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ltmurnauI got to know Istvan Kantor back in the late 80s when I was involved in mail art. I see in today's news he has been given a Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts: CBC story
'NO-HOLDS BARRED' ARTIST AMONG GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARD WINNERS
WebPosted Wed Mar 3 16:28:31 2004
Ottawa---A performance artist who once lay naked in a shallow grave with a vial of his own blood dribbling out of his anus is among seven winners of one of Canada's most prestigious visual arts awards this year.
Described by the jury for the 2004 Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts as a "no-holds-barred, neo-Dada" artist, Toronto-based Istvan Kantor is being honoured for his entire body of work, which blends music, kinetic sculpture, multimedia installations and, most famously, performance art.
In the early 1980s, Kantor began a series he eventually entitled his Blood Campaign .
In the first instalment, Restriction 1 , he suspended himself naked, filled his mouth with his own blood and assumed the lotus position. In Liaison Inter-Urbain he dug a shallow grave, inserted a vial of blood into his anus and contorted himself so that the blood flowed into his mouth.
He has also splattered his blood onto the walls of New York's Museum of Modern Art and Ottawa's National Gallery of Canada, then incanted a militant text donating the blood painting to the museum's permanent collections.
'Literal and personal' art
"Kantor's use of blood is literal and personal. More than feces or sperm, blood is the spurting, contagious prima material of life," wrote Daniel Baird, art editor of the New York-based arts and culture magazine The Brooklyn Rail.
The annual awards are paid for and administered by the Canada Council for the Arts, and are to recognize distinguished career achievement in the visual and media art, as well as contributions they've made through philanthropy or community and professional activities.
"Whether as teachers, as advocates or as makers of art (and often as all three), the honorees are leaders, advance guards of our developing culture," said Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson in a statement about this year's winners.
"Their work challenges our conventional versions of reality and helps us to redefine it. They probe and experiment, reaching beyond the boundaries of comfortable perception for new points of view."
The other 2004 laureates are:
Iain Baxter, a multimedia artist who studied zoology, biology, educational psychology and philosophy before studying fine arts
Eric Cameron, whose process of "thick painting" lays
hundreds of layers of paint over everyday objects
Garry Neill Kennedy, a former president of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design for 23 years
John Oswald, the "plunderphonics" musician whose practice of
combining existing music to change its nature and form has also been applied to photography and video
Ian Wallace, a Vancouver art instructor and large-format photographer whose work invokes the narrative of
historical paintings
Tom Hill, an Iroquois artist, historian, filmmaker and curator whose artistic efforts over the past 40 years are seen as bridge-building between native peoples and non-native peoples
Each laureate receives $15,000 and an original artwork by Walter Ostrom, the Nova Scotia ceramic artist who won the 2003 Saidye Bronfman Award.
The Governor General will present the awards at a Rideau Hall ceremony March 10. They will also be recognized in the House of Commons on March 11 and the National Gallery will present an exhibition of their works from March 10 to May 1.
Copyright (C) 2004 CBC. All rights reserved.
Anecdotes: I had seen Istvan's name in mail art circles before I got around to contacting him personally. What got me to do it was a curious concidence in the summer of 1986: I was on my way to UVic in the very early morning for a very early class, and got on the Number 14. For some reason I sat at the very back of the bus, something I never do. At the moment I sat down, the driver turned on the fan at the back of the bus, the one that blows on the rear window. A sheet of newspaper had been lying on top of the vent and it flew up and hit me in the back of the neck. I looked at it and there was a full-page article from the Globe and Mail about Istvan Kantor. From two days ago. I was probably the only person in the city who had any idea who he was, and the one page in a paper I never read that would have had any meaning to me had been waiting two days to plaster itself to the back of my neck. I thought this such a bizarre coincidence that I wrote to Istvan about it, and we started a correspondence.
In the summer of 1987 I met him personally in Montreal, where he was then living. A very interesting time! I found his place in Outremont and he showed me into his workroom. A moment later he came back with a flatiron and a can of rubber cement and said, "now I will perform an official Neoist greeting ceremony." He poured rubber cement on the iron, lit it (boy does that stuff burn) and waved it back and forth slowly in front of me while singing:
In the blue endless sky
A flaming iron flies
Mom says, Get up Daddy
Your breakfast is ready..."
(this is a song from one of the three record albums he has made)
Then he blew it out. We talked about his work for a while and then went out to dinner.
In the summer of 1989 I went to see him again in Montreal. I went with Alice, my then girlfriend. He greeted us (not the same way, though) and showed us some of his blood paintings (large lithos of Lenin he had taken from an abandoned factory in Budapest, where he was originally from, spattered with a large X of his own blood) and a small cube in his living room lined entriely on the inside with mirrors. It was his current project to go into this little mirrored cube for an hour each day and do something different while making a videotape. Shortly after this Alice broke up with me. I think this visit helped her to make up her mind that she didn't want to be with someone who had friends like Istvan.
Congratulations Istvan, from the Neoist Firing Centre!
'NO-HOLDS BARRED' ARTIST AMONG GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARD WINNERS
WebPosted Wed Mar 3 16:28:31 2004
Ottawa---A performance artist who once lay naked in a shallow grave with a vial of his own blood dribbling out of his anus is among seven winners of one of Canada's most prestigious visual arts awards this year.
Described by the jury for the 2004 Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts as a "no-holds-barred, neo-Dada" artist, Toronto-based Istvan Kantor is being honoured for his entire body of work, which blends music, kinetic sculpture, multimedia installations and, most famously, performance art.
In the early 1980s, Kantor began a series he eventually entitled his Blood Campaign .
In the first instalment, Restriction 1 , he suspended himself naked, filled his mouth with his own blood and assumed the lotus position. In Liaison Inter-Urbain he dug a shallow grave, inserted a vial of blood into his anus and contorted himself so that the blood flowed into his mouth.
He has also splattered his blood onto the walls of New York's Museum of Modern Art and Ottawa's National Gallery of Canada, then incanted a militant text donating the blood painting to the museum's permanent collections.
'Literal and personal' art
"Kantor's use of blood is literal and personal. More than feces or sperm, blood is the spurting, contagious prima material of life," wrote Daniel Baird, art editor of the New York-based arts and culture magazine The Brooklyn Rail.
The annual awards are paid for and administered by the Canada Council for the Arts, and are to recognize distinguished career achievement in the visual and media art, as well as contributions they've made through philanthropy or community and professional activities.
"Whether as teachers, as advocates or as makers of art (and often as all three), the honorees are leaders, advance guards of our developing culture," said Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson in a statement about this year's winners.
"Their work challenges our conventional versions of reality and helps us to redefine it. They probe and experiment, reaching beyond the boundaries of comfortable perception for new points of view."
The other 2004 laureates are:
Iain Baxter, a multimedia artist who studied zoology, biology, educational psychology and philosophy before studying fine arts
Eric Cameron, whose process of "thick painting" lays
hundreds of layers of paint over everyday objects
Garry Neill Kennedy, a former president of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design for 23 years
John Oswald, the "plunderphonics" musician whose practice of
combining existing music to change its nature and form has also been applied to photography and video
Ian Wallace, a Vancouver art instructor and large-format photographer whose work invokes the narrative of
historical paintings
Tom Hill, an Iroquois artist, historian, filmmaker and curator whose artistic efforts over the past 40 years are seen as bridge-building between native peoples and non-native peoples
Each laureate receives $15,000 and an original artwork by Walter Ostrom, the Nova Scotia ceramic artist who won the 2003 Saidye Bronfman Award.
The Governor General will present the awards at a Rideau Hall ceremony March 10. They will also be recognized in the House of Commons on March 11 and the National Gallery will present an exhibition of their works from March 10 to May 1.
Copyright (C) 2004 CBC. All rights reserved.
Anecdotes: I had seen Istvan's name in mail art circles before I got around to contacting him personally. What got me to do it was a curious concidence in the summer of 1986: I was on my way to UVic in the very early morning for a very early class, and got on the Number 14. For some reason I sat at the very back of the bus, something I never do. At the moment I sat down, the driver turned on the fan at the back of the bus, the one that blows on the rear window. A sheet of newspaper had been lying on top of the vent and it flew up and hit me in the back of the neck. I looked at it and there was a full-page article from the Globe and Mail about Istvan Kantor. From two days ago. I was probably the only person in the city who had any idea who he was, and the one page in a paper I never read that would have had any meaning to me had been waiting two days to plaster itself to the back of my neck. I thought this such a bizarre coincidence that I wrote to Istvan about it, and we started a correspondence.
In the summer of 1987 I met him personally in Montreal, where he was then living. A very interesting time! I found his place in Outremont and he showed me into his workroom. A moment later he came back with a flatiron and a can of rubber cement and said, "now I will perform an official Neoist greeting ceremony." He poured rubber cement on the iron, lit it (boy does that stuff burn) and waved it back and forth slowly in front of me while singing:
In the blue endless sky
A flaming iron flies
Mom says, Get up Daddy
Your breakfast is ready..."
(this is a song from one of the three record albums he has made)
Then he blew it out. We talked about his work for a while and then went out to dinner.
In the summer of 1989 I went to see him again in Montreal. I went with Alice, my then girlfriend. He greeted us (not the same way, though) and showed us some of his blood paintings (large lithos of Lenin he had taken from an abandoned factory in Budapest, where he was originally from, spattered with a large X of his own blood) and a small cube in his living room lined entriely on the inside with mirrors. It was his current project to go into this little mirrored cube for an hour each day and do something different while making a videotape. Shortly after this Alice broke up with me. I think this visit helped her to make up her mind that she didn't want to be with someone who had friends like Istvan.
Congratulations Istvan, from the Neoist Firing Centre!
