Elliott Linwood (born July 14, 1956) is an
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
conceptual artist known for his large-scale photo grids and cross-referencing sculptural installations. He is based in
San Diego, California
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...
.
Early life, career and education
Linwood was born July 14, 1956, in Lowell and attended Billerica Memorial High School in Massachusetts before moving to
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
when he was nineteen. He came out as a gay man just before the
AIDS
Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...
epidemic struck. Testing positive for the HIV virus in the early 1980s led him to a life of activism around this condition. Linwood worked in the field of electronic publishing most of his life. He earned dual bachelor's degrees in sociocultural anthropology and philosophy from
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
(NYU) in 1982, then attended the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
through 1983. He earned dual master's degrees in Arts and Education from
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different b ...
's (SFSU) Interdisciplinary Arts Program in 1993. He attended
New College School of Law in San Francisco through a state-funded HIV empowerment grant, and became a California attorney in 2002.
Influences
Linwood was influenced by the work of
Christine Tamblyn, a feminist media artist and critic, who was Linwood's instructor and mentor at SFSU. Tamblyn studied under
Allan Kaprow
Allan Kaprow (August 23, 1927 – April 5, 2006) was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as ...
, the originator of
Happening
A happening is a performance, event, or situation art, usually as performance art. The term was first used by Allan Kaprow during the 1950s to describe a range of art-related events.
History
Origins
Allan Kaprow first coined the term "happen ...
s and Life Art, at the
University of California San Diego
The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...
. Through Tamblyn's tutelage Linwood learned about the performative aspects of Life Art. In a 1991 interview with her Linwood wrote, "In her role as art instructor, Christine Tamblyn teaches that happenings, process-oriented conceptual art, body art, feminist art, persona art, even documentation art . . . can all be considered 'Life Art." At NYU Linwood was also introduced to works of anthropologist
Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980) was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. His writings include '' Steps to an ...
which analyzed rituals using
cybernetics
Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics is named after an example of circular causal feedback, that of steering a ship, where the helmsperson m ...
and
systems theory models. These ideas, combined with his practical knowledge of computer programming and design of index and list publications, informed his art practice.
Film director
Dereck Jarman's movie ''Blue'''','' also influenced work that Linwood presented in "Share Your Vision," for which he won first place and an award. This outreach exhibition was organized to raise awareness about
CMV retinitis
Cytomegalovirus retinitis, also known as CMV retinitis, is an inflammation of the retina of the eye that can lead to blindness. Caused by human cytomegalovirus, it occurs predominantly in people whose immune system has been compromised, 15-40% of ...
, a preventable condition that causes blindness in people with compromised immune systems. Organized by Visual AIDS and
Roche Pharmaceuticals, the show was presented at
Artists Space
Artists Space is a non-profit art gallery and arts organization first established at 155 Wooster Street in Soho, New York City. Founded in 1972 by Irving Sandler and Trudie Grace and funded by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), Artist ...
in New York City in 2003. An homage to Jarman's film (consisting entirely of a blue lit movie screen with dialog of the artist visiting doctors about his loss of sight) appears in Linwood's ''Halos,'' which reads as blurred silhouettes like dark pupils immersed in a field of iris blue light.
Teaching
Linwood developed core graduate curricula in Life Art which he taught at SFSU. These seminars explored conceptual and de-materialized art forms, and ephemera (printed matter, video, digital communication, etc.) generated around performance spectacles, as documentary records, which might then be commodified.
Cultural criticism
Linwood wrote for ''High Performance Magazine'' in Los Angeles, and the ''Bay Area Reporter'', ''The Sentinel'' and ''PhotoMetro'' in San Francisco from 1990 to 1994. Some of the writers and artists Linwood wrote about include
Christine Tamblyn,
Nao Bustamante
Nao Bustamante (born September 3, 1969) is a Chicana interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator from the San Joaquin Valley in California. Her artistic practice encompasses performance art, sculpture, installation, and video and explores issu ...
,
Sheree Rose,
Millie Wilson,
Carrie Mae Weems,
Diamanda Gallas, The Theory Girls,
Jerome Caja
Jerome Caja (1958-1995) was an American mixed-media painter and Queercore performance artist in San Francisco, California in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Early life and education
Jerome Caja was born on January 20, 1958 in Cleveland, Ohio. Raised in ...
, Cliff Hengst,
Paul Monette
Paul Landry Monette (October 16, 1945 – February 10, 1995) was an American author, poet, and activist best known for his books about gay relationships.
Early life and career
Monette was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and graduated from Phil ...
,
Sapphire
Sapphire is a precious gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum, consisting of aluminium oxide () with trace amounts of elements such as iron, titanium, chromium, vanadium, or magnesium. The name sapphire is derived via the Latin "sapphir ...
,
Dodie Bellamy
Dodie Bellamy (born 1951) is an American novelist, nonfiction author, journalist, educator and editor. Her book, ''Cunt-Ups'' (2001) won the 2002 Firecracker Alternative Book Award. Her work is frequently associated with that of the New Narrativ ...
,
Kevin Killian
Kevin Killian (December 24, 1952 – June 15, 2019) was an American poet, author, editor, and playwright primarily of LGBT literature. ''My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer'', which he co-edited with Peter Gizzi, wo ...
,
Justin Chin, The Hittite Empire,
Joe Goode
Joe Goode (born 1937) is an American artist who attended the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles from 1959–1961. Originally born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Goode made a name for himself in Los Angeles through his cloud imagery and milk bot ...
and others.
"Stand Up Theory"
Describing the phenomenon of witnessing several prominent Bay Area theorists using body art and other types of performance to demonstrate the gaps between subcultural concerns and dominant cultural assumptions, Linwood coined the term "Stand Up Theory" to highlight how these performance artists highjacked the mic to seduce, ambush, and educate their audiences. Linwood's sculptural works deploy these strategies. Of ''Initiation,'' a sculpture referencing AIDS and made of honey, Tamblyn wrote, "The piece adroitly expressed the melancholic sensibility that the disease evokes by capitalizing on honey's association with seduction, entrapment and preservation."
Photo grids & cross-referencing installations
![Halos](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Halos.jpg)
Linwood is best known for his large-scale photo grids composed of original and found images culled from the environment, the Internet, cult movies and magazine ads. His cross-referencing installations are similarly made up of found and fabricated objects. Both bodies of work share similar characteristics, such as a non-linear viewpoint and an indexical relationship between the images and objects presented, which in turn point to things outside their framing device. His sculptures, ''Initiation,'' and ''Resistance,'' and his projection ''Citizen Pan,'' were displayed in ''A Living Testament of the Blood Fairies'' at Artists Space in New York in 1997, an exhibition that Frank Moore curated around text-based work.
Reception
![Swarm_Installation](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Swarm_Installation.jpg)
Holland Cotter in the April 1997 ''Art in America'' wrote of the exhibition: "The bittersweet tone was set
ypieces by Elliott Linwood which opened the show. One was a slide projection of words from Sir J.M. Barrie's ''Peter Pan:'' 'When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and spread over the entire world, and that was the beginning of fairies. But all the fairies are dying now because children know such a lot they don't believe or laugh anymore.'" Bill Arning, in the December 10, 1996 ''Village Voice'' also wrote about Linwood's work in the exhibition, "This synthesis of queer politics, camp humour, dark children's stories, and magic sets us up for a different kind of AIDS show than New York has seen before."
Awards
* 1994, California Arts Council Fellowship, Sacramento, CA
* 1994, John Caldwell Award for Excellence administered by Visual AID, San Francisco, CA
* 1996, Art Matter Grant and Artists Space Grant, New York, NY
* 2003, Share Your Vision Award presented by Visual AIDS and funded by Roche Pharmaceuticals, New York, NY
Further reading
* Strong, Strong (2003). "Sharing a Vision," ''Art and Understanding,'' December, p. 21, repro.
* Forbes, Rhomylly (2003). "Living Testament," ''Art and Understanding,'' November, pp. 20–21
* Gould, Claudia (1998). ''5000 Artists Return to Artists Space: 25 Years,'' Artists Space, New York, NY, p. 293 repro.
* Cotter, Holland (1997). "The Stuff Life is Made of," ''Art in America,'' April, pp. 50–51, repro.
* Arning, Arning (1996). "Days with Art," ''Village Voice,'' December 10, p. 95
* ''Art in America'' (1996). "Previews," August, p. 25
* Walker, Hamza (1995). ''Better Living Through Chemistry,'' Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago, IL, repro.
* Hormel, Julie (1994). ''Visions Art Quarterly,'' Winter'','' pp. 336–37, repro.
* Roth, David M. (1994). "Marked Man," ''Artweek,'' November 3, p. 12, repro.
* Wolf, Sara (1994). "Corpus Memorandum," ''Visions Art Quarterly,'' Summer, p. 22
* Darling, Michael (1994). "Skin Deep," ''Artweek'', February 3, back cover
* Levi Strauss, David (1993). "Review," ''Artforum'', "summer, pp. 114-115
* Tamblyn, Christine (1993). "Boys Club, Crafthut, Carnival or Cyberspace?," ''High Performance,'' Summer'','' pp. 60, 62, repro.
* Roche, Harry (1993). "Tongue in Cheek," ''San Francisco Sentinel,'' August 25, p. 28, repro.
* Helfand, Glen (1993). "Like a Den of Inequity," ''San Francisco Weekly,'' August 4, p. 13, repro.
* Fazzolari, Bruno (1992). "Rites of Suffering," ''Artweek,'' December 17, repro.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Linwood, Elliott
1956 births
Living people
20th-century American artists
21st-century American artists
American male artists
Artists from Lowell, Massachusetts
Artists from Massachusetts
Artists from the San Francisco Bay Area
California lawyers
American conceptual artists
American gay artists
LGBT people from California
LGBT people from Massachusetts
New College of California alumni
New York University alumni
People with HIV/AIDS
San Francisco State University alumni
San Francisco State University faculty
University of Chicago alumni
20th-century American male artists
Lawyers with disabilities