Allan Kaprow
“Allan Kaprow has been preaching since 1964 that pure research should be propelled in art and art education like it is in any other academic field, and avant guarde-think-tank should be mobilized to vitalize the often too cautious academic community. […] Kaprow’s far-sight to modulate the avant guarde invention into the ‘outer space’ innovation should not be blocked any longer by bureaucratic red tape.”
(Nam June Paik, Expanded Education for the Paper-Less Society, in: Nam June Paik: Videa ‘n’Videology, 1959-1973, ed. Judson Rosebush, Syracuse/New York: Everson Museum of Art, 1974 [first published in abridged version in: Radical Software, vol. 1, no.1, Spring 1970, 7-8]).
Robert Filliou
“We’ve broken down the barriers between the arts. Now I want to break the barriers between the arts and the other disciplines. […] The new interesting artistic research going on now is research into new ways of living. However, this most important art form lies now outside the field of regular art information. I think museums should subsidize it, and make it known. They could do it by getting and showing information on experiments – private and public – that go on everywhere – the art circuit will follow. Art that makes only reference to art is in trouble […]”
(Robert Filliou, Research at the Stedelijk, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1972, unpaginated)
Raindance
“His [Frank Gillette’s] idea was Raindance. R&D for research and development – Rand, Rain-Dance. I made up the explanation, he made up the name. Also Raindance is ecologically sound anticipatory design.”
(Michael Shamberg, cit. from Deirdre Boyle, Subject to Change. Guerrilla Television Revisited, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 11])
Robert Smithson
“[...] in 1966 I did an article with Mel Bochner on the Hayden Planetarium which, once again, was sort of an investigation of a specific place; but not on a level of science, but in terms of discussing the actual construction of the building, once again, an almost anthropological study of a planetarium from the point of view of an artist.”
(Interview with Robert Smithson for the Archives of American Art/Smithsonian Institution by Paul Cummings [1972], in: Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, ed. Jack Flam, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1996, 296)
Frank J. Malina
„[…] there is a danger of artists blindly imitating the modes of work of science. An example is the recent attempt to form teams of artists to make kinetic art objects. […] Teams of mature artists formed to execute conceptually simple artifacts are of doubtful value. […] Team work both in scientific and in artistic work is basically uncongenial to men with original, adventurous and nonconformist minds. Stresses and strains soon develop in such teams, for it is difficult for individuals of this type of temperament to work together toward a common objective.”
(Frank J. Malina, “Some Reflections on the Differences between Science and Art” [1965], in: DATA. Directions in Art, Theory and Aesthetics, ed. Anthony Hill, London: Faber and Faber, 1968, 140)
Gustav Metzger
“We shall use science to destroy ‘science’”
(Gustav Metzger, „The Chemical Revolution in Art“ [published as “Auto-Destructive Art”, in Granta, 6 November 1965], in Gustav Metzger. History History, ed. Sabine Breitwieser, exh.-cat. Generali Foundation Vienna, Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2005, 237)
artistic research quotes
Allan Kaprow
“Allan Kaprow has been preaching since 1964 that pure research should be propelled in art and art education like it is in any other academic field, and avant guarde-think-tank should be mobilized to vitalize the often too cautious academic community. […] Kaprow’s far-sight to modulate the avant guarde invention into the ‘outer space’ innovation should not be blocked any longer by bureaucratic red tape.”
(Nam June Paik, Expanded Education for the Paper-Less Society, in: Nam June Paik: Videa ‘n’Videology, 1959-1973, ed. Judson Rosebush, Syracuse/New York: Everson Museum of Art, 1974 [first published in abridged version in: Radical Software, vol. 1, no.1, Spring 1970, 7-8]).
Robert Filliou
“We’ve broken down the barriers between the arts. Now I want to break the barriers between the arts and the other disciplines. […] The new interesting artistic research going on now is research into new ways of living. However, this most important art form lies now outside the field of regular art information. I think museums should subsidize it, and make it known. They could do it by getting and showing information on experiments – private and public – that go on everywhere – the art circuit will follow. Art that makes only reference to art is in trouble […]”
(Robert Filliou, Research at the Stedelijk, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1972, unpaginated)
Raindance
“His [Frank Gillette’s] idea was Raindance. R&D for research and development – Rand, Rain-Dance. I made up the explanation, he made up the name. Also Raindance is ecologically sound anticipatory design.”
(Michael Shamberg, cit. from Deirdre Boyle, Subject to Change. Guerrilla Television Revisited, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 11])
Robert Smithson
“[...] in 1966 I did an article with Mel Bochner on the Hayden Planetarium which, once again, was sort of an investigation of a specific place; but not on a level of science, but in terms of discussing the actual construction of the building, once again, an almost anthropological study of a planetarium from the point of view of an artist.”
(Interview with Robert Smithson for the Archives of American Art/Smithsonian Institution by Paul Cummings [1972], in: Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, ed. Jack Flam, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1996, 296)
Frank J. Malina
„[…] there is a danger of artists blindly imitating the modes of work of science. An example is the recent attempt to form teams of artists to make kinetic art objects. […] Teams of mature artists formed to execute conceptually simple artifacts are of doubtful value. […] Team work both in scientific and in artistic work is basically uncongenial to men with original, adventurous and nonconformist minds. Stresses and strains soon develop in such teams, for it is difficult for individuals of this type of temperament to work together toward a common objective.”
(Frank J. Malina, “Some Reflections on the Differences between Science and Art” [1965], in: DATA. Directions in Art, Theory and Aesthetics, ed. Anthony Hill, London: Faber and Faber, 1968, 140)
Gustav Metzger
“We shall use science to destroy ‘science’”
(Gustav Metzger, „The Chemical Revolution in Art“ [published as “Auto-Destructive Art”, in Granta, 6 November 1965], in Gustav Metzger. History History, ed. Sabine Breitwieser, exh.-cat. Generali Foundation Vienna, Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2005, 237)