Meigh-Andrews, C. (2013) A History of Video Art. 2nd Revised edition. London. Bloomsbury Academic.

This book very much puts me in mind of creating my own and personal history of video art. Last year in the MA there were several student projects based upon text, including Elkin's Stories of Art where he so eloquently persuades of the individual map of art history and impressions.

http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/group-seminar-student-led.html

As an artist I probably know more than the usual viewer about the history of video art, and as a moving image artist I probably know more than perhaps painters, and yet I found that the book is certainly not reflective of my own idea of the history of video art.

Although books are fairly solid in that they are published and, in some cases, verified and referred to , thus building up what knowledge is, how inevitable it is that history will be revised as time moves on. For example, and I repeat myself from somewhere else in this blog of some years ago, many history books about art written in the late 20th century barely included mention of Louise Bourgeois, while a current book would doubtless cite her as being most influential to that century all along, even in relative obscurity until later in life. Its' a paradoxical conundrum, but reflects the overlapping waves of time and influence. Similarly, many of the omissions to emerge in future books about the history of video art are influences yet to be acknowledged, or even widely seen. We often look back and find what was significant.

It's a brilliant book, really interesting and informative - there really is nothing new under the sun, even in video art. It gives a shared language and frame of references for other moving image artists and is a great resource to discover artists, terms, movements, and so on.

My own personal history of video art, or my influences in moving image, is a project I would like to research some time after the MA. It's quite hard to grasp every frame of reference and influence - impossible, and yet video art or moving image does not exist in a vacuum, and so I would list significant images and painters that struck me over the years, the influence of film and TV, and especially the aesthetics of those from vanished times. The tech of glass fronted TV's, which I still use, the children's' TV which fed me, the evening light reflected in Glasgow tenement windows.

The book also discussed the debates over the claiming of terms amongst video art and film. Although I understand the importance of such histories, to me, now, it ends up as an argument between oil and acrylic painters that the other is not a real painter because of their medium and its provenance.

11th November 2014