Brian Dailey

Brian Dailey
2016
Born (1951-08-12)August 12, 1951
Pittsburg, California
Nationality American
Education

Otis Art Institute MFA, 1975

University of Southern California PhD 1987
Known for artist, international security
Movement conceptualism, performance, eclecticism

Brian Dailey (born August 12, 1951) is an American artist noted for his careers in both art and international relations. His work in a variety of mediums—including photography, film, installations, and painting—engages with the social, political, and cultural issues of our times and is not easily categorized. Dailey's art reflects his unconventional evolution as an artist, multifaceted life experiences, and national level involvement in arms control, space policy, intelligence systems, and international security.[1] He is based in the Washington DC metropolitan area and maintains studios in the District and Woodstock, Virginia.[2]

Background and early life

Dailey was born in Pittsburg, California. His parents divorced when he was three, precipitating his mother's return to her native New Zealand with Dailey and his sister and subsequent relocation to England. They returned to the United States in 1956 and resided in Santa Monica, California, where he spent his youth.[3] He took up photography at the age of 12, beginning his formal photographic training after entering Pacific Palisades High School.

Dailey attended Ventura College where he developed an interest in ceramic sculpture, shifting the direction of his art career.[4] On the basis of his portfolio, he was accepted directly into the Masters program at Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles where he became interested in performance, conceptual art, and video technology.[5]

Art Career in Los Angeles

As a student at Otis Art Institute (MFA, 1975) and in his ensuing art career in Los Angeles, Dailey participated in the creative experimentation defining the artistic milieu in California in this era.[6] In his installation works from this period, he explored the role of the artist in the causal process. His performance pieces placed an emphasis on active viewer engagement.[7]

Upon graduation from Otis, Dailey began his art career exhibiting his performance and conceptual works in various institutions in Los Angeles and was represented by the Roger Wong Gallery.[8] His work from this period includes painting, sculpture, and performance art, reflecting the pluralistic forms of creative expression and the political and social engagement generated by the Los Angeles artistic community.

Travel and exposure to diverse cultures had a significant impact on Dailey. During his art education, he traveled to Europe, visiting museums to study paintings and sculptures that inspired him as a student and visiting countries in the Eastern Bloc to learn about the communist political system. In 1976, Dailey set out to Japan with the aim of working with the director Akira Kurosawa, whose films were a source of inspiration. He traveled on the Trans Siberian Express to Japan, transiting through the Soviet Union.[9] Meeting artists and writers in East Berlin and along the train stops in Siberia, he became increasingly interested in international relations and the issue of artistic freedom in totalitarian regimes.

Dailey's residence in Japan was brief. Discovering that Kurosawa's professional and private life was at a nadir and confronting the challenges of working in Japan, he returned to Los Angeles where he worked with Sam Francis in his Litho Shop and with a number of other leading artists in his capacity as an assistant at ACE Gallery in Venice, California. He also worked for the architect James De Long, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright.[10] His growing interest in film and video led to his working as a grip at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, where he learned filmmaking. Having worked on AFI projects he began to work on his own films using a 16mm Beaulieu camera.

Arms Control and International Security

In 1981, Dailey's interest in international affairs and the Cold War led him to pursue a doctorate and a career in international relations. He studied arms control, Russian studies, and diplomatic history at the University of Southern California, receiving his degree in 1987 with a dissertation on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.[11]

Dailey’s career in international affairs began in 1984 with an internship as assistant director for chemical warfare negotiations in the Pentagon. In January 1985, he became an Adjunct Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California.[12] In this capacity, he managed a three-year Soviet deception project for the Pentagon's Director of Net Assessment and the U.S. Army as well as teaching courses on modern revolution and terrorism, nuclear targeting, strategic deception, and intelligence systems and products. In 1987, he co-edited and published the anthology, Soviet Strategic Deception.[13]

In January 1988, Dailey became a professional staff member of the Senate Armed Service Committee, assigned to the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and Nuclear Deterrence.[14] He was responsible for matters on arms control, missile defense, special access programs, as well as space and intelligence systems.[15] In that capacity, he was also the minority staff liaison to Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In 1992, he was appointed Executive Secretary of the National Space Council in the White House, where he was responsible for coordinating U.S. space policy for civil, commercial, defense, and intelligence issues.[16]

At the end of the Cold War, Dailey transitioned to the private sector. He left the White House in 1993 to work for the Lockheed Corporation, where he was responsible for commercial programs including their joint ventures in the former Soviet Union.[17] He went on to become a Senior Vice President and Corporate Officer of Lockheed Martin.[18] In the course of his work in art, government, and the private sector, he traveled to more than 80 countries on all continents more than 50 times to the Soviet Union and Russia.

Return to Art

Dailey returned to art full-time in 2008, leveraging his experiences in the intervening decades in his creative practice.[19] His approach to art is both conceptual and performance based, inviting the viewer's participation. In his frequent use of the photographic tableau vivant, Dailey explores topical existential questions and utilizes composite imagery as a vehicle for making critical commentary on contemporary social and political issues.[20] These staged "living pictures" have been featured in exhibitions in Europe and the United States (see selected exhibitions below).

Dailey's early interest in film resurfaces in his current practice. His video Jikai (2012) alludes to Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, employing a moth fatally drawn to light. Dedicated to Kurosawa, the video is a meditation on political disintegration. Jikai was screened on multiple synchronized monitors in New York City in February 2014 as the featured video in the Times Square Midnight Moment series.[21]

Dailey has had solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, and Bulgaria and participated in a number of group shows in the United States, Europe, and Russia. His mid-career retrospective, Declassified: Unraveling a Paradox, took place at the National Art Gallery, in 2014.[22] Dailey was a featured speaker at FotoDC 2015, presenting his American in Color project as part of a series of talks on photobooks.[23]

His current projects include Bulgaria in Democracy (funded in part by a grant from the America for Bulgaria Foundation[24] and the US Embassy, Sofia), the encrypted Riddle series, and the Words series, an international exploration of the role of language in the construction of cultural identity.[25]

Selected Exhibitions

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

1977

1976

1975

1973

1972

Publications

References

  1. ↑ Johnson Space Center Oral History Project: Brian Dailey
  2. ↑ Brian Dailey Art
  3. ↑ Joan Anderson, "And the Shenandoah County Award for Best Extra Goes to....," Mountain Courier (February 2015).
  4. ↑ "College Art Guild Winner," The Ventura County Star-Free Press (December 29, 1971):B-7
  5. ↑ Brian Dailey Art
  6. ↑ Louis Jacobson, "Brian Dailey on the Palette of American Politics"
  7. ↑
    • "Vice," High Performance 1, no. 1 (February 1978): 28–29
  8. ↑ Artists Files. Los Angeles Museum of Art / Roger Wong Gallery records. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
  9. ↑ Johnson Space Center Oral History Project: Brian Dailey, NASA, p. 8
  10. ↑ James De Long, Obituary, LA Times, May 2, 2013
  11. ↑ Brian D. Dailey, "Deception and Self-Deception in Arms Control: The ABM and Outer Space Treaties Reconsidered." Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Southern California, August 1987.
  12. ↑ Lockheed Martin Names Brian Dailey to New Consolidated Washington, D.C., Post
  13. ↑ Brian D. Dailey and Patrick J. Parker, ed., Soviet Strategic Deception, Lexington Books, 1987.
  14. ↑ Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty Hearings Before the Committee on Armed Services
  15. ↑ David C. Morrison, "Sam Nunn Inc.," National Journal (June 15, 1991): 1485
  16. ↑ Johnson Space Center Oral History Project: Brian Dailey
  17. ↑ Executive Profile: Brian D. Dailey
  18. ↑ Lockheed Martin Names Brian Dailey to New Consolidated Washington, D.C., Post
  19. ↑ Lockheed's Top Lobbyist Calling It a Career
  20. ↑ Brian Dailey Art
  21. ↑ February Midnight Moment to Showcase Brian Dailey's Moth to a Flame Video Showcasing the Power and Danger of Attraction (January 31, 2014):
  22. ↑ Lilyana Karadzhova, "Declassified: American Artist Brian Dailey Unravels Paradoxes in Sofia"
  23. ↑ FotoTalks, FotoDC 2015
  24. ↑ America for Bulgaria Foundation
  25. ↑ Brian Dailey Art
  26. ↑ "ONE Gallery at Cosmomoscow"
  27. ↑ Brian Dailey shows Bulgaria in colours
  28. ↑ World BNT Interview
  29. ↑ Brian Dailey at the National Assembly
  30. ↑ Embassy of the United States, Sofia Bulgaria, "Contemporary Art Foundation presents: Brian Dailey – Declassified: Unraveling a Paradox"
  31. ↑ Brian Dailey: Midnight Moment
  32. ↑ Steampunk@The Sangre
  33. ↑ "Brian Dailey," Wall Street International Magazine
  34. ↑ Project Biennial of Contemporary Art, D-0 ARK Underground 2013
  35. ↑ R.C. Baker, "PARTY ANIMALS: Photographer Brian Dailey zooms in on voters,” Village Voice (October 10, 2012).
  36. ↑ "Portraits," I-20 Gallery – New York, Flash Art, Reviews, International Edition, Vol. XLIV (October 2011): 108.
  37. ↑ Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art records, 1973–1988. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
  38. ↑
    • "Vice," High Performance 1, no. 1 (February 1978): 28–29

External links

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