fbpx
Wikipedia

Kathy O'Dell

January 01, 1970

Kathy Rosalyn O'Dell (born 1950) is an art historian, theorist, curator, arts advocate, author, and special assistant to the Dean for Arts Partnerships at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. She is known for art theories, especially for contextualizing violence in performance art within social contracts and psychoanalytic theories.

Kathy O'Dell
Born
Kathy Rosalyn O'Dell

1950
Education
  • B.A., Colby College
  • M.A., University of California, Berkeley
  • Ph.D., Graduate Center of the City University of New York
Known forArt theory: violent practices in performance art

Early life and education edit

O'Dell, born in 1950,[1] is the daughter of L. Dwight O'Dell and Ruth Horner O'Dell, of Chaffee, New York.[2]

O'Dell earned her B.A. in French and Art from Colby College in 1973, and her M.A. in Art History in 1982 from the University of California, Berkeley. He masters thesis was Allan Kaprow: The Artist as Educator.[3] In 1992 she earned a Ph.D. in Art History from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.[4] Her dissertation was titled, Toward a theory of performance art: an investigation of its sites.[5]

O'Dell is married to John Mernit and they live in Catonsville, Maryland. They have one daughter.[6]

Career edit

After completing her baccalaureate degree, O'Dell worked initially as a financial advisor's assistant at Bill Lange Securities in San Francisco. For a year she was a gallery assistant at Daniel Weinberg Gallery, also in San Francisco, before becoming program coordinator at 80 Langton Street between 1976 and 1979. O'Dell held adjunct and visiting positions at School of Visual Arts, Adelphi University, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley. She joined the faculty of the Visual Arts department at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 1992.[4][7]

From 2001 to 2014, O'Dell served as Associate Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. She became Special Assistant to the Dean for Education and Arts Partnerships in 2014.[7]

Her research interests have focused on "performance art, global art, issues of violence, and the importance of the esoteric", and her academic interests include "contemporary art history and theory, as well as the writing practices of artists".[4] She is a co-founder and editor of Link: A Critical Journal on the Arts in Baltimore and the World.[8]

Selected publications edit

Books edit

In 1998, O'Dell published Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art, and the 1970s,[9] in which she posited that the growth of masochistic performance during the 1970s may be understood in context of societal responses to the Vietnam War and corresponding changes in social contract theories. Jane Harris of TDR: The Drama Review, wrote, "Contract with the Skin weaves a thorough and compelling narrative, laudable for its synthesis of contractual and psychoanalytic theories, its redemption of masochistic art practice, and its commitment to a much misunderstood group of artists. Her efforts to map a new terrain deserve nothing short of praise."[10] Tracy Warr wrote that the book makes a "... significant contribution to the contemporary critique of transgressive art in the last three decades."[11]

Art in America's review said that O'Dell places masochistic performances in the Vietnam-era political context, understanding them through psychological, social or legal contracts. She theorizes that masochistic performance artists point out trouble in social institutions —law and the home— which are founded upon contract principles. O'Dell transposes social contract into avant-garde performance.[12]

BOMB Magazine's review said,

In her astute analysis, O'Dell untangles the social, psychological and legal implications of such infamous creative acts as Chris Burden shooting himself, Vito Acconci biting his arm and filling the teeth marks with ink, Gina Pane slitting her lip with a razor blade and Ulay sewing his mouth shut while Marina Abramović attempted to articulate his thoughts. O'Dell argues that we need to move beyond the fact of pain and examine the ways in which these artists' masochistic strategies push the limits of an implicit contract between the performer and audience. O'Dell draws on an impressive range of sources to develop her theory of how masochism operates in these artists' work—and indeed it is her ability to draw connections between the psychological and legal aspects of the contract that enables us to make a conceptual leap beyond the fact of pain.

— Coco Fusco[13]

Mary Kelly, then chair of UCLA's Department of Art, described its focus and photographic documentation of 1970s artists Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, Gina Pane, collaborators Marina Abramović / Ulay, as well as late-1980s artists Bob Flanagan, David Wojnarowicz, Simon Leung, Catherine Opie, Ron Athey, Lutz Bacher, and Robby Garfinkel. Kelly wrote that O'Dell has made the first detailed study of heterogeneous, elusive movements of the 1970s, exposing gender bias of art criticism and introducing new critical apparatus to assess ephemeral art forms. Kelly concluded, "Kathy O'Dell has provided a scholarly, provocative, and important resource for historians of contemporary art."[14]

Henry Sayre of Art Journal commented on O'Dell's uncanny use of photographic documentation she has chosen to illustrate her argument. He continued, "The photograph does, at its best, reflect something that we recognize as a part of ourselves that has, until the moment we see it, remained hidden—or, more properly speaking, sublimated."[15]

In No Innocent Bystanders, Frazer Ward wrote of O'Dell's theories as expressed in Contract with the Skin:

...an idea of masochism derived from the philosopher Gilles Deleuze's encounter with the Marquis de Sade in Coldness and Cruelty, with its emphasis on the "masochistic contract." Writing about Chris Burden's Shoot, for instance, she says: "Each of the individuals involved, therefore, agreed to tacit or specified terms of a "contract" with the artist. . . . [T]he crucial implication of such masochistic performances concerns the everyday agreements—or contracts—that we all make with others but that may not be in our own best interests." The effect of this, for O'Dell, is to reveal the alienation bound up with such everyday agreements. Generally, the "masochistic" artists of the seventies, "wanted to reactivate a meeting of the minds, specifically in the form of a negotiation of differences between individuals or negotiation among the various identities inherent in one's own being."[16]

Selected exhibition catalogs, articles, and book chapters edit

O'Dell curated and published the exhibition catalog for Kate Millett, Sculptor: The First 38 Years in conjunction with the show held February 27–April 5, 1997, at the Fine Arts Gallery, University of Maryland.[17] John Dorsey of The Baltimore Sun wrote that the exhibit included Millett's most important series, and gave them a logical installation. O'Dell also produced "a praiseworthy catalog with an essay by Millett as well as O'Dell's own clear and thorough essay on Millett's work", including a video interview with Millett. Dorsey continued, "So there is much to like about this project. But repetition and lack of force make the work itself disappointing."[18] Critic Grace Glueck of The New York Times wrote, "No one gets by in 38 years without producing some clinkers, and there are more than a few in this show." Glueck criticized O'Dell's choices, saying she "should have used a firmer editorial hand."[19]

Other of her publications include:

  • O'Dell, Kathy. "Crossing Over the Line: Matt Mullican's Hypnosis Performances and the Power of Metaphor," in Matt Mullican: More Details from an Imaginary Universe, ed. Michael Tarantino. Porto, Portugal: Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, 2000: pages 24–25.
  • O'Dell, Kathy (1 November 1997). "Fluxus Feminus" (PDF). TDR. 41 (1): 43–60. doi:10.2307/1146571. JSTOR 1146571.
  • O'Dell, Kathy. (January 1988) "Through the Image Maze," Art in America, volume 76, number 1: pages 114–123.
  • O'Dell, Kathy (1 January 1997). "Displacing the Haptic: Performance Art, the Photographic Document, and the 1970s". Performance Research. 2 (1): 73–81. doi:10.1080/13528165.1997.10871536.

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ "U.S. Public Records Index, 1950-1993, Volume 2". ancestry.com. Retrieved 2018-11-16.
  2. ^ P.A., Stauffer Funeral Homes (November 2017). "Obituary for L. Dwight "Jack" O'Dell, Jr". Celebrating Life's Journey. Retrieved 2018-11-16.
  3. ^ Kathy Rosalyn O'Dell (1982). Allan Kaprow: The Artist as Educator. University of California, Berkeley.
  4. ^ a b c "Kathy O'Dell - Department of Visual Arts - UMBC". art.umbc.edu.
  5. ^ O'Dell, Kathy Rosalyn (1997). Toward a theory of performance art: an investigation of its sites (Thesis). Ann Arbor: UMI Dissertation Services. OCLC 924497776.
  6. ^ "Alumni at Large". Colby Magazine. 91 (4): 50. 26 September 2002.
  7. ^ a b O'Dell, Kathy (September 2018). "Curriculum Vitae" (PDF).
  8. ^ O'Dell, Kathy (1997). "Flux Feminus" (PDF). TDR/The Drama Review. 41 (1): 43–60. doi:10.2307/1146571. JSTOR 1146571.
  9. ^ O'Dell, Kathy (1998). "Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art and the 1970's" (PDF). Monoskop.org.
  10. ^ Harris, Jane (Summer 1999). "Book Review". TDR: The Drama Review. 43 (2): 157–159. doi:10.1162/dram.1999.43.2.157. S2CID 194043252.
  11. ^ Warr, Tracy (2001). "Book Reviews". Performance Research. 6 (1): 127–131.
  12. ^ Cash, Stephanie (March 1999). "Book Review". Art in America: 33–34.
  13. ^ Fusco, Coco (Fall 1998). "Kathy O'Dell's Contract With the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art, and the 1970s". BOMB Magazine: 10. Retrieved 2018-11-01. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  14. ^ Kelly, Mary (1998). Book Review: Contract with the Skin. University Press, UMN. Retrieved December 2, 2016.
  15. ^ Sayre, Henry (Spring 1999). "Reviews". Art Journal. 58 (1): 112–114. doi:10.2307/777900. JSTOR 777900.
  16. ^ Ward, Frazer (2011). No Innocent Bystanders: Performance Art and Audience (PDF). Hanover, New Hampshire: Dartmouth College Press. p. 121. ISBN 978-1-61168-336-3.
  17. ^ "Kate Millett, Sculptor: The First 38 Years - Specific Object". specificobject.com. Retrieved 2018-11-10.
  18. ^ "Unvarying imprisonment theme weakens Millett's sculpture". tribunedigital-baltimoresun. Retrieved 2018-11-10.
  19. ^ Glueck, Grace (7 November 1997). "Art in Review". The New York Times. Retrieved 2018-11-10.

External links edit

  • Kathy O'Dell, Arts Advocate on YouTube (video, 5:40)
  • ""Gunshow" Artist David Hess and UMBC Curator Kathy O'Dell from Midday". www.stitcher.com. (podcast, 9:00)

January 01, 1970
kathy, dell, kathy, rosalyn, dell, born, 1950, historian, theorist, curator, arts, advocate, author, special, assistant, dean, arts, partnerships, university, maryland, baltimore, county, known, theories, especially, contextualizing, violence, performance, wit. Kathy Rosalyn O Dell born 1950 is an art historian theorist curator arts advocate author and special assistant to the Dean for Arts Partnerships at the University of Maryland Baltimore County She is known for art theories especially for contextualizing violence in performance art within social contracts and psychoanalytic theories Kathy O DellBornKathy Rosalyn O Dell1950EducationB A Colby CollegeM A University of California BerkeleyPh D Graduate Center of the City University of New YorkKnown forArt theory violent practices in performance art Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Career 3 Selected publications 3 1 Books 3 2 Selected exhibition catalogs articles and book chapters 4 See also 5 References 6 External linksEarly life and education editO Dell born in 1950 1 is the daughter of L Dwight O Dell and Ruth Horner O Dell of Chaffee New York 2 O Dell earned her B A in French and Art from Colby College in 1973 and her M A in Art History in 1982 from the University of California Berkeley He masters thesis was Allan Kaprow The Artist as Educator 3 In 1992 she earned a Ph D in Art History from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York 4 Her dissertation was titled Toward a theory of performance art an investigation of its sites 5 O Dell is married to John Mernit and they live in Catonsville Maryland They have one daughter 6 Career editAfter completing her baccalaureate degree O Dell worked initially as a financial advisor s assistant at Bill Lange Securities in San Francisco For a year she was a gallery assistant at Daniel Weinberg Gallery also in San Francisco before becoming program coordinator at 80 Langton Street between 1976 and 1979 O Dell held adjunct and visiting positions at School of Visual Arts Adelphi University Stanford University and the University of California Berkeley She joined the faculty of the Visual Arts department at the University of Maryland Baltimore County in 1992 4 7 From 2001 to 2014 O Dell served as Associate Dean of the College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences She became Special Assistant to the Dean for Education and Arts Partnerships in 2014 7 Her research interests have focused on performance art global art issues of violence and the importance of the esoteric and her academic interests include contemporary art history and theory as well as the writing practices of artists 4 She is a co founder and editor of Link A Critical Journal on the Arts in Baltimore and the World 8 Selected publications editBooks edit In 1998 O Dell published Contract with the Skin Masochism Performance Art and the 1970s 9 in which she posited that the growth of masochistic performance during the 1970s may be understood in context of societal responses to the Vietnam War and corresponding changes in social contract theories Jane Harris of TDR The Drama Review wrote Contract with the Skin weaves a thorough and compelling narrative laudable for its synthesis of contractual and psychoanalytic theories its redemption of masochistic art practice and its commitment to a much misunderstood group of artists Her efforts to map a new terrain deserve nothing short of praise 10 Tracy Warr wrote that the book makes a significant contribution to the contemporary critique of transgressive art in the last three decades 11 Art in America s review said that O Dell places masochistic performances in the Vietnam era political context understanding them through psychological social or legal contracts She theorizes that masochistic performance artists point out trouble in social institutions law and the home which are founded upon contract principles O Dell transposes social contract into avant garde performance 12 BOMB Magazine s review said In her astute analysis O Dell untangles the social psychological and legal implications of such infamous creative acts as Chris Burden shooting himself Vito Acconci biting his arm and filling the teeth marks with ink Gina Pane slitting her lip with a razor blade and Ulay sewing his mouth shut while Marina Abramovic attempted to articulate his thoughts O Dell argues that we need to move beyond the fact of pain and examine the ways in which these artists masochistic strategies push the limits of an implicit contract between the performer and audience O Dell draws on an impressive range of sources to develop her theory of how masochism operates in these artists work and indeed it is her ability to draw connections between the psychological and legal aspects of the contract that enables us to make a conceptual leap beyond the fact of pain Coco Fusco 13 Mary Kelly then chair of UCLA s Department of Art described its focus and photographic documentation of 1970s artists Vito Acconci Chris Burden Gina Pane collaborators Marina Abramovic Ulay as well as late 1980s artists Bob Flanagan David Wojnarowicz Simon Leung Catherine Opie Ron Athey Lutz Bacher and Robby Garfinkel Kelly wrote that O Dell has made the first detailed study of heterogeneous elusive movements of the 1970s exposing gender bias of art criticism and introducing new critical apparatus to assess ephemeral art forms Kelly concluded Kathy O Dell has provided a scholarly provocative and important resource for historians of contemporary art 14 Henry Sayre of Art Journal commented on O Dell s uncanny use of photographic documentation she has chosen to illustrate her argument He continued The photograph does at its best reflect something that we recognize as a part of ourselves that has until the moment we see it remained hidden or more properly speaking sublimated 15 In No Innocent Bystanders Frazer Ward wrote of O Dell s theories as expressed in Contract with the Skin an idea of masochism derived from the philosopher Gilles Deleuze s encounter with the Marquis de Sade in Coldness and Cruelty with its emphasis on the masochistic contract Writing about Chris Burden s Shoot for instance she says Each of the individuals involved therefore agreed to tacit or specified terms of a contract with the artist T he crucial implication of such masochistic performances concerns the everyday agreements or contracts that we all make with others but that may not be in our own best interests The effect of this for O Dell is to reveal the alienation bound up with such everyday agreements Generally the masochistic artists of the seventies wanted to reactivate a meeting of the minds specifically in the form of a negotiation of differences between individuals or negotiation among the various identities inherent in one s own being 16 Selected exhibition catalogs articles and book chapters edit O Dell curated and published the exhibition catalog for Kate Millett Sculptor The First 38 Years in conjunction with the show held February 27 April 5 1997 at the Fine Arts Gallery University of Maryland 17 John Dorsey of The Baltimore Sun wrote that the exhibit included Millett s most important series and gave them a logical installation O Dell also produced a praiseworthy catalog with an essay by Millett as well as O Dell s own clear and thorough essay on Millett s work including a video interview with Millett Dorsey continued So there is much to like about this project But repetition and lack of force make the work itself disappointing 18 Critic Grace Glueck of The New York Times wrote No one gets by in 38 years without producing some clinkers and there are more than a few in this show Glueck criticized O Dell s choices saying she should have used a firmer editorial hand 19 Other of her publications include O Dell Kathy Crossing Over the Line Matt Mullican s Hypnosis Performances and the Power of Metaphor in Matt Mullican More Details from an Imaginary Universe ed Michael Tarantino Porto Portugal Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Serralves 2000 pages 24 25 O Dell Kathy 1 November 1997 Fluxus Feminus PDF TDR 41 1 43 60 doi 10 2307 1146571 JSTOR 1146571 O Dell Kathy January 1988 Through the Image Maze Art in America volume 76 number 1 pages 114 123 O Dell Kathy 1 January 1997 Displacing the Haptic Performance Art the Photographic Document and the 1970s Performance Research 2 1 73 81 doi 10 1080 13528165 1997 10871536 See also editFluxusReferences edit U S Public Records Index 1950 1993 Volume 2 ancestry com Retrieved 2018 11 16 P A Stauffer Funeral Homes November 2017 Obituary for L Dwight Jack O Dell Jr Celebrating Life s Journey Retrieved 2018 11 16 Kathy Rosalyn O Dell 1982 Allan Kaprow The Artist as Educator University of California Berkeley a b c Kathy O Dell Department of Visual Arts UMBC art umbc edu O Dell Kathy Rosalyn 1997 Toward a theory of performance art an investigation of its sites Thesis Ann Arbor UMI Dissertation Services OCLC 924497776 Alumni at Large Colby Magazine 91 4 50 26 September 2002 a b O Dell Kathy September 2018 Curriculum Vitae PDF O Dell Kathy 1997 Flux Feminus PDF TDR The Drama Review 41 1 43 60 doi 10 2307 1146571 JSTOR 1146571 O Dell Kathy 1998 Contract with the Skin Masochism Performance Art and the 1970 s PDF Monoskop org Harris Jane Summer 1999 Book Review TDR The Drama Review 43 2 157 159 doi 10 1162 dram 1999 43 2 157 S2CID 194043252 Warr Tracy 2001 Book Reviews Performance Research 6 1 127 131 Cash Stephanie March 1999 Book Review Art in America 33 34 Fusco Coco Fall 1998 Kathy O Dell s Contract With the Skin Masochism Performance Art and the 1970s BOMB Magazine 10 Retrieved 2018 11 01 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help Kelly Mary 1998 Book Review Contract with the Skin University Press UMN Retrieved December 2 2016 Sayre Henry Spring 1999 Reviews Art Journal 58 1 112 114 doi 10 2307 777900 JSTOR 777900 Ward Frazer 2011 No Innocent Bystanders Performance Art and Audience PDF Hanover New Hampshire Dartmouth College Press p 121 ISBN 978 1 61168 336 3 Kate Millett Sculptor The First 38 Years Specific Object specificobject com Retrieved 2018 11 10 Unvarying imprisonment theme weakens Millett s sculpture tribunedigital baltimoresun Retrieved 2018 11 10 Glueck Grace 7 November 1997 Art in Review The New York Times Retrieved 2018 11 10 Portals nbsp Biography nbsp Art nbsp LiteratureExternal links editKathy O Dell Arts Advocate on YouTube video 5 40 Gunshow Artist David Hess and UMBC Curator Kathy O Dell from Midday www stitcher com podcast 9 00 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Kathy O 27Dell amp oldid 1205946814, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

article

, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games.