James Lee Byars

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

James Lee Byars (born April 10, 1932 in Detroit , † May 23, 1997 in Cairo ) was an American artist.

life and work

Byars studied art, psychology and philosophy at Wayne State University in his hometown from 1955 to 1959. In the early 1950s he attended the "Merríl Palmer School for Human Development". He was interested in myth , magic, and madness . From 1957 he made several trips to Japan, including Kyoto . In 1960 he made stone sculptures for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and in 1967 performed The Gold Thread Parade at dawn on Wall Street , New York. In 1969 he received an invitation to the Hudson Institute in Croton-On-Hudson in New York and founded the "World Question Center" there. In the same year he met the Wittgenstein expert Elizabeth Anscombe in Oxford and Joseph Beuys in Düsseldorf . Since the early 1970s, the American artist had an international presence, particularly in Europe, with performances , objects, sculptures and spaces.

Golden Tower in Venice

In 1974 he was a guest of the Berlin artist program of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in Berlin, where he designed the Golden Tower (Der goldene Turm) in the Galerie Springer. a. at the documenta 7 in Kassel . Works by James Lee Byars have also been shown at documenta 5 , documenta 6 and documenta 8 . 1980 and 1986 he participated in the Biennale in Venice in part and called itself in 1986. "Poet of the Gondola" (poet of the Gondola). At the "Alchimia" exhibition he showed The Golden Tower with Changing Tops (The golden tower with changing tops).

In 1994 he (the "magician of silence") was awarded the Wolfgang Hahn Prize . The Museum Ludwig , Cologne received THE PERFECT SMILE , the first immaterial work of art in a museum, on permanent loan from the Friends of the Museum.

James Lee Byars lived and worked in New York and Cairo.

Exhibitions (selection)

literature

  • Thomas Deecke: James Lee Byars monograph. In: KUNSTmagazin No. 1/1979 , Jg. 19, D. 40ff.
  • Thomas Deecke: James Lee Byars. Catalog Westfälischer Kunstverein , Münster 1982.
  • Suzanne Paget: James Lee Byars. Catalog of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1983.
  • Rudi Fuchs : The cube book - James Lee Byars. Catalog Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, 1983.
  • Jürgen Harten : James Lee Byars - Palace of Philosophy. Catalog Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 1986.
  • Rudi Fuchs: James Lee Byars - The palace of good luck. Catalog Castello di Rivoli, 1989.
  • Wieland Schmied : Presence and Eternity. Traces of the transcendent in the art of our time , Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin, April 7 to June 24, 1990, Edition Cantz, Stuttgart 1990; ISBN 3-89322-179-4
  • Guy Schraenen: James Lee Byars - Perfect is my death word. Catalog Neues Museum Weserburg Bremen, 1995
  • Viola Michely: luck in art? The work of James Lee Byars (dissertation Bochum 1998), Reimer Verlag Berlin 1999.
  • Carl Haenlein (Ed.): James Lee Byars - The Epitaph of Con. Art is which Questions have disappeared? Catalog of the Kestner Society, Hanover for the exhibition from July 3 to September 18, 1999.
  • Viola Michely: Death as a Performance? James Lee Byars or Long live the performative power of art , in: Kunstforum International Vol. 152 Oct. - Dec. 2000, Art without Work, pp. 104–118.
  • Viola Michely: Letter art works - folded, wrinkled and curled, the whole sensual world at your fingertips , in: Catalog of the exhibition: James Lee Byars, Letters to Joseph Beuys, Museum Schloss Moyland, 2000.
  • K. Ottmann: James Lee Byars - Life, Love and Death. Catalog Schirn-Kunsthalle Frankfurt a. M., 2004.
  • Viola Michely: The Present Perfect of Painting , in: K. Ottmann: James Lee Byars - Life, Love and Death , s. o., pp. 133-142.
  • Thomas Deecke: James Lee Byars - "Say something perfect about me" In: Artists - Critical Lexicon of Contemporary Art. Issue 76, issue 24, Munich 2006.
  • Viola Michely: Why James Lee Byars became an artist or the eternal search for perfection , in: I'm full of Byars. A homage. Catalog of the exhibition at Kunsthalle Bern, 2008, pp. 198–218.
  • Heinrich Heil: In a flash of the perfect. Works by James Lee Byars and 100 Haiku for now . Piet Meyer Verlag, Bern 2010, ISBN 978-3-905799-08-8 .
  • Viola Michely: James Lee Byars Bril's Gone - A piece in three acts , in: Liebling Moyland, Museum Schloss Moyland 2017.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Description on the museum website, accessed on March 29, 2013 (English)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Byars, James Lee
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American artist
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Detroit
DATE OF DEATH May 23, 1997
Place of death Cairo