Howard Fried (born June 14, 1946, in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American conceptual artist who became known in the 1970s for his pioneering work in video art, performance art, and installation art.
Howard Fried attended Syracuse University from 1964 to 1967, received his B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1968 and his M.F.A. from the University of California, Davis, in 1970. He founded the video and performance department (currently the New Genres Department) at the San Francisco Art Institute.Fried is associated with the first generation of conceptual artists in the San Francisco Bay Area, along with Terry Fox, Lynn Hershman, David Ireland, Paul Kos, and Tom Marioni, among others. His early works addressed such issues as decision making, conflict situations, control, predictability, learning, and cognitive processes.Fried has participated in numerous group exhibitions including the 1977, 1979, 1981, and 1983 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; documenta V, Kassel Germany; Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Museum of Conceptual Art, San Francisco; the Berkeley Art Museum, University of California; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; and the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco.Fried has held solo exhibitions at the de Saisset Art Gallery and Museum, University of Santa Clara, California; Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Canada; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Fort Worth Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas; and/or, Seattle, Washington; the Berkeley Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley; and apexart, New York, among others. A mid-career retrospective was organized at Berkeley Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley in 1983.
Selected works
The Seven States of Openness (1969–70) – installation, objects, drawings, text
All My Dirty Blue Clothes (1969) – installation
Spectral Analysis (1969) – installation
Studio Relocation(1970) – photo and text
1970 (1970) – Super 8 film installation
Chronometric Depth Perception (1970) – Super 8 film, photo and text
Inside the Harlequin: Approach-Avoidance III and II(1971) – Double Super 8 film installation
Synchromatic Baseball (September 5, 1971) – performance action, 16 Rose Street, San Francisco
40 Winks (December 10, 1971) – performance action, University Art Museum, Berkeley
