David Bowie performing Quicksand at The Capitol Theater as part of MTV’s short-lived live series on The 10 Spot.  Seems like the best place to get this kind of programming on American television these days is Later… With Jools Holland, on Ovation.

This is a particularly entertaining episode of Paul H-O’s longstanding documentary series, now being considered an important and unique document of the ’90s New York art world, Gallery Beat.

Piet Mondrian - Broadway Boogie Woogie (1921)

VS

Mark Bradford - Kryptonite (2006)

via Rhizome and White Box Projects’ press release:

Since his first Apparition on Tournez Manege (1993), Matthieu Laurette has been developing an ongoing series of what he calls ‘Apparitions’ on TV and in the media. (In French, the word apparition means both ‘apparition’ and ‘appearances’). ForPandora’s Sound Box, Laurette will develop a new performative series of Apparitions, airing on various American national TV channels from October 27 through November 1st, and continuously on the Video Box in White Box’s exterior window. For the opening on November 2nd, Matthieu Laurette will conceive a site-specific related performative event.

Here is Matthieu’s appearance on The Today Show, NBC, on October 30 (really only the first few seconds):

Many will probably find a gesture like Laurette’s comparable to a very lighthearted form of reality hacking. But to penetrate American network television with a figure such as Jacques Ranciere, who operates in a sphere that has virtually no presence in the medium (in the US anyway), and to do so with clever, not ham-fisted, detournement, actually seems refreshingly powerful. Also, in that the JACQUES RANCIERE IS SO COOL sign bobs/floats around in a disembodied fashion, it really does resemble an apparition. I wonder if doing this during a Halloween special was intended.

Perhaps it’s a stretch, but I am reminded of Chris Burden’s 1972 piece TV Hijack, in which he held his interview hostage, literally commandeering the television medium for artistic purposes. What’s interesting is how two generations of artists think to execute an effectively similar gesture in such different ways.

Chris Burden, TV Hijack, 1972

You can read a full account of TV Hijack on Rhizome

In Jerry Saltz’s retrospective essay on the last 40 years of art in New York, he mentions Laurie Anderson’s ‘O Superman’, which rose to number 2 on the British charts, as a watershed moment when New York artists realized exposure beyond the art world was possible.