Andrea Fraser: A sharp look at the art world

Andrea Fraser was born in the USA in 1965. The American artist stages performances, conceives and builds installations, creates conceptual art, and primarily engages with institutional critique within the art world .

Andrea Fraser currently ranks 264th in the “World Ranking of Art”, which artfacts.net has a computer create independently of ratings.

The computer compares how often artists appear in public, through exhibitions, participation in art festivals, inclusion in public collections, auctions and sales, etc. Andrea Fraser is therefore among the 300 most successful artists in the world and thus also among the 300 most well-known (prominent) artists in the world.

While their celebrity status isn't particularly high in the sense that far fewer people are interested in art than in the floppy, pop-culture side of "art and culture," artists, along with warmongering dictators, pop stars, and athletes, are among the four groups of people who become famous worldwide, not just in their home country or cultural sphere.

“For us normal” politicians, democratically elected and of good character, agitate first the region and then the country through the supposedly slow pace of their often very detailed compromise-finding work, and only in a few isolated figures do they agitate the whole world (because these isolated figures are already on their way to becoming warmongering dictators?).

Writers are primarily known within their own cultural sphere and only in a few exceptions (mass-market sex-love schmaltz, globally standardized crime fiction, the same blood-sucking vampires found worldwide) are they known around the world.

Actors? One might think so, given that the faces of series can now be confused between those from the DACH countries (DE, AT, CH), Scandinavia and the USA – at some point there will surely be a global series with an eternal ensemble of actors, whose continued existence social freezing clause is secured

But it's not that far yet; the (also) actress daughter of the famous football coach's ex-wife is known by everyone in the club's home country, but no one in the neighboring country; the celebrity of a humorous cabaret artist and/or a blonde private television beauty can remain limited to a very small region…

Dictators, athletes, pop stars, artists; although one must always remember that the “world of art” in our cultural sphere consisted, and still largely consists, of the core EU countries Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom and the USA (with their respective small neighboring states) quite recently.

These countries have long been the centers of all art exhibitions (and still host 90% of art exhibitions today), these countries art history , these countries invented and partly established art festivals a long time ago, these countries began collecting art for their citizens and exhibiting it in public museums accessible to everyone.

The last point in particular shows why the art world is growing so slowly: These countries are also the democratic nuclei of the modern age; art is closely linked to democracybecause only in free and democratic states is the free creation, practice, and appreciation of art possible.

The art of Andrea Fraser: Subtle irony sparks curiosity for more

Andrea Fraser goes a step further, examining the democratic processes within the global art world and becoming known for her critical analysis . Here are a few examples from Andrea Fraser's O17 oeuvre:

In the early 1990s, Fraser presented a series of “Gallery Talks”in which she critically examined forms of presentation, hierarchies, and mechanisms of exclusion within the art world. The performances took the form of guided tours through art institutions, such as the 1989 “Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk.” In this work, the artist, in the guise of lecturer “Jane Castleton,” leads a tour of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but has quite extraordinary things to report.

Instead of focusing on the art, the focus is increasingly on trivialities such as the cloakroom, toilets, museum shop and similar functional units (whose design and functional principles are actually found by considerably more people than some curators believe).

At the same time, the lecturer's presentation clarifies "the institution of the museum in its context", the origins and social tasks of museums; but also the invisible power structures and entrenched patterns of definition that can be seen in the arrangement and selection of the presented art and in the architecture of museums (which may be almost more interesting to many museum visitors than the art itself).

In 1991, Andrea Fraser wrote a script for the performance “May I Help You?” , combining quotes from the magazine Artnews, and reciting them to the public by gallery employees in a commercialized gallery exhibition featuring paintings by the artist Allan McCollum .

Unusual, because visitors and gallery staff usually only talk to each other if they already know each other personally; entertaining, because six different characters of gallery staff appear, from the seasoned art salesman to the annoying narrow-minded person who actually has nothing to do with the contemporary art he presents:

In 1997, Andrea Fraser gave “Inaugural Speech” the opening speech for “inSITE97” in San Diego, USA and Tijuana, Mexico

Or rather, the opening speeches, as curator, corporate sponsor, supervisory board member, person responsible for public funding… Fraser in turn compiles a catalogue of quotations, from the catalogue or from self-presentations of the respective “represented” actor obtained through interviews.

Summarized in one block (of 27 minutes), the speeches draw attention to the complex structural conditions under which and with which the actors in global art events work.

A small glimpse that aims to convey nothing more than to pique curiosity about the art of Andrea Fraser, of which there is of course much more to discover.

Even in her work after the turn of the millennium, Fraser analyzed – sometimes in a very humorous way – the structures of museums, galleries, and other art venues. Themes such as cultural transfer, the sponsorship of art exhibitions, and the significance of media coverage of artists and art events play a role in each of her works and are explored in a humorous, critical, and artistic manner.

But Fraser also accomplishes incredible feats of learning, for example, memorizing a long speech from a video recording. In a foreign language, German, complete with the entire drunken demeanor that his artist friend and legend Martin Kippenberger had celebrated in this impromptu speech delivered in 1995.

Gesture by gesture, word by word, Fraser brings Kippenberger, who died in 1997, back to life, as a personal approach to the artist she knew, but also to male-connoted artist clichés draw attention“Art Must Hang”, 2001).

And she doesn't hold back, sometimes even going all out publicly "into her partner's balls": The one-hour video performance "Untitled" from 2003 shows Andrea Fraser in a sexual encounter with an anonymous art collector. He probably hadn't dreamed that one could collect art in this way, but was immediately willing to pay $20,000 for his participation…

The video is shown in exhibitions and can also be purchased through Fraser's gallery, but only under numerous restrictions: It may only be shown publicly in consultation with Fraser, any public statement by the owner about the video must be coordinated with the artist, and the creation/publication of screenshots is prohibited.

The restrictions are supposedly part of the artistic concept, but sound more like an attempt to keep at least some of the world's weirdos/sex offenders away from the video. Here's a short excerpt (don't worry, it'll only please art lovers): www.youtube.com/watch?v=22FcckCeU_M.

How did Andrea Fraser get into art?

Andrea Fraser decided at a young age to pursue art as her profession. After graduating from high school, Fraser studied art until 1986 at New York University and the School of Visual Artsin New York.

During and after her studies, she received scholarships from Art Docent Matter Inc., the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art's Independent Study Program, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Fraser's studies were not her only encounter with academic art; in addition to her artistic work, Fraser taught or teaches at the Maine College of Art, Vermont College, the Whitney Independent Study Program, the Columbia University School of the Arts, the Center for Curatorial Studies Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, Leuphana University Lüneburg and currently at the University of California, Los Angeles, www.art.ucla.edu/faculty/fraser.html.

Public (artist) life, exhibitions, awards

Andrea Fraser lives and works in New York and Los Angeles.

In 1990, Andrea Fraser had her first public solo exhibition, “Andrea Fraser”, at the Christian Nagel Gallery in Cologne. 24 solo exhibitions and 206 group exhibitions .

She has also made appearances at art festivals (InSite97 San Diego CA, One Minute Film Festival 2003-2012, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art North Adams MA) and “a bit of a Biennale” (45th Venice Biennale 1993, where Fraser represented Austria together with Gerwald Rockenschaub and Christian Philipp Müller; Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art New York 1993 and 2012), but Andrea Fraser has little to fear from becoming a regular guest at the world's major biennials or in Kassel – this has supposedly happened quite often, but only to the lords of (artistic) creation and not to female creators, and certainly not to openly feminist creators.

in the exhibition “We call it Ludwig. The Museum turns 40!” at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne featuredTerms & Conditions, Ai Weiwei, Ei Arakawa & Michel Auder, Minerva Cuevas, Maria Eichhorn, Meschac Gaba, Guerrilla Girls, Hans Haacke, Diango Hernández, Candida Höfer, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Kuehn Malvezzi, Christian Philipp Müller, Marcel Odenbach, Ahmet Ögüt, Claes Oldenburg, Pratchaya Phinthong, Alexandra Pirici & Manuel Pelmuş, Gerhard Richter, Avery Singer, Jürgen Stollhans, Rosemarie Trockel, Villa Design Group and Christopher Williams (see article here on Kunstplaza: “Anniversary Exhibition 2016: Museum Ludwig presents Museum Ludwig”).

Recently, your video work “This meeting is being recorded” (until 27.2.2022) was shown at the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart , organized by curator Rhea Anastas and Eric Golo Stone, the artistic director of the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart.

Works of art by Andrea Fraser can be viewed in 18 public collections across the (above-mentioned, traditional) art world:

• Australia: Queensland Art Gallery + Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, QLD
• Belgium: Museum for Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerp, Vanhaerents Art Collection Brussels
• Germany: Daimler Contemporary Berlin, Museum Ludwig Cologne
• France: 49 NORD 6 EST Frac Lorraine Metz, Center Pompidou Paris
• Netherlands: De Hallen Haarlem
• Spain: CCA Andratx, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona
• USA: MOCA Grand Avenue Los Angeles, MoMA + Orchard 47 New York City, Art Institute Chicago, Philadelphia Museum of Art
• United Kingdom: The Saatchi Gallery + Tate Modern London, Fogg Museum Cambridge

In 2013, Andrea Fraser received the Wolfgang Hahn Prize from the Society for Modern Art at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. The prize was worth a total of 100,000 euros, including funds for the acquisition of a work for the Museum Ludwig, a presentation, and a publication.

In 2016, Andrea Fraser was awarded the Oskar Kokoschka Prize Vienna, 20,000 euros at her free disposal for “an artist of groundbreaking importance who has an impressively concise body of work and yet has remained completely unpredictable”, according to the jury's statement.

Andrea Fraser, short biography

• 1965 Andrea Fraser is born in Billings, Montana, USA
• 1966 – 1982 Frazer grows up in Berkeley, California
• 1982 – 1986 Art studies at New York University and the School of Visual Arts NY
• 1986 – 1996 Member of the feminist performance group “The V-Girls”, with Martha Baer, ​​Jessica Chalmers, Erin Cramer, Marianne Weems
• 1994 – 2001 Co-organizer of the “working-group exhibition Services”, which visited 8 venues in Europe and the USA
• 1997 – 1998 Member of the artists' initiative Parasite
• 2005 – 2008 Member of the Cooperative Art Gallery Orchard
• 2013 “Andrea Fraser”, Retrospective, Museum Ludwig Cologne
• 2013 Wolfgang Hahn Prize
• 2015 “Andrea Fraser”, Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art Salzburg
• 2016 “Andrea Fraser”, Retrospective, Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona
• 2016 “Andrea Fraser”, Retrospective, MUAC UNAM Mexico City
• 2016 Oskar Kokoschka Prize Vienna

In her native USA, Andrea Fraser has not yet been honored with a retrospective. In the award-winning online art magazine theculturetrip.com, you can read at theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/california/articles/andrea-fraser-too-shocking-for-a-us-retrospective by Americans “Too Shocking for a US Retrospective” (“Untitled,” the art with the sexual element, plays a role, of course).

You will also read there that the artist has long since accepted her banishment by prudish US art establishment figures in order to turn to the more interested and free European art audience…

Fraser essentially said, “I’m pleased with the stir that ‘Untitled’ has caused in the USA. The best part is that I’ve not only excited ordinary citizens, but also people from the innermost circles of the American art world…”

The enlightened European art public will surely welcome Andrea Fraser.