture of a new type. The wheel
placed in the air can turn on itself, it is a kinetic work. The
stool, well stable in counterpoint, serves as a base. According
to him, we must desacralize art and abandon the notions of
beauty, illusion of reality, authenticity and precious. Duchamp
transforms creation from doing to concept, becoming a pure
adventure of the mind.

24. ATEN REIGN: James Turrell-2013
For his exhibition at the Guggenheim, Turrell has created a major new installation
entitled Aten Reign (2013), radically transforming the museum in the tradition of his
most sweeping, large-scale projects. For the first time, the Frank Lloyd Wright–
designed rotunda can be experienced only from below, as a volume of space floating
overhead rather than a transparency to be looked across. No objects occupy the
rotunda, aside from the structures the artist requires to reveal and amplify the
luminous nature of the space. Turrell proposes an entirely new encounter with the
building, drawing attention away from the boundaries of the
built environment toward the interior and fashioning what he has described as “an
architecture of space created with light.”
In Aten Reign, daylight from the museum’s oculus streams down to light the deepest
layer of a massive assembly suspended from the ceiling. Using a series of
interlocking cones lined with LED fixtures, the installation surrounds this core of
daylight with five elliptical rings of shifting, colored light that echo the banded
pattern of the museum’s ramps. As is typical of Turrell’s work, the apparatus that
creates the effect is mostly hidden from view, encouraging viewers

27. “FOUNTAIN”: Marcel Duchamp-1917
The piece was a porcelain urinal

29. Dollar Sign: Andy Warhol-1981
Dollar Sign by Andy Warhol
The subject of ‘Dollar Bills’ had provided the motif for Warhol’s breakthrough
series of 1961, which in turn had prompted his revolutionary exploration of the
silkscreen process for creating his paintings. Twenty years on Warhol revisited
the subject of money, this time focussing on the elegant curvilinear form of the
dollar sign itself. Unlike the monochromatic and static 1961 ‘Dollar Bill’
paintings, Warhol’s 1981 ‘Dollar Signs’ pulsated with vibrant hues, layered
energy, as if celebrating the artist’s mastery over his adopted medium. Based
on one of Warhol’s own drawings, the stylised $ motif here seems to
reverberate in crimson red, pink and gold against a baby-blue background. In
his seminal 1989 publication on the artist, David Bourdon reflects,
“Warhol’s Dollar Signs are brazen, perhaps even insolent reminders that
pictures by brand-name artists are metaphors for money, a situation that never
bothered him”.