In this unit, we take a look at artists engaging with narrative, that is, telling stories, as well as artists who are interested in exploring the idea of time. In some cases, the use of time in art can span the entire career of an artist, as in the case of On Kawara and Roman Opalka, and in other cases artists such as Hiroshi Sugimoto condense time down to one still photograph.

Some artists, such as Jeff Wall and Ilya Kabakov, arrange images and tableaux that are evocative of a narrative and capture a moment in time that leads the viewer into a story or scene. Others arrange their works so that viewers experience a narrative piece by piece, sometimes coming to realize that the narrative or narrator has been unreliable.

In postmodern artworks, narratives are mostly self-conscious and aware of their own limitations. Just as postmodern theorists believe that identity in contingent, shifting, unfixed, and artificial, narratives are also perceived as biased, limited, fictional, or incomplete. Artists such as Cindy Sherman explore both the shifting nature of identity and the shorthand coded tropes of types of characters, especially of women, in her series "Untitled Film Stills."

Sherman refers to film and movies in her photographic works, but artists who are interested in narrative and time also often directly use film or video as a medium, because of the element of time that is implicit in film. Many artists who work with film and video explore the techniques of manipulation of time that these media allow, and which audiences are familiar with as a result of commercial films and TV. However, artists are free to push these forms even further, since audiences do not expect coherent narrative or tight editing the same way they might in a conventional movie theater. Artists use loops, play with forwards and backwards, and splice together discontinuous scenes.

Themes and Questions for Unit 6: Art and Narrative and Time

Narratives are partial, incomplete, and unreliable, and often refer to other works or common tropes, using appropriation and pastiche.

The difference between "real" time and movie or "reel" time is explored and exploited.

Artists try to capture or represent time, specific moments, and our experience of time, memory, and history.

Unit 6 Slides (pptx)

Unit 6 Readings 1

Unit 6 Watch List and readings 2

Study Tools:

Unit 6 Content and Readings Google Doc

Unit 6 Content and Readings MS Word docx