- Jack Goldstein and the CalArts MafiaOur Pickby Richard Hertz
- Vampire in the Text: Narratives in Contemporary Artby Jean Fisher
- Jack Goldstein x 10,000, Philip Kaiser, 2012 with contributionsOur Pickby Meg Cranston, Douglas Crimp and Alexander Dumbadze
- Art After Modernism: Rethinking RepresentationBy Brian Wallace
Important Art by Jack Goldstein
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1975)
In Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Jack Goldstein loops the familiar roaring lion that introduced films produced by the Hollywood film studio; the lion, isolated and framed by the curled golden film reels, is set against a bright red background. In Goldstein's film the lion roars repeatedly, no longer introducing a film, but rather becoming trapped in its own two minute cycle of repetition. Goldstein leaves the film studio's original Latin motto above the lion's head, Ars Gratia Artis, which translates to "Art for art's sake" and which takes on an ironic cast given the deliberately self-referential nature of his work.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was exhibited in Pictures, the important 1977 exhibition curated by art historian Douglas Crimp at Artists' Space in New York. Like many artworks produced by artists associated with the Pictures Generation, Goldstein's film serves to disrupt our relationship to familiar images and signs. For instance, through its repetition of the lion segment that preceded so many films, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer shows that the footage of the lion roaring plays both forward and backward. As artist Jordan Kantor describes, "This attempt to pass off 'backward' for 'forward' - a quirk of the source material underscored by Goldstein's manipulation - stands as a particularly compelling visual analogy for the cyclical nature of history and exploitation, as well as for the endless diet of recycled stories Hollywood dishes out." This visual device, produced in the edit, and exposed by Goldstein through its isolation and repetition serves to demystify one of the many methods employed to make moving images so compelling. Another artist Jennifer Bolande has described how Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer made the familiar film segment "become suspect." One of the most important uses of the simple, found footage in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer provided an astute criticism of our relationship to, and tendency to accept, the images that surround us.
A Suite of Nine 7-Inch Records with Sound Effects (1976)
In this suite of audio works, Jack Goldstein appropriated sound effects and transferred them to nine separate 45rpm 7-inch vinyl records. Some of the sounds include A German Shepard (on red vinyl), The Tornado (on purple vinyl), Three Felled Trees (on green vinyl), and The Dying Wind (on clear vinyl), among others. In appropriating the sounds instead of recording them himself, Goldstein seeks to question the role of authorship and originality in the art making process. Goldstein, though, did purposefully choose the color of the vinyl records because of the associations with the particular sounds, hence the trees on green vinyl and the wind on clear vinyl.
In many ways, Goldstein transforms the sounds into images, into narratives. Friend and artist Jennifer Bolande recalls listening to the records for the first time: "Next he put on Three Felled Trees, a green record. You hear some chopping, then a tree falling. Then some more chopping, then another tree falls. Chop, chop. Chop, chop, then the record ends. In order to hear the final tree fall, you have to turn the record over. The interrelatedness of expectation, imaginative space and physical space was extraordinary, a kind of spectacle unfolding within my own mind." Bolande also spoke of the importance of the distance of the sounds; for instance, the dog barking sounds like it comes from several yards over, and she remembered Goldstein saying, "Distance equals control." As in his films, Goldstein manipulates familiar sounds so that we might notice them for the first time, but creating the distance is crucial, for to be critical, one must have distance.
Two Fencers (1976)
First performed in Geneva in 1976, Goldstein's performance calls to mind a cinematic image staged in real life. Two fencers duel under a controlled spotlight that isolates the men against a dark background. During the fight, the sound of a swashbuckling fight, reminiscent of a Hollywood movie soundtrack, can be heard. Once one of the fencers appears to have killed the other, the lights go down, but the sound of the fight keeps playing at a lower volume for a further seven minutes. As with much of his work, Goldstein does not participate in the work, preferring instead to distance himself and, therefore, ideas of authorship as well.
In staging the tableaux, Goldstein reveals the tensions in how we view film. Writer Vera Dika explains, "This strategy allows us to contemplate the machine-made movement, the spectral body in a series of consecutive poses, the Hollywood musical score, and the move memories that float through our consciousness, now defamilarized in a stage performance to show us the 'cinematic' as a specific kind of experience." Here Goldstein sets up an image in a highly restrained manner, limiting what he shows, and separates the relationship between image and sound. Like other Pictures Generation artists he tests our relationship to familiar imagery and asserts the dominance of visual culture in our production of memory and relationship to our everyday lives.
Influences and Connections

- David Salle
- Matt Mullican
- James Welling
- Hiro Kosaka
- Cindy Sherman
- Jeff Koons
- Ashley Bickerton
- Michael Majerus
- Jennifer Bolande
- The Pictures Generation
- Neo-Geo
- Moving Image Art