EARLY VIDEO ART by JAMES BYRNE
​Perception, Performance, and the Human Figure
Early Tapes and Installations 1974-1979
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Tapes are available for screening and acquisition at Electronic Arts Intermix
Installations are available through the artist at byrnefilms@gmail.com​
Scale Drawing, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Fransisco, 2019
During the mid-1970's, James Byrne developed a distinctive method of image making in which he used a hand-held portable camera as an extension of the body and of self. Byrne explored this aesthetic in early videos, video installations, and video performances,
of 1974-1980. His later installations and tapes, 1980-1990, reflect themes of personal spaces, natural landscapes, and choreographic collaboration.
"Physicality, performance, and the human figure, are central to my work during this early period. I challenged perception and space both inside the video frame and outside the frame by physically involving the viewer in the work itself."
James Byrne​
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This is a selection of important tapes and installations that were shown nationally and internationally. They can be viewed here and are available for exhibition.
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Early Tapes and Installations 1974 -1979
James Byrne's works of the 1970's are recognized as some of the most important American video art of this era and helped define a new medium. Byrne's rigorous approach and originality have been celebrated internationally in important exhibitions including the 1975 Whitney Biennial, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Video Art, ICA Philadelphia; Biennial De São Paulo; The Kitchen, New York; The Video Show, Serpentine Gallery, London; Video: An Overview, SFMOMA; 10e Biennale de Paris; Video Art, Gallery Paloma, Stockholm;
Video Art, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany; Directions 1981, Hirshhorn Museum;
James Byrne: Video Works, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinatti; and more recently
Videotapes: Early Video Art, Zacheta-National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland;
The Body Electric, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and many more.
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The restored works featured here are made from 40-50 year old analog videotapes. They have a distinctive and beautifully aged quality to them.
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Both 1974
Translucent 1974
Tangent 1975
"Both" and "Translucent" were featured in the 1975 Whitney Biennial - the first year video was shown at the Biennial. Later all three of these works were included in many other important exhibitions around the world including more recently
in 2020 at Zacheta-National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland.
Number Five 1976
"To view "Number Five", one lies underneath the hanging monitor on the same rug that I am lying on in the video. The viewer is in the same position I was when I recored the video. Except now, gravity is defied and the perception of up and down is reversed. The calm, meditative activity of throwing and catching a ball runs on a continuous loop. This is one of my favorite and successful pieces and premiered at the Hanson Cowles Gallery, Minneapolis."
James Byrne
Floor Ceiling 1975
Review of Floor Ceiling in Studio International, May/June 1976, by Lisa Lyons:​
Floor Ceiling is one example of James Byrne's environmental installations that integrate the monitor into a larger sculptural scheme.
His video works link the formal concerns of painting and sculpture to the phenomenological aspects of dance, movement and body art. He is unconcerned with electronic gimmickrey; he is drawn, instead, to technically uncomplicated, but conceptually and visually complex work.
​ Through the use of hanging monitors, wall drawings, props and his own presence, Byrne extends his two-dimensional art into the three-dimensional arena of the gallery space and into the space of the viewer.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
"Floor Ceiling is a two monitor single channel installation showing me moving from monitor to monitor with a hand held camera creating movement from the top monitor to the bottom monitor - and back again. I hang from the ceiling and drop down to the floor, among other vertical moves which mimic the viewers position in the gallery. A column of space is created between the monitors as the viewer looks up and down into deep space above and below.​ Questions of verticality, location, and gravity are explored."
James Byrne
Floor Ceiling premiered in 1975 at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and also exhibited in 1976 at the Kitchen, New York, and in 1977 at Hudson River Museum, Yonkers..
Scale Drawing 1975
Review of Scale Drawing, by Alicia Eler,
Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 30, 2019:
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The first piece visitors will see is James Byrne's Scale Drawing, originally created in 1975 and re-created in 2019 for this exhibition. A black outline of a man is drawn on the wall with a wide Sharpie, with the figure's left hand shown on an old television screen. This early investigation into the mediated body and television, in the Walker's permanent collection, acts as an anchor for the show.
"It was an icon for the show - a meditation on
da Vinci's Vitruvian Man," said curator Pavel Pys,
"It summarizes so much."
Scale Drawing at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis 2019
From the Walker Art Center catalogue, Akagawa, Byrne, Kahn, Leicester, by Curator Philip Larson, 1975:
In Scale Drawing, a life-size outline of the artist on the wall merges with images of his body on a monitor mounted on the same wall. The artist uses a tape measure to measure everything from the height of his own body to the diagonal of the video screen - each time voicing the measurement. This investigative act creates ambiguities of scale which challenges the "real' of our own world outside the work. ​​​​​​​​​​​
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Scale Drawing at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts,
San Francisco, 2019
Scale Drawing premiered at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1975, and showed there again in 2019. It is in the Walker Art Center's permanent collection. Scale Drawing also showed at The Kitchen, New York; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 2019, San Francisco; Dade County Museum of Art and Design 2020, Miami.
Works for Broadcast 1977
"I wanted to work in the context of broadcast television so I bought four 30-second commercial spots to be aired in regular commercial breaks during the
11 o"clock Friday night movie on WCCO Television in Minneapolis/St. Paul. There was little publicity. I wanted to engage, surprise, and confront the regular viewing audience."
​James Byrne
I Like Mechanics Magazines 1978
"In I Like Mechanics Magazines I used questions from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory as a rhetorical theme and wove in a texture of childhood experiences to form an intriguing, speculative self portrait.."
​ James Byrne
One Way 1979
"One Way" was a turning point. It marked the end of my body of work in which self was subject matter. It was the beginning of new work in which I turned the camera away from me and engaged in image making of the world around me. This simple gesture of rotating the camera 180 degrees had a profound impact.
I maintained the physicality of a body held camera but applied it in new and different ways."
James Byrne
From Electronic Arts Intermix Catalogue:
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One Way is a classic of perceptual video, droll yet visceral, pushing the dynamic of physicality to an outrageous extreme.
To startling and often comic effect, Byrne's seemingly self-propelled camera scrapes, digs, probes and careens against trees, signs, sidewalk, and fences — all tactilely experienced by the viewer from the point-of-view of the assertive camera.
The camera itself assumes an animated physical presence in this dramatic phenomenological experience, which demolishes the preciousness of the equipment and introduces landscape and body-based movement to Byrne's work.​​
One Way is in the permanent collection of
the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and has been screened around the world.
Videos, Installations, and Performances of the 1970's
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Horizontal Limitations 1972, 3:00, b/w
Stairs 1972, 5:00, b/w
An Everyday Tape 1973, 2:00, b/w
Surfaces 1973, 3:00, b/w
Unison 1973, 8:00, b/w
Vision 1973, 6:00, b/w
Wavelength 1974, 7:00, b/w
Handheld II 1974, 6:51, b/w, premiered 1975 Whitney Biennial
Both 1974, 3:45, b/w, premiered 1975 Whitney Biennial
Translucent 1974, 2:19, b/w, premiered 1975 Whitney Biennial
Tangent 1975, 4:21, b/w, premiered 1975 Walker Art Center
Scale Drawing 1975, installation, premiered 1975 Walker Art Center
Intra Intro 1975, installation, premiered Walker Art Center
Floor Ceiling 1975, installation, premiered Minneapolis Institute of Art
Morning Event No. 26 August 17, 1976, participatory performance event, Walker Art Center​
Number Five 1976, installation, premiered Hanson Cowles Gallery, Minneapolis
Number Eight 1976, installation, premiered Hanson Cowles Gallery, Minneapolis
Live 1976, performance, premiered Walker Art Center
Field Project October 31, 1976, large scale site specific installation, Memorial Stadium, University of Minnesota
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Works for Broadcast June 3, 1977, four 30 second commercials, WCCO Television broadcast
Do you Have Any Identification 1977, performance, premiered Walker Art Center
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Lens Activity 1978, 3:00, b/w
Four Square 1978, performance, premiered N.A.M.E. Gallery, Chicago
Axilla 1978, 7:00, b/w
I Like Mechanics Magazines 1978, 7:00, b/w
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One Way 1979, 8:00, b/w
Certain Events 1979, installation, premiered Walker Art Center
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Historical Note: Video in the 1970s was analog, had 525 lines of horizontal resolution, prone to dropouts (white horizontal flashes), pixels did not exist, and every time a copy was made the quality degraded. It was rudimentary technology. These videos look old because they are. I see this as a good thing. They represent a certain period in time and have aged well in my opinion. I like this look for what it is. Today our eyes are used to superior digital quality with millions of pixels and thousands of lines of resolution.
There was very little editing equipment available at this time for artists and that is one reason why many of us used continuous takes. Besides, editing was something that filmmakers did and video artists weren't interested in copying experimental film. We had other ideas. There was a cultural and aesthetic divide that was rarely crossed. Self was subject matter. Being on camera instead of behind it was the prevailing aesthetic. Maybe an ancient precursor to TikTok?
Many video artists came to video from conceptual art, performance art, photography, painting, and sculpture, body art, dance and not from film. Or like myself, I started my career in video art, and did not come to it from another medium.