Marta Minujín

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Marta Minujín
Marta Minujín in 2008.
Born (1943-01-30) 30 January 1943 (age 81)
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Known forPainting, sculpture, performance, happening, drawing
Movement
Spouse
Juan Carlos Gómez Sabaini
​
​
(m. 1957)​
[1][2]
AwardsPlatinum Konex Award (1982 and 2002)

Marta Minujín (born 1943) is an Argentine conceptual and performance artist.

Life and work

Signature.
Minujín inside La Menesunda, a 1965 exhibition.
Comunicating with Earth, late 1970s.

Marta Minujín was born in the

Paris Biennale judge.[7]

While in Paris, Minujín was inspired by the experimental work of the Nouveaux Realistes, and especially their transformation of art into life. In response to this idea, Minujín staged an exhibition in 1962 during which she publicly burned her paintings.

Christo and Paul-Armand Gette, to destroy the display. This 1963 creation would be one of her first "Happenings" – events as works of arts in themselves; among her hosts during her stay was Finance Minister Valéry Giscard d'Estaing (later President of France).[9]

She earned a National Award in 1964 at Buenos Aires'

Public Television that year, and involved horses with paint buckets tied to their tails. These displays took her to nearby Montevideo, where she organized Sucesos (Events) at the Uruguayan capital's Tróccoli Stadium with 500 chickens, artists of contrasting physical shape, motorcycles, and other elements.[7]

She joined

black lighting, falling confetti, and the scent of frying food. The use of advertising throughout suggested the influence of pop art in Minujín's "mayhem."[7]

These works earned her a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1966, by which she relocated to New York City. The coup d'état by General Juan Carlos Onganía in June of that year made her fellowship all the more fortuitous, as the new regime would frequently censor and ban irreverent displays such as hers. Minujín delved into psychedelic art in New York, of which among her best-known creations was that of the "Minuphone," where patrons could enter a telephone booth, dial a number, and be surprised by colors projecting from the glass panels, sounds, and seeing themselves on a television screen in the floor.[10] The Minuphone was designed and constructed, in collaboration with her, by engineer Per Biorn, who was employed at Bell Telephone Laboratories, and the work was shown at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York City.[11] She was on hand in 1971 for the Buenos Aires premiere of Operación Perfume, and in New York, befriended fellow conceptual artist Andy Warhol.[7] Her image is included in the iconic 1972 poster Some Living American Women Artists by Mary Beth Edelson.[12]

She returned to Argentina in 1976, and afterwards created a series of reproductions of

Tango vocalist Carlos Gardel for a 1981 display in Medellín. The latter, a sheet metal creation, was stuffed with cotton and lit, creating a metaphor for the legendary crooner's untimely 1935 death in a Medellín plane crash.[9] She was awarded the first of a series of Konex Awards, the highest in the Argentine cultural realm, in 1982.[13] She also created a conceptual proposal for Manhattan based on a prone replica of the Statue of Liberty re-imagined as a public park.[14]

Minujín returned to Buenos Aires in 1983, and the

Ninth of July Avenue. Dismantled after three weeks, its mass of newly unbanned titles was distributed to the public below and given back to their owners, symbolically putting the tools for rebuilding a free society back in the hands of the people.[9][15][8]

A conversation with Warhol in New York regarding the Latin American debt crisis inspired one of her most publicized "happenings:" The Debt. Purchasing a shipment of maize, Minujín dramatized the Argentine cost of servicing the foreign debt with a 1985 photo series in which she symbolically handed the maize to Warhol "in payment" for the debt; she never again saw Warhol, who died in 1987.[16]

In 2017, Minujín went on to make a second Parthenon of Banned Books in Kassel, Germany. Arranging 100,000 banned books into a replica of the Parthenon in Athens, Minujín honors those books that were censored and subsequently burned by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s. Similarly to the 1983 Parthenon, the books were distributed to people around the world when the work was dismantled.[17]

In 2021 Minujín was responsible for making a half-size horizontal replica called Big Ben Lying Down of London's iconic Elizabeth Tower (often called "

COVID-19 travel restrictions.[18][19]

Minujín has continued to display her art pieces and happenings in the

Barbican Center, and a vast number of other international galleries and art shows, while continuing to satirize consumer culture (particularly relating to women).[13][20] In 2023 her work was included in the exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London.[21]

She is well known for her belief that "everything is art."[7]

Gallery

  • The Destruction (1963). Minujín's colleagues and friends collectively destroyed her works.[22]
    The Destruction (1963). Minujín's colleagues and friends collectively destroyed her works.[22]
  • Sweet Obelisk (1965). Minujín covered the Obelisk of Buenos Aires with ice cream, and three colleagues licked it.[22]
    Sweet Obelisk (1965). Minujín covered the
    Obelisk of Buenos Aires with ice cream, and three colleagues licked it.[22]
  • Reading the News (1965). Minujín got into the Río de la Plata covered in newspapers.[22]
    Reading the News (1965). Minujín got into the Río de la Plata covered in newspapers.[22]
  • Minuphone (1967). Patrons could enter a telephone booth, dial a number, and be surprised by different effects.[10]
    Minuphone (1967). Patrons could enter a telephone booth, dial a number, and be surprised by different effects.[10]
  • Importación/Exportación (1968).
    Importación/Exportación (1968).
  • Minujín's We are Many, a mural at the Argentine Public Television Station studios.
    Minujín's We are Many, a mural at the Argentine Public Television Station studios.
  • Babel Tower of books in Buenos Aires.
    Babel Tower of books in Buenos Aires.

References

  1. ^ a b "Los viajes de una artista pop". Revista Ñ (in Spanish). Clarín. 8 February 2013. Retrieved 1 December 2013.
  2. ^ "Marta Minujín". Para Ti (in Spanish). Editorial Atlántida. December 2010. Archived from the original on 22 August 2016. Retrieved 1 December 2013.
  3. ^ a b "Marta Minujín. Biografía". Virtual center of Argentine art (in Spanish). Government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. Retrieved 1 December 2013.
  4. ^ "Marta Minujín". El Cultural (in Spanish). 3 January 2011. Retrieved 1 December 2013.
  5. ^ "Marta Minujín: "El arte es cultura instantánea"". Infobae (in Spanish). 11 April 2013. Retrieved 1 December 2013.
  6. ^ "Marta Minujín - Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires". Braga Menendez Arte Contemporáneo (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 25 December 2012. Retrieved 8 December 2013.
  7. ^ a b c d e Clarín: 'Superé todos mis problemas, como Maradona' (7/6/2005) (in Spanish)
  8. ^
    ISBN 97 8-0-205-03440-6
    .
  9. ^ a b c Página/12: Pop-ular (5/25/2003) (in Spanish)
  10. ^ a b "Sculpture: The Number is 581-4570, but Don't Call It". Time. 7 July 1967. Archived from the original on 9 March 2016.
  11. ^ Biorn Biography
  12. ^ "Some Living American Women Artists/Last Supper". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved 21 January 2022.
  13. ^ a b Fundación Konex: Marta Minujín (in Spanish)
  14. ISBN 9783791356808
    .
  15. ^ La Nación: Política y concepto (in Spanish)
  16. ^ Página/12: Andy y yo (6/19/2005) (in Spanish)
  17. ^ Mafi, Nick (11 July 2017). "100,000 Banned Books Have Been Formed Into a 'Parthenon of Books'". Architectural Digest.
  18. ^ Basciano, Oliver (28 June 2021). "'I hope people remember it all their lives': Why Marta Minujín wants to destroy Big Ben". The Guardian.
  19. ^ Youngs, Ian (1 July 2021). "Big Ben lands in Manchester for international arts festival". BBC News.
  20. ^ ArteBA (in Spanish)
  21. ^ a b c "Happenings and Performances". Marta-minujin.com. 2012. Archived from the original on 27 June 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)

External links

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