Main content
Course: Modernisms 1900-1980 > Unit 12
Lesson 1: Conceptual art- Conceptual Art: An Introduction
- Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs
- Martha Rosler, The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems
- Martha Rosler, Semiotics of the Kitchen
- The Case for Yoko Ono
- Vito Acconci, Following Piece
- John Baldessari, I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art
- John Baldessari, I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art
- Hans Haacke: "A Breed Apart" in South Africa
- Hans Haacke, Seurat's 'Les Poseuses' (small version)
- Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii
- Preserving Nam June Paik's Electronic Superhighway
- Jannis Kounellis, "Da inventare sul posto (To invent on the spot)"
- Juan Downey: Plato Now
- Cildo Meireles
- Eleanor Antin, Carving: A Traditional Sculpture
- Nauman, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths
- Mónica Mayer, The Clothesline
- Mary Kelly, Post-Partum Document
- Yayoi Kusama
- How to paint like Yayoi Kusama
- Yayoi Kusama, Narcissus Garden
- Yayoi Kusama, Pumpkin
© 2024 Khan AcademyTerms of usePrivacy PolicyCookie Notice
Jannis Kounellis, "Da inventare sul posto (To invent on the spot)"
Watch Jannis Kounellis combine painting music and dance. To learn more about what artists have to say, take our online course, Modern and Contemporary Art, 1945-1989. Created by The Museum of Modern Art.
Want to join the conversation?
- So, now the combination of everything where the theatre and its back drops are used in the framework of a specific place so then it is art. Is this correct? Is this art specificity?(1 vote)
- It's all art. even tanking up one's auto with petrol can be seen as art if done with the intention to be art. Intention trumps form.(3 votes)
Video transcript
Female: A painting. A ballerina. A violinist. Jannis Kounellis' Da inventare sul posto, which translates as To Invent on the Spot, brings all three together and is on view in the exhibition Ileana Sonnabend: Ambassador for the New. (violin music) The artist conceived of this painting and performance in 1972. The large canvas, partially covered by loose brush strokes of pink paint, depicts several measures of music from Igor Stravinsky's score
for the ballet Pulcinella. (violin music) The violinist repeats the
music reproduced on the canvass until he takes a short break, and then begins his repetitions once more. (violin music) A ballerina dances in
front of the painting, improvising her choreography
during the first cycle and then repeating her movements each time the music starts again. (violin music) The work was presented in 1972 at Documenta in Kassel, Germany, and then at Kounellis' first
solo gallery exhibition in the Unites States,
held at Sonnabend Gallery in New York that same year. Throughout the course of the exhibition, it will be performed
at MoMA over 40 times. Come join us in the invention.