BIOGRAPHY:
Hans Breder, F. Wendall Miller Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Art, created the Intermedia Area in the School of Art and Art History at The University of Iowa in 1968. The first University program of its kind to grant the MFA, UI’s Intermedia Area has, from the beginning, provided an arena within which to explore creative combustion in the liminal space, at first, between and among the fine arts and, later, between and among the fine arts and the liberal arts.
Breder himself has always worked in more than one medium. Formally trained as a painter in Hamburg, Germany, he came to New York City in l964 where his first work was exhibited at the Richard Feigen Gallery sculptural. Over the last thirty years he has worked with distinction in and between a number of media: painting, sculpture, photography, performance, video and electro-acoustic media; his intermedia work was included in the Whitney Biennials in 1987,1989, and 1991, “The First Group Exhibition of American Art in Moscow,” “An American Odyssey,” Madrid, 2004. Most recently he has been working on a piece commemorating the 150th anniversary of composer Robert Schumann commissioned by the University of Dortmund, Germany.
If interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches and an internationalist perspective have been central to Breder’s pedagogical vision, Intermedia’s visiting artist program is also key to understanding three decades of intermedia work at Iowa. Breder invited experimental intermedia artists and critics from NYC and Europe to spend time with his students in Iowa City. In 1969, Allan Kaprow collaborated with Intermedia students on “happenings;” in 1970, Robert Wilson collaborated with Intermedia students in developing “Deafman Glance” in Iowa City; in the early seventies Vito Acconci, Dick Higgins, Elaine Summers worked in collaboration with intermedia students. This visiting program remained intensely active for three decades: Trinh Minh-Ha, Donald Kuspit, Nam June Paik, Jean Dupuy, Nancy Spero, Ana Mendieta, Carolee Schneeman, Linda Montano, Karen Finley, George Kuchar, to mention just a few of the artists who brought the New York City art world to Iowa City.
URL: http://liminoid.net
|
