Critical Writing Index

Electra Myths: Video, Modernism, Postmodernism

by Katherine Dieckmann

Art Journal, Fall 1985, v. 45, no. 3, pp. 195-203

This journal discusses about the relation between Machianation and Modernism, introuduces the massive exhibition Electra: Electricity and Electronics in 20th-Century Art which is cruicial to interrogation of technology, and explains how Electra, video and the postmodernism joint together. As Electra is the first recent large exhibition organized in the spirit of the multimedia shows of fifteen years ago, the history of electrical inventions in art can be found through video works exhibited in Electra. Its artworks are exempted from investigation into the nature of their mediums by the protective cloak of a scientific perspective; with this isolation, Electra propagates a modernist progress without consequence.

ITEM 1985.116 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

States of MindUmberto Boccioni

MontanaJane Veeder

WarheadNancy Burson