Victor Burgin
Encyclopedia
Victor Burgin is an artist
and a writer. Burgin first came to attention as a conceptual art
ist in the late 1960s and at that time was most noted for being a political photographer of the left, who would fuse photographs and words in the same picture. He has worked with photography
and film
, calling painting
"the anachronistic daubing of woven fabrics with coloured mud". His work is influenced by theorists and philosophers such as Karl Marx
, Sigmund Freud
, Michel Foucault
and Roland Barthes
.
in England
. He studied art
at the Royal College of Art
, in London
, from 1962 to 1965 (A.R.C.A., 1st Class, 1965) before going to the United States
to study at Yale University
(M.F.A. 1967).
from 1973 to 1988. From 1988 to 2001 Burgin lived and worked in San Francisco. He taught in the History of Consciousness
program at the University of California, Santa Cruz
, where he became Professor Emeritus of History of Consciousness. In 2000 he was Robert Gwathmey Chair in Art and Architecture, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York. From 2001 to 2006 he was Millard Professor of Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Burgin also teaches at the European Graduate School
in Saas-Fee
, Switzerland
. In 2005 he received an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Sheffield Hallam University
(Hon. DUniv).
for his exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Kettle's Yard
Gallery in Cambridge
and for a collection of his theoretical writings (The End of Art Theory) and a monograph of his visual work (Between).
1994 Permanent video installation for the Médiatheque d’Orléans, Ville d’Orléans, France.
1994 Design for permanent video installation for the Hotel Furkablick, Furkapasshöhe, Switzerland.
1993 Venise, 30 min video, Ville de Marseille, France.
1993 Poster for 'Images pour la lutte contre le sida', Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, France/Agence française de lutte contre le sida: national poster campaign with posters commissioned from an international selection of 35 artists.
1989 Original print for ‘Estampes et Revolution: 200 Ans Après,’ Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, France (100 sets of prints, commissioned from an international selection of artists, and distributed throughout France as part of the Bicentennial Celebration of the French Revolution).
1989 Fall, Video-wall [Edited version (9 monitors)], two minute videodisk programme, Tate Gallery, London.
1987 Fall, Video-wall (36 monitors), two minute videodisk programme, Mississauga Shopping Mall, and other locations, Toronto.
1976 'What does possession mean to you?,’ color poster, 1000 copies posted in the streets in the center of Newcastle upon Tyne, summer; other poster works, various dates.
2008 Components of a Practice, Skira
2007 Objets Temporels, Boulouch, Nathalie; Mavridorakis, Valérie; Perreau, David (Eds.), Presses Universitaires de Rennes
2006 Victor Burgin—Voyage to Italy, Hatje Cantz
2004 The Remembered Film, London, Reaktion Books
2004 Ensayos, Barcelona, Gustavo Gili
2002 Relocating, London and Bristol, Arnolfini
2001 Victor Burgin, Barcelona, Fundació Antoni Tàpies
2000 Shadowed, London, Architectural Association
2000 Victor Burgin: Robert Gwathmey Lectures, New York, Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
1997 Venise, London, Black Dog Publishing
1997 Szerelmes Levelek/Love Letters, Mücsarnok Museum, Budapest
1996 In/Different Spaces: place and memory in visual culture, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press
1996 Some Cities, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, and London, Reaktion Books
1995 Japanese translation of: The End of Art Theory: Criticism and Postmodernity (see 1986, below), Tokyo, Keiso Shobo Publishers
1995 History Painting, Buffalo, University at Buffalo Art Gallery/Research Center in Art + Culture
1991 Passages, Lille, Musée d’art moderne de la Communaté Urbaine de Lille, Villeneuve d’Ascq
1989 Taideteorian Loppu, Helsinki, Suomen Valokuvataiteen Museon Säätiö, Literos, collection of essays by Burgin in Finnish translation
1988 Victor Burgin, Opere 1982-1986, Milan, Le Case d’Arte
1988 Victor Burgin: Office at Night and Danaïdes/Dames, Charlotte, North Carolina, Knight Gallery, City of Charlotte
1986 The End of Art Theory: Criticism and Postmodernity, Macmillan Press, London and Basingstoke, and Humanities Press International, New Jersey (1986), reprinted 1987, 1988, 1992, 1993, 1996
1986 Between, Basil Blackwell, Oxford and New York
1986 Formations of Fantasy, (co-edited with Donald, J. and Kaplan, C.), Methuen, London
1982 Thinking Photography, Victor Burgin (ed.), [Burgin: Introduction, three essays, bibliography], The Macmillan Press Ltd., London and Basingstoke, and Humanities Press International, New Jersey (1982), reprinted 1983, 1984, 1985, 1987 (twice), 1988, 1990, 1992, 1993, 1994
1982 Hôtel Latône, Calais, Edition Musée de Calais
1977 Family, New York, Lapp Princess Press, Ltd., in association with Printer Matter, Inc.
1977 Victor Burgin, Eindhoven, Stedelijk van abbemuseum
1976 Two Essays on Art, Photography and Semiotics, London, Robert Self Publications
1973 Work and Commentary, London, Latimer
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
and a writer. Burgin first came to attention as a conceptual art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
ist in the late 1960s and at that time was most noted for being a political photographer of the left, who would fuse photographs and words in the same picture. He has worked with photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
and film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
, calling painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
"the anachronistic daubing of woven fabrics with coloured mud". His work is influenced by theorists and philosophers such as Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
, Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
and Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...
.
Education
Burgin was born in SheffieldSheffield
Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...
in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. He studied art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
at the Royal College of Art
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...
, in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, from 1962 to 1965 (A.R.C.A., 1st Class, 1965) before going to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
to study at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
(M.F.A. 1967).
Academic career
Burgin taught at Trent Polytechnic from 1967 to 1973 and at the School of Communication, Polytechnic of Central LondonUniversity of Westminster
The University of Westminster is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom. Its origins go back to the foundation of the Royal Polytechnic Institution in 1838, and it was awarded university status in 1992.The university's headquarters and original campus are based on Regent...
from 1973 to 1988. From 1988 to 2001 Burgin lived and worked in San Francisco. He taught in the History of Consciousness
History of Consciousness
The History of Consciousness program is an interdisciplinary graduate program in the humanities with links to the sciences, social sciences, and arts at the University of California at Santa Cruz....
program at the University of California, Santa Cruz
University of California, Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...
, where he became Professor Emeritus of History of Consciousness. In 2000 he was Robert Gwathmey Chair in Art and Architecture, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York. From 2001 to 2006 he was Millard Professor of Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Burgin also teaches at the European Graduate School
European Graduate School
The European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland is a privately funded graduate school founded by the non-profit European Foundation of Interdisciplinary Studies. Its German name is Europäische Universität für Interdisziplinäre Studien...
in Saas-Fee
Saas-Fee
Saas-Fee is the main village in the Saastal, or the Saas Valley, and is a municipality in the district of Visp in the canton of Valais in Switzerland...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
. In 2005 he received an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Sheffield Hallam University
Sheffield Hallam University
Sheffield Hallam University is a higher education institution in South Yorkshire, England, based on two sites in Sheffield. City Campus is located in the city centre, close to Sheffield railway station, and Collegiate Crescent Campus is about two miles away, adjacent to Ecclesall Road in...
(Hon. DUniv).
Honours and awards
In 1986, Burgin was nominated for the Turner PrizeTurner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...
for his exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Kettle's Yard
Kettle's Yard
Kettle's Yard is an art gallery and house in Cambridge, England.- History and overview :Kettle's Yard was originally the Cambridge home of Jim Ede and his wife Helen. Moving to Cambridge in 1956, they converted four small cottages into one idiosyncratic house and a place to display Ede's collection...
Gallery in Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
and for a collection of his theoretical writings (The End of Art Theory) and a monograph of his visual work (Between).
Solo exhibitions
Burgin has mounted more than one hundred solo exhibitions internationally, since 1970.Public commissions
2004 Restored, Permanent video installation for London Symphony Orchestra, St. Luke’s, Old Street, London.1994 Permanent video installation for the Médiatheque d’Orléans, Ville d’Orléans, France.
1994 Design for permanent video installation for the Hotel Furkablick, Furkapasshöhe, Switzerland.
1993 Venise, 30 min video, Ville de Marseille, France.
1993 Poster for 'Images pour la lutte contre le sida', Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, France/Agence française de lutte contre le sida: national poster campaign with posters commissioned from an international selection of 35 artists.
1989 Original print for ‘Estampes et Revolution: 200 Ans Après,’ Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, France (100 sets of prints, commissioned from an international selection of artists, and distributed throughout France as part of the Bicentennial Celebration of the French Revolution).
1989 Fall, Video-wall [Edited version (9 monitors)], two minute videodisk programme, Tate Gallery, London.
1987 Fall, Video-wall (36 monitors), two minute videodisk programme, Mississauga Shopping Mall, and other locations, Toronto.
1976 'What does possession mean to you?,’ color poster, 1000 copies posted in the streets in the center of Newcastle upon Tyne, summer; other poster works, various dates.
Books and Monographs on or by Victor Burgin
2009 Situational Aesthetics, Leuven University Press2008 Components of a Practice, Skira
2007 Objets Temporels, Boulouch, Nathalie; Mavridorakis, Valérie; Perreau, David (Eds.), Presses Universitaires de Rennes
2006 Victor Burgin—Voyage to Italy, Hatje Cantz
2004 The Remembered Film, London, Reaktion Books
2004 Ensayos, Barcelona, Gustavo Gili
2002 Relocating, London and Bristol, Arnolfini
2001 Victor Burgin, Barcelona, Fundació Antoni Tàpies
2000 Shadowed, London, Architectural Association
2000 Victor Burgin: Robert Gwathmey Lectures, New York, Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
1997 Venise, London, Black Dog Publishing
1997 Szerelmes Levelek/Love Letters, Mücsarnok Museum, Budapest
1996 In/Different Spaces: place and memory in visual culture, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press
1996 Some Cities, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, and London, Reaktion Books
1995 Japanese translation of: The End of Art Theory: Criticism and Postmodernity (see 1986, below), Tokyo, Keiso Shobo Publishers
1995 History Painting, Buffalo, University at Buffalo Art Gallery/Research Center in Art + Culture
1991 Passages, Lille, Musée d’art moderne de la Communaté Urbaine de Lille, Villeneuve d’Ascq
1989 Taideteorian Loppu, Helsinki, Suomen Valokuvataiteen Museon Säätiö, Literos, collection of essays by Burgin in Finnish translation
1988 Victor Burgin, Opere 1982-1986, Milan, Le Case d’Arte
1988 Victor Burgin: Office at Night and Danaïdes/Dames, Charlotte, North Carolina, Knight Gallery, City of Charlotte
1986 The End of Art Theory: Criticism and Postmodernity, Macmillan Press, London and Basingstoke, and Humanities Press International, New Jersey (1986), reprinted 1987, 1988, 1992, 1993, 1996
1986 Between, Basil Blackwell, Oxford and New York
1986 Formations of Fantasy, (co-edited with Donald, J. and Kaplan, C.), Methuen, London
1982 Thinking Photography, Victor Burgin (ed.), [Burgin: Introduction, three essays, bibliography], The Macmillan Press Ltd., London and Basingstoke, and Humanities Press International, New Jersey (1982), reprinted 1983, 1984, 1985, 1987 (twice), 1988, 1990, 1992, 1993, 1994
1982 Hôtel Latône, Calais, Edition Musée de Calais
1977 Family, New York, Lapp Princess Press, Ltd., in association with Printer Matter, Inc.
1977 Victor Burgin, Eindhoven, Stedelijk van abbemuseum
1976 Two Essays on Art, Photography and Semiotics, London, Robert Self Publications
1973 Work and Commentary, London, Latimer
External links
- Victor Burgin @ European Graduate SchoolEuropean Graduate SchoolThe European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland is a privately funded graduate school founded by the non-profit European Foundation of Interdisciplinary Studies. Its German name is Europäische Universität für Interdisziplinäre Studien...
Biography and bibliography. - The Ubuweb-Anthology of Conceptual Writing Website
- The Separateness of Things on Tate Website
- Thomas Dreher: Intermedia Art: Konzeptuelle Kunst with two German articles on Victor Burgin (Memory Piece 1969, Park Edge 1987, Angelus Novus 1995)