Modern Sculpture: Artists in Their Own Words 9780520969827

Citation preview

MODERN SCULPTURE

64214int.indd i

22-05-12 4:50 AM

THE DOCUMENTS OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY ART JACK FL AM, GENER AL EDITOR ROBERT MOTHERWELL , FOUNDING EDITOR Volumes available from University of California Press: Art as Art: The Selected Writings of Ad Reinhardt, edited by Barbara Rose Memoirs of a Dada Drummer, by Richard Huelsenbeck, edited by Hans J. Kleinschmidt Matisse on Art, Revised Edition, edited by Jack Flam German Expressionism: Documents from the End of the Wilhelmine Empire to the Rise of National Socialism, edited by Rose-Carol Washton Long Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, edited by Jack Flam Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary, by Hugo Ball, edited by John Elderfield Pop Art: A Critical History, edited by Steven Henry Madoff The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell, edited by Stephanie Terenzio Conversations with Cézanne, edited by Michael Doran Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, edited by Alan Wilkinson Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art: A Documentary History, edited by Jack Flam with Miriam Deutch The Cubist Painters, Guillaume Apollinaire, translated, with commentary, by Peter Read The Writings of Robert Motherwell, edited by Dore Ashton with Joan Banach Russian and Soviet Views of Modern Western Art, 1890s to Mid-1930s, edited by Ilia Dorontchenkov, translated by Charles Rougle, consulting editor Nina Gurianova Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations, edited by Clark Coolidge, with an introduction by Dore Ashton David Smith: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Interviews, edited by Susan J. Cooke The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader: Writings, Interviews, and Critical Responses, edited by Jordana Moore Saggese Modern Sculpture: Artists in Their Own Words, edited by Douglas Dreishpoon

64214int.indd ii

22-05-12 4:50 AM

Modern Sculpture Artists in Their Own Words E D I T E D B Y D O U G L A S D R E I SHP O O N

UNIVERSIT Y OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

64214int.indd iii

22-05-12 4:50 AM

The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Dedalus Foundation in making this book possible.

University of California Press Oakland, California © 2022 by The Regents of the University of California Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-0-520-29749-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-520-96982-7 (ebook) Manufactured in the United States of America

64214int.indd iv

31

30

10

9

29 8

7

28 6

27 5

26 4

3

25 2

24

23

22

1

22-05-12 4:50 AM

To my parental enablers Irving H. Dreishpoon, MD, and Georgene Simon Dreishpoon

64214int.indd v

22-05-12 4:50 AM

64214int.indd vi

22-05-12 4:50 AM

CONTENTS

Preface and Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 C O N S T R U C T I O N S , C O N C R E T I O N S , R E A DY M A D E S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 7

Auguste Rodin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Preface to Art: Conversations with Paul Gsell (1911) An Antique Fragment (1914) Art and Nature (1916) The Richness of the Antique Lies in Modeling (1917) Constantin Brancusi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Propos (1926) Artist’s Statement (1926) Artist’s Statement (1927) Umberto Boccioni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture (1912) Medardo Rosso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Impressionism in Sculpture (1907) Pablo Picasso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Interview with Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler (1933) Julio González on Picasso as Sculptor (1936) Interview with Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler (1948) Artist Statement (1951) The Bull’s Head (ca. 1957) Conversations with Brassaï (1964) On Sculpture (1964) Life with Picasso (1965) Henri Matisse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Matisse Speaks to His Students (1908) Interview with Pierre Courthion (1941) Julio González . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 “Picasso sculpteur et les cathédrales” (ca. 1932) “Notations” (ca. 1932) Reply to a Question on Contemporary Art (1935) Naum Gabo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 The Constructive Idea in Art (ca. 1937) Vladimir Tatlin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 The Problem of the Relationship between Man and Object: Let Us Declare War on Chests of Drawers and Sideboards (1930)

64214int.indd vii

22-05-12 4:50 AM

László Moholy-Nagy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Sculpture (1936/1947)

Joaquín Torres-García . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 The Will to Construct (1930)

Alexander Calder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Mobiles (1937)

Jean Arp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Concrete Art (1944) Henry Moore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Unit One (1934) Marcel Duchamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Apropos of “Readymades” (1961) P E R S O N A G E S , P O L I T I C S , PA S S A G E S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 5

Jacques Lipchitz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Interview with James Johnson Sweeney (1945) Alberto Giacometti . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Letter to Pierre Matisse (1947) Joseph Cornell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Diary Entry from January 24, 1947 Isamu Noguchi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 New Stone Gardens (1964) Theodore Roszak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 In Pursuit of an Image (1955) Herbert Ferber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Sculpture as Environment (1960) David Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 The Question—What Are Your Influences (1950) Louise Bourgeois . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 On Cells (1991)

Jiro- Yoshihara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Gutai Art Manifesto (1956) Ruth Asawa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Two Conversations with Ruth Asawa (1995 and 1999) Meret Oppenheim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Autobiographical Notes (ca. 1970)

Richard Stankiewicz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Contribution to “The Private Myth, A Symposium” (1961) John Chamberlain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 A Statement (1982)

64214int.indd viii

22-05-12 4:50 AM

Anthony Caro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 My Own Work (1985) E N V I R O N M E N T S , H A P P E N I N G S , C O M B I N E S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .117

Frederick Kiesler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 The Future: Notes on Architecture as Sculpture (1966) Louise Nevelson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 Dawns and Dusks: Taped Conversations with Diana MacKown (1976) Yayoi Kusama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Create, Then Obliterate (2011)

Marisa Merz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 Lo Specchio Ardente (The Burning Mirror) (1975)

Joseph Beuys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 What Is Art? (1979)

Paul Thek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Interview with Harald Szeemann (1973) Edward Kienholz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Documentation Book for Five Car Stud Tableau and the Sawdy Edition (1972)

Paul McCarthy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Substance Substitute (2010)

Mike Kelley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 In the Image of Man (1992) Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Introduction to Public Projects or The Spirit of a Place (2001) Allan Kaprow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 Notes on the Creation of a Total Art (1958) Claes Oldenburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 A Statement (1966) Ken Price . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Memo to M.F.A. Students Who Use Clay (1997–1998) From a Maker’s Standpoint (1997–1998) Lygia Clark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 The Empty Full (1960) The Bichos (1960) Hélio Oiticica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 Eden (1969)

Gilbert and George . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 Two Text Pages Describing Our Position (1970) Robert Rauschenberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Artist’s Statement (1959) Interview with Barbara Rose (1987)

64214int.indd ix

22-05-12 4:50 AM

Jasper Johns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 A Conversation with Terry Winters (2011) Marisol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Interview with Cindy Nemser (1973) Nam June Paik. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Interview with Jud Yalkut (1968) P O L E M I C S , PA R A G R A P H S , P R O P O S I T I O N S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 9

Tony Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Pattern of Organic Life in America (1943) Talking with Tony Smith (1966) Donald Judd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 Specific Objects (1964) Robert Morris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 Notes on Sculpture (1966) Robert Irwin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 “Conditional,” in “Being and Circumstance” (1985)

Hans Haacke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Untitled Statement (1980) Hans Haacke Responds to Questions from Texte zur Kunst (2010) Mierle Laderman Ukeles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 MANIFESTO FOR MAINTENANCE ART 1969! / Proposal for an Exhibition “CARE” (1969) WHY SANITATION CAN BE USED AS A MODEL FOR PUBLIC ART (1984) Sol LeWitt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 Paragraphs on Conceptual Art (1967) Lee Bontecou . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 Statement (1960) Artist’s Statement (2003)

Anne Truitt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 Daybook: The Journal of an Artist (1974) Carl Andre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 ESSAYONSCULPTURE1964 Dan Flavin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Journal Entry (1963) “. . . in daylight or cool white.”: An autobiographical sketch (1964–1969) The Artists Say (1965) Letter to Betsy Baker (1967) Reply to Jan van der Marck (1967) Reply to Dan Graham (1967) Richard Artschwager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 4 Sentences for Art in America (1965) Art and Reason (1990)

64214int.indd x

22-05-12 4:50 AM

Ronald Bladen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Statement (1965)

Eva Hesse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246 Conversation with Cindy Nemser (1970)

Richard Serra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 Extended Notes from Sight Point Road (1984) Richard Tuttle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 Statement (1968) Work Is Justification for the Excuse (1972) Interview with Judith Olch Richards (1998) Bruce Nauman. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 A Thousand Words: Bruce Nauman Talks about Mapping the Studio (2002) Fred Sandback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 Remarks on My Sculpture, 1966–1986 (1986)

Ana Mendieta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266 “La Maja de Yerba,” Proposal for Bard College (1984) E A R T H , S K Y, WAT E R . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 67

Christo and Jeanne-Claude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 Christo in Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist (2017) Robert Smithson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280 A Provisional Theory of Non-Sites (1968) Cultural Confinement (1972)

Nancy Holt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 Statement (1993) Walter De Maria. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 The Lightning Field: Some Facts, Notes, Data, Information, Statistics, and Statements (1980) Michael Heizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 Conversation with Kara Vander Weg (2014–2015)

James Turrell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296 Interview with Christine Y. Kim (2012) Giuseppe Penone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301 Statement (1968) Statement (1970) Statement (1977) Statement (1984) Statement (1991) Statement (1991)

Richard Long . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304 Words after the Fact (1982) Andy Goldsworthy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306 Hanging Stones (2018)

64214int.indd xi

22-05-12 4:50 AM

Maya Lin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 About the Work (2000) S C U L P T U R E I N T H E P R E S E N T . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .313

Ai Weiwei . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 Ai Weiwei with Phong H. Bui (2016) Janine Antoni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323 Conversation with Douglas Dreishpoon (2009) Petah Coyne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 Conversation with Mary Sabbatino (2019) Olafur Eliasson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 Becoming Co-sculptural (2019) Theaster Gates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333 Every Square Needs a Circle: Conversation between Zachary Cahill, Theaster Gates, and Michelle Grabner (2019) Felix Gonzalez-Torres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 Interview with Bruce Ferguson (1990) Practices: The Problem of Divisions of Cultural Labor (1992) Conversation between Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Joseph Kosuth (1993) Interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist (1994) Artist Lecture (1995) Ann Hamilton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346 weight (2016)

Pierre Huyghe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349 Interview with Robert Storr (2013) Martin Puryear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354 Conversation with David Levi Strauss (2007) Ursula von Rydingsvard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364 Why Do I Make Art? (2014)

Alison Saar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366 Statement (2019) Tom Sachs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 Thoughts about Prada Death Camp (2013) Jeanne Silverthorne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372 As of Now (2019)

Kiki Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 Conversation with Douglas Dreishpoon (2018)

Selected Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379 List of Illustration Credits. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395 Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401

64214int.indd xii

22-05-12 4:50 AM

P R E FA C E A N D A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

How does one begin to visualize the trajectory of modern art? Alfred H. Barr Jr.’s admittedly convoluted diagram illustrating Cubism’s affinity to Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, and Cézanne, and its subsequent influence on Futurism, Suprematism, Constructivism, and de Stijl, is a good place to start. The graphic depiction of movements and isms, reproduced as the dust jacket for Cubism and Abstract Art, 1936, is by now well-known. Less known are his many variations of the flowchart, as he continually revised its configuration. Apparently, there was no easy way to finesse stylistic arrows signifying the progressive trends of modern minds. Sculpture occupies an honorable place in Barr’s art constellation.1 Under his directorship at the Museum of Modern Art, experimental art (in its myriad manifestations) gained an institutional platform. In the thematic roundups that followed Cubism and Abstract Art, sculptors were recognized by sympathetic curators like Dorothy C. Miller, Andrew Carnduff Ritchie, William Seitz, and Peter Selz, whose timely exhibitions inform this book’s introduction. Ad Reinhardt’s art cartoon, How to Look at Modern Art in America, like Barr’s morphing illustration, had more than one version.2 Both encourage us to see the development of American modern art as a mutating family tree of sorts: a substantial trunk with shallow roots in shallow soil, banner-like leaves sprouting from tentacle-like branches, all bearing multiple names, descriptions, and quotations on plaques and weights suspended from chains and ropes. The abstract painter, known as the Black Monk for his seemingly hermetic but deceptively nuanced monochromatic canvases, took no prisoners when it came to the intersection of art and society: every kind of artist (representational as well as abstract), art movement, exhibition, institution, and transaction was suspect. His first tree, from 1946, sags under ideological tags—SUBJECT MATTER, BUSINESS AS ART PATRON, REGIONALISM/ILLUSTRATION—that threaten to bring it down. Fifteen years on, many of the branches that supported abstractionists have disappeared. What remains (a mélange of Abstract Expressionists, American Scene painters, and illustrators) teeters on the verge of collapse. Only the names of a few would-be sculptors—Arp, Duchamp, Picasso, Matisse— appear on the first tree’s trunk, whose painter-emblazoned roots appear to be nourished by an infusion of “Negro Sculpture.” One gets the impression that Reinhardt wasn’t a big fan of sculpture, at least not of three-dimensional objects that competed with two-dimensional paintings in the limited space of most New York galleries south of Fourteenth Street. His by now infamous definition of sculpture, as “something you bump into when you back up to look at a painting,” naturally infuriated some of his peers, probably because it exposed, with irreverent humor, the vulnerability of modern sculpture as a vagabond object lacking a stable site.3

xiii

64214int.indd xiii

22-05-12 4:50 AM

It took a sculptor to see the lineage of modern art as a “Great Stream,” which is how Jacques Lipchitz described it to James Johnson Sweeney in 1945. Having escaped Nazi-occupied Paris four years prior, Lipchitz advocated for “the liberty of creative expression—for the broad highway of art through the ages, the royal road of tradition in the true sense.” It was every artist’s right, he told Sweeney, “to express himself and his duty to pour his own small stream into the great river.”4 Lipchitz saw the Great Stream as a “constantly expanding” tide of polymorphous ideas, and not, according to one influential critic who privileged abstract art, as “the only stream that flows toward the ocean.”5 There may have been museum directors, curators, critics, and art dealers cruising the tributaries of Lipchitz’s expansive stream rounding up prospects and making provisional judgments, but what mattered, more than fleeting flurries of fame and fortune, was the art and the artists who made it. Modern Sculpture: Artists in Their Own Words defers to Lipchitz’s descriptive archetype. In this sourcebook, sculptors rise as central protagonists; their words illuminate the work. Artists have their own, admittedly idiosyncratic, reasons for doing what they do. Most approach the history of art as an open book, akin to André Malraux’s “musée imaginaire,” a reservoir of formal possibilities. Curators and critics, in their role as intermediaries, are indispensable as gatekeepers and ideational trendsetters. But in the final analysis, most artists measure themselves against the work of their peers, past and present: rejecting and accepting, negating and assimilating according to their own imaginations. “As an artist you measure yourself against other artists,” Richard Serra wrote in a tribute to Donald Judd. “As you grow older, you measure yourself against the people you have known who have died.”6 Ursula von Rydingsvard expressed a similar sentiment by way of describing why she makes art: Because my deepest admiration goes to those who have made art that has interested me. Because I want attention from those who make good art.

The perpetual undercurrent of Lipchitz’s Great Stream, as documented in this anthology, is decidedly artist-centric. The book’s structure is intended to consolidate kindred sculptors in chronological sequences according to descriptive categories that characterize specific periods. Thematic parameters are inherently porous. Mine are no exception; numerous individuals—Joseph Beuys, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Lygia Clark, Marcel Duchamp, Hans Haacke, Allan Kaprow, Frederick Kiesler, Maya Lin, Ana Mendieta, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Hélio Oiticica, Nam June Paik, Giuseppe Penone, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles—straddle more than one category. The book’s content was compiled and vetted over the course of fi ve years. Many of the selected texts appear in previous anthologies.7 Some are published

xiv

64214int.indd xiv

22-05-12 4:50 AM

here for the first time. As artists evolve, so, too, do their ideas and methods. Privileging a single statement is like asking someone to stand still as life’s race continues. Each text reflects a sculptor’s aesthetic disposition at a particular moment, as does the book’s art program, which features timely photographs of artists’ studios. Ellipses appear in the original texts, unless enclosed in brackets; unless otherwise indicated, emphasis (such as italics or underlining) is in the original. The dearth of women in the first two chapters deserves an explanation. To survey sculpture’s extended history is to quickly realize this lacuna. Linda Nochlin’s clarion inquiry “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” rings as true for sculptors as it does for painters; both were ostracized early on from male-dominated academies and ateliers.8 For any woman seeking to enter a profession forged by hammers and chisels, heavy blocks of wood and marble, the hurdles were indeed formidable. I’m reminded here of something the anthropologist Margaret Mead (then in her midseventies and still a commanding presence) told an attentive audience at Tufts University in the spring of 1977. As the keynote speaker for the opening of the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, Mead recalled a time when women were barred from the field because one had to be able to lift a 250-pound calf. It’s easy to see how similar biases, perpetuated in the sculptural realm, persisted until cultural attitudes changed and institutional barriers were rescinded.9 This anthology benefited from individuals willing to share their time and expertise: Jack Flam, general editor of the Documents of Twentieth-Century Art series, enlisted me as an author, offered judicious council at critical junctures, and shepherded the publication to completion. Jack enabled me, as did Elizabeth Smith, my trusted associate at the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, who conferred on Lee Bontecou, and Clifford Ross, president of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees. John Elderfield, Chief Curator Emeritus of Paintings and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, suggested sources for Picasso, as did Anne Umland, the Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, and Luise Mahler. Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director at the Serpentine Gallery, approved excerpts from his interviews with Christo and Felix GonzalezTorres. Lynn Zelevansky fl eshed out a text for Hélio Oiticica. James Meyers conferred on Carl Andre. Michael Auping consented to reprint his interview with Bruce Nauman. Jennifer Gross advised on Richard Artschwager and Richard Tuttle; Christine Y. Kim, associate curator, Contemporary Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, reviewed excerpts from her 2012 interview with James Turrell; Cara Starke, director, and Tamara H. Schenkenberg, curator, at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, welcomed me at the Ruth Asawa exhibition, processed my requests for images and text, and kindly connected me with Asawa’s daughters, Aiko Cuneo and Addie Lanier; Dakin Hart, senior curator, and Matt Kirsch, curator of research and online content at the Noguchi Museum, provided several options for Noguchi; Matthew Simms, professor of art history at California State University, Long Beach,

xv

64214int.indd xv

22-05-12 4:50 AM

conferred on an excerpt from Robert Irwin’s essay “Being and Circumstance: Notes toward a Conditional Art.” Colleagues aligned with artist-endowed foundations and estates, or working independently, fielded rights requests and queries and suggested texts: Susan Cooke, former associate director, and Rebecca Smith and Christopher Lyon, all at the Estate of David Smith; Jerry Gorovoy at the Louise Bourgeois Studio and Maggie Wright at the Louise Bourgeois Archives, the Easton Foundation; Francine Snyder, director of archives and scholarship at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation; Lisa Le Feuver, executive director at the Nancy Holt/Robert Smithson Foundation; Mary Claire Stevens, executive director at the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts; Romy Colomius at the Ken Price Estate; Olivia Bax at Barford Sculptures for Anthony Caro; Andrea Rosen of Andrea Rosen Gallery and Emilie Keldie, director of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation; Sara Jane Roszak, executor of the Theodore Roszak Estate; Meret Oppenheim’s granddaughter Lisa Wenger; Cara Jordon for Joseph Beuys; Diana MacKown for Louise Nevelson; Sharon Hecker for Medardo Rosso. Others affiliated with artists’ studios and galleries provided timely leads and approvals: director Kimberly Davis, managing director Lisa Jann, and Christina Adora Carlos (all at L.A. Louver), for Ed Kienholz and Alison Saar; Ted Bonin at Alexander and Bonin Gallery for Paul Thek; Meredith Sottili at Hauser & Wirth for Paul McCarthy; Loretta Howard at Loretta Howard Gallery for Ronald Bladen; Joseph Huppert at the Robert Irwin Studio; Angela Westwater at Sperone Westwater Gallery for Bruce Nauman; Trina McKeever at the Richard Serra Studio; James Cohan at James Cohan Gallery for Richard Long; Kristine Bell, director at David Zwirner Gallery, for Fred Sandback and Yayoi Kusama; Liz Bower at Galerie Lelong for Andy Goldsworthy and Ana Mendieta; James Cabot Ewart at the Maya Lin Studio; Ethan Sklar at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery and Geoffrey Garrison at Studio Olafur Eliasson; Laura Miner at the Tom Sachs Studio; Caroline Burghardt at Luhring Augustine Gallery; Joya Mandel-Assael at Janine Antoni Immaculate Conception Inc.; Kara Gut at the Ann Hamilton Studio; Kimberly Sung and Yun-hua Chen at the Ai Weiwei Studio; and Emma German at the Theaster Gates Studio. Several individuals, in addition to identifying specific texts, compiled a composite portrait: Laurie Wilson for Louise Nevelson; Tiffany Bell, former project director for the Dan Flavin catalogue raisonné, for Flavin; and Joan Pachner for Tony Smith. I want to thank Terry Winters for revisiting his interview with Jasper Johns; Robert Storr for his interview with Pierre Huyghe; David Levi Strauss for conferring on his conversation with Martin Puryear and facilitating its inclusion; Phong H. Bui, publisher and artistic director of the Brooklyn Rail, for his empathetic conversation with Ai Weiwei; Theaster Gates for recommending his conversation with Zachary Cahill and Michelle Grabner; Hans Haacke for being the enlightened soul he is; Ingrid Schaffner for helpful leads; Mary Sabbatino for interviewing Petah Coyne; Cindy Nemser for allowing me to reprint excerpts from her interviews with Eva Hesse and Marisol; Helaine Posner for guiding me to Ann Hamilton; and Donald

x vi

64214int.indd xvi

22-05-12 4:50 AM

Rubinstein for the introduction to Kiki Smith, who, together with Janine Antoni, Petah Coyne, Olafur Eliasson, Ann Hamilton, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Alison Saar, Tom Sachs, and Jeanne Silverthorne, enable the book to breathe in the present. I was fortunate to land not one but four amazing assistants, each of whom paced the project with consummate efficiency: Andrew Cappetta and Amy Raffel initiated the research process before passing the baton to Christina Weyl, who stayed the course and ultimately prepared and formatted all texts for publication. Christina was joined by Ian Wallace, who came on in 2019 as our rights and reproductions assistant, a sometimes daunting task to which he rose admirably. My trusted editor in Buffalo, Pamela Hatley, always the first set of eyes, primed the manuscript for publication. Longtime friends Michael Brenson, Michael Gold, Tobi Kahn, Matthew Rosen, Christopher Teasdale, and Paul Tucker rode the rails with me, recommending germane reads and bolstering my spirit. Time elevates nourishing relationships. Modern Sculpture: Artists in Their Own Words was completed during a pandemic exacerbated by nationwide racial protests that shattered any sense of normalcy. As the surreal scenario played out, my wife, Lisa Rafalson, and two daughters, Maia and Mina, remained close by as emotional ballast. With so many lives on the line, they sustained hope. This book rightfully belongs to them. April 2020–April 2021 Buffalo, New York

NOTES 1. Alfred H. Barr Jr., Cubism and Abstract Art, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1936). Of the sixty-four artists identifi ed in the exhibition under “Painting and Sculpture: Drawings, Construction,” twenty-two were described as sculptors. 2. Reinhardt’s art cartoons, some of the most sophisticated critiques of the postwar art world, are published, with an introduction by Robert Storr; see How to Look: Ad Reinhardt Art Comics (Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2014). 3. Reinhardt’s stand-alone quote prefaces Lucy Lippard’s essay on American sculpture of the 1960s; see “As Painting Is to Sculpture: A Changing Ratio,” reprinted in Lucy R. Lippard, Changing: Essays in Art Criticism (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1971), 120. 4. James Johnson Sweeney, “An Interview with Jacques Lipchitz,” Partisan Review 12, no. 1 (Winter 1945): 83. 5. Clement Greenberg, “Review of the Whitney Annual and the Exhibition Romantic Painting in America,” Nation, January 1, 1944; reprinted in Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism, vol. 1, ed. John O’Brian (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 171. 6. Richard Serra, “Donald Judd, 1928–1994,” Parkett 40/41 (1994): 176–79. 7. For an earlier anthology devoted to modern sculpture, see Modern Sculpture Reader, ed. Jon Wood, David Hulks, and Alex Potts (Leeds and Los Angeles: Henry Moore Institute and J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007). For a sourcebook sympathetic to sculpture, see Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings, 2nd ed., ed. Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012).

x vii

64214int.indd xvii

22-05-12 4:50 AM

8. Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?,” Art News 69, no. 9 (January 1971): 22–39, 67–71. 9. Women were consistently underrepresented in major exhibitions that featured sculpture: Alfred H. Barr Jr.’s Cubism and Abstract Art had none. Of the sixty-fi ve sculptors represented in Andrew Carnduff Ritchie’s Sculpture of the Twentieth Century at the Museum of Modern Art in 1952, only two—Mary Callery and Barbara Hepworth—were women; Germaine Richier was the only woman featured in Peter Selz’s New Images of Man at MoMA in 1959; and William Seitz’s The Art of Assemblage, which opened at MoMA in 1961 and tallied 142 artists, included 18 women, among them Lee Bontecou, Louise Nevelson, and Meret Oppenheim.

x viii

64214int.indd xviii

22-05-12 4:50 AM

64214int.indd a

22-05-12 4:50 AM

The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Ahmanson • Murphy Imprint in Fine Arts.

64214int.indd b

22-05-12 4:50 AM

INTRODUCTION

Modern art always projects itself into a twilight zone where no values are fixed. Leo Steinberg, “Contemporary Art and the Plight of Its Public,” 1962

THE GREAT STREAM

The development of modern sculpture can be imagined as an intricate web of artists’ conversations, institutional endorsements, critical assessments, promotional strategies, and periodic reevaluations, or—as Jacques Lipchitz described it to James Johnson Sweeney after fleeing Nazi-occupied Paris and landing in New York—the “Great Stream.”1 Innovation means different things to different people at different times, depending on an individual’s aesthetic disposition and the culture at large. The trajectory of modern sculpture, admittedly a complex amalgam of social, political, and economic forces, is influenced by how artists react to circumstances around them, including changes in the way culture and technology interact. Since the turn of the last century, sculptors have deployed whatever tools, methods, and materials were available to them, all the while responding to vastly varied environmental conditions. The very definition of modern sculpture, unmoored by Du­champ’s first Readymade, remains contingent. Vanguard sculpture, not unlike experimental painting, architecture, dance, music, or theater, has grappled with its own inherent limitations, which is why the infusion of kindred disciplines at key moments liberated sculptors in extraordinary ways. Sculpture’s defining virtue has always been its command of tangible space, its insistent mass and volume—in essence, its phenomenological presence. In its fundamental incarnations, well before the ephemeral conceits of Happenings, postMinimalism, and Conceptualism, sculpture existed as the thing that shared our space. This has been its authority as well as its challenge. In the postindustrial whirl of consumer objects, how does sculpture distinguish itself? How does it persist? Seeing the word sculptural as signifying a malleable proposition—contested and expanded by artists unencumbered by theoretical dictates—offers one avenue of understanding. The modern sculptor, inherently skeptical, has no qualms about negating historical precedents to reimagine a sculptural future.2 Sculpture may have preceded language as one of the first artifacts of human expression.3 Musk oxen, reindeer, and woolly rhinoceroses rendered in pigment on the undulating walls of Paleolithic caves joined pieces of bone, wood, and stone carved into flints, weapons, and fertility figures as shamanic talismans to assuage superstition and ensure survival.4 As Kiki Smith told me, “The whole history of the

1

64214int.indd 1

22-05-12 4:34 AM

world is about people making things.” Sculpture’s origins may well correspond to the origins of human consciousness. But such a distinction didn’t safeguard its rank as the practice of visual art became more codified. Leonardo da Vinci, consummate painter, demeaned Michelangelo, visionary sculptor, as plebeian, a lowly laborer covered in sweat, chips, and marble dust. Sculpture’s objecthood made painting’s illusionistic artifice moot. Judgments were inevitable. The streetwise aesthete Charles Baudelaire castigated sculpture—vapid portraits and full-length statues claustrophobically displayed at the Paris Salons during the mid-nineteenth century—as “boring,” which, considering the invigorating state of painting in the hands of Eugène Delacroix and Théodore Géricault, these appeared to be.5 Modern sculptors thrived on intuitional hunches, unthinkable propositions, excursions into fantastic realms, and scrapes with new materials and techniques with no guarantee as to the outcome, propelled by an impulse to do something (anything) differently, even if it meant alienating other artists and members of the public and failing in the process. Most early modern sculpture, excepting Constructivist and Bauhaus models, eschews utilitarian expectations. No longer conceived as a singular monument or memorial, or as part of an ecclesiastical or civic ensemble, what is sculpture’s function? Who is its audience? Where and how should it be displayed? What differentiates it from an escalating stream of factory-line commodities? Occupying the realm of aesthetic contemplation, the modern object became a rarefied entity, formally sophisticated but, lacking a site, vulnerable. Nonetheless, early modern sculpture is more than the sum total of its formal innovations. “What is it that sets modern sculptures apart from their predecessors?” asked Leo Steinberg when he reviewed Andrew Carnduff Ritchie’s catalogue for a 1952 survey of twentieth-century sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art. “To suggest that modern sculpture shows a greater preoccupation with plastic first principles is not enough. . . . Modern sculpture is not merely more concerned with plastic form, but with a different kind of form, one answering to a radically new awareness of reality. The forms of contemporary sculpture are unstable and dynamic things: every transient shape implies a history, a growth, an evolution.”6 The great stream of modern sculpture is buoyed by the timely resurrection of individuals whose work, rediscovered by sympathetic artists, museum curators, and critics, rises again. Lipchitz may have been one of the first to see Auguste Rodin’s torsos and fragments hidden away in drawers at the elder sculptor’s Meudon studio and to recommend this revelatory cache to the New York dealer Curt Valentin.7 Ritchie, likewise, acknowledged Rodin’s prescience in Sculpture of the Twentieth Century, describing him as “the father of modern sculpture.”8 Ritchie’s sculptural roundup opened at an auspicious time, as Manhattan superseded Paris as the New Art City, and MoMA’s ambitious exhibition programs showcased why.9 Ritchie elevated Rodin while praising Aristide Maillol, Constantin Brancusi, and Pablo Picasso as the medium’s prime movers. Six “stylistic streams”—“The Object

2

64214int.indd 2

22-05-12 4:34 AM

in Relation to Light,” “The Object Idealized,” “The Object Purified,” “The Object Dissected,” “The Object Constructed on Geometric Principles,” and “The Object and the Subconscious”—glorified the object as a manifestation of soulful genius, while providing a framework for assessing the sculptural tenets of Cubism, Futurism, Brancusi’s “organic abstraction,” Constructivism, and Surrealism. Ritchie’s postwar survey enables one to flesh out Rodin’s innovations within the tidal stream of art history. The sculptor’s sensitivity to light, an impressionistic conceit to dematerialize form, became a battle cry for someone like Medardo Rosso, who denied any work “not concerned with light” the right to exist. And Rosso’s enabler, Umberto Boccioni, proselytized for light’s vibrational force as an essential component of Futurism. Boccioni understood that light had the potential not only to energize inherently static mass but also to function aggressively, even theatrically, as energy illuminated—an idea developed in László Moholy-Nagy’s Light Prop for an Electric Stage (also called Light-Space Modulator), 1930, and later dramatized in Dan Flavin’s neon installations, Bruce Nauman’s video corridors, and James Turrell’s luminous crater, where light rematerializes as a palpable presence. Any analysis of modern sculpture must account for shifting dynamics of space. Here’s how Steinberg, during the early 1960s, described Rodin’s contribution: “Rodin’s implied space equips sculpture in three distinct ways for the modern experience. Psychologically, it supplies a threat of imbalance which serves like a passport to the age of anxiety. Physically, it suggests a world in which voids and solids interact as modes of energy. And semantically, by never ceasing to ask where and how his sculptures can possibly stand, where in space they shall loom or balance, refusing to take for granted even the solid ground, Rodin unsettles the obvious and brings to sculpture that anxious questioning for survival without which no spiritual activity enters this century.”10 Rodin conceived of space as active rather than passive, temporal rather than transcendent, as an arena in which sculpture and the spectator interact. Space was humanized, infused by spirit. Boccioni’s desire to “break open the figure and enclose it in [the] environment” defers to Rodin’s anxious space at the same time it anticipates an environmental interface. With Julio González’s assistance and practical know-how, Picasso conceived of sculpture as the equivalent of drawing in space, thus enabling it to breathe. And Alexander Calder animated the object through kinetic activation. The phenomenology of sculptural space, from a static, hermetic envelope to one contingent on temporal systems, defines and redefines the character of modern and postmodern sculpture, from Rodin to Calder, Allan Kaprow to Robert Smithson, and Hans Haacke to Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Olafur Eliasson.11 By 1963 Steinberg could recognize Rodin’s accumulation of figures, limbs, torsos, and heads as “a reservoir of readymades and self-made objets trouvés” and see his protean output as “constellations of interchangeable parts” foreshadowing assemblage.12 Rodin’s tendency to recycle certainly presages Picasso’s sculptural reliefs and his later wartime trophy—the bicycle-seat-and-handlebar Bull’s Head,

3

64214int.indd 3

22-05-12 4:34 AM

1942. But to see Rodin’s “constellations” as the prelude to a then-prevalent urbanbased junk aesthetic was a stroke of art historical brilliance. Still, enlisting the elder as the überbricoleur didn’t mitigate his romantic disposition, a skepticism about mechanical technology that would haunt sculpture’s progression like a humane specter. Ritchie described his fifty-year survey as “an anthology of sculptors,” based on admittedly “subjective choices.” This may explain the curious omission of Marcel Duchamp, whose brother, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, had two Cubo-Futurist bronzes, Rider, ca. 1913, and The Horse, 1914, in the show. Why nothing by Marcel, by then far better known in art world circles, and described by Willem de Kooning a year earlier as “a one-man movement . . . a movement for each person and open for everyone”?13 By the time Sculpture of the Twentieth Century opened in 1952, utopianinspired revolutions and manifestos had come and gone, leaving the promise of progress through advances in science and technology seriously in question. Particularly in the devastating wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, some artists found the Bauhausian prospect—of artists “being trained to take their place in the machine age”—problematic, if not untenable.14 If the death-dealing potential of the militaryindustrial complex shadowed a generation of post–World War II sculptors, Du­­ champ’s mass-produced urinal, bottle dryer, and bicycle wheel signaled another kind of sculpture: conceptual, common, confounding. The Readymade, designated anti-art, was nothing more than a Dada gesture riddled with doubt. But even the most radical tendencies, once consumed by the art system, are assimilated— amoeba-like—into the mainstream. Duchamp remained anathema to most artists, curators, and critics from the end of World War I until the tide began to turn in the mid-1950s, beginning with the Arensberg Collection of Duchampiana opening at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1954, continuing with the appearance of Robert Lebel’s book on the artist in 1959, and culminating with his retrospective at the Pasadena Museum of Art in 1963.15

SCULPTORS AT THE TABLE

During the run of Sculpture of the Twentieth Century, Ritchie moderated a symposium with David Smith, Theodore Roszak, Herbert Ferber, and Richard Lippold. The transcribed contents of The New Sculpture offer an excellent primer for postwar sculpture. When sculptors gathered, their conversations varied. At MoMA one heard nuts-and-bolts shoptalk about tools, materials, and techniques.16 A discussion of space and of sculpture’s relationship to architecture also ensued.17 The topic of subject matter came up as well, but aside from general remarks—such as Smith saying, “the work is a statement of my identity” and Roszak admitting, “the forms I find necessary to assert are meant to be blunt reminders of primordial strife and struggle, reminiscent of those brute forces that not only produced life but in turn threat-

4

64214int.indd 4

22-05-12 4:34 AM

ened to destroy it”—most sidestepped precise descriptions. The reciprocity between sculpture and painting was another matter altogether; strong opinions were voiced. “Outside of Brancusi,” Smith declared in his opening remarks, “the greatest sculptures were mostly by painters,” adding, “I do not recognize the limits where painting ends and sculpture begins.”18 Even as Smith defended painting’s compatibility with sculpture, biases resurfaced. “When an artist at the Eighth Street Club talked about art,” Irving Sandler told me, “and meant painting, Ibram Lassaw would get up and stomp out.”19 It’s a telling remark. American sculptors living in postwar Manhattan could be extremely sensitive, skittish even, about their perceived exclusion from the conversation. Nonetheless, the perception that they were, if not excluded, at least marginal to a discourse dominated by painters just isn’t so. One has only to review the records of panels and symposia organized during the 1950s and early 1960s, or the contemporaneous artist-run journal Tiger’s Eye, to see that sculptors were indeed integral to the conversation generated around the new art. 20 Sometimes (during the Artists’ Sessions at Studio 35 in 1950), they took their place at the table next to the painters. At other times (during the New Sculpture symposium and the Waldorf Panels on Sculpture in 1965), they had the table to themselves. Either way, their voices, heard and transcribed, sound a distinct chorus. Despite real or perceived differences, most postwar sculptors remained deferential to painting for two reasons, one inevitable, the other instinctual. A notable number of them—Ferber, David Hare, Roszak, Smith, Louise Bourgeois—started out as painters, and even after sculpture became their focus, they never relinquished their painter’s eye for color; some of them—Smith, Ferber, and Hare— never stopped painting. Even the most hypersensitive sculptor sensed the importance of solidarity, of being part of a like-minded group—painters, poets, composers, dancers, and musicians—sharing the same cultural challenges: small audiences, sporadic sales and commissions, and the optic that any modern artist living south of Fourteenth Street could be a communist. To be gay was even more suspect. Their creative tribe met and mingled at watering holes like the Cedar Tavern, jazz clubs like the Five Spot Café, and a forum like the Club, a safe haven for free expression at a time when any kind of radical discourse was suspect. The Club’s programmatic agenda during the 1950s—an eclectic menu of lectures on Existentialism, panels on Abstract Expressionism, and one-off talks about creativity, mythology, psychology, detachment, and involvement—flew in the face of conservative politics at the same time it empowered all of those present to be who they wanted to be.21 Sculptors and painters wrestled with the same biases that fueled heated discussions around representation versus abstraction. The figure was to sculptors what the loaded brushstroke was to painters: a fundamental gesture, a medium through which existential questions about the self and humankind could be explored. The figure’s viability as a leitmotif remained unquestioned by many artists even after an influential critic like Clement Greenberg dismissed it as retrograde.22 The 1950s

5

64214int.indd 5

22-05-12 4:34 AM

may have been a glorious decade for abstraction, but it was also a watershed for a new kind of figuration, the zeitgeist behind the New Images of Man exhibition at MoMA in 1959.23 Curator Peter Selz’s polemical brainchild—figurative, literary, and philosophical—posed a threat to the preeminent status of the New York School, even though much of the featured international work incorporated expressionistic flourishes. Rodin’s humane pathos again feels germane, incarnate in Alberto Giacometti, whose Tall Figure, 1947, graced the exhibition catalogue’s cover. Of the twenty-three artists represented, eleven were sculptors (four American, three British, two French, one Swiss, one Austrian). De Kooning’s ferocious women, Jackson Pollock’s slyly referential oils from 1951–52, and Francis Bacon’s gaping pope joined personages by Giacometti, Roszak, Eduardo Paolozzi, and Germaine Richier, infuriating die-hard advocates of Abstract Expressionism. That so much of the work on view appeared anguished made it easier for most critics to dismiss.24 The show’s confessional tone, a curatorial sermon on the bewildering state of humankind, confirmed that by the decade’s end, some of art’s most vital streams were full-bodied propositions.

RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME

Carl Andre, poet and soon-to-be sculptor, accompanied his high school friend Hollis Frampton, photographer and filmmaker, on a journey from New York to the Philadelphia Museum of Art during the fall of 1962 to see sculptures by Rodin, Brancusi, and Duchamp. That evening a bantering conversation, transcribed on a manual typewriter at Andre’s kitchen table in Brooklyn, ricocheted between Rodin and Duchamp (jump-started by Duchamp’s Large Glass and a small plaster model of Rodin’s Gates of Hell), with passing references to Brancusi.25 The two twenty-something-year-olds candidly debated the merits and pitfalls of these modern masters. Both agreed that Rodin and Duchamp were “champions of the gift.” Andre considered Duchamp’s bicycle wheel and stool “one of the greatest sculptures of our time” (a perception that would dramatically change).26 Brancusi comes up toward the end of the conversation. Frampton mentions the Romanian’s short but formidable apprenticeship with Rodin and speculates on what he drew from the French master, to which Andre replies, “Brancusi did indeed escape the protection of Rodin but in doing so he confirmed and illuminated a few seconds of ink stroke in Rodin’s output. . . . We are the sons of our fathers; it is not their protection which we require, but their seed.”27 “Brancusi had a much more immediate influence because it was possible to go to Philadelphia and see the Arensberg Collection,” Andre later recalled when asked about his affinity to Russian Constructivism. “This was a direct and immediate influence because I started making sculpture carving in wood inspired by Brancusi’s wood carving.”28 Andre would eventually negate the monumental verticality of Brancusi’s Endless Column by envisioning it on the ground, flattened like a carpet. Still,

6

64214int.indd 6

22-05-12 4:34 AM

Brancusi’s seeds did indeed proliferate, before and after his death, in the hands of younger sculptors who gravitated to the ambiguity of reductive forms rendered in bronze, stone, and wood, polished and sanded to perfection, and elevated on custom-made bases: poetic objects grounded to their site or sited in the environment as architectural premonitions. Brancusi’s organic abstraction—the synthesis of amphoric and geometric configurations, his insistence on truth to materials and direct carving, and his receptiveness to diverse sculptural sources (folk, African, Cycladic)—spawned a stream of vitalistic sculpture that took flight in the teens, gained momentum in the 1920s and 1930s with Jean Arp, Noguchi, and Henry Moore, and flourished throughout the 1950s in the brazed-metal morphologies of Roszak, Ibram Lassaw, and Seymour Lipton.29 Andre wasn’t the only sculptor who came of age during the 1960s looking at Brancusi. Richard Serra, recalling his student days in Paris (1964–65), told Hal Foster, “Any way you wanted to think about sculpture, it was available in Brancusi. If you wanted to go abstract, it was there; if you wanted to go figurative, it was there; if you wanted to go vertical, it was there; if you wanted to go horizontal, it was there. It was all there.”30 Serra drew every day for four months in Brancusi’s reconstructed studio in the Musée National d’Art Moderne, which he later described as manifesting “a total working process in which there is no separation between working and living space.”31 In the studio, one’s sculptural progeny interact like an extended family, a lesson Brancusi gleaned from Rodin, realized in his “compound of sculptures” (Serra’s words) at Târgu Jiu, and passed on to others like Noguchi, Smith, Ann Truitt, Serra, Petah Coyne, and Ursula von Rydingsvard. When it came to moving the work beyond the studio, Brancusi was a master at presenting precious objects in the controlled setting of his atelier. He even deployed a rotating platform to display smaller pieces, a device no doubt endorsed by his art world advocate Duchamp. It was Duchamp who guided the design of Brancusi’s legacy ensemble at the Philadelphia Museum in 1955 and liaised between Walter and Louise Arensberg and the various institutions vying for the couple’s remarkable collection featuring both artists. 32 Duchamp’s association with Brancusi began with the infamous 1913 Armory Show, where both generated a scandal, and continued until Brancusi’s death. The two became close friends. Brancusi’s association with the Brummer Gallery (1926, 1933–34) was enhanced by Duchamp’s astute intervention. So, too, was his inclusion in Katherine Dreier’s Société Anonyme. Duchamp championed Brancusi in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, facilitating exhibitions and the sale of key works to prestigious collections. Making sure that the Arensberg Collection eventually found a respectable home and that, in the final act, he and Brancusi would be seen together (as they were in 1962, when Andre and Frampton saw them, and still are to this day) became a strategic move to ensure his own legacy. Duchamp—artist, entrepreneur, chess-playing intellectual, mentor, philosophical provocateur—had an uncanny ability to navigate the burgeoning arena of modern art: to make a splash, reap the publicity, and then withdraw, only to reappear

7

64214int.indd 7

22-05-12 4:35 AM

later on, having sustained a calculated presence all along. From his spectacular coming out at the Armory Show until his death in 1968, Duchamp cultivated advantageous relationships in the right circles. His appearance, disappearance, and reappearance, in Paris, New York, and Los Angeles, the ebb and flow of his own creative stream, is one of the most intriguing narratives of the modern era. His “common objects slipped into the stream of aesthetic discourse, as a series of questions to which there is no certain reply,” helps to explain his evergreen stature as an artist lauded, loathed, and still relevant.33 Sightings of Duchamp were legion. Ken Price told me that during the 1960s, Duchamp was revered by his Ferus Gallery comrades and that one day the Frenchman appeared unannounced at his Ventura studio door, led there by Ferus cofounder and curator Walter Hopps, who was hiding several blocks away.34 Duchamp had been invited to California to initiate a late-in-life tribute at the Pasadena Museum of Art.35 If Hopps’s 1963 retrospective provided him with a monolithic boost, William C. Seitz’s thematic survey The Art of Assemblage, two years earlier at MoMA, lionized the mercurial cosmopolitan in his adopted city, where a choice selection of Readymades (several borrowed from Philadelphia) joined a battery of rough-and-ready Combines by a brazen breed of bricoleurs and dumpster divers.36 Seitz enlisted every vanguard tenet to bolster an art of detritus: French and Futurist “calligrammatic” poetry, Picasso and Georges Braque’s papiers collés and Picasso’s sculptural still lifes, Kurt Schwitters’s Merz, African fetishes, Dada provocations, and Surrealist morphologies: any form of creative enterprise that reflected an anarchistic, nihilistic, or subversive sensibility. In doing so, he may have inadvertently divined the first tremors of a 1960s youth rebellion: the sea change from Cold War conformity to wanton acts of impatient seekers hell-bent on testing the limits of what art could be, how it got made, and where it got shown. Here’s how he described some of assemblage’s aesthetic and cultural attributes: The vernacular repertoire includes beat Zen and hot rods, mescalin experiences and faded flowers . . . and hydrogen explosions. Such subjects are often approached in a mystical, aesthetic, or “arty” way, but just as often they are fearfully dark, evoking horror or nausea: the anguish of the scrap heap; the images of charred bodies that keep Hiroshima and Nagasaki before our eyes; the confrontation of democratic platitudes with the Negro’s disenfranchisement; the travesty of the Chessman trial. Indeed, in the United States, a network of artists could be identified who, quite independently and with no special political affiliation, incorporate or represent in their work flags, shields, eagles, and other symbols of democracy, national power, and authority, with mild amusement or irony, with unconcealed resentment and scatological bitterness, or simply as totally banal images. 37

Among a roster of wildly disparate works—by Arp, Lee Bontecou, John Chamberlain, Jasper Johns, Edward Kienholz, Marisol, Louise Nevelson, Robert Rauschenberg, Smith, Richard Stankiewicz, and Joaquín Torres-García—Duchamp claimed

8

64214int.indd 8

22-05-12 4:35 AM

pride of place, along with Schwitters and Duchamp’s Francophile friend Joseph Cornell. Thirteen Readymades accompanied Tu m’, 1918, a friezelike painting violated by graphite, a bottlebrush, a nut and bolt, and safety pins used to suture an extensive rent in the canvas. Reproduced as the only color foldout in the show’s catalogue, Duchamp’s swan song to painting became the curatorial billboard for a freewheeling sensibility fueled by the urban milieu. The sculptural tide was indeed shifting, from rarefied objects to environmental and theatrical tableaux, but not everyone was inclined to rise. Philip Pavia, for one, remained obstinate during the Waldorf Panels on Sculpture (1965), ridiculing the coming ethos as “ass-emblage.” The Waldorf sessions assembled a small group of sculptors, along with an audience of about 125, to discuss the state of sculpture. 38 Both panels, moderated by Pavia, generated contentious debate, as though one’s artistic identity was on the line. When stone carver Noguchi, during the second panel, incited by Claes Oldenburg’s Floor Burger (1962) (canvas filled with foam rubber and paper cartons and painted with Liquitex and latex), asked, “What is sculpture?” his perplexity was palpable. Pavia, a staunch advocate for abstract art, couldn’t disassociate his own cast bronze and carved marble objects from the ethos of Abstract Expressionism; he repeatedly invoked Pollock as the paradigm for artistic integrity, argued for the purity of abstraction (against the Surrealist “jungle”), and equated one’s choice of material and subject matter with moral judgment. As far as he was concerned, any sculptor susceptible to mass media and junk culture was anathema.39 Duchamp hovered over the first session, unnamed like some vague menace, until Ad Reinhardt, with a contrarian’s delight, decried, “I want to continue on his [Pavia’s] drubbing of immorality and Surrealism. Traditionally, there is a morality: it is not the everyday morality, but an art morality. And most immoral of all the immoral traditions in art is the anti-art tradition: that is Surrealism programmatically, and it is immoral. Now, I suppose the Duchamp Urinal is immoral, too. And the mixture of the arts has traditionally been immoral, especially romantic ideas. Also the mixture of fine art with commercial art and industrial art. There’s something immoral about fine artists jobbing. . . . Also, sculptors making paintings is immoral; painters making sculptures is immoral, too.”40 What Reinhardt candidly called out was art’s increasingly pluralistic tendencies. During the second session, Oldenburg, having scripted and directed improvised productions (Ray Gun Theater performances) at his former East Second Street storefront, tried to explain a spectator-inclusive art deferential to life. Some younger members of the audience may have concurred; most just listened, probably unconvinced.

LETTING THE OUTSIDE IN

Some conversations carry profound implications. During the first of five “Radio Happenings,” John Cage and Morton Feldman talked about being composers. Cage

9

64214int.indd 9

22-05-12 4:35 AM

recalled something Erik Satie had said about needing a kind of music that “will not interrupt the noises of the environment,” then proposed that the environment was just another source for compositional sounds rather than “an intrusion.”41 Feldman demurred, preferring “the old-fashioned role of the artist—deep in thought.” But Cage persisted, imagining a concert room with one door open. “Let’s imagine,” he continued, “that the concert is in a room, and that one door from that room is open, and in the room upon which it opens, radio music is audible. Now, must the door be closed or may it be left open?” Outside the door, intrusion rains—every distraction that could potentially deflect a traditional composer deep in thought—the stuff of life, a rainbow of influences. The invitation challenged any artist still sequestered in their studio. Cage’s metaphorical door had been open since the late 1940s. Having communed with dancer Merce Cunningham, visual artists de Kooning and Rauschenberg, poet Charles Olson, and architect Buckminster Fuller at the countercultural breeding ground that was Black Mountain College (1933–57), the composer returned to New York to sow the seeds of sound and silence like a Zen master who expects nothing and encounters extreme skepticism.42 His benign detachment, a quality he shared with Duchamp and Reinhardt, coupled with a playful, Dadaesque spirit inclined toward chance, explains his heightened relevance during the 1960s. It also explains why some of his earliest admirers—George Brecht, Al Hansen, Richard Higgins, Johns, Kaprow, Charlotte Moorman, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, and Rauschenberg—some of them would-be sculptors, preferred to mine the nebulous gap between art and life. Kaprow, for one, approached Cage’s open door as an invitation to see and accept rather than to judge and reject. “In Cage’s cosmology,” he recalled years later, “the real world was perfect, if we could only hear it, see it, understand it. If we couldn’t, that was because our senses were closed and our minds were filled with preconceptions.”43 There was nothing preconceived about Kaprow’s (or, for that matter, the Japanese Gutai Bijutsu Kyokai’s) take on Pollock’s legacy. The arena that had been Pollock’s floor-bound canvas, in Kaprow’s mind, morphed into the grand arena that is life; Pollock’s gestural choreography opened the perceptual doors to other spontaneous acts.44 Sculpture, likewise, faced a new arena of material and methodological possibilities. “Happenings are events that, put simply, happen,” was how Kaprow and others (Brecht, Jim Dine, Red Grooms, Oldenburg, Robert Whitman) described their theatrical-like productions, though not everyone agreed on the details. 45 As the 1960s rolled into the 1970s, with the art world’s global expansion and insatiable appetite for commerce, Kaprow saw the Happening—transient, improvised, chancedriven—as a “state of mind” that knows no boundaries between disciplines, artist, or spectator.46 As with Harold Rosenberg’s association with “Action” painting during the 1950s, the Happening became Kaprow’s calling card to recognition during the 1960s, a creative philosophy he returned to, rethought, and eventually relinquished to others—Yayoi Kusama, Joseph Beuys, Paul McCarthy, Gilbert and George, Janine Antoni—who invented their own performative personae.47

10

64214int.indd 10

22-05-12 4:35 AM

Kaprow’s call for “the creation of a total art” involved tuning in to one’s total surroundings—in other words, the environment, the cultural arena animated by people’s behavioral patterns and psychological dispositions. That an increasing number of artists—Nevelson, Beuys, Kienholz, Kusama, Marisa Merz, Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, Paul Thek—projected themselves into enclosed spaces during the late 1950s and the 1960s may have been a sign of the times, a survival instinct akin to stockpiling a fallout shelter, a way to construct and control their immediate surroundings. Assemblage spurred immersive architectural spaces cobbled together from materials no one else wanted. Some captured the stillness of a private sanctuary; others emulated playgrounds or referenced political issues in provocative tableaux. Andy Warhol’s Pop Factory at East Forty-Seventh Street epitomized an environmental crossroads, just as his Exploding Plastic Inevitable troupe, fronted by the Velvet Underground, was touted as the ultimate Happening.48 Kaprow had his finger on the cultural pulse when he spearheaded Environments—Situations—Spaces at the Martha Jackson Gallery in 1961, filling Jackson’s Upper East Side courtyard with a mound of old tires [Yard], and, six years later, when he reiterated an insight in response to Barbara Rose and Irving Sandler’s questionnaire polling artists about a 1960s sensibility: “The newest energies are gathering in the cross-overs, the areas of impurity, the blurs which remain after the usual boundaries have been erased.”49

MINIMAL/POST-MINIMAL

The description “ABC Art” implies simplicity, an anyone-can-do-it mentality, a child’s ritual, an art of fundamental sequence. By 1965 Barbara Rose noticed a sensibility, decidedly at odds with Kaprow’s “blurs,” emerging from New York and the West Coast. With art historical acumen and journalistic flair, she set out to articulate what she saw: constructing a genealogy (Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Rodchenko, Duchamp, Barnett Newman, Reinhardt), naming current practitioners (Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Andre, Flavin), and citing critical preludes (by Greenberg, Michael Fried, Richard Wollheim).50 As someone who spent a lot of time in studios and at live performances, Rose could see that a reductive impulse extended beyond the domains of sculpture and painting. The processdriven choreography of Cunningham and Yvonne Rainer, an eight-hour film of the Empire State Building shot with a stationary 16 mm camera by Warhol and John Palmer, Satie’s “Vexations,” and the endless continuum of La Monte Young’s “Dream Music” were all incarnations of a minimal expression, sometimes laced with sexual and humorous undertones. That Rose offered sculptors (Richard Artschwager, Andre, Ronald Bladen, Flavin, Judd, Morris, Truitt, Richard Tuttle) and painters (Frank Stella and Larry Zox) column space to explain what they did confirmed a confluence of ambition.

11

64214int.indd 11

22-05-12 4:35 AM

A flurry of opinions followed Rose’s article, as others weighed in on the subject. The initial discourse generated around Minimalism by critics Lawrence Alloway, Michael Benedikt, Fried, Greenberg, Lucy Lippard, Brian O’Doherty, Annette Michelson, John Perreault, Rose, Rosenberg, Sandler, Willoughby Sharp, Wollheim, and Martial Raysse was tempered by sculptors Judd, Morris, LeWitt, and Flavin, all of whom felt compelled to state their point of view.51 Seeing Minimalism, as James Meyer does, “as a debate, an argument if you will, that initially developed in response to the three-dimensional abstraction of, among others, Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Dan Flavin, Anne Truitt, and Sol LeWitt during the period 1963–68” and “as a shifting signifier whose meanings altered depending on the moment or context of its use” is instructive.52 (So is seeing how the discourse expanded through theoretical and feminist critiques.)53 Some individuals were more tolerant when it came to how the discourse evolved and eventually encompassed Conceptual art. “The more that artists write about their own work and ideas,” Lippard penned in the prefatory notes to a compilation of her critical essays in 1971, “the livelier the dialogue between artist and critic, work and words, is likely to become.”54 Someone like Mel Bochner saw the situation as black-and-white, even though linguisticbased ideas would soon be marketable. “Whatever art is,” Bochner wrote, “it is, and criticism, which is language, is something different.”55 And LeWitt, progenitor of Conceptual art, remained pragmatic. “The only reason that I did any writing,” he told Paul Cummings in 1974, “is really the fact that the critics had not understood things very well. They were writing about Minimal Art, but no one defined it. . . . People refer to me as a Minimal artist but no one had ever defined what it meant or put any limits to where it begins or ends, what it is and isn’t.”56 Judd, together with LeWitt and Morris, set the tenor of Minimal art through copious reviews, notes, statements, and, in due course, a series of diagrammatic objects fabricated by others from anodized aluminum, stainless steel, polished brass, metallic paints, fluorescent Plexiglas, and honey-lacquered finishes. In his “Specific Objects” piece (written in 1964, published in 1965), Judd advocates for threedimensional work that toggles between painting and sculpture—objects that negate formal categories, a uniform “movement, school, or style.” “The use of three dimensions,” he proposed, “opens to anything.” If Morris’s four-part “Notes” (1966–69) argued for sculpture as a medium in flux (materially and phenomenologically), and LeWitt’s “Paragraphs” and “Sentences” (1967, 1969) sowed an open field for conceptually based, diagrammatic objects, Judd’s steady stream of statements reflects someone who stuck to his aesthetic guns, even when it meant taking others to task. Which is ultimately what he did in his “Complaints” column.57 Lamenting the deplorable state of art criticism, he took aim at Jack Burnham, Fried, Greenberg, Max Kozloff, Hilton Kramer, Rosalind Krauss, Philip Leider, Rose, and Sandler. By 1969, as far as Judd was concerned, most critics were suspect, decidedly those who still shared Greenberg’s formalist bent. Anyone who viewed creativity as a closed rather than an open system, whose approach to art and art history appeared too determin-

12

64214int.indd 12

22-05-12 4:35 AM

istic, or who deferred to groups rather than individuals for determining the pulse of contemporary art was either misguided or just plain wrong. It was time to name names, rectify earlier judgments, and set the record straight. That sculpture had the “power of actual materials, actual color and actual space,” above and beyond painting, gave Judd’s diatribes a distinct focus.58 For a younger generation, Judd posed a formidable figure. “Most sculptors of my generation,” Serra recalled in a heartfelt tribute, “spoke openly of their admiration for Judd’s work. We all acknowledged his importance by either coming up against him, going around him, or using his work in ways he could not have imagined or intended. Most of us treated him with respectful disrespect.”59 Serra’s “us” refers to friends and acquaintances like Eva Hesse, Nauman, Michael Heizer, Smithson, Tuttle, Warhol, and Artschwager, each of whom acknowledged Judd’s Euclidean “box,” the gestalt of a “specific object,” only to subvert and transpose it according to their own imaginations. There were others, as well, on both coasts and in Europe, who violated strict geometry with material gesture, a cohort of post-Minimal sculptors whose eccentric objects were sought out and discussed by Lippard, Marcia Tucker and James Monte, and Germano Celant.60 Serra, for one, never considered what Judd did as “an end in itself, a mere visual representation of theoretical propositions, intentions, or concepts.” The work remained open for him. “His empiricist prescriptions exclude too much, leave too many questions unanswered,” he wrote.61 This was particularly true of the monumental steel, concrete, and plywood units that eventually occupied Judd’s Marfa, Texas, barracks, which Serra saw as portals to an “expanded field” for sculptural ideas to thrive in.62

MACHINE IN THE GARDEN

Between 1966 and 1969 Smithson and his wife, Nancy Holt, organized a series of “site selection trips” with friends to various locations in New Jersey: Upper Montclair Quarry with Judd and his wife, Julie (spring 1966); Great Notch Quarry (near Paterson) with Morris (December 1966); the Pine Barrens and Atlantic City with Morris, Virginia Dwan, and Andre (April 1967); and Passaic with Claes and Patty Oldenburg and Allan and Vaughan Kaprow and their kids (January 1968). There were other trips, too, to Franklin mineral dumps, Bayonne, Little Falls–Cedar Grove, and Edgewater, most documented by Holt with an Instamatic camera.63 Smithson’s first trip to Passaic, a solo effort, netted twenty-four snapshots—of smokestacks, slag heaps, piled objects, bridges, and sandpits—some of which were used to illustrate his published account “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey.”64 Shortly after the piece appeared in Artforum, Smithson retraced his steps, this time with Holt and two sympathetic artists in tow. Like a Happening, the second Passaic Tour rolled out as a loosely scripted event—participants traipsing through a postindustrial landscape with guides.

13

64214int.indd 13

22-05-12 4:35 AM

Smithson’s association with Kaprow and Oldenburg at this juncture, as he was formulating his own ideas around Site/Non-Site, would have confirmed his own instincts about an impure art without boundaries. Happenings could take place anywhere: at someone’s chicken farm, on a college campus, or even on the Brooklyn Bridge.65 Likewise, each Tour claimed its own terrain and set its own pace. Transient and peripatetic, both challenged what art (and by extension sculpture) had been, where it got made, how it got displayed, and the role of the spectator. The matter obviously appealed to Smithson and Kaprow, because it inspired a dialogue about the museum’s relevance for an ephemeral art conceived in the environment. “I should like to pursue the question of the environment of the work of art,” Kaprow stated up front; “what kind of work is being done now; where it is best displayed, apart from the museum, or its miniature counterpart, the gallery.”66 Both realized that Happenings and Tours were antithetical to the museum’s mandate to classify, categorize, and preserve. A graphite drawing by Smithson made around this time, Museum of the Void, illustrates the moribund trajectory of august institutions, what he and Kaprow referred to as “tombs” and “mausolea.”67 With wry humor, Kaprow nailed the quandary. “ ‘Life’ in a museum is like making love in a cemetery,” he said, before offering a prophetic alternative: “I wonder if there isn’t an alternative on the fringes of life and art, in that marginal or penumbral zone which you’ve spoken so eloquently of, at the edges of cities, along vast highways with their outcroppings of supermarkets and shopping centers, endless lumberyards, discount houses, whether that isn’t the world that’s for you at least.”68 The rules of the art game changed significantly after Smithson returned from a trip out west with Holt and Heizer during the summer of 1968 and wrote “A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects.” “The earth’s surface and the figments of the mind have a way of disintegrating into discrete regions of art” was his opening salvo for land projects spawned from “abstract geology.”69 That Smithson and Heizer gravitated to the earth’s geological fabric as the matrix for human existence during the late 1960s, as the death toll in Vietnam escalated, civil rights riots erupted in Los Angeles and Newark, and “whole earth” ecologies mobilized tribes of hippie youth in off-the-grid communes, isn’t surprising. To even the most benign survivalist, reconnecting with nature using “dumb tools” like shovels and pickaxes, and, when a project required it, construction machinery, was a promising alternative.70 But Smithson was no utopian dreamer, though he did possess a dreamer’s cosmic perspective, where everything is relative and nothing is stable, including language. “Look at any word [Smithson’s italics] long enough,” he wrote, “and you will see it open up into a series of faults, into a terrain of particles each containing its own void.”71 An autodidact of profound sophistication, Smithson surmised that most aesthetic propositions, his own Earthworks included, were riddled with uncertainty. Entropy dismantles “ideal systems.” Death levels “technological miracles.” Smithson’s environmental consciousness, shared by Holt, Heizer, Walter De Maria, and Turrell, is metaphorically linked to earlier epiphanic road journeys taken

14

64214int.indd 14

22-05-12 4:35 AM

by Beats and fellow travelers. Jack Kerouac went “on the road” during the late 1940s to find America’s soul, something Henry Miller, likewise, had done to write The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, 1945, a more sobering portrait of postwar America. Tony Smith’s nocturnal cruise during the early 1950s on an unfinished section of the New Jersey Turnpike, with “no lights or shoulder markers, lines, railings . . . rimmed by hills in the distance, but punctuated by stacks, towers, fumes, and colored lights,” now seems like a quixotic voyage to some uncharted realm beyond the studio. Kerouac’s cross-country pilgrimage and Smith’s night drive correspond to a tumultuous time in American history, as mechanization took command, as preparations for “total war” and “mass retaliation” against an evil foe (Communism) coexisted with the feverish construction of suburbs, shopping malls, interstate highways, and expanding horizons of television—some of the same cultural signposts Kaprow mentioned to Smithson.72 One of the many boons of postwar technology, the highway symbolized mobility and freedom. It also signified one’s ticket out of the studio.73 It beckoned Smithson’s departure from the Port Authority building on September 30, 1967, when he boarded the bus to Passaic with a copy of Brian W. Aldiss’s Earthworks in hand, and it figures prominently, shot from inside a moving vehicle, in multiple frames of the Spiral Jetty Film, as well as in Holt’s films Mono Lake, 1968/2004, and Pine Barrens, 1975. Highways and byways led Smithson, Holt, Heizer, De Maria, and Turrell to remote locations (in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah) and accommodated the machinery necessary to move earth and boulders, drive stainless steel poles, orient four concrete tunnels, excavate a crater, and construct a pharaonic city complex. The difference between driving and walking, particularly when it comes to how artists interact with the natural environment, can be extreme. A compact driftwood circle assembled in Alaska by Richard Long (1977), an Andy Goldsworthy Ice Piece (January 1987), a body silhouette fashioned from mud by Ana Mendieta in a wildlife preserve in Iowa (1979), a random arrangement of painted aluminum rods planted among riverbed reeds in Connecticut by Maya Lin (Aligning Reeds, 1985), and three saplings lovingly intertwined by Giuseppe Penone (Tre alberti intrecciati, 1968) are all unobtrusive interventions when compared to Smithson’s Asphalt Rundown, 1969, Heizer’s Double Negative, 1969–70, Holt’s Sun Tunnels, 1973–76, and De Maria’s Lightning Field, 1977. Still, even the most monumental Earthwork, if left unattended, eventually disappears. Since the end of World War II, the dance between art and technology remains fraught. Most artists, given the opportunity, will take what they need from any viable source.74 Technology’s products and platforms—industrial, electronic, cybernetic, digital—are no exception, but what if the transaction has Faustian overtones? K. G. Pontus Hultén sensed the expanding shadow side of technology when he organized The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age at MoMA in 1968, a year before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. An attempt to illustrate the history of the machine through the ages, Hultén’s exhibition, in retrospect, feels like a clarion warning, summed up in a passage from his introduction:

15

64214int.indd 15

22-05-12 4:35 AM

By the year 2000, technology will undoubtedly have made such advances that our environment will be as different from that of today as our present world differs from ancient Egypt. What role will art play in this change? Human life shares with art the qualities of being a unique, continuous, and unrepeatable experience. Clearly if we believe in either life or art, we must assume complete domination over machines, subject them to our will, and direct them so that they may serve life in the most efficient way—taking as our criterion the totality of human life on this planet.75

More than twenty years have passed since Hultén’s curatorial prognosis, and art’s role in the “technium” remains vexed.76 What if the machine in the garden is actually the machine of civilization—the relentless progression of technological progress with all of technocracy’s discontents? What if technology, as some have observed, operates according to its own deterministic biases, constantly optimizing what it wants, eliminating what’s inessential, and, in the process, altering the course of culture? 77 Smithson called out industry’s myopic obsession with perfection in 1968, by way of describing the empirical properties of steel versus rust: “In the technological mind rust evokes fear of disuse, inactivity, entropy, and ruin. Why steel is valued over rust is a technological value, not an artistic one.”78 Disuse, inactivity, and ruin have enormous artistic potential when it comes to postindustrial sites like mines, quarries, dumps, and landfills. Canadian philosopher and theorist Marshall McLuhan proselytized for mass media while scrutinizing its psychic, social, and environmental impact. “Each new technology,” he wrote in the introduction to Understanding Media, “creates an environment that is itself regarded as corrupt and degrading. Yet the new one turns its predecessor into an art form.” 79 Smithson’s Spiral Jetty still exists near an old mining region; Holt’s Sky Mound, were it ever to be realized, would transform a landfill dump; and Goldsworthy’s Hanging Stones reclaims a dilapidated farm. Reclamation is one ostensible way to stem the tide of technological exploitation—which explains why a cohort of concerned individuals, Agnes Denes, Mel Chin, Harriet Feigenbaum, Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, and others have undertaken related ecological projects since the late 1960s. The spirit of reclamation is redemptive. It’s also purposeful, engaged, and, when necessary, activist.

SCULPTURAL CONSCIENCE

During a symposium at the Drawing Center in 1992, Felix Gonzalez-Torres addressed head-on the problem of divisions of cultural labor. The optics surrounding labor bring us back to Leonardo, who demeaned Michelangelo as a lowly carver of stone, and forward to David Smith and Richard Serra, both of whom identified with the factory laborer and deployed industrial modes of production. But on this occasion, with the culture wars raging, it was the artist’s responsibility as a would-be activist that

16

64214int.indd 16

22-05-12 4:35 AM

drove the conversation. “Reframe the terms of the argument,” Gonzalez-Torres urged. “Make connections. Establish priorities. By taking over the issues of housing, health care, queer rights, women’s rights, the environment, the government cover-ups (and many more unfamiliar acts), we artists, critics, and art historians do in fact rearrange the division of cultural labor, and perhaps in this way, we might be able to put forward our own agenda.” Reframing the terms of the argument meant engaging dominant power structures as “a voice of opposition” that “infiltrates” and “liberates” through “renaming and reordering.” As a gay man living in New York in the wake of the 1980s AIDs epidemic, Gonzalez-Torres knew that silence in the face of death wasn’t an option. Confronting cultural divisions that stymied life-affirming change—even if it meant rallying in the streets and making sculptures (public billboards, candy spills, and paper stacks) that eventually vanished—was an artistic imperative. Cultural engagement beyond the studio has assumed various forms since the early 1960s. Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s guerilla-action, hit-and-run interventions—a wall of oil barrels constructed during the night on Rue Visconti (1961–62)—matured into ephemeral spectacles spun from long-term negotiations with diverse factions. Haacke studied systems of all kinds (political, social, institutional, economic, environmental) to understand how these interconnect with the world at large and where the fault lines exist, revealing corrupt practices. With a detective’s instinct, he knew that the money trail in a capitalist labyrinth more often than not leads to the target.80 Ukeles addressed the meaning of “maintenance” in a four-page manifesto written in 1969, then used these ideas to launch a series of public art projects designed to elevate and honor individuals (laborers and administrators) whose services sustain the urban metropolis. By “rearranging the divisions of cultural labor” through strategic interventions, Ukeles enters the sociopolitical arena as an effective reformer. Less encumbered by ideological stalemates, artists bring creative approaches to otherwise perplexing problems. “That’s the reason why making art is my political and social platform, my spiritual and emotional platform,” Theaster Gates told Phong H. Bui. “Having an artistic practice as the primary platform allows me to move in and out more fluidly of the limitations that are fraught within other parts of hierarchical structures, including city government, the academy, queer gender studies, among other interdisciplinary fields. I want my protest to be in the labor of my artistic practice.”81 A commitment to issues of race and social justice through property ownership and the reclamation of African American achievements informs Gates’s conversation with Zachary Cahill and Michelle Grabner. Born and raised in China, Ai Weiwei knows that to be an activist inside a communist regime is risky business no matter what platforms are used—be these sculpture, architecture, photography, or even an internet blog. “My work as an artist is not about using the language already given,” he mentioned to Bui, “but rather creating my own language. And the Internet gave me this possibility. The language came

17

64214int.indd 17

22-05-12 4:35 AM

out itself. It’s so smooth, so natural, so unpredictable, and so free.” Ai’s blog became a powerful catalyst for raising consciousness around the devastating earthquake in Sichuan in May 2008 that killed thousands of young students. His dogged persistence to uncover the truth by revealing the actual losses led to his blog being shut down and eventually landed him in a prison cell for eighty-one days. Undeterred, he continues to advocate for human rights using every platform at his disposal. Choosing to maintain a traditional studio doesn’t necessarily mollify one’s cultural awareness. “My own work has, at various times, broadcast meditations on diverse means of production: manual, industrial, digital,” Jeanne Silverthorne writes. Since the early 1990s, Silverthorne has explored the trope of the “single-occupant artist’s studio,” acknowledging that the “once-privileged, once-patriarchal place of contemplation is now in decay” and using this premise to “excavate that ruin, unearthing the various items buried in it.” Her flimsy rubber warehouse studio props and obsessively rendered portraits leaven signs of decay with humor and pathos. Petah Coyne’s studio is continually restocked with old and new materials, some dating back to the 1980s. These are her “language,” and they determine each object, each “girl’s” demeanor. Ambiguity is a critical aspect of the work, something her contemporaries (Silverthorne, Janine Antoni, Kiki Smith, Ann Hamilton) would agree on. Antoni’s “escape hatch”—the portal to a performative sculptural ethos that thrives on interdisciplinary research, new processes, materials, and methodologies—leads to the unconscious, an indeterminate space without name, definition, or ego: a “conduit” or “body through which the world is poured.” Ambiguity thrives in Pierre Huyghe’s immersive installations (comprising posters, live events, and films) where fact and fiction, spectator and spectacle commingle in unexpected, indeterminate ways that, as Robert Storr notes, “question what an artwork is (or might be), and who looks at it (and how and why).” “Art gives a physical presence to inexplicable things,” Smith states, “things that can’t be quantified or truly explained. Ambiguity is important; everything else is a trap.” Ann Hamilton’s “weight,” one of four texts comprising the multidimensional “habitus” project, weaves associations, meditations, and historical facts into a textual fabric rife with ambiguity. Ambiguity, evoked in Gonzalez-Torres’s revelation about a “rhetorical image that asks questions with no answers,” has always been art’s subversive edge: the power to provoke without entirely revealing itself. Ambiguity differentiates poetic provocation from political propaganda, but it can be a challenging proposition. “The more overt and literal the elements are that I’m trying to incorporate into the work, the more of a struggle it is for me to make it work as art,” Martin Puryear remarked to David Levi Strauss in reference to C.F.A.O. (2006–7), an object with racial and political overtones. “I’ve been dealing with abstract forms for a long time, so the inclusion of some preexisting things from the world—rather than from my own hand and brain—felt like a pretty dicey proposition. It still does.” Alison Saar addresses a

18

64214int.indd 18

22-05-12 4:35 AM

similar dilemma. “I endeavor to make works that challenge the status quo,” she writes, “that attempt to summon a collective rage for our current times brought on by past inequities.” Saar’s cast and carved objects channel historical events to inform the present. “By creating a dialogue with the past in order to understand the present,” she explains, “I can step back from the headlines and specifics of current crises, while speaking to the persistence of these problems.” Tom Sachs, likewise, evokes a past atrocity, the Holocaust, to probe a current predicament. His Prada Death Camp can be seen as a sly critique of identity theft via the “coercive power of advertising,” branding based on “false promises,” the insidious humanization of commercial products.82 Olafur Eliasson’s studio functions like a command center with a holistic mission. “The Expanded Studio” is how the sculptor describes his atelier in Berlin—an interdisciplinary workshop with teams of researchers and craftspeople and a long “pinboard wall” populated with questions, articles, images, and news clippings arranged around keywords in alphabetical order. Issues like “climate crisis,” “extinction,” “ecological collapse,” and “global warming” drive Eliasson’s sculptural ethos. “Today,” he writes, “a sculpture can be a process, a system, or a collective movement. For decades, artists have considered sculpture to be not only objects but objects that have agency, that do something [Eliasson’s italics] in the world. Objects with agency that do something in the world may well be the mantra for a contemporary sculptural practice that brings awareness to pressing issues—social, political, and environmental. In 2019 Oxford Dictionaries named climate emergency its Word of the Year, because its usage, when compared to “climate change” and “climate crisis,” had increased “by a hundredfold since 2018.”83 Such a semantic distinction isn’t lost on a sculptor whose practice contemplates the planet’s fate. With his notion of “Co-Sculpting,” Eliasson returns to Rodin, the humane gremlin in the machine, whose enigmatic figures, riddled by imperfections, pose existential questions about who we are, how we got here, and how we persist. Rodin was unsettled by the complacency he saw around him, the irrational lure of material comforts brought on by technological advancement. One can see why; we live in the wake of his quandary, wondering at times whether we or technology control the future. For better or worse, technology has permeated our lives through the proliferation of alluring platforms, screens large and small. Modern sculpture inherits Rodin’s doubt like a badge of honor. It’s no longer a question of rejecting what technology has wrought but, rather, of being conscious of how it’s deployed and to what end. The options have to be weighed against the consequences. With the escalating threat of viral infiltration, a stable ecology counts more than financial gain. Driven by a stream of interdisciplinary strategies that can actually do something in the world, sculpture has the potential to effect constructive change. When sculptural conscience signals action, then Eliasson has his priorities straight when he declares, “The most important sculptural project going on today is shaping the future of planet Earth.”

19

64214int.indd 19

22-05-12 4:35 AM

NOTES 1.  James Johnson Sweeney, “An Interview with Jacques Lipchitz,” Partisan Review 12, no. 1 (Winter 1945): 83. Lipchitz’s partisan notion of the “Great Stream” was inseparable from one’s creative freedom: “To begin with, I would like to make it clear that I, too, am a partisan, a very violent partisan for the liberty of art, the liberty of personality, the liberty of creative expression— for the broad highway of art through the ages, the royal road of tradition in the true sense, the Great Stream: the right of every artist to express himself and his duty to pour his own small stream into the great river. The river is never the same; it is constantly expanding and constantly in motion.” 2.  “The radical ambiguities of a modern sculptural imaginary” are the central core of Alex Potts’s seminal book The Sculptural Imagination: Figurative, Modernist, Minimalist (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000) and a subsequent anthology, Modern Sculpture Reader, ed. Jon Wood, David Hulks, and Alex Potts (Leeds and Los Angeles: Henry Moore Institute and J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007); in the anthology, see Potts’s “Introduction: The Idea of Modern Sculpture,” xiii–xxx. 3.  David Smith acknowledged the primacy of images (sculpted or painted) as a primordial language transcending words; see Smith, “The Language Is Image,” Arts & Architecture 69 (February 1952): 20–21, 33–34; reprinted in David Smith: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Interviews, ed. Susan J. Cooke (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018), 145–47. 4.  See Joseph Campbell’s analysis of shamanism and the Paleolithic caves (originally published in 1959); Campbell, Primitive Mythology: The Masks of God (New York: Penguin, 1969), 299–347. 5.  Charles Baudelaire, “Salon de 1846,” Oeuvres Complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1961), 943. For an excellent discussion of Baudelaire’s role in the discourse around sculpture and modernity, see Potts, Sculptural Imagination, 62–65. 6.  Leo Steinberg, “Sculpture since Rodin,” Art Digest 27, no. 19 (August 1953): 22. 7.  Not long after arriving in the United States in 1937 as director of the New York branch of Berlin’s Buchholz Gallery, Valentin, at Lipchitz’s suggestion, showed works by Rodin in two exhibitions: From Rodin to Brancusi (1941) and Homage to Rodin (1942). In May 1954, after the MoMA survey, Curt Valentin Gallery opened a major Rodin exhibition of forty-four sculptures and thirtyseven works on paper; see Peter Selz, “Postscript: Rodin and America,” in Albert E. Elsen, Rodin (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1963), 200. 8.  Andrew Carnduff Ritchie, “The Object in Relation to Light: Rodin and His Influence,” Sculpture of the Twentieth Century (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1952), 14. Finding ways to forge a modernist lineage was MoMA’s core mission from 1929 onward. What Ritchie did for Rodin, Alfred Barr Jr., then director of museum collections, likewise did for Claude Monet three years later when the museum purchased and exhibited one of his Nymphéas. Various painters (Philip Guston, Milton Resnick, and Pat Passloff) and two critics (Leo Steinberg and Clement Greenberg) responded accordingly; see Steinberg, “Month in Review,” Arts Magazine 30, no. 5 (February 1956): 46–48 and Greenberg, “The Late Monet,” Art News Annual 26 (December 1957): 132, 148; and Michael Leja, “The Monet Revival and New York School Abstraction,” Monet in the 20th Century, ed. Paul H. Tucker, exh. cat. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 98–108. 9.  The stature of American sculpture owes an enormous debt to Dorothy C. Miller’s curatorial efforts, particularly the postwar iterations of her esteemed Americans series. 10.  Leo Steinberg, “Rodin,” in Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 351. 11.  The very title of Rosalind Krauss’s book on the topic reenvisions the history of modern sculpture as a sequential, phenomenological progression; see Krauss, Passages in Modern Sculpture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977). 12.  Steinberg, “Rodin,” 371. 13.  Willem de Kooning, quoted in “What Abstract Art Means to Me,” Museum of Modern Art Bulletin 18, no. 3 (Spring 1951): 7.

20

64214int.indd 20

22-05-12 4:35 AM

14.  Quoted from the cover flaps of Bauhaus 1919–1928, ed. Herbert Bayer, Walter Gropius, and Ise Gropius (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1938). 15.  See Thomas McEvilly on Duchamp’s complicated heritage in Sculpture in the Age of Doubt (New York: Allworth Press, 1999), 49–66. 16.  The gestural bias of postwar painting was nearly impossible with sculpture’s heavy metals, except in rare instances, such as Smith’s improvised mix-and-match techniques, or as surface flourishes through brazing and burnishing. Perhaps the oxyacetylene torch, the postwar tool of choice, limited the extent to which sculpture could completely embody the “action” ethos, except through surface effects. Drawing on sheets of paper (large and small), however, allowed one to improvise sculptural ideas free from constructional constraints, and many faithfully pursed this medium. 17.  The compatibility of sculpture with architecture was a highly contested subject during the 1950s and 1960s. Noguchi and Frederick Kiesler embraced the possibility of holistic designs, which were rarely, if ever, financed to fruition. Ferber, David Hare, Ibram Lassaw, and Seymour Lipton gravitated to Judaic commissions, some brokered by the entrepreneurial dealer Samuel M. Kootz, but these were not without their own creative compromises. Roszak’s successful bell tower commission for Eero Saarinen’s MIT Chapel (1953–55) is an anomaly. Smith rejected any possible union of sculpture with architecture and instead preferred to expand the size of certain works. The shifting dynamics of this uneasy marriage were of great interest to the critic Thomas Hess; see Hess, “The Steel Mistletoe,” Art News 61, no. 2 (February 1963): 46–47, 55–57. 18.  David Smith, quoted in the transcript of “The New Sculpture,” Museum of Modern Art (February 12, 1952), 4. About a month before the MoMA symposium, Smith discussed the historical relationship between sculpture and painting, sculpture’s sitelessness, and the deficiencies of criticism in a lecture at the Detroit Institute of Art, one of the series “Five Evenings of Art with the Metropolitan Art Association” (November 1951–April 1952); see “Problems of the Contemporary Sculptor,” in Cooke, David Smith, 140–44. 19.  Irving Sandler, in conversation with the author at the College Art Association conference, New York, February 17, 2007. 20.  The June 1948 issue of Tiger’s Eye featured fourteen sculptors—Jean Arp, Calder, Mary Callery, Ferber, Alberto Giacometti, Peter Grippe, David Hare, Lippold, Lipchitz, Lipton, Noguchi, Helen Phillips, Smith, and Ossip Zadkine—each of whom offered a personal credo, or observations about the history of sculpture, accompanied by an illustration. Giacometti contributed a reprint of his handwritten letter reproduced in the catalogue for his exhibition earlier that year at the Pierre Matisse Gallery; see “[Première] Lettre à Pierre Matisse,” Alberto Giacometti, exh. cat. (New York: Pierre Matisse Gallery, 1948), 31–45. Some contributions, such as Smith’s, were poetic; see “The Ides of Art: 14 Sculptors Write,” Tiger’s Eye 1, no. 4 (June 15, 1948): 73–104. 21.  Club without Walls: Selections from the Journals of Philip Pavia, ed. Natalie Edgar (New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 2007); see pages 158–78 for a listing of programs presented between 1950 and 1955. 22.  When painting became the epitome of avant-garde American art during the 1950s and sculpture appeared the underdog, no one defended sculpture’s right to exist more than Clement Greenberg, who went out of his way to give it a more sustained discussion. He methodically followed sculptural developments in New York (at the Whitney Annuals and at other museum and gallery exhibitions), reviewing the work of a small group—Calder, Ferber, Grippe, Hare, Adaline Kent, Lassaw, Lippold, Lipton, Noguchi, and Roszak—for the Nation, Horizon, and Partisan Review. His opinions about sculpture, as about painting, evolved with a deliberate sense of purpose. His proclamations for “The New Sculpture,” published in Partisan Review in 1949, drew on contemporary literary developments and art historical precedents for critical ballast (see Greenberg, “The New Sculpture,” Partisan Review 16 [June 1949]: 637–642). His criteria for the new abstraction—based on notions of unity, purity, flatness, and linearity—signaled a formal retreat while aggressively propagating a nationalistic point of view. He proselytized for American art, which he saw as holding its own against European precedents, with doctrinaire ballyhoo.

21

64214int.indd 21

22-05-12 4:35 AM

By privileging formal abstraction, equivalent to a one-way conversation, Greenberg effectively eliminated one side of the creative equation, and with it, a lot of would-be subject matter. Such a strict point of view, with its nationalistic gloss, today appears an alternative orthodoxy, quixotic in a pluralistic and global culture. Greenberg’s agenda for the new sculpture elevated the “pictorial” (open, linear, and transparent designs) and jettisoned the monolithic as a vestige of the “somatic Greco-Roman tradition of carving and modeling.” The new sculpture had to be “literal”; to deal with modern materials (steel, glass, plastic) and tools (the oxyacetylene torch); to avoid illusion and overt allusion; and to emphasize the intrinsic qualities of the medium, which essentially made it incompatible with painting. The critic’s grand predictions for great American sculpture failed to materialize as he had hoped; ultimately, few sculptors who came of age during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, with the notable exceptions of Smith, Anthony Caro, and Anne Truitt, found a secure niche in his sculptural pantheon; see Douglas Dreishpoon, “Sculptors and Critics, Arenas and Complaints,” Action/Abstraction: Pollock, De Kooning, and American Art, 1940–1976 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 215–29. 23.  Paul Shimmel and Judith Stein, eds., The Figurative Fifties: New York Figurative Expressionism, exh. cat. (Newport Beach, CA: Newport Harbor Art Museum, 1988). 24.  Of all the critics who reviewed New Images of Man (and there were more than eight), Dore Ashton was by far the most perceptive; see Ashton, “Art: New Images of Man,” Arts & Architecture 76 (November 1959): 14. 25.  “On a Journey to Philadelphia and Consecutive Matter, October 28, 1962,” in Carl Andre— Hollis Frampton: 12 Dialogues 1962–1963, ed. Benjamin H. D. Buchloh (Canada: Press of Nova Scotia, 1981), 25–31. 26.  By 1975, as the commodification of art escalated, Andre saw the Readymade more as a symptom than as an innovation. “The fault of the Duchamp Readymade,” he wrote in the Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin, “is that it idealizes an industrial product by severing it from its origins in working class craft and claiming it as a trophy of capitalist cunning. The Readymade is industrial product as pure exchange value”; see Carl Andre, Cuts: Texts 1959–2004, ed. James Meyer (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 91. 27.  Andre, 12 Dialogues, 31. 28.  Andre, in an interview at the University of New Mexico; see Andre, Cuts, 229. 29.  In an attempt to elucidate what he saw as an essential tenet of modern sculpture, Herbert Read coined the term Vitalism. In Read’s vital scheme of things, sculptors as stylistically diverse as Rodin, Brancusi, Picasso, Alexander Archipenko, Moore, Giacometti, Arp, Barbara Hepworth, and others were united under one aesthetic; see Herbert Read, “The Vital Image,” A Concise History of Modern Sculpture (New York: Praeger, 1964), 163–228. For a concise history of Vitalism, see Jack Burnham, “The Biotic Sources of Modern Sculpture,” Beyond Modern Sculpture: The Effects of Science and Technology on the Sculpture of This Century (New York: George Braziller, 1968), 49–109. 30.  Richard Serra and Hal Foster, Conversations about Sculpture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), 206. 31.  Richard Serra, “Skulpture als Platz,” interview by Friedrich Teja Bach, Das Kunstwerk 31, no. 1 (February 1978); reprinted in Richard Serra: Writings, Interviews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 27. 32.  For a detailed account of Brancusi’s reception in America, including his friendship with Duchamp, see Ann Temkin, “Brancusi and His American Collectors,” Constantin Brancusi, 1876– 1957, exh. cat. (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1995), 50–73. For a more current assessment, see William C. Agee, “Brancusi and America,” Art in America 107, no. 5 (May 2019): 74–81. 33.  Quoted in Krauss, “Forms of Readymade: Duchamp and Brancusi,” Passages in Modern Sculpture, 84. 34.  Ken Price, in conversation with the author, Brooklyn Rail, November 2018, https:// brooklynrail.org/2018/11/art/KEN-PRICE-with-Douglas-Dreishpoon.

22

64214int.indd 22

22-05-12 4:35 AM

35.  Walter Hopps, The Dream Colony: A Life in Art, ed. Deborah Treisman from interviews with Anne Doran (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017), 157–69. 36.  During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Lawrence Alloway, writing about the “arts and mass media,” “artists as consumers,” and “junk culture,” was one of the first to articulate an urbanbased aesthetic that recycled obsolete objects from the environment and resurrected these as art. As a critic, curator, and founding member of the Independent Group in Great Britain, he maintained an egalitarian perspective on popular culture and fine art, seeing the two as confluent rather than mutually exclusive, and drawing on science fiction, Hollywood films, cybernetics, communication, and game theory, where the interplay of cultural forces was dynamic. He recognized America as the pop culture machine of the future and after moving to New York in 1961, just prior to his curatorial appointment at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, brought an open-minded analysis to a decidedly pluralistic scene; see Imagining the Present: Context, Content, and the Role of the Critic (Essays by Lawrence Alloway), ed. Richard Kalina (New York: Routledge, 2006). 37.  William C. Seitz, The Art of Assemblage, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1961), 89. 38.  “The Spontaneous and Design,” Waldorf Panels 1 & 2 on Sculpture, Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York, published in It Is 6 (Autumn 1965): 7–16, 57–64, 73–80, 109–13. Panelists included Ferber, Reuben Kadish, Lassaw, Pavia, James Rosati, Bernard Rosenthal, and David Slivka (Panel 1, February 17, 1965); and Noguchi, Oldenburg, Pavia, George Segal, George Sugarman, and James Wines (Panel 2, March 17, 1965). Both sessions were reprinted in 2011 by Soberscove Press with the permission of Natalie Edgar. 39.  Philip Pavia, dubbed the “tutelary host” of the Club, organized, with input from Club members, more than two hundred panels from 1950 to 1955; see Edgar, Club without Walls. After stepping down from his programmatic responsibilities at the Club, Pavia produced and published six issues of It Is—“A Magazine for Abstract Art.” 40.  Ad Reinhardt in Waldorf Panel 1, It Is 6 (Autumn 1965): 74. 41.  John Cage and Morton Feldman, “Radio Happenings I” (July 9, 1966), Radio Happenings: Conversations/Gespräche, transcribed by Laura Kuhn, translated by Gisela Gronëmeyer (Cologne: MusikTexte, 2015), 16–22. 42.  Helen Molesworth, Leap before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957, exh. cat. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015). 43.  Allan Kaprow, “Right Living,” A Tribute to John Cage, exh. cat. for Chicago International Art Exposition (Cincinnati: Carl Solway Gallery, 1987); reprinted in Allan Kaprow: Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, ed. Jeff Kelly (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 225. 44.  Allan Kaprow, “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock,” Art News 57, no. 6 (October 1958); reprinted in Kaprow: Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, 1–9: “Pollock, as I see him, left us at the point where we must become preoccupied with and even dazzled by the space and objects of our everyday life, either our bodies, clothes, rooms, or, if need be, the vastness of Forty-second Street. Not satisfied with the suggestion through paint of our other senses, we shall utilize the specific substances of sight, sound, movements, people, odors, touch. Objects of every sort are materials for the new art: paint, chairs, food, electric and neon lights, smoke, water, old socks, a dog, movies, a thousand other things that will be discovered by the present generation of artists. [. . .] Young artists of today need no longer say, ‘I am a painter’ or ‘a poet’ or ‘a dancer.’ They are simply ‘artists.’ All of life will be open to them” (7, 9). 45.  Allan Kaprow, “Happenings in the New York Scene,” Art News 60, no. 3 (May 1961); reprinted in Kaprow: Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, 16. Oldenburg had his own ideas about what a Happening entailed, and he was adamant about how his performances differed from those of his fellow “Happeners”; see Branden W. Joseph, “Psychological Expressionism: Claes Oldenburg’s Theater of Objects,” Claes Oldenburg: The Sixties, exh. cat. (New York: Delmonico Books, 2012), 105–6. 46.  The spectator’s shifting role, addressed early on by Duchamp in “The Creative Act,” a paper presented to the Convention of the American Federation of Arts in Houston, Texas, April 1957,

23

64214int.indd 23

22-05-12 4:35 AM

became a nexus of discussion during the 1960s; see Duchamp’s talk, reprinted in The New Art, ed. Gregory Battcock (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1973), 46–48; Thomas B. Hess, “A Tale of Two Cities,” Location 1, no. 2 (Summer 1964); reprinted in New Art, 100–101; and Alan Solomon, “The New Art,” The Popular Image, exh. cat. (Washington, DC: Washington Gallery of Modern Art, 1963), reprinted in New Art, 198–200. 47.  For Harold Rosenberg’s essays on “Action” painting, see “The American Action Painters,” first published in Art News, 1952, reprinted in The Tradition of the New (New York: Horizon Press, 1959); “Getting Inside the Canvas,” 25–27; “Action Painting: Crisis and Distortion,” first published in 1962, reprinted in The Anxious Object: Art Today and Its Audience (New York: Horizon Press, 1964), 39–48; and “The Concept of Action in Painting,” New Yorker, May 25, 1968, reprinted in Rosenberg, Artworks and Packages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). For Kaprow’s essays on the Happening, see “The Happenings Are Dead: Long Live the Happenings!,” first published in 1966, reprinted in Kaprow, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, 59–65; and “Pinpointing Happenings,” first published in 1967, reprinted in Kaprow, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, 84–89. 48.  John Savage, “I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Velvet Underground and Warhol’s America,” 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded (London: Farber and Farber, 2015), 187–234; Branden W. Joseph, “White Light/White Noise,” Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again, ed. Donna De Salvo, exh. cat. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), 42–53. 49.  Allan Kaprow, quoted in Barbara Rose and Irving Sandler, “Sensibilities of the Sixties,” Art in America 55, no. 1 (January–February 1967): 45. For a discussion of Kaprow’s association with Martha Jackson, see Douglas Dreishpoon, “Collecting History,” The Long Curve: 150 Years of Visionary Collecting at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, exh. cat. (Milan: Skira, 2011), 32–33. 50.  Barbara Rose, “ABC Art,” Art in America 53, no. 5 (October–November 1965): 57–69. 51.  See Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battcock (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1968). 52.  Quoted in James Meyer, Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 3. 53.  It took time to flesh out the polemical subtexts of an art so seemingly obdurate. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, theoretical and feminist critiques offered enlightening perspectives; see Hal Foster, “The Crux of Minimalism,” in Individuals: A Selected History of Contemporary Art, 1945–1986, ed. Howard Singerman (New York: Abbeville Press, 1986), 162–83; and Anna C. Chave, “Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power,” Arts Magazine 64, no. 5 (January 1990): 44–63. Also see Chave’s subsequent take on Carl Andre, presented as a talk sponsored by the Dia Art Foundation at Dia Beacon in Beacon, New York, on November 15, 2014; Anna C. Chave, “Grave Matters: Positioning Carl Andre at Career’s End,” Art Journal 73, no. 4 (Winter 2014): 5–21. 54.  Lucy R. Lippard, Changing: Essays in Art Criticism (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1971), 13. 55.  Mel Bochner, “Serial Art, Systems, Solipsism,” Arts Magazine 41, no. 8 (Summer 1967); revised and reprinted in Battcock, Minimal Art, 93. 56.  Sol LeWitt, interview by Paul Cummings, July 15, 1974, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 46; also see Meyer, Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties, 6. 57.  Donald Judd, “Complaints: Part 1,” Studio International, April 1969; reprinted in Judd, The Complete Writings, 1959–1975 (New York: New York University Press, 1975), 197–99. 58.  Donald Judd, “Kenneth Noland,” Arts Magazine 37, no. 10 (September 1963); reprinted in Judd, Complete Writings, 93. 59.  Richard Serra, “Donald Judd, 1928–1994,” Parkett 40/41 (1994): 176–79. I thank Jeffrey Weiss for drawing my attention to Serra’s piece. 60.  As early as 1966, Lippard noticed aberrational tenets of Minimalism emerging on the East and West Coasts, coined the term Eccentric Abstraction, and curated an exhibition in New York at the Fishbach Gallery featuring work by Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Bruce Nauman, and Keith Sonnier, among others; see Lippard, “Eccentric Abstraction,” Art International 10, no. 9 (November 1966); reprinted, slightly cut and rearranged, in Changing: Essays in Art Criticism, 98–111. Three years later, Marcia Tucker and James Monte featured twenty-one sculptors, painters, and

24

64214int.indd 24

22-05-12 4:35 AM

performance artists in Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials at the Whitney Museum of American Art. For one of the most cogent, illustrated blow-by-blow assessments of post-Minimal sculpture, see The New Sculpture 1965–75: Between Geometry and Gesture, ed. Richard Armstrong and Richard Marshall, exh. cat. (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1990). For a European perspective, see Germano Celant, ed., Arte Povera (London: Studio Vista; New York: Praeger, 1969). 61.  Serra, “Donald Judd, 1928–1994.” 62.  Sculpture gained an ardent advocate with Rosalind Krauss, who by 1979 had redrawn the medium’s historical parameters, along with the theoretical terms of its ontology. About two points in particular she was adamant: Sculpture that occupied the “expanded field” was no longer bound by the phenomenological and material conditions of modernism; having “suffered a logically determined rupture,” it claimed a postmodern status; see “Sculpture in the Expanded Field,” October 8 (Spring 1979): 31–44. The second point, which she delivered without apology to an audience of mostly studio art majors at Bard College during the fall of 1979, was “The concerns of the critic are never the concerns of the artist.” Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, November 1, 1979, recorded and transcribed by the author. 63.  Smithson and Holt’s Passaic Tours are discussed by Ines Schaber; see “The Claims She Stakes: A Readying of Nancy Holt’s Archive” and “Day One: Crossing into New Territories, East,” Nancy Holt: Sightlines, ed. Alena J. Williams (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 166–67. 64.  Robert Smithson, “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey,” Artforum (December 1967); reprinted in The Writings of Robert Smithson, ed. Nancy Holt (New York: New York University Press, 1979), 52–57; and Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, ed. Jack Flam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 68–74. 65.  One of Kaprow’s early Happenings, Tree, A Yam Festival, took place at George Segal’s farm in South Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1963, and another, Household, a year later at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Yayoi Kusama staged Anti-War Naked Happening on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1968; see Off Limits: Rutgers University and the Avant-Garde, 1957–1963, ed. Joan Marter, exh. cat. (Newark, NJ: Newark Museum, 1999), 41–42, 125, plates 22, 30, and 31; and Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama, trans. Ralph McCarthy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 110. 66.  “What Is a Museum? A Dialogue between Allan Kaprow and Robert Smithson,” Arts Yearbook, “The Museum World”; reprinted in Writings of Robert Smithson, 59–66. 67.  Robert Smithson, “Some Void Thoughts on Museums,” Writings of Robert Smithson, 58. 68.  Robert Smithson, “What Is a Museum?,” 60–61. 69.  In July 1968, Smithson, Holt, and Heizer traveled first to the desert near Las Vegas, where Holt photographed both men shoveling lava and pumice out of the back of a pickup truck. Two weeks later, the trio made the first of several trips to Mono Lake in California, where Smithson created Mono Lake Nonsite, 1968; see Schaber, “Crossing into New Territories, West,” Nancy Holt: Sightlines, 167. Robert Smithson, “A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects,” Artforum, September 1968; reprinted in Writings of Robert Smithson, 82–91. 70.  For an informed discussion of Heizer’s subterraneous “Lines,” “Depressions,” and “Displacements” as “catastrophic ruins,” see Robert Slifkin, “Catastrophic Ruins,” The New Monuments and the End of Man: U.S. Sculpture between War and Peace, 1945–1975 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019), 149–61. 71.  Smithson, “Sedimentation of the Mind,” 87. The textual dimension of Smithson’s postmodern ethos was cogently argued by Craig Owens; see Owens, “Earthwords,” October 10 (Fall 1979): 120–30. 72.  For a discussion of this period as seen through a curated selection of vintage photographic prints, see Alan Trachtenberg, “Picturing History in the Morgue,” The Tumultuous Fifties: A View from the New York Times Photo Archives, ed. Douglas Dreishpoon, exh. cat. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 21–31; also see Siegfried Giedon, Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History (1948; New York: Norton, 1969). 73.  Caroline A. Jones offers an astute analysis of Smithson’s writings and post-studio Earthworks, while noting the enabling influence of the “road”; see Jones, “Post-Studio/Postmodern:

25

64214int.indd 25

22-05-12 4:35 AM

Robert Smithson and the Technological Sublime,” Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 268–343. 74.  The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s ambitious Art and Technology (A&T) program (1967–71), initiated by Maurice Tuchman and Jane Livingston to pair artists with corporate entities, proved productive in some cases, problematic in others; see Maurice Tuchman, A Report on the Art and Technology Program of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1967–1971 (New York: Viking, 1971). 75.  K. G. Pontus Hultén, introduction to The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1968), 11. 76.  Kevin Kelly coined the term technium to describe civilization’s vast accumulation of inventions, creations, and human-inspired ideas as an interconnected, self-perpetuating organism—culture, art, social institutions, and intellectual creations of all types; see Kelly, What Technology Wants (New York: Viking, 2010), 11–13. 77.  Still one of the most clear-sighted and evenhanded analyses of technology’s historical impact on cultural development is Neil Postman’s Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage, 1992); also see Lewis Mumford’s earlier assessment in Technics and Civilization (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1934). 78.  Smithson, “Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects,” 86. 79.  Marshall McLuhan, introduction to Understanding Media: The Extension of Man, 2nd ed. (New York: New American Library, 1964), ix. McLuhan was clear about technology’s deleterious effects, if left unmonitored, on human beings and the environment; see Eric Norden, “Marshall McLuhan: A Candid Conversation with the High Priest of Popcult and Metaphysician of Media,” Playboy 16, no. 3 (March 1969): 26–27, 45, 55–56, 61, 63. 80.  For a current study of Haacke’s institutional critiques, see Aruna D’Souza, “Inside Job,” Art in America, November 2019, 56–63. 81.  Theaster Gates with Phong H. Bui, Brooklyn Rail, December–January 2020–21, 34–35. 82.  The simulation and appropriation of cultural goods for artistic purposes during the 1980s was the subject of a timely exhibition organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston; see Endgame: Reference and Simulation in Recent Painting and Sculpture, ed. David Joselit and Elisabeth Sussman (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986). 83.  “ ‘Climate Emergency’ Is Oxford’s Word of the Year,” New York Times, November 22, 2019.

26

64214int.indd 26

22-05-12 4:35 AM

C O N S T R U C T I O N S , C O N C R E T I O N S , R E A DY M A D E S In 1911, six years before his death and riding a wave of international recognition, Auguste Rodin could afford to be brutally honest. “Mankind at present,” he snipped to Paul Gsell, “is bestial: it has no use for artists.” The sculptor was frustrated by people’s hedonistic pursuit of physical pleasure and material gain, feeling they lacked imagination, the wherewithal to dream. Rodin’s candid remarks to Gsell, together with his confessional notebooks, reveal a disgruntled gremlin in the machine: an exasperated artist threatened by a burgeoning industrial revolution. “Our age is one of engineers and manufacturers, not artists” was his late-in-life prognosis for a culture in transition, driven by progressive forces that, though beyond his control, nonetheless seeped into his sculptural sensibility. One could say that Rodin was ambivalent about the artist’s role in modern society. Concerned that machines and manufacturing might deaden one’s aesthetic awareness through the proliferation of lackluster products, he produced his own line of eccentric objects: clay and plaster studies of hands, feet, torsos, and faces—many spontaneously modeled, gouged and torn, pitted and encrusted. A steady stream of body parts, endearingly described by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke as Rodin’s “things,” shows a man obsessed with the raw factuality of the human condition—apart from the factitiousness of the world of manufactured objects. Modernity is inscribed in Rodin’s art in a different way—in the perceived vulnerability of his headless torsos, for example, whose blasted limbs and pockmarked skin defy classical canons of perfection and permanence. For him, even an antique fragment ravaged by the effects of time held eternal truths about life unfolding. One wonders to what extent Rodin’s sculptural consciousness was affected, even liberated, by traumatic events witnessed in real time. Wars have a way of heightening sensitivities. Was the street-level carnage of the Franco-Prussian War a catalyst for another kind of figuration: destabilized, fractured, existential? Death and ambivalence never prevented Rodin from questioning how sculpture got made, courting would-be mistakes, and miming modes of industrial production (multiplication and duplication) for his own purposes, within the privacy of his studio, a combination laboratory and storehouse. A lot of what he instinctively modeled and cast was saved, stored in drawers for easy access. The studio facilitated his propensity to graft disparate sculptural elements. It also enabled him to see his output as a related family of forms, something that probably impressed the young Constantin Brancusi during his brief stint as Rodin’s assistant between 1906 and 1907. Over this short period in Rodin’s studio, Brancusi came to see how fluid the medium of sculpture could be, and it is conceivable that the elder sculptor’s tendency to eliminate limbs and heads, as superfluous appendages, reinforced

64214int.indd 27

22-05-12 4:35 AM

Brancusi’s own reductive inclinations. His partial figures, erotic poses, and sensitivity to light evoke an anomalous species—less anatomical, more abstract, streamlined and exquisitely polished, carved and rough-hewn, sexually evocative, intimate and alluring, monumental and soaring. Brancusi drew what he could from Rodin, then reset the terms of sculpture by reenvisioning its form, execution, and presentation. When describing what he did, Brancusi tended to be laconic; simplicity, the essence of things, and truth to materials were his sculptural mantras, offered up (for publications and to inquiring journalists) as aphoristic insights. In his “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture,” published four years before his untimely death, Umberto Boccioni made no qualms about what was at stake; sculpture (dating back to the Egyptians) was moribund, “a monstrous anachronism.” There was only one option: to destroy the past in order to construct a more promising future. No one was spared in the mounting wave of his ideological rant, with one exception: Medardo Rosso, fellow Italian, “the only great modern sculptor,” who “attempted to open up a larger field to sculpture, rendering plastically the influences of an ambiance and the atmospheric ties that bind it to the subject.” Five years earlier, in a piece published in an English newspaper, Rosso had declared light to be the very essence of existence and denied any work “not concerned with light” the right to exist; any sculpture immune to light “lacked unity and spaciousness” and was bound to be “small, paltry, wrongly conceived.” Both Italians, seizing on the French Impressionists as modern agents who painted the fleeting effects of light en plein air, realized that, in sculptors’ hands, light had the power to animate and dematerialize otherwise recalcitrant matter. “We therefore [. . .] proclaim the ABSOLUTE AND COMPLETE ABOLITION OF DEFINITE LINES AND CLOSED SCULPTURE. WE BREAK OPEN THE FIGURE AND ENCLOSE IT IN [AN] ENVIRONMENT,” Boccioni proselytized, urging sculptors to enter the modern age by adapting new materials—glass, metal, wires, outdoor or interior electric lights—and purging anatomical and naturalistic signs. A manifesto may call for revolutionary change, but life can intercede. Boccioni died before many of his ideas could be fully realized. Had he lived longer, one wonders, might he have tempered some of his more extreme proclamations, particularly those equating progress with aggression and destruction? Between 1912 and 1914, when Pablo Picasso cobbled together a series of still lifes made from wood, cardboard, and paper, he effectively reset the course of sculpture by displacing traditional methods of carving and modeling and instead constructing objects from recycled materials. Twenty-eight years later, sequestered in Paris during the Second World War, he combined a set of bicycle handlebars with a seat to create a bull’s head. The artist didn’t write or say much about his quirky objects, a natural extension of his Cubist paintings and paper collages. Instead he spoke off the cuff, or on the record to others, who quoted or paraphrased his observations. Almost any idea, given his preternatural dexterity, could be transposed from one medium to another and flourish in the process.

28

64214int.indd 28

22-05-12 4:35 AM

Henri Matisse, Picasso’s creative equal, also made sculpture at various times during his life. Most of the work—small reclining and freestanding nudes, heads, and, eventually, four monumental backs cast in bronze—can be seen as a response to Rodin. Like Picasso, Matisse modeled in three dimensions to clarify pictorial ideas. The text included here, transcribed from a student’s notes in 1908, has an instructional tone. Matisse urges his students to forget all theories before the subject (the model) and to focus on the “first impression,” which is exactly what he did in trusting his intuition and responding to subjects emotionally. Picasso thrived on collaborations. This was true of his association with Georges Braque during the early phases of Cubism (1907 to 1914) and, likewise, decades later with his friend and fellow Spaniard Julio González, who taught him how to weld. Humble and modest, perhaps to a fault, González deferred to Picasso’s accomplishments, as though his own were somehow less noteworthy. In actuality, what González did with metal, in his unassuming way—by drawing and bending, rolling, cutting, folding and forging, and joining points and edges with an oxyacetylene torch—set sculpture on an alternate track by liberating iron from its role as the death-dealing material of war so it could thrive in “the peaceful hands of an artist.” His inventive prompt, “To draw in space,” inspired in part by nighttime stargazing and connecting the stellar dots, broke open the monolithic object, enabling it to breathe. “The Realistic Manifesto” that Naum Gabo coauthored in 1920 with his brother, Antoine Pevsner, blusters with decrees. As Gabo changed over time, however, so did his ideas about art’s contemporaneity. What began as a renunciation of rarefied art, like Cubism and Futurism, matured into a heuristic philosophy that placed art and artists at the service of humanity: “This idea [the Constructive idea] has not come with finished and dry formulas, it does not establish immutable laws or schemes, it grows organically along with the growth of our century. It is as young as our century and as old as the human desire to create.” In Gabo’s Constructivist worldview, sculpture joined other artistic disciplines (painting and architecture) as creative enterprises with tangible outcomes. Artists had a social responsibility, even an obligation, to enhance human existence. To this end, Gabo formulated his own sculptural expression: abstract, predominantly Euclidean, transparent, pristine, and, ultimately, utopian. Some of the objects he constructed out of plastic and metal were conceived as models for monuments symbolizing a world of clarity and balance. That these were beautiful things in their own right did not lessen their theoretical rigor or adaptability. A manifesto-driven, Constructivist-oriented sensibility also motivated Vladimir Tatlin, whose dynamic counterreliefs of 1914, inspired by Futurist prompts or by Picasso’s assemblages, probably encountered on a trip to Paris the previous year, stand out as icons of modern sculpture. Tatlin, however, remained quintessentially Russian and faithfully Marxist in his ideology. Declaring war on side chests and furniture drawers may seem like an unlikely way to jump-start a sculptural revolution,

29

64214int.indd 29

22-05-12 4:35 AM

but that was the point of his proletarian stance: to elevate material culture, denigrate fine-art objects as capitalistic fetishes (“a sign of social distinction”), and secure employment for artists. There is a distinct Bauhausian inflection to Tatlin’s proscription (written shortly before the Bauhaus was dismantled by the Nazi party), wherein the artist’s knowledge of modern materials ensured quality control. László Moholy-Nagy’s analysis of sculpture, as part of his Bauhaus-based curriculum for the organic integration of the arts, gave Tatlin’s politicized plea a pedagogical imperative. There is also, as with Gabo, Joaquín Torres-García, and even Boccioni, an emphasis on constructing, as though the word, in all of its semantic permutations, signified a new world order made possible by advances in science and technology. “Construction should be, above all, the creation of order,” wrote TorresGarcía, whose own constructions channeled metaphysics and intuition. No one liberated the earthbound object more than Alexander Calder, who gave sculpture wings by suspending abstract elements from wires and rods and designing these to move. His recollection of visiting Piet Mondrian’s austere Paris studio in 1930 and thinking “how fine it would be if everything there moved” now reads like a striking revelation. Calder, the son and grandson of celebrated, more classical sculptors, developed his own method of drawing in space, early on with wire, then by cutting, shaping, and hammering sheet steel and aluminum into mobiles activated by wind or small electric motors. Unlike González, who gazed upon stars and constellations, Calder engaged the unseen forces of nature. Wary of hidebound theories and pedantic posturing, he gravitated to the circus for levity. Nothing about a three-ring circus is static, and Calder learned a lot from performing his own complex multiact artwork, his entry into the Parisian art world during the late 1920s and the unlikely path to a captivatingly kinetic sculpture. Many of the sculptors included in this section, as makers of three-dimensional abstract objects, share common characteristics: faith in process, intuition, and perpetual change; a receptiveness to unfamiliar images (micro- and macrocosmic); a willingness to explore new technologies and materials; an affinity to the landscape; and a fundamental belief in the object’s import as metaphor and symbol. The connection to nature through an “organic abstraction” begins during the late 1910s with Jean (Hans) Arp, who believed that artists “should go back to nature” and saw Concrete art as a full-bodied heart and mind proposition, a way “to produce like a plant that produces a fruit.” Arp’s notion of concrete, a term he and Vassily Kandinsky rescued from Theo van Doesburg’s earlier—formalist—definition, united aspects of geometric abstraction and Surrealism. Arp was skeptical of art that imposed stylistic limitations and proposed definitive answers to spiritual questions. Concrete art was his way of hedging dogmatic assertions, humoring the unknown, and reaffirming one’s vital connection to the natural world. Receptive to Arp’s heuristic approach, Henry Moore began during the 1930s to explore more abstract forms and organic materials. As a founding member of Unit One—an association of progressive English architects and painters informed by

30

64214int.indd 30

22-05-12 4:35 AM

Surrealism and Constructivism—Moore developed definite views about what sculpture should be and how it should be made. He shared his ideas with art historian Herbert Read, who formulated a theory of Vitalism, a poetic concept colored by the earlier writings of Henri Bergson (particularly his notion of life force, or élan vital), D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s On Growth and Form, 1917, and Henri Focillon’s La Vie des forms, 1934. Vitalism came to embody a philosophical stance that elevated artistic intuition above scientific rationalism, stressed an empirical approach to making and forming, and sought to infuse life into inanimate material. Moore’s emphatic first principle, “truth to material,” hearkens back to Brancusi and extends forward to Serra. Rodin’s ambivalence toward industry was ironically countered by Marcel Du­champ’s audacity in raising some of industry’s utilitarian products to the level of art. Duchamp’s sly tactic of exhibiting a porcelain urinal signed R. Mutt and titled Fountain at the 1917 exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists still seems stunningly prescient. Such an absurd Dada-inspired gesture, rife with ambiguity, proved to be at least as subversive as any manifesto. All pretention, technical prowess, and academic ambition were flushed down the drain in a single stroke by someone who feigned detachment, even when the show’s organizers decided to hide Fountain behind a partition. Nothing seemed to be riding on the object’s acceptance or sale. Duchamp somehow sensed at this critical historical juncture, with industry playing an increasingly important role in all aspects of daily life—including in the conduct of war—that the proliferation of its assembly-line production would eventually saturate the world. He also prophetically understood that whatever he accomplished would ultimately be judged and expanded upon by other artists as yet unborn who would recognize that any creative strategy begins and ends with ideas and that some ideas are more enduring, indeed more interesting, than others.

31

64214int.indd 31

22-05-12 4:35 AM

64214int.indd 32

22-05-12 4:35 AM

AU G U S T E R O D I N 18 4 0 –1917

PREFACE TO ART: CONVERSATIONS WITH PAUL GSELL (1911)

Our age is one of engineers and manufacturers, not artists. In modern life, utility is what people want. We are forced to improve existence materially. Every day science invents new means of feeding, dressing, and transporting men. It manufactures bad products economically to give dubious pleasures to the greatest number. It is true that it also brings real improvements to satisfy all our needs. But the spirit, thinking, dreaming are no longer issues. Art is dead. Art is contemplation. It is the delight of the mind that penetrates nature and divines the spirit by which nature itself is animated. It is the joy of intelligence that sees clearly into the universe and creates the universe anew by endowing it with consciousness. Art is the most sublime mission of man since it is the exertion of the mind trying to understand the world and to make the world understood. But today, humanity believes it can do without Art. It does not want to meditate, contemplate, dream. It wants to enjoy itself physically. It is indifferent to lofty and profound truths: it merely appeases its corporeal appetites. Mankind at present is bestial: it has no use for artists.

AN ANTIQUE FRAGMENT (1914)

What a progress toward truth we find in the advance from Assyrian and Egyptian to Greek art! Antique things, if we knew how to look at them, would bring about a new renaissance for us, we who stagnate in the Parisian spirit. The Parisian spirit, young though it is, is already too old to serve us. It is like those pretentious monuments, those constructions in plaster, which are hollow and horrible under their crumbling stucco.

Auguste Rodin, excerpt from the preface to Art: Conversations with Paul Gsell, translated by Jacques de Caso and Patricia B. Sanders with an introduction by Jacques de Caso (London: University of California Press, 1984), 4; originally published as L’Art: Entretiens Reunis par Paul Gsell (Paris: Bernard Grasset, Editeur, 1911). Auguste Rodin, quoted in “Rodin’s Note-Book,” compiled by Judith Cladel and translated by S. K. Starr in the Century 88 (1914): 747. Reprinted in Rodin: The Man and His Art, with Leaves from His Notebook, compiled by Judith Cladel and translated by S. K. Star, with an introduction by James Huncker (New York: Century, 1917), 174–75.

33

64214int.indd 33

22-05-12 4:35 AM

1. Auguste Rodin, Torso: Study for The Walking Man, 1877–78.

64214int.indd 34

22-05-12 4:35 AM

Greece was the land of sculpture beyond all others. The subject of their sculpture was life. The people concealed it under names and symbols—Jupiter, Apollo, Venus, the fauns—but behind all these was the eternal truth of life.

ART AND NATURE (1916)

Criticizing nature is as stupid as criticizing the cathedrals. It is the vice of our cold and petty age to criticize. It is the evil of decadent races. We are constantly being told that we live in an age of progress, an age of civilization. That is perhaps true from the point of view of science and mechanics; from the point of view of art it is wholly false. Does science give happiness? I am not aware of it; and as to mechanics, they lower the common intelligence. Mechanics replace the work of the human mind with the work of a machine. That is the death of art. It is that which has destroyed the pleasure of the inner life, the grace of that which we call industrial art—the art of the furniture-maker, the tapestry-worker, the goldsmith. It overwhelms the world with uniformity. Once artisans created; today they manufacture. Once they rejoiced in the pleasure of making a work of art; today the workman is so bored in his shop that he has invented sabotage and has made alcoholism general.

THE RICHNESS OF THE ANTIQUE LIES IN MODELING (1917)

Observe any fragments of Greek sculpture: a piece of an arm, a hand. What you call the idea, the subject, no longer exists here, but is not all this debris none the less admirably beautiful? Solely in the modeling. Observe it closely, touch it; do you not feel the precision of this modeling, firm yet elastic, in flux like life itself? It is full, it is like a fruit. All the eloquence of this sculpture comes from that. . . . The great concern of my life is the struggle I have maintained to escape from the general flatness. All the success of my sculpture comes from that.

Auguste Rodin, quoted in “Rodin’s Conception of Art and Nature,” compiled by Judith Cladel and S. K. Starr in the Century 92 (1916): 837. Reprinted in Rodin: The Man and His Art, with Leaves from His Notebook, compiled by Judith Cladel and translated by S. K. Star, with an introduction by James Huncker (New York: Century, 1917), 206. Auguste Rodin, excerpt from Rodin: The Man and His Art, with Leaves from His Notebook, compiled by Judith Cladel and translated by S. K. Star, with an introduction by James Huncker (New York: Century, 1918), 222, 224.

AUGUSTE RODIN   35

64214int.indd 35

22-05-12 4:35 AM

C O N S TA N T I N B R A N C U S I 18 76 –19 5 7

PROPOS (1926)

Simplicity is not an end in art, but one arrives at simplicity in spite of oneself, in approaching the real sense of things. Simplicity is complexity itself, and one has to be nourished by its essence in order to understand its value.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT (1926)

What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things. Starting from this truth it is possible for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT (1927)

Besides [. . .] you cannot make what you want to make, but what the material permits you to make. You cannot make out of marble what you would make out of wood, or out of wood what you would make out of stone. [. . .] Each material has its own life, and one cannot without punishment destroy a living material to make a dumb senseless thing. That is, we must not try to make materials speak our language, we must go with them to the point where others will understand their language. When we are no longer children, we are already dead. Theories are samples without value; only action counts.

Constantin Brancusi, “Propos” (1926); originally published in the catalogue for Brancusi’s exhibition at the Brummer Gallery, New York, 1926; reprinted, with a slightly revised translation, in Art of This Century: Objects, Drawings, Photographs, Paintings, Sculpture, Collages, 1910 to 1942, ed. Peggy Guggenheim (New York: Art Aid Corporation, 1942), 35. © Succession Brancusi—All rights reserved (ARS) 2022. Constantin Brancusi, quoted in Paul Morand, “Brancusi,” in the catalogue for Brancusi’s exhibition at the Brummer Gallery, New York, 1926; reprinted in Eric Shanes, Constantin Brancusi (New York: Abbeville Press, 1989), 105. © Succession Brancusi—All rights reserved (ARS) 2022. Constantin Brancusi, artist’s statements (1927); quoted in Dorothy Dudley, “Brancusi,” Dial 82 (February 1927): 124, 127, 129; reprinted in Eric Shanes, Constantin Brancusi (New York: Abbeville Press, 1989), 106, 107. © Succession Brancusi—All rights reserved (ARS) 2022.

36

64214int.indd 36

22-05-12 4:35 AM

2. Overview of Constantin Brancusi’s atelier in Paris, 1925. Seen (left to right) are The Kiss, 1923–25; Endless Column, later destroyed; The Endless Column I, ca. 1925; and Bird in Space, 1925.

64214int.indd 37

22-05-12 4:35 AM

UMBERTO BOCCIONI 18 8 2 –1916

TECHNICAL MANIFESTO OF FUTURIST SCULPTURE (1912)

In the monuments and exhibitions of every European city, sculpture offers a spectacle of such pitiable barbarism, clumsiness, and monotonous imitation, that my Futurist eye recoils from it with profound disgust! The sculpture of every country is dominated by the blind and foolish imitation of formulas inherited from the past, an imitation encouraged by the double cowardice of tradition and facility. In Latin countries we have the burdensome weight of Greece and Michelangelo which is borne in France and Belgium with a certain seriousness of skill, and in Italy with grotesque imbecility. In German countries we have a foolish Greek-ized Gothicism, industrialized in Berlin, and in Munich sweetened with effeminate care by German pedantry. In Slavic countries, on the other hand, there is a confused clash between archaic Greek and Nordic and Oriental monstrosities, a shapeless mass of influences that range from the excess of abstruse details deriving from Asia, to the childish and grotesque ingenuity of the Lapps and Eskimos. In all these manifestations of sculpture, as well as in those with a larger measure of innovating audacity, the same error is perpetuated: the artist copies the nude and studies classical statuary with the simple minded conviction that he can find a style corresponding to modern sensibility without relinquishing the traditional concept of sculptural form. This concept, with its famous “ideal beauty” of which everyone speaks on bended knee, never breaks away from the Phidian period and its decadence. And it is almost inexplicable why the thousands of sculptors who have continued from generation to generation to construct dummies have not as yet asked themselves why the galleries of sculpture, when not absolutely deserted, are visited with boredom and horror, and why the unveiling of monuments in squares all over the world meets with incomprehension and general hilarity. This does not happen with painting because of its continual renewal which, as slow as the process has been, is the clearest condemnation of the plagiarized and sterile works of all the sculptors of our epoch! Sculptors must convince themselves of this absolute truth: to continue to construct and want to create with Egyptian, Greek, or Michelangelesque elements, is like wanting to draw water from a dry well with a bottomless bucket. Umberto Boccioni, “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture,” April 11, 1912; this translation, by Richard Chase, was made from the volume of collected manifestos, I Manifesti del Futurismo, ed. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, and is reprinted, with permission, from Joshua C. Taylor, Futurism (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1961), 129–32. © 2019 The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

38

64214int.indd 38

22-05-12 4:35 AM

There can be no renewal in art whatever if the essence itself is not renewed, that is, the vision and concept of line and masses that form the arabesque. It is not simply by reproducing the exterior aspects of contemporary life that art becomes the expression of its own time; this is why sculpture as it has been understood to date by artists of the past century and the present is a monstrous anachronism! Sculpture has failed to progress because of the limited field assigned to it by the academic concept of the nude. An art that has to completely strip a man or woman in order to begin its emotive function is a dead art! Painting has taken on new life, profundity, and breadth through a study of landscape and the environment, which are made to react simultaneously in relationship to the human figures or objects, reaching the point of our Futurist INTERPENETRATION OF PLANES. In the same way sculpture will find a new source of emotion, hence of style, extending its plastic quality to what our barbarous crudity has made us think of until now as subdivided, impalpable, and thus plastically inexpressible. We have to start from the central nucleus of the object that we want to create, in order to discover the new laws, that is, the new forms, that link it invisibly but mathematically to the APPARENT PLASTIC INFINITE and to the INTERNAL PLASTIC INFINITE. The new plastic art will, then, be a translation into plaster, bronze, glass, wood, and any other material, of those atmospheric planes that link and intersect things. This vision that I have called PHYSICAL TRANSCENDENTALISM will be able to give plastic form to the mysterious sympathies and affinities that the reciprocal formal influences of the planes of objects create. Sculpture must, therefore, give life to objects by making their extension in space palpable, systematic, and plastic, since no one can any longer believe that an object ends where another begins and that our body is surrounded by anything—bottle, automobile, house, tree, road—that does not cut through it and section it in an arabesque of directional curves. There have been two attempts at renewal in modern sculpture: one decorative concentrating on style; and the other strictly plastic concentrating on material. The first, anonymous and disordered, lacked a coordinating technical genius and, since it was too closely tied to the economic requirements of building, only produced pieces of traditional sculpture more or less decoratively synthesized and confined within architectural or decorative motives or schemes. All the buildings and houses constructed in accordance with modern criteria include such efforts in marble, cement, or in metal plate. The second attempt, more pleasing, disinterested, and poetic, but too isolated and fragmentary, lacked a synthetic idea to give it law. In working towards renewal it is not enough just to believe with fervor; one must formulate and work out a norm that points the way. I am referring to the genius of Medardo Rosso, to an Italian, and to the only great modern sculptor who has attempted to open up a larger field to sculpture, rendering plastically the influences of an ambiance and the atmospheric ties that bind it to the subject.

UMBERTO BOCCIONI   39

64214int.indd 39

22-05-12 4:35 AM

Of the three other great contemporary sculptors, Constantin Meunier has contributed nothing new to sculptural sensibility. His statues are almost always agreeable fusions of the Greek heroic with the athletic humility of the stevedore, sailor, or miner. His plastic and constructional concept of the statue and of bas-relief is still that of the Parthenon or the classical hero, although it was he who first attempted to create and deify subjects that had been previously despised or relegated to lower types of realistic reproduction. Bourdelle brings to the sculptural block an almost fanatic severity of abstract architectural masses. Of passionate temperament, highly strung, sincerely looking for the truth, he none the less does not know how to free himself from a certain archaic influence and from the general anonymity of the stonecutters of the Gothic cathedrals. Rodin is of vaster spiritual agility, which has allowed him to go from the Impressionism of the Balzac to the uncertainty of the Burghers of Calais and all the other Michelangelesque sins. He bears in his sculpture a restless inspiration and a sweeping lyrical drive, which would be truly modern if Michelangelo and Donatello had not already possessed these qualities in almost identical form four hundred or so years before, and if they were used to animate a completely recreated reality. We thus have in the works of these three great sculptors influences coming from three different periods: Greek in Meunier, Gothic in Bourdelle, Italian Renaissance in Rodin. The work of Medardo Rosso, on the other hand, is very modern and revolutionary, more profound and of necessity restricted. It involves neither heroes nor symbols, but the plane of a woman’s brow, or of a child’s, points towards a liberation of space, which will have a much greater importance in the history of the spirit than our times have given it. Unfortunately the impressionistic necessities of this attempt have limited Medardo Rosso’s research to a kind of high or low relief, demonstrating that the human figure is still conceived of as a world in itself with traditional bases and an episodic goal. The revolution of Medardo Rosso, although of the greatest importance, starts off from an external pictorial concept that overlooks the problem of a new construction of planes; while the sensual touch of the thumb, imitating the lightness of Impressionist brushstrokes, gives a sense of lively immediacy, it requires rapid execution from life and removes from the work of art its character of universal creation. It thus has the same strong points and defects as Impressionism in painting. Our aesthetic revolution also takes its start from these researches, but in continuing them it has gone on to reach an extreme opposite point. In sculpture as in painting one cannot renovate without searching for THE STYLE OF THE MOVEMENT, that is, by making systematic and definitive in a synthesis what Impressionism has given us as fragmentary, accidental, and thus analytical. And this systematization of the vibrations of light and the interpenetration of planes will produce Futurist sculpture, whose foundation will be architectural, not only in the construction of the masses, but in such a way that the block of the sculp-

40    UMBERTO BOCCIONI

64214int.indd 40

22-05-12 4:36 AM

ture will contain within itself the architectural elements of the SCULPTURAL ENVIRONMENT in which the subject lives. Naturally we will bring forth a SCULPTURE OF ENVIRONMENT. A Futurist composition in sculpture will embody the marvelous mathematical and geometrical elements that make up the objects of our time. And these objects will not be placed next to the statue as explanatory attributes or dislocated decorative elements but, following the laws of a new conception of harmony, will be imbedded in the muscular lines of the body. Thus from the shoulder of a mechanic may protrude the wheel of a machine, and the line of a table might cut into the head of a person reading; and a book with its fan-like leaves might intersect the stomach of the reader. Traditionally a statue is carved out or delineated against the atmospheric environment in which it is exhibited. Futurist painting has overcome this conception of the rhythmic continuity of the lines in a human figure and of the figure’s isolation from its background and from its INVISIBLE INVOLVING SPACE. Futurist poetry, according to the poet Marinetti, “after having destroyed the traditional meter and created free verse, now destroys syntax and the Latin sentence. Futurist poetry is an uninterrupted and spontaneous flow of analogies, each one of which is intuitively related to the central subject. Thus, wireless imagination and free words.” The Futurist music of Balilla Pratella breaks through the chronometrical tyranny of rhythm. Why should sculpture remain behind, tied to laws that no one has the right to impose on it? We therefore cast all aside and proclaim the ABSOLUTE AND COMPLETE ABOLITION OF DEFINITE LINES AND CLOSED SCULPTURE. WE BREAK OPEN THE FIGURE AND ENCLOSE IT IN [AN] ENVIRONMENT. We proclaim that the environment must be part of the plastic block which is a world in itself with its own laws; that the sidewalk can jump up on your table and your head be transported across the street, while your lamp spins a web of plaster rays between one house and another. We proclaim that the whole visible world must fall in upon us, merging with us and creating a harmony measurable only by the creative imagination; that a leg, an arm, or an object, having no importance except as elements of plastic rhythm, can be abolished, not in order to imitate a Greek or Roman fragment, but to conform to the harmony the artist wishes to create. A sculptural entity, like a picture, can only resemble itself, for in art the human figure and objects must exist apart from the logic of physiognomy. Thus a human figure may have one arm clothed and the other bare, and the different lines of a vase of flowers might freely intervene between the lines of the hat and those of the neck. Thus transparent planes, glass, sheets of metal, wires, outside or inside electric lights can indicate the planes, inclinations, tones, and half-tones of a new reality. Thus a new intuitive coloring in white, in gray, in black, can increase the emotive strength of planes, while the note of a colored plane will accentuate with violence the abstract significance of the plastic reality!

UMBERTO BOCCIONI   41

64214int.indd 41

22-05-12 4:36 AM

What we have said about LINES/FORCES in painting can be said similarly of sculpture; the static muscular line can be made to live in the dynamic line/force. The straight line will predominate in this muscular line, since only it corresponds to the internal simplicity of the synthesis that we oppose to the external baroquism deriving from analysis. But the straight line will not lead us to imitate the Egyptians, the primitives, and the savages as some modern sculptors have desperately attempted to do in order to free themselves from the Greeks. Our straight line is alive and palpitating; it will lend itself to all that is necessary for the infinite expressions of the material; and its bare, fundamental severity will symbolize the severity of steel that determines the lines of modern machinery. Finally we can affirm that in sculpture the artist must not shrink from using any means that will allow him to achieve REALITY. There is no fear more stupid than that which makes us afraid to go beyond the bounds of the art we are practicing. There is no such thing as painting, sculpture, music, or poetry; there is only creation! Therefore if a composition is in need of a special rhythmical movement to aid or contrast with the static rhythm of the SCULPTURAL ENTITY (a necessity in a work of art), one can superimpose any structure whatsoever that is capable of giving the required movements to the planes or lines. We cannot forget that the tick-tock and the moving hands of a clock, the in-andout of a piston in a cylinder, the opening and closing of two cogwheels with the continual appearance and disappearance of their square steel cogs, the fury of a flywheel or the turbine of a propeller, are all plastic and pictorial elements of which a Futurist work in sculpture must take account. The opening and closing of a valve creates a rhythm just as beautiful but infinitely newer than the blinking of an animal eyelid. Conclusions

1. We proclaim that sculpture is based on the abstract re-construction of the planes and volumes that determine the forms, not their figurative value. 2. ABOLISH IN SCULPTURE as in every other art THE TRADITIONAL SUBLIMITY OF THE SUBJECT. 3. Deny to sculpture as an aim any “true-to-life” episodic construction, but affirm the absolute necessity of using all reality in order to return to the essential elements of plastic sensibility. Thus, in perceiving bodies and their parts as PLASTIC ZONES, a Futurist composition in sculpture will use metal or wood planes for an object, static or moved mechanically, furry spherical forms for hair, semicircles of glass for a vase, wire and screen for an atmospheric plane, etc. 4. Destroy the wholly literary and traditional nobility of marble and of bronze. Deny the exclusiveness of one material for the entire construction of a sculptural ensemble. Affirm that even twenty different materials can compete in a single work to

42    UMBERTO BOCCIONI

64214int.indd 42

22-05-12 4:36 AM

effect plastic emotion. Let us enumerate some: glass, wood, cardboard, iron, cement, horsehair, leather, cloth, mirrors, electric lights, etc., etc. 5. Proclaim that in the intersection of the planes of a book with the angles of a table, in the lines of a match, in the frame of a window, there is more truth than in all the twisting of muscles, all the breasts and buttocks of the heroes and Venuses that inspire the modern idiocy in sculpture. 6. That only the most modern choice of subjects can lead to the discovery of new PLASTIC IDEAS. 7. That the straight line is the only means that can lead to the primitive virginity of a new architectural construction of sculptural masses or zones. 8. That there can be no renovation if not through a SCULPTURE OF ENVIRONMENT, for through this plasticity will be developed and, continuing, will be able to MODEL THE ATMOSPHERE that surrounds things. 9. The thing that one creates is nothing other than a bridge between the EXTERIOR PLASTIC INFINITE and the INTERIOR PLASTIC INFINITE; thus objects never end, and intersect with infinite combinations of sympathetic harmonies and clashing aversions.

UMBERTO BOCCIONI   43

64214int.indd 43

22-05-12 4:36 AM

MEDARDO ROSSO 18 5 8 –19 2 8

IMPRESSIONISM IN SCULPTURE (1907)

Light being of the very essence of our existence, a work of art that is not concerned with light has no right to exist. Without light it must lack unity and spaciousness—it is bound to be small, paltry, wrongly conceived, based necessarily upon matter. Nothing in this world can detach itself from its surroundings, and our vision—our impressions, if you prefer the term—can only be the result of mutual relations or values given by light, and must have the dominating tonality seized at a glance. There is another point which has never yet been spoken of, and which, nevertheless, is of enormous importance; it is that at the first moment of looking spontaneously at any object in nature, we experience a displacement of tonalities, a broadening of the thing before our eyes, before our spirit—an effect that changes after this first moment. The reason is that after this first flash our eyes, our mind, take back their habits of laziness and thus destroy that first moment of real life, of the complete vision, during which we experience a transposition of the values which, though materially in front, seem to be forced back, and vice versa. But though all this is sharply accentuated at the first moment, it is none the less true that it is still visible at any later moment. The Color of Sculpture

The real visual truth of anything that meets our eye in nature can only strike us with full force in that short moment when the vision breaks upon us, as it were, as a surprise—that is to say, before our intellect, our knowledge, of the material form of objects, have had time to come into play and to counteract and destroy that first impression. Is not the truth of the first impression, charged as it is with poetry and suggestiveness, infinitely more significant than that other truth, which is based on our accumulated knowledge of dry facts? Art is an emotional language; and mathematical accuracy does not lend itself to the expression of our emotions. Thus we have before us a color perspective wholly different from the other traditional and material perspective; and I claim that we need not and should not follow

Medardo Rosso, “Impressionism in Sculpture,” Daily Mail (London), October 17, 1907, 10.

44

64214int.indd 44

22-05-12 4:36 AM

the method of the catalogued celebrities who have measured, and are still measuring, the first plan and second plan, and follow the material facts of form. There is no more need to walk around a work in clay, or wood, or bronze, or marble, than there is to walk around a work on canvas; and thus conceived, a work of sculpture will be infinitely suggestive, intimately alive, homogeneous and grand. On the other hand, every work that is built up of different parts, composed, and invented, becomes small, paltry, untrue, and material. How could it be otherwise when it is known that even today such and such a celebrity enlists the collaboration of mechanical workers to manufacture here one portion, there another, of a material mass which is in this case so justly described as a “statue”—the expression of the negation of life. Is it possible that a work of art is not the property of an idea, and that any hand but that whose owner has conceived this idea should be able to express it? A work of sculpture is not made to be touched, but to be seen at such or such a distance, according to the effect intended by the artist. Our hand does not permit us to bring to our consciousness the values, the tones, the colors—in a word, the life of the thing. For seizing the inner significance of a work of art, we should rely entirely on the visual impression and on all the sympathetic echoes it awakens in our memory and consciousness, and not on the touch of our fingers. Where the Greeks Failed

And note how the preoccupation with color asserts itself even at a very remote epoch— how in the later Greek and Roman days works of sculpture are composed of marbles in different colors, and how the statues themselves are colored! What does this signify, unless it means that the artist realized that his work did not produce the effect he had intended. And do you think he would have had to resort to such means if, before executing his work, he had painted it in his mind, with due consideration of the relations of tone values and of light? When the artist applied himself to the painting of his statue, at this very moment he recognized his impotence and the weakness of his work. Further back still, the Egyptians were far greater. They needed not to have recourse to such small means, because they aimed above all at a certain harmony, at a general effect, and because they considered the play of light. Thus they succeeded in giving their works a grand unity and made them dominate the space. Even in their intentionally decorative spirit they make us forget matter. Of the Macedonians, in the first Greek period, I will only mention one example— the tomb in the gallery of the casts by the brothers Keller at the Louvre—you will be forced to recognize in it the preoccupation with the impression, the intuition of life, and the neglect of matter. And much nearer to us, it is the same with the German Gothics, as opposed to the works of the Italian Renaissance, which by comparison become material. And this is

MEDARDO ROSSO   45

64214int.indd 45

22-05-12 4:36 AM

only natural, since the Renaissance was but the outcome of the late Greek and Roman periods. And, finally, if I may extend the argument to works upon canvas, those of you who, like myself, have seen Velázquez’s Infanta in the Salon Carré of the Louvre, cannot have failed to notice how all the works by which it is surrounded become to a certain extent mere pictures, while it alone seems to enter into the very spirit of creation.

46    MEDARDO ROSSO

64214int.indd 46

22-05-12 4:36 AM

PA B L O P I C A S S O 18 81–19 7 3

INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL-HENRI KAHNWEILER (1933)

29 bis, rue d’Astorg, October 2, 1933: Picasso tells me that in order to avoid having to make casts, he just did some sculptures at Boisgeloup in hollowed out earth into which he then poured plaster. Result: relief sculpture in plaster. “And,” he said, “I would like to paint them, these sculptures. At any rate, painting will always be an imitative art. If you set down a black, the viewer thinks that ‘it turns’ and clearly that is the only way to create depth. Whereas if you paint a sculpture pink, it will be just pink.” daniel-henri k ahnweiler: So you’re returning to your old preoccupations. That’s why, 24 years ago, you created a piano in relief. pablo picasso: Yes. And the neck of a violin. dhk: Clearly even the superposed planes in 1913 were only the imitations of sculpture, your sculptures at the time. pp: That’s why I would like to make colored sculptures. Clearly only line drawing escapes imitation. That’s why I said to you the other day that I loved the Metamorphoses. dhk: Yes, a line drawing doesn’t imitate light, whereas painting is obviously concerned with the imitation of light. pp: Yes, line drawing has its own light, created, not imitated.

JULIO GONZÁLEZ ON PICASSO AS SCULPTOR (1936)

It gives me great pleasure to speak of Picasso as a sculptor. I have always considered him a “man of form,” because by nature he has the spirit of form. Form is in his early paintings and in his most recent.

Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler, interview with Pablo Picasso, October 2, 1933, reprinted in Marie-Laure Bernadac and Androula Michael, eds., Propos sur l’art (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), 60. Translated from the French by Jack Flam. Originally published as Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler, “Entretiens avec Picasso,” Quadrum 2 (November 1956): 73–76. © 2022 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Julio González, “Picasso as Sculptor,” in Museum of Modern Art Bulletin 23, nos. 1–2 (1955–56): 43–44. Originally published in French as “Picasso sculpteur: Exposition de sculptures récentes de Picasso,” Cahiers d’art 11, no. 6–7 (1936): 189–91. © 2022 Jerry Gonzalez / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

47

64214int.indd 47

22-05-12 4:36 AM

In 1908, at the time of his first cubist paintings, Picasso gave us form not as a silhouette, not as a projection of the object, but by putting planes, syntheses, and the cube of these in relief, as in a “construction.” With these paintings, Picasso told me it is only necessary to cut them out—the colors are only the indications of different perspectives, of planes inclined from one size or the other—then assemble them according to the indications given by the color, in order to find oneself in the presence of a “Sculpture.” The vanished painting would hardly be missed. He was so convinced of it that he executed several sculptures with perfect success. Picasso must have felt himself to be of a true sculptor’s temperament, because in recalling this period of his life to me, he said: “I have never been so content” or “I was so happy.” Later, in 1931, at the time when he was working on the sculpture—Monument to Apollinaire—, I often heard him repeat “I feel myself once more as happy as I was in 1908.” I have observed many times that there is no form which leaves him indifferent. He looks at everything, on all sides, because all forms represent something to him; and he sees everything as sculpture. Again, recently, having gathered some sticks of white wood in his studio, he carved the beautiful sculptures published here with his little pen-knife (retaining the planes and dimensions of each piece, each one of them suggesting a different figure to him), which will undoubtedly arouse a great deal of interest. To my mind, the mysterious side, the nerve center, so to speak, of the work of Picasso, is in his formal power. It is this power which has caused so much talk of his work, which has gained so much glory for him.

INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL-HENRI KAHNWEILER (1948)

29 bis, rue d’Astorg, June 28, 1948: picasso: “You should make ceramics. It’s magnificent! (Turning toward me:) The head is fired. (To Laurens:) I made a head. And well, one can look at it from any side, and it’s flat. Of course, it’s the paint that makes it flat—because it’s painted. I arranged it so the color would make it appear to be flat from any angle. What one seeks in a painting: depth, as much space as possible. In a sculpture, you have to try to make it be seen as flat by the viewer from every side. I also did something else: I

Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler, interview with Pablo Picasso, June 28, 1948, reprinted in Androula Michael, ed., Propos sur l’art (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), 80. Translated from the French by Jack Flam. Originally published as Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler, “Entretiens avec Picasso,” Quadrum 2 (November 1956): 73–76. © 2022 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

48    PABLO PICA SSO

64214int.indd 48

22-05-12 4:36 AM

painted on curved surfaces. I painted balls. It’s extraordinary: you make a bottle. It escapes you, it turns around the ball.” Later, he looks at one of his 1914 papiers collés, and he says: “We must have been crazy—or cowards—to abandon that. We had magnificent means. See how beautiful it is—not because I did it, of course—we had this medium, and I returned to oil, and you to marble. It’s insane!”

ARTIST STATEMENT (1951)

I only love objects without value, junk, and if what’s worth nothing were expensive, I would have gone broke a long time ago.

THE BULL’S HEAD (CA. 1957)

It’s not bad, huh? That pleases me. Here’s what I should do: throw the bull out the window. The kids who are playing down below would pick it up. One kid would be missing a bicycle seat and handlebars. He would complete his bicycle. When I go down, the bull will have become a bicycle again.

CONVERSATIONS WITH BRASSAÏ (1964)

[Brassaï shows Picasso some proofs.] Show them all to me, all. It’s curious, isn’t it? But it’s through your photographs that I can judge my sculptures. [. . .] Through them, I see my sculptures with fresh eyes.

Pablo Picasso, as quoted in Claude Roy, War and Peace, 1954, reproduced in Marie-Laure Bernadac and Androula Michael, eds., Propos sur l’art (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), 163. Translated from the French by Jack Flam. Originally published in Claude Roy, La Guerre et la Paix (Paris: Cercle d’art, 1954), 27. © 2022 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Pablo Picasso, as quoted in André Malraux, Picasso’s Mask, 1974, reprinted in Marie-Laure Bernadac and Androula Michael, eds., Propos sur l’art (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), 142. Translated from the French by Jack Flam. Originally published in André Malraux, La tête d’obsidienne (Paris: Gallimard, 1974), 62. © 2022 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Pablo Picasso, as quoted in Brassaï, Conversations with Picasso, 1964, reprinted in Marie-Laure Bernadac and Androula Michael, eds., Propos sur l’art (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), 110, 112–13. Translated from the French by Jack Flam. Originally published in Brassaï, Conversations avec Picasso (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 67, 145. © 2022 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

PABLO PICA SSO   49

64214int.indd 49

22-05-12 4:36 AM

The Bull’s Head

Can you guess how I made this bull’s head? One day, amidst a bunch of objects that were thrown together I found an old bicycle seat right next to a rusted bicycle handlebar. [. . .] In a flash, they became associated in my mind. [. . .] The idea of this Bull’s Head [1939–43] came to me without my thinking about it. [. . .] All I did was weld them together. [. . .] What’s marvelous about bronze is that it can give to the most heteroclite objects such a unity that it’s sometimes difficult to identify the elements that composed it. But it’s also a danger: if one only recognized the head of the bull and not the bicycle seat and handlebars that formed it, this sculpture would lose its interest.

ON SCULPTURE (1964)

Sculpture is the best commentary that a painter can make about painting.

LIFE WITH PICASSO (1965)

My sculptures are plastic metaphors; it’s the same principle that works for my paintings. I told you that a picture should not be a trompe-l’oeil [fool the eye] but a trompel’esprit [fool the mind]. It’s the same for sculpture.

Pablo Picasso, as quoted in Renato Guttuso, “Journal inédit,” 1973, reprinted in Marie-Laure Bernadac and Androula Michael, eds., Propos sur l’art (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), 129. Translated from the French by Jack Flam. Originally published in Renato Guttuso, “Journal inédit,” Scritti di Picasso, ed. Mario de Micheli (Milan: Feltrinelli Editore, 1973), 112. © 2022 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Pablo Picasso, as quoted in Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso, 1965, reprinted in MarieLaure Bernadac and Androula Michael, eds., Propos sur l’art (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), 126. Translated from the French by Jack Flam. Originally published in Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Vivre avec Picasso (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1965), 293. © 2022 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

50    PABLO PICA SSO

64214int.indd 50

22-05-12 4:36 AM

H E N R I M AT I S S E 18 69 –19 5 4

MATISSE SPEAKS TO HIS STUDENTS (1908)

The joints, like wrists, ankles, knees and elbows must show that they can support the limbs—especially when the limbs are supporting the body. And in cases of poses resting upon a special limb, arm or leg, the joint is better when exaggerated than underexpressed. Above all, one must be careful not to cut the limb at the joints, but to have the joints an inherent part of the limb. The neck must be heavy enough to support the head (in the case of a Negro statue where the head was large and the neck slender and the chin was resting upon the hands, which give additional support to the head). The model must not be made to agree with a preconceived theory or effect. It must impress you, awaken in you an emotion, which in turn you seek to express. You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression of the emotion awakened in you by the subject. It can only help you to realize before beginning that this model, for instance, had a large pelvis sloping up to rather narrow shoulders and down through the full thighs to the lower legs—suggesting an egg-like form beautiful in volume. The hair of the model describes a protecting curve and gives a repetition that is a completion. Your imagination is thus stimulated to help the plastic conception of the model before you begin. This leg, but for the accident of the curve of the calf, would describe a longer, slenderer ovoid form; and this latter form must be insisted upon, as in the antiques, to aid the unity of the figure. Put in no holes that hurt the ensemble, as between thumb and fingers lying at the side. Express by masses in relation to one another, and large sweeps of line in interrelation. One must determine the characteristic form of the different parts of the body and the direction of the contours which will give this form. In a man standing erect all the parts must go in a direction to aid that sensation. The legs work up into the torso, which clasps down over them. It must have a spinal column. One can divide one’s work by opposing lines (axes) which give the direction of the parts and thus build up the body in a manner that at once suggests its general character and movement.

Henri Matisse, excerpt from “Matisse Speaks to His Students, 1908: Notes by Sarah Stein,” in Alfred H. Barr Jr., Matisse: His Art and His Public (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1951), appendix A, 551; reprinted in Matisse on Art, ed. Jack Flam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 49–50. © 2022 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

51

64214int.indd 51

22-05-12 4:36 AM

In addition to the sensations one derives from a drawing, a sculpture must invite us to handle it as an object; just so the sculptor must feel, in making it, the particular demands for volume and mass. The smaller the bits of sculpture, the more the essentials of form must exist.

INTERVIEW WITH PIERRE COURTHION (1941)

I took up sculpture because what interested me in painting was a clarification of my ideas. I changed my method, and worked in clay in order to have a rest from painting, in which I had done absolutely all that I could for the time being. That is to say that it was done for the purpose of organization, to put order into my feelings and to find a style to suit me. When I found it in sculpture, it helped me in my painting. It was always in view of a complete possession of my mind, a sort of hierarchy of all my sensations that I kept working in the hope of finding an ultimate method.

Henri Matisse, excerpt from interview with Pierre Courthion, “Nine Unpublished Interviews with Matisse,” 1941, typescript, Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Archives of the History of Art, Santa Monica, California. Excerpt translated from the French by Jack Flam. © 2022 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

52    HENRI MATISSE

64214int.indd 52

22-05-12 4:36 AM

JULIO GONZ ÁLEZ 18 76 –194 2

EXCERPTS FROM “PICASSO SCULPTEUR ET LES CATHÉDRALES” (CA. 1932)

The age of iron began many centuries ago by producing very beautiful objects, unfortunately for a large part, arms. Today, it provides as well, bridges and railroads. It is time this metal ceased to be a murderer and the simple instrument of a supermechanical science. Today the door is wide open for this material to be, at last, forged and hammered by the peaceful hands of an artist. Only a cathedral spire can show us a point in the sky where our soul is suspended! In the disquietude of the night the stars seem to show to us points of hope in the sky; this immobile spire also indicates to us an endless number of them. It is these points in the infinite which are precursors of the new art: “To draw in space.” The important problem to solve here is not only to wish to make a work which is harmonious and perfectly balanced—No! But to get this result by the marriage of material and space. By the union of real forms with imaginary forms, obtained and suggested by established points, or by perforation—and, according to the natural law of love, to mingle them and make them inseparable, one from another, as are the body and the spirit.

EXCERPTS FROM “NOTATIONS” (CA. 1932)

To project and design in space with the help of new methods, to utilize this space, and to construct with it, as though one were dealing with a newly acquired material—that is all I attempt.

Julio González, unpublished manuscript (ca. 1932); first published as “Statement,” in Andrew C. Ritchie, Sculpture of the Twentieth Century (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1952), 30, as quoted in a letter by the sculptor’s daughter, Mme. R. González-Hartung, to Ritchie; reprinted in “Julio González,” Museum of Modern Art Bulletin 23, nos. 1–2 (1955–56): 42. Josephine Withers provides a detailed discussion of this text in Julio González: Sculpture in Iron (New York: New York University Press, 1978), 131–32. © 2022 Jerry Gonzalez / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Julio González, unpublished manuscript (ca. 1932); first published as “Notations de González,” in Julio González (Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1955), n.p.; reprinted and translated in “Julio González,” Museum of Modern Art Bulletin 23, nos. 1–2 (1955–56): 42. Josephine Withers provides a detailed discussion of this text in Julio González: Sculpture in Iron (New York: New York University Press, 1978), 131–32. © 2022 Jerry Gonzalez / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

53

64214int.indd 53

22-05-12 4:36 AM

The synthetic deformities of material forms, of color, of light; the perforations, the absence of compact planes, give the work a mysterious, fantastic, indeed diabolical aspect. The artist, in the very process of transposing the forms of nature, in breathing new life into them, collaborates at the same time with the space which ennobles them.

REPLY TO A QUESTION ON CONTEMPORARY ART (1935)

The masses attach themselves to that art which responds to their needs. Those of the Middle Ages saw cathedrals, those of our day see collectivist constructions embellished with decorations of an abstract tendency. The true artists are of their time. It cannot be otherwise since, if it is true that the age creates its artists, it is because the artists have determined the age. Spiritually, el Greco was of his time and of his country. Did his era understand him? Why did he sink into oblivion over the centuries? And why did he reappear in France as the most modern master, of the purest plasticity, of our school of painting? In his Ninth Symphony, Beethoven wanted to create music for all. Did he succeed? Does the public love this music more than the other symphonies? Does the public understand it better than the Fifth, which was not created for it? Did not Beethoven himself, in the finale of his Ninth, lose some of his genius because of having tried to bend it to popular taste? Why demand everything of the artist? Why not also demand of the spectators that each one, according to his capabilities, try to elevate himself to the work of art? If they don’t succeed at the first try, let them persist, even several times. I have often done this. If one generation has not completely succeeded in its efforts, the following generation may succeed. Whether the public understands or not, the artist must surrender nothing to the public. Besides, why must one understand? Does one understand nature? Nevertheless, the masses often fall in admiration before it. The pretty in art produces the trinket. If one makes out a program for oneself or allows a program to be imposed, the spirit is no longer kept alert.

Julio González, “Réponse à l’enquête sur l’art actuel” [Reply to a question on contemporary art], Cahiers d’art 10, no. 1–4 (1935): 32–34; reprinted in “Julio González,” Museum of Modern Art Bulletin 23, nos. 1–2 (1955–56): 43. © 2022 Jerry Gonzalez / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

54    JULIO GONZ ÁLEZ

64214int.indd 54

22-05-12 4:36 AM

N AU M G A B O 18 9 0 –19 7 7

THE CONSTRUCTIVE IDEA IN ART (CA. 1937)

The Constructive idea is not a programmatic one. It is not a technical scheme for an artistic manner, nor a rebellious demonstration of an artistic sect; it is a general concept of the world, or better, a spiritual state of a generation, an ideology caused by life, bound up with it and directed to influence its course. It is not concerned with only one discipline in Art (painting, sculpture or architecture); it does not even remain solely in the sphere of Art. This idea can be discerned in all domains of the new culture now in construction. This idea has not come with finished and dry formulas, it does not establish immutable laws or schemes, it grows organically along with the growth of our century. It is as young as our century and as old as the human desire to create. [. . .] This was the main obstacle to the rejuvenation of Art, and it was at this point that the Constructive idea laid the cornerstone of its foundation. It has revealed an universal law that the elements of a visual art such as lines, colors, shapes, possess their own forces of expression independent of any association with the external aspects of the world; that their life and their action are self-conditioned psychological phenomena rooted in human nature; that those elements are not chosen by convention for any utilitarian or other reason as words and figures are, they are not merely abstract signs, but they are immediately and organically bound up with human emotions. The revelation of this fundamental law has opened up a vast new field in art giving the possibility of expression to those human impulses and emotions which have been neglected. Heretofore these elements have been abused by being used to express all sorts of associative images which might have been expressed otherwise, for instance, in literature and poetry. [. . .] The Constructive idea does not see that the function of Art is to represent the world. It does not impose on Art the function of Science. Art and Science are two different streams which rise from the same creative source and flow into the same ocean of the common culture, but the currents of these two streams flow in different beds. Science teaches, Art asserts; Science persuades, Art acts; Science explores and

Excerpts from “The Constructive Idea in Art,” Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, ed. J. L. Martin, Ben Nicholson, and Naum Gabo (New York: Praeger Publishers, [1937?]), 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. The writings of Naum Gabo © Nina and Graham Williams.

55

64214int.indd 55

22-05-12 4:36 AM

apprehends, informs and proves. It does not undertake anything without first being in accord with the laws of Nature. Science cannot deal otherwise because its task is knowledge. Knowledge is bound up with things which are and things which are, are heterogeneous, changeable and contradictory. Therefore the way to the ultimate truth is so long and difficult for Science. [. . .] In the light of the Constructive idea the purely philosophical wondering about real and unreal is idle. Even more idle is the intention to divide the real into super-real and sub-real, into conscious reality and sub-conscious reality. The Constructive idea knows only one reality. Nothing is unreal in Art. Whatever is touched by Art becomes reality, and we do not need to undertake remote and distant navigations in the subconscious in order to reveal a world which lies in our immediate vicinity. We feel its pulse continually beating in our wrists. In the same way we shall probably never have to undertake a voyage in inter-stellar space in order to feel the breath of the galactic orbits. This breath is fanning our heads within the four walls of our own rooms. There is and there can be only one reality—existence. For the Constructive idea it is more important to know and to use the main fact that Art possesses in its own domain the means to influence the course of this existence enriching its content and stimulating its energy. This does not mean that this idea consequently compels Art to an immediate construction of material values in life; it is sufficient when Art prepares a state of mind which will be able only to construct, co-ordinate and perfect instead of to destroy, disintegrate and deteriorate. Material values will be the inevitable result of such a state. For the same reason the Constructive idea does not expect from Art the performance of critical functions even when they are directed against the negative sides of life. What is the use of showing us what is bad without revealing what is good? The Constructive idea prefers that Art perform positive works which lead us towards the best. The measure of this perfection will not be so difficult to define when we realize that it does not lie outside us but is bound up in our desire and in our will to it. The creative human genius, which never errs and never mistakes, defines this measure. Since the beginning of Time man has been occupied with nothing else but the perfecting of his world. To find the means for the accomplishment of this task the artist need not search in the external world of Nature; he is able to express his impulses in the language of those absolute forms which are in the substantial possession of his Art. This is the task which we Constructive artists have set ourselves, which we are doing and which we hope will be continued by the future generation.

56    NAUM GABO

64214int.indd 56

22-05-12 4:36 AM

V L A D I M I R TAT L I N 18 8 5 –19 5 3

THE PROBLEM OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MAN AND OBJECT: LET US DECLARE WAR ON CHESTS OF DRAWERS AND SIDEBOARDS (1930)

We are now waging war for a collective way of life. Socialist cities, “green cities,” communal residences, palaces of culture are being built. In this construction there arises before us in all its breadth the problem of man and object. The object in our conception must become not a sign of social distinction but that unit which is called on to realize specific functions allotted to it. At moments this object may disintegrate, become only a part of the whole, but continue to fulfil some functions. Against the old artistic thinking it is necessary to set the new form: material culture. Working in this area since 1914, first alone and then with a group of students, I became convinced that our industry will be able to produce objects of high quality only when the artist-production worker takes a direct part in the organization of the object. A way of thinking based on the culture of material makes it possible to take account both of the properties of individual materials and of the most advantageous features of their interrelationships. In such a way the artist, in creating an object, furnishes himself with a palette of different materials which he uses on the basis of their properties. Taken into account here are color, texture, density, elasticity, weight, strength, etc., etc. With the task of creating a concrete everyday object with determined functions, the artist of material culture takes account of all properties of suitable materials and their interrelationships, the organic form (man) for which a given object is created, and finally the social side: this man is a worker and will use the object in question in the working life he leads. Here must be considered the maximum functionality of the object which can be achieved when there is a great understanding of the properties of materials. This factor

Vladimir Tatlin, “The Problem of the Relationship between Man and Object: Let Us Declare War on Chests of Drawers and Sideboards” (1930), published in Tatlin, ed. Larissa Alekseeva Zhadova, trans. Colin Wright (New York: Rizzoli, 1984), 267–68. Originally published in Рабис, no. 15 (April 14, 1930): 9. Reprinted in Modern Sculpture Reader, ed. Jon Wood, David Hulks, and Alex Potts (Leeds: Henry Moore Institute; Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007), 93–95.

57

64214int.indd 57

22-05-12 4:36 AM

creates the possibility for an intelligent selection of materials for a functional object, and for the introduction of completely new and hitherto unexplored materials. This in turn gives a completely exceptional result: an object which is original and radically different from objects in the West or in America. This last fact is very important inasmuch as our everyday life is being built on completely new principles. The demands we make of an object which has to serve us are considerably greater given the conditions of everyday life here than the demands made in capitalist countries. Our everyday life is built on healthy and natural principles and an object from the West cannot satisfy us. We must search for completely different points of departure for creating our object. It is for this reason that I show such a great interest in organic form as a point of departure for the creation of the new object. I came to the unalterable view that studying organic form will give the richest material for the creation of a new object. All our life, and production too, is overburdened by objects, and mainly things which contain other objects. We have to strive to eliminate these, to take from them only certain parts and introduce those parts into a building’s architecture (shelves into the recess of a wall and so on). What do we use in constructing one object or another? Modern technology is working on those questions first and foremost. But that is not enough. Besides “what,” “how” is very important, the organic form is important. For this we take and analyze existing objects, we use technical constructions as models for the forms of everyday objects, and finally, we also use as models the phenomena of living nature. Such are our principal tasks in working on the organization of new objects in the new collective way of life.

58    VL ADIMIR TATLIN

64214int.indd 58

22-05-12 4:36 AM

L Á S Z L Ó M O H O LY- N A GY 18 9 5 –194 6

SCULPTURE (1936/1947) The General Situation

While many people succeed in establishing some sort of relationship between photography and painting, especially if these contain subject matter, sculptural creation stands in a peculiar isolation. People generally cannot enter into the experience of sculpture, its plastic relationships, biological and social implications. One of the reasons may be that sculpture usually tells a very meager “story.” Aspects of Representation

To primitive man, representation of a person, animal or an object, meant magic. By making plastic images, which moved and overpowered him, he brought them within the realm of touch, putting them at his service. Another aspect of his life was the incomprehensible fact of death. By mummification or other preparations he changed the decaying corpse into tangible reality so that the dead ancestor, the root of the family, remained in the family possession as a powerful protector. A later stage, the death mask, may have sublimated this process. This became the origin of the portrait. The desire to materialize natural forces and to secure their permanent presence was extended also to apparitions who lived only in the world of imagination. Through the ages man longed to be in contact with ancestors, gods, the personified powers of a rich pantheism. Captured within a definite form, they became—even if, and perhaps because, prayed to as deities—his servants. Clay, wood, stone come to life in the artist’s hands. He perceives the existence of the typical, and what is common in different phenomena. Then one day slight deviations from the typical are observed. To the original observation of the typical features are added the individual characteristics. The slightest twitching of the muscles of face and body is given their values in expression. The whole representation is brought down to infinitely fine gradations. The way leads from the typical to the individual. And when no further progress in this direction is possible, the rebound occurs; instead of tangible realism a neutralizing calmness takes place, a stylization, a striving for

László Moholy-Nagy, “Sculpture,” Vision in Motion (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1947), 216–26. A revised version of the chapter on “volume” from Moholy-Nagy’s The New Vision (1936). © 2022 Estate of László Moholy-Nagy / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

59

64214int.indd 59

22-05-12 4:36 AM

indifference toward the psychological aspects. This leads to a more conscious emphasis of the expressive and meaningful effects of material, shape, volume and their relationships. There is the great discovery: a “three-dimensional” language developed for expression. In the transitional period from realistic to abstract sculpture, common still life objects from the Parisian cafe were represented; bottle, absinth glass, violin containing the concave-convex, curved and angular, solid and perforated, horizontal and vertical, smooth and rough plastic elements. Later the objects wholly disappeared and the expressive impact was produced by the relationships of the pure sculptural elements to each other and in their relation to light. Not the representation of a person, animal or object was the problem any more, but the paramount organization of spatial references. Through the biological organization of his senses everyone can have a direct, unadulterated reaction to these elements. This is the basis of the new esthetics of the constructive nonobjective sculpture—the articulation of volume. Fundamental Attitudes in Treating Materials

We made pertinent studies in the psychophysical evaluation of color but we know almost nothing concerning volume, shape and space. Therefore any attempt to describe sculptural works in objective terms may benefit future research. Sculpture can be approached from different viewpoints: tool, material, form, volume, size, proportion, balance, positive-negative, setting, expression, light, etc. But the beginning of appreciation comes from the way the sculpture is made, from its technological quality. The technique of making serves to express the structure, the form. The form is the result of many components: will, tools, reaction of the material synthetized in the process of making. This in turn changes over into a quality of expression. If several people are handed identical blocks of material to be worked on, certain fundamental tendencies can be observed. At first the worker respects the homogeneity of the block. He examines it, feels it all over, estimates its weight, its dimensions. Then he starts, according to his temperament, in the more passive mood of a conserver or in the active mood of an experimenter, to work on the block with a tool. His purpose may be quite clear. He may know what he would like to create, but as he proceeds he may see that his tool and his material allow him only a limited realization. He has to adapt himself to these requirements. Slowly he becomes better acquainted with his materials and tools. He invents new methods and implements with which to approach his medium. Sooner or later he dares to proceed more drastically. He discovers the play of light caused by his indentations in the material. He tries to penetrate deeper into the block. He carves a hole into it producing a “hollow, void space,” a negative volume. He notices the relations between full and empty, between round and angular, dull and sharp, small and large, raised and recessed. Such an articulation of the material is the basis of sculpture. [. . .]

60    L Á SZLÓ MOHOLY-NAGY

64214int.indd 60

22-05-12 4:36 AM

Amplification

The discovery of new materials and new tools inspired man to overcome the static rigidity of a straight block. With the use of metals, especially bronze casts, he came to new structural findings. Just as a piece of clay can be twisted, showing complicated torsions, he shaped marble and granite as if they were flexible. In fact, given his new techniques, marble and granite had become flexible. Twisting added various space directions to the material, as well as “counterpoints” of frozen motion in space—the first step in rendering vision in motion. At the same time, this was a new potentiality to volume articulation of solids as well as in light values. With this man came to the better exploration of his means and toward a more dynamic solution of his sculptural expression. Michelangelo said that the sculptor’s task is to free with his tools the sculpture hidden in the marble block. But what a difference between the rich space curvatures he dared to see in the marble and the forms his gothic predecessors had seen! And what a difference in the mastery of tools and in the handling of material and light! The spiral twisting of bodies was not only an attempt toward vision in motion but also toward a more emphasized use of light as a medium of plastic organization. Michelangelo’s sculptures show deep shadows producing sharp and hard linear definitions. On the other hand, Rodin, with an ingenious chisel-cut, introduced transparent shadows and soft contours which made his sculptures appear ethereally light. This fundamental difference of approach cautions against forming a judgment of “absolute” values of esthetics. Such values are relative and time-determined. If history is analyzed in retrospect, even “eternal” values crumble. For instance, the renaissance usually is considered as the peak of artistic efforts; but a re-evaluation shows that actually it blurred the meaning of sculpture as well as of painting. The renaissance had predominantly illustrative and imitative interests compared with the clearer and more expressive, the more direct material-and-tool-formed concepts of the prerenaissance periods. In the naturalistic illusionism of the renaissance, genuine plastic values of volume relationships in the various materials gave way to imitative handling. The flat board or canvas of a painting was covered not with layers of pigment but with the illusion of nature. In sculpture, the material value of marble and bronze was forgotten in the visual imitation of texture-effects of the real objects. Notwithstanding the negative influence of this deception, there were important sculptural elements highly developed, such as technical skill, sophistication of structural exploration and rich articulation of space directions. This inherited knowledge combined with the prerenaissance concept of expression-emphasis gives a striking power to contemporary sculpture.

L Á SZLÓ MOHOLY-NAGY   61

64214int.indd 61

22-05-12 4:36 AM

JOAQUÍN TORRES-GARCÍA 18 74 –1949

THE WILL TO CONSTRUCT (1930)

If we consider the duty of gathering together, it is because we are surrounded by disorientation and disorder. It is mandatory that we build a foundation in order to arrive at truths. And our reason has shown us that construction is such a foundation. In a unanimous agreement, we all start out under this sign. What is construction? [Everything begins] when man abandons the direct copying of nature and forges an image in his own way, by not wanting to remember the visual deformation that perspective imposes upon us. In other words, since the idea of a thing has been sketched in a contained space more than the thing itself, a certain construction begins. If, in addition, such images were given order in an attempt to harmonize them rhythmically so that they could belong to the totality of the painting more than to what they are trying to express, a higher degree of construction would be achieved. But this is still not the construction that we have in mind. First, we must still consider the form. Being a representation of things, said representation has no value per se and cannot be called plastic. Once this form possesses a value per se—in other words, the abstract expression of its outlines and qualities—it acquires a plastic importance, allowing one to say that a work of art that is conceived in such a way already participates in a certain construction. One can go further, until actually considering the unity of the surface. Such a surface will be divided and the divisions will determine spaces that must stand in [mutual] relation. An equivalence must exist among them, so that the unity of the whole will remain intact. To order would already be something, though not much. To create order is what is imposed. We can order—put in order—by making a naturalist landscape, for example. All painters create their canvases more or less in this way. And they act in nature like they do when they go for walks. But the painter who creates order, establishes a plane, moves from the individual to the universal. This is the important point. Here it becomes necessary to make something clear: not all men are of the same nature. Without a doubt, they have the same elements, even though the proportions of those elements may vary. This is the reason for the diversity that determines corresponding works of art, which does not mean that each varied composition presupposes a more-or-less elevated degree of evolution. Let us attempt to compare two tendencies among which remain

Joaquín Torres-García, “The Will to Construct” (1930), first published in English in Mari Carmen Ramírez and Héctor Olea, Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2004), 488, for which it was translated by Laura Pérez; originally published as Joaquín Torres-García, “Vouloir Construire,” Cercle et Carré (Paris), no. 1 (March 15, 1930): 3–4 (emphasis original).

62

64214int.indd 62

22-05-12 4:36 AM

degrees: intuition, intelligence, the present, time, tone, color, tradition, new spirit, the spiritual, material, reality, the fixed, the relative, emotion, reason, the personal, the impersonal, the concrete, the abstract, senses, measure, faith, beliefs, the romantic, the classical, synthesis, analysis, foresight, physical science, metaphysics, philosophy, the artist, the constructive artist. Thus, if the latter can construct by relying on pure ideas of understanding, then the artist can also do so by relying on intuition. If there is emotion or reason at the foundation of construction, we must be indifferent to it: our only objective is to construct. Representation is the opposite pole of constructivist sensibility. To imitate a thing that already exists is not to create. What purpose is there in imitating a cavern—it would be better to build a cathedral! Construction should be, above all, the creation of order. The plural is outside of us, unity is within us. We can consider the pure concepts of time and space. Our representation of the phenomenological world is inscribed in such pure forms of thought, if art were created based on these principles, we would have pure art. All form would be forbidden. But if we base our construction on intuitive data, we will be artists and our art will possess a certain relationship to metaphysics. In the opposite sense, our art will approximate philosophy. We have in mind the totality of the object, although visually we can only see a part of it. That part changes even if we move to another place. Visually, this means that one never has the object as a whole. The whole object exists only in our mind. In order to have a graphic idea of the total object—to have it in mind—we will choose, almost imperceptibly, essential parts and construct a drawing that, if not in agreement with the laws of perspective, will at least be much more illustrative. There you have spirit of synthesis. In every era, except during the Renaissance, the thing was so normal that it was always drawn in that way. Those who were not trained in the Academy naively drew in that way. And it is correct. Therefore, the greater the spirit of synthesis of the person making the drawing, the more we will obtain a constructed image. The drawings of all primitive peoples, blacks, Aztecs, etc., and Egyptian and Babylonian drawings are good examples of this. In my opinion, this same spirit of Synthesis is what favors the achievement of the construction of the whole painting, of sculpture, and what even determines the proportions of architecture. Only that spirit of synthesis is needed to allow the work of art to be seen in its totality, in a unique order, in unity. Throughout time, how many marvels were made using this role! Why neglect it? This rule is an anonymous thing; it belongs to no one. Everyone can use it in their own way and it can be the true road of any sincere person. But, having been used in all previous eras, how can it be applied in a modern way? It has already been said in terms of the form: what interests us is the absolute value that we give to the form, independently of what it can represent. The same is true of structure or construction; it evolves from being a mere scaffolding for ordering the form to assuming its place and constructing the work of art per se. Then the duality that always existed in the painting disappears: the one between background and images. There will no longer be duality between background and images where structure replaces the superimposed images and the painting will have recovered its original identity: unity.

JOAQUÍN TORRES-GARCÍA   63

64214int.indd 63

22-05-12 4:36 AM

ALEX ANDER CALDER 18 9 8 –19 76

MOBILES (1937)

When an artist explains what he is doing he usually has to do one of two things: either scrap what he has explained, or make his subsequent work fit in with the explanation. Theories may be all very well for the artist himself, but they shouldn’t be broadcast to other people. All that I shall say here will be about what I have already done, not about what I am going to do. I began by studying engineering. But after four years I decided that engineering did not allow enough play of ingenuity on my part. When I was working in a logging camp I first started painting. I went to New York, and then to Paris, where I started making wire toys—caricatures of people and animals, some of them articulated. Then I made things in wood, taking a lump of wood and making very little alteration in its shape— just enough to turn it into something different. Then I made a circus with elephants, horses, a lion, Roman chariots and so on: basically of wire, but with cork and wood and bright colors added. Most of these objects also were articulated, so that they made characteristic gestures. The material for this was based on my observation at the circus, and on drawings of it. I was always interested in circuses. My father was a sculptor and my mother a painter, but it was quite accidentally that I became mixed up with modern art. Through a neighbor who knew about modern art—he had read the books, and so on—I went to see Mondrian. I was very much moved by Mondrian’s studio, large, beautiful and irregular in shape as it was, with the walls painted white and divided by black lines and rectangles of bright color, like his paintings. It was very lovely, with a cross-light (there were windows on both sides), and I thought at the time how fine it would be if everything there moved; though Mondrian himself did not approve of this idea at all. I went home and tried to paint. But wire, or something to twist, or tear, or bend, is an easier medium for me to think in. I started with a few simple forms. My first show was at the Galerie Percier, of simple things ranged on a plank against a wall. In a way, some of those things were as plastic as anything I have done. They did not move, but they had plastic qualities. Then I made one or two things that moved in a slight degree. I had the idea of making one or two objects at a time find actual relationships in space. I did a setting for Satie’s Socrate in Hertford, U.S.A., which I will describe, as it serves as an indication of a good deal of my subsequent work. Alexander Calder, excerpts from “Mobiles,” The Painter’s Object, ed. Myfanwy Evans (London: Gerald Howe, 1937), 63, 67. © 2022 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

64

64214int.indd 64

22-05-12 4:36 AM

3. Alexander Calder’s studio in Paris, 1933.

64214int.indd 65

22-05-12 4:36 AM

There is no dancing in it. It is sung by two people—a man and a woman. The singing is the main thing in it. The proscenium opening was 12 feet by 30 feet. There were three elements in the setting. As seen from the audience, there was a red disc about 30 inches across, left center. Near the left edge there was a vertical rectangle, 3 feet by 10 feet, standing on the floor. Towards the right, there were two 7 foot steel hoops at right angles on a horizontal spindle, with a hook one end and a pulley the other, so that it could be rotated in either direction, and raised and lowered. The whole dialogue was divided into three parts: 9, 9, and 18 minutes long. During the first part the red disc moved continuously to the extreme right, then to the extreme left (on cords) and then returned to its original position, the whole operation taking 9 minutes. In the second section there was a minute at the beginning with no movement at all, then the steel hoops started to rotate toward the audience, and after about three more minutes they were lowered towards the floor. Then they stopped, and started to rotate again in the opposite direction. Then in the original direction. Then they moved upwards again. That completed the second section. In the third, the vertical white rectangle tilted gently over to the right until it rested on the ground, on its long edge. Then there was a pause. Then it fell over slowly away from the audience, face on the floor. Then it came up again with the other face towards the audience; and that face was black. Then it rose into a vertical position again, still black, and moved away towards the right. Then, just at the end, the red disc moved off to the left. The whole thing was very gentle, and subservient to the music and the words. For a couple of years in Paris I had a small ballet-object, built on a table with pulleys at the top of a frame. It was possible to move colored discs across the rectangle, or fluttering pennants, or cones; to make them dance, or even have battles between them. Some of them had large, simple, majestic movements; others were small and agitated. I tried it also in the open air, swung between trees on ropes, and later Martha Graham and I projected a ballet on these lines. For me, increase in size—working full-scale in this way—is very interesting. I once saw a movie made in a marble quarry, and the delicacy of movement of the great masses of marble, imposed of necessity by their great weight, was very handsome. My idea with the mechanical ballet was to do it independently of dancers, or without them altogether, and I devised a graphic method of registering the ballet movements, with the trajectories marked with different colored chalks or crayons. I have made a number of things for the open air: all of them react to the wind, and are like a sailing vessel in that they react best to one kind of breeze. It is impossible to make a thing work with every kind of wind. I also used to drive some of my mobiles with small electric motors, and though I have abandoned this to some extent now, I still like the idea, because you can produce a positive instead of a fitful movement— though on occasions I like that too. With a mechanical drive, you can control the thing like the choreography in a ballet and superimpose various movements: a great number, even, by means of cams and other mechanical devices. To combine one or two simple movements with different periods, however, really gives the finest effect, because while simple, they are capable of infinite combinations.

66    ALE X ANDER CALDER

64214int.indd 66

22-05-12 4:36 AM

JEAN ARP 18 8 6 –196 0

CONCRETE ART (1944)

We don’t want to copy nature. We don’t want to reproduce, we want to produce. We want to produce like a plant that produces a fruit, and not reproduce. We want to produce directly and not by way of any intermediary. Since this art doesn’t have the slightest trace of abstraction, we name it: concrete art. Works of concrete art should not be signed by the artists. These paintings, sculptures—these objects—should remain anonymous in the huge studio of nature, like clouds, mountains, seas, animals, men. Yes! Men should go back to nature! Artists should work in communities as they did in the Middle Ages. In 1915, O. van Rees, C. van Rees, Freundlich, S. Taeuber, and myself made an attempt of that sort. That year I wrote: “These works are constructed with lines, surfaces, forms, and colors that try to go beyond the human and attain the infinite and the eternal. They reject our egotism . . . The hands of our brothers, instead of being interchangeable with our own hands, have become enemy hands. Instead of anonymity, we have renown and masterpieces; wisdom is dead . . . Reproduction is imitation, play acting, tightrope walking.” The Renaissance bumptiously exalted human reason. Modern times with their science and technology have turned man into a megalomaniac. The atrocious chaos of our era is the consequence of that overrating of reason. The evolution of traditional painting toward concrete art, from Cézanne by way of the cubists, has been frequently explained, and these historical explanations have merely confused the issue. All at once, “according to the laws of chance,” around 1914, the human mind underwent a transformation: it was confronted with an ethical problem. Concrete art wants to transform the world. It wants to make life more bearable. It wants to save man from the most dangerous of follies: vanity. It wants to simplify the life of man. It wants to identify him with nature. Reason uproots man and makes him lead a tragic life. Concrete art is a basic art, a sane and natural art that grows the stars

Hans Arp, “Concrete Art” (1944), reprinted in Arp on Arp: Poems, Essays, Memories, ed. Marcel Jean, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, Documents of 20th-Century Art (New York: Viking Press, 1972), 139– 40. © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

67

64214int.indd 67

22-05-12 4:36 AM

of peace, love, and poetry in the head and in the heart. Wherever concrete art appears, melancholy leaves, dragging along its gray suitcases full of black sighs. Kandinsky, Sonia Delaunay, Robert Delaunay, Magnelli, and Léger were among the first masters of concrete art. Without having met, we were all working toward the same goal. Most of these works were not exhibited until 1920. This marked a blossoming of all the colors and all the shapes in the world. These paintings, these sculptures— these objects—were stripped of any conventional element whatsoever. Partisans of this new art cropped up in all countries. Concrete art influenced architecture, furniture, film making, and typography. Aside from their exhibited works, certain works by Duchamp, Man Ray, Masson, Miró, and Ernst, and a number of “surrealist objects,” are also concrete art. Devoid of any descriptive, dreamlike, literary, or polemical content, the works of these artists are, it seems to me, highly important in the evolution of concrete art, for, by allusion, they manage to introduce into that art the psychic emotion that makes it live.

68    JE AN ARP

64214int.indd 68

22-05-12 4:36 AM

HENRY MOORE 18 9 8 –19 8 6

UNIT ONE (1934)

Each sculptor through his past experience, through observation of natural laws, through criticism of his own work and other sculpture, through his character and psychological make-up, and according to his stage of development, finds that certain qualities in sculpture become of fundamental importance to him. For me these qualities are: Truth to material. Every material has its own individual qualities. It is only when the sculptor works direct, when there is an active relationship with his material, that the material can take its part in the shaping of an idea. Stone, for example, is hard and concentrated and should not be falsified to look like soft flesh—it should not be forced beyond its constructive build to a point of weakness. It should keep its hard tense stoniness. Full three-dimensional realization. Complete sculptural expression is form in its full spatial reality. Only to make relief shapes on the surface of the block is to forego the full power of expression of sculpture. When the sculptor understands his material, has a knowledge of its possibilities and its constructive build, it is possible to keep within its limitations and yet turn an inert block into a composition which has a full form-existence, with masses of varied size and section conceived in their air-surrounded entirety, stressing and straining, thrusting and opposing each other in spatial relationship—being static, in the sense that the center of gravity lies within the base (and does not seem to be falling over or moving off its base)—and yet having an alert dynamic tension between its parts. Sculpture fully in the round has no two points of view alike. The desire for form completely realized is connected with asymmetry. For a symmetrical mass being the same from both sides cannot have more than half the number of different points of view possessed by a non-symmetrical mass.

Henry Moore, “Unit One,” Unit One: The Modern Movement in English Architecture, Painting and Sculpture, ed. Herbert Read (London: Cassell, 1934), 29–30; reprinted in Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, ed. Alan Wilkinson, Documents of Twentieth-Century Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 191–93. Reproduced by permission of the Henry Moore Foundation. © The Henry Moore Foundation. All rights reserved, DACS 2022 / www.henry-moore.org.

69

64214int.indd 69

22-05-12 4:36 AM

Asymmetry is connected also with the desire for the organic (which I have) rather than the geometric. Organic forms though they may be symmetrical in their main disposition, in their reaction to environment, growth and gravity, lose their perfect symmetry. Observation of Natural Objects. The observation of nature is part of an artist’s life, it enlarges his form-knowledge, keeps him fresh and from working only by formula, and feeds inspiration. The human figure is what interests me most deeply, but I have found principles of form and rhythm from the study of natural objects such as pebbles, rocks, bones, trees, plants, etc. Pebbles and rocks show nature’s way of working stone. Smooth, sea-worn pebbles show the wearing away, rubbed treatment of stone and principles of asymmetry. Rocks show the hacked, hewn treatment of stone, and have a jagged nervous block rhythm. Bones have marvelous structural strength and hard tenseness of form, subtle transition of one shape into the next and great variety in section. Trees (tree trunks) show principles of growth and strength of joints, with easy passing of one section into the next. They give the ideal for wood sculpture, upward twisting movement. Shells show nature’s hard but hollow form (metal sculpture) and have a wonderful completeness of single shape. There is in nature a limitless variety of shapes and rhythms (and the telescope and microscope have enlarged the field) from which the sculptor can enlarge his formknowledge experience. But besides formal qualities there are qualities of vision and expression: Vision and expression. My aim in work is to combine as intensely as possible the abstract principles of sculpture along with the realization of my idea. All art is an abstraction to some degree (in sculpture the material alone forces one away from pure representation and towards abstraction). Abstract qualities of design are essential to the value of a work, but to me of equal importance is the psychological, human element. If both abstract and human elements are welded together in a work, it must have a fuller, deeper meaning. Vitality and power of expression. For me a work must first have a vitality of its own. I do not mean a reflection of the vitality of life, of movement, physical action, frisking, dancing figures and so on, but that a work can have in it a pent-up energy, an intense life of its own, independent of the object it may represent. When a work has this powerful vitality we do not connect the word Beauty with it. Beauty, in the later Greek or Renaissance sense, is not the aim of my sculpture.

70    HENRY MOORE

64214int.indd 70

22-05-12 4:36 AM

Between beauty of expression and power of expression there is a difference of function. The first aims at pleasing the senses, the second has a spiritual vitality which for me is more moving and goes deeper than the senses. Because a work does not aim at reproducing natural appearances it is not, therefore, an escape from life—but may be a penetration into reality, not a sedative or drug, not just the exercise of good taste, the provision of pleasant shapes and colors in a pleasing combination, not a decoration to life, but an expression of the significance of life, a stimulation to a greater effort in living.

HENRY MOORE   71

64214int.indd 71

22-05-12 4:36 AM

MARCEL DUCHAMP 18 8 7–196 8

APROPOS OF “READYMADES” (1961)

In 1913 I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and watch it turn. A few months later I bought a cheap reproduction of a winter evening landscape, which I called “pharmacy” after adding two small dots, one red and one yellow, in the horizon. In New York in 1915 I bought at a hardware store a snow shovel on which I wrote “In advance of the broken arm.” It was around that time that the word “readymade” came to mind to designate this form of manifestation. A point which I want very much to establish is that the choice of these “readymades” was never dictated by esthetic delectation. This choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste . . . In fact a complete anesthesia. One important characteristic was the short sentence which I occasionally inscribed on the “readymade.” That sentence instead of describing the object like a title was meant to carry the mind of the spectator towards other regions more verbal. Sometimes I would add a graphic detail of presentation which in order to satisfy my craving for alliterations, would be called “readymade aided.”

Marcel Duchamp, “Apropos of ‘Readymades,’ ” talk delivered at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, October 19, 1961. Published in Art and Artist (London) 1, no. 4 (July 1966): 47. © Association Marcel Duchamp / ADAGP, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2022.

72

64214int.indd 72

22-05-12 4:36 AM

4. Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1964 (replica of 1913 original).

64214int.indd 73

22-05-12 4:37 AM

At another time wanting to expose the basic antinomy between art and readymades I imagined a “reciprocal readymade”: use a Rembrandt as an ironing board! I realized very soon the danger of repeating indiscriminately this form of expression and decided to limit the production of “readymades” to a small number yearly. I was aware at that time, that for the spectator even more than for the artist, art is a habit forming drug and I wanted to protect my “readymades” against such contamination. Another aspect of the “readymade” is its lack of uniqueness . . . The replica of a “readymade” delivering the same message; in fact nearly every one of the “readymades” existing today is not an original in the conventional sense. A final remark to this egomaniac’s discourse: Since the tubes of paint used by the artist are manufactured and ready made products we must conclude that all the paintings in the world are “readymades aided” and also works of assemblage.

74    MARCEL DUCHAMP

64214int.indd 74

22-05-12 4:37 AM

P E R S O N AG E S , P O L I T I C S , PA S S AG E S During and after World War II, the metropolis of New York became the crucible for a cadre of sculptors who took stylistic cues from European counterparts at the same time they set out to assert their own artistic independence. Individuality superseded any uniform aesthetic program in the greater arena of postwar American art, in spite of attempts by dealers like Howard Putzel and Samuel Kootz, or a determined critic like Clement Greenberg, to forge a hegemonic entity. Artists naturally gravitated to what other artists had done, particularly renowned émigrés, whose unexpected fruits offered novel insights. This was certainly true of Jacques Lipchitz’s eye-opening presentations, in 1942 and 1943, at Curt Valentin’s Buchholz Gallery, as well as Alberto Giacometti’s minisurvey exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in 1948. Lipchitz fled France shortly after the Nazis entered Paris and just before the political curtain descended. After landing in New York, he set up a studio at 2 East Twenty-Third Street and settled into an apartment at Washington Square South. What he produced shortly thereafter signaled a radical departure from his earlier Cubist-inspired compositions and Transparencies from the first two decades of the century. Modeled in clay, cast in bronze, and bearing titles like Myrah, Blossoming, and Yara, his fertility figures had braided hair and large breasts and buttocks, and their strutting vagina-like torsos rose up on scallop-like shells. Lipchitz’s Venus was reincarnated as the vengeful Goddess, aggressive and potentially dangerous, a mythic being whose gnarly surfaces and expressionistic anatomies opened up new formal terrain for impressionable Americans like Theodore Roszak, Seymour Lipton, and David Hare. James Johnson Sweeney interviewed Lipchitz after his Buchholz shows. Not surprisingly, the sculptor talked at length about Rodin, deferring to him as the “supreme master of light-composition” and a protean experimenter. During the course of the interview, with Rodin in mind, Lipchitz mentioned the “Great Stream,” where every artist has the right “to pour his own small stream into the great river,” a decidedly artist-centric perspective on the course of modern art. After the war, creativity primed by existential tenets thrived in Manhattan through the act of painting, and it began with Giacometti, whose life and work as a sculptor and painter came to embody all that existentialism implied: an individual’s ability to persist, to confront anxious situations, to make choices, and, in doing so, to change. Giacometti’s earlier Surrealist work, particularly The Palace at 4 a.m. of 1932, a cage-like structure populated with a bizarre assortment of objects, resonated with many American sculptors who saw its potential as an environmental dream space. Works by Giacometti that arrived in New York after the war, as effigy-like personages, became the progenitor for a new kind of figuration. Siphoning off the mass from sculpture by instinctively deflating it, Giacometti quelled heroic pretension,

64214int.indd 75

22-05-12 4:37 AM

rendering the human form exposed and vulnerable. His conception of the body— whole and partial, as a battleground of perceptual forces—infused monumental sculpture with renewed possibilities. Giacometti’s letter to his dealer Pierre Matisse, written at a café table while taking a break from the studio, offers a candid glimpse into the mind of a preoccupied artist. Giacometti recounts how he struggled on numerous occasions to render the figure in its entirety, only to end up lost, as space intervened, “like the Sahara,” to dissolve fixed details and anatomical distinctions. Jean-Paul Sartre, the first to articulate the sculptor’s quandary, did so in markedly philosophical terms (when he wrote in the same catalogue as Giacometti’s letter): “Giacometti knows that space is a cancer on being, and eats everything; to sculpt, for him, is to take the fat off of space; he compresses space, so as to drain off its exteriority.” The prospect of a dream space filled with meaningful things, in the hands of Joseph Cornell, spawned intimate repositories, each a peekaboo cabinet of curiosity. Like a poet perpetually time-traveling, Cornell walked on rarefied air. One gets the impression from the artist’s diary that January 24, 1947, was a bountiful day, as he traveled by early-morning train into Manhattan with a few chosen artworks, then returned later that afternoon to Utopia Parkway in Flushing, Queens, with a windfall of raw material. Whether at home with his mother and his physically compromised brother, Robert, or traipsing through the lively streets of the metropolis, Cornell embraced life’s uncanny encounters with a sense of wonder, as grist for magical boxes dreamed into being. When it came to securing public venues for sculpture during the postwar years, New York dealers such as Valentin, Matisse, Kootz, Martha Jackson, Betty Parsons, and Eleanor Ward actively promoted the medium. Some sculptors were optimistic about the prospect of architectural commissions. But a modernist skyscraper is not a nineteenth-century Beaux-Arts building, particularly when it comes to accommodating statuary and reliefs, and the matter became a point of contention. Less contested was the welcome invitation from curator Dorothy Miller to participate in one of her Americans exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art. The series was initiated in 1929, shortly after the museum opened its doors, and by the late 1940s and 1950s it had become a sought-after showcase for artists of all aesthetic stripes. In 1946 Isamu Noguchi and Roszak joined painters Robert Motherwell and Arshile Gorky in Fourteen Americans. Six years later, Herbert Ferber joined his good friend Mark Rothko and thirteen others in 15 Americans. Noguchi had envisioned sculpture as a potential environment since the 1930s, following his apprenticeship with Constantin Brancusi from 1927 to 1929 and before his internment, as a Japanese American, at the Poston Relocation Center in Arizona in 1942. One of his contributions to Fourteen Americans was a model for a contoured playground from 1940. Noguchi realized early on that sculpture claimed a social dimension when conceived as a playground, a garden, or a contemplative sanctuary. He also realized that sculptural objects could animate space, as set and setting,

76

64214int.indd 76

22-05-12 4:37 AM

which spurred his collaborations with dancer/choreographer Martha Graham, as well as his commissions for Chase Manhattan Bank and Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Funding for his environmental projects presented a formidable challenge. Once realized, though, his “imaginary landscapes,” like Brancusi’s silent ensemble at Târgu Jiu, gave sculpture a purposeful site. Roszak’s representation in Fourteen Americans signaled a dramatic transition from pristine wood and plastic constructions to distorted and disquieting figures. Death and destruction in Europe and Asia, culminating in the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, revealed the darker side of progress. Roszak’s earlier belief in utopian, Bauhaus principles was publicly retracted in 1952 during the New Sculpture symposium at the Museum of Modern Art, a fact he reiterated three years later in a lecture at the Art Institute of Chicago. A shattered faith in science and technology was replaced by a renewed faith in nature through atavistic motifs reaffirming fundamental values. After 1945 Roszak wanted his welded and brazed steel creations to ask questions rather than posit answers, to provoke, disturb, and even rankle. He also wanted these mutant creatures to evoke archetypal entities, like Lipchitz’s intimidating goddesses, a life force destructive as well as constructive. His commitment to humanistic content, figuration, dream imagery, and literary associations never wavered from this point on, even after some critics dismissed such tendencies as retrograde. Parts of Ferber’s article “Sculpture as Environment” recall Umberto Boccioni’s Futurist prose, minus the militaristic ballyhoo. Like the Italian, Ferber wanted to free sculpture from bases and pedestals so it could interact with its surroundings. His commission for the Congregation B’nai Israel in Millburn, New Jersey, to design a relief for the temple’s facade challenged him to reconsider how sculpture manipulates space. He said as much in the 15 Americans publication, where an early version of . . . and the bush was not consumed, photographed in his studio, was accompanied by the statement “Contemporary sculpture achieves a good deal of its excitement from the way it extends in space,” something he reiterated at the New Sculpture symposium. Sharing the table with Roszak, David Smith, and Richard Lippold, Ferber mentioned the temple commission, only to question its ability to succeed. By the decade’s end, he had formulated an alternate solution: a dedicated environment for the projection of three-dimensional gestures. The realization of this idea at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1961, as calligraphic papier-mâché forms packed into an already tight gallery, struck a sympathetic chord with younger sculptors—Ronald Bladen and Robert Grosvenor—who would explore a similar notion with vastly different expectations and results. At the New Sculpture symposium, Smith talked about things that mattered to him: his initial training as a painter in the late 1920s and subsequent inability to recognize where painting ends and sculpture begins; his early introduction to Cubism and the welded constructions of Pablo Picasso and Julio González through Cahiers d’Art; making his first steel sculpture with borrowed equipment during the summer of

77

64214int.indd 77

22-05-12 4:37 AM

1933; his respect for iron and steel and his dependence on drawing to germinate ideas; and sculpture’s potential to embody life’s complexities through metaphorical suggestion. Two years earlier, by way of answering a question about his influences, he had composed a list of events, experiences, and observations paced by “the” and “from.” Smith saw influence as a cumulative sequence of insights—dramatic and quotidian, observed and remembered—gleaned through time. He also saw each of his sculptures as a “statement of identity,” part of an ongoing “stream” or segment of a working life that extended backward and forward. Throughout her life, making sculpture enabled Louise Bourgeois to externalize emotions that hounded her. Her first years in America, after moving from France to Connecticut in the late 1930s with her art historian husband Robert Goldwater, were a difficult time of adjustment. Missing family and friends, she carved wooden personages and exhibited these in close proximity at the Peridot Gallery in 1949, 1950, and 1953. It was important that the clan interact in a unified space, the equivalent of a four-sided room. More than forty-two years later, she created stand-alone environments: transparent, voyeuristic, psychically charged. In biological terms, a cell is the smallest structural unit of all living matter, self-sustaining but contiguous. The confined quarters of a cell—and this is certainly true for monks, criminals, and an artist like Bourgeois—can also be a space of redemption, contrition, and even revelation. Cathartic responses to fears and frustrations real and imagined, Bourgeois’s later cells unfold like chapters from an autobiography. A mother’s death poses persistent questions about dependence and abandonment. An afflicted man, who appears to be hiding, ashamed of his condition and fearful of discovery, triggers an earlier association with a sick mother and a detached father. The psychodynamic space of a Bourgeois cell ripples with personal and universal associations. Jiro- Yoshihara, essentially a self-taught artist, was the founder and financial backer of the Gutai Bijutsu Kyokai (Concrete Art Association), a postwar group of Japanese artists—Saburo- Murakami, Sho- zo- Shimamoto, Kazuo Shiraga, Yasuo Sumi, Atsuko Tanaka, Tsuruko Yamazaki, Toshio Yoshida—some of whose improvised performances mimicked the all-or-nothing-at-all ethos of Abstract Expressionism. “Gutai Art Manifesto,” though not exclusively dedicated to sculpture, had some of the same bellicose semantics as Boccioni’s Futurist barrage. The spirit of Gutai rose like a phoenix from the ashes of an annihilated country. In the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Yoshihara’s ground-zero “graveyard” perspective was poignant. So was his attitude toward what constitutes base matter for artistic creation. The occupation of Japan by Allied powers sensitized Yoshihara, and other members of the group, to the dehumanizing effects of domination. This helps to explain his plea for an art in which “the human spirit and matter shake hands with each other while keeping their distance,” where “Matter never compromises itself with the spirit; the spirit never dominates matter.” Given such existential circumstances, it is not hard to see why the brute physicality of Jackson Pollock’s “Action” painting inspired Gutai artists and why two breakout performances—Shiraga’s

78

64214int.indd 78

22-05-12 4:37 AM

Challenge to the Mud and Murakami’s At One Moment Opening Six Holes, both conceived for the First Gutai Art Exhibition, held in Tokyo in 1955—confronted human struggle and liberation. As a Japanese American who came of age during World War II, Ruth Asawa’s story—of attending Black Mountain College to study composition, materials, and color with Josef Albers; making wire baskets in Toluca, Mexico; and eventually settling in San Francisco with her husband, Albert Lanier, and six children—reflects a life enriched by art. What began as modest experiments with a single strand of wire morphed into complex configurations—biomorphic and cellular, skeletal and crystalline—fantastic incarnations of forms depicted in D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s book On Growth and Form. An archival photograph of the Laniers’ living room shows a cloud of suspended vessels. A gathering of Louise Bourgeois’s personages springs to mind, as does Brancusi’s studio, González’s drawing in space, and Alexander Calder’s early constellations. Asawa mastered the art of drawing with wire. By 1999 she could talk about the work’s “transparency,” as though she (and the sculptures) had nothing to hide. What Asawa accomplished as an artist during her lifetime, as she tended to her family’s daily needs, remained for years under the art world’s radar. Today it is recognized as a vital tributary to the great stream of sculptural ideas. One could see Meret Oppenheim’s sculptural strategies as a revival of Surrealist parlor games, but that would be only one part of the story. She recounts how a group of friends gathered at her home in Ticino, Switzerland, during the summer of 1970. To amuse themselves, they created a series of cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse) drawings, which turned out to be predictably bizarre and figurative. After suggesting that the group use the same chance procedures to make sculpture, she organized an outing and created a system for harvesting, sorting, and preparing the materials they found. Having achieved international notoriety for her fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon Object, 1936, she understood the uncanny potential of recycled detritus. On this occasion she led the group to a nearby garbage site, where they salvaged refuse and returned to her house to assemble it. The communal dynamic of Oppenheim’s collaborative endeavor, a formative part of her Surrealist past, continued to guide her approach to a sculpture of disparate parts. Richard Stankiewicz’s junk sculptures share with Oppenheim’s surreal composites a similar generative impulse, which explains why both artists appeared in The Art of Assemblage at the Museum of Modern Art in 1961. The show’s curator, William C. Seitz, traced the roots of assemblage back to French and Futurist anarchists, poets, and collagists, Picasso’s constructions, Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades, and Kurt Schwitter’s Merzbau, and demonstrated how by the early 1960s, this no-holdsbarred sensibility had infiltrated the realm of sculpture. Published in Art News the same year The Art of Assemblage opened, Stankiewicz’s witty statement called for art that “evokes life with apparently dead stuff.” One person’s garbage is another person’s gold, particularly to the struggling artist. If you lived in the metropolis and

    79

64214int.indd 79

22-05-12 4:37 AM

knew where to look, gold was everywhere: on the sidewalks, in a car graveyard, on a vacant lot. Stankiewicz combined abstraction with figuration; he wanted his welded-steel “stuff” to be ambiguous, to “suggest with the logic of dreams,” to function as “psychic magnets drawing something out of us.” Some of his most notable work thrives on sly undertones, political and racial. John Chamberlain’s crushed car assemblages, two of which were included in Seitz’s zeitgeist roundup, mimed the gestural tension of Abstract Expressionism without heroics or mythic pathos. Instead, Chamberlain deferred to sexual and intuitive thinking as the catalyst for his ideas about what sculpture should be and how it should command space through “stance” and “attitude.” That many of his recycled car parts retained their original color added a formal challenge to a correspondingly emotional outcome. Anthony Caro’s abstractions hew close to a sculptural lineage that begins with Picasso’s reliefs, takes flight with González’s welded-steel drawings in space, and returns to carving and modeling with Henry Moore before reaching a fever pitch of protean brilliance with David Smith’s series sculptures. Like his predecessors, Caro knew that sculpture’s continued vitality depended on taking chances, exploring new materials and processes, and staying true to one’s instincts. His friendship with Clement Greenberg, who visited his London studio in 1959, propelled him forward, opened his eyes to abstraction, and gave him the confidence to tackle modernist precedents on his own terms. And painters such as Kenneth Noland, Robert Motherwell, and Helen Frankenthaler enabled him to see abstraction as a more expansive proposition. Caro later acknowledged the importance of painters and paintings—pictorial encounters that inspired sculptural responses. In his own compositions, particularly lithe and lumbering works from the 1960s, he had no qualms about painting steel surfaces to clarify formal relationships, recognizing that the work was one thing, critical agendas another, and that both could coexist without one undermining the integrity of the other.

80

64214int.indd 80

22-05-12 4:37 AM

JA C Q U E S L I P C H I T Z 18 91–19 7 3

INTERVIEW WITH JAMES JOHNSON SWEENEY (1945)

james johnson sweeney: But I believe you once told me that sculpture is essentially “modelling in light”? jacques lipchitz: Yes, but that again is something quite different. In the painting of Bonnard, for example, the flat canvas gives the impression of being soaked, drenched in light which breathes out from it. In sculpture the way in which the volumes catch and reflect the light is something quite different. The light I speak of in Bonnard’s work exudes from the painting itself. In sculpture the light falls on the object from the outside. But the volumes of a piece of sculpture will not begin to live until they receive light in a favorable way. Therefore, they must be composed with this aim in view. You may have a mass which is a volume, but if it does not receive light in the right way, it will not exist from the point of view of light. Light will demolish—disintegrate it with its glare. But masses properly disposed can become a symphony of light. And to this end forms in sculpture must be related in such a way as to create a composition of reflected lights, shadows and voids. The great revolution in art in recent times was that of the impressionists. And one of the great geniuses of Impressionism was Rodin. Perhaps Cezanne was a greater intellect, but Rodin’s artistic gifts were superior. Rodin was the supreme master of light-composition in sculpture. And in our period Rodin has had a great influence on the leading painters. For example on Matisse in his drawing, as well as in his sculpture—in fact, on all the fauves. Yet Rodin is still an unknown man. At Meudon there are some 1500 molds never cast; some, extremely daring representations; some, almost automatic expressions; some, forms derived from the suggestions of ink-spots and stains. For me Rodin is greater in his creative liberty and because of the doors he has opened for sculptors to come. . . . It was cubism’s reaction which broke the impressionist line for our period. The younger generation will probably soon pick it up. Yet much as I admire the impressionists, and Rodin, I always say “I am a cubist, I am always a cubist.” I am, of course, their Benjamin. My real association with the cubists began in 1917. And cubism was always a painters’ movement rather than a sculptors’: its

Jacques Lipchitz, excerpt from “An Interview with Jacques Lipchitz,” Partisan Review 12, no. 1 (Winter 1945): 87–89. All rights reserved, Estate of Jacques Lipchitz. © Estate of Jacques Lipchitz.

81

64214int.indd 81

22-05-12 4:37 AM

viewpoint had little to contribute to sculpture. On the other hand, sculpture brought cubist painting an emphasis on clarity. This, I feel, was my contribution. Cubism, however, was not a school, an aesthetic, or merely a discipline—it was a new view of the universe. Cubism sought a new way to represent nature, a manner adequate to the age. Cubism was essentially a search for a new syntax. Once this was arrived at there was no reason for not employing it in the expression of a full message. This is what I feel I have done and what I am still trying to do. This is why I say I am still a cubist, but expressing myself freely with all the means at my disposal from the cubist point of view, not merely limiting myself to cubism’s syntax. As for “abstract art,” I was never an abstractionist, though I may have given the appearance of being one. As a matter of fact, I do not believe you can put the two words together. If you say art, you mean something concrete. You may have an abstract idea. But art is creation, not analysis; science is analytic, but art is of its essence synthetic. Art for me is not a fragment, it is a totality. If you begin to abstract in the field of art, you will soon find yourself carrying the procedure to an inane and ridiculous extreme. Art is made of blood—earth—all that is most concrete. The seeming abstractness of my art, at a certain point, derived from my own weakness. At that time I was unable to push myself far enough in the realization of my vision. I was only able to realize fragments or aspects which I finished as independent expressions. . . . You asked me, once, what my feelings were on the subject of direct cutting and modelling in sculpture. Let me say that I am, in a manner of speaking, an adversary of direct cutting. For a sculptor today I regard modelling the more adequate technique. I feel that the advocacy of direct cutting which has been so widespread during the last thirty years is, like the interest in “primitivism” and collective production, just another indication of the tendency toward self-imposed technical regression which has marked our age. I was once touched by the contagion myself and tried it. But I soon realized that I would have to leave it aside to explore the aspects of expression which most interested me and where direct cutting hampered more than helped. The larger and more profound ideas a sculptor should undertake to express at this stage in the growth of his art are something which go much beyond the compass of direct cutting. Ideas come with an unimaginable rapidity; they are capricious; the artist must catch them and fix them as quickly as possible. And the technique best suited for this is modelling, not the slower method of direct cutting. Finally, direct cutting has been frequently suggested as a remedy for the supposed ills of sculpture. But sculpture is not ill—it was never healthier. Sculpture today, following Rodin’s indications, should be at its highest point. Sculptors in general have not yet understood Rodin. When they do they will once more join the Great Stream in its forward, ever-widening movement. Art cannot go back. The Royal Road leads only forward.

82    JACQUES LIPCHITZ

64214int.indd 82

22-05-12 4:37 AM

ALBERTO GIACOMET TI 19 01–196 6

LETTER TO PIERRE MATISSE (1947)

Here is the list of sculptures that I promised you, but I could not make it without including, though very briefly, a certain chain of events, without which it would make no sense. I made my first bust from life in 1914, and continued during the following years throughout the whole period of my schooling. I still have a certain number of these busts and always look at the first with a certain longing and nostalgia. At the same time, and for many years before, I was drawing a great deal and painting. In addition to drawing from nature and illustrating the books I read, I often copied paintings and sculptures from reproductions. I mention this because with only short interruptions I have continued to do the same thing up to the present. In 1919 I went to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Geneva for three days, and then to the Ecole des Arts-et-Métiers in the same city to study sculpture. I painted watercolors in the countryside and at the lake shore, and did oil paintings at home. In 1920–21 I lived in Italy. In Venice first, where I spent my days looking mostly at the Tintorettos, not wanting to miss a single one. To my great regret, on the day I left Venice, Tintoretto was a little dethroned by the Giottos in Padua, and he in turn some months later by Cimabue at Assisi. I stayed nine months in Rome where I never had enough time to do all I wanted. I wanted to see everything, and at the same time I painted, figures, somewhat pointillist landscapes (I had become convinced that the sky is blue only by convention and that it is actually red), and compositions inspired by Sophocles and Aeschylus whom I was reading at this time (The Sacrifice of Iphigenia, The Death of Cassandra, The Sack of Troy, etc.). I had also begun two busts, one of them small, and for the first time I could not find my way, I was lost, everything escaped me, the head of the model before me became like a cloud, vague and undefined. I ended by destroying them before I left. I spent a lot of time in museums, in churches, in ruins. I was particularly impressed by the mosaics and the Baroque. I can recall each sensation in front of each thing I saw. I Alberto Giacometti, “Letter to Pierre Matisse,” 1947. Originally published in Alberto Giacometti (New York: Pierre Matisse Gallery, 1948). Translated and published with a facsimile of the original typewritten text in Alberto Giacometti, with an introduction by Peter Selz and an autobiographical statement by the artist (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1965), 14–29. © 2022 Alberto Giacometti Estate / VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris.

83

64214int.indd 83

22-05-12 4:37 AM

filled my notebooks (a marvelous sketch by Rubens comes to mind this very moment and the mosaic in Saints Cosmas and Damian, and this is followed immediately by thousands of other things, but I must hurry). In 1922 my father sent me to Paris to attend the academy. (I would have preferred in a way to have gone to Vienna where living was cheap. At this period my desire for pleasure was stronger than my interest in the academy.) From 1922 to 1925 and later I was at the Académie de la Grande-Chaumière, in Bourdelle’s studio. In the mornings I did sculpture and the same difficulties I had had in Rome began again. In the afternoons I drew. I could no longer bear sculpture without color and I often tried to paint them from life. I kept some of these for years, and then, mostly to make room, I had them taken out and thrown away. Impossible to grasp the entire figure (we were much too close to the model, and if one began on a detail, a heel, the nose, there was no hope of ever achieving the whole). But if, on the other hand, one began by analyzing a detail, the end of the nose, for example, one was lost. One could have spent a lifetime without achieving a result. The form dissolved, it was little more than granules moving over a deep black void, the distance between one wing of the nose and the other is like the Sahara, without end, nothing to fix one’s gaze upon, everything escapes. Since I wanted nevertheless to realize a little of what I saw, I began as a last resort to work at home from memory. I tried to do what I could to avoid this catastrophe. This yielded, after many attempts touching on cubism, one necessarily had to touch on it (it is too long to explain now) objects which were for me the closest I could come to my vision of reality. This gave me some part of my vision of reality, but I still lacked a sense of the whole, a structure, also a sharpness that I saw, a kind of skeleton in space. Figures were never for me a compact mass but like a transparent construction. Again, after making all kinds of attempts, I made cages with open construction inside, executed in wood by a carpenter. There was a third element in reality that concerned me: movement. Despite all my efforts, it was impossible for me then to endure a sculpture that gave an illusion of movement, a leg advancing, a raised arm, a head looking sideways. I could only create such movement if it was real and actual, I also wanted to give the sensation of motion that could be induced. Several objects which move in relation to one another. But all this took me away little by little from external reality, I had a tendency to become absorbed only in the construction of the objects themselves. There was something in these objects that was too precious, too classical; and I was disturbed by reality, which seemed to me to be different. Everything at that moment seemed a little grotesque, without value, to be thrown away. This is being said too briefly. Objects without pedestals and without value, to be thrown away.

84    ALBERTO GIACOMET TI

64214int.indd 84

22-05-12 4:37 AM

It was no longer the exterior forms that interested me but what I really felt. (During all the previous years—the period of the academy—there had been for me a disagreeable contrast between life and work, one got in the way of the other, I could find no solution. The fact of wanting to copy a body at set hours and a body to which otherwise I was indifferent, seemed to me an activity that was basically false, stupid, and which made me waste many hours of my life.) It was no longer a question of reproducing a lifelike figure but of living, and of executing only what had affected me, or what I really wanted. But all this alternated, contradicted itself, and continued by contrast. There was also a need to find a solution between things that were rounded and calm, and sharp and violent. It is this which led during those years (32–34 approximately) to objects going in directions that were quite different from each other, a kind of landscape—a head lying down; a woman strangled, her jugular vein cut; construction of a palace with a skeleton bird and a spinal column in a cage and a woman at the other end. A model for a large garden sculpture, I wanted people to be able to walk on the sculpture, to sit on it and lean on it. A table for a hall, and very abstract objects which then led me to figures and skull heads. I saw anew the bodies that attracted me in reality and the abstract forms which seemed to me true in sculpture, but I wanted to create the former without losing the latter, very briefly put. A last figure, a woman called 1 + 1 = 3, which I could not resolve. And then the wish to make compositions with figures. For this, I had to make (quickly I thought; in passing), one or two studies from nature, just enough to understand the construction of a head, of a whole figure, and in 1935 I took a model. This study should take (I thought) two weeks, and then I could realize my compositions. I worked with the model all day from 1935 to 1940. Nothing was as I had imagined. A head (I quickly abandoned figures, that would have been too much) became for me an object completely unknown and without dimensions. Twice a year I began two heads, always the same ones, never completing them, and I put my studies aside (I still have the casts). Finally, in order to accomplish at least a little, I began to work from memory, but this mainly to know what I had gotten out of all this work. (During all these years I drew and painted a little, and almost always from life.) But wanting to create from memory what I had seen, to my terror the sculptures became smaller and smaller, they had a likeness only when they were small, yet their dimensions revolted me, and tirelessly I began again, only to end several months later at the same point. A large figure seemed to me false and a small one equally un-bearable, and then often they became so tiny that with one touch of my knife they disappeared into dust. But head and figures seemed to me to have a bit of truth only when small. All this changed a little in 1945 through drawing. This led me to want to make larger figures, but then to my surprise, they achieved a likeness only when tall and slender.

ALBERTO GIACOMET TI   85

64214int.indd 85

22-05-12 4:37 AM

5. Alberto Giacometti’s Montparnasse studio at 46 Rue Hippolyte-Maindron, Paris, with plaster study for Man Walking, 1947.

64214int.indd 86

22-05-12 4:37 AM

And this is almost where I am today, no, where I still was yesterday, and I realize right now that if I can draw ancient sculptures with ease, I could draw those I made during these last years only with difficulty; perhaps if I could draw them it would no longer be necessary to create them in space, but I am not sure about this. And now I stop, besides they are closing, I must pay.

ALBERTO GIACOMET TI   87

64214int.indd 87

22-05-12 4:37 AM

JOSEPH CORNELL 19 0 3 –19 7 2

DIARY ENTRY FROM JANUARY 24, 1947

Awoke at six with sense of refreshment covering attempt at reversal. Much warmer after cold spell. Brought in things from garage, put out ashes, typical early morning feeling with light about to break. Greeted Borden milk-man—feeling from lighted interior of wagon (truck)—elation wore out as finicky work on étuis (small cabinets) progressed—Les Petites Filles Modèles, Les Caprices de Giselle, Les Perles de l’Opéra (red, mauve, mixed decoupage tints of green, yellow, light purple on outside, inside dark blue glass covering small glistening white (like alabaster) musician cupid, with wings, music-note paper covering rest of box, glass shelves with pink plush covered slide box on one). Feeling of real accomplishing (after distressing sense of pressure) with boxes tied up and ready for town. Shaved and dressed and waved good-bye to Robert on porch (Mother shopping). Waved to Robert from train. So far uneventful but rest of day picked up that kind of richness in which a revelling in detail becomes such a feast of experience—went all the way in to Penn Station. Just before going under tunnel looked up at freight cars the word Jane scrawled on a box-car in large letters, red with a touch of pink, then touches of primary colors mingling with a scene of men working on the tracks with a long crane mounted on a car—all over in a flash but evoking a strong feeling—had not remembered anything just like that at that point—but similar varied combinations many times from the elevated viewpoint of the subway before going under at same point (the puffing locos, omnipresent pigeons, markings on cars in freight yard, etc.). Once in awhile a touch like the above. This enhanced by a touch of spring in the air. Sunny. Took bus (1:30) to 42 & 11 Ave.—Feeling of great Felicity in large corner cafeteria with aspect of dog-wagon. Griddle cakes, coffee, apple pie a la mode. Walked up 11 Ave. to clear up my films at Major Labs where for almost ten years M. Francis Doublier, the pioneer Lumière cameraman, has accommodated me. Went up in Freight elevator and got glimpses into different Floors not afforded by passenger elevator (out of order) of workers in grimy industrial plants. Remembered with vividness the days of George Boyce and the early movies acquired from him. Took bus crosstown and lingered before appointment at Vogue, 4:00. Found Jenny Lind song sheet, La Sonnam-

Joseph Cornell, “Diary Entry from January 24, 1947,” in Joseph Cornell, Theater of the Mind: Selected Diaries, Letters, and Files, ed. Mary Ann Caws (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1993), 138–39. © 2019 The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

88

64214int.indd 88

22-05-12 4:37 AM

bula, and colored Feathers in dime store. Boxes got good reception. Up to 59th St. Windfall of Bibliothèque Rose to cover étuis, Souvenirs containing good Gérard de Nerval (De Camp) an original colored Deveria of a standing oriental woman musician—two heroic sized forest prints for owl boxes—unusual feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment, unexpected and more abiding than usual. Unexpected the “surprise” the conspiracy of events to produce this miracle of grace.

JOSEPH CORNELL   89

64214int.indd 89

22-05-12 4:37 AM

ISAMU NOGUCHI 19 0 4 –19 8 8

NEW STONE GARDENS (1964)

The possibility of sculpture as a vital function of our environment leads us on to an exciting concept. The two new gardens—for Yale (the closed court of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library) and for the Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza in New York—are my most recent efforts to find an answer to this challenge. I am not concerned here with monuments or embellishment but with gardens, by which I mean that self-contained sculpturing of space with whatever medium, be it trees, water, rocks, wire, or broken-down automobiles. The totality of the experience so controlled adds up to more than the sum of its parts. It is this larger entity that I prefer to call a garden rather than “sculpture court,” which would imply sculpture in a space, rather than the space which has itself become a sculpture. Both these gardens were started three years ago, and in collaboration with the thoughts of Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Library Court at Yale

Very early in the Yale job it was decided that it had best be executed entirely in the same granite or marble as the building; because of its puristic style my first model was a simple convexity and concavity of the surface. After several more variants, there evolved the present concept of a garden with actual symbolical meaning, something more specific than might be read into any abstraction. Here is a brief explanation, based on what I originally wrote for the architects. The Garden of the Yale Beinecke Library is made entirely of white marble and is intended to evoke a dramatic landscape. Its orientation is toward the library building and toward the main reading room. The landscape is purely that of the imagination; it is nowhere, yet somehow familiar. Its size is fictive, of infinite space, or cloistered containment. As seen from the reading room, the illusory effect of space is cut by a pyramid (geometry of the earth, or of the past), the apex of which introduces another point of infinity. To the right beyond this, dominating the drama, is the circular disc of the sun. A ring of energy, it barely touches the horizon. Its

Isamu Noguchi, “New Stone Gardens,” Art in America 52, no. 6 (June 1964): 84–89. Courtesy of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York. © The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York / ARS.

90

64214int.indd 90

22-05-12 4:37 AM

6. Isamu Noguchi, Sunken Garden, Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza, New York City, 1961–64.

radiation, like lines of force in a magnetic field, transfixes it in a curvilinear perspective. The symbolism of the sun may be interpreted in many ways; it is the coiled magnet, the circle of accelerating force. As energy it is the source of all life, the life of Everyman—expended in so brief a time. How he does this is the purpose of education. Looked at in other ways, the circle is zero, the decimal zero, or the zero of nothingness from which we come and to which we return. The hole is the abyss, the mirror, or the question mark. Or it may be the trumpet that calls youth to its challenge—from which a note has sounded (as the cube). The cube signifies chance, like the rolling of dice. It is not original energy (sun) or matter (pyramid), but the human condition from whose shadow the rest is seen in light. If the sun is primordial energy, the cube is that man-made pile of carbon blocks by which he had learned to simulate nature’s processes. The cube on its point may be said to contain features of both earthly square and solar radiance. Looked at from above, this Garden is contained by the massive frame of granite that surrounds it. The drama is being enacted silently, inexorably. The tactile evolution of sculpture is, of course, more complicated than words, and thus indescribable. There were at least ten variants of the sun; and the cube went through phases when it was not a cube at all, and was originally in a cupped well. Many of these elements were in themselves more interesting than those used. However, nothing could be allowed to detract from the whole. The sun, being more plastic, could not stand apart from the rest; it, the cube, and the pyramid had to relate to each other and to the topography as a whole.

ISAMU NOGUCHI   91

64214int.indd 91

22-05-12 4:37 AM

Chase Manhattan Bank

The Garden of the Chase Manhattan Bank downtown came about through my having been called in as consultant on the design of the plaza four or five years ago. I had at that time suggested a water garden. Once the general idea had been accepted the further development of it was left to my judgment. Thus I was able to choose the rocks which I had found in Japan and make changes without, I think, being noticed. The chief feature in this Garden is the use of rocks in a nontraditional way. Instead of being a part of the earth they burst forth, seeming to levitate out of the ground (at least that is the intention). The ground itself is contoured; it is man-made, that is—it is sculpture. The concentric patterns of the paving may be said to be like the contour raking of Japanese gardens, but they go back more to their Chinese origins of stylized sea waves. The rocks which here become the sculptures are natural. There is this transposition: an unnatural thing of will, as is our whole technological age—like going to the moon. I have noticed that when one visits the plaza on a quiet but somewhat windy Sunday, the great building emits an eerie music, and I can see that looking down into the garden with its water flowing will be like looking into a turbulent seascape from which immobile rocks take off for outer space. Nature and non-nature. There will come other gardens to correspond to our changing concepts of reality: disturbing and unbeautiful gardens to awaken us to a new awareness of our solitude. Can it be that nature is no longer real for us or, in any case, out of scale?

92    ISAMU NOGUCHI

64214int.indd 92

22-05-12 4:37 AM

THEODORE ROSZ AK 19 0 7–19 81

IN PURSUIT OF AN IMAGE (1955)

The work that I am now doing constitutes an almost complete reversal of ideas and feelings found in my former work. Instead of looking at densely populated man-made cities, it now begins by contemplating the clearing. Instead of sharp and confident edges, its lines and shapes are now gnarled and knotted, even hesitant. Instead of serving up slick chromium, its surfaces are scorched and coarsely pitted. The only reminder of my earlier experiences that I have retained is the over-ruling structure and concept of Space—no longer buoyant, but unobtrusively concealed, where I now think it properly belongs. [. . .] I reject the notion that calls for playing or experimenting with a variety of materials, after which let us even assume some plastic coherence has been arrived at, and one looks at it, and wonders what has happened, and why one did it. A lot of good suggestion can come from such a method of work. But, I think it is extremely important to feel and know what one is doing and what one expects to say. Personally, of course, I prefer to appeal to what may be termed the psychology of the imagination, where concentration on the experiences one wishes to convey ultimately invokes an image of the forms in one’s mind . . . only after which, one gets down to work. This attitude in no way rejects the notion of plastic suggestion, or possibly accidents arising out of characteristics inherent in the medium. On the contrary, it takes such experiences for granted since it assumes they have already happened, and that such experiences are now assimilated within the mainstream of one’s perceptions. Instead of working my media for ideas, I prefer to have an idea before working. This distinction is central and decisive as an approach to my work. Should one look for historic precedent in the way that these two attitudes of work relate themselves to one another, we should find the best answer supported by way of concrete example in the work of the Sculptor and Painter of the past. In particular, the oriental artist understood the need for a free and unhampered excursion into the realm of his intuitions. And at this stage of his development, he gave full play to the exploration of his chosen medium. By invading—and freely exploiting—his material, he calligraphically

Theodore Roszak, excerpts from “In Pursuit of an Image.” Lecture delivered at the Art Institute of Chicago, March 16, 1955. Published by the Art Institute of Chicago, Time to Time Publications, no. 2 (1955): 4–5, 6–7, 14. © 2022 Estate of Theodore Roszak / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

93

64214int.indd 93

22-05-12 4:37 AM

7. Theodore Roszak’s studio at 1 St. Luke’s Place, New York City, 1954.

pointed up and charted the texture of his sensibilities. This calligraphic experience served as a means, not as an end. It served as a forerunner to his considered and mature forms. [. . .] The forms that I find necessary to assert, are meant to be blunt reminders of primordial strife and struggle, reminiscent of those brute forces that not only produced life, but in turn threatened to destroy it. I feel that if necessary, one must be ready to summon one’s total being with an all-consuming rage against those forces that are blind to the primacy of life-giving values. Perhaps by this sheer dedication, one may yet merge force and grace. [. . .] I believe there is an amazingly strong analogy to be drawn between the content of poetry and the content that I speak of as related to sculpture. In sculpture, we are dealing with a form that presents visual meaning within a changing source of light and the movement of the spectator. It constantly produces illusions of shifting shapes and images. Hence, like poetry, sculpture is fraught with structural and visual ambiguities that are resolved by reconciling opposites in its constant pursuit of a visual metaphor. I think, then, that a medium such as sculpture, able to integrate diverse poles of meaning, can reveal significant suggestions of imagery that cross or fuse from one generation to another the rich source material of Legend and Myth.

94    THEODORE ROSZ AK

64214int.indd 94

22-05-12 4:37 AM

HERBERT FERBER 19 0 6 –19 91

SCULPTURE AS ENVIRONMENT (1960)

It is traditional to think of sculpture as placed in a given environment: in a public square, on a building, in a room. The sculpture enriches, decorates, animates the space, but, however meaningful, it remains something applied or added. The space has a character and an existence apart from the existence of the sculpture. I am thinking of a sculpture and a space each of which would be meaningless if one were to be removed. This is a further development of the break with tradition which contemporary sculpture achieved when it left the monolith and displayed its content in “lines of force,” “open, airy, suspended in space,” and when it exploited the possibility of “piercing space and holding it in tension.” When I made my first roofed sculptures in 1954, my aim was to develop this concept further by defining the space in which the sculpture functions (between a roof and a floor) and to free it from the ground. If the roof, and even walls, are utilized to suspend and support the sculpture, the importance of the base, the traditional anchor of sculpture, is minimized, and the forms can move freely in space. The space itself becomes more integral, more a part of the whole, if all the forms do not have to spring from below. Furthermore, the sculpture need no longer be an object in an environment since it is possible to create an environment defined by both forms and space. “The kinetic compulsion” to move in and about the forms which is engendered by open sculpture and which ordinarily is merely a mental exercise can now be realized in fact. I very soon began to people these roofed sculptures with figures as if they were in a cave among stalactites and stalagmites. They moved about among the forms to which the play of light imparted movement. These figures were no longer dealing with an object but with an ambience. An impelling experience of this kind had actually happened to me when I had finished a large sculpture for a wall in 1951 and found that while it still stood on the ground I could actually walk into it. This was entirely different from seeing the sculpture out of reach, as it were, high on the wall; up there it seemed to have irrevocably lost its real presence. It had become an object in an environment. I had noticed something similar when looking at over-life-size statues which had been brought down from the Campanile in Florence during the war. Seeing them face to face was to feel presences; seeing them in their niches, high above, was to see images.

Herbert Ferber, “Sculpture as Environment,” Art International 4, no. 4 (May 1, 1960): 71. © Edith Ferber.

95

64214int.indd 95

22-05-12 4:37 AM

Contemporary painters have achieved this sense of presence with their large canvases. They have been challenged as to the necessity for the size of their work, but in the revolt against easel painting they have produced a new esthetic experience. Standing before one of these large paintings, one is drawn into the substance of the environment which it emanates. If one steps back fifty feet the largest painting is reduced to a familiar size and one deals with it as a picture, just as had happened when my sculpture was hoisted to its place on the wall. The environment of which I speak is defined by the forms and the space in which the spectator finds himself, and it becomes the measure of his experience. Once in the environment, he must deal with it as he does when he passes through the door of a chapel. He cannot change the perspective of this experience except by leaving. A curious phenomenon of our time is that the spectator stands in exhibition halls as the paintings and sculptures come and go, leaving the rooms in which they have been shown without an identity, to be replaced by more paintings and sculptures, until a vast moving picture is created. The individual work of art is hardly encountered, as change is keyed to flagging interest and the constant variety leads to restless wandering, a situation inimical to the pleasure of finding the work of one artist or one work of art at a time, which alone enables us to be immersed in a unique vision. This kind of immersion can also be realized if the artist imposes on neutral space the function of a specific one, loaded with meaning, which permeates the senses of the man who enters it. In a revolutionary and ultimate way the painter can do this when he stops painting pictures in order to create walls. The sculptor can do it when he weaves the space and the forms into an inseparable whole. The wedding of architecture and art which has been an unconsummated and much discussed ideal in recent years, can become reality. The artist always imposes his vision on the material of his craft. Now he has added a new means by which he can make an ENVIRONMENT his creation. I had dealt with the problems of open sculpture in an article in Art in America in 1954 from which the above quotations are taken. I am aware that similar ideas have been offered by others, among whom l would like to mention Mark Rothko, in his “paintings” (not “pictures”) for a Room, Friedrich Kiesler in his “Galaxy” of 1947, Mathias Goeritz in his “Echo” of 1953, and E. C. Goossen, in his recent article, “The End of the Object” in Art International.

96    HERBERT FERBER

64214int.indd 96

22-05-12 4:37 AM

D AV I D S M I T H 19 0 6 –196 5

THE QUESTION—WHAT ARE YOUR INFLUENCES (1950)

from the history of art and the myth of woman from the half of a part-chewed chicken rib cage and out of a fried salted mackerel spine the structure of August-hatched moths that come off the mountains the color of moths that blind in my arc out of Beethoven’s E flat major, opus 31 and the statement about intent he made at the time from brush marks on a wall the personages that grain pine boards the grease spots on paper the creatures in foliage the statements of nature—the underlying structure which forms the object, its whole or its parts— related by associations not yet befouled by commerce the nature of accident made by man as they fall in unity as if directed by genes and generations From Lahey’s thrust, from Sloan’s cones and cubes from Matulka’s cubist concept and aggressive inquiry from Graham’s erratic finesse from Davis’s conversations over ale at McSorley’s or Stewart’s over coffee, his caustic disdain for the stuffed shirts in our professional world, his enthusiasm for Pine Top Smith From all my friends and contemporaries Directives too come from the way swallows dart the way trees fall the shape of rocks the color of a dry doe in brown the way bark grows on basswood sprouts

David Smith, “The Question—What Are Your Influences,” typescript, August 1950, revised from a handwritten draft in sketchbook 40; published in Susan J. Cooke, David Smith: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Interviews (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018), 96–97. © 2022 The Estate of David Smith / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

97

64214int.indd 97

22-05-12 4:37 AM

the head of a turtle—the vertebrae the memory of the soup it made and the 52 ping pong balls it never laid the roll of the mountains after the day’s work on the walk from the shop to my house the way stars track from bugs and butterflies under magnification dividing to find the common denominators the antennae, body movement to shape, the joints of the legs and feet, squared by the memory of fish and the behavior of man the ecstasy of a piano sonata and black coffee at midnight the pieces finished outside the shop the piece underway—the piece finished conceptually the odds on the wall, the patterns in the rafters, the stack of materials, the tools to form it and the work to come the memory of 1 Atlantic Avenue, the odds on the wall, the ship ventilators that hung from the rafters, the rusty rows of forging tongs the banks of hardies, the forging beds, the babbitt ladles the stacks of buffalo horn the boxes of barrier reef pearl shell the baskets of pistol handles in various stages of finish and polish the rows of every revolver frame ever made, the clatter of barge fuel pumps, the backwater roll of an incoming ferry the crunch of Levy the barge oiler walking thru the cinder yard out the gate for coffee from the way the booms sling from the ropes and pegs of tent tabernacles and side shows at county fairs in Ohio from the barefooted memory of unit relationships on locomotives sidling thru Indiana, from hopping freights, from putting the engines together and working on their parts in Schenectady From everything that happens to circles and from the cultured forms of woman and the free growth of mountain flowers From no one, individually, but selections from the cube root of all in varying context

98    DAVID SMITH

64214int.indd 98

22-05-12 4:37 AM

8. David Smith with Hudson River Landscape, 1951 (unfinished state), Bolton Landing, New York, ca. 1951.

64214int.indd 99

22-05-12 4:37 AM

LOUISE BOURGEOIS 1911–2 010

ON CELLS (1991) I.

The subject of pain is the business I am in. To give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering. What happens to my body has to be given a formal abstract shape. So, you might say, pain is the ransom of formalism. The existence of pains cannot be denied. I propose no remedies or excuses. I simply want to look at them and talk about them. I know I can’t do anything to eliminate or suppress them. I can’t make them disappear; they’re here to stay. The Cells represent different types of pain: the physical, the emotional and psychological, and the mental and intellectual. When does the emotional become physical? When does the physical become emotional? It’s a circle going round and round. Pain can begin at any point and turn in either direction. Each Cell deals with fear. Fear is pain. Often it is not perceived as pain, because it is always disguising itself. Each Cell deals with the pleasure of the voyeur, the thrill of looking and being looked at. The Cells either attract or repulse each other. There is this urge to integrate, merge, or disintegrate. II.

In this Cell the hands, tightly clenched in pain, are made of stone. Pain, like stone, is indestructible. It comes from the rage of not knowing how to understand, of not knowing how to learn. There is this inner resistance that keeps me from learning, that keeps me from understanding. The resistance itself is unconscious and my inability to progress puts me in a state of rage. You confuse the world of emotions, which has a personal logic, with the world of the intellect, which has a universal logic. It is the confusion that drives you to rage. It’s crystal clear. Louise Bourgeois, “On Cells” (1991); first published in Carnegie International 1991 (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Museum of Art, 1991), 60; reprinted in Louise Bourgeois: Destruction of the Father / Reconstruction of the Father, Writings and Interviews 1923–1997, ed. Marie-Laure Bernadac and Hans-Ulrich Obrist (London: Violette Editions, 1998), 205–8; Robert Storr, Paulo Herkenhoff, and Allan Schwartzman, Louise Bourgeois (London: Phaidon Press, 2003), 132–37; and Louise Bourgeois, Structures of Existence: The Cells, ed. Julienne Lorz (Munich: Haus der Kunst in association with Prestel, 2015), 124–27. © 1991 The Easton Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

100

64214int.indd 100

22-05-12 4:37 AM

9. Louise Bourgeois inside her sculpture CELL I in her Brooklyn studio in 1991.

I think the rage to understand comes from the fact that you do not ask the right question. You will never find the right answer if you do not ask the proper question. It’s like trying to open a door with the wrong key. There is nothing wrong with the key, and there is nothing wrong with the door. Some questions are too painful to answer. Some questions we are unwilling to ask. And some are impossible to answer. When my mother died in 1932, this rage to understand took over me. I simply could not make out the why of her disappearance. Why my mother died and abandoned me would be clear if the question was perhaps a different one. If the question was replaced by why do I suffer so much from this loss, why am I so affected by this disappearance. Now these questions are possible to answer. Do I feel guilty? Does it represent a danger? Does it repeat the trauma of abandonment? If you fear abandonment, it keeps you in a state of dependency, which makes you feel you are unable to cope. So there is this rage of not knowing how to live up to your fate. It’s the pain of not knowing how to make yourself loved. This pain never goes away, and you don’t know what to do about it. The Perfume is the opposite. It’s the evanescence of pleasure, the fleeting pleasure of the sense of smell. You cannot grasp it; it’s so subtle you cannot touch it. You cannot hear it or see it or taste it. All the five senses show five totally different worlds. One cannot substitute for the other. Yet the sense of smell has the great power of evocation and healing.

LOUISE BOURGEOIS   101

64214int.indd 101

22-05-12 4:37 AM

III.

The Cell with the figure or arch of hysteria deals with emotional and psychological pain. Here in the arch of hysteria, pleasure and pain are merged in a state of happiness. Her arch—the mounting of tension and the release of tension—is sexual. It is a substitute for orgasm, with no access to sex. She creates her own world and is very happy. Nowhere is it written that a person in these states is suffering. She functions in a selfmade cell where the rules of happiness and stress are unknown to us. The ironing board represents the flattening out of the creases, the diminishing of tension towards sleep. There is the big sleep, which is death, and the little sleep which follows orgasm. IV.

In bed, crouching in fear, the person in this Cell is hiding. What he is hiding is his state of sickness. He is physically sick and afraid of death. But it is not that simple; he has other fears. What is not justified is his fear of people knowing about his sickness. He is afraid of not having any friends or afraid of losing those he has. Some diseases are considered shameful because sinful. So he is intensely possessive of his privacy and fears the onlookers. He fears people are going to pry into his privacy. Yet he is projecting his fear of being seen, for he himself is a voyeur, a latent voyeur. This is expressed by the windows. If you can look out, they can look in. The clear glass represents no secrets. Sick people die of the need of companionship, a stroking hand, a hungering for compassion. He runs away from people, and people run away from him out of fear of contagion. So he is isolated by his own fear and by that of others. The transparent glass represents a sickness. When you’re sick, people don’t like you; you’re not desirable. My mother was ill and used to cough up blood; I helped her to hide her illness from my father.

102    LOUISE BOURGEOIS

64214int.indd 102

22-05-12 4:37 AM

– J I R O YO S H I H A R A 19 0 5 –19 7 2

GUTAI ART MANIFESTO (1956)

To today’s consciousness, the art of the past, which on the whole presents an alluring appearance, seems fraudulent. Let’s bid farewell to the hoaxes piled up on the altars and in the palaces, the drawing rooms and the antique shops. They are monsters made of the matter called paint, of cloth, metals, earth, and marble, which, through a meaningless act of signification by humans, through the magic of material, were made to fraudulently assume appearances other than their own. Slaughtered under the pretense of production by the mind, matter [busshitsu] can now say nothing. Lock up these corpses in the graveyard. Gutai Art does not alter matter. Gutai Art imparts life to matter. Gutai Art does not distort matter. In Gutai Art, the human spirit and matter shake hands with each other while keeping their distance. Matter never compromises itself with the spirit; the spirit never dominates matter. When matter remains intact and exposes its characteristics, it starts telling a story and even cries out. To make the fullest use of matter is to make use of the spirit. By enhancing the spirit, matter is brought to the height of the spirit. Art is a site where creation occurs; however, the spirit has never created matter before. The spirit has only created spirit. Throughout history, the spirit has given birth to life in art. Yet the life thus born always changes and perishes. To us today, the great lives of the Renaissance are nothing more than archaeological relics. Today, it is only primitive art and various art movements after Impressionism that manage to convey to us a feeling of life, however inert. These movements extensively used matter—that is, paint—without distorting or killing it, even when using it for

Yoshihara Jiro-, “Gutai Art Manifesto,” 1956, from Doryun Chong, Michio Hayashi, Kenji Kajiya, and Fumihiko Sumitomo, eds., Postwar to Postmodern: Art in Japan, 1945–1989 (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2012), 89–91. Originally published as “Gutai bijutsu sengen” in Geijutsu shincho [New trends in art] 7, no. 12 (December 1956): 202–4. Translation first excerpted in Alexandra Munroe, Japanese Art after 1945: Scream against the Sky (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 370; first published in full in Ming Tiampo, “Under Each Other’s Spell”: Gutai and New York (East Hampton, NY: Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, 2009), 17–19, and revised for Gutai: Splendid Playground (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2013). Translated by Reiko Tomii.

103

64214int.indd 103

22-05-12 4:37 AM

the purpose of naturalism, as in Pointillism and Fauvism. In any case, these styles no longer move us; they are things of the past. Now, interestingly, we find a contemporary beauty in the art and architecture of the past ravaged by the passage of time or natural disasters. Although such beauty is considered decadent, it may be the innate beauty of matter reemerging from behind the mask of artificial embellishment. Ruins unexpectedly welcome us with warmth and friendliness; they speak to us through their beautiful cracks and rubble—which might be a revenge of matter that has regained its innate life. In this sense, we highly regard the works of [Jackson] Pollock and [Georges] Mathieu. Their works reveal the scream of matter itself, cries of the paint and enamel. These two artists confront matter in a way that aptly corresponds to their individual discoveries. Or rather, they even seem to serve matter. Astonishing effects of differentiation and integration take place. In recent years, [critic] Tominaga Sōichi and [artist] Dōmoto Hisao introduced the activities of Art Informel by Mathieu and [Michel] Tapié. We found them quite interesting; although our knowledge is limited, we feel sympathetic to their ideas as have so far been introduced. Their art is free from conventional formalism, demanding something fresh and newborn. We were surprised to learn our aspiration for something vital resonated with theirs, although our expressions differed. We do not know how they understood their colors, lines, and forms—namely, the units of abstract art—in relation to the characteristics of matter. We do not understand the reason behind their rejection of abstraction. We have certainly lost interest in cliched abstract art, however. Three years ago, when we established the Gutai Art Association, one of our goals was to go beyond abstraction. We thus chose the word gutai [concreteness] for our group’s name. We especially sought a centrifugal departure in light of the centripetal origin of abstraction. We thought at the time—and still do—that the greatest legacy of abstract art is the opening of an opportunity to depart from naturalistic and illusionistic art and create a new autonomous space, a space that truly deserves the name of creativity. We have decided to pursue enthusiastically the possibilities of pure creativity. We believe that by merging human qualities and material properties, we can grasp abstract space in concrete terms. When the individual’s character and the selected materiality meld together in the furnace of automatism, we are surprised to see the emergence of a space previously unknown, unseen, and unexperienced. Automatism inevitably transcends the artist’s own image. We endeavor to achieve our own method of creating space rather than relying on our own images. For example, Kinoshita Yoshiko, who teaches chemistry at a girls’ school, has created a marvelous space by mixing chemicals on filter paper. Even though the effect of chemical manipulation may be predicted to some degree, it cannot be seen until the next day. Still, the wondrous state of matter thus realized is her doing. No matter how many Pollocks have emerged after Pollock, his glory will not diminish. We must respect new discoveries.

– 104    JIRO YOSHIHAR A

64214int.indd 104

22-05-12 4:37 AM

Shiraga Kazuo placed a mass of paint on a huge sheet of paper and started violently spreading it with his feet. His method, unprecedented in the history of art, has been a subject of journalism for the past two years. However, what he presented was not a merely peculiar technique but a means he developed to confront the matter chosen by his personal quality with the dynamism of his own mind and synthesize them in an extremely positive way. In contrast to Shiraga’s organic method, Shimamoto Shōzō has focused on mechanistic methods for the past several years. When he threw a glass bottle filled with lacquer, the result was flying splashes of paint on canvas. When he packed the paint into a small handmade cannon and ignited it with an acetylene torch, the result was an instant explosion of paint in a huge pictorial space. Both works demonstrate a breathtaking freshness. Among other members, Sumi Yasuo deployed a vibrating device, while Yoshida Toshio created a lump of monochrome paint. It should be noted that all these activities are informed by serious and solemn intentions. Our exploration into the unknown and original world bore numerous fruits in the form of objets, in part inspired by the annual outdoor exhibitions held in Ashiya. Above all, Gutai’s objets differ from those of the Surrealists in that they eschew titles and significations. Gutai’s objets included a bent and painted sheet of iron (Tanaka Atsuko) and a hanging box like a mosquito net made of red plastic (Yamazaki Tsuruko). Their appeal lies solely in the strength of their material properties, their colors and forms. As a group, however, we impose no rules. Ours is a free site of creation wherein we have actively pursued diverse experimentations, ranging from art to be appreciated with the whole body to tactile art to Gutai music (an interesting enterprise that has occupied Shimamoto Shōzō for the past few years). A bridge-like work by Shimamoto Shōzō, on which the viewer walks to sense its collapse. A telescope-like work by Murakami Saburō, into which the viewer must enter to see the sky. A balloon-like vinyl work by Kanayama Akira, equipped with an organic elasticity. A so-called dress by Tanaka Atsuko, made of blinking electric bulbs. Productions by Motonaga Sadamasa, who uses water and smoke. These are Gutai’s most recent works. Gutai places an utmost premium on daring advance into the unknown world. Granted, our works have frequently been mistaken for Dadaist gestures. And we certainly acknowledge the achievements of Dada. But unlike Dadaism, Gutai Art is the product that has arisen from the pursuit of possibilities. Gutai aspires to present exhibitions filled with vibrant spirit, exhibitions in which an intense cry accompanies the discovery of the new life of matter.

– JIRO YOSHIHAR A   105

64214int.indd 105

22-05-12 4:37 AM

R U T H A S AWA 19 2 3 –2 013

TWO CONVERSATIONS WITH RUTH ASAWA (1995 AND 1999)

My work habit goes back to growing up on a farm where you learn how to work long hours. Every day, we would go to school, get out at 3:30, have a little snack, and go out to work from 4:00 until 8:00 P.M. Then we’d come in and eat and finally do our homework. That was the routine. In the summer, we worked even harder. We’d start at 7:00 in the morning and work until midnight. It has nothing to do with art; it has to do with the habit of working. It was a necessity.* I originally studied to be a painter. I didn’t study sculpture, so my work with wire is like drawing a line and moving it out into space. I studied weaving just a little, but [Josef] Albers [at Black Mountain College] taught us basic principles about positive and negative, background and foreground, that neither is more important than the other. The object is not more important than the background (the negative space). The transparency of my wire sculptures doesn’t take anything away from what’s behind them.* What excited [us about] Albers’s classes was that he made us look at materials. He’d take a flat piece of paper and then he’d show us how we could make it threedimensional, by folding it, and then we could make it curve. And he’d say that it was still paper, but we were giving it a new personality. And you would not have to destroy the paper. You maintained the integrity of the paper. In general, you find the most economical path without destroying the integrity of the material.† I am able to take a wire line and go into the air and define the air without stealing it from anyone. A line can enclose and define space while letting the air remain air. You can see right through most of my sculpture, so that no matter what you see, you can always also see through it. I am not taking the air away from anything else. And I like the way the pieces overlap, because they are transparent. Transparency is very exciting to me. Looking through glass, for instance, or through insect wings.† The idea for overlapping came when I had a group of works clustered together and the shadows created forms that overlapped. I then began to figure out how to make interwoven sculptures that already had the appearance of overlapping shadows. You can do anything with wire because it’s just a line. You can take it anywhere. It can be

*

Katie Simon, “A Conversation with Ruth Asawa, artist,” Artweek 26, no. 8 (August 1995): 18.

†

Ruth Asawa, interview with Catherine Rountree, in On Women Turning 70: Honoring the Voices of Wisdom

(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999), 88–89. © Ruth Asawa.

106    RUTH A SAWA

64214int.indd 106

22-05-12 4:38 AM

10. Installation view of the exhibition Ruth Asawa: Life’s Work, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis, Missouri, September 2018–February 2019.

enclosed. It can be open. It can be interlocked. You’re only talking about a single line in all of these sculptures, but if I were working with a plane, I would be limited to vertical and horizontal diagonals.† You get something that’s so complex that you can’t see how it was done. I’m building sculpture that starts from the inside, but neither inside nor outside is more important. The background becomes the figure and the foreground becomes the background.† I actually learned how to make wire baskets in Mexico, in Toluca. I always liked the pieces that sculptors made with chicken wire and plaster before they applied the plaster. I learned the simple basket-making techniques then, and later experimented with them, creating enclosed and interlocking shapes. I am excited by the endless possibilities of working with this form, and have only just begun to really explore them.† Initially, I had a lot of problems with exhibition jurors saying, “This is not sculpture.” It wasn’t stone, it wasn’t welded steel, it wasn’t traditional sculpture. They thought it was craft, or something else, but not art. They couldn’t define it in the early fifties when I was starting out. I’d get accepted [into a show] and then I’d get a call that I was disqualified because my work wasn’t sculpture.† Since my husband, Albert, and I have always been independent and largely selfemployed, we’ve always lived a very risky life, by our wits, trying to make things work. I think that helps us now, in our later years, to be quite independent.*

RUTH A SAWA   107

64214int.indd 107

22-05-12 4:38 AM

I think this has made our life more interesting, even though it may have made us often wonder about our future. Our time was our own, and I think as you get older, time is more valuable than money or success. Time becomes precious as you get older, because it’s at the end of your life. Time no longer seems endless, as one realizes life is nearly over.*

108    RUTH A SAWA

64214int.indd 108

22-05-12 4:38 AM

MERET OPPENHEIM 1913 –19 8 5

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES (CA. 1970)

During an exhibition (drawings and collages) in Turin (Galleria Il Fauno), the director Luciano Anselmino suggested she should make a multiple of the Le Déjeuner en fourrure. She refused. After he had come back to this idea several times, she left the office a little angry: This object [. . .] had really become a Mona Lisa, a kind of memento. This inspired her to make a memento of it. At a newsstand, she found a picture postcard of Turin under a convex glass oval with a colored passe-partout, little flowers and lots of mica. She replaced the card with another that showed a cup and a spoon covered in fake fur: the prototype for the multiple Souvenir of the Breakfast in Fur (1970). Anselmino was delighted with the idea. In this gallery she met Anna Boetti and her husband, the painter Roberto Lupo. She invited them to come and visit her in her home in Ticino in August. They arrived. In the evening the question arose: what will we do? It is decided to play the drawing game “cadavre exquis.” The next evening, upon Anna’s insistence, we went back to the same game. A strange contact was created. The results of some of the drawings look as if we had come to an agreement beforehand. We played again on the third evening. Afterwards I told them: “These results are amazing. It is a pity that the drawings are made only by pencil on small sheets of paper (they measured approximately 26 × 15 cm). What if each of us chose a few drawings, those we like, and then enlarged them on papers of 60 × 50 cm, in colors, each of us the way we want but exactly following the original drawing?” We got down to work. After 3–4 days we had 15 (18?) big sheets. The friends had to leave for 3 days. I told them: “come back—we had fun!” They promised to come back. After their departure, I went for a walk, the first after a few days, because we had been drawing until late at night and stopping only for the meals, without even seeing the lovely sunshine outside. On the small path outside the village I picked up a bone, the upper part of a beef ’s femur. I told myself that I could perhaps use it as a pedestal for a small object. However, still thinking of the game we had played for eight days, I had an idea. I wondered if it wouldn’t be possible to find a way to make the “cadavres exquis” in three dimensions. When the friends came back, I told them: “You will see—we shall play the game in three dimensions.” I took them to the place where the village people had taken to the Meret Oppenheim, excerpt from autobiographical notes written in French (ca. 1970), translated by Lisa Wenger, the artist’s niece, with assistance from Jack Flam. By permission of the artist’s estate. © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ProLitteris, Zurich.

109

64214int.indd 109

22-05-12 4:38 AM

habit of throwing away trash into the bushes and on the grass, near a new road that had been started but was never finished. We spread out about 100 meters—each of us had to pick up things. The only condition was: not longer than 30 centimeters. We found mattress springs, pieces of sheet metal, porcelain, aluminum, bricks as well as spectacles, roots, etc. After an hour, each of us had filled several plastic bags. Back home, we separated to wash our “material.” I showed them each a little corner. I said: “Start by making a “head” out of your material, put it into a bag on which you write “head.” Afterwards, make a “body,” write “body” on the bag. Then make the “feet” and a “base.” For this, it was allowed to use glue, wire, nails, screws, colors. After two afternoons we had a total of nine “heads,” nine “bodies” and nine “feet” (all hidden in the bags). “Voilà,” I said to my friends, “before we proceed to exchange everything, we shall create the titles. Because, if we were to do that after having assembled and finished the figures, we would be biased.” We made the titles using the same method as for the drawing game: each of us wrote a noun, folded the paper backwards, passed it on to the next person who would then write an adjective and pass it on the next neighbor. The neighbor wrote a verb, passed it on—another noun—and yet another adjective. After this first passage, each of us three had a paper on which he/she would write number 1. This was the title of the first “character.” This way we ended up with a total of nine titles. And then it was the big moment of the exchanges. The first held up a bag. He/she said: Here is a head, it is very lightweight, it has a rod by which it can easily be attached. The second held up a bag: Here is a body, it is heavy, it needs a solid base. (This was needed for practical reasons.) So then, the person who had a foot, a solid base, received the lightweight head and the heavy body and put these three bags on the paper with the title number one. And so on. At the end each of us had nine elements out of which to make three figures. We separated again and started to combine head, body and base from the bags—number 1, then 2, then 3. And one figure after the other appeared on a console next to the wall. What a surprise, what an amazement each time! And the strangest aspect was that the titles so clearly corresponded to the object! (The King fallen into relativity: light blue children’s sun glasses hung (at an angle) from the “head” of the “king” etc.). The Motorcycle Feels the Pain of the City. The Happy Doll Urinates on the Bicycle. Back in Paris, I ran into Paul Waldberg and told him about these games. He arranged a little exhibition at the Zerbib Gallery, Rue des Beaux-Arts.

110    MERET OPPENHEIM

64214int.indd 110

22-05-12 4:38 AM

R I C H A R D S TA N K I E W I C Z 19 2 2 –19 8 3

CONTRIBUTION TO “THE PRIVATE MYTH, A SYMPOSIUM” (1961)

The peculiar thing about everything is that it is all the same thing—well, at least the same stuff, which makes it the same thing again but organized differently from case to case. When we make art we try to evoke life with apparently dead stuff. Since this is a human matter of communication, we do it pretty well at times by affect, even if we have to resort to personification. That is, to some degree we make resemblances to figures. (Is it that the more like a figure a thing is made, the more we are taking the easy way?) If people were contemplative enough, art, or at least figurative art, might become a pleasant but not especially useful or necessary thing; but almost nobody is and so we make and need art. We form things in organizations, balance them, apply logic and intuition and what-all, and hope that in the end they will, when looked at, vibrate, mysteriously move, or strike some taut chord buried below the muck—somehow, no matter how sluggishly, suggest the life in being. Because we are by training and habit oriented to human form (and this includes the things in the human world) it is necessary on one level at least to suggest these forms so as to have a vocabulary that works— communicates, that is. And so we can have images suggested to us by non-image things, images of beings never seen, or forms never seen reviving familiar beings. This suggestion operates on ideas that aren’t conscious; the ambiguity of creatures—human? animal? both? neither?—elfin, monstrous, horrendous, dolorous, cute. Out of what? Stuff! Postures and attitudes, the forms of things and what they suggest with the logic of dreams. Ghoulish buggy creepers, erect starers, careening exerters, floating fliers, squatting blocky ones: they are company for me—and you. They pertain to us, communicate silently, tell us endless stories not too perfectly explained, psychic magnets drawing something out of us. The population of forms: the swarm. To walk the aisle of a storehouse is to go the gamut of disguised and silent observers—that’s how cathedrals work. By presences and presence. So then, through the unconscious personal and the formal objective presence at the same time, we hope to say that every thing is life, existence; always, and in every thing.

Richard Stankiewicz, contribution to “The Private Myth, A Symposium,” organized by Philip Pearlstein for Art News 60, no. 5 (September 1961): 43, 44, 61, 62. Other contributors included Enrico Donati, Lester Johnson, Ibram Lassaw, Landes Lewitin, John Hultberg, Perl Fine, Louise Bourgeois, Sally Hazelet, George Spaventa, Louise Nevelson, and Pat Adams.

111

64214int.indd 111

22-05-12 4:38 AM

JOHN CHAMBERL AIN 19 2 7–2 011

A STATEMENT (1982)

When I took seven years off from working with painted metal I did three kinds of sculpture: I squeezed and tied foam rubber; I melted plexiglass; I wadded aluminum foil. I deal with new materials as I see fit in terms of my decision making, which has to do primarily with sexual and intuitive thinking. I am told, to a lesser degree, what to do by the material itself. As an artist I am aware that I have to know when to stop, but, the deciding factor has more to do with what I present myself with; that is, with the position I get into to deal with new material. Sexuality is the childlikeness in me and the articulation comes through my intuition. My sense of nature is my ability to make decisions based on the sexual and intuitive aspects of my psyche. The intellectual and emotional aspects have little role in my work. I’ve done pieces, for example, on which were piled as many as 40 to 50 parts, but none was totally interlocked, or welded. That is the sexual fit. Intuition, however, may have made me remove some, or many, of the parts. Intuition will indicate when something is not acceptable, even though it might work. That it works is not necessarily enough. It can be acceptable, but something more is needed. The fine line is that it is either junk, or art materials, or, it is a piece of work. With my sculpture the sexual decision comes in the fitting of the parts. The completion of a piece is intuitive and, on looking at a finished piece, it will have a stance that represents my attitude regarding it. My sculpture is not calculated to do anything other than what it looks like it’s doing. The definition of a sculpture for me is stance and attitude. All sculpture takes a stance. If it dances on one foot, or, even if it dances while sitting down, it has a lighton-its-feet stance. What I do doesn’t look like heavy car parts laid up against a wall. An artist makes a spiritual evaluation of the essence within a thing and then he gets it out; that is the outer appearance of the inner essence and, it is the point. Sophisti-

John Chamberlain, “A Statement,” John Chamberlain: Sculpture, 1970s & 1980s (Houston: Menil Collection, 1987), 18–19; reprinted in John Chamberlain: Papier Paradisio, Drawings, Collages, Reliefs, Paintings, ed. Dieter Schwarz (Winterthur, Switzerland: Kunst Museum Winterthur, 2005), 80–81. © 2019 Fairweather & Fairweather LTD / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

112

64214int.indd 112

22-05-12 4:38 AM

cated materials and complex systems are not necessarily good media for art because art is a simple thing and, the more simple the medium, the less you have to get over to get to the fact of the piece. In what I do, constant hard work is not necessary; my drive is based on laziness. If I were zippy and worked hard all the time, what I’d create would be of little value; I’d make too many mistakes. I don’t mind admitting that I’m lazy because laziness is, for me, an attribute. Being an artist is an initiative occupation. There is no demand on me to have anyone else agree that it is good work, or, whether they like it or not. I try to make the object the liaison to everyone who comes and looks at it. I must unleash something that they’ve probably locked up. Then, occasionally, I have to explain it to them and, all of a sudden, they have the right to an opinion—to counteract—and to say, “That doesn’t work.” Art—regardless of when it was made—is one of the few things in the world that is never boring, and, it costs nothing. You don’t have to own it, you just have to perceive it; art is free. As an artist I give away more than I would if I ran a beauty shop.

JOHN CHAMBERL AIN   113

64214int.indd 113

22-05-12 4:38 AM

ANTHONY CARO 19 2 4 –2 013

MY OWN WORK (1985)

My endeavor as a sculptor has always been to give my sculpture more reality. And each change in my work has been with the purpose of making my sculpture potent as a carrier of feeling. I was forced to make abstract sculpture because I wanted to make my sculpture more vivid, more human. And, whenever what I made, looked, at the time new or outrageous, it was never done in order to shock: but because of my discontent either with the sculpture of the past or with my own sculpture; and was an attempt to find a way around that discontent; or else because of the irresistable excitement of adventure and of following new paths in sculpture. Midday

In 1959 I made my first visit to New York. In New York Clement Greenberg said to me “If you want to change your art change your habits.” On my return to London I decided to work in steel of which I knew nothing at all. I went to scrapyards at the Docks and bought beams and scrap steel. I learnt the rudiments of welding and joining. The sculptures I made were to be like the Menhirs at Carnack or like Stonehenge—the fact of them more emphatic than their form. After the work was made, I painted the sculpture to make it look fresh and new. It was to gain no credit for being recognizable as art. Either it was sculpture or it was nothing. Either it moved you or it did not. [. . .] I believe that art is about what it is like to be alive. And for sculptors that means not only our emotional life but the whole person, what we see, how things relate to the stretch of our arms, what the world is like viewed from our height, not from 3 feet or 7 feet, what it feels like to inhabit the body. It also means familiarity with the materials we use so that what we are saying is said in sculpture’s language. Just as in music there is an intimate, implicit connection between our heartbeat or our breathing, and

Anthony Caro, “My Own Work,” excerpts from notes for a lecture delivered in 1985 at the Young Women’s Hebrew Association in London; revised for another lecture at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in 1989. Anthony Caro’s personal archive. Courtesy of the Anthony Caro archives, London. © Barford Sculptures Ltd.

114

64214int.indd 114

22-05-12 4:38 AM

changes in key or in tempo, so in sculpture there’s a relationship between what we experience physically or visually and the forms or space in a sculpture. So that when we say of a sculpture “Yes that’s right, I like that” we are acknowledging that it works as art that it satisfies us emotionally and the art is a true equivalent of our own natural being and experience. [. . .] In the sixties we were making a language and we had to do so with absolute clarity. Now we can make use of that abstract language and write more complex sentences. The arena for sculpture has grown—it can encompass drawing, the figure, the architectural. Without getting overblown or grandiose we can grant to sculpture, volume, references, delicacy of details, indeed richness as yet undreamed of.

ANTHONY CARO   115

64214int.indd 115

22-05-12 4:38 AM

64214int.indd 116

22-05-12 4:38 AM

ENVIRONMENTS, HAPPENINGS, COMBINES Frederick Kiesler, a visionary architect, sculptor, theater designer, and theoretician, hailed from Vienna, where, during the early 1920s, he developed radical designs for architecture and theater based on a theory of “continuity.” Having absorbed Constructivist precepts before immigrating to the United States in 1926, he brought a progressive perspective to American culture. By the mid-1960s, however, when he wrote his “The Future: Notes on Architecture as Sculpture,” his attitude toward progress had shifted significantly. Kiesler’s “Notes” threw shadows across a culture he saw as susceptible to conformity, materialism, and greed. His response to capitalism’s product-driven creed was an architectural sculpture more responsive to basic human needs. The Endless House had been part of Kiesler’s thinking since Vienna, and after the war, it provided him with a platform to critique the accelerated mechanization of America. The house’s dimensions, like the Western frontier, were in theory expansive, its internal structure adaptable. A far cry from Le Corbusier’s notion of the house as “a machine to live in,” Kiesler’s Endless House was more like a primordial shelter—a dynamic sequence of biomorphic envelopes designed to accommodate inhabitants by ensuring their material and psychological well-being. Kiesler the architect envisioned the Endless House as a living environment “with a very sensitive nervous system.” Kiesler the artist saw an “environment” as a theater-like space where potentially anything could happen. Louise Nevelson gravitated to sculptural environments as a way to claim and transform space using a battery of recycled wooden units unified by monochromatic skins of black or white paint. In these immersive puzzle-like assemblages, black signified dusk, a time of quietude and introspection. White celebrated dawn—the coming of light. Moon Garden + One, 1958, and Dawn’s Wedding Feast, 1959, her breakout installations in New York, at Grand Central Moderns Gallery and the Museum of Modern Art, had settings reminiscent of chapels. As Nevelson changed materials over time, as wood gave way to steel and Plexiglas, her sculpture naturally transitioned to outdoor sites, where it thrived in the public sphere. Yayoi Kusama’s environmental aspirations during the 1960s took the form of multimedia installations, guerrilla-action Happenings, and gallery spaces populated with soft, phallic protuberances, fields of macaroni, polka dots, mirrors, and banks of pulsating colored lights. She echoes Louise Bourgeois when she talks about using psychological complexes as subjects for her disorienting, psychodynamic works. A Kusama Infinity Room is a walk-in invitation to higher consciousness, a kinesthetic chamber where one can be temporarily transported to another cosmic realm. Looking back to a time of uninhibited orgies, the seventy-three-yearold artist describes her immersive environments as “living, breathing manifesto[s] of Love.” There is nothing more humbling than love, an indeterminate space of

64214int.indd 117

22-05-12 4:38 AM

mixed emotions and misguided expectations. Kusama knows that love means different things to different people; like life, it can be a roller-coaster journey— exhilarating, even if, at times, debilitating. In The Burning Mirror, Marisa Merz, the only woman associated with the Italian Arte Povera movement, integrated her roles as wife (of sculptor Mario Merz), mother, and artist. Like much of her work in mixed medias that included copper wire, wax, and clay, the installation drew on past experiences and current circumstances. Her sculptural palette—articles of clothing, a pair of green “moon” shoes, an ironing board, a bowl of saltwater—was based on what was available and what could be easily utilized. When she tells a story about the moon and compares wax to the light of dawn, Nevelson’s black-and-white environments spring to mind. Merz found that caring for an infant, far from being an imposition, offered creative ballast. Her daughter, Beatrice, taught her to see “joy” as the embodiment of continuous surprises—personal and aesthetic. The Burning Mirror, a selfless testament to a fully engaged life, confirmed Merz’s belief in art as a natural expression of self. A consummate performer, Joseph Beuys was an admittedly complicated personality (a member of the Hitler Youth and onetime Nazi sympathizer), whose pedagogical stage, as a professor of sculpture at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, provided a safe haven for his proletarian, everyone-is-an-artist mantra. His stream-ofconsciousness, shamanic dissemination of ideas through animated lectures and performances, objects and installations, drawings and recordings, was in essence an ongoing critique of humanity. His notion of “social sculpture” drew sustenance from the toxic well of industrial capitalism at the same time it exposed the paradoxical inequities of this system. His was a voice of social conscience fueled by personal mythology and political savvy. Creativity, he might say, enabled one to think and to act, to be an effective and productive member of society. Beuys knew that socially minded ideas, if channeled in the right direction, could effect constructive change. He also realized that any idea, once absorbed by the art system, could be appropriated, commodified, and, ultimately, denatured. Paul Thek’s installations have been described as “processional environments,” which is entirely fitting, given the artist’s peripatetic lifestyle. As he traveled, like a nomadic wanderer, back and forth between the United States and Europe during the late 1960s and the 1970s, his artistic ideas continued to change around ephemeral sculptural projects. The opportunity to exhibit usually offered the equivalent of a temporary studio, a space to occupy and fill with sundry materials. Death hovered around Thek’s bric-a-brac tableaux, even the insular Technological Reliquaries of 1964–67, like a specter. So did the possibility of eternal life, like a pharaonic dream. Each environment materialized as a makeshift habitat chock full of signs and symbols, personal and archetypal. In Europe he found sympathetic institutions (Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg), whose liberal-minded curators and directors (Pontus Hultén, Jean-Christophe Ammann, Siegfried Salzmann) nurtured his unor-

118

64214int.indd 118

22-05-12 4:38 AM

thodox work habits and “private little mythologies.” Harald Szeemann, an early advocate for demanding, site-specific art, clearly sensed Thek’s eccentric brilliance when he commissioned Ark, Pyramid for Documenta 5 in Kassel. Edward Kienholz’s spotlit tableau Five Car Stud is as shocking today as it was some forty-seven years ago, when it premiered at Documenta 5. Even as a young artist (cofounder in 1957 of the legendary Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles), Kienholz never shied away from difficult subjects that exposed the underbelly of American culture—its sexual taboos, religious hypocrisy, political travesties, and racial inequities. His sprawling environments were consistently edgy and confrontational. Poignant details—the “State of the Brotherhood ’71” license plates adorned with American flags; a young boy with glasses who observes the horrific scene from one of the cars; a leather wallet with a Romney campaign button; and the multicolored letters N-I-G-G-E-R floating free-form in the open cavity of the victim’s chest— ground Five Card Stud in the time of its making. After completing the piece, Kienholz met Nancy Reddin, who became his life partner and collaborator over the next twenty-two years. Together they made hundreds of environmental tableaux and stand-alone assemblages—uncompromising exposés of human vulnerability. In the provocative spirit of Kienholz, Paul McCarthy mines the darker vectors of human nature while testing the limits of his own endurance through rigorous performances and multimedia installations. His productions are often messy and chaotic, like life, particularly when the forces of consumerism, spectacle, and perversity collide. McCarthy methodically designs and fabricates each mise-en-scène, but when it comes to how actors and actions roll on set, he remains open. “Substance Substitute” scripts the politics of family and patriarchal political propaganda played out by innocent Hummel figurines (Disney doppelgängers) that are flagrantly violated. While laying out the course of action, McCarthy free-associates earlier performances, declaring, “We model our lives after the fragmented actions of our imagination.” Blatantly scatological and psychosexual, a McCarthy production easily rankles and offends, but does so with stunning honesty. Mike Kelley, McCarthy’s younger friend and periodic collaborator, was likewise intrigued by dolls, which captured his imagination and spurred an ambitious series of installation works during the 1990s. Less inclined toward overt violence, his rapport with handcrafted, stuffed figures and animals was motivated by an empathetic generosity. In “In the Image of Man,” he recalls how some New York artists during the Reaganite 1980s (Haim Steimbach, Jeff Koons, Ashley Bickerton), in the spirit of Duchamp’s Readymades, pedestalized commercial products (basketballs, vacuum cleaners, lamps, sneakers, radios, dolls) to fetishize their commodification. This led to Kelley’s interest in “handmade craft items . . . objects already existing in popular usage that are constructed specifically to be given away.” Equating such items with the poet Lewis Hyde’s notion of creativity, as a gift transcending exchange and commerce, Kelley humanized the doll as a polymorphic site of desire, pathos, and repression.

119

64214int.indd 119

22-05-12 4:38 AM

What are the challenges of conceiving an artistic environment in a foreign setting? Confronting the conundrum of the modernist environment as the solipsistic projection of one’s ego, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov explore what makes an installation relevant to an indigenous public. Accommodation becomes their goal, integrating the artwork into the existing cultural fabric. For the Kabakovs, as with many others in this section, an effective installation acknowledges the viewer not just as a spectator but as “an active and perhaps even main character.” They characterize and identify a “multi-faceted” viewer of three types (native inhabitant, tourist, flâneur) and discuss what it actually means to know your intended audience. Instead of the all-knowing “master,” they see the artist as a “medium” whose work channels the many distinct voices, history, and character of a particular place. Inspired by their Russian heritage and the humane belief that art can enlighten and “calm,” the Kabakovs bring a unique perspective to environmental installation. In “Notes on the Creation of a Total Art,” Allan Kaprow advocated for an art that blurred creative disciplines and took its cues from “the sensory stuff of ordinary life.” As historical precedents, he cited liturgical rituals, Wagner, the Symbolists, and Bauhaus experiments. Kiesler’s Endless House, composer John Cage’s life lessons, and Jackson Pollock’s gestural choreography were equally germane. Pollock’s monumental “Action” paintings, in particular, opened Kaprow’s mind to an expansive art responsive to life’s splendid theater—mundane activities and attitudes—conceived as nonlinear scripts. Common objects, real and fabricated, populated these improvised events, along with the human body as one prop among many. People were an essential part of Kaprow’s Happenings, both as actors and spectators, as “shapes” and expressive variables that kept each piece “as open and fluid as the shapes of our everyday experience.” Claes Oldenburg drew on a similar strategy for his early 1960s Happenings by scripting events using “more or less altered ‘real’ material” and real people set in motion through prescribed actions. Oldenburg’s sculptural instincts privileged the inanimate object—his stock-in-trade for The Store, 1961, an actual store that he ran out of his Lower East Side studio—and his tendency to repeat certain actions, often in slow motion, deferred to this material fact. Like Kaprow, he was frustrated by the public’s perception of Happenings as improvised events lacking structure and artistic intention, knowing full well that each production, though spontaneously executed, was thoughtfully conceived. In 1971, after moving from Los Angeles to Taos, New Mexico, Ken Price designed his own variation of Oldenburg’s Store, a simulation of a Mexican curio store filled with his own line of handmade ceramic plates, cups, saucers, and vessels. What was supposed to take about a year to complete ended up lingering on for more than six, until the sculptor, financially and physically depleted, called it quits. Twenty years later, Happy’s Curios, a monumental installation of utilitarian ware arranged in thematic units and shrines, where the work could be appreciated on its own mer-

120

64214int.indd 120

22-05-12 4:38 AM

its, forged the basis of Price’s pedagogy for the graduate classes he taught at the University of Southern California. Lygia Clark saw art as an active engagement with one’s self and surroundings. By the time she created her Bichos (Critters), her notion of art had expanded to include the spectator as participant. Without an engaged audience, art remained aloof and ineffectual. She wanted her art to function more like an organic body. The political situation in Brazil during the early 1960s mobilized Clark’s Neo-Concrete group to make art accessible. “The Empty Full” reads like a philosophical credo for life’s existential journey, from birth to death, where the union of art and life is perceived in dialectical terms, and “neo-concrete” postulations in tune with an “ethico-religious conception” are “the materialization of this fusion.” Sensitive to how society can be deceived by utopian pretensions, Clark was skeptical of scientific progress that neglected humane concerns. The Bichos were conceived as intimate sites for transactional encounters. Though slight in size, these metallic organisms are metaphors for life as the perpetual interaction between people and things. Raised on the sensory streets of Rio de Janeiro, Hélio Oiticica—sculptor, painter, performance artist, theorist, filmmaker, and writer—dreamed up his own Happenings and environmental art. Like his Brazilian comrade and Neo-Concrete associate Clark, Oiticica’s early interest in geometrical abstraction gave way to sprawling environments that made the viewer an active participant. Eden, 1969—“an experiential ‘campus,’ ” where everyone was free to be and to become—channeled the same hippie consciousness that permeated the Woodstock Music and Art Fair held the same year. Everything about the Brazilian’s back-to-the-garden instincts echoed the countercultural, psychedelic ethos of anarchistic youth culture. His environments and mobile sculptures, including the Parangolés and Penetrables of the 1960s and 1970s, designed to liberate body and mind in orgiastic settings, aspired to a state of hedonistic nirvana. Oiticica’s move to New York City in the 1970s propelled his art in new directions at the same time it fostered a more activist engagement with body politics. “We are only human sculptors,” the collaborative duo Gilbert & George declared up front in a two-page statement for an English newspaper, going on to describe the daily routine of their collaborative partnership. As performers who dressed up, painted their faces bronze, and commandeered a pedestal from which they often sang, they projected themselves as human objects, animated or static depending on the piece. This may explain why they interpreted the accompanying photograph of the artists leisurely posing against a wooden fence in formal, though markedly coded terms. Robert Rauschenberg offered the painter a new lease, briefly stated in Sixteen Americans, by redefining what painting was and how paintings got made. He had no qualms about using whatever materials were at hand, and he found novel ways to integrate these. Declaring that painting relates to both art and life, that neither could be made, that the artist acts in the gap between the two, and that a canvas is

121

64214int.indd 121

22-05-12 4:38 AM

never empty, he liberated the painter to think beyond the medium. In content and structure, his Combines, created from 1953 to 1964, defer to painting by way of sculpture, architecture, dance, and theater. They reveal Rauschenberg’s insatiable appetite for detritus—the fruits of dumpster diving around the vicinity of his Fulton Street studio. In his 1987 interview with Barbara Rose, he mentions Picasso, Du­­ champ, Schwitters, and the Dadaists, all precedents for the pluralistic sensibility that thrived during the 1960s. Rauschenberg’s egalitarian attitude toward materi­ als, techniques, and subjects drew from earlier interactions, during the late 1940s, with Cage and with dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham at Black Moun­ tain College. These formative encounters propelled him to court life’s “strange and unpredictable occurrences” as the basis for a rough-and-ready art synonymous with living. Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg’s Fulton Street studio mate and partner during the 1950s, likewise blurred the line between painting and sculpture when he combined plaster casts of faces and body parts with painted targets of decidedly ambiguous meaning. A hallmark of his sculpture, ambiguity also shadows Johns’s paintings and works on paper, all of which display a remarkable confluence. He does not dif­ ferentiate between painting and sculpture as separate categories; one naturally informs the other. “Certain things that I made in the past were classified as paint­ ings until I cast them in metal, and then they became sculptures. What was called a sculpture was a cast of what was called a painting.” Paintings can function as objects, just as objects can function in the context of paintings, where the gap between implication and recognition mirrors the gap between art and life. In her interview with Marisol, Cindy Nemser tries to claim the sculptor, who was then forty-three years old, as a role model for the women’s movement. By 1973 Marisol had a good sense of who she was and was not. Being from Venezuela and having cut her artistic teeth socializing at the Cedar Tavern and the Artists’ Club, she entered the New York art world with the empathetic eyes of an inveterate trave­ ler whose identity remained fluid. Sculpture became a way to explore her own fea­ tures through a series of self-portraits—blocks of laminated wood adorned with fabric, metal, and plaster casts of hands, feet, and faces. By the time of her first solo show at Eleanor Ward’s Stable Gallery in 1962, she had glimpsed Rodin’s arsenal of plaster body fragments in the basement of his Meudon studio and encountered Johns’s face-and-body Target paintings, Nevelson’s majestic environments, and, most importantly, Rauschenberg’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink Combines. In her own work, diverse materials layered with drawn and painted gestures gener­ ated portrait-based assemblages. Some critics construed Marisol’s self-portraits as solipsistic monuments of self-aggrandizement, but this did not stop her from portraying herself, as well as others, with sensitivity and pathos. Nam June Paik, who was described by the critic, photographer, and composer John Gruen in his book The New Bohemia, 1966, as “the embodiment of the Combine Generation,” epitomized the geeky polymath: electronic wizard, sculptor, per­

122

64214int.indd 122

22-05-12 4:38 AM

former, filmmaker, and composer all rolled up into a Zen-like personality. Paik incorporated technological innovations into kaleidoscopic artworks and Fluxusinspired performances. His sculptures are a curious combination of things both futuristic and obsolete: reconditioned television sets, vintage upright pianos, stateof-the-art closed-circuit video cameras, period soundtracks, and myriad cords and cables, all programmed to produce a cacophonous stream of seemingly random, repetitious sounds and images. Paik knew that technology, if responsibly integrated into the cultural fabric, could enhance the quality of life but, if adapted unchecked, could also degrade it. He accepted the Faustian nature of a technocracy with skeptical humor, all the while asserting the artist’s role as prophetic provocateur.

    123

64214int.indd 123

22-05-12 4:38 AM

64214int.indd 124

22-05-12 4:38 AM

FREDERICK KIESLER 18 9 0 –196 5

EXCERPTS FROM “THE FUTURE: NOTES ON ARCHITECTURE AS SCULPTURE” (1966)

[. . .] I am very much afraid that the growing aim of our contemporary architects to create architecture as sculpture is not only an outcome of the new awareness of the time-space concept of our age, but also, if not chiefly, a pursuit of fashions, an insidious by product of our madness for the ever-changing new, a direct outgrowth of novelties sponsored at least twice a year by industry, be they womens’ [sic] fashions, industrial design products—automobiles, refrigerators, washing machines, television sets—the whole range of a profit mentality, which truly builds in obsolescence as deliberately as nature makes everyone ultimately die—except that these manufactured objects have a much shorter range of life, some from season to season, others from showroom to junkyard. [. . .] In tracing the evolution of architecture as sculpture, I must try to make it clear that the difference between the glass buildings of sixty years ago and the new approach of sculptural architecture is as violent as the difference between powder-rifles and the principle of fission and fusion in the atomic bombs and rockets. [. . .] Thus we have put our architectural vision into the prison of a grid, to standardize parts for the sake of a more economic structure. But at the same time we have also put our imagination, our sense of time, space, coordination, into a grid-prison from which we can liberate ourselves only by recreating a new belief in the superfluous—and I dare say that my Endless Houses, from 1920 until 1961, were an initial breakthrough, as was my theater building in Ellenville or the Multi-Purpose Theater for the Ford Foundation (1962); the Shrine of the Book (1957–65) and finally the new project of two years ago for a Grotto of Meditation planned for Indiana. The Endless House is not amorphous, not a free-for-all form. On the contrary, its construction has strict boundaries according to the scale of our living. Its shape and form are determined by inherent life forces, not by building code standards or the vagaries of décor fads. Space in the Endless House is continuous. All living areas can be unified into a single continuum.

Frederick Kiesler, excerpts from “The Future: Notes on Architecture as Sculpture,” Art in America 31, no. 3 (May–June 1966): 58, 63, 67–68. © 2019 Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna.

125

64214int.indd 125

22-05-12 4:38 AM

But do not fear that one cannot find seclusion in the “Endless.” Each and every one of the space-nuclei can be separated from the totality of the dwelling, can be secluded, and re-unified to meet various needs. The “Endless” can be not only a home for a family, but must definitely make room and comfort for the “visitors” from one’s own inner world. Communion with oneself. The ritual of meditation. Nature creates bodies, but art creates life. Living in the Endless House means to live an exuberant life, not only the life of a digesting body, of routine social duties or the wind-up of functions of the four seasons, the automatism of day and night, of high noon and midnight moon. The Endless House is much more than that, and much less than the average dwelling of the rich or pseudo-rich. It is less because it reverts to fundamental needs of the human being in his relationship to men, to industry and to nature (that is, eating, sleeping and sex). The Endless House is not subservient to the mechanics of life activities or to techniques of manufacture; it employs them wherever profitable, but it is not a slave to industrial dictatorship. Having created reinforced concrete, we are now in a position to achieve buildings in unending spatial formations, lateral, vertical, in any direction or extent we wish to achieve. The column is dead. But concrete must not be considered the only material in which a continuous plasticity can be achieved. With a bit of imagination and knowledge of one’s craft, the spatial planning that gives the feeling of freedom can be expressed in practically any material: wood, canvas, stone, paper. Everybody is worried about windows, closets, computing kitchens, baths and bathtubs. The House is not a Machine for living. It is a living organism with a very sensitive nervous system. This we have not yet realized. The Endless House has. In all plans for the “Endless,” the comfort of bathing, of cooking, of eating, of fresh air, of resting and sleeping are taken care of with indulgence. Just to mention one: the white enameled coffins which are called bathtubs do not exist in any of the parts of the Endless House. Each of the space units has its own shape and style of indoor pool, surrounded by varying curtains of growing greenery. The water is renewed every minute, and the temperature remains constant once set on the dial. Since one cannot stretch out or sit or kneel in our tight bathroom coffins, the many pools in the many areas— for parents, children, or guests—are so designed that one can comfortably adjust to all the positions of relaxation. Another general concern is the fear that the continuous construction might enclose the inhabitants in a deadly shell; but as the various plans show, each area has vast openings in different shapes and forms, according to the orbit of the sun and prevailing winds; these are filled not with glass, but with molded reliefs in colored plastics of various thicknesses, so that the heat of the sun is refracted. In each of these larger or smaller openings to the daylight (which during the evening, by the way, receive the same light from outside artificially) are certain sections which are clear and translucent, affording a free view and visual connection to the outside environment. While it is being built, the Endless House will grow its colors, in vast areas or in condensed compositions (fresco-like or paintings), into high or low reliefs, into the

126    FREDERICK KIESLER

64214int.indd 126

22-05-12 4:38 AM

plasticity of full sculpture. Like vegetation it grows its form and color at the same time. And so let us avoid the museum-term “Art” in connection with architecture because, as we understand it today, architecture has been degraded to old-fashioned or newfangled make-up and décor. Art as a ritual cannot be an afterthought. It must again become the expression of a link between the known and the unknown. The Endless House is indeed a very practical house if one defines practicality in not too narrow a sense, and if one considers the poetry of life an integral part of everyday happenings. The coming of the Endless House is inevitable in a world coming to an end. It is the last refuge for man as man. I am not surprised to see that the “Endless,” since its first plans were exhibited in Vienna in 1924 and subsequent new versions were shown, has captured the imagination of the younger architects and is now also attracting older generations into the realm of structural continuity, and into expressing the continuity of indoor life. No wonder that most schools of architecture are filled with concepts of the Endless House and that in Europe and other parts of the world they are even built. [. . .] As I predicted a long time ago, and again recently at my exhibition of Environmental Sculpture at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the object is no longer the main attraction but becomes the environment itself. Thus, we will create a man-made cosmos around us, in which we will not have to depend on decorations to render our homes livable, but which will give us an awareness of belonging to a space center and of the ever-present cosmic forces which feed us continuously, nourish us physically, emotionally and spiritually, without end.

FREDERICK KIESLER   127

64214int.indd 127

22-05-12 4:38 AM

LOUISE NE VEL SON 18 9 9 –19 8 8

EXCERPTS FROM DAWNS AND DUSKS: TAPED CONVERSATIONS WITH DIANA MACKOWN (1976)

I remember I was in the Waldorf Cafeteria in the late thirties [. . .] [and] several men were talking very seriously about art, particularly sculpture, and they said to me, “You know, Louise, you’ve got to have balls to be a sculptor.” And [. . .] I said, “I do have balls.” So I knew then that nothing [. . .] was going to stand in my way. [. . .] [In the 1930s] I did figures that were mostly painted plaster. [. . .] I was really searching for form. I painted each plane a different primary color so that the form would be as clear a line as architecture. [. . .] Basically it’s like architecture. The principles have to be valid because it has to stand, and not only physically, but stand on this other level of creation. The fourth dimension is really the place where you give it its principles and form. Most people think there are three dimensions. Now three dimensions is physical, the world of reality, so-called. But I think the Cubists went beyond. Take something like a chair, or a cube. You can only see three sides. [. . .] [W]e assume that a fourth side must be there or it wouldn’t stand up. Our eye can never take in that dimension, but the mind does. It’s not what you see, it’s what you are assuming to finish what you are seeing that is, for lack of a better definition, the fourth dimension. [. . .] I didn’t make sculpture to share my experience. I was doing it for myself [. . .] to understand this universe, to see the world clearer. [. . .] I could only understand through working. [. . .] That was when I began using found objects. [. . .] Anywhere I found wood, I took it home and started working with it. It might be on the streets, it might be from furniture factories. Friends might bring me wood. It really didn’t matter. I had all this wood lying around and I began to move it around [. . .] to compose. [. . .] I wanted a medium that was immediate. [. . .] I could communicate with [wood] almost spontaneously [. . .] when I’m working with wood, it’s very alive. It has a life of its own.

Excerpts from Louise Nevelson, Dawns and Dusks: Taped Conversations with Diana MacKown (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), 59, 64, 69, 76, 78, 120, 131, 133, 138, 144, 163, 167, 171. All passages selected by Laurie Wilson. Reprinted by permission of Diana MacKown. © 2022 Estate of Louise Nevelson / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

128

64214int.indd 128

22-05-12 4:38 AM

Now, no one, to my knowledge, at that time was using old wood. Sculptors were using the torch. It somehow wasn’t what I wanted. The noise and the masquerade offended me. [. . .] It was too mechanical for me. [. . .] I just automatically went to wood. [. . .] When I compose, I don’t have anything but the material, myself, and an assistant. [. . .] Sometimes it’s the material that takes over; sometimes it’s me that takes over. [. . .] It [is] always a relationship—my speaking to the wood and the wood speaking back to me. [. . .] I’m always there to guide it, but I don’t superimpose, say, like a blueprint, [which] has to be precision and all. I hate that, because that . . . is what you call dictating. I permit it to move to how I feel, how it weighs and how it moves. In other words, my feeling and the sculpture become one. It’s a love affair. [. . .] When I look at [wood, I think to myself], does it look right to me, does it weigh right to me, does it act right to me? [. . .] If my eye and my feeling of that space don’t meet, I won’t use it. I try playing with light and shade, the different sizes and mediums and weights. And I work till I think it’s right for me. [. . .] You add or subtract until you feel . . . the form, the principle, that something that makes the house stand; that makes you stand. Ancient Games and Ancient Places [1955] was environment but [. . .] no one was ready for it. [. . .] Since art, particularly sculpture, is so living, so very living, naturally you want all of life, so you make a total environment. In one way it is a disservice to discuss separate works because it’s the total environment that is important. [. . .] All my shows have had a title of one piece. [. . .] The reason I called it “ancient” was I wanted it to be timeless. [. . .] [. . .] [W]hen I did the first big environmental exhibition Moon Garden + One [1958], there was a desk and chairs that belonged to the gallery and I had them moved out. I didn’t want a chair or anything to intrude on the environment. So I composed. The walls, the sculpture was on the walls, and it was all black. [. . .] I didn’t block [all the] windows. I closed one [. . .] and left the other open. I framed a whole piece of sculpture by placing it in the window. [. . .] It was not really for an audience, it was really for my visual eye. It was a feast—for myself. [In 1959] Dorothy Miller [from the Museum of Modern Art] called and invited me to dinner [. . .] and she asked me if I would be in “Sixteen Americans.” I guess I was so taken by storm and surprise about the whole thing—I’d never had an environment [at MoMA]—that without thinking I said that I would do a white show— Dawn’s Wedding Feast. [. . .] You know, sometimes if you’re highly surprised, I think the human mind begins to spark. [. . .] I had a white wedding cake. A wedding mirror. A pillow. It was a kind of wish fulfillment, a transition to a marriage with the world. [. . .] I had given myself the title “Architect of Shadow.” Then I suppose another thing opened up and I said, “Oh, I’ll be an Architect of Light.” It’s arresting light and

LOUISE NE VEL SON   129

64214int.indd 129

22-05-12 4:38 AM

11. Installation view of Louise Nevelson’s Dawn’s Wedding Feast, 1959, in the exhibition Sixteen Americans, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, December 16, 1959–February 17, 1960.

arresting shadow, which is fleeting. I take light, which is fleeting, right? But I give it solid substance. I give it architecture. [. . .] Now the white, the title is Dawn’s Wedding Feast, so it is early morning when you arise between night and dawn. When you’ve slept and the city has slept you get a psychic vision of an awakening. And [. . .] between almost the dream and the awakening, it is like celestial. White invites more activity. Because the world is a little bit asleep and you are basically more alive to what’s coming through the day. I feel that the white permits a little something to enter [. . .] probably a little more light. Just as you see it in the universe. The white was more festive. Also the forms had just that edge. The black for me somehow contains the silhouette, essence of the universe. But I feel that the whites have contained the blacks with a little more freedom, instead of being mood. It moves out a little bit into outer space. [. . .] [. . .] [F]rom the time that I did work in the so-called round—in the forties, the war years, and early fifties [. . .] my whole work in wood was enclosure [. . .] or interior environment. [. . .] I was getting to want more and more enclosure, and consequently I used glass in front of [the sculptures]. It became more mysterious and deeper and the glass gave it another texture. [. . .] So then I naturally wanted the next step. [. . .] I had been through the enclosures of wood, I had been through the shadow. I had been through the enclosure of light and reflection. And now I was ready to take away the enclosures and come out into the open and let the out-of-doors be the reflection. [. . .]

130    LOUISE NE VEL SON

64214int.indd 130

22-05-12 4:38 AM

Remember I was in my early seventies when I came to the monumental, outdoor sculpture [. . .] Sometimes you want to be alone; sometimes you want to communicate. And that is expressed in the work. [. . .] [. . .] [W]hen I go to the foundry [Lippincott’s] to work, the whole place is at my disposal. It is geared for the artist to work. [. . .] I can work from six in the morning to as late at night, with as many assistants as I need for as many days as I wish. [. . .] I started with aluminum. And I’d make my sculpture, I call them sculpturecollage. I would compose and the men would work with me—direct. And eventually I noticed that there was a great deal of Cor-ten steel lying around. At first I felt, oh, that metal, I can’t work with it. It’s impossible, it’s so strong. [. . .] I had already gotten acquainted with how to use aluminum. I knew if I wanted a half-circle, they would put it through a machine and in a few seconds, you get it. Now the longer I went [to the foundry], the closer I got acquainted with Cor-ten, and after a few years [. . .] I said that I’d like to try it [. . .] and I found that I must have been ready for it. [. . .] I found that in my hands [. . .] it was almost like butter—like working with whipped cream on a cake. [. . .] And somehow it gave me another dimension. It gave me the possibility of maybe fulfilling the place and space and environment that I have probably consciously, unconsciously, been seeking all my life.

LOUISE NE VEL SON   131

64214int.indd 131

22-05-12 4:38 AM

YAYO I K U S A M A B O R N 19 2 9

EXCERPT FROM “CREATE, THEN OBLITERATE” (2011)

My food-and-sex images created a gradual storm in the New York art world of the 1960s. Meanwhile, my work was steadily acquiring a more three-dimensional or spatial character, and soon I was making use of mirrors and plastics. This trend burst into full bloom for my solo exhibition at the Castellane Gallery in November of 1965, Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field. The walls of the room were mirrors, and sprouting from the floor were thousands of white canvas phallic forms covered with red polka dots. The mirrors reflected them infinitely, summoning up a sublime, miraculous field of phalluses. People could walk barefoot through the phallus meadow, becoming one with the work and experiencing their own figures and movements as part of the sculpture. Wandering into this infinite wonderland, where a grandiose aggregation of human sexual symbols had been transformed into a humorous, polka-dotted field, viewers found themselves spellbound by the imagination as it exorcised sexual sickness in the naked light of day. The next stage of my mirror series, Kusama’s Peep Show (or Endless Love Show), opened at the same gallery in March, 1966. The show contained no paintings or sculptures, but consisted of a single multimedia installation—a mirror room with coloured electric lights! The room was a hexagon with mirrors covering the interior walls, floor, and ceiling. Embedded in the ceiling were small red, white, blue, green, and yellow light bulbs programmed to blink incessantly in changing patterns as music played. I gave each visitor a badge that said “LOVE FOREVER.” In the brochure for this exhibition, I wrote: Endless Love Show 1966 is about Mechanization, Repetition, Obsession, Impulse, Vertigo, and Unrealized Infinite Love. I prefer the title Kusama’s Peep Show for this exhibition, because it allows you to see things that you can not touch. The many-colored lights in the ceiling blinked at a furious speed in seventeen different, constantly changing patterns. These psychedelic images made the work a kind of kaleidoscope, mirroring the light at the root of all things and luring anyone who entered the room towards madness. This was the materialization of a state of rapture I myself had experienced, in which my spirit was whisked away to wander the border

Yayoi Kusama, excerpt from “Create, Then Obliterate,” Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama, trans. Ralph McCarthy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 48, 51. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Courtesy David Zwirner, New York; Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore/Shanghai; Victoria Miro, London/Venice.

132

64214int.indd 132

22-05-12 4:38 AM

12. Yayoi Kusama, Mirror Performance, New York, 1968.

between life and death. I gave this enormous environmental sculpture the title Love Forever because I intended it as an electric monument to love itself. The show was an immediate sensation. This was my living, breathing manifesto of Love. Thousands of illuminated colors blinking at the speed of light—isn’t this the very illusion of Life in our transient world? In the darkness that follows a single flash of light, our souls are lured into the black silence of death. The kaleidoscope of our lives and joys, and the great, radiant drama of human life: a paper-thin instant, dependent upon denial and disconnection at one-second intervals. The psychedelic lights of a moment ago—were they a dream? An illusion? This is Shangri-La.

YAYOI KUSAMA   133

64214int.indd 133

22-05-12 4:38 AM

MARISA MERZ 19 2 6 –2 019

EXCERPTS FROM “LO SPECCHIO ARDENTE” (THE BURNING MIRROR) (1975)

No, there’s never been a separation between my work and my life. [. . .] This exhibition came my way. It suited me because it was at the gallery of Fabio, whom I have known for some time. This is important to me: someone who “receives” me and who understands me in a given moment. The artist already has an established role like that of a wife or a son. But I do not identify with these roles, separating roles, lists. . . . Yes, I told you that I had nothing to say in this exhibition except “this is mine; you do your own business.” It’s true. Isn’t every man, every human being a culture in himself? And I’m not saying something in favor of individualism. I am saying “my” exhibition, sure. I am alive, alive, but who says so? I have to realize for myself! There were a lot of things I didn’t know . . . no, discovering things doesn’t scare me: joy doesn’t scare me. For example, with wax: I discovered wax with the dawn. Colors, the colors around us: there’s something that makes me dizzy. You can’t see them the way they actually are. You know. So with wax there are no more colors. Dawn is like that. And wax on its own? What is it? Certainly not the dawn anymore, and not light either . . . it’s awkward, isn’t it? But light passes. You feel wax to be transparent, but it’s heavy: it’s not like glass, it is a sensation of transparency but not true transparency itself. It interests me more. I wanted to put in a pool there in the other room. But the wall’s in the way and lots of things I call commonplace but that prevent you from doing what you’d like. The bowl of salt is the entire sea, that’s true. The whole ocean! You see, the salt is exuded, do you see? And every so often I add a little water, and then you see that the pottery is transparent too. Because it passes through. It passes everything! It’s not just a visual thing, transparency. I haven’t done technical research, they’re just “things,” out of my fantasy; they come my way. And then I discover the technical part later. But if I were to start from there, I wouldn’t bother; it would bore me immediately. The moon shoes. Yes, the little green shoes weren’t placed like that by chance against the wall in Fabio’s gallery. Don’t you know the story of the moon? It’s a good one. We were at Campo de’ Fiori, and the moon was out. I thought: perhaps from the

Marisa Merz, “Lo specchio ardente” [The burning mirror], trans. Lucian Henry Comoy, in Marisa Merz: The Sky Is a Great Space, ed. Connie Butler (Los Angeles: Hammer Museum; New York: DelMonico Books/ Prestel, 2017), 116–19. Originally published in Anne-Marie Sauzeau-Boetti, “Lo specchio ardente— Intervista a Marisa Merz, Carla Accardi, Iole Freitas,” Data, no. 18 (September–October 1975): 50–55. © Marisa Merz.

134

64214int.indd 134

22-05-12 4:38 AM

window in the last room I’ll see it, but from which of the three windows? And when? Then I’ll put on my shoes and I’ll sit by the window before which passes the moon (if it passes . . .), with my feet placed just so, stretched out against the wall, and I’ll look at the moon. . . . But then we forgot about it: we worked, and then we needed the ladder and I had to walk through the last room, and when I turned with the ladder . . . bang! the moon! So, as you can guess, I got the chair, put on the shoes and laid my feet against the wall, legs outstretched. When Mario pinned one of the shoes, the one with the nails, to the wall, where it was. When he finished, the moon had already moved quite a bit . . . the right amount. And the next evening was the turn of the second [shoe]. The moon was higher and appeared half an hour later, then it vanished in a different direction. Mario pinned the other shoe [to the wall]. [. . .] Yes, all the shoes I do fit me. They can even be stretched a bit; they’re not a precise size. Do you find the ironing board with the little statue and ring rather mysterious? Well. I can tell you that it was a tray that I used for years on the concave side. I thought it small. Then one day I upset it and I saw that it was quite large, a nice little table with hollowed edges. I had some feet made for it from wood, at the height of my hands when I have my arms stretched out as though I were carrying it as a tray. Yes, my body. Perhaps I have kept some of the clothes I used to have made for me. But no, I don’t consider them my work, professional work. But they are personal stimuli, yes. They concern my body like the shoes, and above all they concern my whims, my certainties; you know, intuitions when they go click! and so I adopt them. It’s true, the clothes I make don’t reveal my body: they give me freedom: I’m comfortable, and they let the air pass through. Other projects made to my measure, as it were . . . the ring of salt, and the height of the copper wire running round a room in my exhibition, corresponding to my height, my possibilities. I have never really done an exhibition with my body. But I have noticed that when I used to go to an exhibition where I had not been invited as an artist, I didn’t have the sensation of not being there at all; I would go there and say it’s me. I remember years ago in Bern, toward the end [Harald] Szeemann came up to me and said: “Marisa, it’s not really been fair to you.” “No, no, I was there!” I replied. At the quadrennial in Rome, I was there until the last second of the layout, because if I had not stayed there, I wouldn’t have been able to understand the link. So that’s what I did, to understand what I was doing. I used to stay a lot at Sargentini’s too; in fact, I almost lived there. [. . .] When Bea was little, I would stay at home with her. At the time, I was making my aluminum foil works. I would cut and sew these things (they fold by themselves, you know, you don’t need to force them; this is their possibility and their limit). There was certain rhythm to this, and time, lots of time. So there was Beatrice, still very little. She would ask me things, and I would get up and do them. Everything was on the same level, Bea and the things I was sewing; I was as involved with the one as with the other. But it was becoming rather mechanical. So I stopped. I sat in this armchair. Two years I sat there and would get up only for Bea. I didn’t produce any works of art anymore. Yes, it was for her that I have always continued. She was fantastic; I have learned a lot

MARISA MERZ   135

64214int.indd 135

22-05-12 4:38 AM

from her and she nothing from me, because the little she knew was wonderful. She would invent and make things. In the two years that I stopped I wanted to see my entire nervous system. A very long time can be concentrated into a very short time. In the long times, you make discoveries about the nervous system. And then you go on to finish because you’re late! And so in the end you’re happy. I have succeeded, yes, at times. But in terms of the load-bearing structure of life, you see. My fantasies, all that I discover, are not what I call knowledge; for me it’s joy. In my opinion, as soon as it becomes knowledge, I lose the joy. OK, I can’t manage to prevent it becoming knowledge, but sometimes I attain that flash of joy. It is a joy associated with the contact with myself and the contact with the world, and the relationship between the two.

136    MARISA MERZ

64214int.indd 136

22-05-12 4:38 AM

JOSEPH BEUYS 19 21–19 8 6

WHAT IS ART? (1979)

My objects are to be seen as stimulants for the transformation of the idea of sculpture, or of art in general. They should provoke thoughts about what sculpture can be and how the concept of sculpting can be extended to the invisible materials used by everyone: Thinking Forms—how we mold our thoughts or Spoken Forms—how we shape our thoughts into words or SOCIAL SCULPTURE how we mold and shape the world in which we live: Sculpture as an evolutionary process; everyone an artist. That is why the nature of my sculpture is not fixed and finished. Processes continue in most of them: chemical reactions, fermentations, color changes, decay, drying up. Everything is in a state of change. What Forces Give Rise to Art?

joseph beuys: All my life I have returned to this same question time and again: What is the need—that is, what is the truly objective constellation of forces working in us and the world—that justifies the creation of something like art? This question has certainly had a central place in my life, and has led me to distance myself from my initial involvement in the scientific field. Before I made this shift, provoked by this question, this search for answers, I began my studies in the natural sciences, and experienced certain things about the prevailing scientific paradigm, which made me realize that an answer would not be found here. In questioning the value of this kind of research, or alternatively, as a means of exploring the overall field of existing forces— including life forces, the forces of the mind, that is of the soul, psyche-spirit and their higher forms—I was compelled to consider, on purely experimental grounds, whether I should explore the sphere of art, that has manifested through time as a form of cultural activity. However, I already had a sense that this fundamental question would remain unresolved there too. And then, during my studies at the academy, I found that this question about the impetus and source of art, the need for the world to

Joseph Beuys, excerpt from “Conversation with Joseph Beuys,” in What Is Art?, ed. Volker Harlan, trans. Matthew Barton and Shelley Sacks (Forest Row, UK: Clairview Books, 2004), 9–11; originally published in Was ist Kunst?, Werkstattgesprach mit Beuys (Stuttgart: Verlag Urachhaus, 1986). © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

137

64214int.indd 137

22-05-12 4:38 AM

develop and evolve through art, did indeed remain unresolved. I found that art had undergone a kind of parallel development with science, an academicism, with a long tradition going back to the Renaissance, and that people no longer knew exactly what they were trying to do. On the one hand there were teachers who, as I saw it, approached the problem as an anatomist or surgeon would in an operating theatre: approaching things in a mimetic way, based entirely on the observation of what is there before you, reproducing it from this same perspective, on paper or in spatial form, in other words, copying. On the other hand, there were those teachers who had a radical stylistic approach of their own. However, the source and impetus of their intentions was very hard to discern. They demonstrated a stylistic approach that, if you like, derives from “abstract art”—which is a kind of popular concept—that asserts that abstract form can also be art. That both these positions obviously had something to do with this question was clear. In this sense, I had teachers whom one could truly call artists. However, the thing that was missing was that all these fundamental questions, that is, the fundamental research into art and its function, could not be answered at the academy. And this increased my resolve to pursue the matter myself. For now, I’ll just say this. And I have been pursuing it ever since, though I’m not pretending that I haven’t gone some way towards subverting and shaking things up a little in this field. However, one thing in particular seems clear to me: if this question does not become the central focus of such research, and is not resolved in a truly radical way that actually sees art as the starting point for producing anything at all, in every field of work, then any thought of further development is just a waste of time. This idea—that it is from art that all work ensues—needs to be borne in mind, if we want to reshape and re-form society, because it will also have a bearing on economic questions and issues to do with legal and human rights. I am saying “will,” for it has become clear to me in the meantime, and is increasingly understood, that this is a viable way of compensating for the errors in the philosophy or sociology of the last century—for instance by balancing the mistaken tendencies in Marx with something that, extending beyond his correct analysis, can lead to a truly holistic development of the world. So we’re right in the midst of this question about the necessity of art, which, without doubt, is also a question of freedom. For if we want to work at these things, these problems which humanity has: the potential inherent in such forces and therefore the energy question too, including technological energy—which is so pressing and relevant nowadays . . . if we want to deal with this question we also have to pose it as an overall energy question. So, we need to take stock, at the outset, make an inventory of all the energies before us, which correspond to what is actually there. Nowadays people very often overlook the fact that human beings have a quite different kind of energy than they had 200 years ago, or 500 or 1000 years ago; that today the energies of freedom are emerging in us, and that this is exactly the point where one can speak of art— that this is, so to speak, a kind of science of freedom. Once the bottom line in our stocktaking of the world has been found then everything must orientate itself toward this new energy situation. This includes recognition of the fact that a new manifesta-

138    JOSEPH BEUYS

64214int.indd 138

22-05-12 4:38 AM

tion of energy is in the world, represented by the human being; and that this is also something new in human beings—leaving aside for the time being the extent to which it has spiritual links to other networks of forces, individualized in the world. And although this is a given, it is still something that must actually be perceived, as well as practiced, taught and investigated. So, first of all, we have art as the science of freedom, and as a consequence of this, we also have art as primary production or as the original, underlying production for everything else. Now this concept is apparently too lofty for many people; many object that not everyone can be an artist. But that’s precisely the point: to make the concept into one that once more describes the essence of being human, the human being as the expression of freedom, embodying, carrying forward and further evolving the world’s evolutionary impulse. So what we have here is an anthropological concept rather than the traditional, middle-class concept of art, as it currently exists. This gives rise to difficulties in discussion, when one has always to speak on two levels: talking on the one hand about what has come down to us from the past, what our forefathers developed, which now stands in our way today as something no longer relevant unless we go beyond it; and on the other hand having to project into the future in a preliminary, anticipatory way. This is often a difficulty— having to discuss both at once, in the same way that, you can say the new develops in the womb of the old. I’m sure we’ll come to speak about more specific things later on, but I have to begin by casting my net wide.

JOSEPH BEUYS   139

64214int.indd 139

22-05-12 4:39 AM

PAU L T H E K 19 3 3 –19 8 8

INTERVIEW WITH HARALD SZEEMANN (1973)

harold szeemann: From 1966—when The Tomb was created—until now, your notion of death has undergone development, away from its individual aspect and toward a more global vision. By distancing yourself from your own body as the center of your work, you have come to use elements such as symbols and myths, which are more universally comprehensible. What brought about this change? paul thek: Life, the people I’ve met, the books I’ve read. hs: People react to your works, even when the meanings of the symbols you use are unknown to them, as if they were in a kind of chapel or sacred place. Do you think that is because you choose symbols that have their own dynamics, as Neumann defined it in The Big Mother? pt: It happens more often that the symbols choose me, than that I choose the symbols. Art is liturgy, and if the audience reacts to the holy character of the symbols, then I hope that I have achieved my goal, at least at that moment. hs: Let’s take a look at the various aspects of your environment. What does the corridor represent for you? pt: It is the place of concentrated energy, a birth-canal, the way of the Cross. It is also used in the sense, which Jung mentioned, of a journey of initiation (a rite of passage). All theologies have something in common: a life-long journey, ascension, fusion or union. hs: And the fountain? pt: The fountain is the sacristy. The place on the other side of the passage. There obviously has to be flowing water, even if sometimes it’s not possible technically. In Kassel there was a picture of a seascape. hs: And the trees? Harald Szeemann, excerpts from interview with Paul Thek, Duisburg, Germany, December 12, 1973, translated from the German by Gloria and Isaac Custance, reproduced in Paul Thek: Artist’s Artist, ed. Harald Falckenberg and Peter Wiebel (Karlsruhe: ZKM, Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, 2008). Originally published in French in Chroniques de l’art vivant, no. 48 (April 1974); in German in Harald Szeemann, Individuelle Mythologien (Berlin: Merve Verlag, 1985); and in English in Paul Thek—The Wonderful World That Almost Was (Rotterdam: Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, 1995). Reprinted with the kind permission of Ingeborg Lüscher, estate of Harald Szeemann. Courtesy Alexander and Bonin, New York. © Estate of George Paul Thek.

140

64214int.indd 140

22-05-12 4:39 AM

pt: Life growing, visible aging. hs: The pyramid? pt: That has a very special fascination for me: when I was a kid, my room was exactly the same size as the tip of the great pyramid, which as we all know today, in its epoch was the ideal cathedral for all religious purposes, not just for burials. To me a pyramid is never finished, which is why most of our pyramids (in my environments) are always open at the top. The only finished pyramid is the one with the eye of God. hs: And the Sea of Sand? Or should I say, of water? pt: It is water you can walk on, it’s time itself. hs: In Japan . . . did you see that they also have seas of sand there, around sacred stones? pt: Yes, Zen gardens. I did not notice that until I did it myself . . . I think we protect our individuality and our inspirations as though they were our very own inspirations and ideas, although actually they are group-ideas. They are God-given, and they belong to us all. Unfortunately, because of our economic system we are forced to fight for them, and to hold on to them through patents, ownership rights, and the like. I think it’s rather nice when artists can share everything they have with each other. That makes everything so much richer; then it becomes a proper tapestry, and not just some isolated object. [. . .] hs: In his book about UFOs, Jung mentions the names of a few artists, and the interpretation of the entire phenomenon that he offers is that the unconscious, of course, is again seeking entity symbols. In your environments, I get the same impression. As soon as you create entity symbols, you are free of fears and worries again, and when you only paint chaos, you are merely pushing fear aside. pt: Well said. That is exactly what I believe I try to do. If I think about what I am trying to do, then that’s it. hs: In the texts, which unfortunately have not been published, at the Documenta in Kassel one of your helpers wrote: “Paul came to the christening, and christening means to accept the idea of death.” If you look back at all the exhibitions you have done, then they really do add up to a life-cycle. I mean, they contain all the important moments of the year. Did this idea of a cycle arise from the Ark environment, or have you always wanted to do that? pt: I definitely never had an idea about what was happening there; or, the idea was always a lot smaller than what actually happened. In six months’ time, I shall have an idea of what has happened here. There are always other people who understand the whole thing a lot better than me. I scarcely have enough time to do it. These people are invaluable to me, all these ideas, every word they say [. . .] as I already said to you, I copy everything that I do.

PAUL THEK   141

64214int.indd 141

22-05-12 4:39 AM

hs: What is really unusual—in Kassel too, which I witnessed most closely—is your experience with working in a group with other artists, out of which a whole ultimately results. pt: A whole results from it in every sense. What you have done in Kassel, Harald, is exactly what I try to do. You were one of the very few people with enough foresight to recognize what all the artists tried to do spontaneously and according to their own, very private little mythologies. Like the way our system has made us be very jealous of discoveries—to see that that doesn’t make any difference, that whatever the system might be, the holy message in all their works shone through, and all it took was one eye, which stood high enough above it all to recognize that. I think the Documenta was the greatest and best show that I have ever seen. It was the only one which really made that clear, and put everything into a content. [. . .] hs: Is there an intensity for you which ranks it above and beyond the Documenta 5’s attempt at classification? Like Thek-Boltanski, religious-popular art, psychotic art? pt: Yes, we are all psychotics. There’s no doubt about that. But one should judge a tree by its fruit. hs: And how does this feature in your work, especially the works in Amsterdam, Stockholm, Kassel, Lucerne, and Duisburg? pt: Through development, how it has grown. [. . .] hs: In earlier interviews, there was talk of the sado-masochistic, psychoanalytical, and Surrealist essence of your works. What would you say about those labels today? pt: I think the sado-masochistic aspect of my work was connected to what I was doing in the mid-1960s in New York, and I would say that the atmosphere in the U.S. and New York and the art scene at that time was a very sado-masochistic one. And if the people found that in my works, then it was because I absorbed it from the atmosphere. What was the other one? hs: The psychoanalytical aspect. pt: Well, isn’t everything psychoanalytical? hs: The Surrealist aspect? pt: I have never understood what that word is supposed to mean. hs: Well, you gave a very good answer, which was published in the environment. pt: And what does it say? (laughs) hs: Well, you say that it’s somehow Surrealist. At that point you said: “Yes, every one of these words is a part of it. . . ” pt: Oh really? hs; But it doesn’t express the whole thing. pt: O.K., right.

142    PAUL THEK

64214int.indd 142

22-05-12 4:39 AM

hs: And of course for you Surrealism is not just automatic writing, it’s not just assembling illogical objects. . . pt: Illogical objects in illogical times. . . hs: Which in combination result in a symbolic value. pt: This is now getting so abstract, that I simply don’t understand anymore. I just defend myself against such ways of thinking, no matter what it is—I believe I just don’t want to be a Surrealist. Somehow I don’t feel it’s enough. hs: Well, it became very formalist. pt: What, Surrealism? Yes, probably. Frankly, I don’t know much about it, and in fact have always avoided learning anything about it. To me it just seemed like another kind of formalism. As if what I was trying to do had the feeling that it had nothing whatsoever to do with my very own efforts to achieve it, that it then achieved itself. That the work could only be good if my head was functioning well. hs: You just said, “Through the people I’ve met, the books I’ve read.” Who are the key figures? pt: Oh, Master Eckart, the Bible, Jung, Ann Wilson (an American artist). Bob Wilson, Neil Jenney, the Italian processions I’ve seen, Frank Stella, Jasper Johns very much . . . observing Bob Rauschenberg’s life . . . I could go on forever. The Living Theatre, certain performances of theirs that really bowled me over. They were so beautiful. St. Rita, St. Augustine. hs: Rita or Theresa? pt: Theresa. hs: St. Francis? pt: St. Francis, all of them. hs: Museums? pt: Definitely. hs: La Specola? pt: What’s that? hs: The museum of the University of Florence. The Wax Museum? pt: I’ve never been there, but I’ve seen books on it. That’s right, absolutely. Cemetery sculpture. There’s a certain one in Milan. hs: In Genoa. pt: In Genoa, that’s right. hs: Which role did you play in Robert Wilson’s Deaf-man Glance? pt: Oh, that was fantastic. Robert Wilson is a genius, one of the greatest geniuses of our time. I played many roles, but my favorite was that of the runner, a messenger who runs around on the stage any which way he wants during the entire play, which

PAUL THEK   143

64214int.indd 143

22-05-12 4:39 AM

as you know, is pretty long. I always imagined that role like a kind of metronome. But I was always incredibly scared of any kind of stage. I had nightmares about suddenly being pushed out on stage and not knowing what I should say, but when I saw the production by Wilson I immediately wanted to be a part of it. I didn’t just want to look at it. I never saw a whole show from the audience’s side, I immediately wanted to go backstage. They asked me what I wanted to play, and I said “the gorilla.” For that role one needed the most complicated costume, so therefore I would be the least vulnerable. I found that when the time came for me to make my entrance, and they showed me what to do—it was really easy. And I realized that I couldn’t do it. I was so paranoid that I couldn’t breathe because of this costume, this gorilla costume. So I tore off the costume, and refused to do anything. The next evening I went back again, fiercely determined to continue as a gorilla. So there I was, standing backstage in my gorilla costume, when suddenly people started running around me and pulling my costume off while they explained: “Paul, Paul, there is no time for this now—you’ve got to play something else.” I was utterly confused, and they dressed me up as something else. They put talcum powder on my face, and shoved me on stage. The last thing I said, as far as I remember, was, “What am I supposed to do?” and they said, “Look at what the others are doing.” I was playing a new soul.

14 4    PAUL THEK

64214int.indd 144

22-05-12 4:39 AM

E D WA R D K I E N H O L Z 19 2 7–19 94

EXCERPTS FROM THE “DOCUMENTATION BOOK FOR FIVE CAR STUD TABLEAU AND THE SAWDY EDITION” (1972)

Generally, I think of Five Car Stud as symbolic of minority strivings in the world today. Surface subject matter concerns a black man caught drinking in his pickup truck at night with a white woman. His vehicle has been surrounded and cut off by the parked cars of his six white captors. No attempt was made to indicate an actual geographic location or any historical situation. However, I did use small American flags and the “State of Brotherhood” license plates to create a frame of reference. Total dimensions (approximately seventy-five feet square) were determined by the amount of space required to set up five full-size American automobiles and, of course, the figures. The man has been stripped by the whites who are in the process of castrating him. The victim’s head is a composite of two: The inner one in wax, sadly resigned and quiet, while the outer plastic features scream with the rage and fury of violation. The woman, still in the truck, is vomiting. The attackers are realistic except for their heads, which are made from rubber masks. The bizarre idea of an Emmett Kelly (fun image) pulling the rope, that stretches the leg, that pins the man, who twists and turns, etc. somehow appeals to me. My scene is invented—the germane complexities within today’s society are not. [. . .] I should probably add that in my mind my work has always taken on a kind of life and identity of its own and as I push one way it seems to push back another. In this continuing internal dialogue I understand things better and do hopefully grow. The conversation with Five Car Stud is still very painful and slow, but one thing has been established for sure: if six to one is unfair odds in my tableau, then 170 million to 20 million is sure as hell unfair odds in my country. In peace. Edward Kienholz Los Angeles February 1972

Edward Kienholz, “Documentation Book for Five Car Stud Tableau and the Sawdy Edition,” in Kienholz: Five Car Stud, ed. Michael Juul Holm (Humlebæk, Denmark: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2011), 108, 113. © Kienholz.

145

64214int.indd 145

22-05-12 4:39 AM

13. Edward Kienholz, Five Car Stud, 1969–72.

64214int.indd 146

22-05-12 4:39 AM

PAU L M c C A R T H Y B O R N 194 5

SUBSTANCE SUBSTITUTE (2010)

Loving care and obliteration and/or subject, object, objectification figurines of boys and girls, little ones, figurines, knickknacks for mothers and fathers loving care, a sliding slippery political objective for objectivity. Objectification as subject. Little girls and boys, object of desire and pleasure to defer and to complete family and patriarchical political propaganda. The small Hummel, a German figurine, a shelf collectible, a figurine of innocence, Alpine Aryan washed and scrubbed hygienic purity holding a straw handmade basket. An image of hygienic joy, frolicking around the pipe pole. Figuration as repressed representation of cultural mass social outdoor trail mapping. A monumental stone pillar of blended folded happy morality. The perfect form, Mickey Mouse, perfect proportions. The true icon is the mouse and not the rabbit. Two-dimensional animation, a window view of the mouse character of multiple positions in reverse motion overlaid. The figure the figurine on a platform, a pedestal. A one of a kind figuration, a representation. Pink clay material having the malleable resemblance of flesh, a stand-in for body tissue, soft tissue, substitute substance. So you and I will begin by cutting the layers of the clay tissue of the sculpture, layers of human tissue. Cutting into the sculpture. Inserting a pipe, a phallus into the sculpture through the clay into the foam. Metal armatures being a suitable representation of bone. Use a hammer, a knife, a spoon, a board, an electric saw, a hammer, a knife. Cut off the head of the lymph node. Re-weld the pipe, armature. Cut off the leg. Cut off the arm and the ear. Insert a pipe. Pound a pipe through the head down into the neck. Place a second head onto the remaining protruding pipe, coming out of the first head. Adjust the head with the proper puppet tilt. Insert your finger or a stick into the finger prosthetic. Your thin finger is the penis finger, in the rubber prosthetic finger. Put your arm into the sculpture hole. Try to get your head and right arm pole into the sculpture. Inserting yourself into the interior of the sculpture. Entering the interior of the sculpture is similar to entering a room resembling a past experience. The clay face hole should be rubbed with car grease producing a slippery goo hole. Massage the clay sculpture. Use your digit as a penis in the face hole. Fractured abstraction. Abbreviation as abstraction. The fracture is/is not an abstraction. The cultured schooled realism, as a cultural taught corporate skill. Only time is required but we prefer

Paul McCarthy, “Substance Substitute,” Paul McCarthy: Three Sculptures (Los Angeles: L&M Arts and Hauser & Wirth, 2010), 123–25. © Paul McCarthy.

147

64214int.indd 147

22-05-12 4:39 AM

appropriation. The subject will eventually be resolved. Use the corporate representation as re-enactment. The appropriated image as theater. The statue as theater, something to act onto a type of state, an arena. Attempting to formalize, to massage the statue. A pink clay subject, with a hole for formal fornication. A German Bavarian figurine known as a Hummel. Enter stage left penis pipe. Pre-puberty arrangement, front to back with genital coupling. The opposite of one-off representation of mass production. A mass-produced statue or the opposite of a one-off becoming mass-produced object becoming a singular image of mass production or a joy toy, mirror reflection, a self portrait, a device to loop memory. Fantasy fabricated objects in a dream seek out one (remove actual) another. Verbal construction is abstraction. We model our lives after the fragmented actions of our imagination. Imagination connected to an action, an activity we refer to as a staged performance. The performance body as representation, a prop. Insert a Barbie doll into your rectum hole, remember to keep the figure straight, limbs parallel to the doll torso, feet together. Insert the Barbie doll up the hole, feet first. You and I see out of holes in the skull. The Kokoschka doll, the avantgarde, lover doll. Kokoschka’s dream doll, semisoft sculpture with hair and a hole. Desire for realism. Kokoschka fornicated with the fabricated object. You may prefer the sculpture, said the dealer, to the collector. Entry through the fractured vertical door of the living room is nearly the same as the Statue, the same as the sculpture on a cube. But I am interested in the figurine, which is nearly the same as a container for liquidation.

148    PAUL McCARTHY

64214int.indd 148

22-05-12 4:39 AM

MIKE KELLE Y 19 5 4 –2 012

IN THE IMAGE OF MAN (1992)

In the 1980s, when some artists self-consciously began to produce works that embraced their status as commodities, there arose, simultaneously, the desire in other artists to make works that escaped such commodification. The argument was advanced that an artwork could function analogously to the gift, an object outside of the system of exchange. This is what initially led to my interest in homemade craft items, that is, objects already existing in popular usage that are constructed specifically to be given away. This is not to say that I believe craft gifts themselves harbor utopian sentiments; all things have a price. The hidden burden of the gift is that it calls for payback, but the price is unspecified, repressed. The uncanny aura of the craft item is linked to time. Crafts are the literal embodiment of the Puritan work ethic. They seem to announce that work is its own reward. This is conveyed by the long, labor-intensive hours required to construct them by hand. They speak the language of the wage earner in which there is a one-to-one relationship between time spent and worth. The equation is not between time and money; it is a more obscure relationship drawn between time and commitment, one that results in a kind of emotional usury. The gift operates within an economy of guilt, an endless feeling of indebtedness attends it because of its mysterious worth. And the highly loaded nature of these objects is intensified by their material nature: by the seeming contradiction that their emotional weight far exceeds the worth of the cheap and lowly materials from which they are constructed. However, it isn’t proper to speak of the “junk” status of the craft item; it is in bad taste to comment on the financial worth of a gift. The fine art “junk sculpture” could be said to have value in spite of its material, while the craft item could be said, like the icon, to have value beyond its material. In the process of acquiring large numbers of craft items, primarily dolls and stuffed toy animals, I started to become conscious of them for the first time as discrete objects. Beyond thinking of them as mere carriers of “love hours” (or “guilt hours”), I became aware that they also had specific forms, and that there must be some connection between these forms and the objects’ use. But at the same time that I became conscious of this fact, I also realized that they were extremely limited in a formal sense.

Mike Kelley, “In the Image of Man,” Mike Kelley: Minor Histories, Statements, Conversations, Proposals, ed. John C. Welchman (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 52–54. Text © 2022 Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. All rights reserved / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

149

64214int.indd 149

22-05-12 4:39 AM

14. Mike Kelley, Craft Morphology Flow Chart, 1991.

The few craft types commonly made can easily be categorized by material and construction techniques. The shift in my interest to the individual craft item led me away from my earlier accumulation works, such as More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid (1987) and Plush Kundalini and Chakra Set (1987), into the Arena series, which consists of stuffed animals arranged on blankets laid on the floor. Primarily composed of “autograph hounds,” Arena #10 (Dogs) (1990) is typical of the series. In these works, I toyed with the viewer’s inclination to project into the figures, to construct an inner narrative around them, which I would argue makes viewers less aware of their own physical presence. To counter this tendency, and thus make the viewer more selfconscious, I used extremely worn and soiled craft materials in the construction of these works. The immediate tendency of viewers to be sucked into a narrativizing situation was dismantled when they got close enough to the sculptures to recognize the unpleasant tactile qualities of the craft materials. Fear of soiling themselves countered the urge to idealize. Stuffed toys, especially dolls, lend themselves to invisibility. When you look at a doll, you don’t notice its particularities. Rather, you see it in a general way as “human.” If there are enough suitable cues—head, body, legs, etc.—you can personify it; specific details like facial features, hands, and feet are unimportant. In fact, the figure can be stripped down to a simple bag shape and still be accepted as portraying a human being.

150    MIKE KELLE Y

64214int.indd 150

22-05-12 4:39 AM

All of the “humanoid” details missing in such an object are filled in by the viewer. It is this projective relationship with the doll that allows us to empathize with it. If you were to see the doll as an exact model of a figure, as a portrait statue, empathy would be impossible—it would be seen as a monstrosity. In my next series, Empathy Displacement: Humanoid Morphology (2nd and 3rd Remove) (1990), I concentrated on this process of identification. I take as my starting point the notion that there is a Platonic human archetype, and that individual human beings are at the first remove from it. A three-dimensional doll would be at the second remove; and a two-dimensional depiction of the doll, at the third. These works consist of a human-scaled black-and-white illustrative painting of a doll, presented along with its model concealed in a black box that lies on the floor in front of it. Empathy is problematized in this situation, for the shift in scale makes it difficult to empathize with the painting of the doll, and the viewer is led to empathize instead with the original doll, which they must assume is enclosed in the box. Projection is made complete because the object of empathy can no longer be seen. My latest work with these materials, Craft Morphology Flow Chart (1991), will be presented at the Carnegie International, 1991. This is, I believe, the last of my “stuffed animal” works. I removed all vestiges of empathy from this piece in order to address the pure “material nature” of the crafts. Three representational systems are used simultaneously to present the materials. First, the crafts are arranged categorically, according to construction technique and shape, on simple folding tables. Second, every one of these items, accompanied by a ruler to show its true size, has been photographed. And third, one representative grouping of craft items—the collection of “sock monkeys”—has been rendered in a large black-and-white line drawing reminiscent of archaeological illustration. Through this reiteration, I propose that the psychological baggage that usually attends such objects has been discarded. Of course, by attempting to repress them, these emotional qualities become even more pervasive.

MIKE KELLE Y   151

64214int.indd 151

22-05-12 4:39 AM

I LYA A N D E M I L I A K A B A KO V B O R N 19 3 3 A N D 194 5

INTRODUCTION TO PUBLIC PROJECTS OR THE SPIRIT OF A PLACE (2001)

I had been occupied with total installations that Emilia and I constructed in various art institutions and exhibition halls, for approximately ten years. Called “total” because they represented fully encapsulated spaces, these installations were confined within the museums where they were exhibited and, of course, within the larger context of the surrounding local environment. They represented a world within a world and the viewer, upon entering such a space, found himself in an entirely different place, a different country, on an entirely different planet. The contrast between the site of the installation and the installation itself, inspires the overall concept; the crux being the contrast of the viewer’s state prior to and after winding up inside the installation. In producing these installations, one world is built into another world, one world being Russia, of course, Soviet Russia, and the other being the Western world, that is, the world of western democracy, of a western cultural context. The potential of this artistic product—the total installation—seemed unlimited, since at that time, the themes depicting various aspects of Soviet life seemed inexhaustible to me. The reserves of enthusiasm and of masochistic pain that were evoked by the recollections of life in Soviet Russia were infinite. Everything appeared in such a way that it seemed I would be involved with this kind of creative endeavor to the end of my life. But, as they say, man presumes but fate decides, and around 1997 I began to feel that energy and interest were gradually waning, and the themes, even if they were not ending, ceased to evoke in me that burning and persistent demand to be born. [. . .] When I glance back, a public project, to a great degree, appears to be something practical that has a concrete, utilitarian meaning. In my imagination, what arises is a great quantity of monuments that were erected in order to reinforce the memory of some very important events in history connected with the places where these monuments were built. In particular, these are usually memorials of some victory or plague, some sort of important historical event or curious circumstance in one way or another connected with the location of these monuments. Furthermore, public projects, undoubtedly, have served as ornaments, unique aesthetic centers, junctures of an urban ensemble. For instance, ornaments in squares or streets, especially classical squares or baroque structures. [. . .] Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, excerpts from the introduction to Public Projects or The Spirit of a Place (Milan: Charta Editions, 2001), 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32–33. Minor revisions by Emilia Kabakov, 2019. © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

152

64214int.indd 152

22-05-12 4:39 AM

According to my observations, these artists’ works use the proposed places exclusively in the capacity of exhibition space for their own creations. [. . .] The author begins from the notion that the place, no matter what it is, even though it is unbelievably important, authoritative and historically significant, is still just the background and the “simple” area for the erection and construction of his own artistic creation. As a rule, the artistic work in this case either ignores what is around it, that is, it considers it to be insignificant or, more often, the author is certain that with his creation he should repress, surmount, and in any way possible, vanquish all that is around it. [. . .] The traditions of modernism that extend even to today are the traditions of an artist who understands himself exclusively in his capacity as a genius and prophet, a unique kind of ruler; everything else only heeds and submissively perceives those brilliant, extraordinary communications that are emitted by this artist. Hence, the interrelationship between the teacher and pupil, genius and inept, the prophet and the inert masses, the connoisseur and the ignoramus—this opposition for many artists is still considered entirely natural and self-evident. Originating from this starting point, any place turns out to be absolutely empty for the modernist, a blank page on which he can write his immortal lines. The concept of the public project to which we shall turn our attention in the near future represents the complete opposite of what has been hereto described. In the first place, the attitude toward the public project is not the same as toward a temporary exhibit, but rather it is an attitude toward something permanent that in principle should exist forever in a given location. It should be as though the public project has existed for a long time already among these other objects surrounding it. It should not stand in contrast to, but rather be a natural and absolutely normal part of that space where it is located. The attitude toward the viewer is also entirely different; it is not an attitude that marginalizes the viewer and is condescending, but on the contrary, sees the viewer as an active and perhaps even main character here. [. . .] The concept of the public project in our discussion presupposes a rather complex and, one might say, “multi-faceted” viewer. In the most general terms, we will reduce him to three types. The first and most important type, is the viewer as the “master of this place.” He is the inhabitant of this city, these streets, and this country, where the artist has been invited to build his work. He is very familiar with everything beforehand, he has grown accustomed to this place, he lives in it. Everything new that will be placed here, is perceived from the point of view of the owner into whose apartment something has settled, and he either has to accept it, accommodate it into his normal life, or he has to discard this extraneous, repulsive and entirely useless thing—a reaction that is completely natural and anticipated. [. . .] The second type of viewer turns out to be the tourist. Tourists are a large tribe now racing all over the globe and they are interested in something a bit different than the owner when viewing a public project. A tourist is interested in the unique characteristics of a place he has visited, its individual nuances and quirks, and for him, the public project he sees, should be somehow characteristic of the place, even perhaps peculiar

ILYA AND EMILIA K ABAKOV   153

64214int.indd 153

22-05-12 4:39 AM

to it. The tourist should see the public project in its capacity as a reflection of some unique trait of this place he is visiting, he should see the public project as an important spot in this locale, this city, this street, this area—something that he should remember among all his other tourist impressions. [. . .] Finally, the third viewer for whom the public project must be considered, is the loafer (we shall call him a flâneur), the solitary passerby at the moment of his scatteredmeditative stroll, when he is not really involved in mundane cares, but rather is contemplating various distractions, problems in life, culture, his own memories, sentimental or romantic; when he finds himself in a scattered, solitary journey through life. In this case the public project should be entirely oriented toward this state and toward this kind of viewer who is escaping and submerging into imagined spaces, such as the past, where certain associations, memories arise. [. . .] Another question then emerges: who is this artist who relates to his task in an entirely different way, not like a modernist, to create his work? If we were to label the position of the modernist artist as the position of the master, demiurge and prophet (in fact, such is his behavior and the program of creating his work in a public place), then the position of an artist of a different type, the kind of artist we have begun speaking about here, can be understood as his complete opposite. The term we could apply here would be “medium”—the artist has the position of a medium who not so much dominates and terrorizes the place in which he finds himself, but rather listens to it attentively, or better said, is attuned to the full perception of that voice, that sound, that music, which is supposed to resound in this place. This music, this sound, these voices are especially clearly heard in those places where the cultural layers are very dense, where deep levels of a cultural past exist. The artist tunes his internal hearing to those voices that constantly—and if you listen to them with strained attention then they are very loud—resound in each place where a public project is proposed. [. . .] From what has been said it is clear that our attitude toward the public project is primarily that of an installation. This is not a sculpture. Much is said about how a public project is a sculpture. But for us it is not a sculpture at all, but rather is the kind of installation object that we had been creating during the entire previous period. The public project belongs in the same series as the total installation. Only in contrast to the total installation where the totality was that of a new world, an imported world, from Soviet Russia, with the public project the total installation is now constructed inside the layout of an already existing cultural environment which existed long before this began to be built into this cultural medium. The public project functions as one element of an already existing installation, it transforms any, even an everyday spatial environment, into the space of culture; it often transforms even the most banal environment into one that is activated in its capacity as a cultural environment. [. . .] A no less important requirement is the consideration of the significance of the spatial ensemble, and not its sculptural qualities. Although many components of our installations have been sculptural, what is important is that these sculptures do not

154    ILYA AND EMILIA K ABAKOV

64214int.indd 154

22-05-12 4:39 AM

affix one’s attention, but rather appeal to the environment, proposing that we see ourselves together with that environment. They invite us to consider ourselves part of the environment and not merely its main characters against the background of this surrounding space. [. . .] All of these installations are constructed in such a way that they create the image of standing on the edge, on the side and along the contour of figures that—under no circumstances occupy or form the center. [. . .] The installation more than likely represents a surrounding system of mirrors or antennae that project their energy and their associations on the subjective perception of the viewer and, strange as it may seem, the viewer and not the object that he is looking at turns out to be the center. [. . .] All public projects that we have done are aimed not toward confrontation, not toward provoking paradoxes, not toward aggression or attack, not toward destruction, but rather for, one might say, their calming qualities. All of them have a principally positive meaning and represent the continuation of the romantic tradition with its melancholy, its tranquility, its reflection and its memory. [. . .] We shall end this foreword as we began it, trying to describe the biographical elements of our engagement with public projects. We began with the biographical, subjective reasons and shall end with the same kind of subjective story, a story about the meaning of a culture in the imagination of a Soviet artist who has been presented with the opportunity to make something on the territory of that very culture. This is a form of gratitude, or a form of internal applause, at the encounter with those origins to which we personally do not belong anymore, and do not possess, but which turn out to be a distant, almost unconscious memory of ours. This memory, this beautiful dream was the energy reserve, the stimulus and the reason for the enthusiasm that prompted the emergence of all kinds of images and ideas for building public projects.

ILYA AND EMILIA K ABAKOV   155

64214int.indd 155

22-05-12 4:39 AM

ALL AN K APROW 19 2 7–2 0 0 6

NOTES ON THE CREATION OF A TOTAL ART (1958)

It has been inconceivable until recently to think of the arts as anything other than separate disciplines, united at a given moment of history only by vaguely parallel philosophical objectives. During certain periods in the West, notably the Middle Ages in the atmosphere and ritual of the church, the arts found a certain theological harmony— a blending perhaps, but not a total unity. Painting, music, architecture, ceremony— were each an identifiable genre. With the advent of the Renaissance, an emphasis on unique personal styles led to more specialization. Conscious thoughts about a total art did not emerge until Wagner and, later, the Symbolists. But these were modeled on the earlier examples of the church: essentially hierarchies of the several arts organized by master directors. The Bauhaus’s experiments continued this approach, only modernizing the forms and subject matters. A total art could not come about this way. A new concept and new means were necessary. Art forms developed over a long period and articulated to a high degree are not amenable to mixture: they are self-sufficient so far as their cohesiveness and range of expression are concerned. But if we bypass “art” and take nature itself as a model or point of departure, we may be able to devise a different kind of art by first putting together a molecule out of the sensory stuff of ordinary life: the green of a leaf, the sound of a bird, the rough pebbles under one’s feet, the fluttering past of a butterfly. Each of these occurs in time and space and is perfectly natural and infinitely flexible. From such a rudimentary yet wonderful event, a principle of the materials and organization of a creative form can be built. To begin, we admit the usefulness of any subject matter or experience whatsoever. Then we juxtapose this material—it can be known or invented, “concrete” or “abstract”—to produce the structure and body of our own work. For instance, if we join a literal space and a painted space, and these two spaces to a sound, we achieve the “right” relationship by considering each component a quantity and quality on an imaginary scale. So much of such and such color is juxtaposed to so much of this or that type of sound. The “balance” (if one wants to call it that) is primarily an environmental one.

Allan Kaprow, “Notes on the Creation of a Total Art,” in Allan Kaprow: An Exhibition, exh. cat. (New York: Hansa Gallery, 1958); reprinted with revisions in Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, ed. Jeff Kelley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 10–12. © Allan Kaprow Estate.

156

64214int.indd 156

22-05-12 4:39 AM

15. Allan Kaprow installing Yard in the back courtyard of the Martha Jackson Gallery at 32 East Sixty-Ninth Street, New York City, 1961.

Whether it is art depends on how deeply involved we become with elements of the whole and how fresh these elements are (as though they were “natural,” like the sudden fluttering by of the butterfly) when they occur next to one another. Paradoxically, this idea of a total art has grown from attempts to extend the possibilities of one of the forms of painting, collage, which has led us unknowingly toward rejecting painting in any form, without however, eliminating the use of paint. In fact, the theory, being flexible, does not say how much of one element or another must be used. Because I have come from painting, my present work is definitely weighted in a visual direction while the sounds and odors are less complex. Any of these aspects of our tastes and experiences may be favored. There is no rule that says all must be equal. Although I expect that in the future a greater equivalence of these different senses will reduce the role that the visual side now plays in my own work, this result is not necessarily desirable for another artist. Any moment taken at random from life may have differently accented components: we may be primarily aware sometimes of the great number of sounds produced by a waterfall and at other times of the penetrating odor of gasoline. Someone trained as a composer may begin to create this new art form by showing a preference for sounds over odors, but this person, at the same time, will not be dealing simply with the older art of music, any more than I believe I am engaged in the arts of painting, sculpture, or architecture. In the present exhibition [Allan Kaprow: An Exhibition, Hansa Gallery, New York] we do not come to look at things. We simply enter, are surrounded, and become

ALL AN K APROW   157

64214int.indd 157

22-05-12 4:39 AM

part of what surrounds us, passively or actively according to our talents for “engagement,” in much the same way that we have moved out of the totality of the street or our home where we also played a part. We ourselves are shapes (though we are not often conscious of this fact). We have differently colored clothing; can move, feel, speak, and observe others variously; and will constantly change the “meaning” of the work by so doing. There is, therefore, a never-ending play of changing conditions between the relatively fixed or “scored” parts of my work and the “unexpected” or undetermined parts. In fact, we may move in and about the work at any pace or in any direction we wish. Likewise, the sounds, the silences, and the spaces between them (their “here-” and “there-”ness) continue throughout the day with a random sequence or simultaneity that makes it possible to experience the whole exhibit differently at different times. These have been composed in such a way as to offset any desire to see them in the light of the traditional, closed, clear forms of art as we have known them. What has been worked out instead is a form that is as open and fluid as the shapes of our everyday experience but does not simply imitate them. I believe that this form places a much greater responsibility on visitors than they have had before. The “success” of a work depends on them as well as on the artist. If we admit that work that “succeeds” on some days fails on other days, we may seem to disregard the enduring and stable and to place an emphasis upon the fragile and impermanent. But one can insist, as many have, that only the changing is really enduring and all else is whistling in the dark.

158    ALL AN K APROW

64214int.indd 158

22-05-12 4:39 AM

CL AES OLDENBURG B O R N 19 2 9

A STATEMENT (1966)

What I do as a “happening” is part of my general concern, at this time, to use more or less altered “real” material. This has to do with objects, such as typewriters, ping-pong tables, articles of clothing, ice-cream cones, hamburgers, cakes, etc., etc.—whatever I happen to come into contact with. The “happening” is one or another method of using objects in motion, and this I take to include people, both in themselves and as agents of object motion. To present this material, I have worked out some structures and techniques which parallel those of the presentation of the static object. The static object is shown by me as one of a number of related objects, in a particular “real” place—itself an object. For example, The Store (1961, New York), containing 120 items approximately, within a real store (107 E. Second St., New York). Or, The Home, which I am now developing, with items of furniture and appliances, etc. (Bedroom Ensemble, 1964, a room at the Sidney Janis Gallery, New York) though a real house or apartment has not yet been set up. I present in a “happening” anywhere from thirty to seventy-five events, or happenings (and many more objects), over a period of time from one-half to one and a half hours, in simple spacial relationships—juxtaposed, superimposed—like those of The Store. The event is made simple and clear, and is set up either to repeat itself or to proceed very slowly, so that the tendency is always to a static object. In some pieces, I tried setting up events into a pattern, a pseudo-plot, more associational than logical (Ray Gun Theater, those after Store Days II especially. March-May, 1962, New York). In the first “happening” I did, Snapshots from the City (March, 1960, New York), the events were fragments of action, immobilized by instantaneous illuminations. Otherwise, the “happenings” have been one pattern or another of discrete events: in Blackouts (December, 1960, New York), the events were illuminated at different stations across a long stage. In Fotodeath (February, 1961, New York), the events repeated themselves in superimposed lines of movement. In Gayety (February, 1963, Chicago), the events occurred at stations within and around the spectators. In Stars (April, 1963, Washington, D.C.) events moved in and out of sight along a right-angle

Claes Oldenburg, “A Statement,” in Happenings: An Illustrated Anthology, ed. Michael Kirby (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1966), 200–203. © Claes Oldenburg.

159

64214int.indd 159

22-05-12 4:39 AM

stage. In Autobodys (December, 1963, Los Angeles), the audience (in cars) surrounded a rectangle on which widely spaced events occurred. An individual event may be “realistic,” and this may be quite direct, evolving on the spot with a player and certain materials and objects, or a reconstruction (of something I might have observed the day before or read about or dreamed, or of which someone else may have brought the account) or it may be, at an opposite extreme, an enigmatic, fantastic event, with altered objects and altered (costumed) persons. I mix realistic and fantastic events, as the imagination does, and I consider the imaginary event as real as the “real” one. In the process of altering an object or event, I use various methods, some of which are purely whimsical, others having a rationalization, such as the alteration of real (tangible) furniture into its appearance (visual perspective). The effect of my “happenings” will be missed if my specific intention and technique are not understood. Spectators will look for development where none is intended, or be bored by the repetition. Or the term “happening” by its vagueness will raise an expectation unlike the effect encountered; for example, spontaneous effect or an improvisation or a spectacle of some sort. My aim is the perfection of the details of the events rather than any composition (except in the later Ray Gun Theater with its “poetic” arrangement of incidents), and the composition is merely a practical structure (usually “real” f.ex. “snapshots” “blackouts” “circus”—a structure which is an object in itself). The audience is considered an object and its behavior as events, along with the rest. The audience is taken to differ from the players in that its possibilities are not explored as far as that of the players (whose possibilities are not explored as far as my own). The place of the audience in the structure is determined by seating and by certain simple provocations. The place in which the piece occurs, this large object, is, as I have indicated, part of the effect, and usually the first and most important factor determining the events (materials at hand being the second and players the third). “Place” may have any extent, a room or a nation, and may have any character whatsoever: old, new, clean, dirty, water or land, whatever is decided. There is no limit to what objects or what methods may be used to arrive at events. An account of the “rehearsals” or making of particular pieces will show the strategies employed to achieve results.

160    CL AES OLDENBURG

64214int.indd 160

22-05-12 4:39 AM

KEN PRICE 19 3 5 –2 012

MEMO TO M.F.A. STUDENTS WHO USE CLAY (1997–1998)

Since the clay students are being ghettoized by media category, I think it’s time to present the crafts’ point of view, even though I don’t always share it and may not be fully qualified to give it. This is from experience and from reading about the subject for many years. Regarding how the real artists feel about works in clay—part of your education here is to experience it. In the art world, working with clay is like being a member of the wrong race. And the situation is not going to change for the better. The only effective way you can combat it is by continuing to attempt serious and beautiful work in the face of it. While here, you can present a verbal position based on the work you really want to make, and the material you feel connected to.

FROM A MAKER’S STANDPOINT (1997–1998)

Making art offers an arena for us to move in and can’t be replaced by other activities. Its uniqueness has been attributed to the fact that it interprets human experience by means of sensory expression. The mental conception requires a material embodiment. This is the essential problem for us; what makes work have value is its ability to put the artist’s vision into a physical incarnation. Part of the problem is that the goal image isn’t really available before it’s realized, because it comes about gradually by interaction with the medium. The meaning of the work is conveyed through the look of it regardless of content. This is a visual medium and problems have to be solved visually. It’s about looking, about seeing, not reading or talking. The work needs to be more than the illustration of an idea. So the primary question becomes what the works are, not what they mean. You have to try to make good work. If your work is really good, you can do anything you want to and pull it off. If the work is good, it will have authority. If it’s not good, few will care what it is or is about. This is a time in history when you can be an artist and do mediocre work. But poorly made work loses its power. It’s not connecting, because people use quality of execution as a basis for judging works of art.

Ken Price, “Memo to M.F.A. Students Who Use Clay,” written between 1997 and 1998, Ken Price notebooks. © Ken Price. Ken Price, excerpts from “From a Maker’s Standpoint,” written between 1997 and 1998, Ken Price notebooks. © Ken Price.

161

64214int.indd 161

22-05-12 4:39 AM

16. Ken Price, Arctic, 1998.

If you approach it casually you can’t expect much. All of the easy stuff has been used up. You’ve got to go all out, try for the best, the most real, most authentic, sincere output you can achieve with what you were given. You may need to be alone to figure it out. It needs to come from your own experience (other people aren’t living your life).

162    KEN PRICE

64214int.indd 162

22-05-12 4:39 AM

It’s hard for anything real to get through the constant onslaught of ideas, opinions, trends, theories and the rest. University art education offers the academic perspective, no matter how broad you may think it is. The university setting is the only place in our society where this critical discourse still goes on in a serious way. But you don’t have to buy into anything. You should question assumptions including your own (where did they come from?) and come to your own conclusions. Then you have to figure out how to render those conclusions in some convincing way. After you get out of here your problem will be executing the work, not explaining yourself. You can’t know what good work will be before you make it, because it takes on its own life and transformation during the making process. You have an interaction with the work, taking suggestions from the work (if you’re heavily into this, the work can seem to “make” itself). Of course, none of the transformation in the process takes place if you have the work fabricated by someone else. Intentions are what get you started. Disparity between intentions and results always exists. Intentions don’t matter once you’ve entered the process, then you follow the process. Ideally, an artist would be open to change anything, if it meant finding a better way to realize his or her vision. Adhering to some agenda is stifling to the creative process. Being creative means being open to shifts of meaning, content, subject matter, style, technique, size, anything! There is no single formula for the creative process. Just because we want to make something is enough justification. The only thing we have to answer to is our own creative urgings. The end always justifies the means. It doesn’t matter which way you get there. The word “art” no longer signifies anything. Artists determine what art is. Art can exist without theory. Art is not founded on ethical or moral grounds. Perception is subjective. Thinking is unlimited. Making art is closer to thinking than it is to talking. Linear thinking is inconsistent with creative thought because it causes information and ideas to stack and synthesize, so the results are distilled rather than expansive. We live in a culture without set standards of art, without traditional ways of incorporating cultural information and without fixed techniques or styles. We can make whatever we want with no obligation to serve religion, state, or art dogma coming from philosophers, historians, or critics. You can make beautiful work without being able to speak one word about beauty. Studio art lives in a visual realm. If you have to talk a lot about the work, it’s probably not functioning well visually. For the grad seminar, if our talk can translate into making stronger imagery, that’s good. Outside of grad school, imagery with some impact precedes discussion or criticism.

KEN PRICE   163

64214int.indd 163

22-05-12 4:39 AM

LYG I A C L A R K 19 2 0 –19 8 8

THE EMPTY FULL (1960)

For me art is only valid in the ethico-religious sense, internally connected to the inner elaboration of the artist in its deepest sense, which is the existential. My whole vision is not purely optical, but is profoundly connected to my experience of feeling, not only in the immediate sense, but, even more, in the deeper sense in which one doesn’t know what is its origin. That which a form may express only has a meaning for me in a strict relationship with its inner space, the empty-full of its existence, just as there exists our space which goes on being completed and taking on meaning as maturity arrives. At times I think that before we are born we are like a closed fist which opens its first finger when we are born and is opened internally like the petals of a flower as we discover the meaning of our existence, for us at a certain moment to become aware of this plenitude of an empty-full (interior time). At that moment we achieve an awareness of an ethico-religious conception which goes against the whole existence of a God external to us: he is within us and is the best thing we have; the idea of life and death abandons us. This polarity no longer exists. That which we are able to transmit in a work of art is no more than a static moment within the cosmological dynamics from which we came and to which we are going. It is a flash of that infinite materialized in the finite. As if it were a stopping in time. It is a piece of eternity. Man seeks out his inner time and when he finds it he lives out his whole origin. It is at that moment that he goes beyond the life-death frontier. The anguish of the exterior time (one day after another) which is connected to the same existential anguish (the reason for things in relation to it) disappears, because he then begins to abstract himself from that outer reality. It exists, but man is no longer invaded by it in the practical-mechanical sense. He and it become one unit, in its deep existential sense. Reality becomes a support for mediation or a magnetic field in which he, the artist, identifies himself with the times. At that moment he travels through his whole origin. The life “beginning” and death “end” has finished. The work of art is the materialization of this fusion. This is what makes it eternal or transcendent. Other, less creative people will feel this moment, through the artist’s work, as a response to an issue of universal meaning. Life only exists in relation Lygia Clark, “The Empty Full,” 1960, from Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948–1988, ed. Cornelia H. Butler and Luis Perez-Oramas (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2014), 159–60. “O vazio-pleno” was first published in Jornal do Brazil, April 2, 1960, Suplemento Dominical, 5, and translated as “The FullEmptiness” in Lygia Clark (Barcelona: Fundació Antoni Tàpies, 1997–98), 111–13. © O mundo de Lygia Clark.

164

64214int.indd 164

22-05-12 4:39 AM

to polarities. There begins the relationship between life and art. In art we seek out the emptiness (from which we have come) and when we discover it being valorized we then discover our inner time. The acceptance of life (contradictory dynamics), silence, and non-formulation has taken on the sense of the full and formulation. It is the gaze turned within itself. It is the situation of the man in this space—the beginning of the interior realization: maturity. It is a cut from former situations in which the individual only existed in relation-function to them. Man is not alone. He is the form and the emptiness. He comes from emptiness to form (life) and he goes from life to the emptyfull which is a relative death. To reach this state of plenitude it is necessary to relive all his previous experiences, to face them—which means a liberation. There he achieves a state of ethics in the widest sense. Whilst the emptiness remains disconnected from the other side (life) you have to bow to the void, as in an abyss, and to live within it. Nothing, Death, lack of meaning. All men feel this inner state. Through art the artist shows them this slice of eternity. It is a deeply religious message in the highest ethical sense, valorizing this sense of the nonsignifying emptiness. Forms, like all things, express more than their mere physical presence (measurements and weight). It is as if each thing radiated an energy connected to the energy of the living and real space. When one places an object within a space which is too great in relation to it, the space does not stop being empty and dead, but when this object finds its space, then the space which surrounds it is full. If the object is placed too close to other objects, I feel two contradictory forces fighting against each other. Man has this irradiation more than any object and more than that of other animals. It is as if, through being vertical, he is supported on the earth less than other animals. Then the search for his transcendence appears in contraposition to this polarity (earth-space) with the stubbornness and intensity of a privileged being, terribly anguished, always being thrust upwards, attached by his feet to the organic side of his animal origin. At the moment when, breaking the rectangle and virtually inverting the surface, which stops being the thickness of the space and becomes the thread of this space, this expression is now inside this real space in which all the living and cosmological irradiated forces act. The expression is immediately identified with that organic-man irradiation, with the same real dynamics. In Sculpture there was a need for this dynamics much earlier, because there the problem was volume. Then it began emptying and today it is the emptinessform complementing which identifies it as a current means of expression. In Architecture the need is the same today. There are no static things. Everything is dynamics. Even an apparently static object is not stopped. It is based on a series of supports which are in turn dynamically pulled at by the force of gravity. My painting expresses, therefore, a new reality in which the work of art is expressed as a living object, like you and I. In the sense of an identification with the reality of our times: when man lived with more space he was able to be satisfied, as nature was his habitat: he would awake when light opened upon him and would sleep when night closed in. There was a great deal of space and an integration of man within nature. Today, however, he is confined within great buildings squeezed into their own needs of irradiation, yet without

LYGIA CL ARK   165

64214int.indd 165

22-05-12 4:39 AM

having a space on the horizontal sense which might be a support for their spiritual nature. Thus it is coherent for him to try to conquer space with a greater than ever need to fulfill himself, not only in conquering the universe, but also in giving release to this vertical expression of spirituality. As science conquers on one side, it is essential for the individual to conquer his inner time, becoming aware of this ethico-religious sense, so that he does not become lost and destroyed.

THE BICHOS (1960)

I gave the name Bichos [Critters] to my works of this period, because their characteristics are fundamentally organic. Furthermore, the hinge between the planes reminds me of a backbone. The arrangement of metal plates determines the positions of the Bicho, which at first glance seems unlimited. When asked how many moves a Bicho can make, I reply. “I don’t know, you don’t know, but it knows.” The Bichos don’t have a back. Each Bicho is an organic entity that fully reveals itself within its inner time of expression. It has an affinity with the shell and shellfish. It is a living organism, a work essentially active. A full integration, existential, is established between it and us. There is no room for passivity in the relationship that is established between the Bichos and us, neither from them nor from us. What happens is a body-to-body between two living entities. In fact, a dialogue happens in which the Bicho’s answers are properly defined by the beholder’s stimuli. This relationship between the Bicho and us—formerly metaphoric—becomes real. The Bicho has its own circuit of movements that reacts to the beholder’s stimuli. It is not composed of still, independent forms that can be indefinitely handled at will, as in a game. On the contrary, its parts are functionally related to each other, as in a real organism. Their movement is interdependent. There are two types of movements in the relationship between the Bicho and you. The first, purely external, is what you do. The second, the Bicho’s, is produced by the dynamics of its own expressiveness. Lygia Clark, “The Bichos,” 1960, from Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948–1988, trans. Licia R. Olivetti, ed. Cornelia H. Butler and Luis Perez-Oramas (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2014), 160. “Bichos” was first published in Livro-Obra, 1960. Alternate translations are in “The Bichos,” October 69 (Summer 1994): 97, 99, and Lygia Clark (Barcelona: Fundació Antoni Tàpies, 1997–98), 121. © O mundo de Lygia Clark.

166    LYGIA CL ARK

64214int.indd 166

22-05-12 4:39 AM

The first movement (the one you do) has nothing to do with the Bicho, because it does not belong to it. By contrast, the conjunction of your gestures with the immediate response of the Bicho creates a new relationship, and this is only possible because of the movements the Bicho knows how to perform by itself: it is the Bicho’s own life.

LYGIA CL ARK   167

64214int.indd 167

22-05-12 4:39 AM

HÉLIO OITICICA 19 3 7–19 8 0

EDEN (1969)

It is an experimental “campus,” a kind of taba [indigenous encampment], where all human experiments will be allowed—human ones, concerning human species possibilities. It is a kind of mythical place for feelings, for acting, for making things and constructing one’s own interior cosmos—so, for that, “open” propositions are given, and even raw materials for the “making of things,” that the participator will be able to do. I have never been so happy as over this EDEN plan. I feel completely free, of everything, even of myself. This has come to me with the new ideas about this “suprasensorial” conception I have arrived at: for me all art comes to that: the necessity for a supra-sensorial meaning of life, of transforming art processes into life feelings. I consider as simple “sensorial” problems those related to “stimulus-reaction” feelings, conditioned “a priori,” as occurs in Op-art and those arts related to it (either those with mechanical stimulus, or natural stimulus as in Calder’s mobiles where natural physical laws determine its mobility and affect the spectator sensorially). But when a proposition is made for a “feeling-participation” or a “making-participation,” I want to relate it to a supra-sensorial sense, in which the participator will elaborate within himself his own feelings which have been “woken-up” by those propositions. This “wake-up” process is a supra-sensorial one: the participator is shifted off his habitual field to a strange one that wakes up his internal fields of feeling and gives him conscience of some area of his Ego, where true values affirm themselves. If this does not happen, then participation has not taken place. My new works are very opened ones: two big Bolide that one can go into. Filling the inside area: sand in one and straw in the other. The outside of the wooden border is painted the first in orange and the other in yellow, both very bright, creating a kind of visual limit to the bare “acting field,” and the spectator comes inside this field and acts as he wants; involving himself in the sand or in the straw, barefeet, or just stepping and walking over it, etc. I consider them “open” and “cosmic” works. I want the spectator to create his own sensations from it, but without conditioning him to that and

Hélio Oiticica, “Eden,” in Helio Oiticica (Rotterdam: Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, in collaboration with Projeto Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro, and the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, 1992), 12–13; originally written in English and published in Helio Oiticica (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 1969). Courtesy Projeto Hélio Oiticica. © César and Claudio Oiticica.

168

64214int.indd 168

22-05-12 4:39 AM

the other sensation. The sand, the straw, are only qualitative differences, and the spectator will act upon those areas looking for “internal meanings” within himself, rather than trying to apprehend external meanings, or sensations. Rhythmic music and dance have been the main introduction to these convictions, for me: I want to come into the whole of its acting area: social, psychological, ethical. Other similar processes could be found in dreams, ascetic meditation and, in special conditions, the so-called “artistic emotion” (in a condition such as that defined in Zen as satori that is, when one is “touched” in a strong and fundamental way and “discovers,” as a revelation, a new totality between self and world, where total feelings float over all contraries). Of course, artistic creation (and I mean “creation” in all its manifestations) in a certain sense englobes all that but I want to show the special sense it takes now in my work and many modern manifestations of individual participation in the “work of art”—participation in a total sense, not merely “manipulation” which appeals to the senses in isolation. I am making plans for very simple Penetrables, like the one with just a bare wood structure (without paint), covered with a thick canvas (like those used in trucks to prevent water from wetting things) and one in-out way: the spectator would be invited to come in without shoes and all the floor area inside would be occupied by water at a very shallow level, so water would cover only the spectator’s feet. Another thing I am constructing is a Penetrable, tall and large, a kind of “cabinbed”: one enters, barefeet, and lies in it: after entering one closes the door and lies and plays with some colored tissues, etc. The cabin is painted all red. The most important here is the act of lying down in this determined space. The idea of Creleisure arises slowly with the Eden concept, in fact it is its profound sense: leisure in itself, an opened idea based in a “behavior state” that, internally, will require a transformation or an identification of the ones who want to penetrate it, but this transformation would not be pre-dictated: “be that,” or “that,” no—you can’t buy a piece, because also the idea of a solid work to be bought is fake: the nests, or tents, or bed, etc. are Nuclei for leisure, for it, given in a specific context, but that must be different relating to each person’s internal feelings; no use having something as an object, distorted then to bourgeois structure, etc., because it relates to the idea of the nonrepresentative leisure, creative, it is not the place for divertive thoughts, but for the replacement of myth in our lives, the cresleep conscious of itself. I am planning the Barracão which should be the whole communal environment for the Creleisure in my specific group in Rio de Janeiro. Have you the idea for yours? The Creleisure may be marginalized now, but I am sure there will be a day when it won’t be, as far as human aspirations become desalienated in an oppressive world, not as a desublimative and fake activity, but as a real one, demystifying and transforming it internally.

HÉLIO OITICICA   169

64214int.indd 169

22-05-12 4:39 AM

GILBERT & GEORGE B O R N 194 3 A N D 194 2

TWO TEXT PAGES DESCRIBING OUR POSITION (1970)

Gilbert and George, the sculptors, say:— We are Only Human Sculptors

We are only human sculptors in that we get up every day, walking sometimes, reading rarely, eating often, thinking always, smoking moderately, enjoying enjoyment, looking, relaxing to see, loving nightly, finding amusement, encouraging life, fighting boredom, being natural, daydreaming, travelling along, drawing occasionally, talking lightly, tea drinking, feeling tired, dancing sometimes, philosophizing a lot, criticizing never, whistling tunefully, dying very slowly, laughing nervously, greeting politely and waiting till the day breaks. These two people resting on a five-bar gate. Such a simple easy thing to do and yet there is a little more to the story. Observe, for instance, the similarity of their poses, or look to the differences, one dark, one light. See the walking stick. One single-breasted suit and one double-breasted suit. Think of all that diagonal relaxation, for only the picture behind is symmetrical. With Very Best Wishes to You All from Gilbert and George

Gilbert & George, “We Are Only Human Sculptors: Two Text Pages Describing Our Position,” Sunday Times Magazine (London), January 10, 1970, 19–20; reprinted in Gilbert & George, 1968–1980 (Eindhoven, Netherlands: Municipal Van Abbemuseum, 1980), 84–85. © Gilbert & George.

170

64214int.indd 170

22-05-12 4:39 AM

R O B E R T R AU S C H E N B E R G 19 2 5 –2 0 0 8

ARTIST’S STATEMENT (1959)

Any incentive to paint is as good as any other. There is no poor subject. Painting is always strongest when in spite of composition, color, etc. it appears as a fact, or an inevitability, as opposed to a souvenir or arrangement. Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in that gap between the two.) A pair of socks is no less suitable to make a painting with than wood, nails, turpentine, oil and fabric. A canvas is never empty.

INTERVIEW WITH BARBARA ROSE (1987)

barbar a rose: What are the most inventive things you’ve done? robert r auschenberg: I don’t know—screwing light bulbs into a painting maybe. Trying to make the light come from the painting. Adding the luminosity from the painting to match the environment. That was the first evidence I had of wanting the work to be the room itself. Instead of the work depending on input from the outside, it was self-sufficient. The first one that I used mirrors in was in the Betty Parsons show. I used mirrors so that the room would become part of the painting. I didn’t even know what I was doing. Now I can rationalize it, but then I just did it. I did crazy things in those early Betty Parsons days—like cutting off my hair and putting it behind plastic and gluing it in. I did dirt paintings. I was working on one dirt painting underneath a bird cage. Then grass started growing on it and I had to take care of it. I did a piece that had to be planted for, I believe, the second Ninth Street Show. It was a wall piece. The inorganic matter was water glass. Then I mixed it with mud to support the structure of the growing plants.

Robert Rauschenberg, artist’s statement, in Dorothy C. Miller, ed., Sixteen Americans (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1959), 58. © 2022 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / © 2019 The Museum of Modern Art. Barbara Rose, excerpts from An Interview with Robert Rauschenberg (New York: Vintage Books, 1987), 56–58. © 2022 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

171

64214int.indd 171

22-05-12 4:40 AM

17. Robert Rauschenberg in his Front Street studio, New York City, 1958.

br: What happened to that work? rr: I had a really good friend who was into psychology and mysticism and psychotherapy. I wasn’t into that stuff, but he was okay. I bought two beautiful white mice for him as Christmas presents. I was going to take them to him, but he was out of sorts and didn’t want to see me that day. I was living on Fulton Street at the time and I didn’t have any heat. The poor mice froze to death during the night. So I broke the growing painting into bits. It was another sort of dying. The painting was having problems with the lack of heat anyway. And no one was particularly interested in it. They couldn’t see that there was more to it. There was the feeling that you have to take care of things in order to keep them going. That’s true with art. When the mice died, I killed the painting. br: You use real objects often in your work. rr: I started using real objects from the very first. I remember in the Navy I painted a picture of someone and I didn’t know much about painting. I used blood for the red—my blood. What’s the difference between real objects and unreal objects? Unreal objects are ideas that people have and real objects are things that are around you. Once I was in a museum and I saw a Picasso collage. He had done it in 1924, the year before I was born. I didn’t know about collage at the time and I thought, That’s not fair—I wasn’t born yet! Then I saw Marcel Duchamp’s stool with the bicycle wheel and I thought that was the most fantastic piece of sculpture I’d ever seen. It was showing with some things by Maillol. It wasn’t until later that I found out that Dada was supposed to be a European intellectual movement of protest against the

172    ROBERT R AUSCHENBERG

64214int.indd 172

22-05-12 4:40 AM

bourgeoisie. The surrealists “mothered” or “brothered” the Dadaists practically into obscurity because the surrealists had the authority of Jung and Freud and the Dadaists were progressive, revolutionary individuals. I found out shortly thereafter about collage because everyone was talking about Schwitters and I had to find out about him. The thing I like best about Schwitters is that Stefan Volpe, who was doing theater work in the Bauhaus, wrote music for the piece where the tenor rides around on the bicycle. I was always sorry I missed that performance. br: You have a special relationship with your materials. rr: All material has history. All material has its own history built into it. There’s no such thing as “better” material. It’s just as unnatural for people to use oil paint as it is to use anything else. An artist manufactures his material out of his own existence—his own ignorance, familiarity or confidence. I come to terms with my materials. They know and I know that we’re going to try something. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but I would substitute anything for preconceptions or deliberateness. If that moment can’t be as fresh, strange and unpredictable as what’s going on around you, then it’s false. The nature of some of my materials gave me an additional problem because I had to figure out how they could be physically supported on a wall when they obviously had no business being anywhere near a wall. That was the beginning of the combines. It also gave me another surface to work on, so it was economical too. When I did Bed, I had just literally run out of things to paint on. There was a quilt that I didn’t need and I thought it would be good. I had been working on flat surfaces and covering them with the newspaper funny pages. I was into color then. I guess my painting with the funnies could be said to be stranger than fiction. Bed could be considered the first combine except that it really doesn’t fit with the true combines. I think it was the Untitled piece in the Panza collection—the one with the Plymouth Rock chicken, mirrors and shoes in it—that was the first real combine painting.

ROBERT R AUSCHENBERG   173

64214int.indd 173

22-05-12 4:40 AM

JA S P E R J O H N S B O R N 19 3 0

A CONVERSATION WITH TERRY WINTERS (2011)

terry winters: A while ago I asked you what you were working on, and you said, “Sculpture, although sculptors might not think so.” jasper johns: I still think that. tw: Why wouldn’t they think so—where is that qualification coming from? jj: Well, I’ve made things exactly like these that I call paintings, with most of the same qualities but made with different material. I’ve often worked in wax and encaustic, and the originals of these sculptures were made in wax. It was very close to how I work on a painting, except I had in mind that these were to be sculpture. And I think that a lot of people might associate the low relief and the kinds of detail that are in these pieces more with painting than with sculpture. tw: It’s striking the way you’re blurring the distinctions between different media. The prints, for instance, almost function as drawings; it’s such an accessible and direct process for you. And the sculptures address so many issues about painting, they really do feel like cast or extruded paintings. jj: I’m aware of that. I suppose it is a limitation, this quality that they have. Certain things that I made in the past were classified as paintings until I cast them in metal, and then they became sculptures. What was called a sculpture was a cast of what was called a painting. tw: From very early on you were making sculptures that function in the paintings and around the paintings. What was the origin of that? Did you model clay or work with plaster as a kid? jj: Yes, I remember a fascination with plaster of Paris as a child and thinking that it was a wonderful material. tw: It’s very painterly. When you started making artwork, did you think of yourself as a sculptor or as a painter? jj: I wanted to be an artist. And I thought of myself as an artist, but I didn’t know what an artist was. So, I am not sure that “painting” and “sculpture” were separate categories for me. Terry Winters, excerpts from “Jasper Johns: In the Studio, A Conversation with Terry Winters,” in Jasper Johns: New Sculptures and Works on Paper (New York: Matthew Marks Gallery, 2011), 141–42, 146–49, 154– 57. Text courtesy of the author, © Terry Winters 2020. © 2022 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

174

64214int.indd 174

22-05-12 4:40 AM

tw: Do you remember making your first plaster casts? jj: I don’t remember when I first took life casts from friends. In childhood, there were little molds that one filled with plaster—figures of some sort—animals, maybe. tw: Like a toy. You had cast your own toy? jj: Yeah, something like that, but I don’t remember what they were. I’m not sure that I correctly remember it at all. tw: You’ve always dealt with paintings themselves as objects. Leo Steinberg talks about the strangeness of your first exhibition and how it was difficult for people to understand or see your work as paintings. jj: It was a concern of mine at the time—the painting as an object—an important thing that I thought many artists hadn’t noticed. It’s as though they’d never run into theirs in the night. [Laughs.] tw: Didn’t you once say that paintings ought to be looked at the way one looks at a radiator? These sculptures have that quality. They’re physically substantial. jj: Shortly after I said that, I covered my radiators with a seat, a sort of bench. They became no longer visible. [. . .] tw: I wanted to ask you about a note you made. It’s a reference to Baudelaire’s essay about the Salon of 1846. jj: Is it about sculpture and painting? tw: Yes. You had made a note to include Baudelaire’s text as part of a painting. The essay is called “Why Is Sculpture Boring?” He was referring to sculpture as an inferior art. One of the reasons he thought sculpture was boring, it turns out, was that it had too many “faces”—that is, too many ways to be seen. jj: You didn’t know how to look at it. tw: Your sculptures feel somehow symmetrical and whole: No matter where one stands, the complete form is understood. In a way, they bypass Baudelaire’s objections and function like paintings, as a singularity. Recently you made another singular object, a vase. It suggests, to me at least, complex spatial ideas that you’ve implied in earlier paintings. The vase forms a cylindrical space. Have you done anything like that before? jj: Connecting the two sides? tw: Connecting the two sides. You’ve suggested curving spaces through patterning systems in your paintings and drawings. With the vase, it’s striking to see even a simple numerical sequence curve in actual space. jj: The vase was made from an original wax from which some metal reliefs had been cast. Again, the foundry had taken a mold from the wax—I intended there to be an edition of four finished pieces—and my original work in wax remained. I thought to curve it into a cylinder, plug the end, and have a vase.

JA SPER JOHNS   175

64214int.indd 175

22-05-12 4:40 AM

tw: You once told a wonderful story about how to mend bed sheets—you won’t remember this. You said that while growing up it was standard practice to split old bed sheets down the worn middle and sew the less worn edges together. jj: So the weak part is on the outside. I had forgotten about that. It’s something my Aunt Gladys used to do. [Laughs.] tw: I like the idea of applying that same pragmatic approach to making art objects. Did you do preparatory drawings for the vase? jj: No, I just worked directly with the wax, and the one cast was made directly from that original. tw: Here’s an entry from one of your notebooks: A cylinder is depicted. In a related note, you wrote: “All marks spiral at one speed.” jj: That was about Usuyuki [1977–78], where I tried to indicate falling snow to show a spiraling motion—except I then added two other sets of marks, which— tw: —travel at different speeds? jj: Supposedly. It got so complicated that I’m not sure. tw: In regard to movements and spaces, I wanted to ask about your interest in Du­­ champ. When the first complete English translation of The Green Box appeared in 1960, was that a revelation to you—Duchamp’s involvement with geometric space? jj: I don’t know whether I’ve ever understood his ideas about space, really. tw: But it’s something that interested you? You even wrote a review of that publication. jj: Very naive. Well, it’s like anything. You can find some way to understand almost anything, but you may miss a lot. [Laughs.] tw: Duchamp’s “anti-art” position was always emphasized, so I wondered if the Eng­ lish publication of those extensive notes might have coincided with your own inter­ ests, or led you to engage those ideas somehow? jj: Well, it’s hard for me to know whether I have ever understood Marcel’s ideas, but certainly contacting his work boosted my confidence in my own. I think he showed that an artist could have ideas other than the ones usually being discussed. He was complicated. And when you say “anti-art,” I remember that there was a Monet show at MoMA in 1960 that Larry Rivers reviewed negatively in Art News. [Art critic] Nico Calas told me how extremely upset Duchamp was by Larry’s piece— which is amusing, isn’t it? tw: It’s funny—Monet is so visual and contrary to what’s usually associated with Duchamp. Which Monet paintings were being shown? jj: They included haystacks painted at different times of the day, I think, and maybe church facades.

176    JA SPER JOHNS

64214int.indd 176

22-05-12 4:40 AM

tw: I wonder how those paintings might have looked at that time, even in terms of paint application. Were they of any interest to you? jj: Not especially, no. But I’ve never been a good whatever-you-call-it—student of such things. I’m not sure what registers with me and what doesn’t, and it’s certainly not an orderly process. I think the work looked dry and preconceived. It can be difficult to remember what one once thought, but that’s probably the way I saw it then. And I never liked churches, I don’t know why. I’ve never felt strongly that religion offered much to people or, perhaps, to me. tw: Is your aversion to religion based on personal experience or something more fundamental? I could see your objection to its reliance on supernatural powers. jj: I really don’t know what it is. I think I might have been a good candidate for religious life if I hadn’t had some other ideas. [Laughter.] I mean, I think I would have been very devoted at one point, maybe as a youngster, but it all seemed to me to evaporate. tw: It’s just that much of your work declares a commitment to things in themselves. There’s an insistence about being here, not elsewhere. jj: I like to imagine that I am a realist. [. . .] tw: You’re doing virtually all the work on the sculptures yourself. You seem concerned with each detail of the production, even things that other sculptors might job out. That must be a conscious decision, especially at a time when so many artists are engaged with ideas about fabrication. Is that option out of the question for you? jj: It’s something I haven’t done. Obviously, I have to send work out to be cast, and usually l ask that they do nothing to “finish” the casts. But they are reluctant to turn things over if they don’t think they look good. Each time that they make a new cast, I think they assume they have learned something about how l work, and it’s probably true. tw: Anticipating what you’re looking for? jj: Exactly. I can see that they do that and begin to trust them a bit. The imperfect detail that I want kept is not something they’re accustomed to being concerned with. tw: Your insistence on doing it yourself, the patina and all the surface treatments, is almost an ethical commitment to an idea that the artwork is a consequence of your own labor. The work is handmade; and something is being accessed from your own sensibility. jj: In some way, it’s knowing what you want; and in another way, it’s not knowing what you want, and so it’s something that can’t be said before it happens. There is no way to say exactly what I’m doing before I do it. tw: So then, it’s a question of recognition—of recognizing what’s revealed through the process?

JA SPER JOHNS   177

64214int.indd 177

22-05-12 4:40 AM

jj: Yes, and accepting something that comes out of the process. tw: Then you’re open to the possibility of getting something that you wouldn’t have predicted, or couldn’t have. jj: Absolutely. tw: That brings to mind Duchamp’s “co-efficient of art”—the gap between the unexpressed but intended and the unintentionally expressed. jj: Yes, I think I understand that idea, and I don’t think I disagree with it. Things can sometimes appear to be over-expressed. We may identify something as best we can, and of course it’s very useful to do that. But there is still a possibility that the thing that we identify with seemingly great precision may be something else as well. tw: With anything, not just art objects? jj: Yes, but such ambiguity is particularly strong in art, in the way we think of art. tw: And is that because of the viewer’s interpretive role? jj: In part. We all have lives and ideas and relationships with things, and they seem to me to be infinitely shaded, not precise. Or at least not in precise agreement. We may or may not see the same thing, but there’s always an area of uncertainty. tw: Is that truer for material than for language? jj: Well, material is very like language. You have to use it and you can make a mess out of it. [Laughs.] tw: Do you think that material itself is a kind of language? Is the aluminum and the bronze each a particular language? jj: Well, they have character. And any modulation shifts meaning. tw: Because the methods of utilizing the material are a grammar? jj: Perhaps not grammar but expression.

178    JA SPER JOHNS

64214int.indd 178

22-05-12 4:40 AM

MARISOL 19 3 0 –2 016

INTERVIEW WITH CINDY NEMSER (1973)

cindy nemser: In your sculpture you make many different kinds of women, although many of them have your own features. I’m standing here in 1973 and looking back into the sixties. It seems to me that, even then, you were a precursor of the women’s movement in that you were looking for an identity—trying to explore different aspects of woman’s identity. marisol: Yes. There comes a point where you start asking, “Who am I?” I was trying to find out through my sculpture. That’s why I made all those masks and each one of them is different. Every time I would take a cast of my face it came out different. You have a million faces. It’s like photography: it’s spooky. cn: I know. Whenever you see a photograph of yourself, you always look different. You try to figure out which photograph is really you. m: Well, sometimes—no, most of the time—the photographs look like the person who’s taking them—the photographer. I don’t know how that happens. Well, maybe that means that everybody really looks alike. It’s so spooky. cn: I read about that stunt you did in the fifties at the Artists’ Club. Grace Glueck, in her article in the New York Times Magazine in 1965, described how you came with a Japanese-style mask painted white, and when you took off the mask, you had your face made up exactly like the mask. That was a marvelous thing to have done. Was it a kind of protective device? m: That was just for fun, because those lectures had become so boring. cn: But if you probe deeper, weren’t you perhaps protecting yourself through your art from people who could hurt you? m: I don’t hide anything. I’m not embarrassed about anything. cn: But you have this mystique that people talk about—this mystique of silence. People say, “Marisol never talks.” m: Well, I think that’s a way to wipe me out. They used to say I am mysterious and like a madonna, and that I don’t say anything. I was thinking about it the other day. It is a way to wipe you out, isn’t it? Marisol Escobar, excerpts from an interview with Cindy Nemser, Art Talk: Conversations with 12 Women Artists (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975), 181–82, 186–87, 190–91. Text courtesy of the author, © Cindy Nemser 2020. © 2022 Estate of Marisol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

179

64214int.indd 179

22-05-12 4:40 AM

cn: Well, you were a myth. All the fashion magazines wrote about you. Andy Warhol said you were the first glamorous girl artist. That is the kind of thing done to women to make them into the mysterious Other. m: I’m a very good artist, but I have to seem like a spook and not really like a person. I think Andy Warhol did it so I could get away with being an artist. Now, maybe I’ve become paranoid, but it seems to me that in the sixties the men did not feel threatened by me. They thought I was cute and spooky, but they didn’t take my art so seriously. Now, they take my art more seriously, but they don’t like me so much. But, maybe I’m paranoid. cn: No, I don’t think so. The whole idea of a woman making an achievement could be explained away by making her something unreal. Otherwise, she becomes very threatening. It’s the same with Louise Nevelson. She was always presented (and presents herself) as the great eccentric. But she’s also a very real, warm human being. Nowadays, however, there are too many women artists on the scene to allow one to get away with being a woman just because she is different. How did you feel about this mythmaking around you in the sixties? m: I went along with it, just for the experience. Maybe it was a way of doing my art. But I also enjoyed it, because I am very curious. I like to do lots of different things. So at one point I was like a beatnik; then, at one point I wanted to be a society girl; then a diver, a skier. I’m very curious. But it is not that I really believe in all these things. cn: But isn’t that like wearing masks? Like roles one plays. m: No. It doesn’t have to be such a role—just an experience from life. [. . .] cn: I notice in your sculpture that you have so many different types. You range from a portrait of a Family from the Dust Bowl to the society women in The Party. m: That was from meeting those kinds of society people. It was some kind of commentary on that experience. cn: In the past you’ve said that your art didn’t make a commentary—that you were just interested in the forms you worked with and not the content. m: No. My work had a lot of content. My idea was to work for everybody, because I saw that art had become such a highbrow thing—just for a few people. It’s just that I think people see it, so why should I explain every detail? I remember when I did a group of politicians, a man came up and he said, “Well, is this political art?” And I said, “No, it has nothing to do with it.” cn: Yet there’s a difference between your art and such other Pop artists as Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Rosenquist. They took vulgar advertising images and made them into high art. However, that art wasn’t for many people, because most people saw they were just advertising images and felt the artists were putting them on—making fun of them. But there’s more sympathy for people in your art.

180    MARISOL

64214int.indd 180

22-05-12 4:40 AM

18. Installation view of Marisol’s solo exhibition at the Stable Gallery, New York City, May 8–26, 1962.

You aren’t throwing lowbrow images back into people’s faces and telling them it’s high art. m: No. It’s criticism—social criticism. I’m surprised that, up to this day, some people never understood what I was saying—like a close friend of mine. I always thought everybody knew it. [. . .] cn: It seems to me that the period from ’64 to ’67, which we talked about, was the end of something. It was the end of a time when things could be swept under the rug. All sorts of fermentation was taking place, all the seeds for the rebellions, the demonstrations, the reactions against the war were growing in this country. But the art world acted as if it wasn’t happening. It was in the art, but nobody saw it, nobody wanted to see it. The people at the top were having an exciting good time, but the rest of society was getting angry and eventually they exploded. You must have felt this, since you became depressed and left about the time everything erupted. These new fish images you are doing now emerged after you left, didn’t they? m: I think that’s from going to the Far East. When I came back I felt like doing something very pure, just for the sake of it. In some cases I worked on one piece for six months. I wanted to do something very beautiful. cn: Yet the faces, your face which is joined to the body of many of the fish [in the Fish series from 1972–73], looks as if it is in great pain, experiencing terrible anguish— like a baroque sculpture of the seventeenth century. Some of the fish are predators. They are frightening and dangerous creatures.

MARISOL    181

64214int.indd 181

22-05-12 4:40 AM

m: Most of the fish are evil fish. There are barracuda and tiger fish. I haven’t analyzed what I am doing this time. At one point I thought that I was making weapons, because I had these skinny long pieces, and they were aiming out of the window like missiles. cn: They have that kind of sleekness about them, but these pieces are very far from the kind of work you did in the sixties. m: I am not working for the general public any more. cn: Why is that? m: I lost interest. I don’t want to reach them. I’ve lost interest in them. They look ugly to me. Yes . . . Suddenly I made a portrait of Nixon, and it was like a nightmare thinking about this person. I would go into the subway, and everybody had that face—the very tight lips and sort of grayish complexion. I really would have nightmares at night. So I can’t think about those people or represent them. I want to make something very beautiful. cn: But in a sense these are very frightening things you’ve made. m: Oh, awful. cn: There’s the pain and anguish of someone who’s suffering, on the faces of the fish, which is your face. They are surreal-nightmare visions. They are monsters from the sea. Was doing them like making a descent? m: I think it’s that I was sort of disturbed. When I was on an island, some people taught me how to go scuba diving. When I first went down I went to the bottom and I was resting. I didn’t get up and my teacher, who understood me so well, told me, “Go down to the bottom of the sea and take a rest.”

182    MARISOL

64214int.indd 182

22-05-12 4:40 AM

N A M J U N E PA I K 19 3 2 –2 0 0 6

INTERVIEW WITH JUD YALKUT (1968)

jud yalkut: John Gruen has referred to you as “the embodiment of the Combine Generation compulsion to be latter-day Renaissance man of the arts” by being at once a kinetic sculptor, a composer, a filmmaker, an actor, and a theoretician. What new roles have you assimilated? nam june paik: I am the greatest Haiku poet of all periods since 1967, and it is scientifically provable. 17111 is a magic number. Haiku poems consist of 17 syllables and there are no more than 111 syllables in the Japanese language, therefore 17111 is the total possibility of all Haiku poems including the best and the worst. When I let the computer write out all these possibilities, which is pretty easy, thereafter no one can write any more Haiku poems. Whatever they might write, however they might sweat, the result will be one of my Haiku poems. The best Haiku poet from now on will be at best the editor of my poems. jy: And what about your views on the possibilities of LASER? njp: In 1965, Billy Kluver asked the question: “If you could have unlimited money to use technical means for artistic uses, how would you do it?” One of my answers was to make many, many LASER TV and radio stations, so we could have, for example, a Cage only station, a Brakhage only TV station, etc. Color has been the biggest problem in twentieth-century life, but color will be the biggest problem in death in the twenty-second century. Because of the LASER gun, we will have not only the luxury of life or death, but the choice of the color of death—violet death, pink suicide, transparent Nirvana, tricolor hara-kiri, etc. I think it will be the biggest invention since the electric knife. jy: As a communication specialist, what role do you envision for the artist? njp: Eighty per cent of the family planning job in India is the publicity job, for which artists are best talented. The only way to reach an Indian villager is through the mixed-media language, which is the avant-garde artist’s own language. Meanwhile, a first-class ad man would never go to India to live, and probably third-class talents are getting paid in India at first-class rates and are doing third-class jobs. Bizarre

Jud Yalkut, “Art and Technology of Nam June Paik,” Arts Magazine 42, no. 6 (April 1968): 50–51. Reprinted in Nam June Paik: Videa ’n’ Videology, 1959–1973, ed. Judson Rosebush (Syracuse, NY: Everson Museum of Art, 1974), n.p. © Nam June Paik Estate.

183

64214int.indd 183

22-05-12 4:40 AM

vision, unorthodox approach, rich imagination and, most importantly, a genuine love for India and a will to study and admire Indian culture—all these make the artist a qualified publicity worker for family planning, and probably more talent for this work will be gathered among artists than any other group. jy: What is your contribution to the C.I.A.? njp: A great deal. (A) Most of my electronic TV work is a scanning variation. I think I have more scientific data on the scanning pattern than any lab on earth, and this is something for the C.I.A. For example, if the Republic of Tanganyika sent their moon ship to the moon and wanted to send their picture back to earth in a way that the Republics of Uganda or Katanga could not see its content, then they could scramble the picture according to one of my 1,000 scanning patterns and send it back to earth. In this way, the power balance in Africa would be stable forever. (B) The use of the “synthetic face” for police identification and beauty surgery will enable us to construct any kind of face on a TV screen, e.g., a suspect who has the long contour of John Wayne, the melancholy eyes of James Mason plus Chou EnLai, half- bald as Yul Brynner, oriental flat nose, but with the sensual mouth of, say, Oscar Wilde and wearing glasses like James Joyce’s, and with the sex appeal of Henri Vidal. jy: What is your main concern as of now? njp: As a responsible citizen, I am very worried about the moral consequences of the picture telephone. First of all, the picturephone will undoubtedly soar the sales and spur the design of gorgeous negligees. When you get a telephone call at night, you want to be seen in your best pajamas. This has its positive aspect for society. Say, a businessman goes to a convention in the Midwest and wants to say good night with a picturephone call to his beloved wife in New York, in their East Side brownstone house. They talk to each other, a bit of escalation, and kiss through the picture, a bit of escalation, they try to hug through the picture, in vain, frustration and a bit more escalation. Then maybe a daring wife might talk to her husband topless, perhaps that’s still okay. But what happens if there is a professional good-night answering service, which has a staff of buxomy blondes, doing picturephone answering service? How will this affect the whole Park Avenue call-girl business? And what if micro-boppers get that telephone number? I urge, as a responsible citizen, that a special committee be set up in Congress for this further attack on morality. John Cage expressed similar concern already a few years ago. jy: What do you think of the urging of J. J. Akston in the February Arts magazine for an art and business collaboration? njp: Yes, I urge that the top 500 businesses create an “artist in residence” position to advise in marketing, advertisement, and the research of new products on the top level, so that their unorthodox, fresh sense can vitalize a big corporation hierarchy.

184    NAM JUNE PAIK

64214int.indd 184

22-05-12 4:40 AM

For example, John Cage as artist in residence of I.B.M., Allan Kaprow in the Chase Manhattan Bank, Mary Bauermeister in Helena Rubinstein, Christo in the United Packing Company, Otto Piene in Polaroid, USCO in General Motors, Nam June Paik in the Something Else Concern. . . . jy: Whom do you recommend to Dow Chemical? njp: Franz Schubert. jy: Now even Ray Johnson is going out with a petite computeress. What have been your results with the computer itches? njp: Max Matthews of Bell Labs has quoted John Cage, who said that if you are surprised with the result, then the machine has composed the piece. If you are not surprised, then you have composed it. I found out, however, that no matter how genial a computer might be, “he” has no common sense. For example, instead of just saying “Walk,” you have to break it down to logical steps, that is, give the weight to the left half of your body, give strength to the muscles below the knee, put the energy to the vector pointing to the sky, making 90 degrees to the earth, move the vector to 160 degrees to the earth, give the energy to the leg in the direction of the earth, using also universal gravitation, stop the movement as soon as the distance between your leg and the earth comes to zero, repeat the above process for your right leg, the right leg meaning your leg on the right side of your body, then repeat the entire process 100 times. I decided to title all my computer pieces in French, to protest the lack of common sense in the computer. Verlaine wrote: “It rains in my heart, as it rains in the city.” I say: “It rains in my computer, as it rains in my heart”—“Il pluit dans mon computeur” will be my first piece. It is the mix of real rain and simulated rain in the computer. My second piece will be called “La Computeur sentimentale,” and the third piece, “Aimez-vous FORTRAN-programming?” The more it deals with the character of randomness and repetition, the more efficient is the computer. These are the two poles of human artistic materials. Total repetition means total determinism. Total randomness means total indeterminism. Both are mathematically simply explicable. The problem is how to use these two characters effectively. Therein lies the secret for the successful usage of the computer in the creative arts. jy: You have worked with electronic music since 1958 and with electronic painting since 1960. What is your opinion on the current stage of the art and technology boom? njp: If revolution meant electrification for the Russians of 1920; and for the Americans of 1940, wall-to-wall carpeting; then revolution in 1960 means electronification, from mind to mind and from planet to planet. But even McLuhan misuses and mixes up the words “electric” and “electronic,” which have as much difference as tonal and atonal. In the electronic trade jargon,

NAM JUNE PAIK   185

64214int.indd 185

22-05-12 4:40 AM

we distinguish roughly two sorts of processes: (1) peripheral units, that is, various input-output units and gate circuits: and (2) central processing units, that is, the various data-storage and data-processing units, which have some similarity with organic unity, the animal and human machines. Many art works using electronics up to now have been in the first stage. Whether you use a capacitor switch, a photocell switch, or wireless control, it is still the peripheral unit and does not reach the central processing unit. Data Processing is the superior meaning. Some of my color TV works which I will show at my forthcoming Bonino show will have this kind of data processing unit, because they have some discontrol elements among the three constituents, the creator-artwork-and-viewer. They are moving independently, that is, affecting each other, but not determining each other. I also envisage the day when the collaboration of artist and engineer will progress into the unification of artist and engineer into one person. According to my past experience, the best results were achieved through accident and error. As you see, the transistor was discovered by accident. This means that the present computer age was the product of chance to a high degree. Therefore, if I give an order to an engineer, and if I don’t go through all the experiments myself (that is, the complicated process of trial and error), I will lose all these precious errors, I will only get what I want, and miss all the disappointment and surprises. I have found that the byproduct is often more valuable than the first envisioned aim. And, to look back to the classics, Leonardo’s scientific study of perspectives was inseparable from his artistic achievement, Chopin’s and Debussy’s piano virtuosity was inseparable from their compositional imagination. Although the piano has only 88 keys, now we have, in color TV, 12 million dots per second, which I have somehow to control for my work. It is like composing a piano concerto using a piano equipped with 12 million keys. How can you deal with that vast quantity of possibility without the painstaking study of your materials and instruments? jy: Besides your latest color TV work, what other elements will constitute your Bonino Gallery show opening in mid-April? njp: One element will be electronic antique art. I am using some first-class Japanese art works and combining them with new electric media, without harming the original antique work. Thus the buyer is sure to own at least one authentic and secure investment, even if Nam June Paik is completely forgotten by the year 2000; and if my reputation does survive till then, they will then own two authentic works. It is a game in which the buyer never loses. One more new idea is the collaboration of two artists, like Cage and Tudor in the performance of music, but never done quite this way in the visual arts. Mary Bauermeister, Ayo, Robert Breer, Ray Johnson, and possibly Bob Benson and Otto Piene, will make the exterior housing of my TV as their own composition. In serious art, becoming a celebrity is only a passage to anonymity and these collaborations are a modest but beautiful stepping-stone to the utopian republic of anonymity.

186    NAM JUNE PAIK

64214int.indd 186

22-05-12 4:40 AM

19. Charlotte Moorman performing Nam June Paik’s Concerto for TV Cello and Videotapes, 1971, at Galeria Bonino, New York City, November 23, 1971.

64214int.indd 187

22-05-12 4:40 AM

64214int.indd 188

22-05-12 4:40 AM

P O L E M I C S , PA R AG R A P H S , P R O P O S I T I O N S Teacher, architect, painter, and sculptor Tony Smith took a long view of art—its significance, modalities, and cultural relevance. His early interest in organic principles and unifying patterns provided a philosophical perspective that informed his thinking about architecture and eventually sculpture. It is not surprising that his ideas around the “Pattern of Organic Life in America” took root during World War II, amid catastrophic chaos. Organic signifies unification, natural systems, perpetual change, and transformation. Nature reveals a spectrum of patterns, micro- and macrocosmic, if one has the vision and wherewithal to perceive them. By the time Smith, accompanied by three students from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, took a nocturnal drive on an unfinished section of the New Jersey Turnpike in the early 1950s, he sensed the domain of aesthetic experience expanding; bodies streaming through a dark landscape along a road with no beginning or end signaled “the end of art” as one had known it. As a practicing architect, he understood how people negotiate enclosed spaces. But the turnpike experience, expansive and epiphanic, clearly altered his aesthetic consciousness and in turn would inspire others, who traveled alternate routes to even more remote locations, with entirely different outcomes. Donald Judd had definitive ideas about what sculpture was and was not, and, along with Robert Morris and Sol LeWitt, he set the terms for a Euclidean expression of minimal flourish. Being the first sculptor of his generation to clearly articulate his views, he inspired others to do the same. Generalities were anathema to Judd. His was an art of specificity, clean edges, and pristine surfaces, literal objects that eschewed histrionic gestures and subjective posturings. He appreciated the earlier efforts of certain Abstract Expressionists, like Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock, but to him their work remained “less credible” because its humanistic subtext lacked the requisite “specificity.” As a sculptor who wrote criticism and frequented galleries and museums around New York, he formulated his own aesthetic position based on everything he saw and considered. “Specific Objects,” the watershed essay he drafted in 1964 and published a year later in Arts Yearbook, shortly after his “Statement” appeared in Barbara Rose’s “ABC Art,” 1965, was a culmination of this early reconnaissance. Judd’s prescription for “Specific Objects” lauded three-dimensional work that was “non-relational,” “clear and powerful,” not the profusion of disparate elements common to assemblage but a unified gestalt. He endorsed objects that combined painting and sculpture, seeing this hybrid condition as a viable direction, in opposition to the bifurcated tactic taken by formalist critics like Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried. Still, the exact nature of Judd’s “Specific Objects,” particularly its kinship to modernism, was not a simple matter of negation or rejection but, rather, a contingent, ever-evolving point of view.

64214int.indd 189

22-05-12 4:40 AM

The same could be said of his political perspective, which contested dominant “kinds of power and many of the prevailing attitudes” while accommodating industrial methods of high-gloss production. In his “Notes on Sculpture,” a riposte to Judd, Robert Morris scrutinizes what differentiates the sculptural from the pictorial. The first installment of “Notes” established Morris as a serious writer and theorist. He begins by praising a kindred theorist, George Kubler, as well as a sympathetic critic, a composer, and a painter— Rose, John Cage, Newman—for guiding his thinking. He also mentions modernist sculptors—Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Rodchenko, Naum Gabo, Antoine Pevsner, Georges Vantongerloo—to historicize his ideas. Sculpture’s physical properties (proportion, shape, and mass) were paramount to Morris, who relegates color to the optical domain of painting, lobbies for a sculptural skin of neutral hues—to “allow for the maximum focus on those essential physical decisions which inform sculptural work”—and argues for the use of regular and irregular polyhedrons—“unitary” forms arranged in controlled settings that enable the viewer to experience an allat-once impression. Implicating the viewer as an active participant in the sculptural experience was a natural outcome of Morris’s close friendships with dancers, musicians, and choreographers associated with Judson Dance Theater (1962–64). What began as a gestalt proposition, through subsequent iterations of “Notes” (parts 2–4), assumed a phenomenological, antiform orientation with environmental implications. During the late 1960s, Robert Irwin spent extended hours sitting in an anechoic chamber at the University of California, Los Angeles. Powers of perception are heightened in such an extreme setting, absent light and sound. One retreats inward, tuning in to retinal images stored in the brain, a beating heart, or body pulsations. These sensory deprivation sessions, undertaken with fellow artist James Turrell and psychologist Edward Wortz, as part of curator Maurice Tuchman’s Art and Technology Program (1967–71) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, affected Irwin’s views about what constitutes an aesthetic experience. Subsequent road trips to the southwestern desert (into Arizona and farther south to Mexico) confirmed his instincts about an art derived from the “quality of phenomena.” Irwin’s extensive writings, coupled with his more than thirty-year conversation with author Lawrence Weschler, published as Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, 1982, are essential primers for anyone interested in the West Coast Light and Space movement. The text excerpted here, from the essay “Conditional,” illuminates the contingencies—intention, site, being, and circumstance—of sensorial encounters through art and life. A voice of conscience in the rarefied realm of art is one way to describe the more than sixty-year trajectory of Hans Haacke’s sculptural practice. German-born Haacke saw through the art world’s commodity-tainted veneer early on and set out during the 1970s to expose determining forces (social, political, economic) at play. Longtime tenure at New York’s Cooper Union, from 1967 to 2002, enabled this con-

190

64214int.indd 190

22-05-12 4:40 AM

trarian to persist, leavening inequity and pretention with political savvy and social awareness. Relational and content driven, his installations can be deliberately accusatory and confrontational. No cultural institution or individual is immune to his probing critiques, which tease out affinities between aesthetics and politics in contexts that enable viewers to contribute to the “creative act.” Haacke’s exposés sidestep propagandistic ballyhoo. Political agendas do not necessarily rule out poetic solutions when it comes to tackling complex cultural issues. One can be subversive and sly without compromising the art’s integrity. Mierle Laderman Ukeles composed her MANIFESTO FOR MAINTENANCE ART 1969! the same year Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and five hundred thousand countercultural youths gathered for three days at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in upstate New York. At a portentous moment in the cosmic frame of time, life and death became the existential pillars in her call for humane actions, recognizing that, without maintenance, any kind of revolutionary movement becomes a house of cards. It was as simple as “who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?” Ukeles saw urban maintenance as a feminist cause, mainstreaming its underdog status through exhibition, discourse, and debate. Fifteen years later, the manifesto’s environmental aspirations became a consciousness-raising public art project. As an artist in residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation, Ukeles infiltrated the sanitation system from the inside out, first by analyzing its constituent parts, then by honoring its enablers—the people who drove the trucks, picked up the garbage, and delivered it to various dumps. To this day, Ukeles’s performative sculptural practice approaches “reality” as a social system with endless points of remedial access. A somewhat reluctant Sol LeWitt joined a cadre of theoretically inclined sculptors when he composed a series of paragraphs clarifying the character of Conceptual art. He focused on analytical ideas but, with a touch of humor, admitted that some ideas can be illogical—the fruits of intuitional flashes. “Most ideas that are successful,” he proffered, “are ludicrously simple.” LeWitt understood that the gap between artistic conception and an individual’s perception could be vast. Even the simplest idea, once conceived, could defy the laws of logic when subjectivity intervened. His own work flourished through serial variations and iterations. Rigorous ideational exploration helped to eliminate “the arbitrary, the capricious, and the subjective as much as possible.” Simple modular forms were preferred, so as not to disrupt “the unity of the whole.” The germination of ideas through “scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed works, models, studies, thoughts, conversations” encouraged alternate methodologies, as did the prompt “Ideas may also be stated in numbers, photographs, or words or any way the artist chooses, the form being unimportant.” LeWitt was not out to codify Conceptual art as a monolithic practice. He knew that an idea-based art would mean different things to different artists and that the “paragraphs” were an invitation to think differently about what art could be, all the while realizing that not all concepts lead to significant art.

191

64214int.indd 191

22-05-12 4:40 AM

Lee Bontecou prefers to let her work speak for itself, though on occasion, over the course of forty years, a published statement or interview has proven insightful. The brooding sculptural reliefs she welded and stitched together during the early 1960s—canvas and copper-wire constructions bearing ominous dark holes, some lined with black velvet—drew the attention of notable curators and critics, including Dorothy Miller, who featured them in the Americans 1963 exhibition. Bontecou penned a brief statement for that catalogue, encouraging people to see the work in relation to the world at large and to oppositional forces that shadow lives. The same year, Judd cited her work, praising its “primary and determining structure,” and two years later, he folded one of her mysterious objects into his “Specific Objects” roster. For more than a decade, while represented by the Leo Castelli Gallery, she sustained an international profile. Then, after a startling show of vacuum-formed plastic fish and flowers in 1971, followed by a few smaller shows outside New York, she all but disappeared. During a nearly twenty-year hiatus, she continued to make sculpture and, as she had always done, to draw. Her auspicious return in 1993, through a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, followed ten years later by a major retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, came as a revelation, even to those who had followed her earlier work. Having remained taciturn for so many years, while others wrote and spoke on her behalf, Bontecou felt compelled to write a statement at the time of her 2003 retrospective. In it she notes the complex character of the natural world and of human nature—“wonders and horrors,” “mind-boggling engineering feats and destructive abominations”—as influences. She also acknowledges institutions whose ethnographic collections inspired her, in addition to kindred individuals who shared the same creative path. Her text shines as a late-in-life declaration of intent. For most artists, what counts most is the work, concentrating on the matter at hand, so as not to get waylaid by mundane responsibilities. Still, life intervenes. “Artists have no choice but to express their lives,” Anne Truitt mused on July 31, 1974, in one of her many daybooks. A Minimalist sculptor whose hand-painted wooden objects and columns evoke the poetry of people, places, and things, Truitt found the act of writing cathartic, another form of personal expression. Candid about her daily challenges as a wife and mother, she compares the artistic journey to a night ride on a faithful horse through torrential rains without knowing the final destination. Having made the ride once, one musters the courage to do it again, confident that with each nocturnal excursion comes experience, knowledge, and perspective. Given the opportunity, in 1973 and 1974, to mount surveys of her sculptures and drawings with the curator Walter Hopps, first at the Whitney Museum of American Art and then at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Truitt temporarily dismounted the imaginary horse to assess her accomplishments. Revisiting what she had done during the early 1960s, though at times she found it difficult to reenter the work’s emotional fabric, enabled her to push forward with greater clarity. It was around this time that she began to ruminate in notebooks, beginning at a friend’s house in

192

64214int.indd 192

22-05-12 4:40 AM

Arizona while “sitting up in bed every morning and writing for as long a time as seemed right” and continuing during productive stints at Yaddo, the artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. Her musings illuminate her journey as a sculptor of minimal objects with maximal implications. In 1964 Carl Andre composed an essay on sculpture and dedicated it to his friend and advocate, the curator and critic E. C. Goossen. The composition—nouns arranged in roughly alphabetical order, typed one on top of the other to form two irregular, sawtooth columns—presents a modular sequence of sculptural precepts. Andre described these early, meticulously conceived sheets as “planar poetry.” Pared down to essence, each word, a discrete unit, connotes a material, a thing, a place, or a possibility. Some words, like “dike,” “crypt,” “roof,” “slot,” and “mast,” seem like unlikely sculptural analogues. But that is the point; Andre’s view of sculpture, at this juncture, was the equivalent of an open field, a slate of theoretical propositions. A dome or floor or trench or hill or hole signified another kind of sculpture, with affinities to architecture and the natural environment. From the fertile recesses of a poet’s mind came a series of concrete prompts—typed on paper, letter by letter, word by word—an essay that reset the terms of what sculpture could become. Evoking the names of Constantin Brancusi and Tatlin as art historical ballast, Dan Flavin positioned himself on the shoulders of those sculptural giants. Brancusi’s Endless Column of 1918 and Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International, 1919–20, milestones of modernism, offered a foothold to the past and a portal to the future. Traditional icon paintings, with their ineffable light, also captured Flavin’s imagination. Eventually light became his medium of choice—not the transcendent light of Russian icons but the “dumb-anonymous and inglorious” light of commercial fixtures available at building supply shops on Canal Street in downtown Manhattan. Using prefabricated fluorescent units, Flavin diagrammatically designed “situations” for “interior spatial containers,” domestic rooms, and white-box spaces. When he describes his early efforts “to combine traditions of painting and sculpture in architecture with acts of electric light defining space,” one senses a lingering affinity to Abstract Expressionism. With time, however, came a clearer sense of purpose. “I don’t like the term environment,” he replied to museum director Jan van der Marck, who probably mentioned the word in reference to a proposal then on the table. Van der Marck’s semantic misstep gave Flavin the opportunity to explain that his installations were not intended as comfortable settings, where one might meditate for endless hours, but, rather, as confrontational contexts for “rapid comprehension—get in and get out situations.” By 1967 he did not even want his efforts to be construed as sculpture or himself as a sculptor, per se. His work, he declared, was not “three-dimensional still work” but contextually determined ideas adapted for a particular site—“an interchangeable system of diagrams for fluorescent light held for situation installation.” Richard Artschwager dreamed up some of the quirkiest objects imaginable: a table conceived as a square wooden cube laminated with pink and brown Formica

193

64214int.indd 193

22-05-12 4:40 AM

(Table with Pink Tablecloth, 1964); a plaque made out of rubberized horsehair (Untitled, 1969); a stylized organ constructed out of Formica and latex paint on plywood (Organ of Cause and Effect III, 1986). Are these things furniture? Fine art? Minimalist contraptions from outer space? The outlandish creations of an eccentric inventor? When the sculptor described his objectives to Barbara Rose in 1965, he sounded more like an engineer or an architect, which may explain why his brand of utilitarian-inspired objects defies easy classification. Artschwager wrote “Art and Reason” when he was sixty-seven years old. By then he had carved out a distinctive niche in the art world, having begun as an artisan furniture maker before signing on with the Leo Castelli Gallery for an impressive twenty-five-year run. By 1990 he could afford to be honest about what he saw as an increasingly cybersaturated world, and in tone and content, the piece could have been written by a cultural anthropologist or even a philosopher. His perception of physical versus social space is poignant from today’s digital perspective. Physical space, “the natural habitat for art,” harks back to a predigital era. Its dimensions are boundless, palpable; one can actually navigate through it with “no ulterior purpose, except possibly to celebrate what is generally meant by respect for life.” In contrast, Artschwager saw social space as transactional, where “every move has a value.” The situation has profound cultural ramifications, particularly for individuals who play by their own rules and pursue their own idiosyncratic ends. In the annals of Minimalism, Ronald Bladen stands out as an endearingly anomalous romantic. In the spring of 1966, shortly after Kynaston McShine’s exhibition Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculpture closed at the Jewish Museum, Bladen was asked by the poet and critic Bill Berkson what he thought of the “more is less” dictum and the ascendance of “minimal art.” “If by ‘more’ you mean more of a dramatic quality,” the British Columbia–born sculptor responded, “that is, more drama as a result of the greater simplicity of a statement, then I would agree. But the ‘minimal’ artists don’t mean drama. They mean less is sufficient. Whereas what I am after is to create drama out of a minimal experience—to make use of it in terms of geometrical construction.” Dramatic presentation was important to Bladen. So were heroic scale and a reductive geometry that evoked the paintings of Newman, Rothko, and Clyfford Still. “Ronnie’s position was contrary to the belief that the hero was dead and something heroic was no longer possible,” his good friend the painter Al Held told this author in 1995. “His work is very Blakean in the sense that it is very heroic. It aspired to the heroic when the Minimalists were talking about anti-heroic and anti-mythic qualities. Every single one of Ronnie’s pieces is embedded with mythic and epic qualities. Those gigantic sculptures are either self-images or images of great epic heroes, gods, and goddesses. Nothing short of that.” Bladen obviously read what Judd, Morris, and LeWitt wrote, and he adapted some of their ideas regarding integrity of materials, literal space, and monochromatic color. But he refused to relinquish sculpture’s metaphorical potential, just as he sustained a birthright connection to nature—the transcendent properties of light.

194

64214int.indd 194

22-05-12 4:40 AM

Eva Hesse never dismissed her early training, as a painter, with Josef Albers at Yale University (1958–59), persistently violating what she considered to be arbitrary delineations between painting and sculpture. She navigated within the formal boundaries of a Minimalist discourse but veered toward extremes that transfigured the minimal object. Her receptiveness to work by LeWitt, Judd, and Andre was balanced by a deep respect for the work of Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, and Lee Bontecou. Her uneasiness about the cool constraint of the former artists was tempered by the (sometimes fetishistic) exuberance of the latter. Labeled an “Abstract Inflationist,” “Stuffed Expressionist,” and “Eccentric Abstractionist,” Hesse never occupied stylistic classifications comfortably. Interviewed by Cindy Nemser in 1970, after being diagnosed with a brain tumor, she had prolific ideas but limited energy. Things that had preoccupied her, like planning ahead and managing the studio herself, became less important. She continued to make work, knowing full well that many of her materials (cheesecloth, fiberglass, papier-mâché, rubber, yarn) were fugitive. On the one hand, she felt guilty about making something someone might buy, only to see it eventually disappear. On the other, given her dire circumstances and her belief in life’s absurdity, she remained pragmatic: “Life doesn’t last; art doesn’t last. It doesn’t matter.” Richard Serra remains committed to fundamental sculptural principles—mass, volume, space—and to the base-plane questions these raise: How does sculpture mark and displace space? How do materials, coupled with one’s choice of site, determine an object’s character and composition? What is the desired relationship between the viewer and the object? Determined to keep the creative process open, Serra’s “Extended Notes from Sight Point Road” are a midlife testament to what being a sculptor in the grand stream of historical time entails. The “Notes” exemplify his approach to the medium, from the germination of ideas through “experimentation” and “invention” to the actual production of work in steel mills, shipyards, and fabrication plants. He acknowledges his place in the pantheon of welders but distances himself from Julio González, Pablo Picasso, and David Smith, whose transportable objects epitomize a pictorial “part-relation-to-whole sensibility.” Instead, he equates his site-determined gargantuan arcs, curves, walls, and slates with architects and engineers—Gustave Eiffel, John Roebling, Robert Maillart, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe—who dealt “with steel as a building material in terms of mass, weight, counterbalance, load-bearing capacity, and point load.” His discussion of “contextual issues” surrounding site-specific installations is insightful, even though poignant, given the eventual fate of Tilted Arc, a commission sponsored by the US General Services Administration in 1981 and destroyed, after years of litigation, five years after the “Notes” were written. Without a designated site, sculpture is vulnerable, vagabond, and threatened by the capricious whims of a market-driven system. Even with a site, challenges remain. From years of experience, Serra knows what is at stake: that a dedicated audience for sculpture is wishful thinking, and that any sculptural object placed in the public domain is subject to

195

64214int.indd 195

22-05-12 4:40 AM

scrutiny and potential scorn. But all of this only reinforces his resolve to see sculpture as an inviolate language bound by its own internal necessities and responsive to the ordained site that gives it meaning. When Richard Tuttle talks about reality, he is well aware that the word signifies a contingent state of sentient being. If post-Minimalism (sculptors whose diverse work defined the period between 1965 and 1975) claimed a poet laureate, it would be Tuttle, for whom living is an art and working is the justification for dreaming. Drawing may be synonymous with dreaming, which is probably why Tuttle equates it with life. Both are fluid and ever-changing, require discipline, and thrive in unstructured, spontaneous circumstances. With so little riding on such an ephemeral act, it is easier to fail and to see failure as an alternate course. Tuttle’s poetic disposition permeates everything he does and may explain why so much of the work—its unassuming materials, marks, and gestures—has the lightness of helium. Tuttle prefers to keep all creative options open. Not every idea has to be resolved; some disappear like wisps of unraveled thread. Letting the work take you places in your mind, places you have not been or would not ordinarily visit, enables alternate realities to unfold. Most of what Bruce Nauman has accomplished over the course of forty-four years has some reciprocity with the body, generally his own: making molds and impressions from body parts (Wax Impressions of Knees of Five Famous Artists, 1967); layering on excessive amounts of makeup (Art Make-Up, Nos. 1–4, 1967); sitting at a table to eat pieces of white bread carved into words (Eating My Words, 1967); constructing claustrophobic, video-monitored corridors, illuminated rooms, or steel cages to walk through or occupy (Green Light Corridor, 1970); even breaking in green horses on his ranch in Galisteo, New Mexico (Green Horses, 1988). In each instance, the body is both prime mover and implied recipient. The act of conceiving and making, regardless of the medium or the outcome, is an essential part of the work, even when the actual process remains undocumented. Ideas may issue from the mind, but in Nauman’s aesthetic arena, the body brings these to fruition through gesture, action, performance, utterance, and in the case of Mapping the Studio (Fat Chance John Cage), 2001, silence, inaction, and expectation. At first glance, not much happens in the surveillance footage of Nauman’s studio, shot for one hour each night with one infrared camera moved to seven different locations over the course of forty-two nights. There is nothing dramatic or cinematic about the piece. Time moves at a glacial pace, as nocturnal activities—scampering mice, a darting cat, a moth fluttering across the frame, dogs barking, coyotes howling—play out. Absent the artist, the studio becomes another kind of space, indeterminate and passive, but not entirely inactive. The Cagian overtones of Mapping the Studio are all of the spontaneous sights and sounds that intrude. In the end, Nauman’s nocturnal studio becomes a meditation on time and one’s ability to slow down, tune in, and, ultimately, persist. Utilizing lightweight materials, Fred Sandback subverted traditional sculpture by eliminating mass and only implying its volume. Having constructed assemblages

196

64214int.indd 196

22-05-12 4:40 AM

from “odd pieces of industrial material,” by 1968 he had gravitated to acrylic yarn and steel wire to delineate simple Euclidean forms in white-box settings. Sculpture was no longer some massive thing displacing space but shapes indicated by colored lines, where the inside became the outside. Sandback stressed the site specificity of ideas adapted to different contexts, likening his shapes to a “tool” or “a musical note,” something that could be “pushed around” until he “got it right.” He described his “intrusions” as “usually modest”: straight lines that “mediate the quality or timbre of a situation” and create an optical “wholeness” as light as air. His delicate intrusions were generally short-lived commissions that went up and came down in less than a month. Such programs kept the work in flux, enabling an idea to evolve. Still, by the late 1970s, the sculptor had begun to seek out a more permanent site for the work, and with the opening of the Fred Sandback Museum, a former bank in Winchendon, Massachusetts, in 1981, he achieved it. Even then, a part of him chafed at seeing the work static, as though memorialized. Sandback closed the museum in 1996, but before his death, he completed a permanent installation at Dia Beacon in upstate New York. Ana Mendieta’s provocative and poetic art—drawings, performances, photographs, films, site-specific sculptures—informed by her Cuban heritage, embodies her physical presence, as actor and protagonist, or absence, as shadow, void, and silhouette. Curator Olga Viso notes these connections in the catalogue for Mendieta’s 2004 retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden: “Mendieta’s cipher—the naked female form that performs in the studio, merges with the landscape, is etched on a leaf, or is burned into the soil or a tree trunk—is the hallmark of her production. Her body is defining formal motif and gesture, subject and object, form and content, providing a striking logic to the work, as well as structural integrity reinforced through insistent repetition.” Mendieta’s proposal for Bard College, in upstate New York, submitted a year before her untimely death, combines practical instructions with a clear statement of artistic purpose. So many of her “earth-body works”—ritual markings in the landscape, archetypal tropes of feminine form excavated into and built on top of the ground—were realized in obscure locations, documented in photographs and films. On this occasion, having to submit her idea on paper for peer review, she explained how the work would get made and maintained. She offered a cogent rationale for what she intended to do, positioning La Maja de Yerba in the categorical gap between modernism and postmodernism. From that undifferentiated terrain, “grounded on the primordial accumulations, the unconscious urges that animate the world,” she intended to explore issues—identity, memory, displacement, primordial essence—that mattered to her, in a piece preserved in perpetuity.

197

64214int.indd 197

22-05-12 4:40 AM

64214int.indd 198

22-05-12 4:40 AM

TONY SMITH 1912 –19 8 0

PATTERN OF ORGANIC LIFE IN AMERICA (1943)

I am trying to clarify the pattern of organic life in America. I think [. . .] that there is a pattern here and it wants only uncovering—the poets have seen it, Thoreau, Whitman, Wright, but no one else has much idea of it. [. . .] There is a great order, a great unconscious form here in America that very few seem to perceive. [. . .] It seems to me that in their great scope your publications are consciously or unconsciously trying to discover that pattern. [. . .] Your magazines cover the length and breadth and some of the depths of our great land. They reflect its life but they do not greatly clarify it. They do not reveal its pattern and its deep rhythms. There is a pattern and there are rhythms. [. . .] We need some guides to make clear the meaning of otherwise unrelated and isolated experiences, actions, dreams. We need the pattern of our existence made clear to us. [. . .] The style of organic life is intrinsic. [. . .] Here in America—in the New World— style is conceived of built in, not hung on. Instead of the Cross—we follow the law of growth—of dynamic equilibrium—the spiral. [. . .] I want to help make clear the pattern of organic life in America. There is such a pattern and there are deep rhythms to our life here but they are not clear. We have no great culture. A great deal of our energy is lost in that we have no myth or unifying bible by which we can relate and interpret the vastness and complexity of our experience.

EXCERPTS FROM “TALKING WITH TONY SMITH” (1966)

I view art as something vast. I think highway systems fall down because they are not art. Art today is an art of postage stamps. I love the Secretariat Building of the U.N. placed like a salute. In terms of scale, we have less art per square mile, per capita, than any society ever had. We are puny. In an English village there was always the cathedral.

Tony Smith, excerpts from handwritten drafts of a letter to Henry Luce (publisher of Time magazine), summer 1943. All texts selected and compiled by Joan Pachner, Tony Smith Estate. © 2022 Estate of Tony Smith / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Tony Smith, excerpts from “Samuel Wagstaff, Jr.: Talking with Tony Smith,” Artforum 5, no. 4 (December 1966): 17, 19. © 2022 Estate of Tony Smith / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

199

64214int.indd 199

22-05-12 4:40 AM

20. Tony Smith, Cigarette, 1961–67.

There is nothing to look at between the Bennington Monument and the George Washington Bridge. [. . .] When I was teaching at Cooper Union in the first year or two of the fifties, someone told me how I could get onto the unfinished New Jersey Turnpike. I took three students and drove from somewhere in the Meadows to New Brunswick. It was a dark night and there were no lights or shoulder markers, lines, railings, or anything at all except the dark pavement moving through the landscape of the flats, rimmed by hills in the distance, but punctuated by stacks, towers, fumes, and colored lights. This drive was a revealing experience. The road and much of the landscape was artificial, and yet it couldn’t be called a work of art. On the other hand, it did something for me that art had never done [. . .] its effect was to liberate me from many of the views I had had about art. It seemed that there had been a reality there that had not had any expression in art. The experience on the road was something mapped out but not socially recognized. I thought to myself, it ought to be clear that’s the end of art. Most painting looks pretty pictorial after that. There is no way you can frame it, you just have to experience it. Later, I discovered some abandoned airstrips in Europe—abandoned works, Surrealist landscapes, something that had nothing to do with any function, created worlds without tradition. Artificial landscape without cultural precedent began to dawn on me. There is a drill ground in Nuremberg large enough to accommodate two million men. The entire field is enclosed with high embankments and towers. The concrete approach is three sixteen-inch steps, one above the other, stretching for a mile or so.

200    TONY SMITH

64214int.indd 200

22-05-12 4:40 AM

DONALD JUDD 19 2 8 –19 94

SPECIFIC OBJECTS (1964)

Half or more of the best new work in the last few years has been neither painting nor sculpture. Usually it has been related, closely or distantly, to one or the other. The work is diverse, and much in it that is not in painting and sculpture is also diverse. But there are some things that occur nearly in common. The new three-dimensional work doesn’t constitute a movement, school, or style. The common aspects are too general and too little common to define a movement. The differences are greater than the similarities. The similarities are selected from the work; they aren’t a movement’s first principles or delimiting rules. Three-dimensionality is not as near being simply a container as painting and sculpture have seemed to be, but it tends to that. But now painting and sculpture are less neutral, less containers, more defined, not undeniable and unavoidable. They are particular forms circumscribed after all, producing fairly definite qualities. Much of the motivation in the new work is to get clear of these forms. The use of three dimensions is an obvious alternative. It opens to anything. Many of the reasons for this use are negative points against painting and sculpture, and since both are common sources, the negative reasons are those nearest commonage. “The motive to change is always some uneasiness; nothing setting us upon the change of state, or upon any new action, but some uneasiness.”1 The positive reasons are more particular. Another reason for listing the insufficiencies of painting and sculpture first is that both are familiar and their elements and qualities more easily located. The objections to painting and sculpture are going to sound more intolerant than they are. There are qualifications. The disinterest in painting and sculpture is a disinterest in doing it again, not in it as it is being done by those who developed the last advanced versions. New work always involves objections to the old, but these objections are really relevant only to the new. They are part of it. If the earlier work is first-rate it is complete. New inconsistencies and limitations aren’t retroactive; they Donald Judd, “Specific Objects,” 1964, first published in Arts Yearbook 8 (1965): 74–82; reprinted in Donald Judd: Complete Writings 1959–1975 (Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design; New York: New York University Press, 1975), 181–89; Donald Judd: Complete Writings 1975–1986 (Eindhoven, Netherlands: Van Abbemuseum, 1987), 115–24; Donald Judd: Écrits 1963–1990 [in French] (Paris: Daniel Lelong, 1991), 9–20; Donald Judd Writings (New York: Judd Foundation and David Zwirner Books, 2016), 134–45. © 2022 Judd Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. 1.  John Locke, The Philosophical Works of John Locke, Vol. 1, ed. J. A. St. John (London: George Bell and Sons, 1908), 376. This book is part of Judd’s library in Marfa, Texas.

201

64214int.indd 201

22-05-12 4:40 AM

concern only work that is being developed. Obviously, three-dimensional work will not cleanly succeed painting and sculpture. It’s not like a movement; anyway, movements no longer work; also, linear history has unraveled somewhat. The new work exceeds painting in plain power, but power isn’t the only consideration, though the difference between it and expression can’t be too great either. There are other ways than power and form in which one kind of art can be more or less than another. Finally, a flat and rectangular surface is too handy to give up. Some things can be done only on a flat surface. Lichtenstein’s representation of a representation is a good instance. But this work, which is neither painting nor sculpture, challenges both. It will have to be taken into account by new artists. It will probably change painting and sculpture. The main thing wrong with painting is that it is a rectangular plane placed flat against the wall. A rectangle is a shape itself; it is obviously the whole shape; it determines and limits the arrangement of whatever is on or inside of it. In work before 1946 the edges of the rectangle are a boundary, the end of the picture.2 The composition must react to the edges and the rectangle must be unified, but the shape of the rectangle is not stressed; the parts are more important, and the relationships of color and form occur among them. In the paintings of Pollock, Rothko, Still, and Newman, and more recently of Reinhardt and Noland, the rectangle is emphasized. The elements inside the rectangle are broad and simple and correspond closely to the rectangle. The shapes and surface are only those which can occur plausibly within and on a rectangular plane. The parts are few and so subordinate to the unity as not to be parts in an ordinary sense. A painting is nearly an entity, one thing, and not the indefinable sum of a group of entities and references. The one thing overpowers the earlier painting. It also establishes the rectangle as a definite form; it is no longer a fairly neutral limit. A form can be used only in so many ways. The rectangular plane is given a life span. The simplicity required to emphasize the rectangle limits the arrangements possible within it. The sense of singleness also has a duration, but it is only beginning and has a better future outside of painting. Its occurrence in painting now looks like a beginning, in which new forms are often made from earlier schemes and materials. The plane is also emphasized and nearly single. It is clearly a plane one or two inches in front of another plane, the wall, and parallel to it. The relationship of the two planes is specific; it is a form. Everything on or slightly in the plane of the painting must be arranged laterally. Almost all paintings are spatial in one way or another. Yves Klein’s blue paintings are the only ones that are unspatial, and there is little that is nearly unspatial, mainly Stella’s work. It’s possible that not much can be done with both an upright rectangular plane and an absence of space. Anything on a surface has space behind it. Two colors 2.  In the mid-1940s, Jackson Pollock created his first “drip” paintings. Significant features of these paintings include their allover composition and lack of central point of focus. For Judd, this work was a crucial interruption in the tradition of painting.

202    DONALD JUDD

64214int.indd 202

22-05-12 4:40 AM

on the same surface almost always lie on different depths. An even color, especially in oil paint, covering all or much of a painting is almost always both flat and infinitely spatial. The space is shallow in all of the work in which the rectangular plane is stressed. Rothko’s space is shallow and the soft rectangles are parallel to the plane, but the space is almost traditionally illusionistic. In Reinhardt’s paintings, just back from the plane of the canvas, there is a flat plane and this seems in turn indefinitely deep. Pollock’s paint is obviously on the canvas, and the space is mainly that made by any marks on a surface, so that it is not very descriptive and illusionistic. Noland’s concentric bands are not as specifically paint-on-a-surface as Pollock’s paint, but the bands flatten the literal space more. As flat and unillusionistic as Noland’s paintings are, the bands do advance and recede. Even a single circle will warp the surface to it, will have a little space behind it. Except for a complete and unvaried field of color or marks, anything spaced in a rectangle and on a plane suggests something in and on something else, something in its surround, which suggests an object or figure in its space, in which these are clearer instances of a similar world—that’s the main purpose of painting. The recent paintings aren’t completely single. There are a few dominant areas, Rothko’s rectangles or Noland’s circles, and there is the area around them. There is a gap between the main forms, the most expressive parts, and the rest of the canvas, the plane and the rectangle. The central forms still occur in a wider and indefinite context, although the singleness of the paintings abridges the general and solipsistic quality of earlier work. Fields are also usually not limited, and they give the appearance of sections cut from something indefinitely larger. Oil paint and canvas aren’t as strong as commercial paints and as the colors and surfaces of materials, especially if the materials are used in three dimensions. Oil and canvas are familiar and, like the rectangular plane, have a certain quality and have limits. The quality is especially identified with art. The new work obviously resembles sculpture more than it does painting, but it is nearer to painting. Most sculpture is like the painting which preceded Pollock, Rothko, Still, and Newman. The newest thing about it is its broad scale. Its materials are somewhat more emphasized than before. The imagery involves a couple of salient resemblances to other visible things and a number of more oblique references, everything generalized to compatibility. The parts and the space are allusive, descriptive, and somewhat naturalistic. Higgins’s sculpture is an example, and, dissimilarly, di Suvero’s. Higgins’s sculpture mainly suggests machines and truncated bodies. Its combination of plaster and metal is more specific. Di Suvero uses beams as if they were brushstrokes, imitating movement, as Kline did. The material never has its own movement. A beam thrusts, a piece of iron follows a gesture; together they form a naturalistic and anthropomorphic image. The space corresponds. Most sculpture is made part by part, by addition, composed. The main parts remain fairly discrete. They and the small parts are a collection of variations, slight through great. There are hierarchies of clarity and strength and of proximity to one or two

DONALD JUDD   203

64214int.indd 203

22-05-12 4:40 AM

main ideas. Wood and metal are the usual materials, either alone or together, and if together it is without much of a contrast. There is seldom any color. The middling contrast and the natural monochrome are general and help to unify the parts. There is little of any of this in the new three-dimensional work. So far the most obvious difference within this diverse work is between that which is something of an object, a single thing, and that which is open and extended, more or less environmental. There isn’t as great a difference in their nature as in their appearance, though. Oldenburg and others have done both. There are precedents for some of the characteristics of the new work: the parts are usually subordinate and not separate in Arp’s sculpture and often in Brancusi’s. Duchamp’s readymades and other Dada objects are also seen at once and not part by part. Cornell’s boxes have too many parts to seem at first to be structured. Part-by-part structure can’t be too simple or too complicated. It has to seem orderly. The degree of Arp’s abstraction, the moderate extent of his reference to the human body, neither imitative nor very oblique, is unlike the imagery of most of the new three-dimensional work. Duchamp’s bottle-drying rack is close to some of it. The work of Johns and Rauschenberg and assemblage and low relief generally, Ortman’s reliefs for example, are preliminaries. Johns’s few cast objects and a few of Rauschenberg’s works, such as the goat with the tire, are beginnings. Some European paintings are related to objects, Klein’s for instance, and Castellani’s, which have unvaried fields of low-relief elements. Arman and a few others work in three dimensions. Dick Smith did some large pieces in London with canvas stretched over cockeyed parallelepiped frames and with the surfaces painted as if the pieces were paintings. Phillip King, also in London, seems to be making objects. Some of the work on the West Coast seems to be along this line, that of Larry Bell, Kenneth Price, Tony Delap, Sven Lukin, Bruce Conner, Kienholz of course, and others. Some of the work in New York having some or most of the characteristics is that by George Brecht, Ronald Bladen, John Willenbecher, Ralph Ortiz, Anne Truitt, Paul Harris, Barry McDowell, John Chamberlain, Robert Tanner, Aaron Kuriloff, Robert Morris, Nathan Raisen, Tony Smith, Richard Navin, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Watts, Yoshimura, John Anderson, Harry Soviak, Yayoi Kusama, Frank Stella, Salvatore Scarpitta, Neil Williams, George Segal, Michael Snow, Richard Artschwager, Arakawa, Lucas Samaras, Lee Bontecou, Dan Flavin, and Robert Whitman. H. C. Westermann works in Connecticut. Some of these artists do both three-dimensional work and paintings. A small amount of the work of others, Warhol and Rosenquist for instance, is three-dimensional. Painting and sculpture have become set forms. A fair amount of their meaning isn’t credible. The use of three dimensions isn’t the use of a given form. There hasn’t been enough time and work to see limits. So far, considered most widely, three dimensions are mostly a space to move into. The characteristics of three dimensions are those of only a small amount of work, little compared to painting and sculpture. A few of the more general aspects may persist, such as the work’s being like an object or being specific, but other characteristics are bound to develop. Since its range is so wide, three-

204    DONALD JUDD

64214int.indd 204

22-05-12 4:41 AM

dimensional work will probably divide into a number of forms. At any rate, it will be larger than painting and much larger than sculpture, which, compared to painting, is fairly particular, much nearer to what is usually called a form, having a certain kind of form. Because the nature of three dimensions isn’t set, given beforehand, something credible can be made, almost anything. Of course something can be done within a given form, such as painting, but with some narrowness and less strength and variation. Since sculpture isn’t so general a form, it can probably be only what it is now— which means that if it changes a great deal it will be something else; so it is finished. Three dimensions are real space. That gets rid of the problem of illusionism and of literal space, space in and around marks and colors—which is riddance of one of the salient and most objectionable relics of European art. The several limits of painting are no longer present. A work can be as powerful as it can be thought to be. Actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface. Obviously, anything in three dimensions can be any shape, regular or irregular, and can have any relation to the wall, floor, ceiling, room, rooms, or exterior or none at all. Any material can be used, as is or painted. A work needs only to be interesting. Most works finally have one quality. In earlier art the complexity was displayed and built the quality. In recent painting the complexity was in the format and the few main shapes, which had been made according to various interests and problems. A painting by Newman is finally no simpler than one by Cézanne. In the three-dimensional work the whole thing is made according to complex purposes, and these are not scattered but asserted by one form. It isn’t necessary for a work to have a lot of things to look at, to compare, to analyze one by one, to contemplate. The thing as a whole, its quality as a whole, is what is interesting. The main things are alone and are more intense, clear, and powerful. They are not diluted by an inherited format, variations of a form, mild contrasts and connecting parts and areas. European art had to represent a space and its contents as well as have sufficient unity and aesthetic interest. Abstract painting before 1946 and most subsequent painting kept the representational subordination of the whole to its parts.3 Sculpture still does. In the new work the shape, image, color, and surface are single and not partial and scattered. There aren’t any neutral or moderate areas or parts, any connections or transitional areas. The difference between the new work and earlier painting and present sculpture is like that between one of Brunelleschi’s windows in the Badia di Fiesole and the facade of the Palazzo Rucellai, which is only an undeveloped rectangle as a whole and is mainly a collection of highly ordered parts. The use of three dimensions makes it possible to use all sorts of materials and colors. Most of the work involves new materials, either recent inventions or things not used before in art. Little was done until lately with the wide range of industrial products. Almost nothing has been done with industrial techniques and, because of the cost, probably won’t be for some time. Art could be mass-produced, and possibilities 3.  See the work of Pollock, Rothko, Newman, and Still as exceptions.

DONALD JUDD   205

64214int.indd 205

22-05-12 4:41 AM

otherwise unavailable, such as stamping, could be used. Dan Flavin, who uses fluorescent lights, has appropriated the results of industrial production. Materials vary greatly and are simply materials—formica, aluminum, cold-rolled steel, plexiglass, red and common brass, and so forth. They are specific. If they are used directly, they are more specific. Also, they are usually aggressive. There is an objectivity to the obdurate identity of a material. Also, of course, the qualities of materials—hard mass, soft mass, thickness of 1/32, 1/16, 1/8 inch, pliability, slickness, translucency, dullness—have unobjective uses. The vinyl of Oldenburg’s soft objects looks the same as ever, slick, flaccid, and a little disagreeable, and is objective, but it is pliable and can be sewn and stuffed with air and kapok and hung or set down, sagging or collapsing. Most of the new materials are not as accessible as oil on canvas and are hard to relate to one another. They aren’t obviously art. The form of a work and its materials are closely related. In earlier work the structure and the imagery were executed in some neutral and homogeneous material. Since not many things are lumps, there are problems in combining the different surfaces and colors, and in relating the parts so as not to weaken the unity. Three-dimensional work usually doesn’t involve ordinary anthropomorphic imagery. If there is a reference, it is single and explicit. In any case the chief interests are obvious. Each of Bontecou’s reliefs is an image. The image, all of the parts, and the whole shape are coextensive. The parts are either part of the hole or part of the mound which forms the hole. The hole and the mound are only two things, which, after all, are the same thing. The parts and divisions are either radial or concentric in regard to the hole, leading in and out and enclosing. The radial and concentric parts meet more or less at right angles and in detail are structure in the old sense, but collectively are subordinate to the single form. Most of the new work has no structure in the usual sense, especially the work of Oldenburg and Stella. Chamberlain’s work does involve composition. The nature of Bontecou’s single image is not so different from that of images which occurred in a small way in semiabstract painting. The image is primarily a single emotive one, which alone wouldn’t resemble the old imagery so much, but to which internal and external references, such as violence and war, have been added. The additions are somewhat pictorial, but the image is essentially new and surprising; an image has never before been the whole work, been so large, been so explicit and aggressive. The abatised orifice is like a strange and dangerous object. The quality is intense and narrow and obsessive. The boat and furniture that Kusama covered with white protuberances have a related intensity and obsessiveness and are also strange objects. Kusama is interested in obsessive repetition, which is a single interest. Yves Klein’s blue paintings are also narrow and intense. The trees, figures, food or furniture in a painting have a shape or contain shapes that are emotive. Oldenburg has taken this anthropomorphism to an extreme and made the emotive form, with him basic and biopsychological, the same as the shape of an object, and by blatancy subverted the idea of the natural presence of human qualities in all things. And further, Oldenburg avoids trees and people. All of Oldenburg’s

206    DONALD JUDD

64214int.indd 206

22-05-12 4:41 AM

grossly anthropomorphized objects are manmade—which right away is an empirical matter. Someone or many made these things and incorporated their preferences. As practical as an ice-cream cone is, a lot of people made a choice, and more agreed, as to its appearance and existence. This interest shows more in the recent appliances and fixtures from the home and especially in the bedroom suite, where the choice is flagrant. Oldenburg exaggerates the accepted or chosen form and turns it into one of his own. Nothing made is completely objective, purely practical or merely present. Oldenburg gets along very well without anything that would ordinarily be called structure. The ball and cone of the large ice-cream cone are enough. The whole thing is a profound form, such as sometimes occurs in primitive art. Three fat layers with a small one on top are enough. So is a flaccid, flamingo switch draped from two points. Simple form and one or two colors are considered less by old standards. If changes in art are compared backward, there always seems to be a reduction, since only old attributes are counted and these are always fewer. But obviously new things are more, such as Oldenburg’s techniques and materials. Oldenburg needs three dimensions in order to simulate and enlarge a real object and to equate it [to] an emotive form. If a hamburger were painted it would retain something of the traditional anthropomorphism. George Brecht and Robert Morris use real objects and depend on the viewer’s knowledge of these objects. The composition and imagery of Chamberlain’s work is primarily the same as that of earlier painting, but these are secondary to an appearance of disorder and are at first concealed by the material. The crumpled tin tends to stay that way. It is neutral at first, not artistic, and later seems objective. When the structure and imagery become apparent, there seems to be too much tin and space, more chance and casualness than order. The aspects of neutrality, redundancy, and form and imagery could not be coextensive without three dimensions and without the particular material. The color is also both neutral and sensitive and, unlike oil colors, has a wide range. Most color that is integral, other than in painting, has been used in three-dimensional work. Color is never unimportant, as it usually is in sculpture. Stella’s shaped paintings involve several important characteristics of threedimensional work. The periphery of a piece and the lines inside correspond. The stripes are nowhere near being discrete parts. The surface is farther from the wall than usual, though it remains parallel to it. Since the surface is exceptionally unified and involves little or no space, the parallel plane is unusually distinct. The order is not rationalistic and underlying but is simply order, like that of continuity, one thing after another. A painting isn’t an image. The shapes, the unity, projection, order, and color are specific, aggressive, and powerful. This article was commissioned by Arts Yearbook and published one year later than written. —Donald Judd

DONALD JUDD   207

64214int.indd 207

22-05-12 4:41 AM

ROBERT MORRIS 19 31–2 018

NOTES ON SCULPTURE (1966) What comes into appearance must segregate in order to appear. Goethe

There has been little definitive writing on present day sculpture. When it is discussed it is often called in to support a broad iconographic or iconological point of view— after the supporting examples of painting have been exhausted. Kubler has raised the objection that iconological assertions presuppose that experiences so different as those of space and time must somehow be interchangeable.1 It is perhaps more accurate to say, as Barbara Rose has recently written, that specific elements are held in common between the various arts today—an iconographic rather than an iconological point of view. The distinction is helpful, for the iconographer who locates shared elements and themes has a different ambition than the iconologist, who, according to Panofsky, locates a common meaning. There may indeed be a general sensibility in the arts at this time. Yet the histories and problems of each, as well as the experiences offered by each art, indicate involvements in very separate concerns. At most, the assertions of common sensibilities are generalizations which minimize differences. The climactic incident is absent in the work of John Cage and Barnett Newman. Yet it is also true that Cage has consistently supported a methodology of collage which is not present in Newman. A question to be asked of common sensibilities is to what degree they give a purchase on the experience of the various arts from which they are drawn. Of course this is an irrelevant question for one who approaches the arts in order to find identities of elements or meanings. In the interest of differences it seems time that some of the distinctions sculpture has managed for itself be articulated. To begin in the broadest possible way it should be stated that the concerns of sculpture have been for some time not only distinct but hostile to those of painting. The clearer the nature of the values of sculpture become the stronger the opposition appears. Certainly the continuing realization of its nature Robert Morris, “Notes on Sculpture,” Artforum 4, no. 6 (February 1966): 42–44. © 2022 The Estate of Robert Morris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. 1.  “Thus ‘Strukturforschung’ presupposes that the poets and artists of one place and time are the joint bearers of a central pattern of sensibility from which their various efforts all flow like radial expressions. This position agrees with the iconologist’s, to whom literature and art seem approximately interchangeable.” George Kubler, “The Shape of Time.” Yale University, 1962. p. 27.

208

64214int.indd 208

22-05-12 4:41 AM

has had nothing to do with any dialectical evolution which painting has enunciated for itself. The primary problematic concerns with which advanced painting has been occupied for about half a century have been structural. The structural element has been gradually revealed to be located within the nature of the literal qualities of the support.2 It has been a long dialogue with a limit. Sculpture, on the other hand, never having been involved with illusionism could not possibly have based the efforts of fifty years upon the rather pious, if somewhat contradictory, act of giving up this illusionism and approaching the object. Save for replication, which is not to be confused with illusionism, the sculptural facts of space, light, and materials have always functioned concretely and literally. Its allusions or references have not been commensurate with the indicating sensibilities of painting. If painting has sought to approach the object it has sought equally hard to dematerialize itself on the way. Clearer distinctions between sculpture’s essentially tactile nature and the optical sensibilities involved in painting need to be made. Tatlin was perhaps the first to free sculpture from representation and establish it as an autonomous form both by the kind of image, or rather non-image, he employed and by his literal use of materials. He, Rodchenko, and other Constructivists refuted Appollinaire’s [sic] observation that “a structure becomes architecture, and not sculpture, when its elements no longer have their justification in nature.” At least the earlier works of Tatlin and other Constructivists made references to neither the figure nor architecture. In subsequent years Gabo, and to a lesser extent Pevsner and Vantongerloo, perpetuated the Constructivist ideal of a non-imagistic sculpture which was independent of architecture. This autonomy was not sustained in the work of the greatest American sculptor, the late David Smith. Today there is a reassertion of the nonimagistic as an essential condition. Although, in passing, it should be noted that this condition has been weakened by a variety of works which, while maintaining the nonimagistic, focus themselves in terms of the highly decorative, the precious, or the gigantic. There is nothing inherently wrong with these qualities; each offers a concrete experience. But they happen not to be relevant experiences for sculpture for they unbalance complex plastic relationships just to that degree that one focuses on these qualities in otherwise non-imagistic works. The relief has always been accepted as a viable mode. However, it cannot be accepted today as legitimate. The autonomous and literal nature of sculpture demands that it have its own, equally literal space—not a surface shared with painting. Furthermore, an object hung on the wall does not confront gravity; it timidly resists it. One of the conditions of knowing an object is supplied by the sensing of the gravitational force acting upon it in actual space. That is, space with three, not two coordinates. The 2.  Both Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried have dealt with this evolution. Fried’s discussion of “deductive structure” in his catalog “Three American Painters” deals explicitly with the role of the support in painting.

ROBERT MORRIS   209

64214int.indd 209

22-05-12 4:41 AM

ground plane, not the wall, is the necessary support for the maximum awareness of the object. One more objection to the relief is the limitation of the number of possible views the wall imposes, together with the constant of up, down, right, left. Color as it has been established in painting, notably by Olitski and Louis, is a quality not at all bound to stable forms. Michael Fried has pointed out that one of their major efforts has been, in fact, to free color of drawn shape. They have done this by either enervating drawing (Louis) or eliminating it totally (recent Olitski) thereby establishing an autonomy for color which was only indicated by Pollock. This transcendence of color over shape in painting is cited here because it demonstrates that it is the most optical element in an optical medium. It is this essentially optical, immaterial, noncontainable, non-tactile nature of color which is inconsistent with the physical nature of sculpture. The qualities of scale, proportion, shape, mass, are physical. Each of these qualities is made visible by the adjustment of an obdurate, literal mass. Color does not have this characteristic. It is additive. Obviously things exist as colored. The objection is raised against the use of color which emphasizes the optical and in so doing subverts the physical. The more neutral hues which do not call attention to themselves allow for the maximum focus on those essential physical decisions which inform sculptural works. Ultimately the consideration of the nature of sculptural surfaces is the consideration of light, the least physical element, but one which is actual as the space itself. For unlike paintings, which are always lit in an optimum way, sculpture undergoes changes by the incidence of light. David Smith in the “Cubi” works has been one of the few to confront sculptural surfaces in terms of light. Mondrian went so far as to claim that “Sensations are not transmissible, or rather, their purely qualitative properties are not transmissible. The same, however, does not apply to relations between sensations . . . Consequently only relations between sensations can have an objective value . . .” This may be ambiguous in terms of perceptual facts but in terms of looking at art it is descriptive of the condition which obtains. It obtains because art objects have clearly divisible parts which set up the relationships. Such a condition suggests the alternative question: could a work exist which has only one property? Obviously not, since nothing exists which has only one property. A single, pure sensation cannot be transmissible precisely because one perceives simultaneously more than one as parts in any given situation: if color, then also dimension; if flatness, then texture, etc. However, certain forms do exist which, if they do not negate the numerous relative sensations of color to texture, scale to mass, etc., they do not present clearly separated parts for these kinds of relations to be established in terms of shapes. Such are the simpler forms which create strong gestalt sensations. Their parts are bound together in such a way that they offer a maximum resistance to perceptual separation. In terms of solids, or forms applicable to sculpture, these gestalts are the simpler polyhedrons. It is necessary to consider for a moment the nature of three dimensional gestalts as they occur in the apprehension of the various types of polyhedrons. In the simpler regular polyhedrons such as cubes and pyramids one need not move around the object for the sense

210    ROBERT MORRIS

64214int.indd 210

22-05-12 4:41 AM

of the whole, the gestalt, to occur. One sees and immediately “believes” that the pattern within one’s mind corresponds to the existential fact of the object. Belief in this sense is both a kind of faith in spatial extension and a visualization of that extension. In other words it is those aspects of apprehension which are not coexistent with the visual field but rather the result of the experience of the visual field. The more specific nature of this belief and how it is formed involve perceptual theories of “constancy of shape,” “tendencies toward simplicity,” kinesthetic clues, memory traces, and physiological factors regarding the nature of binocular parallax vision and the structure of the retina and brain. Neither the theories nor the experiences of gestalt effects relating to three dimensional bodies are as simple and clear as they are for two dimensions. But experience of solids establishes the fact that, as in flat forms, some configurations are dominated by wholeness, others tend to separate into parts. This becomes clearer if the other types of polyhedrons are considered. In the complex regular type there is a weakening of visualization as the number of sides increases. A 64-sided figure is difficult to visualize, yet because of its regularity one senses the whole, even if seen from a single viewpoint. S i m p l e irregular polyhedrons such as beams, inclined planes, truncated pyramids are relatively more easy to visualize and sense as wholes. The fact that some are less familiar than the regular geometric forms does not affect the formation of a gestalt. Rather the irregularity becomes a particularizing quality. Complex irregular polyhedrons (for example, crystal formations) if they are complex and irregular enough can frustrate visualization almost completely, in which case it is difficult to maintain one is experiencing a gestalt. Complex irregular polyhedrons allow for divisibility of parts insofar as they create weak gestalts. They would seem to return one to the conditions of works which, in Mondrian’s terms, transmit relations easily in that their parts separate. Complex regular polyhedrons are more ambiguous in this respect. The simpler regular and irregular ones maintain the maximum resistance to being confronted as objects with separate parts. They seem to fail to present lines of fracture by which they could divide for easy part-to-part relationships to be established. I term these simple regular and irregular polyhedrons “unitary” forms. Sculpture involving unitary forms, being bound together as it is with a kind of energy provided by the gestalt, often elicits the complaint among critics that such works are beyond analysis. Characteristic of a gestalt is that once it is established all the information about it, qua gestalt, is exhausted. (One does not, for example, seek the gestalt of a gestalt.) Furthermore, once it is established it does not disintegrate. One is then both free of the shape and bound to it. Free or released because of the exhaustion of information about it, as shape, and bound to it because it remains constant and indivisible. Simplicity of shape does not necessarily equate with simplicity of experience. Unitary forms do not reduce relationships. They order them. If the predominant, hieratic nature of the unitary form functions as a constant, all those particularizing relations

ROBERT MORRIS   211

64214int.indd 211

22-05-12 4:41 AM

of scale, proportion, etc., are not thereby canceled. Rather they are bound more cohesively and indivisibly together. The magnification of this single most important sculptural value, shape, together with greater unification and integration of every other essential sculptural value makes on the one hand, the multipart, inflected formats of past sculpture extraneous, and on the other, establishes both a new limit and a new freedom for sculpture.

212    ROBERT MORRIS

64214int.indd 212

22-05-12 4:41 AM

ROBERT IRWIN B O R N 19 2 8

“CONDITIONAL,” IN “BEING AND CIRCUMSTANCE” (1985) Conditional

This consequence brings us, in a future perhaps remote, towards the end of art as a thing separated from our surrounding environment, which is the actual plastic reality. But this end is at the same time a new beginning. Art will not only continue but will realize itself more and more. By the unification of architecture, sculpture and painting, a new plastic reality will be created. Painting and sculpture will not manifest themselves as separate objects, nor as “mural art” which destroys architecture itself, nor as “applied” art, but being purely constructive will aid the creation of a surrounding not merely utilitarian or rational but also pure and complete in its beauty. piet mondrian1

What would an art of the phenomenal, of plastic reality, be like? Where and how would it exist, and how would we come to know it? To try and answer these questions, let’s review what we’ve already established. First, we have already determined that, in one sense, the phenomenal can be located in the dynamics of change in the world; and that, in another sense, it can be located in the dynamics of our perceiving of that world. We can now venture to put these two senses together and say that the phenomenal, as we can know it, exists in the dynamics of our perceiving (experiencing) the nature of the world about us and of our being in it. From this we can infer that the grounds of a phenomenal art will be in being and circumstance; and from this we can further infer, as a working principle, that a phenomenal art will be a conditional art action. It should be noted that for any such action to be truly conditional, the art act can only occur in response to a set of specifics: since a conditional art, by its own definition, possesses no transcendent criteria (truths), it can have no grounds for predetermining (preplanning) its actions. It takes a peculiar kind of compounded belief to plan, proselytize, or thrust your abstractions onto the world. Robert Irwin, “Conditional,” from the essay “Being and Circumstance: Notes toward a Conditional Art,” in Being and Circumstance: Notes toward a Conditional Art (Larkspur Landing, CA: Lapis Press; New York: Pace Gallery, 1985), 9–29; reprinted in Robert Irwin: Notes toward a Conditional Art, ed. Matthew Simms (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2011), 214–20. © 2022 Robert Irwin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. 1. The section epigraph is from Piet Mondrian, “Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art” (ca. 1943), in Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics, ed. Herschel B. Chipp (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 362.

213

64214int.indd 213

22-05-12 4:41 AM

(It is one thing to believe in or desire such concepts as a timeless art, an orderly universe, or a God in the heavens, and something altogether different to act as if these concepts were in fact real, actual, and already at hand.) By contrast, to act in response in actively “determining relations” constitutes the ethic of a phenomenal art. Second, we have also already determined that qualities are the property of the perceiving individual, that warm-cool, hard-soft, red-blue are feelings (not values—we give them value by attending to them). This is what Malevich meant when he declared his “desert” to be filled with pure “feeling.” We have stated that the meaning of “modern art” arose when it declared creative art to be a quality-centered discipline; its method to be involvement, not explicit detachment; and that, basically, “art is knowing in action.” The consequence of this, by definition, is that what holds true for the artist/ perceiver must hold true for the observer/perceiver. Aesthetics then is not a conceptualized ideal, science, or a discipline, but a method, a particularized kind or state of awareness. The subject/activity of aesthetics, therefore, is feeling (to try and speak of an ideal or a science of feeling is a contradiction in terms) with an “eye” for the special (beauty). Let me again paraphrase Michael Polanyi on this point. We cannot learn to keep our balance on a bicycle by trying to follow an explicit rule, such as that to compensate for an imbalance; we must force our bicycle into a curve—away from the direction of imbalance—whose radius is proportional to the square of the bicycle’s velocity over the angle of imbalance. But the art of riding a bicycle, of course, presupposes that all of this be understood, be dwelt in—through a personal act of tacit integration. It is important to note that this metaphor cuts both ways. It has become fashion­ able to claim that the history of the individual’s role in modern art now simply provides a license to mindlessly ride the bicycle, that is, “to express oneself.” But in that case, what is not an expression? Anything and everything we do, or don’t do, is an expression of one kind or another, and what’s more they must be thought of as equivalent expressions (the first step toward Nihilism?) unless something else, something more important, is brought to bear. So it is quite clear that “expression” is not a real issue, but simply the lowest common denominator arising from modern art’s placing the individual at the crux of the decision-making process. We have now, in effect, reduced those hoary philosophic issues of change, the phenomenal, and quality down to the conceptual issues of individual, conditionality, and response. What now remains for us to accomplish is to convert these new concepts into specifics, and we can begin to do this by properly conditioning them. That is, we must provide the operative frame of reference (what it is we measure with, or by) for determining what we can know (and accomplish) from a phenomenal perspective. Consider another example in this context: the universal time becomes 4 a.m. when we condition it with an objective logic (system), i.e., clock time. But it is seasonal when we reference nature, and fleeting when we “tell time” from the perspective of our feelings. To focus the conditions for a phenomenal perspective (art), let us now try laying out, in order, what we have established:

214    ROBERT IRWIN

64214int.indd 214

22-05-12 4:41 AM

change . . . phenomenal . . . qualities → the perceiving individual individual . . . conditionality . . . in response → being and circumstance (the operative frame of reference) being and circumstance . . . determined relations (art as knowing in action) → a phenomenal/conditional art What takes place from this point forward becomes a horse of a different color. The questions as to how we might practice a phenomenal/conditional art and what kind of conclusions (reality) we might draw from this perspective remain to be realized. There are already a number of good artists beginning to test facets of this perspective, each with a unique contribution to make toward a rounded whole that will ultimately become a collective definition of art for our moment in time. What now follows are my present speculations, ideas, positions, and actions in this regard. I am trying them on to see how they fit (work), what makes sense to me, and how I might turn that sense into something (art?) I can live with. Intention: The intention (ambition?) of a phenomenal art is simply the gift of seeing a little more today than you did yesterday. This intention is based on the simple intuition (truth?) that everything there is to know is not already known. This in turn distinguishes the subject of art from the objects of art and indicates the fundamental role of art (as in every primary discipline) vis-à-vis the discipline and practice of art. The subject of art is the human potential for an aesthetic awareness (perspective). The object of art is a representation of that acquired sensibility (an art object)—a transformation in all dimensions of what was previously known otherwise into an objective form. The action (practice) of art carries this sensibility to become a part of all our individual, social, and cultural values (systems, institutions, etc.). Sculpture: For this term to remain useful, it must be expanded to indicate (mean) the articulation of three and four (even five?) dimensional space, in terms of being, place, (“determined”) relations, and order, as well as form. Site conditioned/determined sculpture—as distinguished from the generic term “public art” (which permits everything not nailed down to be thrown into one pot, as in a teeming bouillabaisse)—is an attempt to integrate the components of the phenomenal, conditionality, and response with the practical goal of bringing modern art’s focusing of qualities (beauty) to bear directly on how we order our world. Mondrian’s words bear repeating on this point: We are attempting “to aid in the creation of a surrounding not merely utilitarian or rational but also pure and complete in its beauty.” To help sort out some of the confusion of ambitions and practices, let me rough out some general working categories for public/site art, in terms of how we generally process (recognize, understand) them. (Note: there are no value judgments intended here, only distinctions.) Put simply, we can say that any given work falls into one of the following four categories:

ROBERT IRWIN   215

64214int.indd 215

22-05-12 4:41 AM

1. Site dominant. This work embodies the classical tenets of permanence, transcendent and historical content, meaning, purpose; the art-object either rises out of, or is the occasion for, its “ordinary” circumstances— monuments, historical figures, murals, etc. These “works of art” are recognized, understood, and evaluated by referencing their content, purpose, placement, familiar form, materials, techniques, skills, etc. A Henry Moore would be an example of site dominant art. 2. Site adjusted. Such work compensates for the modern development of the levels of meaning-content having been reduced to terrestrial dimensions (even abstraction). Here consideration is given to adjustments of scale, appropriateness, placement, etc. But the “work of art” is still either made or conceived in the studio and transported to, or assembled on, the site. These works are, sometimes, still referenced by the familiarity of “content and placement” (centered, or on a pedestal, etc.), but there is now a developing emphasis on referencing the oeuvre of the individual artist. Here, a Mark di Suvero would be an example. 3. Site specific. Here the “sculpture” is conceived with the site in mind; the site sets the parameters and is, in part, the reason for the sculpture. This process takes the initial step towards sculpture’s being integrated into its surroundings. But our process of recognition and understanding of the “work of art” is still keyed (referenced) to the oeuvre of the artist. Familiarity with his or her history, lineage, art intent, style, materials, techniques, etc., are presupposed; thus, for example, a Richard Serra is always recognizable as, first and foremost, a Richard Serra. 4. Site conditioned/determined. Here the sculptural response draws all of its cues (reasons for being) from its surroundings. This requires the process to begin with an intimate, hands-on reading of the site. This means sitting, watching, and walking through the site, the surrounding areas (where you will enter from and exit to), the city at large or the countryside. Here there are numerous things to consider; what is the site’s relation to applied and implied schemes of organization and systems of order, relation, architecture, uses, distances, sense of scale? For example, are we dealing with New York verticals or big sky Montana? What kinds of natural events affect the site—snow, wind, sun angles, sunrise, water, etc.? What is the physical and people density? the sound and visual density (quiet, next-toquiet, or busy)? What are the qualities of surface, sound, movement, light, etc.? What are the qualities of detail, levels of finish, craft? What are the histories of prior and current uses, present desires, etc.? A quiet distillation of all of this—while directly experiencing the site—determines all the facets of the “sculptural response”: aesthetic sensibility, levels and kinds of physicality, gesture, dimensions, materials, kind and level of finish, details, etc.; whether the response should be monumental or ephemeral, aggressive or gentle, useful or useless, sculptural, architectural, or simply the planting of a tree, or maybe even doing nothing at all.

216    ROBERT IRWIN

64214int.indd 216

22-05-12 4:41 AM

21. Robert Irwin, Varese Portal Room, 1973.

Here, with this fourth category of site-conditioned art, the process of recognition and understanding breaks with the conventions of abstract referencing of content, historical lineage, oeuvre of the artist, style, etc., implicit in the other three categories, and crosses the conventional boundaries of art vis-à-vis architecture, landscape, city planning, utility, and so forth, reducing such quantitative recognitions (measures and categories) to a secondary importance. We now propose to follow the principles of phenomenal, conditional, and responsive art by placing the individual observer in context, at the crux of the determining process, insisting that he or she use all the same (immediate) cues the artist used in forming the art-response to form his or her operative-response (judgments): “Does this ‘piece,’ ‘situation,’ or ‘space,’ make sense? Is it more interesting, more beautiful? How do I feel about it? And what does it mean to me?” Earlier, I made the point that you cannot correctly call anything either free or creative if the individual does not, at least in part, determine his or her own meaning. What applied to the artist now applies to the observer. And in this responsibility of the individual observer we can see the first social implication of a phenomenal art. Being and circumstance, then, constitute the operative frame of reference for an extended (phenomenal) art activity, which becomes a process of reasoning between our mediated culture (being) and our immediate presence (circumstance). Being embodies in you the observer, participant, or user, your complete genetic, cultural, and personal histories as “subsidiary” cues bearing on your “focal” attending

ROBERT IRWIN   217

64214int.indd 217

22-05-12 4:41 AM

(experiencing) of your circumstances, again in a “from-to relation.” Circumstance, of course, encompasses all of the conditions, qualities, and consequences making up the real context of your being in the world. There is embedded in any set of circumstances and your being in them the dynamic of a past and future, what was, how it came to be, what it is, and what it may come to be. If all of this seems a bit familiar, it should. No one “invents” a new perceptual consciousness. This process of being and circumstance is our most basic perceptual (experiencing) action, something we already do at every moment in simply coming to know the nature of our presence, and we almost always do so without giving the wonder of it a second thought. Once again this “oversight” speaks not of its insignificance; on the contrary, it speaks of its extraordinary sophistication. What I am advocating is simply elevating this process, this reasoning, to a role of importance that matches its innate sophistication. It should be noted that it is upon this “reasoning” process that all of our subsequent logics (systems) are instinctively patterned—although this generally goes unacknowledged. But with one modification (gain and loss): to cut the world down to a manageable size, our logics hold their components to act as a kind of truth, locking them in as a matter of style into a form of permanence. Conversely, the process of reasoning, our being and circumstance (which I am here proposing), is free of such abstraction and can account for that most basic condition (physic) of the universe—change. The wonder of it all is that what looked for all the world like a diminishing horizon—the art-object’s becoming so ephemeral as to threaten to disappear altogether—has, like some marvelous philosophical riddle, turned itself inside out to reveal its opposite. What appeared to be a question of object/non-object has turned out to be a question of seeing and not seeing, of how it is we actually perceive or fail to perceive “things” in their real contexts. Now we are presented and challenged with the infinite, everyday richness of “phenomenal” perception (and the potential for a corresponding “phenomenal art,” with none of the customary abstract limitations as to form, place, materials, and so forth)—one which seeks to discover and value the potential for experiencing beauty in everything.

218    ROBERT IRWIN

64214int.indd 218

22-05-12 4:41 AM

HANS HA ACKE B O R N 19 3 6

UNTITLED STATEMENT (1980)

If art contributes to, among other things, the way we view the world and shape social relations, then it does not matter whose image of the world it promotes and whose interests it serves.

HANS HAACKE RESPONDS TO QUESTIONS FROM TEXTE ZUR KUNST (2010)

At the end of August, I received an inquiry from Texte zur Kunst about whether I could contribute something on the topic of “Political Art?” for its December anniversary issue. The combination of the two words in the title was referred to as “not without problem.” A number of questions from the editors seem to illustrate this unease. I quote them here and try to provide some improvised answers. texte zur kunst: Is all art that deals with socio-critical topics inevitably political? hans haacke: All art productions, irrespective of their subject, the artists’ intentions, and how the recipients of the works interpret them, have a political effect. Like other public articulations they too are little pieces of the mosaic with which one can compare the conflict-ridden consensus of a society. It is these currents of the Zeitgeist that have a political effect in the present and thereby also in the future. tzk: How do aesthetics and politics relate to each other? hh: Whatever one may understand by aesthetics, it, like all areas of life, is inextricably intertwined with politics. In the 1985 annual report of Saatchi & Saatchi PLC one could read: “As Lenin said, everything is connected to everything else.” At the time, the Saatchi brothers had already made a name for themselves as the bosses of

Hans Haacke, “Untitled Statement, 1980,” Skira annuel (Geneva) 6 (1980): 91; reprinted in Working Conditions: The Writings of Hans Haacke, ed. Alexander Alberro (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 101. © Hans Haacke / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Hans Haacke, “Hans Haacke Responds to Questions from Texte zur Kunst,” 2010, Texte zur Kunst (Berlin) 80 (December 2010): 124–25; reprinted in Working Conditions: The Writings of Hans Haacke, ed. Alexander Alberro (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 245–49. © Hans Haacke / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

219

64214int.indd 219

22-05-12 4:41 AM

22. Hans Haacke, Gift Horse, Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, London, 2015.

a global advertising agency and promoter of the Tories. Charles, the younger of the two, had also become a big player in the international art world. tzk: How are the formal qualities of an artwork related to the social conditions that allow for its production? hh: All human-made objects and behavior are shaped by their social environment and personal circumstances. Pierre Bourdieu spoke of “habitus.” tzk: Is political art more persuasive if it provokes or is subversive and expresses activism and engagement? hh: Whether and to what extent so-called political art, i.e., art productions that are perceived as having a political agenda, are “persuasive,” depends not only on their own qualities; what matters as much is who the recipients happen to be and in which historic and social context they encounter them. Likewise, whether these productions are thought of as provocative, subversive, and, in fact, promoting their cause, depends on that context. Admen, public relations experts, press agents, and the managers of election campaigns, wrestle with these questions in order to develop promising strategies for their clients. In a lecture of 1961 at the Museum of Modern Art, Marcel Duchamp said: “All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. This becomes even

220    HANS HA ACKE

64214int.indd 220

22-05-12 4:41 AM

more obvious when posterity gives a final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists.” tzk: Can an art that considers itself as political be more than merely a personal gesture if it appears in the white cube; and no matter how radical it may be, can it avoid easily being co-opted by the capitalist art market and publicly subsidized or privately financed exhibition establishments? hh: It is a mistake to assume that commercial and public exhibition spaces are sealed off from the socio-political sphere. Their walls are porous in both directions. It is frequently in the white cube where curators of exhibitions in public museums, biennials, Documentas and other noncommercial venues initially encounter the works they eventually select for their mega-shows. It therefore made sense that Okwui Enwezor and his co-curators of the 2008 Gwangju Biennale called the selection of what they had seen and found remarkable during their tours through galleries and other exhibiting venues around the world during the preceding year an “Annual Report.” The mass media, lifestyle-connoisseurs, and bloggers boost indirect distribution. Also serving as lubricant is that cultural events have often become a spectacle, have gained entertainment value, and, as the case may be, that they are perceived as cool. The promotion of tourism and attempts to attract business also help. For an adequate assessment of the target group(s) one needs to recognize that the public of the art world enjoys a comparatively high level of education and, as a consequence, exerts considerable influence in society. Younger visitors of art exhibitions are potentially more open to contrarian positions than their parents. They are the ones who will shape the future. tzk: Why is there an expectation that artists address political issues? hh: Such expectations from the “fine arts” are far from being generally shared. “Political art” is often dismissed as “propaganda.” Below the surface, distant and troubling memories of a former Propagandaministerium and so-called Socialist Realism may play a role in the rejection. It is usually overlooked that positions critical of these former regimes, at the time, were denounced as “degenerate” or “serving the class enemy” and violently suppressed. Of course, censorship and self-censorship are not foreign to the present. However, aside from such rejectionist attitudes, as in the past, many people expect “disinterested pleasure” from their encounter with art productions, particularly when interests are at stake. It is not generally recognized or, in fact, [is] duly forgotten that artists have been socially engaged for many centuries and that, e.g., Caspar David Friedrich was a decidedly political artist. It is the seeming otherworldliness and the “sublime” (transcending self-interest) that makes cultural events so attractive for sponsors. That, however, is a reason not to leave the field to them. You reap what you sow.

HANS HA ACKE   221

64214int.indd 221

22-05-12 4:41 AM

MIERLE L ADERMAN UKELES B O R N 19 3 9

23. Mierle Laderman Ukeles, MANIFESTO FOR MAINTENANCE ART 1969!, 1969.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles, MANIFESTO FOR MAINTENANCE ART 1969! / Proposal for an Exhibition “CARE” (1969); excerpts first published in Lucy R. Lippard, ed., Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 (1973; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 220–21. Courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York. © Mierle Laderman Ukeles.

222

64214int.indd 222

22-05-12 4:41 AM

64214int.indd 223

22-05-12 4:41 AM

64214int.indd 224

22-05-12 4:41 AM

64214int.indd 225

22-05-12 4:41 AM

24. Mierle Laderman Ukeles, WHY SANITATION CAN BE USED AS A MODEL FOR PUBLIC ART, written in New York City, May 1984.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles, “Why Sanitation Can Be Used as a Model for Public Art” (1984); published in the Act 2, no. 1 (Winter–Spring 1990): 84–85. Courtesy of the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York. © Mierle Laderman Ukeles.

64214int.indd 226

22-05-12 4:41 AM

64214int.indd 227

22-05-12 4:41 AM

25. Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Touch Sanitation Performance, July 24, 1979–June 26, 1980.

64214int.indd 228

22-05-12 4:41 AM

SOL LEWITT 19 2 8 –2 0 0 7

PARAGRAPHS ON CONCEPTUAL ART (1967)

The editor has written me that he is in favor of avoiding “the notion that the artist is a kind of ape that has to be explained by the civilized critic.” This should be good news to both artists and apes. With this assurance I hope to justify his confidence. To use a baseball metaphor (one artist wanted to hit the ball out of the park, another to stay loose at the plate and hit the ball where it was pitched), I am grateful for the opportunity to strike out for myself. I will refer to the kind of art in which I am involved as conceptual art. In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive, it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless. It is usually free from the dependence on the skill of the artist as a craftsman. It is the objective of the artist who is concerned with conceptual art to make his work mentally interesting to the spectator, and therefore usually he would want it to become emotionally dry. There is no reason to suppose, however, that the conceptual artist is out to bore the viewer. It is only the expectation of an emotional kick, to which one conditioned to expressionist art is accustomed, that would deter the viewer from perceiving this art. Conceptual art is not necessarily logical. The logic of a piece or series of pieces is a device that is used at times, only to be ruined. Logic may be used to camouflage the real intent of the artist, to lull the viewer into the belief that he understands the work, or to infer a paradoxical situation (such as logic vs. illogic). Some ideas are logical in conception and illogical perceptually. The ideas need not be complex. Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple. Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable. In terms of ideas the artist is free even to surprise himself. Ideas are discovered by intuition. What the work of art looks like isn’t too important. It has to look like something if it has physical form. No matter what form it may finally have it must begin with an idea. It is the process of conception and realization with which the artist is concerned. Once given physical reality by the artist the work is open to the perception of all, including the artist. (I use the word perception to mean the apprehension of the sense Sol LeWitt, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” Artforum 5, no. 10 (June 1967): 79–83. © 2022 The LeWitt Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

229

64214int.indd 229

22-05-12 4:41 AM

data, the objective understanding of the idea, and simultaneously a subjective interpretation of both.) The work of art can be perceived only after it is completed. Art that is meant for the sensation of the eye primarily would be called perceptual rather than conceptual. This would include most optical, kinetic, light, and color art. Since the functions of conception and perception are contradictory (one pre-, the other postfact) the artist would mitigate his idea by applying subjective judgment to it. If the artist wishes to explore his idea thoroughly, then arbitrary or chance decisions would be kept to a minimum, while caprice, taste and other whimsies would be eliminated from the making of the art. The work does not necessarily have to be rejected if it does not look well. Sometimes what is initially thought to be awkward will eventually be visually pleasing. To work with a plan that is preset is one way of avoiding subjectivity. It also obviates the necessity of designing each work in turn. The plan would design the work. Some plans would require millions of variations, and some a limited number, but both are finite. Other plans imply infinity. In each case, however, the artist would select the basic form and rules that would govern the solution of the problem. After that the fewer decisions made in the course of completing the work, the better. This eliminates the arbitrary, the capricious, and the subjective as much as possible. This is the reason for using this method. When an artist uses a multiple modular method he usually chooses a simple and readily available form. The form itself is of very limited importance; it becomes the grammar for the total work. In fact, it is best that the basic unit be deliberately uninteresting so that it may more easily become an intrinsic part of the entire work. Using complex basic forms only disrupts the unity of the whole. Using a simple form repeatedly narrows the field of the work and concentrates the intensity to the arrangement of the form. This arrangement becomes the end while the form becomes the means. Conceptual art doesn’t really have much to do with mathematics, philosophy, or any other mental discipline. The mathematics used by most artists is simple arithmetic or simple number systems. The philosophy of the work is implicit in the work and it is not an illustration of any system of philosophy. It doesn’t really matter if the viewer understands the concepts of the artist by seeing the art. Once it is out of his hand the artist has no control over the way a viewer will perceive the work. Different people will understand the same thing in a different way. Recently there has been much written about minimal art, but I have not discovered anyone who admits to doing this kind of thing. There are other art forms around called primary structures, reductive, rejective, cool, and mini-art. No artist I know will own up to any of these either. Therefore I conclude that it is part of a secret language that art critics use when communicating with each other through the medium of art magazines. Mini-art is best because it reminds one of miniskirts and long-legged girls. It must refer to very small works of art. This is a very good idea. Perhaps “miniart” shows could be sent around the country in matchboxes. Or maybe the mini-artist is a very small person, say under five feet tall. If so, much good work will be found in the primary schools (primary school primary structures).

230    SOL LE WIT T

64214int.indd 230

22-05-12 4:41 AM

26. Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #1268: Scribbles: Staircase (AKAG), conceived 2006, executed 2010.

If the artist carries through his idea and makes it into visible form, then all the steps in the process are of importance. The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of art as any finished product. All intervening steps—scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed works, models, studies, thoughts, conversations—are of interest. Those that show the thought process of the artist are sometimes more interesting than the final product. Determining what size a piece should be is difficult. If an idea requires three dimensions then it would seem any size would do. The question would be what size is best. If the thing were made gigantic then the size alone would be impressive and the idea may be lost entirely. Again, if it is too small, it may become inconsequential. The height of the viewer may have some bearing on the work and also the size of the space into which it will be placed. The artist may wish to place objects higher than the eye level of the viewer, or lower. I think the piece must be large enough to give the viewer whatever information he needs to understand the work and placed in such a way that will facilitate this understanding. (Unless the idea is of impediment and requires difficulty of vision or access.) Space can be thought of as the cubic area occupied by a three-dimensional volume. Any volume would occupy space. It is air and cannot be seen. It is the interval between things that can be measured. The intervals and measurements can be important to a work of art. If certain distances are important they will be made obvious in the piece. If space is relatively unimportant it can be regularized and made equal (things placed equal distances apart) to mitigate any interest in interval. Regular space might also

SOL LE WIT T   231

64214int.indd 231

22-05-12 4:41 AM

become a metric time element, a kind of regular beat or pulse. When the interval is kept regular whatever is irregular gains more importance. Architecture and three-dimensional art are of completely opposite natures. The former is concerned with making an area with a specific function. Architecture, whether it is a work of art or not, must be utilitarian or else fail completely. Art is not utilitarian. When three-dimensional art starts to take on some of the characteristics of architecture, such as forming utilitarian areas, it weakens its function as art. When the viewer is dwarfed by the larger size of a piece this domination emphasizes the physical and emotive power of the form at the expense of losing the idea of the piece. New materials are one of the great afflictions of contemporary art. Some artists confuse new materials with new ideas. There is nothing worse than seeing art that wallows in gaudy baubles. By and large most artists who are attracted to these materials are the ones who lack the stringency of mind that would enable them to use the materials well. It takes a good artist to use new materials and make them into a work of art. The danger is, I think, in making the physicality of the materials so important that it becomes the idea of the work (another kind of expressionism). Three-dimensional art of any kind is a physical fact. This physicality is its most obvious and expressive content. Conceptual art is made to engage the mind of the viewer rather than his eye or emotions. The physicality of a three-dimensional object then becomes a contradiction to its non-emotive intent. Color, surface, texture, and shape only emphasize the physical aspects of the work. Anything that calls attention to and interests the viewer in this physicality is a deterrent to our understanding of the idea and is used as an expressive device. The conceptual artist would want to ameliorate this emphasis on materiality as much as possible or to use it in a paradoxical way (to convert it into an idea). This kind of art, then, should be stated with the greatest economy of means. Any idea that is better stated in two dimensions should not be in three dimensions. Ideas may also be stated with numbers, photographs, or words or any way the artist chooses, the form being unimportant. These paragraphs are not intended as categorical imperatives, but the ideas stated are as close as possible to my thinking at this time. These ideas are the result of my work as an artist and are subject to change as my experience changes. I have tried to state them with as much clarity as possible. If the statements I make are unclear it may mean the thinking is unclear. Even while writing these ideas there seemed to be obvious inconsistencies (which I have tried to correct, but others will probably slip by). I do not advocate a conceptual form of art for all artists. I have found that it has worked well for me while other ways have not. It is one way of making art; other ways suit other artists. Nor do I think all conceptual art merits the viewer’s attention. Conceptual art is good only when the idea is good.

232    SOL LE WIT T

64214int.indd 232

22-05-12 4:41 AM

LEE BONTECOU B O R N 19 31

STATEMENT (1960)

I’m afraid I am rather vague about expressing philosophies of art and especially about my own work. I can only say that I do not know if what I am doing is art nor do I have any real concern. I just want to do what I believe and what I want to do, and what I must do to get what I want—something that is natural and something that exists in us all. My concern is to build things that express our relation to this country—to other countries—to this world—to other worlds—in terms of myself. To glimpse some of the fear, hope, ugliness, beauty and mystery that exists in us all and which hangs over all the young people today. The individual is welcome to see and feel in them what he wishes in terms of himself.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT (2003)

Over the years and to the present day, there has been so much written about my work that has nothing to do with me that when I read it, I don’t recognize anything of myself or my work in it. In the past when I tried to express my thoughts, eyelids drooped and other agendas were doled out. As a result I stopped trying and spoke only through my work. So I am writing this now during my retrospective to put all that to rest, and to express my own voice about inaccuracies and irrelevant contextualizations. Since my early years until now, the natural world and its visual wonders and horrors—man-made devices with their mind-boggling engineering feats and destructive abominations, elusive human nature and its multiple ramifications from the sublime to unbelievable abhorrences—to me are all one. It is in the spirit of this feeling that the primary influences on my work have occurred.

Lee Bontecou, “Statement (from a letter of 1960),” Americans 1963, ed. Dorothy C. Miller (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1963), 12. © Lee Bontecou / © 2022 The Museum of Modern Art. Lee Bontecou, “Artist’s Statement,” reproduced in full from Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective (Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 2003), 12. © 2003 Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Bontecou’s text appears as an insert, following the acknowledgments, in only the softcover version of the catalogue.

233

64214int.indd 233

22-05-12 4:41 AM

Along with this feeling, walking through the Metropolitan Museum, I would always end up looking at the Greek vases with the wonderful drawings and shapes, and then wander with awe through the African halls. At the Museum of Natural History, the fossils, bones, and panoramas were and are still unbelievably exciting. At the Museum of Modern Art, just to see a single Brancusi sculpture was enough. Those secondary feelings intermingled with the primary emotions that are basic to my work. As for my contemporaries, it was my personal friends who were the other basic influences on my work, some of whom were never near an art scene. There were several. I’ve mentioned them elsewhere, but one was a man named Doc Groupp—a rough and tough New Yorker who, though his main interests were electronics and aviation, painted the most delicately beautiful and sensitive Oriental landscapes on rice paper and mounted them on scrolls. Remaining true to that tradition, he kept them secluded until very special personal occasions arose worthy of their private display. His scrolls still haunt my imagination. Coinciding with those personal feelings in the early years, over us all spread the most wonderful period of abstract expressionism. It gave young artists a burst of energy and a desire for boundless freedom to break away individually and find new paths. On the purely tangible side of seeking new paths, there were four of us whose work was allied in the late fifties: the sculptors John Chamberlain, Tom Doyle and myself and the painter William Giles. The latter’s work more closely paralleled mine due to the need for breaking up the flat rectangular plane. We were all lucky to be working in art at such an exciting time of exploration. It is in the spirit of all these feelings that my work was and is still being made.

234    LEE BONTECOU

64214int.indd 234

22-05-12 4:41 AM

ANNE TRUIT T 19 21–2 0 0 4

EXCERPTS FROM DAYBOOK: THE JOURNAL OF AN ARTIST (1974) July 6, 1974

Balancing intuition against sensory information, and sensitivity to one’s self against pragmatic knowledge of the world, is not a stance unique to artists. The specialness of artists is the degree to which these precarious balances are crucial backups for their real endeavor. Their essential effort is to catapult themselves wholly, without holding back one bit, into a course of action without having any idea where they will end up. They are like riders who gallop into the night, eagerly leaning on their horse’s neck, peering into a blinding rain. And they have to do it over and over again. When they find that they have ridden and ridden—maybe for years, full tilt—in what is for them a mistaken direction, they must unearth within themselves some readiness to turn direction and to gallop off again. They may spend a little time scraping off the mud, resting the horse, having a hot bath, laughing and sitting in candlelight with friends. But in the back of their minds they never forget that the dark, driving run is theirs to make again. They need their balances in order to support their risks. The more they develop an understanding of all their experience—the more it is at their command— the more they carry with them into the whistling wind. There seems to be a law that the more conscious knowledge you develop, the more you can expand your consciousness. The artist takes advantage of this law. Wise artists like Titian and Rembrandt and Matisse became greater as they became older. Piero della Francesca died blind at the age of ninety-odd. I think often of what he must have kept on seeing, his own space and color perfectly balanced and alive behind his fixed eyes. July 8, 1974

The central fact of the dark run is its high emotion, and this is in no way avoidable in actually making a work of art, even when—as happened to me early this morning— the look of what you are trying to make is clear in your mind’s eye. A certain train of thought that absorbed me ten years ago resurfaced about 5 A.M. in the form of a series

Anne Truitt, excerpts (1974) from Daybook: The Journal of an Artist (Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 1982), 26–27, 43, 82. © annetruitt.org / Bridgeman Images.

235

64214int.indd 235

22-05-12 4:41 AM

27. Anne Truitt’s studio in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington, DC, 1979. From left: Amica, 1979; Sand Child, 1979; Pilgrim, Nicea, 1977; Come Unto These Yellow Sands, 1979; Sentinel, 1978; Portal, 1978.

of drawings and paintings so plain in their essence that I wonder they evaded me for so long. July 31, 1974

I expanded into love with the discipline of sculpture. Although my intellectual reason for abandoning writing for sculpture in 1948 was that I found myself uninterested in the sequence of events in time, I think now that it was this love that tipped the balance. Artists have no choice but to express their lives. They have only, and that not always, a choice of process. This process does not change the essential content of their work in art, which can only be their life. But in my own case the fact that I have to use my whole body in making my work seems to disperse my intensity in a way that suits me. October 12, 1974

When I conceive a new sculpture, there is a magical period in which we seem to fall in love with one another. This explains to me why, when I was in Yaddo and deprived of

236    ANNE TRUIT T

64214int.indd 236

22-05-12 4:42 AM

my large pieces, I felt lonely with the same quality of loneliness I would feel for a missing lover. This mutual exchange is one of exploration on my part, and, it seems to me, on the sculpture’s also. Its life is its own. I receive it. And after the sculpture stands free, finished, I have the feeling of “oh, it was you,” akin to the feeling with which I always recognized my babies when I first saw them, having made their acquaintance before their birth. This feeling of recognition lasts only a second or two, but is my ample reward.

ANNE TRUIT T   237

64214int.indd 237

22-05-12 4:42 AM

CARL ANDRE B O R N 19 3 5

28. Carl Andre, ESSAYONSCULPTURE1964, 1964.

Carl Andre, ESSAYONSCULPTURE1964, 1964, Whitney Museum of American Art, Promised Gift of Emily Fisher Landau, P.2010.8. Originally published in Barbara Rose, “ABC Art,” Art in America 53, no. 5 (October–November 1965): 67; reprinted in Carl Andre, Cuts: Texts 1959–2004, ed. James Meyer (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 233, this version with the dedication “FORECGOOSSEN1964.” © 2022 Carl Andre / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

238

64214int.indd 238

22-05-12 4:42 AM

D A N F L AV I N 19 3 3 –19 96

JOURNAL ENTRY (1963)

Last week at the Metropolitan, I saw a large icon from the school of Novgorod. I smiled when I recognized it. It had more than its painting. There was a physical feeling in the panel. Its recurving warp bore a history. This icon had that magical presiding presence which I try to realize in my own icons. But my icons differ from a Byzantine Christ held in majesty; they are dumb—anonymous and inglorious. They’re as mute and undistinguished as the run of our architecture. My icons do not raise up the blessed savior and elaborate cathedrals. They are constructed concentrations celebrating barren rooms. They bring a limited light.

“. . . IN DAYLIGHT OR COOL WHITE.”: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH (1964–1969)

During Spring 1963, I felt sufficiently founded in my new work to discontinue it. From a recent diagram, I declared the diagonal personal ecstasy (the diagonal of May 25, 1963), a common eight-foot strip with fluorescent light of any commercially available color. At first, I chose “gold.” The radiant tube and the shadow cast by its supporting pan seemed ironic enough to hold alone. There was literally no need to compose this system definitively; it seemed to sustain itself directly, dynamically, dramatically on my workroom wall—a buoyant and insistent gaseous image which, through brilliance, somewhat betrayed its physical presence into approximately invisibility. (I put the paired lamp and pan in position at an angle 45° above the horizontal because that seemed to be a suitable situation of resolved equilibrium but any other positioning could have been just as engaging.)

Dan Flavin, excerpt from record book entry dated August 9, 1963; published in Dan Flavin: three installations in fluorescent light / Drei Installationen in fluoreszierendem Licht, exh. cat. (Cologne: Kunsthalle Köln, 1973), 83. All texts selected and compiled by Tiffany Bell. © 2022 Stephen Flavin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Dan Flavin, excerpts from “ ‘ . . . in daylight or cool white.’: An autobiographical sketch,” as printed in Michael Govan and Tiffany Bell, Dan Flavin: The Complete Lights, 1961–1996 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 189–92. The text was originally used as a lecture presented at the Brooklyn Museum Art School in December 1964 and revised for other publications. This version dates from 1969. © 2022 Stephen Flavin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

239

64214int.indd 239

22-05-12 4:42 AM

It occurred to me then to compare the new “diagonal” with Constantin Brancusi’s past masterpiece, the “endless column.” That artificial “column” was disposed as a regular formal consequence of numerous similar wood wedge-cut segments extended vertically—a hewn sculpture (at its inception). The “diagonal” in its overt formal simplicity was only the installation of a dimensional or distended luminous line of a standard industrial device. Little artistic craft could be possible. [. . .] In time, I came to these conclusions about what I had found with fluorescent light, and about what might be accomplished plastically: now the entire interior spatial container and its components—wall, floor, and ceiling—could support a strip of light but would not restrict its act of light except to enfold it. Regard the light and you are fascinated—practically inhibited from grasping its limits at each end. While the tube itself has an actual length of eight feet, its shadow, cast from the supporting pan, has but elusively dissolving ends. This waning cannot really be measured without resisting consummate visual effects. Realizing this, I knew that the actual space of a room could be disrupted and played with by careful, thorough composition of the illuminating equipment. For example, if an eight foot florescent lamp be pressed into a vertical corner, it can completely illuminate that definite juncture by physical structure, glare and doubled shadow. A section of wall can be visually disintegrated into a separate triangle by placing a diagonal of light from edge to edge on the wall; that is, side to floor, for instance. These conclusions from completed propositions (in the Kaymar Gallery during March 1964 and in the Green Gallery during November 1964 and December 1964) left me at play on the structure that bounded a room but not yet so involved in the volume of space which is so much more extensive than the room’s box. [. . .] What has art been for me? In the past, I have known it (basically) as a sequence of implicit decisions to combine traditions of painting and sculpture in architecture with acts of electric light defining space and, recently, as more progressive structural proposals about these vibrant instruments which have severalized past recognitions and increased them into almost effortless yet insistent mental patterns which I may not neglect. I want to reckon with more lamps on occasion at least for the time being.

THE ARTISTS SAY (1965)

Thus far, I have made a considered attempt to poise silent electric light in crucial concert point to point, line by line and otherwise in the box that is a room. This dramatic decoration has been founded in the young tradition of a plastic revolution which

Dan Flavin, excerpt from “The Artists Say,” Art Voices 4, no. 3 (Summer 1965): 72. © 2022 Stephen Flavin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

240    DAN FL AVIN

64214int.indd 240

22-05-12 4:42 AM

gripped Russian art only forty years ago. My joy is to try to build from the “incomplete” experience as I see fit. Monument 7 in cool white fluorescent light memorializes Vladimir Tatlin, the great revolutionary, who dreamed of art as science. It stands, a vibrantly aspiring order, in lieu of his last glider, which never left the ground.

EXCERPT FROM A LETTER TO BETSY BAKER (APRIL 27, 1967)

For a few years, I have deployed a system of diagramming designs for florescent light in situations. Of course, I was not immediately aware of that convenience and its inherently fascinating changes. I assume that it “developed” without my explicit or regular recognition. Also, a number of diagrams had to accumulate before a kind of reciprocity could obtain. Now, the system does not proceed; it is simply applied. Incidentally, I have discovered that no diagram is inappropriate for my file. None need to be prevented, suspended or discarded for lack of quality. Each one nearly awaits coordination again and again. Sometimes, adjustments or new variants are implied. Then, and only then, do I think to move my pencil once more. I am delighted by this understanding. Yes, florescent light fixtures are unwieldy to place, particularly away from a flat surface. I am conscious about being exceedingly careful with that part. I aim constantly for clarity and distinction first in the pattern of the tubes and then with that of the supporting pans. But, with or without color, I never neglect the design.

EXCERPTS FROM A REPLY TO JAN VAN DER MARCK (JUNE 17, 1967)

[. . .] I do not like the term “environment” associated with my proposal. It seems to me to imply living conditions and perhaps an invitation to comfortable residence. Such usage would deny a sense of direct and difficult visual artifice (in the same sense that to confront vibrating fluorescent light for some time ought to be disturbing for most participants). Also, I intend rapid comprehensions—get in and get out situations. I think that one has explicit moments with such particular light—space. Now, I have witnessed

Dan Flavin, excerpt from a letter to Betsy Baker, April 27, 1967, first published in Dan Flavin, “Several more remarks . . .,” Studio International 177, no. 910 (April 1969): 173–75. © 2020 Stephen Flavin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Dan Flavin, excerpts from a reply to Jan van der Marck, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, June 17, 1967, first published in Dan Flavin, “Several more remarks . . .,” Studio International 177, no. 910 (April 1969): 173–75. © 2022 Stephen Flavin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

DAN FL AVIN   241

64214int.indd 241

22-05-12 4:42 AM

these moments in situations frequently enough not to be burdened by them. I know them and forget sufficiently. The installations are completed, lighted and disassembled. Clarity obtains in my mind after all. [. . .] Before I forget, please do not refer to my effort as sculpture and to me as sculptor. I do not handle and fashion three-dimensioned still works, even as to Barbara Rose’s Juddianed “specific objects.” I feel apart from problems of sculpture and painting but, there is no need to re-tag me and my part. I have realized that there need not be a substitute for old orthodoxy anyhow.

EXCERPT FROM A REPLY TO DAN GRAHAM (JUNE 22, 1967)

Last year, I became fully conscious that I had been deploying an interchangeable system of diagrams for florescent light held for situation installation. (The system was so thoroughly operative that it could be recorded finally in writing.) This attitude differs greatly from that former sense of development, piece by piece.

Dan Flavin, excerpt from a reply to Dan Graham, June 22, 1967, first published in Dan Flavin, “Several more remarks . . .,” Studio International 177, no. 910 (April 1969): 173–75. © 2022 Stephen Flavin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

242    DAN FL AVIN

64214int.indd 242

22-05-12 4:42 AM

R I C H A R D A R T S C H WA G E R 19 2 3 –2 013

EXCERPT FROM “4 SENTENCES FOR ART IN AMERICA” (1965)

My aim is to imbue my work with qualities of grace, beauty, monumentality, reverence, sense of purpose, sense of the eternal, purity, truth, craftsmanship, significant form, durability, honesty, and strength—singly or in combination.

ART AND REASON (1990)

It comes from the anthropologists and goes like this: the trouble with a human being arises from our being strongly individualist on one hand and social creatures on the other. There is an alternative to this schism that I like that goes like this: humankind can walk about and is capable of inhabiting a physical space and a social space as well. I bring this up because I think it can be of some use in dealing with our topic—Reason. We are looking at Art in connection with this theme not just because this is an art publication, but because reason and art stand correctly for the two fundamental modes of knowing. When we speak of both we are dealing with ancient as well as modern practices, and I think that the second characterization of their relationship—one of complex conduct, rather than schizophrenia—provides the better reach across time; there are substantial carry-overs of the ancient practices into those of the present day. We are animals. In this branch of life we enjoy an advantage over plants: we can move about as we please. At the beginning, this mobility was a lot like that of plants— just faster. Oxygen to carbon dioxide is simply faster and there has always been an excess of power with our bind, much more than would be required to power a suite of tropisms. So, there is always a certain amount of movement to no particular purpose. We move through air and not dirt, generally speaking. With the advent of memory, another increment is added to this excess in the form of virtual movement—a whole universe of the subjunctive; maybe starting with dreams that played back precisely the day’s events. But somewhere some actual

Richard Artschwager, excerpt from “4 Sentences for Art in America,” in Barbara Rose, “ABC Art,” Art in America 53, no. 5 (October–November 1965): 68. © 2022 The Estate of Richard Artschwager / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Richard Artschwager, “Art and Reason,” Parkett 23 (March 1990): 36–38. © 2022 The Estate of Richard Artschwager / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

243

64214int.indd 243

22-05-12 4:42 AM

levering of mental processes, some actual arranging, took place. There arose a sense that there is such a thing as sets. This rough axiom would be enough to set art into play and reason to work. This hypothetical event—“the birth of the axiom”—marks the start of reason, its branching off from the older, more holistic knowing. It also proclaims the social space. The natural habitat for art is the physical space where movement is possible—that is to say, movement which is free and whimsical and essentially to no purpose, except possibly to celebrate what is generally meant by respect for life. By social space I mean a space in which every move has a value: of yes or no, of good or bad. This (binary) space is also the space of Kant’s practical reason. But reason as a whole belongs to the physical space as well; that is its birthplace. One could argue that reason and social space created one another, maybe when someone said, “Don’t eat that leaf with the glabrous underside and the serrated edge!” So the social space is a kind of subspace inside the physical space. More surmise: Reason developed in physical space as a light skimming of the flux of experience, occasionally supplementing or grafting into the net of instincts. In artmaking, any such skimmings are stirred back into the flux to increase its potency. You see this in art made 30 millennia ago and also 30 days ago. Nothing is thrown away. Editing, pruning, distillation, abridgement in general, are for the most part foreign to it, but integral to reason as embodied in language—that Procrustean practice. The physical and social space are facts of modern as well as ancient life. Side by side they proclaim, also maintain, our notorious adaptability. Now our physical space is eroded to the point of being endangered, survives where (naively) there are few people and lots of space and where a person or persons can reside in pleasurable solipsism— watching, listening, not editing or throwing anything away—entering and departing this state each at their pleasure. Probably most people in today’s world are so much a part of a corporate sensibility that they would be unable to conceive of a physical space.

24 4    RICHARD ARTSCHWAGER

64214int.indd 244

22-05-12 4:42 AM

RONALD BL ADEN 1918 –19 8 8

STATEMENT (1965)

My involvement in sculpture outside of man’s scale is an attempt to reach that area of excitement belonging to natural phenomena such as a gigantic wave poised before it makes its fall or man-made phenomena such as the high bridge spanning two distant points. The scale becomes aggressive or heroic. The esthetic a depersonalized one. The space exploded or compressed rather than presented. The drama taut in its implication is best described as awesome or breathtaking. In rare moments I think these things can be gathered to produce a particular beauty.

Ronald Bladen, “Statement, 1965,” in Barbara Rose, “ABC Art,” Art in America 53, no. 5 (October–November 1965): 63. Ronald Bladen wrote his statement to Barbara Rose, then contributing editor at Art in America, on June 1, 1965; see Barbara Rose Papers, 1962–ca. 1969, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. © 2022 The Estate of Ronald Bladen, LLC / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

245

64214int.indd 245

22-05-12 4:42 AM

E VA H E S S E 19 3 6 –19 7 0

CONVERSATION WITH CINDY NEMSER (1970)

cindy nemser: When did you start working in soft materials? eva hesse: I started working in sculpture when my husband [Tom Doyle] and I lived for a year and a half under an unusual kind of “Renaissance patronage” in Europe. A German industrialist invited us to live with him and I had a great deal of difficulty with painting but never with drawings. The drawings were never very simplistic. They ranged from linear to complicated washes and collages. The translation or transference to a large scale and in painting was always tedious. It was not natural and I thought to translate it in some other way. So I started working in relief and with line—using the cords and ropes that are now so commonly used. I literally translated the line. I would vary the cord lengths and widths and I would start with three-dimensional boards and I would build them out with paper mâche or kinds of soft materials. I varied the materials a lot but the structure would always be built up with cords. I kept the scale, in Europe, fairly small, and when I came back to America I varied the materials further and I didn’t keep to rectangles. Even in Europe I did some that were not rectangles, and then they grew and grew. They came from the floor, the ceiling, the walls. Then it just became whatever it became. cn: How do the soft materials relate to the subject or content of your work? Do they embody unconscious ideas? Looking at your works they seem, to me, to be filled with sexual impulses or organic feeling. I feel there are anthropomorphic inferences. eh: It’s not a simple question for me. First when I work it’s only the abstract qualities that I’m really working with, which is to say the material, the form it’s going to take, the size, the scale, the positioning or where it comes from in my room—if it hangs from the ceiling or lies on the floor. However, I don’t value the totality of the image on these abstract or esthetic points. For me it’s a total image that has to do with me and life. It can’t be divorced as an idea or composition or form. I don’t believe art can be based on that. This is where art and life come together. Also I have confidence in my understanding of the formal to the point that I don’t play with it. I don’t want to make that my problem. I know it so well. I have complete confidence in my abilEva Hesse, “Conversation with Cindy Nemser,” in Cindy Nemser, Conversations with 12 Women Artists (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975), 206–8, 209–10, 211, 212–13, 215–16, 218, 222–23. Text courtesy of the author, © Cindy Nemser 2020. © The Estate of Eva Hesse, Courtesy Hauser & Wirth.

246

64214int.indd 246

22-05-12 4:42 AM

ity. I don’t want to be aware of it or conscious of it. It’s not the problem for me. Those problems are solvable, I solve them, can solve them beautifully. In fact, my idea now is to discount everything I’ve ever learned or been taught about those things and to find something else. So it is inevitable that it is my life, my feelings, my thoughts. And there I’m very complex. I’m not a simple person and the complexity—if I can name what it consists of (and it’s probably increased now because I’ve been so sick this year)—is the total absurdity of life. I guess that’s where I relate, if I do, to certain artists who I feel very close to, and not so much through having studied their writings or works, but because, for me, there’s this total absurdity in their work. cn: Which artists are they? eh: Duchamp, Yvonne Rainer, Ionesco, Carl Andre. [. . .] cn: How about motifs? I notice that you use the circle quite frequently. What does it mean to you? eh: I think that there is a time element. I think that that was in the sequence of change and maturation. I think I’m less involved in it now. I guess if you are going to pick a motif, you would say that before I got sick I was working with squares and rectangles. At that time when I really worked, the last works I did were just about a year ago, I was less interested in a specific form as the circle or the square or rectangle and was really working to get to non-anthropomorphic, non-geometric, non-non, where you can’t make any reference as a circle. I’ll try to get back to your question. I think the circle is very abstract. I could make up stories of what the circle means to me, but I don’t know if it is that conscious. I think it was a form, a vehicle. I don’t think I had a sexual, anthropomorphic, or geometric meaning. It wasn’t a breast and it wasn’t a circle representing life and eternity. I think that would be fake—maybe on an unconscious level, but that’s so opposed—to say it was an abstract life symbol or a geometric theory. There you have the two in opposition and I don’t think I had that conception. One memory I have: I remember always working with contradictions and contradictory forms which is my idea also in life. The whole absurdity of life, everything for me has always been opposite. Nothing has ever been in the middle. When I gave you my autobiography, my life never had anything normal or in the center. It was always extremes. And I think, I know that, in forms that I use in my work that contradiction is certainly there. When I was younger or a less mature artist, I was always aware that I could combine order and chaos, string and mass, huge and small. I would try to find the most absurd opposites or extreme opposites and I was always aware of their contradiction formally. It was always more interesting than making something right size, right proportion. Back to the question—within the circle I remember taking this straight perfect form and then putting a hole in the center and dropping out a very, very flexible surgical hose, the most flexible rubber I could get. I would make it very, very long and then it would squiggle and wiggle. That was the extreme you could get from that perfect, perfect circle. [. . .]

E VA HESSE   247

64214int.indd 247

22-05-12 4:42 AM

cn: Repetition is very prevalent in your work. Why do you repeat a form over and over? eh: Because it exaggerates. If something is meaningful, maybe it’s more meaningful said ten times. It’s not just an esthetic choice. If something is absurd, it’s much more greatly exaggerated, absurd, if it’s repeated. [. . .] cn: I feel there is so much of the unconscious in your work, things that are coming out of you that you don’t even realize. I guess that’s true of every artist, but your work seems to have a release in it that some art doesn’t have. eh: I let it. I want that release. I can’t go on a sheer program. At times I thought “the more thought the greater the art,” but I wonder about that and I do have to admit there’s a lot that I’ll just let happen and maybe it will come out the better for it. I used to plan a lot and do everything myself and then I started to take a chance. I needed help. It was a little difficult at first. I worked with two people but then we got to know each other well enough and I got confident enough and just prior to when I was sick I would not state the problem or plan the day. I would let more happen and let myself be used in a freer way. They also—their participation was more their own, more flexible. I wanted to see within a day’s work or within three days’ work what we would do together with a general focus but not anything specified. I really would like, when I start working again, to go further into this whole process. That doesn’t mean total chance or freedom or openness. [. . .] cn: What about the idea of environmental art? Do you think of your work as environmental? eh: No. I don’t make them for the outside or the inside. Yet I guess they’re for the inside because they are much closer to soul or introspection—to inner feelings. They are not for architecture or the sun or the water or the trees and they have nothing to do with color in nature or making a nice sculpture garden. cn: I was thinking of it in another way. Large pieces take up a great deal of the actual space in a room. They control the spectator and in a sense they demand more of one and one has to bring more to them. It’s the idea of perception and perceiving. eh: I think that is mainly scale and you have to walk in and around something and it covers or connects to the four walls and the ceiling and the floor. And some can be very, very inconspicuous. No, I am not interested in that. I could control the environment if I meant to do that through another means. I think I could control the environment if I wanted to with something the size of a book. cn: How about the relation of light and color in your work? eh: I think they are less important. Color is whatever comes out of the material and keeps it what it is. The light—I’m not too concerned with it, because if you use reinforced fiberglass clear and thin the light is there by its nature and the light does beautiful things to it. It is there as part of its anatomy. I am not interested in dramatics and so I deemphasize the beauty of the fiberglass or the light and just make

248    E VA HESSE

64214int.indd 248

22-05-12 4:42 AM

29. Eva Hesse, Contingent, 1969.

64214int.indd 249

22-05-12 4:42 AM

it natural. I don’t highlight it with extra light. It’s a by-product, built in there. Maybe dark does beautiful things to it. [. . .] cn: But you are concerned with the idea of lasting? eh: Well, I am confused about that as I am about life. I have a two-fold problem. I’m not working now, but I know I’m going to get to the problem once I start working with fiberglass because from what I understand it’s toxic and I’ve been too sick to really take a chance. I don’t take precautions. I don’t know how to handle precautions. I can’t wear a mask over my head. And then the rubber only lasts a short while. I am not sure where I stand on that. At this point I feel a little guilty when people want to buy it. I think they know but I want to write them a letter and say it’s not going to last. I am not sure what my stand on lasting really is. Part of me feels that it’s superfluous and if I need to use rubber that is more important. Life doesn’t last; art doesn’t last. It doesn’t matter. Then I have that other thing that I should use—I can’t even say it because I believe it less—but maybe that is a cop-out. [. . .] cn: Do you feel then that you’ve broken with the tradition of sculpture? eh: No. I don’t feel like I am doing traditional sculpture. cn: Then your art is more like painting? eh: I don’t even know that. Where does drawing end and painting begin? I don’t know if my own drawings aren’t really paintings except smaller and on paper. The drawings could be called painting legitimately and a lot of my sculpture could be called painting. That piece Contingent I did at Finch College could be called a painting or a sculpture. It is really hung painting in another material than painting. And a lot of my work could be called nothing or an object or any new word you want to call it.

250    E VA HESSE

64214int.indd 250

22-05-12 4:42 AM

RICHARD SERR A B O R N 19 3 8

EXTENDED NOTES FROM SIGHT POINT ROAD (1984)

I never begin to construct with a specific intention. I don’t work from a priori ideas and theoretical propositions. The structures are the result of experimentation and invention. In every search there is always a degree of unforeseeability, a sort of troubling feeling, a wonder after the work is complete, after the conclusion. The part of the work which surprises me invariably leads to new works. Call it a glimpse; often this glimpse occurs because of an obscurity which arises from a precise resolution. I never make drawings beforehand. Drawing is a separate activity, an ongoing concern with its own concomitant and inherent problems. It is impossible, even by analogy, to represent a spatial language. In the final analysis most depictions and illustrations are deceitful. When I begin there is no specific goal or accomplishment as such that I want to achieve. My work is not bounded by a preformulated definition. That would be a limitation on me and an imposition on the viewer. It is difficult to think without some obsession. It is impossible to create something, without a foundation that is rigorous, incontrovertible and, in fact, to some degree repetitive. The significance of the work for me is in its effort, not in its intentions. The effort is both a state of mind and an interaction with the world. I think art is a kind of activity that burns itself out, and it does so as you finish each piece. For the most part the site determines how I think about what I am going to build, whether it be an urban or landscape site, a room or other architectural enclosure. Some works are realized from their inception to their completion totally at the site. Other pieces are worked out in the studio. Having a definite notion of the actual site, I experiment with steel models in a large sandbox. The sand functioning as a ground plane or as a surrogate elevation enables me to shift the building elements so as to understand their sculptural capacity. The building method is based on hand manipulation. A continuous hands-on procedure, both in the studio and at the site (full scale mock-ups, models, etc.), allows me to perceive structures I could not imagine, for retention of physical properties is limited.

Richard Serra, “Extended Notes from Sight Point Road” (December 1984), in Richard Serra: Recent Sculpture in Europe 1977–1985 (Bochum, Germany: Galerie m, 1985); reprinted in Richard Serra: Writings and Interviews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 167–73. © 2022 Richard Serra / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

251

64214int.indd 251

22-05-12 4:42 AM

Understanding the pragmatic limitations of various contexts, be it accessibility, surface or subsurface condition, load potential, is part of my work, and I come up against the same problems a structural engineer comes up against. I have always been interested in testing the limits and assumptions of so-called structural rules, engineering codes. I have attempted to take the possibilities and practice of engineering to absurd lengths. My decision, early on, to build site-specific works in steel took me out of the traditional studio. The studio has been replaced by urbanism and industry. Steel mills, shipyards, and fabrication plants have become my on-the-road extended studios. My work can only be built in cooperation with city planners, engineers, transporters, laborers, riggers. Usually, I analyze a mill’s capacity, study its equipment, look at its products, consider its most advanced processes applied in making turbines, shells, pistons, nose cones, ingots, etc. I often try to extend a mill’s or shipyard’s tool potential in relation to what I need to accomplish. To be able to enter into a mill, a shipyard and extend both their work and my needs is a way of becoming an active producer within a given technology, not a manipulator of a “found” industrial product, not a consumer. The history of welded steel sculpture in this century—González, Picasso, David Smith—has had little or no influence on my work. Most traditional sculpture until the mid-century was part-relation-to-whole. That is, the steel was collaged pictorially and compositionally together. Most of the welding was a way of gluing and adjusting parts which through their internal structure were not self-supporting. An even more archaic practice was continued: that of forming through carving and casting, of rendering hollow bronze figures. To deal with steel as a building material in terms of mass, weight, counterbalance, load-bearing capacity, point load has been totally divorced from the history of sculpture, whereas it determines the history of technology and industrial building. It allowed for the biggest progress in the construction of towers, bridges, tunnels, etc. The models I have looked to have been those who explored the potential of steel as a building material: Eiffel, Roebling, Maillart, Mies van der Rohe. Since I chose to build in steel it was a necessity to know who had dealt with the material in the most significant, the most inventive, the most economic way. In all my work the construction process is revealed. Material, formal, contextual decisions are self-evident. The fact that the technological process is revealed depersonalizes and demythologizes the idealization of the sculptor’s craft. The work does not enter into the fictitious realm of the “master.” I would just as soon have the work available to anyone’s inspection. That evidence can become part of the content. Not that it is the content, but it’s discernible for anyone who wants to deal with that aspect of my work. My works do not signify any esoteric self-referentiality. Their construction leads you into their structure and does not refer to the artist’s persona. However, as soon as you put a work into a museum, its label points first to the author. The visitor is asked to recognize “the hand.” Whose work is it? The institution of the museum invariably

252    RICHARD SERR A

64214int.indd 252

22-05-12 4:42 AM

creates self-referentiality, even where it’s not implied. The question, how the work functions, is not asked. Any kind of disjunction the work might intend is eclipsed. The problem of self-referentiality does not exist once the work enters the public domain. How the work alters a given site is the issue, not the persona of the author. Once the works are erected in a public space, they become other people’s concerns. By their implicit and explicit values they become judgmental by what they exclude. They become critical of what they neglect and pass judgment on other works and their context. The emergence of new relationships among things within a context, more than the intrinsic quality of the thing itself, always gives rise to new meanings, new observations, new ways of seeing. The context is redefined. The contextual issues of site-specific work remain problematic. Site-specificity is not a value in itself. Works which are built within the contextual frame of governmental, corporate, educational, and religious institutions run the risk of being read as tokens of those institutions. One way of avoiding ideological cooptation is to choose leftover sites which cannot be the object of ideological misinterpretation. However, there is no neutral site. Every context has its frame and its ideological overtones. It’s a matter of degree. But there are sites where it is obvious that art work is being subordinated to / accommodated to / adapted to / subservient to / required to / useful to. . . . That’s not to say that art is not ideological. Art is always ideological, whether it carries an overt political message or whether it is art for art’s sake, based on an attitude of indifference. Art always, either explicitly or implicitly, manifests a value judgment about the larger sociological context of which it is part. Art supports or neglects, embraces or rejects class interests. Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International is not more ideological than a black painting by Ad Reinhardt. Ideological expression does not limit itself to an affirmation of power or political bias. My large-scale pieces in public spaces are often referred to as being monumental and oppressive. Yet, if you look at these pieces, are you asked to give any credence to the notion of the monument? Neither in form nor content do they relate to the history of monuments. They do not memorialize any person, place, or event. They relate solely as sculpture. I am not interested in the idealization of the perennial monuments of art history, emptied of their historical function and meaning, being served up by architects who need to legitimatize their aesthetic production by glorifying past historical achievements. The “appropriate historical solution” is nothing other than kitsch eclecticism. So much for the bronze figure on the pedestal and the Ionic column. The return to historical images, icons, and symbols is based on an illusory notion, the nostalgic longing for the good old days when times were better and art more meaningful. Nostalgia assumes full meaning today when the real is nothing other than a secondhand representation of the past. Styles, subject matter, historical icons, authenticity are all up for grabs. I might add that one of the glaring problems of Postmodernism is that imagination itself has been reduced to a commodity. XEROX history. The biggest break in the history of sculpture in the twentieth century was to remove the pedestal. The historical concept of placing sculpture on a pedestal was to establish

RICHARD SERR A   253

64214int.indd 253

22-05-12 4:42 AM

a separation from the behavioral space of the viewer. “Pedestalized” sculpture invariably transfers the effect of power by subjugating the viewer to the idealized, memorialized or eulogized theme. As soon as art is forced or persuaded to serve alien values it ceases to serve its own needs. To deprive art of its usefulness is to make other than art. I am interested in sculpture which is nonutilitarian, nonfunctional. Any use is a misuse. There is a trend now to demean abstract art as not being socially relevant. I have never felt and I don’t feel now that art needs any justification outside of itself. One can only be suspicious of those artists and architects “who gotta serve somebody” (Bob Dylan’s Jesus Christ capitalist theology). I know that there is no audience for sculpture, as is the case with poetry and experimental film. There is, however, a big audience for products which give people what they want and supposedly need, and which do not attempt to give them more than they understand. Marketing is based on this premise. Warhol is a master of art as commercial enterprise. No one demands that sculpture or poetry resist manipulation from the outside. On the contrary, the more one betrays one’s language to commercial interests the greater the possibility that those in authority will reward one’s efforts. I think that sculpture, if it has any potential at all, has the potential to create its own place and space, and to work in contradiction to the places and spaces where it is created. I am interested in work where the artist is a maker of “anti-environment” which takes its own place or makes its own situation, or divides or declares its own area. This is impossible if sculpture is built in the studio, then taken out of the studio and adjusted to a site. Every site has its boundary, and it is in relation to that boundary that scale becomes the issue. Sculpture built in the studio has studio scale. To take the work out of the studio and site-adjust it is conceptually different than building in a site, where scale relationships are determined by the nature and definition of the context. You can’t build a work in one context and indiscriminately place it in another and expect the scale relation to remain. Scale is dependent on context. Portable objects moved from one place to another most often fail for this reason. Henry Moore’s work is the most glaring example of this site-adjusted folly. An iron deer on the front lawn has more contextual significance. I think that if a work is substantial, in terms of its context, then it does not embellish, decorate, or point to a specific building, nor does it add to a syntax that already exists. In my work I analyze the site and determine to redefine it in terms of sculpture not in terms of the existing physiognomy. I have no need to augment existing contextual languages. I have always found that that leads to application. I’m not interested in affirmation. Walking and looking, simple observation is my most important formal device. Observation later becomes transformed into memory. The interrelation of observation, analysis, and memory become, so to speak, tools of the trade. When I conceive a structure for a public space, a space that people walk through, I consider the traffic flow, but I do not necessarily worry about the indigenous community. I am not going to concern myself with what “they” consider to be adequate, appropriate solutions.

254    RICHARD SERR A

64214int.indd 254

22-05-12 4:42 AM

Indifference towards “people’s needs” as manifest in a “useless” piece of sculpture in a public place makes it difficult to spend taxpayers’ money to get work built. Politicians who play with people’s needs and who are also responsible for the funding of those pieces realize that they could be trapped in what they consider to be a contradiction. Politicians tend to go with the flow. Reagan, for example, found an easy way out of this dilemma by cutting the National Endowment, thereby reaffirming art as market commodity. The private sector—collectors and dealers—take over control. Taste and profit become the main criteria for what’s to be shown in American museums, which are so generously funded by the same people. Large-scale, site-specific projects that don’t allow for secondary sale are not considered to be a worthy investment. One of the basic problems posed by any context (landscape, urban, or architectural) is that of content. To be effective, my work must disengage itself from the already existing content of the site. One method of adding to an existing context and thereby changing the content is through analyzing and assimilating specific environmental components—boundaries, edges, buildings, paths, streets, the entire physiognomy of the site. The site is redefined not re-presented. When sculpture enters the realm of the non-institution, when it leaves the gallery, when it leaves the museum, to occupy the same space and place as architecture; when it redefines space and place in terms of sculptural necessities, architects become annoyed. Not only is their concept of space being changed, but for the most part it’s being criticized. The criticism can only come into effect when architectural scale, methods, material, and procedures are being used. That’s how comparisons are provoked. Every language has a structure about which one can say nothing critical in that language. There must be another language dealing with the structure of the first and possessing a new structure to criticize the first.

RICHARD SERR A   255

64214int.indd 255

22-05-12 4:42 AM

RICHARD TUTTLE B O R N 1941

STATEMENT (1968)

In life you can do two things. In art you can do one thing. There are no decisions to make in art except one—that is the possibility of art, while the actuality (of it) is lifelike. And that is why anything connected with art appears paradoxical, although that is not the goal of art. Art is discipline and discipline is drawing. Drawing will change before art will. Discipline is always the same. And we will never know what art is— except as the goal, which already defined through necessity although not understood, is essentially abstract in nature or naturally abstracted, which is to say life-like, without hope. Because color is the most abstract evidence of/in art and because we are beginning to grasp certain specific abstracted experiences (which appear as forms in art) my work looks the way it does.

WORK IS JUSTIFICATION FOR THE EXCUSE (1972)

Just as we have no concern for other people, we have no concern for ourselves. We have a common concern for infinity which we can only think of as indefinite, real, and in absolute. To believe, as we do, that heaven exists for the chosen is a denial of everything and anything rational in the—small letter—universe. Therefore, I will say that our denial of any principle less than equal to denial of reality is in itself greater than equal to that denial. Absolute positivism suffers from Utopian ideals, but there is not and never has been a reality greater than the excruciation of its absolute realization. If this be the case, we are left with nothing other than this impulse to impede ourselves. In other words, to go on. That is justification enough and motivation enough to causally/casually inflict our will upon others for brief periods, which I gather is the express purpose of my invitation to participate in Documenta. I hardly understand anything, much less anything important, but my inclination must, or seems to, have some significance in the world in which I am living. There is Richard Tuttle, statement in “Artists on Their Art,” Art International 12, no. 5 (May 15, 1968): 48. Courtesy of the artist. © Richard Tuttle. Richard Tuttle, “Work Is Justification for the Excuse,” in Documenta 5, Befragung der Realität Bildwelten heute, vol. 1 (Kassel, Germany: Verlag Documenta GmbH, 1972), 17:17. Reprinted in Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 721–22. Courtesy of the artist. © Richard Tuttle.

256

64214int.indd 256

22-05-12 4:42 AM

seldom any excuse as good as the excuse to be, and the fact that anyone (anyone else) can be motivated in that same direction comes as somewhat of a surprise. That this surprise quality is not only valuable to me but is also an exercise in the “art of living” causes me to wonder whether the mind’s viewpoint has anything to do with what is, after all, the exact viewpoint of its observation, or whether, in fact, that what we judge worth looking at is, in fact, even in our mind’s eye (there). It is however an estimable fact that an artwork exists in its own reality and in that exists a certain cause and effect pattern which has baffled the ancients as well as myself. To make something which looks like itself is, therefore, the problem, the solution. To make something which is its own unraveling, its own justification, is something like the dream. There is no paradox, for that is only a separation from reality. We have no mind, only its dream of being, a dream of substance, when there is none. Work is justification for the excuse.

EXCERPTS FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH JUDITH OLCH RICHARDS (1998)

My work is not about size, it’s about scale. The smallest works from the mid-’70s are not small at all. I thought, “You know, you’re alive. What’s the most fantastic thing you can relate to in the contemporary moment that your life, your being alive, can conjoin?” I felt a point in space was changing into a point in time. And the question was, How can we see that? A lot of my work is about seeing, the chance to see what we don’t ordinarily see. So the work got involved in these small, small pieces. They stimulated a lot of controversy. Now we understand: if you’re trying to see what a point in space looks like as it changes to a point in time (if seeing that is possible), the size fits the scale. [. . .] The job of the artist is to find reality. There are millions of routes to reality, and they’re changing all the time. The type of person I may represent to my society is someone who, in following a particular creative direction over the years, can consistently find a new route to reality through the ever changing pathways. What art is in America is the sense of energy emitted by finding a new route to reality, something exciting and important to all.

Richard Tuttle, excerpts from interview with Judith Olch Richards (February 19, 1998), in Inside the Studio: Two Decades of Talks with Artists in New York, ed. Judith Olch Richards (New York: Independent Curators International, 2004), 192, 193. Courtesy of the artist. © Richard Tuttle.

RICHARD TUT TLE   257

64214int.indd 257

22-05-12 4:42 AM

B R U C E N AU M A N B O R N 1941

A THOUSAND WORDS: BRUCE NAUMAN TALKS ABOUT MAPPING THE STUDIO (2002)

michael auping: So what triggered the making of this piece, and how long did you think about it before you actually began to make it? bruce nauman: Well, I was working on the Oliver [collectors Steve and Nancy Oliver] Staircase piece and I had finished up the Stadium piece in Washington and I was trying to figure out what the next project would be. I was trying to come up with something out of those ideas, thinking about where those ideas might lead me next, and I really wasn’t getting anywhere. Those pieces had pretty much finished off a line of thought and it didn’t make sense to try and extend it. So a year or so ago I found myself going in the studio and just being frustrated that I didn’t have any new ideas to work on. What triggered this piece were the mice. We had a big influx of field mice that summer, in the house and in the studio. They were everywhere and impossible to get rid of. They were so plentiful even the cat was getting bored with them. I’d be sitting in the studio at night reading and the cat would be sitting with me and these mice would run along the walls and the cat and I would watch. I know he’d caught a few now and then because I’d find leftover parts on the floor in the morning. So I was sitting around the studio being frustrated because I didn’t have any new ideas and I decided that you just have to work with what you’ve got. What I had was this cat and the mice and I did have a video camera in the studio that happened to have infrared capability. So I set it up and turned it on at night when I wasn’t there, just to see what I’d get. At the time, I remember thinking about Daniel Spoerri’s piece for a book. I believe it’s called Anecdotal Photography of Chance [An Anecdoted Topography of Chance, 1966]. You know, he would photograph or glue everything down after a meal so that what you had were the remains. For the book, a friend of his did the subtext, writing about the leftovers on the table after Spoerri had preserved them. He wrote about every cigarette butt, piece of foil, utensil, the wine and where it came from, etc. It made me think that I have all this stuff laying

Michael Auping, “A Thousand Words: Bruce Nauman Talks about Mapping the Studio,” Artforum 40, no. 7 (March 2002): 120–21; reprinted in Please Pay Attention Please: Bruce Nauman’s Words: Writings and Interviews, ed. Janet Kraynak (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 397–404. Text courtesy of the author, © Michael Auping 2020. © 2022 Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

258

64214int.indd 258

22-05-12 4:42 AM

around the studio, leftovers from different projects and unfinished projects and notes. And I thought to myself why not make a map of the studio and its leftovers. Then I thought it might be interesting to let the animals, the cat and the mice, make the map of the studio. So I set the camera up in different locations around the studio where the mice tended to travel just to see what they would do amongst the remnants of the work. So that was the genesis. Then as I got more involved I realized I needed seven locations to really get a sense of this map. The camera was eventually set up in a sequence that I felt pretty much mapped the space. ma: So the final piece is six hours long? How did you decide on that length, as opposed to eight hours or two hours? bn: Well, it felt like it needed to be more than an hour or two, and then I thought if it’s going to be that long then it should be . . . well, it just felt like it needed to be long so that you wouldn’t necessarily sit down and watch the whole thing, but you could come and go, like some of those old Warhol films. I wanted that feeling that the piece was just there, almost like an object, just there, ongoing, being itself. I wanted the piece to have a real-time quality rather than fictional time. I like the idea of knowing it is going on whether you are there or not. ma: It seems to me this relates to that early Pacing the Studio piece [Pacing Upside Down, 1969]. Do you see that? bn: Somewhat. It generally goes back to that idea that when you don’t know what to do, then whatever it is you are doing at the time becomes the work. ma: In that sense, it also relates to your last video Setting a Good Corner. bn: Yeah. ma: So the fact that you’ve done two in a row means that you don’t have any more ideas. bn: [laughter] I guess there’s nothing left. ma: Tell me about the subtitle. I think the reference to Cage is fairly clear in terms of the open-ended character of the piece, but why the words “Fat Chance”? bn: Well, when I chose the seven spots, I picked them because I knew there was mouse activity, assuming that the cat would occasionally show up too. So the given area that I would shoot over a certain period became a kind of stage. That’s how I thought of it. So, when nothing was happening, I wanted it to still be interesting. These areas or stages, if you will, tend to be empty in the middle. So that became the performance area and the performers are the bugs, the mice and the cat. So the performance is just a matter of chance when the performers are going to show up and what is going to happen. “Fat Chance,” which I think is just an interesting saying, refers to a response for an invitation to be involved in an exhibition. Some time ago, Anthony d’Offay was going to do a show of John Cage’s scores, which are often very beautiful. He also

BRUCE NAUMAN   259

64214int.indd 259

22-05-12 4:42 AM

wanted to show work by artists that were interested in or influenced by Cage. So he asked if I would send him something that related. Cage was an important influence for me, especially his writings. So I sent d’Offay a telegram that said “FAT CHANCE JOHN CAGE.” D’Offay thought it was a refusal to participate. I thought it was the work, but he didn’t get it so— ma: So along with the debris in the studio, you’re reusing an earlier work in the title as well. bn: Yeah. ma: Let me ask you about the issue of cutting and editing for this piece. You refer to Cage, which is about indeterminacy and chance, and you do the piece with that kind of inspiration, and then you go in and cut and edit it— bn: No. I didn’t. It’s all real time. The only thing that comes into play in regards to what you’re saying is that I only had one camera and I could only shoot one hour a night. So it’s a compilation. There’s forty-two hours altogether. So it’s forty-two nights. The shooting went from late August through late November or early December. I didn’t shoot every night. Before I went to bed at night I would go out to the studio and turn the camera on and then in the morning I’d go out and see what had happened. And I’d make a log of what happened each night. ma: But you have flipped or reversed and then colorized some of the scenes. bn: Right. There are two versions of the piece. In the first version, nothing has been manipulated, no flips, reverses or color changes. In the second version, there are color changes and flips and reverses. Then there is also a third. I’d show the piece to Susan [Rothenberg] and she’d get really bored with it and say “Why don’t you cut out all of the stuff where nothing is happening?” And I’d say, well, that’s kind of the point of the piece. And then she said “Well, obviously that’s what you should do then,” precisely because it is contrary to the piece. So I did do a kind of “all action” edit. So the six hours gets cut down to forty minutes or an hour. ma: How did you decide what color to use and when to reverse or flip an image? Was it generally a matter of composition or highlighting certain scenes? bn: Both. In terms of the colors, I wanted to run through the rainbow, but it ended up having a kind of quiet color. It changes from a red to a green to a blue and then back to red over fifteen or twenty minutes. But it changes at a very slow rate. You can’t quite see the color changing. In each of the seven images it’s changing at different times so you have a lot of different colors at any given moment. It’s a quiet rainbow. The flips and the flops are fairly arbitrary at about fifteen minutes apart. It’s a way of keeping the eye engaged, to give the whole thing a kind of texture throughout. ma: In terms of reading this symbolically, were you thinking of the cat as a surrogate for the artist, chasing mouse/muse? bn: Not really. I was interested in the relationship between the two of them, but more in a psychological way. Their relationship exists as a sort of a paradox between a joke

260    BRUCE NAUMAN

64214int.indd 260

22-05-12 4:42 AM

30. Installation view, Bruce Nauman, Mapping the Studio I (Fat Chance John Cage), 2001, in the exhibition Bruce Nauman: Mapping the Studio I (Fat Chance John Cage), Dia Center for the Arts, New York, January 10– July 27, 2002.

and reality. They’ve been cartoon characters for so long that we think of them as light-hearted performers, but there is this obvious predator-prey tension between them. I wanted to create a situation that was slightly unclear as to how you should react. I think there are parts that are humorous and there are parts that are not at all. But those are glimpses that you might or might not catch. The overall effect is ambiguous, maybe a little anxious. Then you can hear the dogs barking once in awhile and the coyotes howling now and again. So there is also an element of what’s going on inside and what’s going on outside, which I like. There are also two locations on the tape of the different doors in the studio. One door goes into the office and two doors go outside and most of the time during the taping I could keep those doors open because it was still warm. Sometimes you can see the reflections of the cat’s eyes outside through the screen door. The mice also go inside and outside because there is a hole in one of the screens and they could come and go. Throughout the piece there is an outside-inside dialogue that deals with being in the studio with all this activity going on, and then being aware of a larger nature going on outside that space. ma: What kind of emotion do you associate with this piece? If you had to assign it an emotion, what would it be?

BRUCE NAUMAN   261

64214int.indd 261

22-05-12 4:42 AM

bn: I don’t know about an emotion. What I’ve felt in watching it is almost a meditation. Because the projection image is fairly large, if you try and concentrate on or pay attention to a particular spot in the image, you’ll miss something. So you really have to not pay attention and not concentrate and allow your peripheral vision to work. You tend to get more if you just scan without seeking. You have to become passive, I think. ma: There’s a kind of forlorn beauty about the piece, almost a pathos. This may sound, well, you just turned 60 so you are now making what curators and art historians call “the late work.” Is there any thought here in regards to reviewing yourself? bn: [laughter] I guess it’s late work. I hope it’s not too late. Maybe in the sense that there’s ten years of stuff around the studio and I’m using the leftovers, but I’ve always tended to do that anyway. Pieces that don’t work out generally get made into something else. This is just another instance of using what’s already there. ma: Well, I was also thinking about the fact that the camera is an extension of your eye. In the primary sense, you are the observer. We are following you watching yourself. bn: That’s true. There are times when I “see myself,” as you put it, and times when I don’t. There are times when I just see the space, and it’s the space of the cat and the mice, not necessarily my space. On the other hand, I’ve had to re-look at all of this stuff before it finally gets put on the DVDs—and I’d forgotten that I’d done this, but the spaces that I’d shot, because I wasn’t shooting every night, every hour the cameras move just a little bit. The image changes a little bit every hour regardless of any action that’s taking place. I was working in the studio during the day all that time. I would unconsciously move things around. Maybe organize a few things— what you do in a studio when you’re not supposedly making art. So the areas that I was shooting tended to get cleaner or have fewer objects in them over the period of the six hours. I thought that was kind of interesting. It didn’t occur to me when I was doing it, but then I went to SITE Santa Fe and saw Ed Ruscha’s film Miracle. In the garage as he gets more precise, the garage gets cleaner and cleaner and he gets cleaner as the film goes on. The film made me think that I had done the same thing unconsciously. ma: Since I haven’t seen the final cut, I’m curious how the piece ends. bn: It ends pretty much how it starts. It begins with a title and a few credits, and then basically it just starts and then it ends. No crescendo, no fade, no “The End.” It just stops, like a long slice of time, just time in the studio.

262    BRUCE NAUMAN

64214int.indd 262

22-05-12 4:42 AM

FRED SANDBACK 194 3 –2 0 0 3

REMARKS ON MY SCULPTURE, 1966–1986 (1986)

In 1966 I found myself engaged in a sort of assemblage of odd pieces of industrial material, connected in series. The singsong interrelationship of the parts didn’t have much energy or conviction. In response to my complaints about sculpture in general, and the incoherence of mine in particular, George Sugarman said something to the effect, “Well, if you are so sick of all the parts, why not just make a line with a ball of string and be done with it?” The first sculpture I made with a piece of string and a little wire, was the outline of a rectangular solid—two-by-four—lying on the floor. It was a casual act, but it seemed to open up a lot of possibilities for me. I could assert a certain place or volume in its full materiality without occupying and obscuring it. I think my first attraction to this situation was to the way it allowed me to play with something both existing and not existing at the same time. The thing itself—two-byfour—was just as material as it could be—a volume of air and light above the surface of the floor. Yet my forming of it, the shape and dimension of that figure, had an ambiguous and transient quality. It was funny too—it had an anecdotal quality on the order of “first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. . . .” but in reverse. I didn’t have a highly defined set of goals at this point. I did, indeed, want to make sculpture—and I suppose that’s interesting—l didn’t draw much of my impetus at all from the American painting of the 1950s, or at least not nearly as much as from older sculpture. I spent one summer trying, with limited success, to draw Michelangelo’s slaves every day. When I got around to the first string pieces, it wasn’t so much, in retrospect, that I wanted to make sculpture without a composition of parts, or sculpture without positive and negative spaces, as that I just wanted to make sculpture and these other things just seemed to be getting in the way. I did have a strong gut feeling from the beginning though, and that was wanting to be able to make sculpture that didn’t have an inside. Otherwise, thinking about the nature of place, or a place—my being there with or in it—and the nature of the interaction between the two was interesting. And at that Fred Sandback, “Remarks on My Sculpture, 1966–1986,” Fred Sandback: Sculpture, 1966–1986 (Munich: Fred Jahn, 1986), 12–19; reprinted in Fred Sandback, ed. Friedemann Malsch and Christiana Meyer-Stoll (Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2005), 119–21. All text by Fred Sandback © 2022 Fred Sandback Archive.

263

64214int.indd 263

22-05-12 4:42 AM

point the thinking was perhaps more interesting than the doing, though it’s of course the latter that has sustained my interest. My feeling persists that all of my sculpture is part of a continuing attitude and relationship to things. That is, sometimes, I don’t see various sculptures so much as being discrete objects, but rather more as instances of a generalized need to be in some sort of constituting material relationship with my environment. The sculptures address themselves to the particular space and time that they’re in, but it may be that the more complete situation that I’m after is only constructed in time slowly, with the individual sculptures as its constituent parts. I don’t feel that once a piece is made, then it’s done with. I continue to work with older schemata and formats, and often begin to get what I want out of them only after many reworkings. Though the same substructure may be used many times, it appears each time in a new light. It is the measure of the relative success of a piece, not necessarily that a new structure emerges, but that a familiar one attains, in its present manifestation, a particular vibrancy or actuality. It seems to work best when the format is so fully internalized and taken for granted that it doesn’t demand much of my active concern. Like the U-shaped freestanding pieces that I started work on in Bregenz in 1973. I’m still using that shape—it’s more like a tool or a musical note that I can push around until I get it right. There’s a lot of push and pull in these pieces. Straight lines tend to be perceived as purist and geometrical, and I am forever being warned to “loosen up,” as when Spoerri prescribed great bowls of lentil soup to cure me of my puritanical fanaticism. It’s a consequence of wanting the volume of sculpture without the opaque mass that I have the lines. They are more or less simple facts though, and not instances of a geometry or some other larger order—just what the hand does. The line is a means to mediate the quality or timbre of a situation, and has a structure which is quick and abstract and more or less thinkable, but it’s the tonality or, if you want, wholeness of a situation that is what I’m trying to get at. My intrusions are usually modest, perhaps because it seems like it’s that first moment when things start to coalesce that is interesting. Most of my work now is executed in and for a particular place. It’s always been conceived with at least a generalized sort of place in mind, but these pieces are now bound to one site. This doesn’t mean that I won’t redo a piece in a new location, but it will be a whole new kettle of fish. There are things that I want to do, but until they have a place they remain necessarily vague and indeterminate. The work is “about” any number of things, but “being in a place,” would be right up there on the list. Around 1968, a friend and I coined the term “pedestrian space,” which seemed to fit the work we were doing at the time. It certainly wasn’t painting’s space that we were after, nor that of sculpture, for the most part. Pedestrian space was literal, flat-footed, and everyday. The idea was to have the work right there along with everything else in

264    FRED SANDBACK

64214int.indd 264

22-05-12 4:42 AM

the world, not up on a spatial pedestal. The term also involved the idea of utility—that a sculpture was there to be engaged actively, and it had utopian glimmerings of art and life happily cohabiting. P.S. 1

In the summer of 1977, I had the opportunity to use about 10,000 square feet of space at P.S. 1 in Long Island City, as a studio for a month. I had developed a need in the years prior to this for increasingly large and unwieldy formats, and this had led inevitably to the result that I could only build one piece at a time in my studio. Exhibitions, too, often consisted of only one image. Hence it was difficult for me to correlate my experiences, and almost impossible for a spectator to see enough to get what I was up to. Having these seven huge rooms to work in was a small revelation, in that I was able for the first time to see how these pieces acted together and to work with them simultaneously. It was a chance to crystallize some of the things that I had been pecking away at one at a time, but more than anything, a chance just to do a lot of work in the same place. A usual consequence of my work is that not too much of it can exist in any one place for too long. The Museum in Winchendon, which began renovation in 1978 with the caring patronage of the Dia Art Foundation, offered some remedy to my feeling that things were just too diaphanous. I’d been building work for twelve years that had almost completely ceased to exist. I was not producing a product that could be easily acquired or preserved, and I felt a great need for a sense of material continuity and permanence. The idea of having one’s own museum is quirky and amusing, but I did feel that the work ought to exist somewhere in a reasonably dense and permanent grouping, outside of the “three-week stands” that were the approximate limit in galleries. This permanence, once established with the opening of the Museum in 1981, did indeed produce the necessary sense of having some ballast, and designing the interior space and the work was a source of great pleasure. But it was a surprise to see how quickly it became something on its own, not necessarily connected to me. Once the work was done, it was done, whereas I had a continuing need to disrupt that permanence that I had wanted. Perhaps indeed, I have nomadicized my existence.

FRED SANDBACK   265

64214int.indd 265

22-05-12 4:42 AM

A N A M E N D I E TA 194 8 –19 8 5

“LA MAJA DE YERBA,” PROPOSAL FOR BARD COLLEGE (1984)

Because I have never made “paper art” and am used to working directly on location in the simplest and most direct way, my method of construction would be as follows: First, to draw directly with the earth the image on the chosen site (9 feet × 5 feet), and to build the spirals to the desired height and width (4 inches × 10 inches). Second, to cover the earth-drawing with Phillips 66 plastic erosion membrane in order to ensure the protection of the piece. Third, to plant the seedlings of an English grass called RACROSTES, known for its close cropping growth and fine texture, which helps eliminate sedimentation of the earth and which makes upkeep of the piece easier. Needless to say, proper irrigation will be crucial to the welfare of the work. Handtrimming will be the only way to maintain it. During the past 10 years, my work, as a dialogue between nature and the mythical female body, has evolved dialectically in response to diverse landscapes as an emotional, sexual, biological affirmation of being. Opposed to the Earthworks of the 1970’s, which use nature in its most literal sense, my purpose and interest is rooted in nature’s symbolical meaning. My works do not belong to the modernist tradition, which exploits physical properties and an enlarged scale of materials. Nor is it akin to the commercially historical-self-conscious assertions of what is called post-modernism. My art is grounded on the primordial accumulations, the unconscious urges that animate the world, not in an attempt to redeem the past, but rather in confrontation with the void, the orphanhood, the unbaptized earth of the beginning, the time that from within the earth looks upon us.

Ana Mendieta, “La Maja de Yerba,” proposal for Bard College, 1984. Ana Mendieta Archives, Galerie Lelong & Co., New York. Previously published in Olga M. Viso, Unseen Mendieta (Berlin: Prestel, 2008), 293, and Stephanie Rosenthal, ed., Ana Mendieta: Traces (London: Hayward Publishing, 2013), 224. Ana Mendieta Archives, Galerie Lelong & Co., New York. © 2022 The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

266

64214int.indd 266

22-05-12 4:42 AM

E A R T H , S K Y, WAT E R “I can tell you one thing now,” Christo says to his interviewer Hans Ulrich Obrist toward the end of their conversation. “I will always refuse to make retrospective exhibitions. I will never spend a minute of my life looking at what is in the past. I will never agree to do the same thing again.” To understand the environmental art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude is to recognize the works’ transitory character and the artists’ own migratory nature. Christo, a Bulgarian dissident, met Jeanne-Claude in Paris during the late 1950s, and together they dreamed up ambitious projects that often took years to complete. Negotiation and education became an essential part of their creative process. Running a fabric fence through Sonoma and Marin Counties (Running Fence, 1972–76), wrapping the Pont Neuf (The Pont Neuf Wrapped, Paris, 1975–85) and the Reichstag (Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, 1971–95), and planting a forest of umbrellas in Ibaraki and California (The Umbrellas, Japan-USA, 1984–91), required not only diplomatic skills but also an unerring sense of optimism. Most ideas entailed pragmatic challenges, real-life encounters: talking with local residents, convincing politicians and environmentalists, and, once a proposal received approval, monitoring construction on site. What took years to conceive had a stunningly short life span. The Mastaba, a project for Abu Dhabi, may be the rare exception, even though its precedents—the surreptitious wall of oil barrels constructed in Paris on Rue Visconti in 1961–62, The Köln Mastaba, 1986, and The Wall in Oberhausen, Germany, in 1999—were all conceived as transient interventions. The Mastaba, as the incarnation of an ancient monument, assembled from 410,000 oil barrels, towering 150 meters high, and weighing 650 tons, has the pharaonic potential to honor and perpetuate the couple’s legacy. That it may someday rise from the desert, where “all religions are born,” where light and space conspire to a vast and fleeting emptiness, seems entirely fitting. Robert Smithson’s notion of Site/Non-Site not only dislodged traditional sculpture from its “pedestalized” position but also dissolved critical boundaries that had previously confined the object. For someone whose iconic earthworks—Spiral Jetty, 1970, and Amarillo Ramp, 1973—exist in remote locations, “backwater sites,” the idea of cultural confinement had far-reaching consequences. In lieu of an actual artwork for Harald Szeemann’s Documenta 5, Smithson contributed a provocative statement. In it, he questioned the viability of any art that passively accepts conditions dictated by “warden” curators who corral artists into prescribed settings that might reduce what they do “to visual fodder and transportable merchandise.” Smithson’s polymath, dystopian worldview questioned museums, white-box galleries, manicured sculpture parks, and myopic curatorial agendas. He gravitated to entropy as a philosophical imperative, courting it the way most people presume

64214int.indd 267

22-05-12 4:42 AM

order and structure in their lives. Entropic systems were tonic for an art world that fetishized perfection through predictable outcomes. Temporal rather than transcendent, dynamic rather than stagnant, these signified chaotic, centrifugal forces impossible to confine. Any attempt to flesh out Nancy Holt’s sculptural ethos must revisit her formative years with Smithson and the many friends—visual artists, poets, dancers, critics— who occupied their intimate circle and frequented their loft on the corner of West Twelfth and Greenwich Streets. Being an art-world couple, Holt and Smithson were like bookends enabling each other—emotionally, psychologically, and artistically— for the ten years they were married (1963–73). There is no question that Smithson’s accelerated trajectory and off-the-grid aesthetic choices propelled Holt, who embraced their collaborations as facilitator and documentarian, just as she later accepted her role as the keeper of Smithson’s expanding legacy. While Holt’s own artistic development—as photographer, filmmaker, poet, and conversationalist— began well before Smithson’s untimely death, it was only after he died that she tackled the monumental sculptural projects for which she is best known. Following a breakout series of tubular, viewfinder-like pipe pieces called Locators, 1971–72, she designed and installed Sun Tunnels, 1973–76, four twenty-two-ton concrete tunnels laid out on forty acres of desolate land in the Great Basin Desert in northwestern Utah. Drilled with four sizes of holes corresponding to the constellations Draco, Perseus, Columba, and Capricorn, and configured to align with the summer and winter solstices, this earthwork set the bar for Holt’s subsequent public sculptures, which culminated with Sky Mound, the reclamation of a landfill dump in Kearney, New Jersey. Holt spent formative years in nearby Clifton, New Jersey, so the site carried special meaning for her. After conceptualizing the project in multiple renderings and clearing bureaucratic hurdles, work on Sky Mound began in 1984. However, by 1993, well after the project’s first phase was complete, it became apparent that the second phase could be delayed indefinitely. To this day, the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission has not developed an alternate plan for the landfill, though a renewable solar energy facility was considered in 2011. Walter De Maria’s rapport with the landscape combined meticulous observation and calculation with poetic rumination. Before undertaking The Lightning Field, 1977, the artist drew two parallel chalk lines, each a mile long, in the Mojave Desert, a quixotic gesture in the spirit of his proto-Fluxus activities and high-decibel rock drumming for the Primitives. The Lightning Field rises from arid terrain as spectacular arrangements of stainless-steel elements that mediate between the sky and the land. The piece exists in a constant state of being and becoming. One can experience it only by visiting the site and spending a minimum of twenty-four hours walking through the field or observing it from a restored 1923 log cabin equipped to accommodate small groups of pilgrims. During any visitor’s prescribed period, of course, lightning may or may not strike. For all of its technological accoutrements and calibrated engineering, The Lightning Field remains as an invitation to observe

268

64214int.indd 268

22-05-12 4:42 AM

the slow progression of natural cycles from a desolate plateau in western New Mexico, where, to De Maria, even “the invisible is real,” and “the light is as important as the lightning.” At the end of his data-laden description, he notes, “isolation is the essence of Land Art,” confirming the primacy of experiential reckoning. “I try to be open, look for options,” Michael Heizer told Kara Vander Weg during an intermittent yearlong conversation in 2014 and 2015. “I don’t have any fixed ideas: my brain is empty, like the inside of a basketball, and I have to go find them. I’m inspired by anything. I try to remain alert, to be receptive. There’s no vitality if you’re just executing concepts.” Born into a family of academics, geologists, and miners, Heizer early on developed a curiosity about exotic cultures and artifacts exhumed from the earth’s strata. The mystery of what lies beneath the ground and a fascination with burial rites, ritual markings, and ceremonial architecture have inspired over the course of fifty-one years ambitious, Sisyphean-like projects: the massive extraction of ground to configure a series of zigzag depressions (a 1,500-foot-long, 50-foot-deep, 30-foot-wide gash the size of the Empire State Building) onto facing slopes of Mormon Mesa in Nevada (Double Negative, 1969); the displacement or replacement of mammoth boulders in and out of deep pits (Displaced/Replaced Mass, 1969); and the still-ongoing construction of a sprawling subterranean city composed of multiple complexes and measuring one and a quarter miles long and more than a quarter-mile wide. City (1970–present) may well be Heizer’s ultimate statement, the culmination of his life’s work as a painter and sculptor, where so many of the artist’s ideas, past and present, are synthesized and reimagined. The Altars (pictographic sculptures elevated on bases that evoke ceremonial objects), boxed and suspended boulders, and polyvinyl latex paintings that made up a 2015 Gagosian exhibition deferred to City‘s base materiality, eccentric morphology, and symbolic significance. Excerpts from Heizer’s 2014–15 interview with Kara Vander Weg represent his present thinking. One’s perception of light, space, and time changes dramatically when seen from the cockpit of a prop plane ten thousand feet above the ground. James Turrell realized this early on, just as he realized that light projects a spectrum of possibilities, ranging from the tangible to the metaphysical. The optical quality of an aesthetic experience is what matters most to Turrell, not the material means that make it possible. Like other West Coast Light and Space artists (Robert Irwin, Doug Wheeler, Maria Nordman, Mary Corse), Turrell does not see his continual exploration of light (Cross Corner and Single Wall Projections, 1966–74; Shallow Spaces, 1968–69; Space Division Constructions, begun in 1976; and Skyspaces) as “a subset of Minimalism. This is not its origin, not its context. I was not interested in seeing the source of light—only its result in space.” Turrell’s perceptual investigations began in the late 1960s, when he, together with Irwin and psychologist Edward Wortz, undertook a series of sensory deprivation experiments in an anechoic chamber at Garrett Aerospace Corporation in Los Angeles. These synesthetic sessions had a profound effect on Turrell, who, in 1972, secured access to an extinct volcano on the western

269

64214int.indd 269

22-05-12 4:42 AM

edge of the Painted Desert in Arizona and started excavations on Roden Crater— exposing the crater’s bowl outside and sculpting its interior into a natural observatory with multiple underground chambers “to capture and apprehend light” from the sun, moon, and stars. The Roden Crater project is still under construction after more than forty-five years. Like Heizer’s gargantuan City, Turrell’s labyrinthine obsession may well be, as he half-jokingly suggests to curator Christine Kim, a latter-day incarnation of the “cargo cult.” Richard Long combines the empirical instincts of a naturalist with the enlightened perspective of an ascetic wanderer. He enters into the landscape unobtrusively, without a lot of equipment, “using the land without possessing it” and leaving only traces. He communes with the natural environment through extended walks. Walking is a way for Long to mark time (his own life’s progression) and space in response to specific locations. What began in a London park in 1969, as a line in the grass made by walking back and forth repeatedly, developed into challenging excursions to more remote sites in the Himalayas, the Alps, the Andes, and the Arctic. While walking, Long discovers alternate terrains for ephemeral sculptures: “Art can be a step or a stone.” Some walks, nonstop motion, remain invisible, undocumented. Others involve marking sites with stones, driftwood, and river mud laid out in simple archetypal shapes—circles, spirals, squares. Sometimes, materials gleaned from a walk become the basis for an installation at a museum or gallery. On such occasions, topographical maps, captions, and photographs contextualize the piece, grounding it in the time of its making. The act of walking thus becomes “a simple metaphor for life.” Giuseppe Penone plumbs the visible and invisible forces that connect human beings to the natural environment. His early association with Arte Povera, Giovanni Anselmo, and Michelangelo Pistoletto, through a stint at the Academy of Fine Arts in Turin, provided the springboard for an art that deferred to natural forms and forces. The sculptor seeks ways to commune with nature, and his recommendation “to settle down on the ground” in order to channel one’s immediate surroundings becomes a gateway to aesthetic awareness. Cosmic consciousness fuels Penone’s poetic disposition. A forest is a veritable “cathedral,” “a slow factory producing wood,” “a voyage in time.” Each tree possesses its own “intimate” history, a gnarled knot on its bark, annual rings at its core, “little stories and consciousness,” all of which become revelatory grist for artistic creation. Trees without leaves signify another kind of reality, as does a tree cast in bronze—no less vital as “a dried, metallic, hard forest which has lost some of its elasticity/in the air but which has conquered the tension of the sound/in its crystallized, sculptural matter which ensures quivering and musicality.” As the title of one of Andy Goldsworthy’s environmental interventions, Hanging Stones has the requisite ambiguity, referring to both an actual place and a precarious situation. The many nature-based projects Goldsworthy has undertaken over the course of four decades, even those involving sophisticated engineering, have

270

64214int.indd 270

22-05-12 4:43 AM

been guided by a sensitivity to what he finds at each location. Some of his earliest works from the late 1970s and 1980s, using frozen water, autumnal leaves, flowers, small stones, and even feathers, were fleeting gestures photographed before they disappeared. Named after Hanging Stones Farm in Northdale, England, Goldsworthy’s Hanging Stones is, in theory, a reclamation project—the restoration of multiple buildings on grounds devastated by the effects of time. The artist first familiarized himself with the entire site, absorbing its history and idiosyncratic character before determining a course of action. Stabilizing long-abandoned buildings on the verge of collapse, without undermining their status as ruins, is part of an ongoing challenge to reenvision Hanging Stones as both an act of renewal and a conditional artwork for ambulatory visitors armed with a map. Maya Lin’s “simple desire to make people aware of their surroundings, not just the physical world but also the psychological world we live in,” drives sculptural projects that address sociopolitical and environmental issues with empathetic acuity. Public commissions, like the Vietnam Memorial, 1980–82, the Civil Rights Memorial, 1988–89, or Women’s Table, 1990–93, honor the site of their historical context. Temporal time grounds Lin’s cross-disciplinary consciousness, as does cosmological time, conceived as an indeterminate stream without beginning or end. A Lin memorial, particularly when imprinted with individuals’ names and historical texts, fosters an intimate dialogue with the viewer “to allow a place of contemplation, sometimes an incorporation of history, always a reliance on time, memory, a passage or journey.” Sculptural solutions complement architectural explorations. Both “create entire environments” that acknowledge history as the imprint of human activity on the environment through time. When Lin wrote “About the Work” (the text selected for this anthology), she acknowledged her past as she contemplated the future, as an artist who defers to “the beauty of the natural world” while recognizing its fragile ecosystem.

271

64214int.indd 271

22-05-12 4:43 AM

64214int.indd 272

22-05-12 4:43 AM

C H R I S T O A N D J E A N N E- C L AU D E 19 3 5 –2 0 2 0 A N D 19 3 5 –2 0 0 9

EXCERPTS FROM “CHRISTO IN CONVERSATION WITH HANS ULRICH OBRIST” (2017)

hans ulrich obrist: I’m always interested in when the catalogue raisonné of an artist begins. What is your “first” work? christo: I’m not like some artists who refuse to acknowledge their earliest work; I think all my work is legitimate. It is all part of what I have done in my life. My works are signed with a different name, though. It is like some great writers who want to write literature, but to make a living they write a detective story. In a similar way, my portraits were the detective story. While in Geneva, I had made portraits for hairdressers and their wealthy clients. I made it to Paris in March 1958. I was introduced to Jacques Dessange in Paris, who asked me to paint Brigitte Bardot. This is how I met Jeanne-Claude, when I painted her mother. huo: And in Paris you made your first works signed “Christo.” How did your work shift from portraits to sculptures made from cans and barrels? I’m interested because the cans mark the starting point of our exhibition at the Serpentine Galleries. c: Yes, I was making portraits, but alongside all kinds of other works, I was drawing, making landscapes and scale models. I used existing objects, cans or bottles and covered them with canvas to create structural forms. I used fabric because I could not afford to work in clay, wood or steel. When combined with lacquer and sand the fabric became a very sturdy, sculptural surface. Before this time I was also making works on a flat surface with my Cratères series. huo: The scarcity of materials led to your work with fabric at this time. This then led to the wrapping, for which you are so well known. c: Yes, fabric was a very convenient material. Using cloth is not necessarily only wrapping, but also covering things. I even covered flat planes in my Surfaces d’Empaquetage works. The cans are collectively titled Inventory. It comes from when you move to a new house and place things in the corner or on shelves. There’s something old about these early cans and packages; they are very visceral.

“Christo in Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist,” December 2017, New York City, in Christo and JeanneClaude: Barrels and the Mastaba 1958–2018, ed. Simone Philippi (Cologne: Taschen, 2018), 8–12. Text courtesy of the author, © Hans Ulrich Obrist 2020. © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

273

64214int.indd 273

22-05-12 4:43 AM

They are not industrially packaged. It probably has to do with escaping, carrying things, bundles or going home. They are in transition, objects about to go somewhere else. huo: It is connected to migration. c: I always use the French word miserabilist to describe them: they are dirty, not fancy. Of course, it is very natural for small objects to grow into bigger objects. The barrels developed from the little cans. huo: Can you tell me about when the work transitioned from cans to barrels? There is a famous photograph of your Paris studio, with many barrels creating a total environment. c: Yes, they were closely packed in, but the barrels are also very textured. You can see many references within them; Jean Dubuffet is in there. The photo is from my studio in Gentilly, a southern suburb of Paris. I rented a garage from my friend Jan Voss to store the barrels for the installation on the Rue Visconti. I had a nomadic life, I was doing different projects from two studios. Paris was terrible for space, you know. huo: Paris was at this time a cultural hub for artists and thinkers in Europe. How did you meet Pierre Restany, the French art critic and philosopher who coined the movement Nouveau Réalisme? Who else were your peers at this time? c: A Russian painter living in Paris called Anna Staritsky, whom my mother knew from Bulgaria, introduced me to Pierre Restany, who was of course very critical of my work. I did not fit into Nouveau Réalisme because I was arranging too much in my work. I was wrapping objects. I was deciding how things would be made, my work was not ready-made enough. Of course, at that age I would have loved to win the group, but they refused.   Dieter Rosenkranz, the son of my father’s friend, loved contemporary art and music. In the summer of 1958 he invited me to spend a weekend at his home in Wuppertal, where I met John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Nam June Paik, who was at that time not a visual artist, but a composer. huo: Was this when you met the artist Mary Bauermeister? c: Yes, and it was through this connection with Mary that my first solo exhibition of barrels and wrapped objects took place at Galerie Haro Lauhus, Cologne, in 1961. huo: How did you arrive at the idea of making columns out of barrels? c: Columns were a very natural form to create. I made columns for the Cologne exhibition and some sculptures. huo: So among the vertically stacked barrels there is another series of columns? c: Yes, using fabric and a wooden spoke. It is like Alberto Giacometti. In fact, I visited his studio.

274    CHRISTO AND JE ANNE-CL AUDE

64214int.indd 274

22-05-12 4:43 AM

huo: Yes, the surfaces of the barrels have a relationship to painting, such as to Dubuffet. Were you also thinking about Constantin Brancusi’s Endless Column? c: No, not so much. More and more, you can see how I was moving outside of the gallery space. In the Cologne exhibition the first room was like a storefront on the street. In the window there were small black objects; in the first room there was a big column of barrels and packages on the walls. The back wall of the second room was lined with barrels. At this time, I was still a political refugee; in fact, I lived stateless for 17 years. Europe was unstable and I feared the Soviets would take me back to Bulgaria. I was in Germany the summer when the Berlin Wall was built. This is why I built the wall in the Cologne exhibition in August 1961, and the following month I made the proposal for the Rue Visconti—to install the Iron Curtain in a Parisian street. Jeanne-Claude and I also made a temporary installation called Stacked Oil Barrels and Dockside Packages at the Port Authority on the River Rhine in Cologne for people to see our work even when the gallery was closed. With heavy tarpaulin, we covered industrial rolls of paper and we used machinery to stack oil drums into large structures. This was the first collaboration between Jeanne-Claude and myself, the first outdoor work we made. huo: The second public temporary sculpture was The Iron Curtain—Wall of Barrels, Rue Visconti, Paris. You worked for eight hours on the evening of 27 June 1962 in order to block this road with a wall of 89 barrels. It was an “art barricade.” c: At that moment, Paris was full of violence. There was the Algerian War of Independence, and there were barricades that were stopping people in the streets. There was violence and killings, and in 1961 there was a massacre at an Algerian demonstration. huo: Did you stop the traffic on Rue Visconti? c: Yes. The traffic stopped in the street. We asked for official permission but it was denied. I finally did it illegally. The police arrived and asked us to remove it, which we did. huo: You just did it, so you took an enormous risk. c: Yes, I take risks all the time. I also built Running Fence at the Pacific Ocean illegally. Journalists, especially in America, have a sacred image of everything legal and when I say that I escaped from a Communist country, they ask “Illegally?,” and I reply, “Yes, I bribed the customs officer to escape.” “You really escaped illegally?” I tell you, they are shocked I broke the law! [. . .] huo: [. . .] you had begun to stack them, not only to create walls but also three-dimensional forms. You made many different arrangements of the barrels, including for the Suez Canal. How did you arrive at the idea of The Mastaba? c: The first mastaba sculpture used 1,204 barrels; it was in 1968 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, where I had a solo exhibition. The earliest urban civilisation, 8,000 years ago, was in Mesopotamia, now known as Iraq. It is

CHRISTO AND JE ANNE-CL AUDE   275

64214int.indd 275

22-05-12 4:43 AM

thought that the first cities with streets and houses were built here. In front of these houses they built banks to sit, and that bank or bench is called a mastaba. It is defined by two vertical walls, two slanted walls and a flat top. huo: It’s a stone or earth bench made as part of the exterior of a house. c: Exactly. That is before the Egyptians used the same word to describe tombs, which is not the meaning I am interested in. Bedouin people know about the mastaba; it is still a term used in the Middle East, where I plan to build my largest mastaba sculpture. The form can be created by stacking barrels horizontally as the angles of the sloped sides naturally achieve 60 degrees. Dominique and John de Menil collected our works in America and suggested the idea of creating something in Texas. We proposed to build a mastaba between Houston and Galveston in 1969. We never succeeded with the Houston Mastaba, nor with a mastaba we tried to build in the parking lot of the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo in the Netherlands in 1970. This was despite the support of the director Rudi Oxenaar and Martin Visser’s large donation of our works to the collection. huo: After these unsuccessful attempts to place a mastaba in the landscape, the plans in Abu Dhabi increased greatly in scale and ambition. It’s interesting because you studied architecture; the mastaba is a form of architecture. c: Wrapped Reichstag and The Pont Neuf Wrapped are also both architectural structures. Much of art involves architecture. In 1977 I made the first drawings for The Mastaba for Abu Dhabi. We first visited this newly formed nation in 1979 on a trip organized by the French Foreign Office and we loved the landscape and knew that the structure would be huge. huo: When you look at the flat surfaces of The Mastaba for Abu Dhabi model, it’s similar to a digital pixilation, even though it was painted by hand. It was made many years before the digital age. c: I made the model of The Mastaba for Abu Dhabi in 1979 and it is exactly how we imagine the structure to be built. Many years later, in order to create a feasibility study on the project, we hired two architectural students who took two months to pinpoint the ten colors on the model. How many reds? How many yellows? How many blues? Each row and each barrel color needed to be put in order, from left to right, like a pointillist painting. huo: The Mastaba is a composition on painting and color. The colors in all your works fascinate me. In a way, it entered your sculptures very early on. Your first can and barrel works are characterized by discoloration and have a patina, which you have referred to as miserabilism. The strength of color is important; you have said that when you needed to perfectly control the composition of a sculpture that you chose new barrels, and in other cases you wanted to suggest time and fatigue, and then you selected old barrels. So, there is a difference between old and new barrels.

276    CHRISTO AND JE ANNE-CL AUDE

64214int.indd 276

22-05-12 4:43 AM

c: With the early works, I never thought of buying new barrels, they were readily available. There is so much color in all my works, all the time. The old barrels have a rust texture: that is color also. In Rue Visconti, we used the barrels as they were, in their original colors, even with the labels. It was very simple. These early works used the industrial, ready-made colors; they were not chosen. huo: Will the barrels for Abu Dhabi be regular industrial barrels? c: Yes, but they will be fabricated specifically for the work. The proportion of the distinctive shape of the mastaba is 2 : 3 : 4. This ratio is beautiful, but it’s very difficult to explain its effects. If you were to stand at the center of one of the two 60-degree sloping walls of the Abu Dhabi Mastaba, the vastness means that you will not see the other sides of the sculpture. You would only see a 150-metre-high metal stairway leading to the sky: This is why the pyramid is a completely different shape from The Mastaba. When you see The Mastaba at different angles, you can experience the dynamic forces and thrust of the form, which is not present with a pyramid. huo: So, how many barrels will be used for this work? c: The entire project comprises 410,000 barrels of ten colors, the exact order of which has all been determined. huo: Beautiful. It seems to me that this work is connected very closely to light, the light of the desert. You have said: “It’s amazing. At dawn, the vertical wall becomes gold. There are so many pictures taken by my friend Wolfgang Volz from the same angle at sunset and sunrise, and the view of The Mastaba is completely different. It keeps changing according to the sun’s pass.” So, this idea that the work is never the same twice, that it changes in the light, is very poetic. c: Yes, we wanted to position it to catch the different directions of the sunlight from sunrise to sunset. huo: How do The Mastaba’s colors and geometric form relate to Islamic mosaics? c: The two frontal, flat walls are very much like a pointillist painting. The color of the frontal walls has a connection to Islamic architecture, which has a similar abstraction of color and form. The project in the UAE has involved many years of discussion—the planning and requirements of the project are very complex. We need to reserve 16 square kilometers of land around The Mastaba that cannot be changed. The main challenge is to keep it untouched. We would like to keep the surrounding landscape as part of the project. huo: I always believed that art leads us to transcendence, and in a way the desert already leads us there. The Sudanese artist Ibrahim el-Salahi said they would go to the desert to have transcendental experiences. c: All religions are born in the desert. The emptiness and grandness of the desert gives us space to think. [. . .]

CHRISTO AND JE ANNE-CL AUDE   277

64214int.indd 277

22-05-12 4:43 AM

31. Christo in his studio with a preparatory drawing for The Mastaba, New York City, 1984.

huo: You say that there are politics in your projects and, of course, Rue Visconti in 1962 is an important example. Can you tell me more about the relationship between politics and your work? c: Today I think that some contemporary art is often an illustration of politics. We deal with real politics, with real parliaments debating whether to grant permission for our works. That is politics and this is why I refute artists who claim to talk about politics, when actually they make illustrations of politics. I deal with real life, the real wind, real water, the real kilometer and real politics, talking to presidents, prime ministers or rulers. It’s there, real politics. huo: I am curious about this notion of the unrealized project, how you differentiate between works that have been realized and those yet to come. Of course, The Mastaba for Abu Dhabi is still an unrealized project which you are working towards. c: In 50 years, 47 projects were not realized compared to 23 that were. Many projects were refused permission from the authorities, and for some we lost interest after the refusal and did not want to pursue them further. For some projects we have an idea, we’ll find a site or multiple possibilities, and for some the sites are decided—like Central Park, the Reichstag or the Pont Neuf. For The Mastaba the site began in Texas, moved to Holland, and then finally we chose the desert in UAE. We hope for it to be realized. I’m very optimistic, you know, I’m an eternal optimist! The same thing occurred with The Floating Piers. We started in Argentina with a

278    CHRISTO AND JE ANNE-CL AUDE

64214int.indd 278

22-05-12 4:43 AM

project for Rio de la Plata, then in Tokyo Bay with The Daiba Project, and many years later the concept came to Lake Iseo, Italy. huo: It goes back to the beginning of the interview. The migration, the idea migrates. Besides The Mastaba for Abu Dhabi, do you have other unrealized projects you still want to realize? c: I have ideas that I want to realize, but I cannot tell you right now! I have at least two ideas, three ideas probably, to do things. The concept does not connect to a particular place. I can tell you one thing now: I will always refuse to make retrospective exhibitions. I will never spend a minute of my life looking at what is in the past. I would also never agree to do the same thing again. Imagine we were to do another Gates, in another park, in another city around the world; it would be so boring because we know how to do it. huo: So, you never repeat? c: No, and this is why we like to do the projects we’ve never done. This is why The Mastaba is exciting for [. . .] Abu Dhabi. New ideas are very exciting. This is something I enjoy tremendously. huo: Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a book of advice to a young poet. What would be your advice to a young artist? c: Myself and Jeanne-Claude would never judge other artists; who are we to judge somebody? Art is an extremely personal thing. Art is not a profession; art is existence. It is not a nine-to-five job! In art, you live everything. So I cannot give advice. The only thing you should do in art is to think and question what it is that you like to do and do it. The biggest problem is to find what you like to do! huo: Do you have a definition of art? Gerhard Richter says, “Art is the highest form of hope.” What is art for you? c: Art is incredibly enjoyable. I enjoy the things that I do so much! Fortunately, what I am doing is not a traditional studio practice. It’s very rich and, probably, this is the secret: We see so many people outside of the art world; from Japanese rice farmers, parliamentarians and engineers, to all kinds of bureaucrats. We are deeply involved with society—real society and community, not an illustration of society. It is very enchanting.

CHRISTO AND JE ANNE-CL AUDE   279

64214int.indd 279

22-05-12 4:43 AM

ROBERT SMITHSON 19 3 8 –19 7 3

A PROVISIONAL THEORY OF NON-SITES (1968)

By drawing a diagram, a ground plan of a house, a street plan to the location of a site, or a topographic map, one draws a “logical two dimensional picture.” A “logical picture” differs from a natural or realistic picture in that it rarely looks like the thing it stands for. It is a two dimensional analogy or metaphor—A is Z. The Non-Site (an indoor earthwork) (1968) is a three dimensional logical picture that is abstract, yet it represents an actual site in N.J. (The Pine Barrens Plains). It is by this three dimensional metaphor that one site can represent another site which does not resemble it—thus The Non-Site. To understand this language of sites is to appreciate the metaphor between the syntactical construct and the complex of ideas, letting the former function as a three dimensional picture which doesn’t look like a picture. “Expressive art” avoids the problem of logic; therefore it is not truly abstract. A logical intuition can develop in an entirely “new sense of metaphor” free of natural or realistic expressive content. Between the actual site in the Pine Barrens and The Non-Site itself exists a space of metaphoric significance. It could be that “travel” in this space is a vast metaphor. Everything between the two sites could become physical metaphorical material devoid of natural meanings and realistic assumptions. Let us say that one goes on a fictitious trip if one decides to go to the site of the Non-Site. The “trip” becomes invented, devised, artificial; therefore, one might call it a nontrip to a site from a Nonsite. Once one arrives at the “airfield,” one discovers that it is man-made in the shape of a hexagon, and that I mapped this site in terms of esthetic boundaries rather than political or economic boundaries (31 sub-divisions—see map).* This little theory is tentative and could be abandoned at any time. Theories like things are also abandoned. That theories are eternal is doubtful. Vanished theories compose the strata of many forgotten books.

Robert Smithson, “A Provisional Theory of Non-Sites” (originally titled “Some Notes on Non-Sites”), reprinted in Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, ed. Jack Flam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 364. The text was excerpted by Lawrence Alloway in the introduction to Directions 1: Options (Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Center, 1979), 6. © 2022 Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

* Smithson here refers to a photostat map that was originally part of the artwork and reproduced, with his typed text, in Robert Hobbs, Robert Smithson: Sculpture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 102. A Nonsite, Pine Barrens, New Jersey, 1968; map photostat; 12 ½ × 10 ½ inches. Collection Dwan Gallery, Inc.

280

64214int.indd 280

22-05-12 4:43 AM

CULTURAL CONFINEMENT (1972)

Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits. Artists are expected to fit into fraudulent categories. Some artists imagine they’ve got a hold on this apparatus, which in fact has got a hold of them. As a result, they end up supporting a cultural prison that is out of their control. Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is. Museums, like asylums and jails, have wards and cells—in other words, neutral rooms called “galleries.” A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world. A vacant white room with lights is still a submission to the neutral. Works of art seen in such spaces seem to be going through a kind of esthetic convalescence. They are looked upon as so many inanimate invalids, waiting for critics to pronounce them curable or incurable. The function of the warden-curator is to separate art from the rest of society. Next comes integration. Once the work of art is totally neutralized, ineffective, abstracted, safe, and politically lobotomized it is ready to be consumed by society. All is reduced to visual fodder and transportable merchandise. Innovations are allowed only if they support this kind of confinement. Occult notions of “concept” are in retreat from the physical world. Heaps of private information reduce art to hermeticism and fatuous metaphysics. Language should find itself in the physical world, and not end up locked in an idea in somebody’s head. Language should be an ever developing procedure and not an isolated occurrence. Art shows that have beginnings and ends are confined by unnecessary modes of representation both “abstract” and “realistic.” A face or a grid on a canvas is still a representation. Reducing representation to writing does not bring one closer to the physical world. Writing should generate ideas into matter, and not the other way around. Art’s development should be dialectical and not metaphysical. I am speaking of a dialectics that seeks a world outside of cultural confinement. Also, I am not interested in art works that suggest “process” within the metaphysical limits of the neutral room. There is no freedom in that kind of behavioral game playing. The artist acting like a B. F. Skinner at doing his “tough” little tricks is something to be avoided. Confined process is no process at all. It would be better to disclose the confinement rather than make illusions of freedom. I am for an art that takes into account the direct effect of the elements as they exist from day to day apart from representation. The parks that surround some museums isolate art into objects of formal delectation. Objects in a park suggest static repose rather than any ongoing dialectic. Parks are finished landscapes for finished art. A Robert Smithson, “Cultural Confinement,” Artforum 11, no. 2 (October 1972): 39; reprinted in The Writings of Robert Smithson: Essays with Illustrations, ed. Nancy Holt (New York: New York University Press, 1979), 132–33. This statement was published originally in the Documenta 5 catalogue as Smithson’s contribution to the exhibition. © 2022 Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

ROBERT SMITHSON   281

64214int.indd 281

22-05-12 4:43 AM

park carries the values of the final, the absolute, and the sacred. Dialectics have nothing to do with such things. I am talking about a dialectic of nature that interacts with the physical contradictions inherent in natural forces as they are—nature as both sunny and stormy. Parks are idealizations of nature, but nature in fact is not a condition of the ideal. Nature does not proceed in a straight line, it is rather a sprawling development. Nature is never finished. When a finished work of 20th-century sculpture is placed in an 18th-century garden, it is absorbed by the ideal representation of the past, thus reinforcing political and social values that are no longer with us. Many parks and gardens are re-creations of the lost paradise or Eden, and not the dialectical sites of the present. Parks and gardens are pictorial in their origin—landscapes created with natural materials rather than paint. The scenic ideals that surround even our national parks are carriers of a nostalgia for heavenly bliss and eternal calmness. Apart from the ideal gardens of the past, and their modern counterparts—national and large urban parks, there are the more infernal regions—slag heaps, strip mines, and polluted rivers. Because of the great tendency toward idealism, both pure and abstract, society is confused as to what to do with such places. Nobody wants to go on a vacation to a garbage dump. Our land ethic, especially in that never-never land called the “art world” has become clouded with abstractions and concepts. Could it be that certain art exhibitions have become metaphysical junkyards? Categorical miasmas? Intellectual rubbish? Specific intervals of visual desolation? The warden-curators still depend on the wreckage of metaphysical principles and structures because they don’t know any better. The wasted remains of ontology, cosmology, and epistemology still offer a ground for art. Although metaphysics is outmoded and blighted, it is presented as tough principles and solid reasons for installations of art. The museums and parks are graveyards above the ground—congealed memories of the past that act as a pretext for reality. This causes acute anxiety among artists, in so far as they challenge, compete, and fight for the spoiled ideals of lost situations.

282    ROBERT SMITHSON

64214int.indd 282

22-05-12 4:43 AM

N A N C Y H O LT 19 3 8 –2 014

STATEMENT (1993)

For the last 24 years I have made large-scale, outdoor, site-specific sculptures. Each work evolves out of its site with consideration given to the typography, built environment, and local materials, along with the psychology, sociology, and history of each place. Many of these works have astronomical aspects, being aligned with the sunrises and sunsets on the equinoxes and solstices, the North Star, and/or the moon. Other works are system sculptures which channel water, air electricity (a form of fire) and methane gas from decomposing organic matter. Since incorporating natural elements, channeling natural substances and being sensitive to outdoor sites are so much a part of my work, it was inevitable that ecological concerns would crop up in my art process, and a few works with ecological aspects would be produced. Three of these works, Views Through a Sand Dune (1972), Catch Basin (1982) and Sky Mound (1984, in progress) are included in this study. In Views Through a Sand Dune the pipe through the dune actually helped retard the wind erosion, which was slowly eating away at this highly exposed dune, situated at the end of a peninsula, where the Narragansett River and the Atlantic Ocean meet. This ecological connection certainly was not the most critical aspect of the work, which framed horizons of earth, water and sky, as well as occasional appearances of the sun and moon, or far more frequently, the sun and moon seen indirectly as light glimmering on the water. However, I would never have made Views Through a Sand Dune, an essential work for me, in that place if the engineer I consulted had thought it would harm the environment. That it actually enabled the dune to last longer was very satisfying, and added another dimension to the work. Ecological implications of a technological order are evident in Catch Basin, one of an ongoing series of works I began in 1981. Using basic technological systems, such as plumbing, electrical, drainage, heating and ventilation, these works exposed sections of vast, ordinary hidden networks. Over the years these technological systems have become necessary for our everyday existence, yet they are usually hidden behind walls or beneath the earth and forgotten. We have trouble owning up to our almost total dependence on them. Yet with greater awareness of these systems, the channeling

Nancy Holt, statement in Creative Solutions to Ecological Issues, exhibition organized by Gail Enid Gelburd for the Council for Creative Projects (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 32–36. © 2022 Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

283

64214int.indd 283

22-05-12 4:43 AM

of the energy and elements of the earth can be done intelligently with the long-term benefit of the planet in mind. In doing so we become nature’s agents rather than aggressors against nature. In 1982 I visited St. James Park in Toronto, the future site of Catch Basin. Several buildings had been destroyed and the park had been extended into the demolition area. Someone, either the landscape architect or the landscaping contractor, had erred, leaving a low area in the land where water collected after each rain. The soil, being a dense fine clay, absorbed very little water, consequently a stagnant pool remained in the midst of the park most of the time, becoming polluted and killing the grass. Catch Basin is art that, at the same time, resolves this drainage problem by using modern technology with ancient origins (drainage systems having been in use since 5,000 B.C. in Crete, Egypt and Babylon). The rainwater now flows down the park slopes into the clay channel pipes and eventually into a basin, where it is either absorbed into four feet of gravel or is channeled through an overflow pipe into the city’s underground storm water drainage system. When I first visited the site for my work, Dark Star Park, in the Rosslyn section of Arlington, Virginia in 1979, I saw, at the convergence of two busy streets, two triangles of barren land, about an acre in area, strewn with broken asphalt, giant weeds, collapsed fencing, and fragments of glass and rusting steel. Rosslyn, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., was the fastest growing metropolitan area in the country at that time, but one very important element was missing—there were no public parks. So in making Dark Star Park (1979–1984) I was reclaiming a blighted urban site. In 1984, partially as a result of my Dark Star Park experience, I signed a contract with the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission (HMDC) to reclaim a landfill in the New Jersey Meadowlands as a park/artwork. The Meadowlands is a vast open space in the heart of the NY/NJ metropolis. It is a place where sky and ground meet, where you can track the sun, moon and stars with the naked eye and where you have 360 degree panoramic views of Manhattan, Newark, the Pulaski Skyway, networks of roads and train tracks, old steel turn-bridges, and here and there some decaying remnants of the industrial revolution. I said yes, yes, yes, to HMDC as soon as I saw the site, sat up all night writing a contract, and hand delivered it first thing the next morning. With the New Jersey Turnpike on one side of the landfill, the Amtrak and NJ Transit trains on the other, and jets flying low over it on their way to Newark Airport, the 57 acre, 100 ft. high landfill is one huge, highly visible, man-made mound. My proposal, Sky Mound, incorporates the entire landfill, top and side slopes, as well as a methane gas system, already in place, collaboratively designed to be part of the artwork, while recovering the methane gas generated by the decomposition of the organic garbage in the landfill. This gas is an alternative energy source for the community, supplying about 10% of the gas used locally. The Sky Mound pond, already completed on top of the landfill, also functions as a storm water retention pond. Various bushes have been planted in an irregularly shaped

284    NANCY HOLT

64214int.indd 284

22-05-12 4:43 AM

32. Nancy Holt, proposal drawing for Sky Mound, 1988.

pattern around the perimeter of the pond, and the water has been stocked with fish. Hopefully, Sky Mound will attract some of the larger variety of birds in the Meadowlands—ducks, geese and egrets have already been sighted there. The feeling of awe I frequently feel while on top of Sky Mound landfill is similar to the wonder I experience on the huge American Indian mounds in Miamisburg, Ohio and in the Cahokia site along the Mississippi River in Illinois. Both kinds of manmade mounds were built to meet vital social necessities, but here the similarity ends. American landfills, of course, result from essential needs of human beings to rid themselves of the used-up, cast-off materials of our culture, while American Indian mounds derived from deep spiritual, social and ritualistic needs. Trash piles, however, have been with us for thousands of years, as far back as the archaeologists have traced. With a friend who is an archaeologist I once visited a cave home of the Anasazi, the earliest known human beings in the Southwest, which happens to be in a high butte a few miles from my work Sun Tunnels in Utah. When this deep cave was inhabited the rocky butte was on the edge of an ancient inland sea. The Great Salt Lake, a puddle in comparison, is a remnant of this sea. There at the base of the butte just below the cave I saw my first prehistoric trash—a large pile of broken pottery, fish and animal bones, shells and such. Another excavated refuse pile, several feet deep, fills the back of the cave.

NANCY HOLT   285

64214int.indd 285

22-05-12 4:43 AM

Today’s landfills, then, have a long heritage. Around the globe there are millions of these shunned earthen forms—forgotten trash heaps relegated to the realms of the unconscious. By the end of the century with more reliance on improved methods of recycling and incinerating our refuse, laws will go into effect which will prohibit the use of landfills for garbage disposal. These heaps of garbage will be seen as the artifacts of our generation, our legacy to the future. So there is no escaping our responsibility for making these mounds of decaying rubbish safe with the latest closure technology, and then reinterpreting and reclaiming them, giving them new social and aesthetic meanings and functions.

286    NANCY HOLT

64214int.indd 286

22-05-12 4:43 AM

WA LT E R D E M A R I A 19 3 5 –2 013

THE LIGHTNING FIELD: SOME FACTS, NOTES, DATA, INFORMATION, STATISTICS, AND STATEMENTS (1980)

The Lightning Field is a permanent work. The land is not the setting for the work but a part of the work. The work is located in West Central New Mexico. The states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and Texas were searched by truck over a five-year period before the location in New Mexico was selected. Desirable qualities of the location included flatness, high lightning activity and isolation. The region is located 7,200 feet above sea level. The Lightning Field is 11 1/2 miles east of the Continental Divide. The earliest manifestation of Land Art was represented in the drawings and plans for the Mile Long Parallel Walls in the Desert, 1961–1963. The Lightning Field began in the form of a note, following the completion of The Bed of Spikes in 1969. The sculpture was completed in its physical form on November 1, 1977. The work was commissioned and is maintained by the Dia Art Foundation, New York. In July, 1974, a small Lightning Field was constructed. This served as the prototype for the 1977 Lightning Field. It had 35 stainless steel poles with pointed tips, each 18 feet tall and 200 feet apart, arranged in a five-row by seven-row grid. It was located in Northern Arizona. The land was loaned by Mr. and Mrs. Burton Tremaine. The work now is in the collection of Virginia Dwan. It remained in place from 1974 through 1976 and is presently dismantled, prior to an installation in a new location. The sum of the facts does not constitute the work or determine its esthetics. The Lightning Field measures one mile by one kilometer and six meters (5,280 feet by 3,300 feet). There are 400 highly polished stainless steel poles with solid, pointed tips.

Walter De Maria, “The Lightning Field: Some Facts, Notes, Data, Information, Statistics, and Statements,” Artforum 18, no. 8 (April 1980): 58. © Artforum.

287

64214int.indd 287

22-05-12 4:43 AM

The poles are arranged in a rectangular grid array (16 to the width, 25 to the length) and are spaced 220 feet apart. A simple walk around the perimeter of the poles takes approximately two hours. The primary experience takes place within The Lightning Field. Each mile-long row contains 25 poles and runs east-west. Each kilometer-long row contains 16 poles and runs north-south. Because the sky-ground relationship is central to the work, viewing The Lightning Field from the air is of no value. Part of the essential content of the work is the ratio of people to the space: a small number of people to a large amount of space. Installation was carried out from June through October, 1977. The principal associates in construction, Robert Fosdick and Helen Winkler, have worked with the sculpture continuously for the last three years. An aerial survey, combined with computer analysis, determined the positioning of the rectangular grid and the elevation of the terrain. A land survey determined four elevation points surrounding each pole position to insure the perfect placement and exact height of each element. It took five months to complete both the aerial and the land surveys. Each measurement relevant to foundation position, installation procedure and pole alignment was triple-checked for accuracy. The poles’ concrete foundations, set one foot below the surface of the land, are three feet deep and one foot in diameter. Engineering studies indicated that these foundations will hold poles to a vertical position in winds of up to 110 miles per hour. Heavy carbon steel pipes extend from the foundation cement and rise through the lightning poles to give extra strength. The poles were constructed of type 304 stainless steel tubing with an outside diameter of two inches. Each pole was cut, within an accuracy of ¹/₁₀₀ of an inch, to its own individual length. The average pole height is 20 feet 7 ¼ inches. The shortest pole height is 15 feet. The tallest pole height is 26 feet 9 inches. The solid, stainless steel tips were turned to match an arc having a radius of six feet. The tips were welded to the poles, then ground and polished, creating a continuous unit. The total weight of the steel used is approximately 38,000 pounds. All poles are parallel, and the spaces between them are accurate to within ¹/₂₅ of an inch. Diagonal distance between any two contiguous poles is 311 feet. If laid end to end the poles would stretch over one and one-half miles (8,240 feet). The plane of the tips would evenly support an imaginary sheet of glass.

288    WALTER DE MARIA

64214int.indd 288

22-05-12 4:43 AM

33. Walter De Maria, The Lightning Field, 1977.

During the mid-portion of the day 70 to 90 percent of the poles become virtually invisible due to the high angle of the sun. It is intended that the work be viewed alone, or in the company of a very small number of people, over at least a 24-hour period. The original log cabin located 200 yards beyond the mid-point of the northernmost row has been restored to accommodate visitors’ needs. A permanent caretaker and administrator will reside near the location for continuous maintenance, protection and assistance. A visit may be reserved only through written correspondence. The cabin serves as a shelter during extreme weather conditions or storms. The climate is semiarid, eleven inches of rain is the yearly average. Sometimes in winter, The Lightning Field is seen in light snow. Occasionally in spring, 30- to 50-mile-an-hour winds blow steadily for days. The light is as important as the lightning. The period of primary lightning activity is from late May through early September. There are approximately 60 days per year when thunder and lightning activity can be witnessed from The Lightning Field. The invisible is real.

WALTER DE MARIA   289

64214int.indd 289

22-05-12 4:43 AM

The observed ratio of lightning storms which pass over the sculpture has been approximately 3 per 30 days during the lightning season. Only after a lightning strike has advanced to an area of about 200 feet above The Lightning Field can it sense the poles. Several distinct thunderstorms can be observed at one time from The Lightning Field. Traditional grounding cable and grounding rod protect the foundations by diverting lightning current into the earth. Lightning strikes have not been observed to jump or arc from pole to pole. Lightning strikes have done no perceptible damage to the poles. On very rare occasions when there is a strong electrical current in the air, a glow known as “St. Elmo’s Fire” may be emitted from the tips of the poles. Photography of lightning in the daytime was made possible by the use of camera triggering devices newly developed by Dr. Richard Orville, Dr. Bernard Vonnegut and Robert Zeh, of the State University of New York at Albany. Photography of The Lightning Field required the use of medium- and large-format cameras. No photograph, group of photographs or other recorded images can completely represent The Lightning Field. Isolation is the essence of Land Art.

290    WALTER DE MARIA

64214int.indd 290

22-05-12 4:43 AM

MICHAEL HEIZER B O R N 194 4

EXCERPTS FROM CONVERSATION WITH KARA VANDER WEG (2014–2015)

kar a vander weg: Your work is distinctively American, but one could argue that it also synthesizes many ideas from many different cultures. michael heizer: I try to take it all into account. I have an American impulse— big size, big country, big expanse. A 747 airplane, the Golden Gate Bridge, the hydrogen bomb, the highway system. You could put any city in Europe in the Los Angeles basin. What’s great about size? Go to Aswan [in Egypt] and look at Abu Simbel—the greatest sculpture made by man, carved into rock. It is awesomely huge. The size thing is also part of our culture, and it informs the dialogue today. My work is international, but it is also about where I am from. kvw: Can you talk about the title of your recent show Altars [Gagosian New York, May 2015], and its meaning for you? mh: You know how it is with altars—people put fancy chalices and objects on them. An altar would be anything ceremonial: Obama’s desk, for example. If art isn’t spiritual, it is decoration. The sculptures are altars. Their bases derive from the Intihuatana at Machu Picchu. When I was eighteen, I saw it and made some drawings of it. It is a piece of living rock, a piece of bedrock that comes out of the ground, on the edge of a dramatic precipice, made by the Incas, who shaped it. The forms are geometric but not hyper-precise. kvw: So the base not only physically elevates the work but is a form of reverence? mh: Yes. I have this sculpture, a little ceramic head with a wire mounted into it and placed on a huge piece of wood. The so-called base is six hundred times more dominant than the artwork, but it puts a lot of energy into the little deity. Alone on the table, the ceramic element would be a piece of junk, but the wood enables it, it articulates it. That’s a pedestal, that’s an altar. Everyone thought that a Calder sitting on the ground was modern because it was freestanding and a victory over pedantic pedestals, but sometimes it can be super modern to utilize a pedestal. That is the intent of the Altars. There is a slab under 45°, 90°, 180°, City [1970–present], one of the sculptural elements within City

Michael Heizer in conversation with Kara Vander Weg (November 2014–May 2015), published in Michael Heizer: Altars, ed. Kara Vander Weg (New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2016), 145–55. © Michael Heizer.

291

64214int.indd 291

22-05-12 4:43 AM

[1970–present]. That’s an altar that it’s sitting on, 6 inches in height and 240 feet long. It didn’t have to be there structurally, those things could be originating from the dirt in some pseudo-honest way. I wanted them dissociated from the ground. I wanted to have that low-lift pad. Call it what you want—pedestal, base, slab—it’s an interesting addition to sculpture. I’ve been thinking about the base under the Guennette [1977–78] since I was eighteen. kvw: The title Altars connotes spirituality. Have titles always been important to you? mh: I always called all of my paintings Untitled with a number, but when it comes to sculptures, the names are important. They are descriptive: Levitated Mass, Double Negative, Effigy Tumuli, Complex One, Dragged Mass—it never stops. kvw: Where did the curvilinear forms that are placed on top of the Altar bases come from? mh: I’ve been playing with geometry all my life; it is the core of my interest. [James Dwight] Dana was an American mineralogist who wrote A System of Mineralogy. Having learned some things from it, I built the “Moly Project” [Geometric Land Sculpture, 1980–83] that had three pyramidions that were the three oxides of molybdenum. The Altar bases come out of this crystallography. I also like weird, squeezy, outer-space shapes. I’ve been trying to step beyond straight geometry—crystalline morphology—into pneumatic form. My Track Painting [1967] is a key to my shapes, with its rounded ends. I got into the pneumatic, inflated shapes because they are appropriate for dirt. That’s why there are way more of those forms in City. I came across some survey books published in 1847 with documentation by surveyors of effigy tumuli on the Mississippi River, and they showed forms on a large scale. When you approach on foot, you encounter a diffracted image, a combination of multiple images that you recongeal in your brain. I’ve been working with chaotic form since Dissipate and Rift [both 1968]. kvw: And many of the shapes have names? mh: Many of the forms on bases have names. For instance, the Walking K. The state of Nevada gives a description to your cattle brand; mine is the TUMBLING Z, HANGING THREE. When there is a “leg” poking out, they say the brand is “walking”: Walking House, Walking Moon, Walking Crescent. There is a complete language to describe the characters that appear in brands. kvw: Does the propeller shape in the new sculpture come out of City? mh: The propeller is a shape that comes out of several areas in the U.S. and around the world, as well. Researchers have found hundreds of charmstones in burial mounds. Some had holes drilled in them. I like to see this geometry reintroduced in the world. The iconography is just too good and too universal to be forgotten. It might raise questions to see that earlier people made the same shapes. kvw: Where did the silkscreened imagery on the new sculpture originate?

292    MICHAEL HEIZER

64214int.indd 292

22-05-12 4:43 AM

mh: These are images of rocks, grain, mud, and gravel. Some of the imagery on these works is from the 1984 show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, which had one silkscreened photo of granite. I did five or six big silkscreened works for the 1985 show at the Whitney [Dragged Mass Geometric, 1985], and some of that imagery is here as well. I combined screens, cut them up, and put them back together. With this project, I just grabbed what I had, and I kept finding old stuff that I liked. kvw: I think of your work as an amalgamation of experiences and sources from different times in your life. mh: It’s not just about my past exposure. I’m interested in living in Paris, living in New York, LA, and In-N-Out Burger paper bag design. It’s all fair game in this business. All of this input is coming in all the time: contemporary art, medieval art—you mix it all together and put it in a blender. You put the data in, and then you access it. I think that current art is obliged to relate to art that has come before, so you might as well do it in an informed way. If you poke into anything, you’ll see that there are associations with other objects. The origins of the Tumuli are just part of the story: the shapes are mine—just done, not some other guy’s rehashed stuff from the year 1000 or a Russian artifact. I try to be open, look for options. I don’t have any fixed ideas: my brain is empty, like the inside of a basketball, and I have to go find them. I’m inspired by anything, I try to remain alert to be receptive. There’s no vitality if you’re just executing concepts. kv w: Let’s talk a bit about your earlier paintings. How did the form of the Track Painting emerge? mh: I was making drawings of ovals and circles in the 1960s, and I made a bunch of paintings over those years. Rounded rectangles, verticals, horizontal, eyeballshaped ones. There’s only so much you can do when you’re into that type of geometry. You have curves and you have straight lines—it is part of the exploration; that’s all you have to work with. I have drawings of the Track shape from 1966. I was in Mexico City when I was twelve going to the Plaza México to the bullfights. And later, I went to short tracks, as well as half-mile and one-mile motorcycle tracks, in and around California. As far as the geometry part, Walter [De Maria] did a lot: he ended up making stainless squares and circles and triangles. I had one square painting in black and white. That’s one of the reasons that Walter and I got along: we were both pursuing the same ideology, but we were pretty independent. We developed lots of ideas for exteriorated art together. I always thought that Tony [Smith] was the original and ultimate Minimalist artist. He made serious classical statements. I remember thinking, “I’m making these paintings because they have to be made.” My paintings were statements about

MICHAEL HEIZER   293

64214int.indd 293

22-05-12 4:43 AM

34. Michael Heizer, Altar 2, 2015.

a square, a circle, a rectangle, an oval. I got the vocabulary, and I made them, and then I made a whole series with a variation of line. kvw: Do you consider yourself a Minimalist? mh: No, I never considered myself to be a Minimalist. I just lived at the time when that was the spirit. It was also a group or movement. Many artists made contributions if they could. There is nothing like that today. kvw: And how did you develop the surfaces for the paintings? mh: They were all made the same way. Sometimes I mixed a metal powder, different kinds of powders, with black latex, or sometimes I used just black and white latex paint. I painted them with a roller. If I kept rolling, it would flatten out. Sometimes I would do one coating, like fresco work, with these big blobs. I put it on to be wet and really spotty. All of my paintings are painted with rollers: I never used a brush. The greatest thing the Canadians invented was the paint roller. kvw: The scale of these sculptures is—for New York—quite large. Is your scale motivated by the western U.S., where you live? And do you want to make work that physically confronts and perhaps dominates the viewer? mh: Scale is a proportion; it is imagined. Size is measurable. It is just not my inclination to make small work. I don’t consider these works such a large size. Forty feet isn’t large, although for putting it inside a building, it might be large. These works are right on the edge—they weren’t built inside, but they could work inside or outside.

294    MICHAEL HEIZER

64214int.indd 294

22-05-12 4:43 AM

kvw: You once said, “My sense is that you see art sequentially.” But isn’t the idea that a full knowledge of the sculpture only exists in the viewer’s mind? mh: We have to see a sculpture in time. There aren’t very many people who understand sculpture. You would think it would be the most available and easiest art form to contend with, but it isn’t. Movies and photography aren’t a way to see art; they are a way to illustrate it. I don’t like kinetic work that moves around; I like static art. I am peaceful around it. kvw: It is important that you be able to walk around your sculpture. mh: Harald Szeemann came out to see me, when I had just finished Complex One, City [1970-Present], and he said it wasn’t a sculpture, because it had no back on it. I said, “What is it, is it a painting?” It brought out this standard of European art. Americans do weird things, and we’re still leading the way to “somewhere.” kvw: Can you talk about the creative decisions behind the rocks in this exhibition? mh: Each rock is, in my mind, a work of art, but there has to be something more to it. I decide how to present it, rotate it, decide what side is up and what side is down, then put it in the box and have it poking out of the box, but make the box tight around it. The rocks have been bolted and pinned in, and in the case of Potato Chip [2015] it has been suspended so that it can swing. That rock has a percussion surface, a wave that goes edge to edge, which shows the power of the shear where it snapped off. The granite faces in Yosemite Valley are percussion surfaces. As far as evolution, the rocks in boxes with backs evolved before Potato Chip, which doesn’t have a front or a back. If you build a wall around it, it becomes a hole in the wall. Negative space is where you find it or invent it. And this is Displaced/ Replaced Mass [1969], where you take out a mass and replace it with something else—a rock. It is about volume and mass. It’s also like the medieval painting by Hans Holbein that shows a dead Jesus inserted on a slab into the wall. kvw: How do you want people to feel when they walk in the space and see your work? mh: I hope that they have never had an experience like it. It has to be transcendent. If it isn’t, there is no point. Art has to be new every time. If you’re being repetitive, it’s not a contribution, so why bother?

MICHAEL HEIZER   295

64214int.indd 295

22-05-12 4:43 AM

JA M E S T U R R E L L B O R N 194 3

EXCERPTS FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTINE Y. KIM (2012) Quaker Roots and Early Years

chr istine y. k im: What interests led up to your studies in perceptual psychology—as well as geology, math, chemistry, and astronomy—as an undergrad at Pomona College in the early 1960s? james turrell: Pomona College is a liberal arts school, so I took varied courses. In astronomy there was a very good teacher, Robert Chambers, whom Ed Krupp [director of the Griffith Observatory] studied with as well. Chambers was quite a [Carl] Sagan type of guy and very inspiring. He talked about the idea of knowing a star without touching it. And how there was truth in light. If you looked at the light that came from a star, you could tell from its spectral analysis what the star was made of and the temperature at which those materials were burning as well as the speed the star was receding from us due to the spectral shift toward red. The idea that there’s truth in light was fascinating. Also teaching at Pomona were Jim Demetrion, Maurice Cope, Bates Lowry and John Mason who represented a group of men that pushed an interest in art, particularly getting young men more engaged in art. In painting classes blue paint was mixed with yellow to get green. But blue light mixed with yellow made white light. And red mixed with green resulted in an approximation of white also. Clearly I needed to study the spectrum and our response to it. Hence, the psychology of perception. cyk: Did these influences and academic interests develop in concert with a fascination with the very quotidian side of light, and the experience and perception of it? jt: The interest was there from childhood. I still think of the light and shadow cast from the dim night-light plugged into the floor socket in my room. My family did not have TV and in order to see Flash Gordon (remember the light bridge) or Cecil and Beanie I had to walk to Peter Arnold’s house to see it. Walking by houses to get there I could see the glow of light in rooms where people were watching TV. By the type of glow and rapidity of change I came to be able to know which program, of

Excerpts from Christine Y. Kim, “James Turrell: A Life in Art” (conversation recorded in the spring of 2012), in James Turrell: A Retrospective (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York: DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2013), 39–45, 47. Reprinted with author’s permission, courtesy of LACMA. © James Turrell.

296

64214int.indd 296

22-05-12 4:43 AM

the then-few possibilities, they were watching. Today you can tell the difference between the weather channel, a cartoon channel, and a sports channel and can identify which one was which from the gathered comprehensive light. The idea that there is content (truth) in light is confirmed. [. . .] cyk: You once said, “Quakers didn’t believe in art.” The ideal of a Quaker would be a “starry-eyed person” on the periphery.1 That sounds like a viewer of your work to me. Could you talk a bit about your grandmother’s lesson? When you were a child, she told you to “go inside and greet the light?” jt: Well, the Quakers often talk about the light inside. In fact, the light inside everyone. She was talking literally about this relationship between the light inside and the light outside. Even with the eyes closed, we have vision, as in a dream. My grandmother believed the purpose of meditation or contemplation was to wait upon the Lord and meet up with the light inside. The temple is within. So Quakers could make good viewers of art. Or, they might just as likely see through it. [. . .] The Pasadena Art Museum and Los Angeles in the 1960s

cyk: Los Angeles had ample, cheap studio space in the 60s that helped artists nurture their own creativity. You’ve described it as having been free and boundless because it was “tasteless . . . and it was a great place because you could do anything in it. That’s why I liked L.A. [as opposed to New York]—the revenge of the tasteless.”2 jt: Well, I still think that. It’s less so today. It’s taking on taste. I used to look at Las Vegas as what L.A. wants to do on its day off. There is this vulgarity and celebration of the tasteless in L.A. And that’s actually quite freeing. Taste is actually repression. You don’t have that feeling at all in L.A. It still distinguishes itself by staying that way. And New York has this uber-taste, which I found had everything to do with style and something that was changeable and also not very interesting. [. . .] cyk: I am reminded of a quote from a New Yorker profile on you from 2003: “The California Light and Space artists . . . seemed indigenous to the West Coast. The main practitioners of Light and Space—Irwin, Turrell, Wheeler, and Maria Nordman—never functioned as a group, and didn’t agree on much of anything. What they did share, more or less, was an interest in perception—how we see what we see—and also a high-minded disdain for the commercial side of art making.”3 jt: The disdain was healthy. But remember this is difficult work to take on the road, difficult to sell domestically, expensive for galleries to show. So perhaps the attitude 1.  Peter Weber, “Sky People: A Travelogue,” in James Turrell: The Wolfsburg Project (Wolfsburg, Germany: Kunstmuseum, 2009), 46. 2.  Michael Govan, “James Turrell,” Interview, June–July 2011. 3.  Calvin Tomkins, “Flying into the Light: How James Turrell Turned a Crater into His Canvas,” The New Yorker, January 13, 2003, 67–68.

JAMES TURRELL   297

64214int.indd 297

22-05-12 4:43 AM

came along with the territory. My difficulty is with how perceptual art has become a subset of Minimalism. That is not its origin, not its context. cyk: What about this notion of your Pacific concentration on colored light projected from hidden sources versus Dan Flavin’s Atlantic version, or “Canal Street aesthetic”? jt: I was not interested in seeing the source of light—only its result in space. The interest was in where the light goes—the thing-ness of light, not the light thing. He [Flavin] was initially interested in the unit of the source. My art was about perception. The material may have been light, but perception was the medium. The “material” was patently immaterial, the medium in which it took place, perception, even more ephemeral. [. . .] The Mendota Years (1966–1974)

cyk: The Mendota Hotel was your first real effort to “apprehend the light.” I’ve always enjoyed reading the stories of your studio there. You covered the windows, plastered the walls, and created groundbreaking works like the projections but also drawings, photography, and installation. jt: I had done the projection work first, and it required closing off the studio from outside light, which resulted in the needed darkness but also a certain stuffiness. I began to open things and let light in, and then began to make a piece out of the whole space of the Mendota. cyk: The studio was spacious and multifarious enough to allow you to work within it, creating apertures. In essence, you created a giant pinhole camera out of the building. So when light or movement from people and cars occurred on the outside, you’d have this action happening inside. It was time-based media in real time. jt: Why go in to see outside? You see the sky on the outside, so why do you go inside something to then look at the sky, and only a portion of it? Only that could be some retroactive way of involving you with your own perception. And that’s of course what happens in Plato’s Cave. You see reality upside down and backwards. [. . .] Art and Technology

cyk: Nearly every essay on your work chronicles Art & Technology and this period as a vital time in your career. Could you talk about how you were introduced to the project and the work that you did there? jt: I think that was a very heady, forward-thinking time in L.A. that pushed the limits of goals and efforts. The rockets may have been sent out of Cape Canaveral and controlled in Houston, but everything was made in Southern California. And you really felt it here. The L.A. County [Museum of Art] came to me and they thought that Bob [Irwin] and I would be interested in collaborating. I was interested. Bob is someone I respect, and we had a great time doing this. We got into it fully and deeply. 298    JAMES TURRELL

64214int.indd 298

22-05-12 4:43 AM

35. James Turrell, Roden Crater, 1977.

We did research on ourselves, and alpha-conditioning and biofeedback conditioning core involuntary muscles like the heart, where you can learn to slow down your heart rate. I had done work in sensory deprivation chambers before, a strange portion of my life, and when I got together with Bob and Ed [Wortz] at Garrett [an aerospace corporation], we continued a lot of the experiments that I had done as a psychology student at Pomona College with Graham Bell, who was the great psychology professor that ran the department and took a personal interest in each of the students. We worked with synesthesia. These things were pivotal in my thinking about how we sense and how we form this reality that then we live within. And it was also useful to me in terms of art. Those are the pure motives involved with art. And it was Ed that made the difference. Ed carried us and still does for me. I believe Bob would say the same. [. . .] Roden Crater

cyk: You had to get financing for the land surrounding Roden Crater but one can’t get a loan on vacant land in Arizona, so you got a loan as a cattle rancher. You used agriculture to fund art. These activities have a very pragmatic purpose of supporting your work as an artist. But they seem to be a part of your life and your art in an inseparable, unified way, which again seems very related to your Quaker beliefs. jt: I did use aviation to support my art habit. I can only wish that art would now support my aviation habit. And it is true that I used ranching to support the purchase of lands around the crater (the viewshed). However, I have begun to see this as a subset of artists as ersatz members of the cargo cult. Perhaps I made a project that uses the tools, machines, and practices I love. Artists often spend more time making studios than the art that goes out of them. More time collecting and restoring tools than using them. In this way we can be seen as modern day practitioners of JAMES TURRELL   299

64214int.indd 299

22-05-12 4:43 AM

the society of John Fromme or the cargo cults that arose after World War II in the South Pacific Islands. And what about the mound-builder fascination with the mastaba-like volcanic crater, the pyramid? Not exactly Quaker beliefs. cyk: You’re about a third of your way through your master plan for Roden Crater. In the New Yorker profile on you, Calvin Tomkins conjectures that you have “built nine underground chambers and one huge outdoor space (the crater’s bowl) ‘to capture and apprehend light’ from the sun and the moon and the stars— and also to demonstrate how we create and form our perceptions of the visible world. The first phase of construction is virtually complete, but a great deal remains to be done, and the future of the crater, whose total cost will probably exceed twenty million dollars, is far from assured. As obsessions go, this one could outlive Turrell.”4 jt: Well, that’s true. I hope it does. If somebody wanted to pick it up and finish it, it could be a piece of art that would cost less than many Picassos and other single paintings. The plans are there, they’re finished. So it could become someone else’s obsession. Of course I would love to see it in my lifetime. That’s one of the joys of being an artist. You get to see these things yourself and either disappoint yourself with what didn’t happen or be excited that what you never expected to happen did. [. . .] cyk: Why do you claim that your work comes more from painting than sculpture? jt: There are a few reasons why and ways in which this happens, starting with the Projection Pieces; I used the hypothetical space of painting, first by preparing the wall of the space smoothly as though it were the picture plane. This served as Plato’s Cave wall. The light projection appeared either as something hovering two or three inches in front of the wall, or it could seem to be making a hole through the wall. Then, I cut through the wall with an edge that had no thickness and put light behind the wall. With these Shallow Spaces, I could yield a light space where it was on the same plane as the wall: three dimensions seen as two, until you came up close to it. After that I began cutting through the structure, above the horizon, with the Structural Cuts and then the Skyspaces. There is an evolution of the picture plane that happens with these typologies of my work. With the cave wall, you are in front of it, you go up to it . . . and then you go through it, in the space where the image had been. I went from working with the picture plane to cutting to the outside, which can look like an opaque flat space, which you wait to enter with consciousness. Some people have tried to dive through apertures of Space Division Constructions expecting it to be soft inside. With the Ganzfelds, I allow you to enter the picture plane itself as if you are entering the painting. These works get more sculptural of course, but it still has the idea of using three dimensions in a hypothetical way. It is still about dissolving the dimensional quality or in some way reordering the dimensioning, in the language of painting. 4.  Tomkins, “Flying into the Light,” 62.

300    JAMES TURRELL

64214int.indd 300

22-05-12 4:44 AM

GIUSEPPE PENONE B O R N 1947

STATEMENT (1968)

To make a sculpture the sculptor must settle down on the ground, letting himself slip down slowly, softly and little by little. Then, stretched out, he can concentrate his attention and the forces upon his   body which, pressed against the earth, allows him to see and feel earthy things; then he can stretch out his arms to delight fully in the coolness of the ground and achieve the degree of calm required to produce the sculpture. His immobility at this point becomes the most evident and active condition; every movement, every thought, every desire for movement is superfluous and undesirable in the state of calm and of slow sinking without tiring convulsions and words and artificial movements which would only succeed in jarring one from the condition happily arrived at. The sculptor penetrates . . . and the line of the horizon comes nearer to him. When, finally, he feels literally light-headed, the cold of the earth cuts him in half   and enables him to see quite clearly and precisely the point which divides the part of his body which belongs to the emptiness of the sky and   the part which belongs to the fullness of the earth. This is when sculpture comes into being.

STATEMENT (1970)

From the knots in the wood, it is possible to determine which way a tree rose into the sky, from which side it absorbed the southern light, whether it was born in a crowded forest,

Giuseppe Penone, “Statements,” in Giuseppe Penone: Writings 1968–2008, ed. Gianfranco Maraniello and Jonathan Watkins (Bologna, Italy: Istituzione Galleria d’Arte Moderna—MAMbo; Birmingham, UK: Ikon Gallery, 2009), 56, 91, 96, 109, 121, 122. © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

301

64214int.indd 301

22-05-12 4:44 AM

in a meadow or at the edge of a wood. The forest, a slow factory producing wood. The trees of wood, a forest without leaves, which still preserves a memory and the smell of it. A dried, metallic, hard forest which has lost some of its elasticity in the air but which has conquered the tension of the sound in its crystallized, sculptural matter which ensures quivering and musicality.

STATEMENT (1977)

An economy of gestures produces the sculpture turning vertiginously around a point gives the concentration of space necessary for sculpture. I rest against the form that spirals with its concentric lines in the space and in the matter. It is the need to avoid friction, which holds back the wind of action, to give the sculpture, the animal gesture of the vertical tree, the plant gesture of the sculptor. Around the tree’s gesture the sculptor’s action is dispersed and in the sculptor’s vegetal gesture the tree’s action is held. Around the sculpture around the sculptor boxwood, laurel, myrtle, olive.

STATEMENT (1984)

Capturing the green of the forest. Running through the green of the forest with a gesture. Rubbing the green of the forest. Overlaying the green of the forest. Imagining the thickness of the green of the forest. Working with the splendor and density of the green of the forest. Consuming the green of the forest against the forest. Repeating the forest with the greens of the forest.

STATEMENT (1991)

To enter into the forest of wood is to embark on a voyage in time, into the history of every single tree and every year of its life.

302    GIUSEPPE PENONE

64214int.indd 302

22-05-12 4:44 AM

The slowness with which a year in the life of a tree is traced and uncovered recalls its growth. The slower it is, the richer in details and little stories and consciousness it will be. To penetrate into the intimate history of the wood with a chisel, carved by days of sunshine, rain, snow, frost and encounters with other living forms, contacts with insects, animals, accidents, shocks, incisions, wounds and the caresses of other plants is an idea which only a thought close to the material can develop.

STATEMENT (1991)

In the month of May 1969 I entered the forest of wood and I began a walk in time slow, reflective and surprised, attentive to every small form enclosed within the fluid wood. It was then that this cathedral rose up from the silent world of matter, to enter into the world of sculpture and the poetic use of real.

GIUSEPPE PENONE   303

64214int.indd 303

22-05-12 4:44 AM

RICHARD LONG B O R N 194 5

WORDS AFTER THE FACT (1982)

The source of my work is nature. I use it with respect and freedom. I use materials, ideas, movement and time to express a whole view of my art in the world. In the mid-sixties the language and ambition of art was due for renewal. I felt art had barely recognized the natural landscapes which cover this planet, or had used the experiences those places could offer. Starting on my own doorstep and later spreading, part of my work since has been to try and engage this potential. I see it as abstract art laid down in the real spaces of the world. It is not romantic; I use the world as I find it. My work is simple and practical. I may choose rolling moorland to make a straight ten mile walk because that is the best place to make such a work, and I know such places well. I like the idea of using the land without possessing it. A walk marks time with an accumulation of footsteps. It defines the form of the land. Walking the roads and paths is to trace a portrait of the country. I have become interested in using a walk to express original ideas about the land, art, and walking itself. A walk is also the means of discovering places in which to make sculpture in “remote” areas, places of nature, places of great power and contemplation. These works are made of the place, they are a re-arrangement of it and in time will be re-absorbed by it. I hope to make work for the land, not against it. I like the idea that art can be made anywhere, perhaps seen by few people, or not recognized as art when they do. I think that is a great freedom won for art and for the viewer. My photographs and captions are facts which bring the appropriate accessibility to the spirit of these remote or otherwise unrecognizable works. Time passes, a place remains. A walk moves through life, it is physical but afterwards invisible. A sculpture is still, a stopping place, visible. The freedom to use precisely all degrees of visibility and permanence is important in my work. Art can be a step or a stone. A sculpture, a map, a text, a photograph; all

Richard Long, “Words after the Fact” (1982), Touchstones (Bristol: Arnolfini Gallery, 1983). Reprinted in Richard Long: Selected Statements & Interviews, ed. Ben Tufnell (London: Haunch of Venison, 2007), 25–28. © 2022 Richard Long. All rights reserved, DACS, London / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

304

64214int.indd 304

22-05-12 4:44 AM

the forms of my work are equal and complementary. The knowledge of my actions, in whatever form, is the art. My art is the essence of my experience, not a representation of it. My inside and outside sculptures are made in the same spirit. The urban and rural worlds are mutually dependent, and they both have equal significance in my work. My work has become a simple metaphor for life. A figure walking down his road, making his mark. It is an affirmation of my human scale and senses: how far I walk, what stones I pick up, my particular experiences. Nature has more effect on me than I on it. I am content with the vocabulary of universal and common means; walking, placing, stones, sticks, water, circles, lines, days, nights, roads.

RICHARD LONG   305

64214int.indd 305

22-05-12 4:44 AM

A N DY G O L D S W O R T H Y B O R N 19 5 6

HANGING STONES (2018)

The name Hanging Stones is derived from Hanging Stone Lane and Hanging Stone Farm in Northdale, near Rosedale Abbey—the location of the Hanging Stones project. Generally, my titles aspire to the status of a place name. Maps and the poetry of place names are an important literary source for me. Hanging Stones could already be a title for a work of mine (for instance I have a work at Yorkshire Sculpture Park called Hanging Trees). The name suggests precariousness—appropriate for a project that looks to reestablish derelict and semi-derelict buildings in order to give them new purpose, thus arresting their inevitable slide into disrepair and in some cases imminent collapse. Northdale is wild but it is not wilderness. It bears the evidence of an industrial past— it is a complex, tough, resilient and powerful landscape with a strong human presence. There is hardly a blade of grass that does not in some way reflect the human hand, and yet Northdale is a place in which nature is strong in terms of both its landscape and the people who have worked there. I have tried to see something that is in some ways already there—I like the discipline of working within an existing framework. It is the valley itself, not me, that has set the terms of engagement and created my rationale for Hanging Stones. The buildings set the pace and rhythm for Hanging Stones. Apart from Redwall, I have chosen existing buildings (or in the case of Northdale Head the place where a building once stood), because they are places that have the imprint of the people who have been there before. All the buildings are currently unused. There is no such thing as a permanent ruin. Unless maintenance of some kind is undertaken (and I am not suggesting that it should) a ruin will continue to collapse until it becomes an overgrown footprint. Aside from collapsing, stone has always been taken from old buildings to be used in the making of new structures. Northdale Head House is an extreme example of a building that has been completely removed, but others gradually disappear over time. Buildings do not stand still once they have no purpose.

Andy Goldsworthy, “Artist’s Statement for Hanging Stones,” 2018. See https://hangingstones.org. © Andy Goldsworthy.

306

64214int.indd 306

22-05-12 4:44 AM

The issue is not whether a ruin is better off left alone, but what form it will take next. My own personal belief is that there is time enough for a building to become ruinous again and the prospect of being rebuilt as an artwork would not be an uninteresting layer in a building’s history. The rebuilding of four ruins (and five derelict buildings) represents a tiny percentage of the many buildings in a similar condition within the North York Moors National Park. Art is by its very nature outside of the normal. It reflects the unique and the deeply personal view of an individual. Art does not conform. It is an exception. Hanging Stones should not be seen as setting precedents for rebuilding all old buildings as artworks, or for any other purpose, elsewhere. The repair of a building is for me an act of renewal and not of “developing,” and this notion of renewal is an important dimension of my earning or having the right to remake the building as a work of art. The old buildings were originally made from need. Need is important. I need the buildings not just to provide a site, but to give the reason for making the art itself. Each proposal has come out of my dialogue with the landscape, as well as each building and the people who once lived and worked there. The inside of each house should be as raw as the outside. Indeed, one of the many rationales for working with buildings is that sound, atmosphere and materials are amplified when experienced inside a confined space. None of the buildings will have electricity or mains water. Wherever possible, stone from the old building is used for its repair or renovation. The use of already worked stones is a way for me to connect with the people who first made the buildings. The resonance with those who have gone before is important and is made more poignant by the fact that I am making spaces to be occupied by people to come. Whilst Hanging Stones would be connected to the past, it would also be a contemporary work of art that addresses our relationship with the landscape today. It would be very much about the future. The kind of life that Hanging Stones will have would depend upon people—not as spectators but as participants in a work. The walk is an integral part of Hanging Stones—the artery by which people will give life to the buildings. The patina of hand and footprints left inside and out of the buildings by those who visit them and make the walk will add richness to the project. The buildings will only be accessed with a key, which people will pick up from and return to a designated location. People will be given the responsibility of opening and closing the buildings. The number of visitors will be determined by the time and space

ANDY GOLDSWORTHY   307

64214int.indd 307

22-05-12 4:44 AM

to experience the buildings properly as well as minimizing any impact on the artworks, the valley and nearby village of Rosedale Abbey. Hanging Stones will be both discreet and dramatic. Visible to those who know it is there and hidden to those that don’t. It will be so rooted in what is already there that it would be difficult to say where the work begins or ends.

308    ANDY GOLDSWORTHY

64214int.indd 308

22-05-12 4:44 AM

M AYA L I N B O R N 19 5 9

ABOUT THE WORK (2000)

Each of my works originates from a simple desire to make people aware of their surroundings, not just the physical world but also the psychological world we live in. This desire has led me at times to become involved in artworks that are as much politically motivated as they are aesthetically based. I have been drawn to respond to current social/political situations in my work. My subject is not infrequently an idea of our time, an accounting of history, yet I would hesitate to call myself a “political” artist—if anything, I would prefer “apolitical” as a self-description. I do not choose to overlay personal commentary on historical facts. I am interested in presenting factual information, allowing viewers the chance to come to their own conclusions. I create places in which to think, without trying to dictate what to think. I have produced works that are socially motivated, such as the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, or the Women’s Table at Yale University, or the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. But more typical are those works that focus on purely aesthetic levels of experience, works that invite the viewer in, that ask the viewer to notice a change in shape, color, or light. But whether socially or aesthetically based, in these works I seek to create an intimate dialogue with the viewer, to allow a place of contemplation, sometimes an incorporation of history, always a reliance on time, memory, a passage or journey. A direct empathy exists between the artwork and the viewer. These works rely on a physical or empathetic response rather than on a learned one from the viewer in order to be understood—or, more accurately, felt. The works have a tactile quality. Water flows over the Civil Rights Memorial or the Women’s Table, so that when the viewer touches the smooth surface of the water, the viewer creates ripples—and a direct interaction with the work. The Wave Field and Topo invite the viewer in to sit or walk into and through the work, to participate and become a part of the work. This active participation with my work involves the viewer in a direct and intimate dialogue with the work. I like to think of my work as creating a private conversation with each person, no matter how public each work is and no matter how many people are present.

Maya Lin, “About the Work” (2000), Boundaries (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 2:03, 2:05, 2:07. © Maya Lin.

309

64214int.indd 309

22-05-12 4:44 AM

36. Maya Lin, The Civil Rights Memorial, Southern Poverty Law Center, Montgomery, Alabama, 1989.

My incorporation of text, whether a specific language or a scientific or mathematical notation, requires the viewer to read the work. This act of reading, which is inherently a private act, is made more intimate by my deliberate choice of a smaller-scaled text that one reads like a book, rather than a billboard. This creates a private reading in an otherwise public venue. The monuments especially capture this intimacy, one that is unexpected for works of that scale and public nature. I think writing is the purest of art forms. When your thoughts and intentions are conveyed as directly as possible to another person, no need exists for a translation. Words can be the most direct means of sharing our thoughts. The experiential nature of these works also incorporates the element of time. Some works, such as the monuments, mark a specific time frame. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a closed time frame with the beginning date of the war, 1959, meeting the end date of the war, 1975. The Civil Rights Memorial leaves a space between Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968: that space signifies the time before or after the time frame that the monument cannot encompass. And the Yale Women’s Table uses a spiral of numbers, marking a beginning but not an end. The last number marks the enrollment of women in 1993, the year I installed the sculpture.

310    MAYA LIN

64214int.indd 310

22-05-12 4:44 AM

This use of time brings viewers into a real-time experience of these works, allowing for their participation and making past events part of the actual time spent reading the work. I have always felt that time is suspended when experiencing these works. One is almost gaining a neutral ground in history, where past, present, and future can exist simultaneously. In the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, returning veterans will find their time spent in Vietnam when they find a friend’s name. Time becomes the object of the works; the form dematerializes, becoming pure surface as you approach it, so that the text, the information, becomes the object. I have also incorporated the notion of time and its passing in other works—quite literally, Eclipsed Time, located in the subterranean central corridor of the Long Island Railroad in Pennsylvania Station, New York, incorporates the natural passage of the day’s light into darkness in the form of a solar eclipse. At twelve noon the disk is completely illuminated; at twelve midnight the glass disk, and its light, is completely eclipsed by the traveling aluminum disk, and the gradation of light, like the lunar phases, reflects the passing of time. Time is also a crucial element in how I see my architecture. I cannot see my architecture as a still moment but rather as a movement through space. I design the architecture more as an experiential path, in which rooms flow from one to the next, rather than as a series of closed spaces connected to one another. My works create a sense of place, where the landscape often becomes an integral part of the work. Both the architecture and the sculpture are site-specific. I read clues from the existing site, identifying a character or feature on which to build. What I introduce into the land does not try to dominate or overwhelm the existing landscape but instead tries to work with it, producing a new experience or framing of the site. Both the art and architectural works are environmental—they both create entire environments and reflect my concerns with environmental issues. A strong respect and love for the land exists throughout my work. I cannot remember a time when I was not concerned with environmental issues or when I did not feel humbled by the beauty of the natural world. I do not believe anything I can create can compare to the beauty of the natural world, but these works are a response to that beauty. From childhood I remember a geode my brother had that fascinated me. I would constantly borrow it and he would take it back—this geode would travel back and forth between my desk and his. He still has it. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a geode. I envisioned it not as an object inserted into the earth but as part of the earth, a work formed from the act of cutting open the earth and polishing the earth’s surface, dematerializing the stone to pure surface, creating an interface between the world of the light and the quieter world beyond the names.

MAYA LIN   311

64214int.indd 311

22-05-12 4:44 AM

64214int.indd 312

22-05-12 4:44 AM

SCULPTURE IN THE PRESENT Sculpture has undergone dramatic transformations over the course of a century. Objects carved, modeled, and cast—some pedestalized, aloof from life’s stream— by the early 1960s seemed not only anachronistic but, in vanguard circles, beside the point. Some recognized that to remain relevant, sculpture had to enlarge its phenomenological footprint in ways that enabled it to breathe and engage. Brancusi’s and Noguchi’s sculptural environments joined Tony Smith’s nocturnal epiphany on an unfinished section of the New Jersey Turnpike to open up an expanded field for sculpture’s future. The transition from objects to actions, from tangibility to ephemerality, liberated experimental artists who had no qualms about breaking the rules by bridging the gaps between kindred disciplines like dance, architecture, theater, and music. Sculptural art, as distinguished from the art of three dimensions, implies a mindset—what I refer to as sculptural consciousness in the last section of the book’s introduction. Sculptural consciousness embodies an omnidimensional sensibility that’s politically savvy, socially engaged, environmentally aware, and, when necessary, activist. Every artist in this chapter shares this ethos. Clear-eyed skepticism can motivate cultural engagement without mitigating the poetic power of ambiguity. Ambiguity sustains art’s subversive edge: the power to provoke without revealing itself. Ambiguity differentiates poetic provocation from political propaganda. Technological infiltration and environmental degradation are two of the more pressing challenges confronting contemporary artists, who, as Sherrie Rabinowitz urged in 1984, “NEED TO CREATE ON THE SAME SCALE THAT SOCIETY HAS THE CAPACITY TO DESTROY.”1 Sculptural consciousness fueled by interdisciplinary strategies that can actually do something in the world offers a powerful antidote.

NOTE 1.  Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition (New York: Fordham University Press, 2020), xxv.

64214int.indd 313

22-05-12 4:44 AM

64214int.indd 314

22-05-12 4:44 AM

AI WEIWEI B O R N 19 5 7

EXCERPTS FROM “AI WEIWEI WITH PHONG H. BUI” (2016)

phong h. bui: I’d like to begin with the path, the formation, the journey if you like, which may mean different things, and probably apply to different times in your growth as a person and as an artist. In September 1976 Mao Zedong died and the Gang of Four was brought to trial and found guilty; that same year your father, the great poet Ai Qing, and your family were allowed to return to Beijing when you were nineteen. They put your father in a labor camp, on and off, for twenty-two years. And you grew up experiencing this harsh punishment as a child. I can only relate because when my family and I were sent to an educational/labor camp by the communist regime in Vietnam, I remember being extremely angry. I remember saying to myself, when I grow up I’ ll either pretend nothing happened, live a normal life like anyone else, ignore the humiliation, or deal with the anger through some virtuous, productive ambition or creative output. What was your earliest memory of being angry witnessing this condition imposed upon your father and family? ai weiwei: It was a horrible situation for all of us. But it wasn’t only him, it was his whole generation of intellectuals who were regarded as enemies of the people. It was like it was raining and everywhere was wet. When it’s raining, you see that everyone is wet. So you learn not to complain that much because it’s the common condition. It’s not raining for one afternoon, it’s raining for thirty to forty years. So you’re part of the environment. It would be very strange if it rained for thirty years and you still complained. You would never see sunshine even for one moment in your life. It seems like everybody in my father’s generation learned to accept this horrible condition. [. . .] phb: A lot of things happened in Beijing when you and your family came back in 1976. All the schools and art academies reopened. And you went to film school to study animation. Why animation and not filmmaking, or painting and sculpture?

“Ai Weiwei with Phong H. Bui,” Brooklyn Rail (December 2016–January 2017). Reprinted in Tell Me Something Good: Artist Interviews from the Brooklyn Rail (New York: David Zwirner Books, 2017), 25–34. The conversation took place in the lobby of the Gramercy Park Hotel on November 3, 2016, two days before the opening receptions for Ai Weiwei 2016: Roots and Branches at Mary Boone and Lisson Gallery, and for Laundromat at Jeffrey Deitch (all November 5–December 23, 2016). Reprinted from the Brooklyn Rail courtesy of Ai Weiwei and Phong H. Bui.

315

64214int.indd 315

22-05-12 4:44 AM

aw: It was just the first school that opened. [Laughter.] And I wasn’t aware that there were other schools that opened at the same time. phb: It was that random? aw: Yeah. I had already rushed into the school. I didn’t even want to go to school but my teacher and a good friend of my father said, “Weiwei, please just apply.” It was almost the last day to apply, but I was accepted. There was no excitement. Anybody would have been excited by it. The universities had been closed up for ten years. Suddenly, they reopened. All my classmates were the sons and daughters of the old intellectual class that had been criticized and punished during the Cultural Revolution. Only their children knew what film was, or what art was. The others were just workers, how would they know? I feel quite bad about it. I think that’s a reason I became more angry. Not because I was punished, but because after the punishment, there was no justice. There was no justice. It was just the same. Everything goes back to normal and no one dares nor cares to talk about the past. That made me very angry as a young man. phb: That’s a reason you got involved with the Stars collective, no? aw: Yes, I was part of the early Stars group of artists. But soon I realized that I’m not a very passionate part of any group. You start to distrust any sort of ideology. After all, you’re an individual. You can have control and take full responsibility for your own actions. I began to make drawings and paintings. I remember my teacher wouldn’t even criticize my work because it was outside the bounds of what he knew. He gave critiques to each student, but purposely ignored me. Soon I realized that if I stayed, the condition would get worse. Luckily, my girlfriend and I had the chance to come to the United States. With her family’s sponsorship, we first went to Philadelphia, to UPenn to study English, and then later to Berkeley. As soon as I passed my English test, I came to New York. That was where I wanted to be. [. . .] phb: You did a lot of different jobs, including playing blackjack in a casino and making portraits of tourists in Times Square, and around 1983 you started using photography to document your life in New York. Was it a conscious decision? aw: Not really. I used to hang out on St. Marks and 2nd Ave, where people would sell stolen things, cameras and all sorts of stuff. Very cheap, 20 or 30 bucks, because they needed it for drugs. I could never dream of having a camera before, but I could now have a Linhof or a Hasselblad. First, I was testing those cameras to see if they even worked and then I began taking pictures because I had nothing else better to do. Anyhow, I took some photos of the Tompkins Square Park riot in 1988. That got me interested because I liked seeing confrontation between local people and the police. I also then realized that authority was blind, they just did their job and didn’t care for a reason. The people defending so-called values and interests were also helpless, yet the confrontation was real, and it made a strong impression on me. As a young person, how do you start with or experience some meaningful structure

316    AI WEIWEI

64214int.indd 316

22-05-12 4:44 AM

of society? As long as you don’t obey the basic patterns of society, such as getting into a good university, getting a job, securing yourself, to buy a house or get married—none of this I was interested in. Still the question remains: how could you make it in New York? It’s impossible. phb: We haven’t spent a lot of time together, but I feel you personify a spirit of rebellion to which I relate. My creative energy thus far sparks from my struggle to maintain the equilibrium between anarchy and benevolence. At any rate, you were in New York when Tiananmen Square occurred on June 4, 1989. The day after, an unknown 19-year-old student appeared out of nowhere to stop the advancing tanks of the PLA. It was a symbol of change, inevitable change, for sure. It was widely circulated by Jeff Widener’s photograph and Charlie Cole’s video footage. The world was stunned by this image. Everyone was shocked yet everyone knew it was very familiar. It took a while until they realized it’s an Old Testament episode of David against Goliath. However small and insignificant he is, his will is driven to stand up against the giant. With your arrest, I felt so strongly that the little Tank Man or the “Unknown Rebel” is you as David, the advancing tanks are Goliath. But it wasn’t until 1993, when you returned to attend to your father’s illness, who died two years later, that you may have recognized this significant moment of change and gave yourself the permission to become that unknown rebel, the Tank Man. Is that a fair observation? aw: I think it’s true. It takes a long time, a long journey to be naïve, to be innocent and standing in front of power. You can’t be too sophisticated. On the other hand, that naïveté takes sophistication, developed from the great pressure of decades of oppression. Even when you have strong strategies, it still takes an individual to stand up at the right moment. Everything is symbolic, everything is a ritual, especially when we talk about revolution and change. Why does change happen? Why do the leaves fall from the trees? It’s full of poetic meaning, but even the simplest things in life require a clear gesture. Sometimes it comes naturally, sometimes it feels like it will never happen. phb: What about the subject of repetition, the use of repetition, which means different things in the West and the East. In the West it seems to amplify abundance, plenitude, lavishness, grandeur, and wealth. We saw how ingeniously Warhol had depicted this in his thirty-two canvases of Campbell’s Soup Cans, which were among his last hand-painted works even though they had been painted to look as though they were mechanically made. He discovered the mechanical process after, as seen in his ten screenprints Marilyn Monroe (1967), which hence enabled him to make limitless numbers of precise repetitions and variations of his subjects and whatnot. But among Asian cultures, repetition is meant to empty your head. In Buddhism for example the idea of nirvana is about “not being there.” It’s interesting to be reminded of this difference: in the West you repeat in order to feel how much you gain, and in the East, you repeat in order to get rid of things.

AI WEIWEI   317

64214int.indd 317

22-05-12 4:44 AM

aw: That’s a good point. In the West, you use it to secure or amplify an image. In the East, you use it to dismantle an image. This meaning itself is very Zen, to see everything as is, to the point in which even the interpreter disappears. That practice is a completely different direction, because the East thinks of one who wants to give meaning, as an artist, his or her condition is questionable. It has to be redefined each time. Even if you do the same thing, it’s completely different because you’re the one who’s doing the action and you’re never the same. That’s the most interesting part. phb: It is, but don’t you feel that’s how the government of the People’s Republic of China sees you, as someone who positions himself in between the two worlds? You’re able to utilize whatever you learn from the West and subversively apply it, and transform yourself as the Unknown Rebel. In reading Jonathan Napack’s essay, I thought the two epigraphs were so telling about where you get your spark from. One quote was by Duchamp: “Doubt in myself, doubt everything. In the first place, never believe in truth.” The other was by Warhol: “All the lighter things in life . . . are the most important things.”* aw: Warhol said, “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.” It’s close to Oriental thinking in a way. [. . .] phb: Do you feel in retrospect that the three years [1993–96] you came back to Beijing to tend to your father’s illness was a gestation period which allowed you to think through what you did, and what you were about to do, including Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, and the Study of Perspective series in which you gave the finger to various symbols of power. Both were initiated in 1995, then there was the infamous group show, Fuck Off, introducing 46 emerging artists which ran alongside the Third Shanghai Biennale that you curated with Feng Boyi in 2000. aw: Well, since I published three books, The Black Cover Book (1994), The White Cover Book (1995), and The Grey Cover Book (1997), I recognized even if I was given a moment, I never felt I had one. I needed to create this little moment just as a reminder to myself that it’s not a game that’s started yet. Simply, what happened to my father’s generation is not over. You just want to remind yourself of who you are and what you’re defending. And it has no effect at all. When you don’t have a platform, it’s not going to happen. It just doesn’t work when we talk about political gesture or protest amongst just your friends. It has to be in the public realm because that’s the real nature of freedom of expression. It’s no good to freely express yourself into a mirror by yourself. You have to show it to a neighbor, or to society. Later, I got involved with architecture, and architecture is very political, especially in China. You’re dealing with all the government bureaucracy, and you’re dealing

* Jonathan Napack, “Ai Weiwei,” Ai Weiwei Works: Beijing 1993–2003 (Beijing: Timezone 8, 2003), 38–43.

318    AI WEIWEI

64214int.indd 318

22-05-12 4:44 AM

with the people including the ones who are on your side. You deal with the regulations and questions like, “Who is going to use it?”, “Why did you design it a specific way?”, “What do you expect from them?”, and “Do they really care?” All those considerations make you feel alone. You only have your heart. You only have your energy. But eventually I gave up. I cannot do something if I cannot control it. I was making things, but could not really be responsible for them. So, I quit, right after the National Stadium was built for the Beijing Olympics in 2008. But lucky enough, by 2005, I found the internet as a platform. Sina, an online web portal, invited me and said, “If anyone should open a blog, you should.” I was very well known in the architecture world and I was always doing many interviews in fashion magazines, talking about style. It’s easy to make comments about various events in New York and have strong opinions on aesthetics and so on. So they said, “My god, you’re the only person in China that has his own ideas about how things should be.” So everybody interviewed me, but all the interviews were in fashion magazines. [Laughter.] And architectural ones, too, because they need to feature new lifestyles, which is fine. That made me famous and they wanted me to open up a blog because they said, “This is a famous person that can always give an opinion.” But nobody, not them, not me, understood what that meant. Because I never touched a computer, I didn’t know how to type. They said, “It’s okay, we have an assistant for you. You just tell us.” So while standing in front of a computer, I felt so fascinated. I said, “My god, this young person lives in such a very remote area,” which reminded me of when my family was in the Gobi Desert in the ’60s and ’70s. You can see and watch this young person and stay in touch with him. I thought this was amazing. So I typed my first sentence on the internet, “To express yourself you need a reason, but expressing yourself is a reason.” It was to convince myself that I could do it. [Laughter.] So I gradually put my first interviews and some older artworks on there, which I realized wasn’t at all interesting. I have to directly work with current situations. So every morning I would open the newspaper and choose a topic to give my opinions. That generated so much heat. Each article could have 200,000 people reading and reposting, and it would even become newspaper headlines. They generated social discussions, meaningful discussions. And at that time in China, the authorities didn’t know how to control it. They knew it was a problem because so many people began to direct these social arguments and they did so well that nobody could stop them, until the earthquake in Sichuan occurred in May 2008. I told them, “If you don’t give us names, on the internet I’ll organize the first demonstration of civil disobedience by conducting a Citizens’ Investigation.” We went to the earthquake area, family by family, school by school, and located 5,000 names. It was unthinkable in China. We discovered the students’ birthdates, their classes, and their parents’ names. We sent a few dozen young volunteers, to go make camera recordings. Many of them were arrested a few dozen times. It was like the 1960s in the U.S., but I think it was successful because there was a very simple target. We

AI WEIWEI   319

64214int.indd 319

22-05-12 4:44 AM

were not talking about anything. We were only respecting life, trying to find the truth and to not forget what took place. phb: And you made a huge exhibit, So Sorry, at Haus der Kunst in Munich a year later, in 2009, where 9,000 children’s backpacks covered the whole museum’s façade, spelling the sentence “For seven years she lived happily on this earth” in Chinese, so the whole world knows about it. aw: Yes, not to mention that each day we posted the names we found that day. And so many people were watching and said, “This government cannot give any truth, but this stupid guy, this maniac, is doing that and very successfully.” So many people started to know me, and to understand me and my way. You have to show a way. You cannot just have a simple ideology; you have to show how it can be achieved. The project was so successful. The result, of course, was that they shut off all my blogs, which happened before my exhibit in Munich. My name cannot even be typed on the Chinese internet, it became an illegal word. I think we achieved a big victory on this matter, and that is when I became a so-called activist. But I always think that’s an indivisible part of my art. My work as an artist is not about using the language already given, but rather creating my own language. And the internet gave me this possibility. The language came out itself. It’s so smooth, so natural, so unpredictable, and so free. The next moment, the next second, it can change to another subject and that’s so critical. For those reasons, I became one of the most fluent users of social media in China. Everybody knows. [. . .] phb: Do you think your political activism became more driven, more ambitious, due to the recent refugee crises? aw: All I know is when people asked me, “When did you become a rebel?” I reply, “I was born a rebel.” It’s true. But it takes a long time for you to find the right language and the right platform as I’ve mentioned before. And once you take full responsibility, you anticipate that when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. For me, it’s very natural. I respond to the situation. I think that if you don’t measure it by normal daily values, then you’re liberated. Because daily values cannot match up to it. It’s larger than that. When we talk about another person drowning, that’s perhaps normal. But when you see over 3,000 people have drowned, like twelve jetliners have been shot down, because they’re Arabs, Palestinians, and Africans, then you really have to confront the question: Do we really care? To what degree do we care or why is it that we don’t care? phb: I was told that you’ve been making a new documentary film on the current refugee crisis. When did it begin? aw: It actually started before I got my passport. I was invited [by the Ruya Foundation for Contemporary Culture in Iraq] to make a selection of drawings, poetry, and prose made by refugees in various camps in northern Iraq for a publication [Traces of Survival: Drawings by Refugees in Iraq] which was published to coincide

320    AI WEIWEI

64214int.indd 320

22-05-12 4:44 AM

37. Ai Weiwei, Remembering, 2009.

with the Iraq Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. They were beautiful and touching drawings, testaments to their dreams and all they’ve gone through. Anyway, I said, “Yes, I can be on your jury but I cannot just stop there.” I sent two assistants to the camp to make interviews. We did over a hundred interviews along with videos and photos, some of them were very compelling. But I couldn’t pay much attention because I wasn’t allowed to travel then. Once I got my passport I went to Berlin partly because I had previously accepted a visiting professorship at the Universität der Künste, and partly because the German representatives were proactive in communicating with Chinese officials during my detention. My partner (Wang Fen) and my son (Ai Lao) had already settled there. At any rate, once I got there, I met many refugees who came to Berlin. I always asked the same question: “Where did you want to go?” They all said Germany. So I asked “Why Germany?” In my mind it was very strange. Why do they have to go to Germany? Many of them came through the island of Lesbos. I said to my partner and son, “Okay, since I have to do a show in Athens, we can go to Lesbos for a vacation before Christmas.” phb: [Laughter.] Unconventional idea for a vacation! aw: They loved it because in Germany the winter is so cold. I said, “Let’s go to a warmer area. We’ll walk on the beautiful, blue beach.” Then we see boats approaching. People getting off the dinghies, women holding babies, pregnant women, old people. That moment, I understood everything. There was nobody there to save them. They have been put in camps, treated inhumanely. There’s no light in their hands, barely enough food. At that point I asked my family, “Can we spend New Year’s here?” They agreed. I called my studio and asked my assistants to send solar powered lights as gifts because it’s pitch black at night. These perfect families. Why did they have to give up so much by coming so far to be in a place like Lesbos? I thought a good solution would be to make a documentary to understand who they are since I knew so little about them. I have to set up something for me to start to

AI WEIWEI   321

64214int.indd 321

22-05-12 4:44 AM

be able to understand. So after Greece, we went to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Gaza, Africa, and Mexico, and our team went to Bangladesh, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and now they’re shooting in Syria. We’ll have a big film made, to be released next year in 2017. [. . .] phb: Since you were initially the unknown rebel [laughs] and now you are a very wellknown rebel, would it be fair to propose that as an artist you maximize every possible means, including your fame, to support and materialize your political activism? aw: I think for the ultimate rebel, the last act is always to destroy themselves, to destroy that title. Otherwise, they’re not a true rebel.

322    AI WEIWEI

64214int.indd 322

22-05-12 4:44 AM

JA N I N E A N T O N I B O R N 196 4

JANINE ANTONI IN CONVERSATION WITH DOUGLAS DREISHPOON (2009)

There are a few things that come to mind when I think about my sandcastle-making days growing up on the beaches of the Bahamas. First, there is my love of process. The ephemeral just comes with the territory. There is also the miniature, which I was obsessed with as a little girl. I like the idea that one thing can stand for another: a shell, for example, can be a door. I see my daughter playing the same imaginative games. The sand, a primal material, makes me think of Robert Smithson. I imagine that my relationship to materials is why I relate to him so much. I had a very physical, sensuous, visceral childhood. This influence is certainly reflected in the ideas and materials I gravitate to. I have been working on a piece that also happens to be triggered by a childhood memory. Growing up in the Bahamas, I heard pirate stories that were more reality than fantasy. The islands were subject to bootlegging, blockade running, illegal immigration and drug trafficking. My brother told me stories about Anne Bonney, an IrishAmerican woman who masqueraded as a male pirate in the Caribbean during the 18th century. One of the ways Bonney deflected suspicion about her double identity was by using a ceramic apparatus that enabled her to urinate standing up. As a young girl, I was fascinated with the idea of Anne Bonney’s device. Recently, I encountered commercially made objects designed exactly for this purpose. I couldn’t resist the complex implications of such an object. Like Anne Bonney, I, too, wanted to live out the fantasy triggered by the use of this object. My fantasy, like most do, took me to an unlikely place. Such is the unexpected journey of the unconscious. So here’s the leap: What if the apparatus for peeing while standing up was a gargoyle? And what if I actually cast this apparatus as a sculpture and used it to pee off a landmark building in New York City? Gargoyles fascinate me, not only as hellish creatures but because they signify the mythical, shadow side of our psyche. There’s no consensus on the source of their grotesque configuration. They are functional, though, designed to disguise a funneling system that reroutes rainwater away from a building. I chose to sculpt a griffin gargoyle, which is a hybrid—a mythical composite of different animals. It occurred to me that to use my invented apparatus was to make myself into a hybrid, because as a woman my anatomy doesn’t enable me to pee standing up.

Janine Antoni, excerpts from “Janine Antoni in Conversation with Douglas Dreishpoon,” Art in America, no. 9 (October 2009): 123–28, with minor revisions by the artist. © Janine Antoni.

323

64214int.indd 323

22-05-12 4:44 AM

38. Janine Antoni, Conduit, 2009.

64214int.indd 324

22-05-12 4:44 AM

The sculpture was cast in copper, calling to mind copper plumbing pipes as well as copper architectural details. The metal oxidized and changed color when it came into contact with my urine, so the object’s patina is a natural result of this action. By using the gargoyle in relationship to my body, I equate myself with the architecture. For, just as I have memories of being entertained by stories of the high seas, I also remember the Franciscan nuns in school telling me, “Your body is a temple.” I took the convergence of these memories literally when I gained access to the Chrysler Building, where I was photographed on the 61st floor, outside of the building, standing next to an architectural gargoyle and peeing through the copper gargoyle. It was definitely a wild and exhausting session that took endless hours and a lot of patience on the part of everyone involved. The Chrysler Building acts as a pedestal for my exuberant gesture. It made me think of Yves Klein’s photograph Leap into the Void [1960]. Maybe my attempt to confront the existential void is tempered by comic relief. Humor is useful because it exposes self-consciousness without pretension. It allows us to get closer to things that make us feel uncomfortable, such as our demons, our bodily fluids and our desire for power. My performances happen in real time, control is relative and surprises inevitable. Sometimes I have to get out of the way. It’s beyond letting go of control. It’s about waiting and following one’s intuition. The creative process is a mystery, something that seems to happen on the periphery of thought. When conceiving a work, I don’t try to hone in on it too quickly. In fact, I do the opposite. I try to stay as open as possible for as long as I can. This state is full of potential, but it’s a terrifying place, too, because all I really want is for my ideas to solidify. I have so much doubt and fear, and yet the more I can just watch the unfolding with a light touch, the more the piece seems to make itself. At a certain unexpected point, something comes to the forefront. The unconscious looms large in my work. There’s something I call the escape hatch. Every project needs one. It’s the one part of an installation that doesn’t add up. And that escape hatch leads to the unconscious. To liberate the unconscious might be to let go of the ego, or the notion of authorship. I always come back to the word “conduit,” because I feel like an open channel when I’m making art. I often imagine my body as a funnel through which the world is poured. And yet I always anticipate the audience at the other end of that funnel, because without them, half of the picture is missing. I need someone to fantasize about! My work occupies the territory between object, performance and relic. For each piece, I ask myself what the piece needs, how much I should show and how much I should leave to the viewer’s imagination. With earlier projects, I spoke through the work in a very direct way, and I thought that was a generous gesture. Now, I’m more interested in leaving a space for the viewer’s imagination.

JANINE ANTONI   325

64214int.indd 325

22-05-12 4:44 AM

P E TA H C OY N E B O R N 19 5 3

CONVERSATION WITH MARY SABBATINO (2019)

I always knew that I would be an artist. When I was little, I would take my mother’s finest silver and china, even the family’s Irish linen, outside into the yard and make tiny sculptures, although at the time I didn’t think of them as sculptures. I was raised a very strict Catholic. We went to church everyday, and my family moved fifteen times by the time I was twelve. Whenever we settled somewhere new, I would search out the perfect place to create my little worlds, which often ended up looking like altars. I imagined myself as the priest while making these beautiful things in the tree branches or at the base of trees. I took these early installations very seriously, and then, like any good missionary, I served mass, being too young to understand that a girl would never be allowed this much power in the Catholic hierarchy. At the end of each day I took them apart. Everything had to be back in the house by the time my father came home. In some ways, my process has remained the same. I’m constantly recycling almost every material ever used and held onto. What gets clearer, more intense, is my vision for the kind of pieces I want to make. When I moved to New York City in the late 1970s, I started going to galleries almost everyday. I noticed that some artists seemed to do the same thing over and over. I made a promise to myself that I would challenge my practice by implementing new ideas into my work. One way to do this is to change the materials I work with. Materials are my language. It’s taken years to become multilingual. I have an enormous supply of stock materials and have figured out how to efficiently sort and store these. Now, I don’t have to take the time to figure out what’s what, as I did years earlier with hair, plaster, black sand, and other things. On occasion, I bring something from the building up into the studio, to see if I can incorporate it into pieces that I’m working on. I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever exhaust everything saved during my lifetime. Recently, I’ve collected beautiful fabrics and exquisite tassels. Any new material presents a renewed set of challenges and every piece still takes time to figure out. Many require multiple redos. Using velvet, a fairly new addition, was like learning yet another language. At first I struggled with it, but now that I understand its properties and potential, it’s giving new energy and meaning to the work. The velvet is very dark, particularly when used with dark tassels, which compliment one another aesthetically, and metaphorically symbolize how dark experiences can possess beauty. I think this is

Petah Coyne, excerpts from a conversation with Mary Sabbatino, New York, March 19, 2019. © Petah Coyne.

326

64214int.indd 326

22-05-12 4:44 AM

what the Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata was trying to capture toward the end of his life in The House of the Sleeping Beauties. The story gains intensity from a long life: beautiful memories tinged with regrets that escalate to an almost unbearable degree. I try to evoke the same kind of intense emotion in my work. A long life enhances the process, giving you a treasure trove of experiences to cull from. Even the darkest memories can be transformed into something beautiful. Ambiguity is important. I always want people to bring their own emotional response to the work without my having to give everything away. The titles of certain works reference authors and books, such as Zora Neale Hurston and The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, to name a few, because writers, particularly fiction writers, continue to inspire me. These references are only parenthetical titles, because the sculpture is not a direct response to any one thing. I may start out as a Minimalist, but by the time I’m finished, most pieces are extremely layered. It’s similar to reading a book as a younger person and then coming back to it much later. You interpret the text differently. Time, age, and experience alter perception. I don’t know what any piece is truly about until it’s finished, at which point multiple associations become clear. It might start with a single idea and then morph into a world event or catastrophe, a personal experience from decades ago, the theme of a book, or all of these. It’s my hope that as much as I put into the work, the work will give that much back to the viewer. I see space as another material, a determining variable. Marian Griffiths, Director of the Sculpture Center for more than two decades beginning in 1981, taught me this lesson when she gave me my first installation opportunity in 1987. At the time, the Sculpture Center was located in a townhouse on East 69th Street. I sat in the ground floor space for days studying and absorbing the quirky architecture, and then spent two months, with an assistant, making and installing works for the show. That was the only way to do it. Since then, I’m hyper-aware of how every space has its own character, which determines what works can go into it, and how one might experience them. It’s like learning in art school to pay as much attention to the negative space in drawings and paintings as to the positive space. The relationship between works, how pieces speak to one another, given their height, spacing, and orientation, is so important, like seeing works in a building with ornately carved details in the ceiling and walls, as opposed to seeing them surrounded by glass walls. I also don’t see my sculptures as having a front, back, top or bottom. I give every angle the same careful consideration—to enable surprises, the opportunity for new interpretations. In life, no two people will see the same situation similarly. I like the idea of offering multiple viewpoints visually, emotionally, and intellectually. I’ve always explored the subtlety of dark on dark, white on white. On occasion I have also exhibited black and white pieces together in one installation. My next challenge is to work with more stark contrasts, to actually combine black and white together in one piece. I’m curious about how black sand, a material derived from pigiron casting, the darkest and deepest black I’ve ever seen, will co-exist with white wax? What will this look like? Can I achieve the same emotional subtlety without being too obvious?

PETAH COYNE   327

64214int.indd 327

22-05-12 4:44 AM

39. Installation view of the exhibition Petah Coyne: black/white/black, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, October 26, 1996–February 10, 1997.

Lately, what’s happening in the world can feel so horrifying. How can I channel certain events into the work? Can I make a strong statement without trivializing someone else’s experience? Knowing my materials so well, I am fueled more by instinct, driven by feeling and thought. Anger, hope, sadness, beauty, rage, if one can even name these feelings, are channeled into the work. When emotion becomes content, the work assumes a life of its own.

328    PETAH COYNE

64214int.indd 328

22-05-12 4:44 AM

OL AFUR ELIA SSON B O R N 1967

BECOMING CO-SCULPTURAL (2019) Walking Is Sculpting

At the Institut für Raumexperimente, my temporary experimental art school (2009– 14), the participants and I frequently did movement experiments, using the streets as our studio. These journeys most often took us through the city of Berlin, but also through Zurich, and on another occasion through Addis Ababa. On these walks, we were no longer individuals but a group of artists engaged in prototyping alternative ways of orienting within, shaping, and sharing public space. We carried mirrors aimed upward and cardboard prosthetics and props; we used our voices to demarcate space, followed our sense of smell, practised slow-motion walking, and moved alone, in pairs, clusters, and rows, dispersed yet connected. Outside the comfort zones of the art school, the artist’s studio, and traditional exhibition spaces, the friction between everyday life and artistic exploration becomes apparent. These walks were ways of sketching space; sensing the pull of gravity and the points of contact to the ground and to each other; reorganizing the urban environment; challenging social norms and expectations and notions of center and periphery; and exploring the correlation of the embodied activities and their consequences for public space. There can be a difference between how we expect a space to unfold and our actual experience of its unfolding, just as there can be a significant difference between what we see when we are standing still and what we see when we move, whether on our own or as part of a group. The act of looking is often not enough for us to properly understand and navigate space. Our stereoscopic vision is intensified through physical movement; depth and scale are perceived with more clarity. Through moving and activating the memory stored in our bodies, we can render space in higher definition; we read and write it through our bodies. What a great sculpture does is that it allows me, my body, to experience space in a deeper way while also co-shaping it. You could say that a successful experience of a sculpture is one that takes me on a walk, a practice in motion that both relies on the conditions of space and time and, at the same time, makes them felt, present.

Olafur Eliasson, “Becoming Co-sculptural,” written in 2019 for Modern Sculpture: Artists in Their Own Words (2022). © Olafur Eliasson.

329

64214int.indd 329

22-05-12 4:44 AM

Co-sculpting

The urban thinker Andreas Ruby once told me that Auguste Rodin disliked the sequential photographic studies of Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey, that Rodin felt it was impossible to capture and segment time in this very scientific manner. The famous L’ homme qui marche (Walking man) sculpture was his response. Apparently, he assembled it from unrelated studies that he found lying around his studio. If you look closely at it, you can see that the torso twists in a different direction from the legs and that the muscles in fact present different moments in the progress of a step, collaged together into one moment. What interests me about Rodin’s sculpture is that his collection of not-quite-right movements drives you, the viewer, to walk around it, to relate to it from various angles. You are activated by the composition. And it is not only an external type of movement: when I look at the walking sculpture, I walk with it, invisibly, on the inside. My mirror neurons fire away, in what the neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese calls embodied simulation. “Even the observation of the static image of someone else’s action can awaken beholders’ internal motor representations of the same actions.”1 The movement is reenacted internally. My body becomes invisibly tied to the sculpture that it encounters, becoming co-sculptural. Or, in the words of Gallese: “Embodied simulation . . . allows a direct apprehension of the relational quality linking space, objects, and the actions of others to our bodies.”2 It is, however, not only you and I who are activated: the narrative of the sculpture emerges from our movement—and it is in this meeting up of sculpture and visitor that the artwork manifests itself at its fullest. We move it, and it moves us. And when we meet others within this space, each of our trajectories is affected by their presence; we all dance in the gravity of someone else. Today, a sculpture can be a process, a system, or a collective movement. For decades, artists have considered sculpture to be not only objects but objects that have agency, that do something in the world. The consequences for the spaces that contain them are as important as the objects “themselves.” I can only celebrate the fact that today a sculpture can be most anything— ephemeral, transient: a plume of smoke, a burst of water, the lighting in a room, the reflections from the surface of a pond, or a set of atmospheric conditions. Today, a sculpture can be a situation or a feeling. I once made an artwork, called A fiercely affectionate sculpture, which consisted of a shared emotion, congealing and dissolving again.

1.  Vittorio Gallese, “Bodily Framing,” in Experience: Culture, Cognition, and the Common Sense, ed. Caroline Jones et al. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 241. 2.  Gallese, 242.

330    OL AFUR ELIA SSON

64214int.indd 330

22-05-12 4:45 AM

40. Installation view, Olafur Eliasson and Minik Rosing, Ice Watch, Bankside, outside Tate Modern, London, 2018.

Sculpting the Future

In 1969, utopian architect and author R. Buckminster Fuller published a small book called Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth: One of the interesting things to me about our spaceship is that it is a mechanical vehicle, just as is an automobile. If you own an automobile, you realize that you must put oil and gas into it, and you must put water in the radiator and take care of the car as a whole. You begin to develop quite a little thermodynamic sense. You know that you’re either going to have to keep the machine in good order or it’s going to be in trouble and fail to function.3

Today, however, we cannot simply get away with doing service checks on the earth. We have—finally—become aware that we are, inadvertently and as a consequence of our lifestyles and overconsumption in the Western world, sculpting the planet. This is a radical sculptural activity. Bruno Latour, adopting a term popular with science-fiction writers in the 1950s, has called us “Earthlings,” saying that we “humans are not on Earth . . .

3.  R. Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, ed. Jaime Snyder (Baden: Lars Müller Publishers, 2008), 60.

OL AFUR ELIA SSON   331

64214int.indd 331

22-05-12 4:45 AM

but in Earth.” 4 Or as the Danish author Josefine Klougart puts it: “we are nature.”5 The earth is not an object or a machine or an automobile from which we can separate ourselves. Following this realization, terms like climate crisis, extinction, ecological collapse, and global warming have become standard in our vocabulary. The philosopher Timothy Morton calls global warming a hyperobject, “something that is so vastly distributed in time and space, relative to the observer, that we might not think it’s even an object at all.”6 This hyperobject that we are creating and have been contributing to, mostly unawares and over more than a century, is vastly more disjunct than Rodin’s L’ homme qui marche. Whereas Rodin’s sculpture offers us the opportunity to rethink the parameters for encountering a work of art, the destabilization of our ecosystems is an imminent threat. Both, however, ask us to come to our senses. It is by engaging fully with our senses that we can grasp our relation to the sculptural objects and to the earth, and make sense of and craft knowledge about them and us. And what Rodin makes apparent, that any meeting up with L’ homme qui marche is an embodied encounter, we are beginning to learn with regard to our commitment to the planet: looking from a distance and talking about it are not enough—nor, I’d say, even an option. That is why we see more and more people coming together, taking to the streets to protest the lack of climate action by governments—children and teenagers speaking up and climate activist groups staging protests and “die-ins,” using their bodies as tools in public space to manifest nonviolent, disruptive civil disobedience. Sculpting in the streets matters. It is urgent. The most important sculptural project going on today is shaping the future of planet Earth.

4.  Bruno Latour, “Is Geo-logy the New Umbrella for All the Sciences? Hints or a Neo-Humboldtian University” (lecture, Cornell University, October 25, 2016), http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default  /files/150-CORNELL-2016-.pdf, 8. 5.  Josefine Klougart, “We Are Nature,” in Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life, ed. Mark Godfrey (London: Tate Publishing, 2019), 105. 6.  Timothy Morton, “Hyperobjects and Creativity,” in Hyperobjects for Artists, ed. Timothy Morton and Laura Copelin (Marfa, TX: Ballroom Marfa, 2018), https://tci-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/pdfs/library  /hyperobjects-for-artists.pdf, 4.

332    OL AFUR ELIA SSON

64214int.indd 332

22-05-12 4:45 AM

T H E A S T E R G AT E S B O R N 19 7 3

EVERY SQUARE NEEDS A CIRCLE: EXCERPTS FROM A CONVERSATION BETWEEN ZACHARY CAHILL, THEASTER GATES, AND MICHELLE GRABNER (2019)

zachary cahill: Something that struck me about this exhibition was that some of the work left me speechless. When I initially encountered the large installation in the center of the room, there was this moment where I questioned whether I should climb it or not. It really stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t feel comfortable. I could share what kind of connotations it evoked for me, but I’d be more interested in hearing from you, Theaster. Perhaps the viewer is supposed to figure it out, but I wonder if you could give us some clues as to what’s happening in this work? theaster gates: I recently taught a class called Big Art, Little Art. Then I have this show titled Every Square Needs a Circle. It felt like there was something flatfooted and primary about this, and I became interested in this idea: that complicated things could be revealed out of simplicity. The Gray Warehouse is already a beautiful space, and I wanted to interrupt its natural beauty with my own grid, my own set of systems. It required a platform for staging a world. Perhaps I’m staging the Chicago grid, or the capacity to see at different levels. These two works on either side are arranged so that you’re at viewing height when you’re standing to look at the Slaves Ex-Slaves piece. I needed a platform, and in some ways, talking about the platform or the grid is the easiest way to suggest that the central piece becomes the city, or it becomes a battleground, a theater set, a land mine, or land math. Therefore, this architectural move becomes an unquestionable basis for how I imagine my experience in Chicago. For me, the city has become a contract with land. I wanted to bring forward the truth of that contract, or the truth of my basis in the city, which is that I have contracts with the city over the ownership of land. Land requires that I do things, and so, in some ways, this theater set, or this elevation platform in its precision is my first square—a kind of primary square. It’s from this square that things either work or don’t work and are seen or not seen. The square never tells you whether or not you have access to it, which is why I wanted to make a big square.

Theaster Gates, excerpts from a conversation with Zachary Cahill and Michelle Grabner on June 19, 2019, on the occasion of the exhibition Theaster Gates: Every Square Needs a Circle, presented by Richard Gray Gallery in the Gray Warehouse, Chicago, April 4–June 29, 2019. Published courtesy of the artist, Zachary Cahill, and Michelle Grabner.

333

64214int.indd 333

22-05-12 4:45 AM

zc: You’ve spoken about the works that surround the pavilion. Can you talk a little bit about the pieces that are placed on it? tg: These objects are informed by my own craft, my engagement with others to make things that are beyond my personal capacity to lift, move, or shape, and the value that I have for nature. There is an athletic shaman with a Wilson headband, which feels like a moment where totem and mask and sweat start doin’ things ritually. This beautiful colored stone is probably sexier than any painting. Its making, or its life, is the by-product of eruption, violence, volcano and land masses smashing together and meeting with basalt and marble. It can only be found in one or two places in the world. It’s a readymade, but in fact, it is not the earth’s readymade; the earth had to do a whole lot to get it ready. The show isn’t about demonstrating prolificness or how well I can make something, it’s about the things that trained me. These streets trained me. I understand balance and composition. I am concerned with why these objects live where they live, why there’s no floor in the grid, why the grid is exposed—these decisions reveal the way my mind works. michelle gr abner: It’s my observation, Theaster, that a beautiful way of articulating those elements is within that field metaphor for a city. There’s also a protective quality to that structure—it also works as a large vitrine. Unlike the other work in this exhibition, which we can approach formally, there are traces, marks, and your touch in those works—your thinking. There is almost a psychoanalytical containment or how that work is protected within that metaphor of a city. tg: [walks over to Every Square and walks up on the platform] I like how there are these references to traditional Japanese architecture—this idea that there’s a series of private rooms but each of the rooms need to be serviced. To achieve this, you need a lane, so that privacy and service can coexist. This walk is not just about perspective, but it has something to do with the adjacency that service has to things that it doesn’t [affect?]. It’s not privy to what’s happening in the grid, but it’s constantly servicing the grid. Chicago feels like that sometimes. Let’s say there’s a CTA bus driver who has been servicing the city for thirty years. That CTA bus driver would follow the same route for their whole life, up and down Pulaski, but would have, by some strange construct, no access to [or knowledge of] what’s happening past the places that they’re traveling [by] every day. The pavilion—this structure in the middle of the space—does not permit the viewer to have access in the same way. If I had a shoe that was twenty-four inches by twenty-four inches, I would walk on this surface differently. If I were to go in with the shoes that I was born with, then it would seem as though this surface was not made for my feet. Containment works differently for me. If we were talking about perimeter or parameters or finiteness, then I could say that I actually need things to square up sometimes so that I can mess with them. zc: As a follow-up to the question on containment, so much of the work has a real gutpunch quality to it, and one piece is definitely the Madonna and Child in a cage. I

334    THE A STER GATES

64214int.indd 334

22-05-12 4:45 AM

wonder if you could talk about containment. For me, it resonates really strongly with what’s happening on our southern borders with families in cages. This may not have been your intent, but I wonder if you could talk about the choice to put the Madonna and Child in a cage. tg: This also draws on Michelle’s question about formalism. If we assume that I had formalist intent, then it seems like there are a few squares in the room, and that the big square isn’t necessarily about what’s held within it. It’s a defined space, and inside those grids, it feels infinite. I like how it allows you to see the floor below it, and the opportunity to look up through the grid. The amount of time it took to put all the parts together, to make it strong, is evident, and it feels generous within the form. With the Madonna, it was different. The cast is from my project in Basel where I took a keychain with a Madonna that was given to me by a friend, which I then blew up into a foam cast. It was a small and insignificant keychain. Christ’s arm was broken, and the Madonna was missing a hand, yet it offered everyday blessings—it made sure the holder had their keys, that their car started, and that they were protected from getting into an accident—a material connection to the divine as a keychain. With the Square, I was thinking about how there are moments where a spiritual world or an invisible world exists around us, but there are many things that prevent us from accessing it. There were many moments I remember from my childhood, where Black preachers would talk about somebody trying to touch Jesus’s hem. I don’t have to touch Jesus, I can just touch a part of the material that touched his body. It’s this idea that a connection to a material that is connected to spiritual power will give me spiritual power. When you can’t even get to the hem, you can’t identify a moment where the material world is offering you anything into the infinite. Do I think about Abuelita? Absolutely. Grandmothers being stopped at the borders? Absolutely. The idea that children are being held unto death. Absolutely. That we’re assassinating genius in our young Black boys and girls with K2 and synthetic drugs, and the challenges of school, and prison over school? All of these concerns are on my mind, but this exhibition is just about circles and squares. I’ve chosen to pull things from the studio, and I don’t have to think about these other concerns. I have a rusty gate, and I have a cast. mg: Yes, but you do think about these things, and it’s much more than circles and squares—it’s the formal qualities that we’re talking about. Let’s circle back to the politics of form, and the juxtaposition between the Black Madonna and the metaphor of the city. Thus, where the difference of interpretation can happen within that same geometry. How spaces and bodies are organized very differently from one piece to another. Where narrative is more explicit, let’s say in the Black Madonna, where there’s a high degree of abstraction about how those bodies, those hands, those clay bodies work in that space. So, I think it’s a beautiful example of how formal choices, the formal choices that you’re making, can open up a narrative, to the point of it being abstract, obligating the viewer into a kind of deep

THE A STER GATES   335

64214int.indd 335

22-05-12 4:45 AM

interpretation in which there is no right answer. That grid could be the modernist grid of containment, of exclusion, or it can be a suspension. What is so beautiful about the open floor is that these bodies are suspended in a very different way than the Black Madonna. We talked at one point, and you claimed to be a formalist, as am I, but not in the traditional sense, which tends to center around taste and aesthetics. It’s really about politics, order, and hierarchy. tg: Thank you; let’s revisit the Madonna. She’s on a plinth, and the plinth is on a plinth. There’s also a cerulean granite that I got from the Walker Art Center. In 2017 I was invited by the Walker to produce an outdoor permanent installation, which resulted in a work titled Black Vessel for a Saint.1 During this time, they had all of this granite in the plaza, so I traded them a portion of my artist’s fee for the cost of transporting the granite to Chicago. The transport was $75,000, so as you can imagine, there was a lot of granite in my backyard. I put this heavy granite under the Madonna, and then extending from the granite there’s a piece of carpet from the third floor of the former Johnson Publishing Company headquarters. It’s a small square of carpet, and the edges are not hemmed. It’s a piece of Black DNA that has been deemed bankrupt. If I could get that DNA inside my Madonna, then a portion of Johnson Publishing Company will always live in the world and will always be preserved; for as long as people are talking about the Madonna, they will also talk about Johnson Publishing Company. As long as I’m making these neons about Du Bois, then Du Bois will be on our minds. An important facet of the formalistic is weaving histories in, but not just history for history’s sake. The world is trying to say that Johnson Publishing doesn’t matter anymore. There are moments where I feel implicated to quietly weave into the fabric of the sculptural work. I want people to think, “Oh, that rug is hot,” and to realize that having a museum foundation, followed by a Black foundation, followed by this kind of ethereal divine is necessary. When I’m thinking about formalisms, I’m not thinking about the history of formalisms but rather the importance of form, and the importance of aggregating forms toward an end. Sometimes it is just about freaking the form and finding ways to let my peers and my homies into some of those deep conversations we have at two in the morning that should be recorded—the time when things get real open and real honest. Some people may encounter the work and feel its impact, whereas other people will walk out of here and say, “Ain’t shit on the walls! You got a piece of concrete. I could do that!” I’m always addressing that kind of viewer in my work. zc: For me, that was particularly the case with the water fob. If some of the other pieces are clearly coded and representational, the water fob struck me as being 1.  When St. Laurence, a cast concrete figure about my height, lost his home on Chicago’s South Side because St. Laurence Church was being demolished, his itinerancy became my topic for investigation. For this commission, I immediately thought of the Sol LeWitt and Joseph Beuys works that would be this project’s immediate neighbors. Creating a dialogue between these three “saints” might be interesting. The project allowed me to pursue brick manufacturing in a way that was no longer gestural but quite real.

336    THE A STER GATES

64214int.indd 336

22-05-12 4:45 AM

blank. For the folks that spend time along the Chicago waterfront, it might render a very particular association to the city. I’d like to hear about your choice to include that piece in the exhibition. tg: I was going to move the speaker, but I was afraid that it would topple over the fob, which would result in a bad situation. [. . .] These fobs are normally used as stanchions. They represent perimeters and borders. I wanted to use this Chicago signifier next to my paintings and my tar works. I almost want Paul Gray to leave the marker in the same place for the next show. Could I say to the gallery, “Hey, for the next year, can you leave me up in this mug?” and leave that particular move in this space. Like when the land around Howard University was Black. Now, there’s only one Black house left, and all of the white people are on P Street, eating outside on their front stoop with champagne and quinoa, while replicating forms of Blackness. It looks so civil, compared to the last brother on the block who’s eatin’ chicken wings from down the street with his pit bull, giving his pit bull the bones, with his music playing loud, because he refuses to leave P Street, even though the new restaurants were coming on both sides of him. I don’t know if it was his grandmother’s house, or if he bought the house, but this brother was the water fob. [. . .] mg: Let’s circle back, just a little bit. I want to revisit your point about the kind of viewer that doesn’t necessarily have the visual vocabulary or experience that you or I have in the art world. I don’t want to dwell on form, but let’s talk about organization and composition. There is a clarity, stability, and concreteness to everything in this exhibition. You’re referencing the Madonna and the material signifiers. That is nearly totemic, it is vertical. You can read that there is a sense of hierarchy and containment in this work. So even though those things may have to be interpreted by the viewer to a certain degree, there still is a concern that you have to give some, again, stability, but that it’s okay for the viewer to have their interpretation. There is enough openness and abstraction to how you use material and how you organize those materials, those forms, that allow an openness of other possible interpretations. I would also like to circle back to sources. Within this exhibition, the three of us, or just the two of us, can hit sources that you evoked but also sources that you haven’t evoked. [. . .] You mentioned at one point, Theaster, that it is a nod to fill in, to keep W. E. B. Du Bois present, in these forms. I’m curious about what that current is. Who are the authorities? Are they references? How do they collapse history and temporalities? tg: There is a concreteness in this space—in this exhibition. A kind of absolutism, which I consider a reaction to contemporary art. One way of dodging exposure is by remaining in an ephemeral state, in a certain kind of exhibition moment. In some ways, the work is a scattered debris, it’s jumbled, it’s a constant failure of everything that could fail. None of the forms are accidental or incidental. By doing this, you gain an effusiveness. Is it a painting? Is it tar? Am I trying to create a new genre? Is it a vocabulary against painting? Am I involved in the language of Black paintings, because they’re

THE A STER GATES   337

64214int.indd 337

22-05-12 4:45 AM

absolutely Black paintings? What do I offer Black paintings? I intend to lean into the materials of roofing for a long time. I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, but I’ll lean in. The Rothschild’s sign is not a readymade. I met Ms. Rothschild! It’s a trinket from a relationship. It signifies the South Side. Mama’s Milk . . . Ms. Rothschild calls the Black men who work for her “boys.” It was ten in the morning, and people were coming to get what they needed on a Sunday morning. I’ve placed the Rothschild near the Madonna to reference the fact that I was going to church and people were already going to the liquor store on a Sunday morning. That’s a spatial truth. There were two lords: Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church and the corner store. They were both offering the same thing: affordable salvation. ’Cause neither was free. It was affordable salvation. All of these conditions are trying to touch the truth of the history of art as I understand it. I don’t know art history that well, but I’ve looked at a lot of images and I know that these paintings are in conversation with something called art. I know that the Madonna is in a conversation, and because the works are in this building, there’s some conversation about art. I built the Arts Bank for Black people on the South Side—I built it for this neighborhood, then Black people, the art people, and then the world can come. I feel good about that! zc: It’s so interesting to think about that in terms of the suffix that keeps popping up, the “ish.” As I hear you talk and reflect on the work and the codes that inform it, I feel that the show is putting us in that zone of maybe we know, maybe we don’t know, and it’s a way of feeling out your audience a little bit. Some people might be familiar with the Rothschild sign or the art historical references in the paintings. [. . .] tg: [. . .] I imagine that everybody in this room has some stakes, in art or in life. I think one of the main challenges of an exhibition is that there’s so many different ways to say something. I could choose to say something really literally, like the bound Ebonys, and translate it into a really deliberate form. If I were to try to summate what was happening at Johnson Publishing, if people were already using the term Black modernism for what was happening at Johnson, a book work might resonate really well. This would be a moment of commemoration honoring a corporate titan. John and Eunice Johnson did, in their work, artful things. Their corporation was putting the power of the Black image in front of Black people and in front of the rest of the world, so that the rest of the world wouldn’t be afraid—so that they would know stories of Black success that were equal to their stories. [. . .] I’m invested in the $13.5 million—the starting bid to take the company out of bankruptcy. If I could find $13.5 million, I would grab the company. I would change my title from artist to president and CEO of Johnson Publishing Company. Sometimes the stakes have nothing to do with art at all, except that they move through a place like this. I’m not as concerned about whether Johnson Publishing Company will sell, but that it survives.

338    THE A STER GATES

64214int.indd 338

22-05-12 4:45 AM

Companies go bankrupt all the time, but it’s still hard to get past the fact that Columbia College bought that building, saying they would raise the money to make the penthouse a tribute to John Johnson. But they did not do that. Instead they sold the building, which will become micro-apartments. This is part of that grid of privacy. The college should buy the building back and return it to Linda [Linda Johnson Rice, daughter of John and Eunice Johnson and heir to the Johnson Publishing Company]. The building needs to be a museum or to remain an active publishing company. It’s not about a found sign. A Jewish family was making alcohol pre-Prohibition. The Binstein family and the Rothschilds. Binstein’s became Binnys. Before it was Binnys, it was Gold Standard Liquors. They were serving Italians. Germans who were working on the South Side making buildings for Jews. Rothschild stayed until the ’80s. Their survival was in fact enhanced because there was a lot worth drinking about from the ’20s until the ’80s! Ms. Rothschild has a relationship with Blackness. She is they Mama. She is the Madonna! That’s complicated. Those are the things on my mind, and there’s so many ways to say it. mg: There are so many ways to say it, and you are thinking very carefully about the ethical way of presenting these ideas. We are in an art gallery, and you know contemporary art, and that it can be as literal and didactic and flat as it wants to be, or it can be as ambiguous, and unable to untangle anything. You avoid both of those paths, although they are very viable paths, as you know within contemporary art, and you keep using and building so there is a clarity in which you can lay on the politics, the meaning, and the truths that you are talking about, so they do not get lost—they do not get lost in a didactic relationship with work, and they do not get lost in the ambiguity of the world that we’re living in. There is a clarity in which you create, so that the things you are passionate about do not get lost. [. . .] I have one more question, and it has to do with the Tamir Rice gazebo coming to Chicago from Cleveland. It has to do with place and spaces. We are currently in a moment where artwork circulates—we understand it as an economy. I was just thinking how you navigate, very expertly, the local, the hyperlocal, and also the global. My question to you, and possibly Zack, centers around ideas of regionality. Can we still talk about issues of race and social justice within the framework of regionality? tg: This makes me think about Bryan Stevenson and his lynching memorial in Montgomery. That work is about counties; it’s about a region, an area where people were massacred. When I was first in touch with Samaria Rice, there was no way the gazebo made sense anywhere but Cleveland. I thought that we should buy an empty lot in Cleveland, so that it could be on private property, and that we would have some Friends of the Gazebo, or Friends of Tamir Rice, because the City can’t stop you from buying a piece of private property and putting an ancillary structure on it. That’s when the policy part gets interesting, or the understanding of land-use

THE A STER GATES   339

64214int.indd 339

22-05-12 4:45 AM

41. Installation view of the exhibition Theaster Gates: Every Square Needs a Circle, Gray Warehouse, Chicago, 2019.

law. I also don’t think the gazebo belongs at the African American Museum [Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC]. If it goes anywhere beyond the bank, it goes back home, or it gets packed up and buried. This is where other kinds of decisions are made, decisions that include Samaria, her lawyer, her family. Is there ever a moment where we bury that? zc: We began this discussion by looking at formalism and sacred art, a language of silence and reverence. Although you’re working in 2019 in a commercial gallery, there is a quality of the sacred, or . . . the religious. Maybe it’s not art, but rather, art that matters. That’s what art should be about, which makes me think that maybe it’s something closer to the sacred. tg: I think about Hito Steyerl or Pierre Huyghe’s practice. These are artists whose work contains a specific motivation. I’m always talking about Ilya Kabakov. I believe in these makers, and they’re no less causal than Kerry James Marshall. What I love about Ilya Kabakov is: what seems like material indifference was the truth of Russia. Ordering indifference was the truth of Russian bureaucracy, and there’s something super captivating about that. I knew that I wanted to use these walls. This middle wall is maybe fourteen inches higher than these other two walls, so I thought that this wall could work harder. The wall was already doing something, but I thought I could make it work harder. If there is a known and understood architectural code of God, it’s that twelve inches could be the determining

340    THE A STER GATES

64214int.indd 340

22-05-12 4:45 AM

factor that takes this from hanging three paintings to making the space feel sacred. Those moves are exciting for me, whether I ever talk about them or not. I don’t make every pot. I can’t make these tar paintings by myself, but there’s still parts that nobody can do for me, and that nobody could do but me. zc: Is this when the voice in your head chimes in? tg: Yeah, and folks are like “Well. Theaster brought over a bunch of shit.” You know? A stone, a rock, a mask, and a pole. That’s the South Side, it’s a rock, a mask, and a pole, and it don’t look like shit. The power of a rock, a mask, and a pole is always there. It has something to do with aligning things, lining things, realigning things. It’s about squares. Everything that I’m doing on the South Side is centered around ordering. There is nothing magical—it is just the ordering of things that already exist. It’s not a readymade. It’s something more special than that.

THE A STER GATES   341

64214int.indd 341

22-05-12 4:45 AM

F E L I X G O N Z A L E Z-T O R R E S 19 5 7–19 96

INTERVIEW WITH BRUCE FERGUSON (1990)

At first, I went to the dictionary and looked for the meaning of rhetorical. The art of persuasion. There was nothing about the “rhetorical image,” but there was something about rhetorical questions. One that requires no answer. And I thought, “Oh, here I am,” you know. The work is done.

PRACTICES: THE PROBLEM OF DIVISIONS OF CULTURAL LABOR (1992)

Yes, really screw up the division of labor and your role—the divisions and rules of how you should look, and how you should act; or the things you should know if you’re an artist. Don’t give them what they are expecting from you. Reframe the terms of the argument. Make connections. Establish priorities. By taking over issues of housing, health care, queer rights, women’s rights, the environment, the government cover-ups (and many more unfamiliar acts), we artists, critics, and art historians do in fact rearrange the divisions of cultural labor, and perhaps in this way, we might be able to put forward our own agenda. Maybe in this way, our voice of opposition will be a more complex voice—less easy to dissect and categorize. A voice, not only of more diverse contestation, but also of infiltration that upsets the expected narrative. Ultimately this will be a voice that truly attempts liberation through meaning and renaming, and reordering according to our own needs.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, excerpt from an interview by Bruce Ferguson, in Rhetorical Image (New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1990), 48. Reprinted courtesy of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation. © Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, excerpt from “Practices: The Problem of Divisions of Cultural Labor,” in Sites of Criticism: A Symposium (New York: Drawing Center, 1992); also published in Acme Journal 1, no. 2 (1992): 49. Reprinted courtesy of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation. © Felix Gonzalez-Torres.

342

64214int.indd 342

22-05-12 4:45 AM

42. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled,” 1991, installation view in the exhibition Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Double, PLATEAU and Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, June 21–September 28, 2012.

CONVERSATION BETWEEN FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES AND JOSEPH KOSUTH (1993)

My first reaction was a very predictable leftist reaction which more and more I am questioning and finding very static and self-defeating. At this point I do not want to be outside the structure of power, I do not want to be the opposition, the alternative. Alternative to what: To power? No. I want to have power. It’s effective in terms of change. [. . .] My embrace is a strategy related to my initial rejection. [. . .] Some of the works I’ve been doing for the last few years have been portraits in which I asked a person to give me a list of events in their lives, private events, and then mix those up with public events, more or less relating the public to these so-called private events. At this point in history, how can we talk about private events? Or private moments? When we have television and phones inside our homes, when our bodies have been legislated by the state? We can perhaps only talk about private property.

Excerpts from a conversation between Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Joseph Kosuth (New York, October 1993), in Ad Reinhardt, Joseph Kosuth, Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Symptoms of Interference, Conditions of Possibility, ed. Clare Farrow (London: Camden Arts Centre, 1994), 76, 81. Reprinted courtesy of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation. © Felix Gonzalez-Torres.

FELIX GONZ ALEZ-TORRES   343

64214int.indd 343

22-05-12 4:45 AM

INTERVIEW WITH HANS ULRICH OBRIST (1994)

The work is always extremely unstable. But that is one thing that I enjoy very much. I enjoy that danger, that instability, that in-between-ness. If you want to relate it to a personal level, I think in that case that the work is pretty close to that real life situation that I am confronted with daily as a gay man: a way of being in which I am forced by culture and by language to always live a life of “in-between.” So the work was an attempt—especially at that time, in 1987–89, when we were still at the height of the ’80s boom . . . you might want to call it “art market,” right?—to deal with the fact that having this stack on the floor that was not an original—you could never have an original—that you could show this piece in three places at the same time and that it would still be the same piece. And it was almost like a threat—not only a threat but a reinterpretation of that market and the marketing of an original piece, which it really never is, as I said before. And at the same time, the work is almost like a metaphor because you cannot destroy something that does not exist. The same applies to the billboard; it just disappeared but will come out again in a different cover, in a different cultural, historical context.

EXCERPT FROM ARTIST LECTURE (1995)

I wanted to have a show that could just totally disappear. I guess the stack work comes from my readings of Walter Benjamin, and his writings from the ’30s, about The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, an artist trying to use new forms of distribution, as opposed to new forms of new styles. And, just recently, one of the writers for The New York Times said that this was like Donald Judd. And I said, it just really doesn’t make any sense, because you would not compare—I mean, you would not compare the work of Carl Andre, and say, “Oh, it’s just like a Brancusi.” It’s not. It’s just sitting on the floor, and it’s big, and it’s very simple, but it’s not, Brancusi and Carl Andre are not the same. But, leave it to The New York Times. But anyway, so this is the first show in which I just used stacks.* And really, what’s coming from that theoretical background of Walter Benjamin, and [Bertolt] Brecht—because these have been two

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, excerpt from an interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist (1994), in Hans Ulrich Obrist: Interviews, vol. 1, ed. Thomas Boutox (Florence: Fondazione Pitti Immagine Discovery; Milan: Charta, 2003), 311–12. Reprinted courtesy of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation. © Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Text courtesy of the author, © Hans Ulrich Obrist 2020. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, excerpt from artist lecture delivered in March 1995 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in conjunction with its exhibition Public Information: Desire, Disaster, Document (January 18–April 20, 1995). Reprinted courtesy of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation. © Felix Gonzalez-Torres. * Gonzalez-Torres is referring to the solo show in which he displayed six individual stack works (Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, January 20–February 24, 1990).

34 4    FELIX GONZ ALEZ-TORRES

64214int.indd 344

22-05-12 4:45 AM

of the biggest influences on me, but also, like Freud said, it was about fear. It was about learning to let go. And you have a show, and everyone’s walking out of the show with your work. And it’s kind of painful, but at the same time, it was a rehearsal for me, learning to let go. And, at that time, people wouldn’t touch those things. They just wouldn’t. I mean, we had signs on the walls that said “Please Take One.” Now, I wish it was the same. Now, people just fight for this stuff, and they disappear really quickly . . . But also, in terms of history, you have to realize how this broke the narrative at that time. This is 1989, 1990. Everything you saw was on the walls in New York, and people were fighting for the walls, so I realized early on that the margins, that the marginal spaces were as important as the center. So, anyway—and again, going back to the subject of not occupying space, of letting other people take over, and taking the risk of disappearing. One of the benefits of doing the stack is, if I like someone else’s work, I usually cannot afford it—and neither can a lot of other people—so I just ask them to give an image to make a stack, so a lot of people can have it. In this case, I asked Christopher Wool to give me this great painting for a stack, and we did—I mean, he agreed on that. But what happens then is that when you go home and you put it up on the wall, I totally disappear, and it becomes a Christopher Wool. And I like that even more, because there’s no—I mean, there’s not a signature there. It’s just a poster, by Christopher Wool, that—came from my stack, but that’s fine. I like that. I like taking that risk. It’s a total transgression of authorship. I mean, that doesn’t look like Donald Judd at all. But—and I love Donald Judd’s work, and don’t take me wrong. He’s one of my daddies—was one of my daddies.

FELIX GONZ ALEZ-TORRES   345

64214int.indd 345

22-05-12 4:45 AM

A N N H A M I LT O N B O R N 19 5 6

WEIGHT (2016)

Water promises weightlessness to a ship’s tonnage as it does to an animal or human body. In water we experience a buoyancy impossible to feel on land, except perhaps in the hiccup of suspension that occurs on a fully extended swing, just before the pendulum’s inevitable backward pull. The railroad tracks bisecting Pier 9 once offloaded goods from water to land. Ships with cavernous hulls, vehicles of buoyancy riding half above and half below the water’s horizon, came loaded plump with goods from as far away as South America and as close as New York. Stacked high in boxes, the goods—often perishables such as fruits from other climates—were lifted by pulley and rope and distributed by rail, bringing the taste of another locale to Philadelphia. The passage, like a lifetime, was temporary. It began with a hand on one continent and ended in a hand on another. In economic terms, “goods” are tangible items that satisfy a human want or need. A thing found useful. Free goods are those things that are unlimited, that require no payment or effort to acquire. Economic goods are items that are in limited supply relative to demand. The water and air that make the boat buoyant might be considered as a law of physics but also, at least at one time, as a free good, the weight it carries is an economic one. Listed on a ship’s bill of lading “cloth goods,” often used synonymously with “fabric goods,” refers to material made into a finished piece. Yardage is the terminology for something woven or printed but unfinished, hence a raw good. Finished goods made of cloth include many membranes for covering the body: socks, hose, undergarments, gloves, hats, coats, dresses, suits, sweaters, blankets, tarps, tents. The bill of lading is the written document that accompanies traded goods to help guarantee payment. Lading also refers to a fraudulent accounting practice of balancing the books in order to hide a shortfall or theft. Hand and ship are alternate modes and scales of traveling and conveying goods. A ship holds its cargo in the same darkness made when my hand closes around an object or another hand. The darkness, like the cave that is my mouth, my ear, my nostril, my vagina, is not a thing but a space, a portable darkness. The mouth can be willed open and intentionally closed. The ear and nose, though always open, are protected by fine Ann Hamilton, “weight,” in Ann Hamilton: habitus (Philadelphia: Fabric Workshop and Museum, 2016), 11. © Ann Hamilton.

346

64214int.indd 346

22-05-12 4:45 AM

43. Ann Hamilton, (habitus • sweater), 2016.

hairs that grow outward and toward the center. The growth pattern of the hair that warms the body and grows outward from the top of the head is called a hair whorl. Counterclockwise whorls are more common in left-handed people than in righthanded, but it is not clear whether there is any relationship between hair-whorl direction and either handedness or sexuality. Some people carry twin hurricane whorls, which swirl in opposite directions. Scalp patterns, like the arches and loops on the ends of the fingers, are unique to each person and almost impossible to abrade or erase. In skilled hands the centrifugal force of the spindle whorl twists animal hair or plant fiber into yarn. If the fibers are long and the hand particularly skilled, the yarn will be strong. Whorl is a motion but also the weighted disc attached to a spindle to increase the velocity of the spin. The making of thread, the transformation of material into form, is the basis of all knitted or woven cloth. At the center of the whirling, the spinner is still. The motion of the hands working is a form of thinking. Hands (manus) seek their work, their service (munus), finger its absence. We are bound by cloth and words. When I give you my word, I give you my hand. When I break my word, I withdraw my hand. In the epic tale of the Odyssey, Penelope wove by day, unraveled by night. The incomplete cloth of her making and unmaking stilled time while binding the realm of the human to the realm of the gods. In the bible, Joseph was symbolically sold by his jealous brothers, and his coat of many colors, a sign of his father’s favor, was torn and covered in the blood of a slain goat. In traditional

ANN HAMILTON   347

64214int.indd 347

22-05-12 4:45 AM

coats of arms, now almost impossible to decipher, the goat symbolized political ability. Depending upon the thickness of the thread and the fineness of the cloth, many miles of thread might make up the three yards of cloth needed to make a coat that will protect a body through multiple gales and snowstorms. Slip an arm into the sleeve of a coat, assume its warmth and cover, inhabit it. Its shape is your neck, your arms, your torso. In contrast, a curtain, larger than a coat, bigger than a tent, but smaller than a house, covers over. Disappear into it. Stand inside the space of the circling ring. The circle is an inside and an outside, is a whole, is a hole. From essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, I know my eye is the first circle. I can wrap my right arm to the left around my torso, then cross my left arm to the right around my arm and chest, but my fingers are not long enough to touch, to complete the circle the way the end and the beginning envelop the middle in the symmetries of a ring composition. Our extremities are paired; they have, like books and clothing, a right and a left, a front and a back, an up and down. But hearts do not participate in the symmetry of appendages; we have only one heart. It acts with two hands. One hand might try to undo or contradict what the other hand has done. One hand may act at cross-purposes to the other, but usually the right and the left are coordinated, are linked, do their work in unison. A hand, directed by the eye stretches forth; it may be his hand, or her hand, the hand of his daughter, the hand of my brother, the hands of her two sons, a friend’s hand, the hand of a stranger. The hand pulls threads in short lengths from the knitted sweater. A hole is opened. The hole and the thickness of the thread is the feeling in my heart, is the horizon, is the weight of our making, is a fragment of the story.

348    ANN HAMILTON

64214int.indd 348

22-05-12 4:45 AM

P I E R R E H U YG H E B O R N 196 2

INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT STORR (2013)

robert storr: Your work comprises posters, live events, films and, above all, situations that question what an artwork is (or might be), and who looks at it (and how and why). To begin, I would like to ask you about the work that you conceived in 2007 for the Venice Biennale that I directed. I don’t want to talk about my Biennale, but about how you conceive a project and how you go about working on it. Could you talk about what you planned to make for that exhibition, a project that you could not realize? pierre huyghe: Often, there are given conditions to which I react in a particular way. Monster Island is a case in point. You invited me to participate within a given context, that of the Biennale. People attend that event attracted by the prospect of seeing something new. I start by trying to understand the conditions, the sedimentations attached to it. rs: In order to extract something from those sedimentations? ph: To extract something and, at the same time, to find a form of disruption within that condition. I was part of the Venice Biennale a few times and wasn’t particularly keen on doing something inside a building. I was looking to shift outside the strict framework of the Giardini [the Napoleonic Gardens, one of the main Biennale venues], and thought of a journey, a navigation towards an island in the lagoon— remember we hopped from island to island to find the right one. On that island would be a living image, someone we can recognize for being an image, only an image, an iconic model for example. The rumor of the icon’s presence on an island would spread. But upon arriving near the island’s shore, it would be impossible to disembark. People would try to get to that image without ever reaching it, changing expectation and point of view. The icon would vanish, and a group of monsters, impersonated by actors in hyperrealist prosthesis would wander around an empty stage, an island of Doctor Moreau of a sort. We identified an island that was

Pierre Huyghe, interview with Robert Storr (June 2013) in Paris, where a retrospective of Huyghe’s work was under preparation at Centre Georges Pompidou (Pierre Huyghe, September 25, 2013–January 6, 2014). The original interview was held in French. An edited version of it was first featured (in French and English) as “Pierre Huyghe: Ecritures singulières / Pierre Huyghe: Singular Writings,” Art Press 404 (October 2013): 38–44. Reprinted courtesy of Pierre Huyghe and Robert Storr. © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

349

64214int.indd 349

22-05-12 4:45 AM

interesting, fairly small, surrounded by old walls, an abandoned garden with a building in ruins and a landing dock. What I do is confronted with a set of rules and conditions, the product of intentions encountering accidents. A conditional set up and a contingent process. This confrontation enables [me] to construct a dynamic living situation, which constantly changes, evolves, and can be experienced over time differently. I used to capture these situations, producing an equivalent or a variation of it. It took a variety of forms: films, objects or drawings. These variations also include their mode of exhibition and circulation. The live situation didn’t really disappear, but its intensity varied. It exists in the memory of a person, a witness who experienced it. rs: Let’s talk about the project for Documenta 13 in Kassel in 2012—the most recent one—and an older one, La Toison d’or (Golden Fleece) from 1993. Whereas Conceptual art of the 1960s and 70s had a philosophical, sociological or psychological dimension, these two projects have strongly oneiric, even folkloric aspects. How do you articulate these with other processes? ph: Untitled (2011–12) starts with a habitat, the compost of the Baroque park in Kassel. Separated from the mise en scène surrounding it, it’s the place where dead or useless things are thrown. Following that path, and speculating on it, different historical elements or fragments were dropped there, using the same non-categorization gesture as in a compost. These are either inanimate or living elements—made or not made artifacts, objects found in different periods in time, plants, animals described in different narratives. These particular written forms—factual, artistic, literary, scientific or agricultural—are leaking out of their form into a biological or mineral reality. Elements from lost orders are corrupting each other or in symbiosis. Nothing is written and there is nothing to interpret. Untitled is a particular mesh, a dynamic unpredictable entanglement, a compost of process in which emergence and auto-organization occur. Among other things, a statue whose head is hidden by a swarm of bees pollinate the plants, aphrodisiacs and psychotropics, poppies from Afghanistan, marijuana, a dog with a pink paw, a bench that Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster used in a previous Documenta, an uprooted tree by Joseph Beuys, a fragment of his 7000 Oaks (1982), which is itself a whole, a world being carried away by ants that use it as material to build their nests, another tree lying on the ground—as the one by Robert Smithson [Dead Tree (1969)]—a pool containing tadpoles, used in the first studies of embryology . . . There is decay and flow. There is appearance, image, intensity and variations. No explanation is given to people when entering that place and what happens there is indifferent to their presence. It grows and co-evolves with or without them; they are witnesses instead of being in a central, determined position. Each one experiences his/her own world, separate and juxtaposed Umwelts (environments). There is no dominant form of knowledge or discourse or program, but heterotopias, particular rhythms, indeterminate conditions.

350    PIERRE HUYGHE

64214int.indd 350

22-05-12 4:45 AM

To answer your question, I see the exhibition as a philosophical and speculative approach—how things could be rather than how they are—rather than an oneiric or folkloric one, a cultural expression, including the Western one. The words fiction or real unfortunately vary in accordance with the different fields of discourse, whereas the real is what we don’t know, something that continues to exist even when we stop believing in it, as Philip K. Dick says. We tend to confuse fiction with imaginaire (the imaginary), fiction with illusion. I look at non-illusory fictions and what produces an image, which is to say that I am interested in the imageant (the process of producing images) rather than in the imaginaire (the imaginary). In that sense, we can talk about the words oneiric or folkloric, but under the authority of discourses. When fiction tries to make you believe that it is real, fiction becomes an illusion. In other words, when an authority makes you believe that something which is not or which has been constructed—epistemological discourse or imaginary—is a fact, is ontological. If it doesn’t pretend, it’s [Jorge Luis] Borges, some place Mallarmé, or a magician. rs: A fiction as such can be real. ph: Fiction is part of reality. I’d rather say, humanly constructed, and consider reality as everything including that construction. Is this that which affects us, influences us, or what happens outside our knowledge? I have been interested in science fiction as a speculative approach, rather than fantasy, in the possible possible and the possible that is not possible. The example you mentioned, La Toison d’or, isn’t a fiction: what is constructed is factual. La Toison d’or is a medieval order whose arms were adopted by a city that promoted this partially invented tradition by creating a theme park by that name. As the park closes, the characters of this narrative find themselves unemployed. What is a character that doesn’t have a story anymore? It’s a question of roles, as actors or interpreters following a given script or stand-ins. La Toison d’or reprises five figures of power, their masks covering the heads of five teenagers left to themselves in a park somewhere in the city. There is no performance, no history to act out. rs: No screenplay. ph: No, and indeed none of my works impose a relation or politics between A and B. On the contrary, these interdependences are indeterminate, what is written between them flows into the contingent. rs: In some situations—particularly in the works you make in the form of posters or films—the spectator is in front of something that contains thought and image. In others, he or she is part of an ensemble that participates in the creation of a thought, if not of an image. For example, in the project for the Sydney Opera House, Forest of Lines, (2008), that I have seen, you created inside the Opera House a forest that was at once completely real and fictional, and you brought in the public who became part of the spectacle—spectators of the spectacle and of themselves.

PIERRE HUYGHE   351

64214int.indd 351

22-05-12 4:45 AM

44. Pierre Huyghe, Untitled, 2011–12.

ph: They were witnessing spectators, persons who, at a given time, experience something according to a set protocol. Keeping these protocols produces spectators, but if you get rid of them perhaps you have no longer spectators but savage witnesses. Forest of Lines took place in an opera house. An image of a forest appears and it is overflowing. A song whose words describe a path—an oral map inspired by Aboriginal tradition—gives a diversion to exit this place of representation and to go towards the source of this image, in a particular place of the jungle. The one thousand trees in a morning mist overtaking the opera house were transplanted there for twenty-four hours. You could almost get lost, as there was no more distinction between the stage and the seating area. People wore forehead lamps and moved around, making lines when viewed from the higher level of the opera house. The same year I plunged the Guggenheim Museum in New York into darkness. People entered the space wearing forehead lamps but, unlike in Sydney, there was nothing to see apart from positions forming a constellation of small luminous points constrained by the exhibition space.1 1.  The artist refers to the participatory event Opening (2008), which he created for the group show theanyspacewhatever, organized by Nancy Spector at the Guggenheim in New York, 24 October 2008– 7 January 2009.

352    PIERRE HUYGHE

64214int.indd 352

22-05-12 4:45 AM

After L’Expédition scintillante (The Blinking Expedition) [at Kunsthaus Bregenz, in 2002], an exhibition announcing its own passing, in 2005 I organized a journey to Antarctica—called A Journey That Wasn’t—followed by a musical event on the ice rink in Central Park [titled Double Negative in Central Park], the latter being an equivalence that took the exhibition and expedition as its material.2 Robert Smithson’s site/non-site dialectic was present in this project, even if these dialectics don’t work that way here. I usually film the event and the public looking at it, not the spectacle, but the ritual as a whole, including those experiencing it. That inspired me to carry out an experiment at the disused [ethnographic museum] Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires in Paris, The Host and the Cloud (2009– 10), an anachronous navigation through history, craft, and beliefs. A small group of people were put in certain conditions, as though in a laboratory space testing different exhibition modes. These fifteen people—my in vitro spectators—were accidentally confronted with live situations that they could imitate, alter and vary, generating others. The movement and intensity of these influences was indeterminate. This took place over one year, with three moments of external porosity, in which people from outside that experiment—savage witnesses in the sense that nothing, no information was given to or planned for them—could enter. Instead of exhibiting something to someone, I exposed people to something, existing with or without them, indifferent to their presence. rs: Spectator-spectacle: it is neither one nor the other, but an engagement, a dialectic between the two, about the way spectators enter into, and become, the spectacle. ph: Yes, that is why today I’m thinking of the indifference of address to avoid that dialectic and position, going rather toward a savage witness, in the sense that I have described, in a non-discernable, unpredictable and unintentional mesh. rs: That’s what spectators come for. ph: There’s a need to cut that relationship and to exhibit that inherent separation between the subject that you call spectator and the object, through exhibition apparatus. It’s challenging in the framework of this museum exhibition [at Centre Georges Pompidou, under preparation].

2.  Both events were reworked in the film A Journey That Wasn’t (2005).

PIERRE HUYGHE   353

64214int.indd 353

22-05-12 4:45 AM

MARTIN PURYE AR B O R N 1941

EXCERPTS FROM A CONVERSATION WITH DAVID LEVI STRAUSS (2007)

david levi str auss: When I came to see you at the Museum of Modern Art on Friday, to view all the works being installed for your upcoming retrospective, including the new piece, Ad Astra [2007], which you made especially for the atrium, it was quite a scene, with museum visitors gathered all around the edges watching you and your assistants install the pieces. That familiar space was entirely transformed. martin puryear: Well, the new piece has a very long sapling attached, like an attenuated shaft for the wagon, stretching upward “to the stars.” There are two Latin phrases the title derives from: Ad astra per ardua, meaning “to the stars through difficulty,” and Ad astra per aspera, which translates as “to the stars through rough things or dangers.” dls: Ad astra per aspera is the motto of Kansas, where I grew up, and I’ve always thought it fitting. Is that long shaft really one piece or is it joined? mp: The main section is one piece, forty-eight feet in length, with an additional piece spliced on that extends it another fifteen feet, so it stretches all the way up and a few inches beyond the atrium’s ceiling, which is sixty feet high, to the sixth floor. It’s slightly angled, so it’s a bit longer than the ceiling is high. As you noticed, it extends up to the edge of the elevated walkway on the sixth-floor level. [. . .] dls: Let’s talk a little about your early years. You moved around quite a lot over the last thirty years. In 1973, you established a studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and had a very productive four years there. You must have been one of the few artists who lived and worked in Williamsburg at that time! mp: Well, of course when I came to New York I began looking for workspace in SoHo, because that’s where everything was happening, and the lofts I visited there would’ve been perfect for me, except that by the time I arrived they were completely out of reach financially. I didn’t have a steady job at the time, so like a lot of artists in those days I was doing anything I could to survive. I was doing some building and construction work, with my brother, at times, or by myself, in the city. I worked “Martin Puryear with David Levi Strauss,” Tell Me Something Good: Artist Interviews from the Brooklyn Rail (New York: David Zwirner Books, 2017), 353–61. Recorded on the eve of Martin Puryear’s 2007 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in David Levi Strauss’s library, not far from Puryear’s house and studio in the Hudson River Valley. Reprinted courtesy of Martin Puryear and David Levi Strauss.

354

64214int.indd 354

22-05-12 4:45 AM

as a set carpenter in a photo studio for a while. I did a couple of renovation jobs. I was doing all sorts of freelance work and putting ads in The Village Voice to get work. Then I got an offer for a teaching position at the University of Maryland, College Park, which is right outside of Washington, DC, where I grew up. I went down and interviewed and figured this would at least give me a reliable, steady way to survive and keep my studio rent paid in New York. So I took the job even though it involved a four-hour commute. And I did that for almost four years. Commuting was not fun, but I look back on my time in Williamsburg with a lot of fond memories. I had as much contact with the art life in Manhattan as I wanted, but I also had what felt like a quiet place to live and develop my work. [. . .] dls: In this show, Bask (1976), Circumbent (1976), and Some Tales [1975–78] are all from that period. So they must have survived the fire that destroyed most of your early work on February 1, 1977. mp: Everything else that was in my place, which was on Berry Street, not far from the Marcy Avenue stop on the J or M train, got destroyed in the fire. It was a secondfloor loft with a freight elevator—a wonderful space, with a view of Manhattan, for very little money. At that time, it was a fraction of what I would have to pay in Manhattan for a comparable space. I could even park my truck in a locked courtyard with a roll-down gate. But if you left your car outside with your hood unlocked, in half an hour your battery would be gone, invariably. And if you left it for much longer, other parts would disappear. There were just a lot of people struggling. It was an intense but also a very rich time. dls: So the whole building was destroyed? mp: Actually, four floors were destroyed, which were connected to an enormous complex of loft buildings on two separate blocks, which still remain. It was a very cold winter that year; they had cut off the water to our sprinkler system because the pipes had frozen. And that’s why the fire went as fast as it did. Luckily, I had an adjoining space off to one side that I had set up as sort of a gallery for myself, in which I kept Some Tales, Circumbent, Bask and a few other pieces. It was not part of the main space and it was closed off. So those few pieces were recovered nearly intact from the fire, but everything else, including all my personal possessions, books, and tools, everything I’d done on paper to that point, and most of my slides and photographs of work were gone. dls: This was a real turning point. As it turns out, it was also the point of departure for this whole retrospective . . . mp: That’s true. It’s the genesis of the whole growth of my work from that point on. And I did feel in some strange way that suddenly I had no past, but since my past was obliterated, I felt liberated to move forward into a new future. dls: In 1978, you moved to Chicago and spent the next twelve years there. That was when you really became known internationally.

MARTIN PURYE AR   355

64214int.indd 355

22-05-12 4:45 AM

mp: After trying for a while to gain some visibility in New York, it just wasn’t happening, because I didn’t have the ability to do what we call today “networking” productively. I mean, I certainly enjoyed people’s company, and I had a lot of friends, but I didn’t seem able to translate that into a contact that would get me someplace, in terms of serious gallery exposure. It just wasn’t something that I was good at. I think Chicago at the time was a more open place. I had one person who told me when I arrived in Chicago, “You’re going exactly the opposite direction from most people, who leave Chicago for New York. We really appreciate that you’re here.” Not that I was well known when I left New York, but when I got to Chicago some people had heard of me, and I felt very welcomed. dls: It’s also nice to be missed. When you left Chicago in 1990 and moved here to Ulster County, New York, the art critic for the Chicago Tribune wrote, “We lost not only a gifted sculptor, but also the first Chicago artist who had conquered the rest of the world since the photographer Harry Callahan did in the 1960s.” And when your retrospective opened at the Hirshhorn Museum in 1992, Washington, DC, treated you like a returning hometown hero. [. . .] mp: I think maybe the fact that I was born there, educated there, and came back and could be claimed as a genuine Washingtonian, born and bred, may have had something to do with it. And with Chicago, I was there long enough—twelve years—to have a tremendous number of friendships and contacts. I did a lot of work there, had a number of shows, and got my first really important gallery connection, which I still have to this day, with Donald Young Gallery, originally Young-Hoffman. dls: Sterrett Smith and I moved to Ulster County from San Francisco in 1993, three years after you and Jeanne got here, and our daughter Maya and your Sascha are less than two years apart in age. I remember when I first met you, you were talking about how you needed to step back from doing so many big public commissions so you could spend more time in the studio, and it seemed like that was a struggle for a while. mp: I was getting commissions that it felt crazy not to accept. But it might have been wiser to just stay in the studio. I don’t do commissions that efficiently, because for every project I tend to take on extensive research and development. I try to take into account the factors of site, material, scale, and context, so each one ends up being a completely different entity. Since they get fabricated, I have to find a way to stay as connected to the process as I possibly can. Being the obsessive and controlling person that I am, it means a lot of oversight, and usually a lot of travel back and forth to check in on it. They are usually constructed somehow with industrial processes, but it gets done differently each time. It’s been very fascinating and rewarding to go in so many different directions, but it does take its toll. dls: You said once that it’s a good thing you became an artist, because if you had to make a living building things for their utility, you would have gone broke a long time ago. Because the way you make things is not “efficient.”

356    MARTIN PURYE AR

64214int.indd 356

22-05-12 4:45 AM

mp: I tend not to have the kind of mind that thinks in terms of what I guess a business person would call “efficiency.” I think only in terms of the result, and whatever I have to do to achieve that result. I’ve often done things over and over again until I get it right, or worked on one piece for so long and then ended up having to discard it in the end because it didn’t work. I think every artist has to do that from time to time, and similarly, I am constantly finding ways to resist any kind of predictability in my work, mostly because I always seem to need to be doing something that I don’t fully understand. So there needs to be an element of discovery for me usually, which again doesn’t make for the greatest efficiency or productivity, or predictability, as far as success is concerned. Even though I think I’m efficient enough once an idea is clear, I don’t have a “production” kind of attitude towards the work. So I tend not to make lots of variations on a given theme, or work in series very much. dls: There has always been a relation in your work to dwellings, buildings, architecture, and shelter. I’m thinking especially of works like Cedar Lodge (1977), and Where the Heart Is (1981). These pieces evoke a kind of melancholic longing, perhaps a longing for home. John Elderfield refers to this in his catalogue essay: “If at times he does seem to be re-creating a primitive dwelling, it is not as a representation, but as a wish, one that can never come true.” Does that ring true to you? mp: As somebody growing up in the city all my life, I always had an interest in the natural world, from the time I was very young, but my urban life was my entire life until I moved up here to the Hudson Valley. I think there is something about that fantasy of living in a natural environment that came from being a city dweller who never fully accepted the fact that he was an urban person. The irony is, now that I’m living in the country, I realize how important it is for me to maintain contact with the city. I get down to New York about once a month, and it’s almost like coming up for air. I always thought that as I grew older, I would be happier to just be in the studio and not need or want to know what was going on culturally so much, but the fact is I love the energy that’s in New York, and I enjoy seeing what’s going on. The other part of the whole notion of habitable spaces has to do with the notion of scale. So much sculpture historically has been about looking at a thing in front of you and being completely outside of it. However colossal it is, you’re outside of it, and I’m always fascinated by what it’s like to have a sense of the inside of something, and that’s in a way what I felt I was doing in Cedar Lodge. It was a kind of strange, biomorphic, organic structure that had a door that you could enter. So I’m fascinated by that, and even in the things that aren’t inherently about dwellings or about inhabitable spaces, there is the sense that if a thing is a certain size or a certain scale in relation to your body, and that you’re conscious of the hollowness of it, I think there is a way to project yourself into it, to imagine what it would be like to experience that from the inside. This has given rise to a lot of my works that are not sealed off, unbroken skins, but are in fact various ways of articulating a space or a volume that’s permeable, visually permeable, that you can penetrate, sense the

MARTIN PURYE AR   357

64214int.indd 357

22-05-12 4:45 AM

inside as well as the outside of. It’s always been fascinating to me to have that dual sense. So it isn’t about fantasies of living in a primitive way, it’s about the space that you can intuit or feel inside of. dls: I wanted to ask you about the titles. You’ve always taken titles pretty seriously and I’ve always liked your titles a lot, because they manage to be open-ended and poetic, and not nail things down too much. But when you called that piece Ladder for Booker T. Washington, it did fix its meaning. mp: Absolutely. I discovered that the historical connectedness of that image to the reality of who Booker T. Washington was overrides any kind of expectation I might have had of the work as a primarily aesthetic experience. The ladder did in fact start with an idea that was visual, and the title, despite its specificity, was a complete afterthought. But it seemed so apt, given the contorted, precarious ascent presented by the ladder and its distorted perspective, that I couldn’t resist it. Booker T. Washington believed that freed slaves and their descendants should prove they were deserving of equal rights when they were granted them. He was an educator whose ideas of racial uplift were more gradual than someone like W. E. B. Du Bois, for example, who was much clearer in his analysis of the intransigence of American society with respect to equality for Black people. Anyway, I feel that our knowledge of each other’s history in this country is so spotty that if I can put something out there, and people get curious, they might learn a little bit about the whole history, and that’s not a bad thing. dls: Have you had time to look at the Kara Walker pieces that are next door to the atrium here at MoMA? mp: I did. When I came to MoMA, I realized that she had an installation of some works on paper here, while her other show has just opened at the Whitney. dls: Did you read the Hilton Als piece on her in the New Yorker? mp: I did. dls: What did you think of it? mp: I think he came as close as I’ve ever seen anybody come to capturing her as a person. I find her fascinating, a really brave artist. She is someone I’ve been interested in and curious about for a long time. I think her silhouettes are brilliant. She’s incredibly eloquent with the language she’s developed for herself, and it makes me sad that people can take her work so literally that they can miss its point—that it’s really a complicated, ambiguous critique. She blows a window open to show things we’d rather forget, or that we refuse to face, about our past as a nation, and it is work that is meant to get under your skin, as it should. It gets under mine. dls: In her series of prints at MoMA, Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), she’s taking these Civil War lithographs and then screen-printing onto them, and there were a couple of them that, to me, seemed related to some of your recent works in this show. Walker’s Confederate Prisoners Being Conducted

358    MARTIN PURYE AR

64214int.indd 358

22-05-12 4:45 AM

from Jonesborough to Atlanta has a Black man’s head projected right into the middle of it, so that the Union soldiers look like they are surrounding it and gazing into it. And then there is another Walker piece over by the stairs, Pack-Mules in the Mountains, that has her trickster woman figure superimposed on the mule train, with an interior section cut out of it. The spatial imposition of those made me think of your work, and especially the most recent works, which I think are really much more inyour-face racially and politically than a lot of things from the past. I’m thinking of the recent piece, C.F.A.O. (2006–2007). I’m told the initials stand for “Compagnie Française de l’Afrique Occidentale,” or “the French Company of West Africa,” a French trading company that operated between Marseilles and West Africa. The piece consists of a complex scaffolding of milled wood rising out of an old wooden wheelbarrow—it’s the kind of thing that you see in poor countries, where impossibly large piles of material are being moved around on simple carts—and whoever is pushing the wheelbarrow is facing this large white Fang mask which is cut in reverse. It’s literally “in your face.” This sculpture hits me on so many levels I don’t even know where to start, but in some way I almost think of it as a self-portrait. I don’t know whether you ever thought of it that way. It’s in your form language, but it seems like another step out. It’s really more direct, more . . . mp: It’s more overt, isn’t it? dls: Yes, more overt. mp: The more overt and literal the elements are that I’m trying to incorporate into the work, the more of a struggle it is for me to make it work as art. I’ve been dealing with abstract forms for a long time, so the inclusion of some pre-existing things from the world—rather than from my own hand and brain—felt like a pretty dicey proposition. It still does. In the case of Ad Astra, I feel that what I’ve done is make a kind of still-life composition using those wheels as a starting point. And with C.F.A.O., I feel I was trying to reconstruct a feeling—and I can’t call it a dream, or even a memory, but just a way to look back to 1964, ’65, ’66, when I was in Sierra Leone, and there was a warehouse building in our village, Segbwema, which had those letters on it, C.F.A.O., which was an abbreviation for Compagnie Française de l’Afrique Occidentale—a faded metal rusting warehouse, and the local people just called it “French company.” It was by the railroad tracks, among other big warehouse buildings, where they were unloading goods and so forth. In any case, it had once been an active French trading company, in a former British colony. It just struck me, as I got to learn more about colonialism, that colonialism wasn’t simply about bringing raw materials out of the colonies, it was also about creating markets for the goods that were produced by the colonizers. A huge part of the whole colonialist enterprise was to create markets with the goods from all the administrative centers, such as Paris, Marseilles, London, Lisbon and elsewhere in Europe. It was a huge part of the way that the interface happened between Europe and Africa, or Europe and

MARTIN PURYE AR   359

64214int.indd 359

22-05-12 4:46 AM

Asia, during that period. So when I saw that wheelbarrow, which looks like it might have been made during the time when France still maintained colonies in West Africa—when I saw that rustic, obviously handmade, object, I had a couple of thoughts. The first thought was “I understand this object”—the way the form of each part was generated by the role it had to play in making the thing function, and I felt that I could have come up with something very similar myself if I had to solve the same problem, using the materials and the means the original builder had at his disposal. The second thought, and this feels uncanny, was about the form of this mask from the Fang people of Gabon, in West Africa, which I’d seen reproduced numerous times, and which was on the cover of a book I’d picked up in Paris shortly before I came upon the wheelbarrow. The book was called L’art à la source, by Claude Roy. To me, this very well-known mask seemed almost modern in its form. [. . .] dls: Michael Auping made me very happy when he brought in the words of the poet Robert Duncan—who was my main teacher in San Francisco—to talk about your work. Auping writes, “The poetics of Puryear’s image suggest what Robert Duncan called ‘access to the world mystery,’ in which ‘the immediacy of what I can grasp and form with my hands is as big as any idea I can imagine.’ ” That’s why I’ve kept coming back to your sculptures over and over, all these years: because they have that access, and thereby are inexhaustible to me. They are dealing with very big ideas, but these big ideas are always grounded back into the body, through the hands. I was taught poetics, by Duncan and the other poets in San Francisco, as “the study of how things are made,” and I also think that much of poetics is about joinery. The place where things are cut and joined together or where they touch, is really where meaning is made. And that holds true for poetry or writing as well as for sculptural objects. It’s all about the edges, this cutting and joining. The new piece, Ad Astra, has a kind of martial look to it, with what could be an armored cart to carry ammunition mounted on these big caisson wheels. At the same time, it casts out this impossible extension, if not to the stars, at least to the sixth floor. [Laughter.] I just found out that in astronomy, “wagon” refers to an asterism, like the Big Dipper. What was the origin of this piece? mp: Well, in one sense it began as a response to an extremely tall space, something like the way I created an earlier work called This Mortal Coil in 1999 for the Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière, in Paris. That interior was over eighty feet high, and for that installation I also made a construction that was massive at its base but became much lighter and more fragile as it rose upwards. Actually, I first worked this way back in 1977 [at Artpark in Lewiston, New York], when I incorporated a wooden pole that rose vertically one hundred feet above the ground into a work installed in an enormous field. That was my first time trying to hold a very large space with minimal means, and from that first attempt I began to think more in terms of concentrated energy than enormous mass and volume in dealing with

360    MARTIN PURYE AR

64214int.indd 360

22-05-12 4:46 AM

large spaces. So there were precedents in my work to my response to the atrium space at MoMA. I had found those wheels in France while I was working at the Calder Studio— it must have been about fourteen years ago, because my daughter Sascha was two years old at the time. They were from an old farm wagon, and I saw them in an open shed not far from the Calder place, which is surrounded by the most extraordinary rural landscape. I bought two pairs from the farmer who owned them and they’d been in my possession ever since, waiting for a suitable idea. As I’ve already said, using found objects is a departure for me, but it’s been a way of sabotaging some of the control I tend to exert in my work, and opening the door to some chance and even spontaneity. Also, the things I tend to want to appropriate are things which I feel were originally conceived and made in ways which are close to my own way of creating things. Ad Astra, the work that I finally made, was pretty far removed from the original history of the wheels, and was an attempt to transform them into something that felt like my own work. It was also a question of physically balancing the whole thing so that it stands up like that, so that it’s erect. dls: Does it have an interior? mp: Yeah, the wagon’s “cargo,” the crystal-shaped box, is hollow. The walls of it are very thick, but it is hollow. [. . .] dls: Could you talk about A Distant Place, as a title? mp: It’s not that specific. I like what you said about putting words together as a form of joinery in poetry. That’s what I’m trying to do with titles, where I juxtapose things in order to open up various possible meanings to the imagination. dls: How do they generally come? mp: All kinds of ways. But the main thing is that I try not to have it be something that a person can regard as a key to unlock a work and interpret it. Like I said, Ladder for Booker T. Washington is perhaps unique among my titles, in that it lets you into the work in a fairly specific and rather concrete way, which many people will probably never get out of, they’ll just see it as a metaphor for a certain social idea. dls: I think sometimes when young artists look at a career like yours, they might imagine that it’s been an unbroken string of successes and accolades, and one of the things that happens with a retrospective like this is that the rough spots get smoothed out in the art historical narrative. I know that’s not exactly how things went with you. There were good times and bad times, especially when the kinds of things that you were working with or on were sometimes considered so far out of fashion that there was no place for them in the art historical narrative. Is there anything that you can say that might be useful to younger artists about that? mp: Well, it’s interesting that you bring that up now, because looking over a thirty-odd-year span of my work, it’s obvious that my way of making art must seem

MARTIN PURYE AR   361

64214int.indd 361

22-05-12 4:46 AM

45. Martin Puryear, Ad Astra, 2006–7.

64214int.indd 362

22-05-12 4:46 AM

anachronistic and out of sync with what is most vital in art today. I still work with my hands, in the belief that touch, or the way the material is manipulated, can influence the work, and that the physical making process itself can generate ideas, as well as bring them to fruition. And this is happening at a time when so much of the power in recent work resides in the ideas, whose translation into physical form has become almost perfunctory, capable of being farmed out to the skilled hands of others, often quite removed from the artist’s direct control. It’s odd for a living artist to say this about his own work today, but my way of making art seems very traditional, at least in its methodology, and in the values that guide the result. What I can say at this juncture, though, is that even as I am more aware than ever of urgent social realities, and of the youthful surges as the art of our present moment evolves in response, I hope I can continue to persist, and to hold on to what’s most important in my own work.

MARTIN PURYE AR   363

64214int.indd 363

22-05-12 4:46 AM

U R S U L A V O N R Y D I N G S VA R D B O R N 194 2

WHY DO I MAKE ART? (2014)

I have sometimes been asked why I make art. It is not a question I find easy to answer with any kind of clarity, but I will try to poke around some possibilities. Why Do I Make Art? Mostly, to survive. To ease my high anxiety, to numb myself with the labor and the focus of building my work. Objects or the process by which I concretize my ideas feels so good. Because I invariably, especially with my monstrous pieces, run into intense anxiety moments from which I have to unravel myself. Because there’s a pleasure in it. Because there’s pain in it. Because I endure a hefty load of self-doubt. Because I have confidence in the possibility of seeing this work through. Because I see life as being full of abominations. Because life is full of marvels close to miracles. Because I still don’t get who I am. Because I will never get who I am. Because my deepest admiration goes to those who have made art that has interested me. Because I want attention from those who make good art. Because I need to use both my body and my mind. The labor of my body is what keeps me awake and alive . . . what numbs me and offers a kind of veneer between me and the things in life which are painful to face. Because the visuals—that which I perceive through my eyes—are an extraordinarily important part of my life. Because I don’t want to be doing anything else with my life—that the building of my art work feels like the most consequential thing I could be doing with my time. Because I can run into a world of my making, both physically and mentally.

Ursula von Rydingsvard, “Why Do I Make Art?,” in Ursula von Rydingsvard (West Bretton, UK: Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 2014), 3, and Ursula von Rydingsvard: The Contour of Feeling (Philadelphia: Fabric Workshop and Museum, 2018), 6–7. Reprinted courtesy of the artist. © 2022 Ursula von Rydingsvard / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

364

64214int.indd 364

22-05-12 4:46 AM

46. Ursula von Rydingsvard, Droga, 2009.

Because I like working with a group of assistants who become another kind of family. Because I like the daily rhythm of going to my studio. Because it’s a place to put my pain, my sadness. Because there’s a constant hope inside of me that this process will heal me, my family, and the world. Because it helps fight my inertia. Because I like embroidering around my long ago Polish fantasies. Because I can reach into the future with my work. Because I constantly need to try to better understand the immense suffering and pain of my family that I never seem to be able to really understand. And also because I want to get answers to questions for which I know there are no answers.

URSUL A VON RYDINGSVARD   365

64214int.indd 365

22-05-12 4:46 AM

ALISON SA AR B O R N 19 5 6

STATEMENT (2019)

As someone who understands the world through touch, I suppose it was inevitable I would become a sculptor. Growing up in Laurel Canyon, a semirural enclave in the center of Los Angeles, I was always finding mysterious objects, branches or stones that looked like animals, or burnt detritus and melted bottles from a historic wildfire in the area. I would imagine the stories behind these objects and keep them in my treasure shoebox. As a teen, I apprenticed with my father, a conservator, to restore broken art objects in his studio. While handling these precious objects, I became intrigued with the nature of their materials. The textures and patina pointed to their use and handling, which was especially evident in pieces that came from non-Western cultures. For example, works from Africa often had surfaces imbued by libations and caresses. It wasn’t until the last six months of my graduate studies that I tried my hand at sculpting. My father had given me a set of chisels for my birthday, and I decided to try carving a small figure. Si J’etais Blanc (1981) was my first attempt. My primitive skills left him looking much like the piece of lumber from which it was hewn, but I was hooked. Having come to the figure and sculpting at the end of my graduate studies, I had never taken any figure drawing or sculpting classes. This may be evident in my forms. Not having a model as part of my process, I often assume the positioning of the figure with my own body to find the right arch of the back or tilt of the hips, to find, no feel, the power in the pose. The content of the pose often overrides the rules of anatomy, so my figures sometimes have disproportionately large hands or may be simultaneously voluptuous and muscular. One arm may be longer than the other or bend unnaturally. I aspire to that asymmetry. I’m a child of two artists, both of whom brought different things to the table in terms of how I understand art, as a practice, and its historical significance. My mother is interested in art of non-Western cultures, specifically African, Mexican, Indigenous American, East Indian, and Asian. My father, a traditionally trained artist who studied at the Cleveland Art Institute, exposed me to Classical Greek and Renaissance sculpture. Both of these influences are deeply ingrained in me; this sense of duality,

Alison Saar, “Statement,” written in 2019 for Modern Sculpture: Artists in Their Own Words (2022). © Alison Saar. Courtesy of L.A. Louver, Venice, CA.

366

64214int.indd 366

22-05-12 4:46 AM

47. Installation view of Alison Saar’s High Cotton, 2017, an assembly of five individual sculptures—(left to right) Rice, Cotton, Tobacco, Sugarcane, and Indigo—in the exhibition Alison Saar: Topsy Turvy, L.A. Louver, Venice, CA, March 28–May 25, 2018.

and the exploration of my own biracial identity within that dichotomy, is prevalent in my work. A few things attracted me to sculpting. One was the availability of affordable materials, either scraps of lumber found at construction sites, or old floor beams dragged from dumpsters. In the same dumpsters, I discovered vintage linoleum flooring and ceiling tin. I envisioned the old rusted ceiling tin looking down on scenes inside tenements—children being born, or people dying, parties, fights and lovemaking, families moving in and out—recording, absorbing, and soaking in the lives witnessed below. Imbued with their own stories, the material artifacts enrich the work with a narrative all their own. They possess spirit and wisdom. I am also drawn to the physicality of sculpting. My carving implements (chain saws, hammers, and chisels) are tools of labor. I love the collaborative relationship that develops from working with unyielding materials. They tell me what they can and can’t do—from “wrassling” tin into submission to hewing blocks of timber into shape. To forge, cleave, and chisel is physically demanding. I enjoy the polar aspects of sculpting; the solitary, quiet process of conceptualizing a piece, compared to the strenuous, forceful process of actually making it. After a few weeks of carving and hammering, fatigue sets in: wrists start to hurt, fingers begin to ache; the body is satiated. I endeavor to make works that challenge the status quo, that attempt to summon a collective rage for our current times brought on by past inequities. Recently, in 2017, I created High Cotton, an assembly of five sculptures of life-size young girls. Each is

ALISON SA AR   367

64214int.indd 367

22-05-12 4:46 AM

armed with tools used to cultivate southern plantation crops—Sugarcane (machete), Tobacco (tobacco knife), Indigo (hoe), Rice (sickle), and Cotton (bale hook). I conceived them as a fierce little army, poised to wage an attack on the masters, wielding the implements of their labor. For these works, it was important to source tools that had actually been deployed. Some were quite old and had seen a lot of use in their time. I utilize found objects in my printmaking as well. I am interested in woodcuts, because I already possess the tools to carve the blocks. I use any piece of wood lying around, like panels from old tables and furniture. The Arcade Suite (2000) was carved from the wooden drawers of an abandoned dresser. In part I was being frugal, but I was also inspired by German Expressionists, particularly Käthe Kollwitz and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, the powerful imagery they produced through woodcuts, which have an intense physicality. As a sculptor, I’m always challenging the two-dimensionality and uniformity of printmaking. I look for papers with more body and texture, funkier, less refined. These have personality, presence. I’m also interested in using unconventional materials. Over the years, I’ve collected vintage fabrics from flea markets—quilts, handkerchiefs, sugar sacks, and seed bags with faded logos, mended tears, stains, evidence of their former life. In Haint Blue (2016), the figure is printed on chiri, which has a mulberry, speckled texture. I found an old worn quilt, so thin you could see right through it. We took the fabric and applied it on top of the image as a chine collé, so you look through the fabric to see the image. There are areas where the material tore, revealing the paper underneath. Otherwise, the fabric cloaks the whole sheet like a veil, giving it a hazy texture and ghostly appearance. Since haints are restless spirits that jump on your bones in bed, this quality seemed appropriate. Printmaking also allows me to step back from the physicality of sculpting. For me, making prints is like an intermezzo, a time to go back and reflect, and maybe rework ideas. Carving woodblocks can be tiring, but it’s nothing like using chain saws. Making prints has become a resting period, like a lave tete, or a cleansing of the mind. I often use a historical lens to address contemporary issues. By creating a dialogue with the past in order to understand the present, I can step back from the headlines and specifics of current crises, while speaking to the persistence of these problems.

368    ALISON SA AR

64214int.indd 368

22-05-12 4:46 AM

TOM SACHS B O R N 196 6

THOUGHTS ABOUT PRADA DEATH CAMP (2013)

When I was 12 years old and preparing for my Bar Mitzvah, I was cut from the soccer team for missing too many practices. Hebrew school, scheduled at the same time as soccer, was not a place of spirituality, but of conscription and my familial obligation to tradition. My teacher, Mr. Zivi, a Holocaust survivor and ex-IDF operative turned diamond dealer, taught us the alphabet and the history of Judaism without any spirituality or feeling. When I complained to Rabbi Rubenstein, “Where’s my burning bush?” he said “Look out the window at these 90 foot pine trees. Are they not God’s miracle?” It was only many years later through surfing that I began to appreciate the miracle of nature. My twelve-year-old mind was much more interested in video games, soccer, social acceptance among my peers, and the unattainable captain of the cheerleading squad. Occasionally, with a little prodding, Mr. Zivi would go off on a tangent about the Holocaust. With a little encouragement he would tell us about the horrors and complexities of the ethnic cleansing in Europe during WWII. It was fascinating, like Apocalypse Now or A Clockwork Orange or Friday the 13th. The horror and gore captivated my imagination, and soon Hebrew school became Holocaust school. I could avoid the tedium of learning the Hebrew alphabet and studying the Torah as long as we could keep Mr. Zivi talking about death camps and gas chambers. We learned about everything in Auschwitz from the methods, ideology, and propaganda of the Third Reich, down to their uniforms. By the time I was 13, I could barely read Hebrew, but I had a college level understanding of the circumstances that led up to the creation of the death camps. Although no one in my immediate family perished in the Holocaust, years later in 1987 on a trip to Israel I met a survivor cousin on a Kibbutz who looked exactly like my father, except instead of being the owner of an insurance agency that was starting to prosper, he worked in a factory that made plastic footwear. At home, every night around the dinner table, our family’s discussion frequently focused on shopping. We talked about Mom’s new dress, Dad’s new (used) BMW, if I saved up my allowance from mowing the lawn could I buy a CB sports ski jacket? and keeping up with the Joneses. The ritual topics weren’t religion and spirituality but consumption and material pleasures. Our consumer culture discussions weren’t critiques

Tom Sachs, “Thoughts about Prada Death Camp” (April 2013), reprinted in Prada Death Camp Zine. Museum of Modern Art Library, New York. Courtesy of the artist. © Tom Sachs.

369

64214int.indd 369

22-05-12 4:46 AM

48. Tom Sachs, Prada Death Camp, 1998.

so much as they were training. We also talked about education, business, and family, but the focus on consuming inspired me most as a teen. Before school ski trips, I painted my generic equipment with the status logos of the Olympic athletes of the day: Rossignol ST Comp, Lange boots and Scott racing poles. Although I was lucky to go skiing at all, these were the coveted brands that my family couldn’t afford and for me aspirational consumption was as meaningful as skiing itself. In 1982, I made my first real money working at the Big Top Shoppe Hamburger Restaurant on the Post Road in Westport. I spent the hours after school and all summer cleaning trays and sweeping up the parking lot, and I scored LSD from the fry chef. I learned the value of hard work and made enough money to buy whatever skis I wanted. By the time I was 16, I had discovered the Sex Pistols and the American punk rock movement. I was trying to find a way in, and punk rock was it. The badass older Swedish mechanic at the BMX shop saw my “Nevermind the Bollocks” badge and said, “So you’re into the Sex Pistols, Man? That’s cool.” I was in. I went to the Anthrax in Stamford where I saw Bad Brains and Black Flag, skated with the Faction and smoked pot on the school bus with Jody Foster’s Army. I covered my skis with duct tape, sliced the red tag off the back of my Levis, and popped the badges off the family car. My father, furious, said, “Why the fuck did you do that?” when he saw his badgeless BMW. I argued in protest, “BMW’s not sending you a check—why should you advertise for them?” Next summer’s pay went towards a new paint job. I wasn’t in—I just didn’t care anymore. I went to college and expanded my punk rock studies to include Marx, Roland Barthes, and the Situationist International. I made love to women with hairy armpits. I

370    TOM SACHS

64214int.indd 370

22-05-12 4:46 AM

had a job working for punk furniture designer Tom Dixon where we would break into abandoned buildings to steal the Parquet flooring and “salvage” Victorian cast iron railings and weld them into art. Tom also taught me to repair my motorcycle. Eventually, to pay the bills, I got a job at Barney’s New York doing window display. I was making real money and surrounded by glamorous, beautiful women and handmade luxury goods. I discovered the Kelly bag and admired its utility, craftsmanship, and military heritage. I bought a Saville Row suit and the finest welding equipment for my studio. I was still salvaging plywood from dumpsters, but I was also beginning to appreciate the value of expensive goods—not what they represented as status icons, but what they could provide in terms of making it easier for me to make sculpture, and the way those Louboutin heels made her ass look. Prada Deathcamp (1998) is a scale model of a hybrid death camp. It’s got the gates of death, double barbed-wire fencing, Crematorium IV, and housing barracks. It’s an expression of my years of study and obsession with this defining moment in our history, but it’s also an expression of loss of identity. The victims of the Holocaust had their identities stripped from them involuntarily by the Nazis. The coercive power of advertising steals our identities and replaces them with false promises: if you buy this fragrance, you’ll get the man of your dreams; if you wear this dress, you’ll look skinny like Kate Moss, and then you’ll be happy; if you have this car, you’ll get the girl; if you buy this product, you will feel powerful. All of these advertisements take us away from who we really are, and encourage us to subscribe to a premade image of success or power. To suggest that the Holocaust and advertising are equal would unacceptably trivialize the horrors and destruction of the Third Reich. The focus here is on the parallels in the subjugation of identity. The purpose of my art isn’t to moralize or sell ethics . . . that would be propaganda. My sculpture is an expression of the contradictions that make up who I am. All we can ever do is tell our own individual story.

TOM SACHS   371

64214int.indd 371

22-05-12 4:46 AM

J E A N N E S I LV E R T H O R N E B O R N 19 5 0

AS OF NOW (2019)

At the moment, art reception is split between a fervor for the “authentic hand” of “deskilled” painting, sculpture, and ceramics and, conversely, a continued move to greater and greater spectacle, inevitably involving fabrication outside the studio and often collaboration with other professionals, including engineers, scientists, philosophers, AI specialists, et cetera. Likewise, while abstraction remains more popular than ever, an overwhelming amount of work now points to subjects outside itself, to a buried source or reference, a “backstory.” My own work has, at various times, broadcast meditations on diverse means of production: manual, industrial, and digital. Since the early 1990s, exploring the trope of the collapsed studio, the single-occupant artist’s studio, has been a preoccupation. This once-privileged, once-patriarchal place of contemplation is now in decay. One is therefore free to excavate that ruin, unearthing the various items buried in it, ranging from its architectural details, infrastructure, and history to uncovering lost or obsolescent art genres, including that of the sculpted still life, floral relief “picture,” and threedimensional portrait. Even the imagery of these sculptures is inflected with loss. The still lifes often show nature—grasses and weeds—pushing their way through the cracks of the studio floor or walls. The floral works are beset by insects. The rubber portraits are of the dead or otherwise departed, an invisible company that haunts the studio. This is the reason for their phosphorescent pigment, with its ghostly but shortlived afterglow, and the reason for the inclusion of DNA reports on each subject. The reports constitute a “backstory” that also speaks of a lost past. The matrilineal ancestry report traces the geographical location of the sitters’ genetic haplogroups for the last fifteen thousand or so years, thus connecting them to millions of other ghosts. A second DNA report provides their genetic “fingerprint,” that part of their genetic makeup that makes them utterly unique. So even here we are dealing with the tension between or overlapping of the individual (authenticity) and the reproduced (the endless transmission of “copied” DNA). That the figures are rubber, an industrial material, but sport their own real hair—fetish stuff—is another contradiction. Or perhaps we should think of these as parallax views. Indeed, the use of rubber as a final material in most of the sculptures is itself paradoxical as its associations with industry are no

Jeanne Silverthorne, “As of Now,” written in 2019 for Modern Sculpture: Artists in Their Own Words (2022). Courtesy of the artist. © Jeanne Silverthorne.

372

64214int.indd 372

22-05-12 4:46 AM

49. Jeanne Silverthorne, Big Grief, 2003 (right), and Blink, 2001 (left), detail of installation view of the exhibition Materials, Metaphors, Narratives: Works by Six Contemporary Artists, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, October 4, 2003–January 4, 2004.

stronger than its tactile likeness to flesh; it is inherently deformalizing, floppy, and disobedient but bouncily irrepressible. It opens up what Duchamp called a “corridor of humor.” And humor operates as a “hinge” between seeming irreconcilables. In the archaeology of the studio, there are many kinds of excavation. Much of it is cast in rubber, but other media intervene from time to time. There is the inventorying of physical aspects of a particular working space, with its own history as, perhaps, a sweatshop or factory. Actual pipes and circuitry are modeled in clay and cast in rubber. Tiny fragments of the casting process—plaster and rubber drips and chips—are salvaged, enlarged in clay, and also cast in rubber or plaster or resin. The casting process itself of course involves destroying the “original,” while its multiple yields align it with the factory assembly line. In addition to modeling and casting, there are photos and videos of the studio and its processes, presented in tiny scale, framed and matted in a salon-style arrangement. For some time now, each new sculpture has been accompanied by a functional rubber crate with faux-wood grain, an extension of an ongoing interest in the invisibility of the “deep storage” of the studio. Works are shipped in these rubber crates that then become themselves part of the exhibition. Over the years, letters and song lyrics have been handwritten by fictional occupants of the studio. And recently the confluence of the so-called authenticity of handwriting or script and its present near obsolescence has initiated the practice of writing in longhand and invisible ink, writing a series of commissioned and found texts on the

JE ANNE SILVERTHORNE   373

64214int.indd 373

22-05-12 4:46 AM

topic of invisibility, to be stored in cast rubber boxes and sometimes in rubber-bound books. Clearly, the conflicting issues of authorship, of the hand, and of the mechanics of reproduction have always been present. In the last few years, I have occasionally made sculptures digitally as well. Usually this is about saving time. Digital technology is an invaluable tool. Not everything has to take forever. However, increasingly, one experiences the creeping extinction of private, slow time and its opportunity for reflection, which the relentless incursion of digital “non-time” has exacerbated. The fear of falling behind or being outdated, the fear of social and economic failure, has made this technology irresistible. To opt out would render one invisible, since our personalities are now constructed through the new social media. But the withering away of a studiobased practice—class-, race-, and gender-inflected as it has historically been—is intimately linked to the disappearance of privacy. In sculpture, we may be experiencing a shift akin to that moment when the craft of master builder gave way to the profession of architect—the one who plans but does not actually execute the work. Certainly portraits could have been made more quickly using 3D imaging programs, scanning the subjects and outputting their simulacra through rapid prototype technology. But often, and particularly with the figural work, I feel I must earn the right to portraits or intimate presentations and that can be done only by investing huge amounts of time (months and months) and excruciating amounts of attention (modeling clay while peering through two sets of magnifying lenses, using needles for tools, et cetera, or writing in longhand for toilsome months). This is an idiosyncratic urge, not a demand to be imposed on others. As long as we are mortal, time will be of the essence. Spending time or saving time—these are now, more than ever, political as well as practical and personal choices. And when time-saving technology comes with the ceaseless demand to constantly master new programs, devices, and applications, when time-saving actually becomes time-consuming, the choice is made even more complicated.

374    JE ANNE SILVERTHORNE

64214int.indd 374

22-05-12 4:46 AM

KIKI SMITH B O R N 19 5 4

CONVERSATION WITH DOUGLAS DREISHPOON (2018)

Art is a balancing act. It’s about making meaning through some kind of process, making something out of nothing by harnessing your energy. I’m very into numbers. Everything I do is guided by numbers, though most people would never know it. When I’m making something, I go, “Oh, what are the numbers?” How things (objects) measure up has a lot to do with the body, my relationship to the body. My father [Tony Smith] was very interested in this kind of thing, and it’s something I’m interested in, too—a visual response to how something feels. One of my father’s favorite books was D’Arcy Thompson’s On Growth and Form (1917), and my mother collected crystals. I grew up around this fascination with organic structures and an obsession with numbers as a kind of superstition. Good numbers bode good things; bad numbers could mean the opposite. Sculpture has never been my only means of expression. When an idea, any idea, becomes apparent, you begin to pay attention. You may see something totally unexpected, and begin to think about what it could mean, or whether or not it’s worth pursuing. It’s hard to say what makes an idea interesting. Since last November and up until last week, I’ve been focused on four prints. Two are of a single ear of unhusked corn, another is of small nuts, and the third is an arrangement of corn, nuts, an apple, potato, and pear. Part of the creative process is environmental, what you’re exposed to. My world has become much smaller in lots of ways during the past couple of years as I spend more time upstate. I’m more interested in being in the garden than in the city. You think about different things when you’re in the garden. I almost never edit or question what comes into my mind. Both of my parents trusted their intuition, and they instilled this same trust in their children. I see intuition as a base of knowledge that you incorporate into your being, like a language, and use freely to move in any direction. Age affects intuition. I was impulsive when I was young. I wanted to make everything, do everything, experience everything. When you get older, you see the potential ramifications of being too impulsive. But you also acquire a deeper experiential base to draw from. Essentially, I’m like a dilettante who craves experiences. It’s a kind of experiential greed. I’m drawn to whatever arcane subjects or things intrigue me. I sometime go, willy-nilly, in every direction possible,

Kiki Smith, excerpts from a conversation with Douglas Dreishpoon, New York City, June 15, 2018. Courtesy of the artist. © Kiki Smith.

375

64214int.indd 375

22-05-12 4:46 AM

doing things that may seem completely unconnected, extraneous. I remember my mother saying, “Kiki, learn to prioritize.” Everything is of equal fodder, if it’s of interest to me. As a dilettante, I’m not too interested in being an expert at something. I’m more interested in the struggle that comes with experience, even if it sometimes results in bad art. When it comes to sculpture, I make up strategies that work to my advantage, because I don’t have the facility to do things in a more conventional manner. Early on I made sculptures (ceramic ribs) that broke in the kiln. So I got Krazy Glue and glued them all back together, thinking that I’d make the piece as ephemeral as possible and that would be all right. After a while, I started making things in bronze, because I didn’t want to maintain them afterwards. Having to go back to redo or to fix a piece hurts your soul. I want my own authentic experience of something without having to go back after the initial discovery. A lot of sculptures come from drawing, which comes out of printmaking, where a drawing transferred to a plate might also become a woodcut. I can hammer a drawn idea into clay and then pull a wax impression of it before I start constructing, chopping and reconfiguring. You can make something. You can also cannibalize it. Making art is a way to synthesize and abstract. Sometimes it’s a way of holding onto big events in your life—the death of a loved one, a traumatic transition. Good art should be vital, not in the modernist sense, but in its ability to hold energy, to mutate and recapitulate into something new—to be reborn. Certain ideas follow you over time, as you keep turning them over and over again, like tilling garden soil over to stimulate new growth. Art gives a physical presence to inexplicable things, things that can’t be quantified or truly understood. Ambiguity is important; everything else is a trap. I’ve never been a very good Catholic, even though being one probably informs the work. Catholicism resides in one’s psyche, as a belief that the spiritual is manifest through the physical. That an image or thing has the power to evoke the spiritual is a very Catholic idea. Catholic artists tend to fetishize everything. Maybe it’s because of their complicated relationship to sexuality and other things. Maybe it’s about catching an aspect of something, so you can hold onto it and visualize it, too. Creativity is something inherent in human beings, a way to externally synthesize one’s experience of being alive. Sculpture has presence. It holds presence differently than other media. The threedimensional world is a world of embodiment. It’s the world we live in, without illusion. It’s tangible. Physical things embody energy. They’re in flux on a molecular level. You interact with objects physiologically. Sculpture occupies an endlessly big arena. What can it do? How should it do it? The whole history of the world is about people making things. How sculpture happens and what it can do is a wide-open proposition. In the end, making art enables awareness and consciousness—the opportunity to be conscious.

376    KIKI SMITH

64214int.indd 376

22-05-12 4:46 AM

50. Kiki Smith, Teaching of the Snakes I, 2011.

64214int.indd 377

22-05-12 4:46 AM

64214int.indd 378

22-05-12 4:46 AM

SELECTED BIBLIOGR APHY CONSTRUCTIONS, CONCRETIONS, READYMADES

Ades, Dawn, Neil Cox, and David Hopkins. Marcel Duchamp. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1999. Bach, Friedrich Teja, Margit Rowell, and Ann Temkin, eds. Constantin Brancusi. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1995. Barr, Alfred H., Jr. Matisse: His Art and His Public. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1951. Barr, Margaret Scolari. Medardo Rosso. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1963. Basualdo, Carlos, and Erica F. Battle, eds. Dancing around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg, and Duchamp. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. Bott, Gian Casper, ed. Tatlin: New Art for a New World. Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2012. Cabanne, Pierre. Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp. New York: Da Capo Press, 1979. De Duve, Thierry. “Marcel Duchamp, or The ‘Phynancier’ of Modern Life.” Translated by Rosalind E. Krauss. October 52 (Spring 1990): 60–75. d’Harnoncourt, Anne, and Kynaston McShine, eds. Marcel Duchamp. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1973. Elsen, Albert E. Rodin. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1963. Flam, Jack, ed. Matisse on Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Gabo: Constructions, Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings, Engravings. Introduction by Herbert Read and essay by Leslie Martin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957. Giménez, Carmen, ed. Picasso and the Age of Iron. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1993. Guggenheim, Peggy. Art of This Century: Objects, Drawings, Photographs, Paintings, Sculpture, Collages, 1910–1942. New York: Art of This Century, 1942. Hecker, Sharon. A Moment’s Monument: Medardo Rosso and the International Origins of Modern Sculpture. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. Heron, Patrick. “Sculpture: Fruit or Thorn: Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Alexander Calder, Reg Butler, Henri Matisse.” In The Changing Forms of Art, 208–34. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1955. Joselit, David. “The Artist Readymade: Marcel Duchamp and the Société Anonyme.” In The Société Anonyme: Modernism for America, edited by Jennifer R. Gross, 33–43. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. “Julio González.” Introduction by Andrew Carnduff Ritchie and statements by Julio González. Special issue, Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art 23, nos. 1/2 (1955–56). Krauss, Rosalind E. “This New Art: To Draw in Space.” In Julio González: Sculpture & Drawings, n.p. New York: Pace Gallery, 1981.

379

64214int.indd 379

22-05-12 4:46 AM

Marcel Duchamp: A Retrospective Exhibition. Pasadena, CA: Pasadena Art Museum, 1963. Marter, Joan M. Alexander Calder. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. McCully, Marilyn, ed. Picasso Anthology: Documents, Criticism, Reminiscences. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982. Moholy-Nagy, László. The New Vision and Abstract of an Artist. New York: George Wittenborn, 1947. . Vision in Motion. Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1947. Moore, Henry. Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations. Edited by Alan Wilkinson. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Olson, Ruth, and Abraham Chanin. Naum Gabo, Antoine Pevsner. Introduction by Herbert Read. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1948. Penrose, Roland. The Sculpture of Picasso. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1967. Pfeiffer, Ingrid, and Max Hollein. 2009. László Moholy-Nagy: Retrospective. Munich: Prestel, 2009. Picasso, Pablo. Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views. Edited by Dore Ashton. New York: Viking, 1972. Ramírez, Mari Carmen, ed. Joaquín Torres-García: Constructing Abstraction with Wood. Houston: Menil Foundation, 2009. Rodin, Auguste. Art: Conversations with Paul Gsell. Translated by Jacques de Caso and Patricia B. Sanders with an introduction by Jacques de Caso. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. . Rodin: The Man and His Art, with Leaves from His Notebook. Compiled by Judith Cladel and translated by S. K. Star, with an introduction by James Huncker. New York: Century Co., 1917. Rowell, Margit. Julio González: A Retrospective. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1983. Sweeney, James Johnson. Alexander Calder. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1943. Taylor, Joshua C. Futurism. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1961. Temkin, Ann, and Anne Umland. Picasso Sculpture. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2015. Witkovsky, Matthew S., Carol S. Eliel, and Karole P. B. Vail, eds. Moholy-Nagy: Future Present. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2016. Zhadova, Larissa Alekseevna, ed. Tatlin. New York: Rizzoli, 1988. PERSONAGES, POLITICS, PASSAGES

Affron, Matthew, and Sylvie Ramond, eds. Joseph Cornell and Surrealism. Charlottesville, VA: Fralin Museum of Art, University of Virginia, 2015. Agee, William C. Herbert Ferber: Sculpture, Painting, Drawing, 1945–1980. Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1983. Alberto Giacometti: A Retrospective Exhibition. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1974.

380   

64214int.indd 380

22-05-12 4:46 AM

Andersen, Wayne V. The Sculpture of Herbert Ferber. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1962. Arnason, H. Harvard. Theodore Roszak. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1956. Ashton, Dore. Noguchi: East and West. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Brummel, Kenneth. Anthony Caro: Sculpture Laid Bare. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2016. Burckhardt, Jacqueline, Bice Curiger, Josef Helfenstein, Thomas Josef, and Nancy Spector. Meret Oppenheim: Beyond the Teacup. New York: Independent Curators International, 1996. Cornell, Joseph. Joseph Cornell’s Theater of the Mind: Selected Diaries, Letters, and Files. Edited by Mary Ann Caws. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1993. Davidson, Susan. John Chamberlain: Choices. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2012. Donadio, Emmie. Richard Stankiewicz: Sculpture in Steel. Middlebury, VT: Middlebury College Museum of Art, 1994. Dreishpoon, Douglas. “Sculpture’s Expanding Arena.” Archives of American Art Journal 51, no. 1/2 (Spring 2012): 24–26. . “Theodore Roszak (1907–1981): Painting and Sculpture.” PhD diss., City University of New York, 1993. Eipeldauer, Heike. Meret Oppenheim: Retrospective. Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2013. Fletcher, Valerie J. Isamu Noguchi: Master Sculptor. London: Scala, 2004. Friedman, Martin. Noguchi’s Imaginary Landscapes. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1978. Giménez, Carmen. David Smith: A Centennial. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2006. Gordon, John. Isamu Noguchi. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1968. Hope, Henry R. The Sculpture of Jacques Lipchitz. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1954. Krauss, Rosalind E. Terminal Iron Works: The Sculpture of David Smith. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971. Lipchitz, Jacques. Twelve Bronzes by Jacques Lipchitz. New York: Curt Valentin, 1943. “The Landscapes of Noguchi.” Special issue, Landscape Architecture Magazine 80, no. 4 (April 1990). McShine, Kynaston. Joseph Cornell. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1980. Morris, Frances, ed. Louise Bourgeois. New York: Rizzoli, 2008. Roszak, Theodore. In Pursuit of an Image. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1955. Rubin, William. Anthony Caro. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1975. Schenkenberg, Tamara H., ed. Ruth Asawa: Life’s Work. St. Louis: Pulitzer Arts Foundation, 2018. Selz, Peter. Alberto Giacometti. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1965. Shiff, Richard, ed. It’s All in the Fit: The Work of John Chamberlain. A symposium hosted by the Chinati Foundation, 2006. Marfa, TX: Chinati Foundation, 2009.

    381

64214int.indd 381

22-05-12 4:46 AM

Smith, David. David Smith by David Smith. Edited by Cleve Gray. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968. . David Smith: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Interviews. Edited by Susan J. Cooke. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018. The Studio of Alberto Giacometti. Paris: Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti and Centre Georges Pompidou, 2007. Verderame, Lori. The Founder of Sculpture as Environment: Herbert Ferber (1906–1991). Hamilton, NY: Picker Art Gallery, Colgate University, 1998. Waldman, Diane. John Chamberlain: A Retrospective Exhibition. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1971. Whelan, Richard. Anthony Caro. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1974. Wilkin, Karen. Anthony Caro: Interior and Exterior. London: Lund Humphries, 2010. Wilkinson, Alan G. Jacques Lipchitz: A Life in Sculpture. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1989. Wye, Deborah. Louise Bourgeois. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1982. ENVIRONMENTS, HAPPENINGS, COMBINES

af Petersens, Magnus, and Paul McCarthy, eds. Paul McCarthy: Head Shop/Shop Head: Works 1966–2006. Göttingen: Steidl; Stockholm: Moderna Museet, 2006. “The Artist’s Artist: A Rauschenberg Symposium.” Art in America 105, no. 1 (January 2017): 45–53. Barron, Stephanie, ed. Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2012. Bernstein, Roberta, Edith Devaney, Hiroko Ikegami, Morgan Meis, and Robert Storr. Jasper Johns. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2017. Beuys, Joseph. What Is Art? Edited by Volker Harlan. Forest Row, UK: Clairview Books, 2004. Bingham, Juliet, ed. Ilya & Emilia Kabakov: Not Everyone Will Be Taken into the Future. London: Tate Publishing, 2017. Birnbaum, Daniel, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, eds. Gilbert & George: The Great Exhibition (1971–2016). London: HENI Publishing, 2018. Buchloh, Benjamin, Rosalind Krauss, and Annette Michelson. “Joseph Beuys at the Guggenheim.” October (Spring 1980): 3–21. Butler, Cornelia. Marisa Merz: The Sky Is a Great Space. New York: DelMonico Books/ Prestel, 2017. Butler, Cornelia, and Luis Pérez-Oramas. Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948–1988. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2014. Cameron, Dan, Amelia Jones, and Anthony Vidler. Paul McCarthy. New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art; Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2000. Chiu, Melissa, Stéphane Aquin, Jonathan Feinberg, and Ksenia Nouril. Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: The Utopian Projects. Bielefeld, Germany: Kerber Verlag, 2018.

382  

64214int.indd 382

22-05-12 4:46 AM

Chiu, Melissa, and Michelle Yun. Nam June Paik: Becoming Robot. New York: Asia Society Museum, 2014. Garrels, Gary, ed. Jasper Johns: Seeing with the Mind’s Eye. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. Gilbert & George: Major Exhibition. London: Tate Modern, 2007. Gruen, John. The New Bohemia. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1967. Hanhardt, John G. Nam June Paik. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1982. Hanhardt, John G., and Ken Hakuta. Nam June Paik: Global Visionary. Washington, DC: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2012. Hochdörfer, Achim, and Barbara Schröder. Claes Oldenburg: The Sixties. Munich: DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2012. Holm, Michael Juul, ed. Kienholz: Five Car Stud. Humlebæk, Denmark: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2011. Hopps, Walter. Kienholz: A Retrospective. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1996. Hoptman, Laura. Yayoi Kusama. London: Phaidon, 2000. Kabakov, Ilya. On Art. Edited with an introduction by Matthew Jesse Jackson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. Kaprow, Allan. Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life. Edited by Jeff Kelley. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Kelley, Mike. Mike Kelley: Interviews, Conversations, and Chit-Chat (1986–2004). Edited by John C. Welchman. Zurich: JRP/Ringier, 2005. . Minor Histories: Statements, Conversations, Proposals. Edited by John C. Welchman. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. Kiesler, Frederick. Inside the Endless House: Art, People and Architecture: A Journal. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966. Kusama, Yayoi. Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama. Translated by Ralph McCarthy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Lee, Sook-Kyung, and Rudolf Frieling, eds. Nam June Paik. London: Tate Publishing, 2019. Louise Nevelson: Atmospheres and Environments. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1980. Meyer-Hermann, Eva, ed. Paul McCarthy: Brain Box Dream Box. Dusseldorf: Richter, 2004. Meyer-Hermann, Eva, and Lisa Gabrielle Mark. Mike Kelley. Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum; New York: DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2013. Neubauer, Susanne. Paul Thek in Process. Zurich: JRP/Ringier, 2012. Nevelson, Louise, and Diana MacKown. Dawns + Dusks: Taped Conversations with Diana MacKown. New York: Scribner, 1976. Obrist, Hans Ulrich. Gilbert & George. Cologne: König, 2007.

    383

64214int.indd 383

22-05-12 4:46 AM

Orton, Fred, and Penelope Curtis, eds. Jasper Johns: The Sculptures: An Exhibition. Leeds: Centre for the Study of Sculpture at the Henry Moore Institute, 1996. Pacini, Marina. Marisol: Sculpture and Works on Paper, 1955–1998. Memphis: Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, 2014. Paul Thek: The Wonderful World That Almost Was. Rotterdam: Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, 1995. Phillips, Lisa. Frederick Kiesler. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1989. Rose, Barbara. An Interview with Robert Rauschenberg. New York: Vintage Books, 1987. Rosebush, Judson. Nam June Paik: Videa ’n’ Videology, 1959–1973. Syracuse: Everson Museum of Art, 1974. Rosenthal, Mark, and Sean Rainbird, eds. Joseph Beuys: Actions, Vitrines, Environments. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004. Rubin, Caitlin Julia, ed. I Must Recompose the Environment. Los Angeles: Inventory Press; Waltham, MA: Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, 2018. Rugoff, Ralph, Kristine Stiles, Massimiliano Gioni, and Robert Storr. Paul McCarthy. London: Phaidon, 2016. Schimmel, Paul. Robert Rauschenberg: Combines. Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2005. Sussman, Elisabeth. Mike Kelley: Catholic Tastes. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1993. Sussman, Elisabeth, and Lynn Zelevansky. Paul Thek: Diver: A Retrospective. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2010. Tisdall, Caroline. Joseph Beuys. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1979. Tuchman, Maurice. Ken Price: Happy’s Curios. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1978. Varnedoe, Kirk. Jasper Johns: A Retrospective. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1996. Weiss, Jeffrey. Jasper Johns: An Allegory of Painting, 1955–1965. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2007. Welch, Adam, and Heiner Bastian, eds. Joseph Beuys: Skulpturen / Joseph Beuys: Sculptures. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2015. Wilson, Laurie. “Bride of the Black Moon: An Iconographic Study of the Work of Louise Nevelson.” Arts Magazine 54, no. 9 (May 1980): 140–48. Yoshitake, Mika, ed. Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors. Washington, DC: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2017. Zelevansky, Lynn. Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958–1968. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1998. Zelevansky, Lynn, Elisabeth Sussman, James Rondeau, and Donna De Salvo. Hélio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Museum of Art; Munich: DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2016.

384   

64214int.indd 384

22-05-12 4:46 AM

POLEMICS, PARAGRAPHS, PROPOSITIONS

Andre, Carl. Cuts: Texts 1959–2004. Edited by James Meyer. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. Andre, Carl, and Hollis Frampton. 12 Dialogues, 1962–1963. Edited by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh. Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1981. Anne Truitt: Threshold: Works from the 1970s. New York: Matthew Marks Gallery, 2013. Barreras de Rio, Petra, and John Perreault. Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective. New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1987. Benezra, Neal, Robert Storr, Paul Schimmel, and Kathy Halbreich. Bruce Nauman. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1994. Berger, Maurice. Labyrinths: Robert Morris, Minimalism, and the 1960s. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Carrion-Murayari, Gary, and Massimiliano Gioni, eds. Hans Haacke: All Connected. London: Phaidon Press; New York: New Museum, 2019. Compton, Michael, and David Sylvester. Robert Morris. London: Tate Gallery, 1971. Cooper, Harry, and Briony Fer. Fred Sandback: Light, Space, Facts. Potomac, MD: Glenstone, 2016. Cooper, Helen A. Eva Hesse: A Retrospective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992. Coplans, John. Robert Irwin. Pasadena, CA: Pasadena Art Museum, 1968. Crone, Rainer, and Rudi Fuchs. Donald Judd. Eindhoven: Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum; Düsseldorf: Städtische Kunsthalle; Paris: ARC/Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Barcelona: Fundació Joan Miró, 1987. Dreishpoon, Douglas. Ronald Bladen (1918–1988): Drawings and Sculptural Models. Greensboro, NC: Weatherspoon Art Gallery, 1995. Govan, Michael, and Tiffany Bell. Dan Flavin: A Retrospective. New York: Dia Art Foundation, 2004. Grasskamp, Walter, Molly Nesbit, and Jon Bird. Hans Haacke. London: Phaidon Press, 2004. Gross, Jennifer R. Richard Artschwager! New York: Whitney Museum of American Art; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. Grynsztejn, Madeleine. The Art of Richard Tuttle. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2005. Haacke, Hans. Working Conditions: The Writings of Hans Haacke. Edited by Alexander Alberro. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016. Halbreich, Kathy, Isabel Friedli, Heidi Naef, Magnus Schaefer, and Taylor Walsh. Bruce Nauman: Disappearing Acts. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2018. Hankins, Evelyn C., ed. Robert Irwin: All the Rules Will Change. Washington, DC: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2016. Heddaya, Mostafa. “Labor Relations.” Art in America 105, no. 1 (January 2017): 66–71.

   385

64214int.indd 385

22-05-12 4:46 AM

Hileman, Kristen. Anne Truitt: Perception and Reflection, exh. cat. Washington, DC: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2009. Irwin, Robert. Notes toward a Conditional Art. Edited by Matthew Simms. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011. Irwin, Robert, and Lawrence Weschler. Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: Over Thirty Years of Conversations with Robert Irwin. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Judd, Donald. Donald Judd: Complete Writings 1959–1975. Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 2005. . Donald Judd Writings. Edited by Flavin Judd and Caitlin Murray. New York: Judd Foundation and David Zwirner Books, 2016. Kabakov, Ilya. Public Projects or the Spirit of a Place. Milan: Charta, 2001. Kellein, Thomas. Ronald Bladen: Sculpture. New York: Delano Greenidge Editions, 1998. Krauss, Rosalind E., and Laura Rosenstock. Richard Serra: Sculpture. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1986. Legg, Alicia. Sol LeWitt. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1978. Lewallen, Constance M., Robert R. Riley, Robert Storr, and Anne M. Wagner. A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Lippard, Lucy R. Eva Hesse. New York: New York University Press, 1976. . Tony Smith. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1972. Livingston, Jane, and Marcia Tucker. Bruce Nauman: Work from 1965 to 1972. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1972. Mattison, Robert S. Ronald Bladen: Sculpture. New York: Abbeville Press, 2019. Meyer-Stoll, Christiane, Yve-Alain Bois, Thomas McEvilley, and Thierry Davila. Fred Sandback. Vaduz: Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein; Edinburgh: Fruitmarket Gallery; Graz: Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum; Bordeaux: capcMusée d’art contemporain; Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2005. Nauman, Bruce. Please Pay Attention Please: Bruce Nauman’s Words: Writings and Interviews. Edited by Janet Kraynak. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Phillips, Patricia C. Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Maintenance Art. New York: Queens Museum and DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2016. Prokopoff, Stephen. The Art of Fred Sandback: A Survey. Champaign-Urbana: Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, 1985. Robert Irwin. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1977. Robert Morris: The Mind/Body Problem. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1994. Roberts, Veronica. Converging Lines: Eva Hesse and Sol LeWitt. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014. Rosenthal, Stephanie. Ana Mendieta: Traces. London: Hayward Gallery, 2013. Sandback, Fred. Fred Sandback: Being in Place. Edited by Friedemann Malsch and Christiane Meyer-Stoll. Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2006.

386   

64214int.indd 386

22-05-12 4:46 AM

Serota, Nicholas. Donald Judd. London: Tate Publishing; New York: D.A.P., 2004. Serra, Richard. Writings/Interviews. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Serra, Richard, and Hal Foster. Conversations about Sculpture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018. Shearer, Linda. Eva Hesse: A Memorial Exhibition. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1972. Simms, Matthew, Kimberli Meyer, Sally Yard, and Ed Schad. Robert Irwin: Site Determined. Munich: DelMonico Books, 2018. Smith, Elizabeth A. T., and Ann Philbin. Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective. Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art; Los Angeles: Hammer Museum, 2003. Speaks, Elyse. “The Terms of Craft and Other Means of Making: Lee Bontecou’s Hybrid Trajectory.” Art Journal 71, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 54–71. Stockebrand, Marianne, and Richard Shiff. The Writings of Donald Judd. Marfa, TX: Chinati Foundation, 2009. Storr, Robert. Tony Smith: Architect, Painter, Sculptor. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1998. Sussman, Elisabeth. Eva Hesse. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002. Temkin, Ann, Erica Cooke, Tamar Margalit, Christine Mehring, James Meyer, Annie Ochmanek, Yasmin Raymond, and Jeffrey Weiss. Judd. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2020. Truitt, Anne. Daybook: The Journal of an Artist. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1982. Tucker, Marcia. Richard Tuttle. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1975. . Robert Morris. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1970. Viso, Olga M. Ana Mendieta: Earth Body: Sculpture and Performance 1972–1985. Washington, DC: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2004. Wallis, Brian, ed. Hans Haacke: Unfinished Business. New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1986. EARTH, SKY, WATER

Andrews, Richard, John Beardsley, and Lawrence Weschler. Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes. Seattle: Henry Art Gallery; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. Andy Goldsworthy: Collaboration with Nature. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1990. Badrocke, Lucy, Rudi Fuchs, Teresa Gleadowe, Nicholas Logsdail, Richard Long, and Robert Macfarlane. Richard Long: Time and Space. Bristol: Arnolfini; London: Koenig Books, 2015. Bereen, Wim. Walter De Maria. Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen, 1984. Brenson, Michael, William L. Fox, and Paul Goldberger. Maya Lin: Topologies. New York: Rizzoli, 2015. Brown, Julia, and Barbara Heizer. Michael Heizer: Sculpture in Reverse. Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984.

   387

64214int.indd 387

22-05-12 4:46 AM

Celant, Germano, Christa Lück, and Gerd de Vries. Giuseppe Penone. Essen: Museum Folkwang, 1978. Chiappini, Rudy, Albert Elsen, Molly Donovan, Werner Spies, Lawrence Alloway, David Bourdon, Harald Szeemann, Jonathan Fineberg, and Wolfgang Volz. Christo and JeanneClaude. Milan: Skira, 2006. Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Barrels and the Mastaba 1958–2018. Cologne: Taschen, 2018. Donovan, Molly. Christo and Jeanne-Claude in the Vogel Collection. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2002. Dreishpoon, Douglas. “The World through a Circle.” In Nancy Holt: Locators, 6–15. London: Parafin, 2015. Felix, Zdenek. Michael Heizer. Essen, Germany: Museum Folkwang; Otterlo, Netherlands: Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, 1979. Fiske, Tina. Andy Goldsworthy: Projects. New York: Abrams Books, 2017. Friedman, Terry, and Andy Goldsworthy, eds. Hand to Earth: Andy Goldsworthy Sculpture 1976–1990. New York: H. N. Abrams, 2004. Fuchs, R. H. Richard Long. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1986. Goldberger, Paul. Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Cologne: Taschen, 2019. Govan, Michael, and Christine Y. Kim. James Turrell: A Retrospective. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2013. Grenier, Catherine. Giuseppe Penone. Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2004. Hobbs, Robert. Robert Smithson: Sculpture. Ithaca, NY: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, 1980. Jones, Caroline A. Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Lin, Maya. Boundaries. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. Lin, Maya, and Robert Rindler. Between Art and Architecture. New York: Cooper Union School of Art, 2000. Long, Richard. Walking the Line. London: Thames & Hudson, 2002. Long, Richard, Denise Hooker, Paul Moorhouse, and Ann Seymour. Richard Long: Walking the Line. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2006. McFadden, Jane. Walter De Maria: Meaningless Work. London: Reaktion Books, 2016. Meyer, Franz. Walter De Maria Skulpturen. Basel: Kunstmuseum Basel, 1972. Morgan, Jessica. Walter De Maria: The Lightning Field. New York: Dia Art Foundation, 2017. O’Doherty, Brian, G. Wayne Clough, Edwin C. Anderson Jr., and Elizabeth Broun. Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Remembering the Running Fence. Washington, DC: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2010. Penone, Giuseppe. Giuseppe Penone: Writings 1968–2008. Edited by Gianfranco Maraniello and Jonathan Watkins. Bologna: MAMbo—Istituzione Galleria d’Arte Moderna; Birmingham: Ikon Gallery, 2009.

388   

64214int.indd 388

22-05-12 4:46 AM

Penone, Giuseppe, and Massimiliano Gioni. Matrice. New York: Rizzoli, 2017. Reynolds, Ann. Robert Smithson: Learning from New Jersey and Elsewhere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Richard Long: Walking in Circles. London: South Banks Centre, Hayward Gallery, 1991. Rubin, William S., David Bourdon, and Lawrence Alloway. Christo Wraps the Museum: Scale Models, Photomontages, and Drawings for a Non-Event. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1968. Smithson, Robert. Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings. Edited by Jack Flam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Tsai, Eugenie, and Cornelia Butler. Robert Smithson. Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2004. Von Rosen, Philipp. Outside and Inside the White Cube: Michael Heizer. Munich: Verlag Silke Schreiber, 2005. Whitney, David. Michael Heizer: Dragged Mass Geometric. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1985. Williams, Alena J. Nancy Holt: Sightlines. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. SCULPTURE IN THE PRESENT

Adamson, Glenn, Ken Tan, Sue Canning, and Saul Ostrow. Jeanne Silverthorne: From Darkness. New York: Marc Straus Gallery, 2019. Alison Saar: Breach. Easton, PA: Lafayette College Art Galleries, 2017. Ann Hamilton: Present–Past, 1984–1997. Milan: Skira, 1998. Antoni, Janine. Moor. Stockholm: Magasin 3 Stockholm; Santa Fe: SITE Santa Fe, 2003. Beccaria, Marcella. Olafur Eliasson. London: Tate Publishing, 2013. Breslin, David. Felix Gonzalez-Torres. New York: David Zwirner Books, 2018. Cameron, Dan, Amy Cappellazzo, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Rosa Martinez, Nancy Spector, and Marina Warner. Janine Antoni. Uster, Switzerland: Ink Tree Editions, 2000. Celant, Germano. Tom Sachs. Milan: Fondazione Prada, 2006. Colombo, Paolo, Elizabeth Janus, and Robin Winters. Kiki Smith. The Hague: Institute of Contemporary Art, Amsterdam, and SDU Publishers, 1990. Cruz, Amada, and Matthew Drutt, eds. Billboards: Felix Gonzalez-Torres. San Antonio: Artpace, 2014. Dreishpoon, Douglas. “Janine Antoni.” Art in America, no. 9 (October 2009): 123–28. . Petah Coyne: Above and beneath the Skin. Buffalo: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 2005. Feallan and Fallow. New York: Madison Square Park Conservancy, 2011. Filipovic, Elena, ed. Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects without Specific Form. London: Koenig Books, 2016. Fisher, Sally, ed. Ursula von Rydingsvard: The Contour of Feeling. Philadelphia: Fabric Workshop and Museum, 2018.

   389

64214int.indd 389

22-05-12 4:47 AM

Gilroy-Hirtz, Petra, ed. With Julia Bryan-Wilson, Okwui Enwezor, Virginia Raguin, Kiki Smith, and Ulrich Wilmes. Kiki Smith: Procession. Munich: Haus der Kunst, 2018. Godfrey, Mark, ed. Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life. London: Tate Modern, 2019. Heathfield, Adrian, ed. Ally: Janine Antoni, Anna Halprin, Stephen Petronio. Philadelphia: Fabric Workshop and Museum, 2017. Jeanne Silverthorne: Peripheral Vision. New York: McKee Gallery, 2012. King, Sarah S., ed. Tom Sachs: Sony Outsider. Santa Fe: SITE Santa Fe, 1998. Kline, Katy, and Helaine Posner. Ann Hamilton: Myein. Published on the occasion of Hamilton’s installation at the United States Pavilion at the 48th Venice Biennale, 1999. Linton, Meg, ed. Alison Saar: STILL. . . Los Angeles: Otis College of Art and Design, Ben Maltz Gallery, 2013. Markonish, Denise, ed. Petah Coyne: Everything That Rises Must Converge. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; North Adams, MA: Mass MoCA, 2010. Olof-Ors, Matilda, Daniel Birnbaum, and Timothy Morton. Olafur Eliasson: Reality Machines. London: Koenig Books; Stockholm: Moderna Museet, 2015. Petah Coyne: Vermilion Fog. Milan: Charta, 2008. Phillips, Patricia. Ursula von Rydingsvard: Working. New York: Prestel, 2011. Posner, Helaine, and Christopher Lyon. Kiki Smith. New York: Monacelli Press, 2005. Princenthal, Nancy. Jeanne Silverthorne: Peripheral Vision. New York: McKee Gallery, 2012. Shapero, Natalie, Susan Lubowsky Talbott, and Patricia C. Phillips. Habitus: Ann Hamilton. Philadelphia: Fabric Workshop and Museum and DelMonico Books, 2017. Simon, Joan. Ann Hamilton: An Inventory of Objects. New York: Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2006. Tannenbaum, Judith. Jeanne Silverthorne. Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 1996. Tesner, Linda. Alison Saar: Bound for Glory. Portland, OR: Lewis & Clark College, Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2010. Ursula von Rydingsvard: At Yorkshire Sculpture Park. West Bretton, UK: Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 2014. Wetzler, Rachel. “Personal Monuments.” Art in America 106, no. 9 (October 2018): 66–71. GENERAL REFERENCES

Andersen, Wayne. American Sculpture in Process, 1930–1970. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975. Armstrong, Richard, and Richard Marshall. The New Sculpture, 1965–1975: Between Geometry and Gesture. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1991. Armstrong, Tom. 200 Years of American Sculpture. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1976.

390  

64214int.indd 390

22-05-12 4:47 AM

Battcock, Gregory. Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1968. . The New Art: A Critical Anthology. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1973. Burnham, Jack. Beyond Modernist Sculpture: The Effects of Science and Technology on the Sculpture of This Century. New York: George Braziller, 1968. Celant, Germano. The Knot: Arte Povera at P.S.1. New York: P.S. 1, Institute for Art and Urban Resources, 1985. Chipp, Herschel B. Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. Clark, Robin. Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Dreishpoon, Douglas. Between Transcendence and Brutality: American Sculptural Drawings from the 1940s and 1950s: Louise Bourgeois, Dorothy Dehner, Herbert Ferber, Seymour Lipton, Isamu Noguchi, Theodore Roszak, David Smith. Tampa: Tampa Museum of Art, 1994. . “Sculptors and Critics, Arenas and Complaints.” In Action/Abstraction: Pollock, De Kooning, and American Art, 1940–1976, edited by Norman L. Kleeblatt, 215–29. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. Edgar, Natalie, ed. The Waldorf Panels on Sculpture (1965). New York: Soberscove Press, 2011. Einstein, Albert. Essays in Humanism. New York: Philosophical Library, 1950. Elsen, Albert E. Origins of Modern Sculpture: Pioneers and Premises. New York: George Braziller, 1974. Goldstein, Ann. A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958–1968. Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2004. Goldwater, Robert. Primitivism in Modern Art. New York: Vintage, 1967. Greenberg, Clement. Affirmations and Refusals: 1950–1956. Edited by John O’Brian. Vol. 3 of The Collected Essays and Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. . Arrogant Purpose: 1945–1949. Edited by John O’Brian. Vol. 2 of The Collected Essays and Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. . Art and Culture: Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961. Haskell, Barbara. Blam! The Explosion of Pop, Minimalism, and Performance 1958–1964. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1984. Hopps, Walter. The Dream Colony: A Life in Art. Edited by Deborah Treisman from interviews with Anne Doran. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017. Hultén, K. G. Pontus. The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1968. Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking, 2010. Kirby, Michael. Happenings: An Illustrated Anthology. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1966. Krauss, Rosalind E. Passages in Modern Sculpture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977. . “Sculpture in the Expanded Field.” October 8 (Spring 1979): 30–44.

    391

64214int.indd 391

22-05-12 4:47 AM

Kultermann, Udo. Art and Life. Translated by John William Gabriel. New York: Praeger, 1971. Lippard, Lucy R. Changing: Essays in Art Criticism. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1971. . Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory. New York: Pantheon, 1983. Marter, Joan, ed. Off Limits: Rutgers University and the Avant-Garde, 1957–1963. Newark, NJ: Newark Museum; New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999. Marter, Joan, and Mona Hadler, eds. “Sculpture in Postwar Europe and America, 1945–1959.” Special issue, Art Journal 53, no. 4 (Winter 1994). McEvilly, Thomas. Sculpture in the Age of Doubt. New York: Allworth Press, 1999. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Me: Lectures and Interviews. Edited by Stephanie McLuhan and David Staines. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. . Understanding Media: The Extension of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964. McLuhan, Marshall, and Quentin Fiore. The Medium Is the Massage. New York: Bantam, 1967. Meyer, James. Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. Miller, Dorothy C., ed. Fourteen Americans. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1946. , ed. 15 Americans. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1952. , ed. 12 Americans. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1956. , ed. Sixteen Americans. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1959. , ed. Americans 1963. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1963. Molesworth, Helen, ed. Part Object Part Sculpture. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005. Molesworth, Helen, with Ruth Erickson. Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College, 1933–1957. Boston: Institute of Contemporary Art; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015. Motherwell, Robert, and Ad Reinhardt, eds. Modern Artists in America. New York: Wittenborn Schultz, 1951. Mumford, Lewis. The Pentagon of Power: The Myth of the Machine. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970. Nemser, Cindy. Art Talk: Conversations with 12 Women Artists. New York: Scribner, 1975. Obrist, Hans Ulrich. Hans Ulrich Obrist: Interviews, Volume 2. Edited by Charles ArsèneHenry, Shumon Basar, and Karen Marta. Milan: Charta, 2010. Pavia, Philip. Club without Walls: Selections from the Journals of Philip Pavia. Edited by Natalie Edgar. New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 2007. Phillips, Lisa. The Third Dimension: Sculpture of the New York School. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1984. Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. New York: Vintage, 1992. Potts, Alex. The Sculptural Imagination: Figurative, Modernist, Minimalist. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000.

392   

64214int.indd 392

22-05-12 4:47 AM

Ritchie, Andrew Carnduff. Sculpture of the Twentieth Century. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1952. , moderator. “The New Sculpture Symposium.” Museum of Modern Art, February 12, 1952. Sandler, Irving. A Sweeper-Up after Artists: A Memoir. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2003. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism. Translated by Bernard Frechtman. New York: Philosophical Library, 1947. Savage, Jon. 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded. London: Faber & Faber, 2015. Seitz, William C. The Art of Assemblage. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1961. Selz, Peter. New Images of Man. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1959. Shimmel, Paul, and Jenni Sorkin, eds. Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947–2016. Milan: Skira; New York: Hauser & Wirth Publishers, 2016. Slifkin, Robert. The New Monuments and the End of Man: U.S. Sculpture between War and Peace, 1945–1975. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. Steinberg, Leo. Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972. Stiles, Kristine, and Peter Selz. Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. Storr, Robert. Interviews on Art. London: HENI Publishing, 2017. Tarbell, Roberta K., Jeffrey Wechsler, and Joan Marter. Vanguard American Sculpture, 1913–1939. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Art Gallery, 1979. Tucker, William. Early Modern Sculpture: Rodin, Degas, Matisse, Brancusi, Picasso, González. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. Waldman, Diane. Transformations in Sculpture: Four Decades of American and European Art. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1985. Wood, John, David Hulks, and Alex Potts, eds. Modern Sculpture Reader. Leeds: Henry Moore Institute; Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007.

    393

64214int.indd 393

22-05-12 4:47 AM

64214int.indd 394

22-05-12 4:47 AM

I L L U S T R AT I O N C R E D I T S 1. A  uguste Rodin, Torso: Study for The Walking Man, 1877–78. Bronze, 20 7/8 inches (53 cm) high. Musée du Petit Palais, Paris. © Julien Vidal / Petit Palais / Roger-Viollet.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 2. O  verview of Constantin Brancusi’s atelier in Paris, 1925. Negative. 9 × 7 inches (24 × 18 cm). Inv. PH58. Photo: Jacques Faujur. Musée National d’Art Moderne. © Succession Brancusi—All rights reserved (ARS) 2022. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 3. A  lexander Calder’s studio in Paris, 1933. Photo: Marc Vaux. Calder Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. © 2022 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 4. M  arcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1964 (replica of 1913 original). Wheel, painted wood, 50 ½ × 25 × 12 ¼ inches (128.27 × 64.5 × 13.1 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of Galleria Schwarz, 1964; 1964-175-1. © Association Marcel Duchamp / ADAGP, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2022. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 5. A  lberto Giacometti’s Montparnasse studio at 46 Rue Hippolyte-Maindron, Paris, with plaster study for Man Walking, 1947. Photo: Patricia Kane. © Patricia Kane Matisse. All rights reserved. © 2022 Alberto Giacometti Estate / VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 6. I samu Noguchi, Sunken Garden, Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza, New York City, 1961–64. Rocks on paved and contoured ground, diameter 60 feet (18.29 meters). The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum. © The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York / ARS. Photo by Arthur Lavine.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 7. T  heodore Roszak’s studio at 1 St. Luke’s Place, New York City, 1954. © 2022 Estate of Theodore Roszak / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 8. D  avid Smith with Hudson River Landscape, 1951 (unfinished state), Bolton Landing, New York. Photograph by the artist, ca. 1951. Black and white negative, 4 ¾ × 3 ¾ inches (12.1 × 9.5 cm). The Estate of David Smith. © 2022 The Estate of David Smith / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 9. L  ouise Bourgeois inside her sculpture CELL I in her Brooklyn studio in 1991. © 2022 The Easton Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photo: Inge Morath.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 10. I nstallation view of the exhibition Ruth Asawa: Life’s Work, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis, Missouri, September 2018–February 2019. Courtesy of Pulitzer Arts Foundation and Alise O’Brien Photography. Artwork © 2022 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy David Zwirner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

395

64214int.indd 395

22-05-12 4:47 AM

11. I nstallation view of Louise Nevelson’s Dawn’s Wedding Feast, 1959, in the exhibition Sixteen Americans, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, December 16, 1959–February 17, 1960. Photographic Archive. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. (IN656.16) The Museum of Modern Art. © 2022 Estate of Louise Nevelson / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY.. . . . . . . . 130 12. Y  ayoi Kusama, Mirror Performance, New York, 1968. © 2022 YAYOI KUSAMA. Courtesy David Zwirner, New York; Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore/Shanghai; Victoria Miro, London/Venice... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 13. E  dward Kienholz, Five Car Stud, 1969–72. Mixed media tableau, dimensions variable. Collezione Prada, Milan, Italy. Courtesy of L.A. Louver, Venice, California. © Kienholz. Photo: Delfino Sisto Legnani Studio, 2016. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 14. M  ike Kelley, Craft Morphology Flow Chart, 1991. Mixed media, dimensions variable. Installation view, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 1991. Courtesy of Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. © 2022 Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. All rights reserved / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photo: Eric Baum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 15. A  llan Kaprow installing Yard in the back courtyard of the Martha Jackson Gallery at 32 East Sixty-Ninth Street, New York City, 1961. The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (980063). Courtesy of Allan Kaprow Estate and Hauser & Wirth. © Allan Kaprow Estate and Hauser & Wirth. Photo © Ken Heyman.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 16. K  en Price, Arctic, 1998. Fired and painted clay, 22 × 16 ¾ × 15 ½ inches (55.9 × 42.5 × 39.4 cm). Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Edward R. Broida. 757.2005. © Estate of Ken Price. Photography © Fredrik Nilsen Studio.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 17. R  obert Rauschenberg in his Front Street studio, New York City, 1958. Courtesy of Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. © 2022 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photo: Kay Harris.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 18. I nstallation view of Marisol’s solo exhibition at the Stable Gallery, New York City, May 8–26, 1962. © 2022 Estate of Marisol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: John D. Schiff.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 19. C  harlotte Moorman performing Nam June Paik’s Concerto for TV Cello and Videotapes, 1971, at Galeria Bonino, New York City, November 23, 1971. © The Estate of Peter Moore / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 20. T  ony Smith, Cigarette, 1961–67. Cor-Ten steel, edition 1 of 3, 180 × 216 × 312 inches (457.2 × 548.64 × 792.48 cm). Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Gift of The Seymour H. Knox Foundation, Inc., 1968 (1968:4). Image courtesy of Albright-Knox Art Gallery. © 2022 Estate of Tony Smith / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 21. R  obert Irwin, Varese Portal Room, 1973. Room: 138 × 177 × 438 inches (3.5 × 4.5 × 11.13 m); aperture: 72 × 72 inches (1.8 × 1.8 m). The Solomon R.

396   

64214int.indd 396

22-05-12 4:47 AM

Guggenheim Foundation, New York; Panza Collection, gift 1992; permanent loan to FAI, Fondo per l’Ambiente Italiano. Photo: Alessandro Zambianchi, 2008. © 2022 Robert Irwin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.. . . . . . . . . . . 217 22. Hans Haacke, Gift Horse, 2015. Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, London. 2015. Courtesy of the artist. © Hans Haacke / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 2 3. Mierle Laderman Ukeles, MANIFESTO FOR MAINTENANCE ART 1969! Proposal for an exhibition: “CARE,” 1969, written in Philadelphia, October 1969. Four typewritten pages, each 8 ½ × 11 inches (21.6 × 27.9 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York. © Mierle Laderman Ukeles.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 24. Mierle Laderman Ukeles, WHY SANITATION CAN BE USED AS A MODEL FOR PUBLIC ART, written in New York City, May 1984. One typed page, 8 ½ × 11 inches (21.6 × 27.9 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York. © Mierle Laderman Ukeles.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 25. Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Touch Sanitation Performance, July 24, 1979–June 26, 1980. Citywide performance with 8,500 sanitation workers across all fifty-nine New York City sanitation districts. January 20, 1980. Sweep 5, Queens 60. Courtesy of the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York. © Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Photo: Marcia Bricker. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228 26. Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #1268: Scribbles: Staircase (AKAG), conceived 2006, executed 2010. Graphite on three walls. First drawn by Darren Adair, Takeshi Arita, Kyle Butler, Roshen Carman, Andrew Colbert, Cynthia Cui, Katharine Gaudy, Aviva Grossman, John Hogan, Ani Hoover, Gabriel Hurier, Roland Lusk, Amanda Maciuba, Allison Midgley, Alyssa Morasco, and Joshua Turner. First installation: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, October 2010. Dimensions variable. Albright-Knox Art Gallery. George B. and Jenny R. Mathews Fund, 2007. 2007:24a-c. © 2022 The LeWitt Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 27. Anne Truitt’s studio in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington, DC, 1979. Courtesy of the Estate of Anne Truitt / www.annetruitt.org / The Bridgeman Art Library. © annetruitt.org / Bridgeman Images.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236 2 8. Carl Andre, ESSAYONSCULPTURE1964, 1964. Whitney Museum of American Art, promised gift of Emily Fisher Landau, P.2010.8. Originally published in Barbara Rose, “ABC Art,” Art in America 53, no. 5 (October–November 1965): 67; reprinted in Carl Andre, Cuts: Texts 1959–2004, ed. James Meyer (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 233, with the dedication “FORECGOOSSEN1964.” © 2022 Carl Andre / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 2 9. Eva Hesse, Contingent, 1969. Fiberglass and polyester resin; latex on cheesecloth. Eight units, 138 × 249 × 43 inches (350 × 630 × 109 cm) (variable) overall. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. © The Estate of Eva Hesse. Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

    397

64214int.indd 397

22-05-12 4:47 AM

30. B  ruce Nauman, Mapping the Studio I (Fat Chance John Cage), 2001. DVD projections (color, sound), 5 hours 45 minutes, dimensions variable. Collection of Dia Art Foundation; partial gift, Lannan Foundation, 2013. Installation view, Bruce Nauman: Mapping the Studio I (Fat Chance John Cage), Dia Center for the Arts, New York, January 10–July 27, 2002. Courtesy Sperone Westwater Gallery, New York. © 2022 Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. . . . . . 261 31. C  hristo in his studio with a preparatory drawing for The Mastaba, New York City, 1984. © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Wolfgang Volz. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 32. N  ancy Holt, proposal drawing for Sky Mound, 1988. © 2022 Holt / Smithson Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 3 3. W  alter De Maria, The Lightning Field, 1977. Long-term installation, western New Mexico. Courtesy of Dia Art Foundation, New York. © Estate of Walter De Maria. Photo: John Cliett. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 3 4. M  ichael Heizer, Altar 2, 2015. Weathering steel, coated with polyurethane, 89 ½ × 480 × 520 inches (27.3 × 1219.2 × 1320.8 cm). Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery. © Michael Heizer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294 35. James Turrell, Roden Crater, 1977. Courtesy of the artist. © James Turrell.. . . . . 299 36. M  aya Lin, The Civil Rights Memorial, Southern Poverty Law Center, Montgomery, Alabama, 1989. Courtesy of the artist. © Maya Lin. Photo: Balthazar Korab. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310 37. A  i Weiwei, Remembering, 2009. Backpacks and metal structure on the facade of the Haus der Kunst, Munich. Photo: Jens Weber.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 3 8. J  anine Antoni, Conduit, 2009. Framed digital C-print; copper sculpture with urine verdigris patina. Image: 25 × 30 inches (63.5 × 76.2 cm); framed: 27 ¼ × 32 ¼ × 2 ¹/8 inches (69.22 × 81.92 × 5.4 cm); sculpture: 2 × 7 ¼ × 2 ¼ inches (5.08 × 18.42 × 5.72 cm); pedestal: 10 ½ × 10 ½ × 32 ½ inches (26.67 × 26.67 × 82.55 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York. © Janine Antoni.. . . . . . . . . . 324 39. Installation view of the exhibition Petah Coyne: black/white/black, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, October 26, 1996–February 10, 1997. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co., New York. © Petah Coyne. Photo: Peter Harholdt. . . . . . . . . . . 328 4 0. O  lafur Eliasson and Minik Rosing, Ice Watch, 2018. Supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies. Installation view: Bankside, outside Tate Modern, London. Courtesy of the artist. © Olafur Eliasson. Photo: Charlie Forgham-Bailey.. . . . . . 331 41. I nstallation view of the exhibition Theaster Gates: Every Square Needs a Circle, Gray Warehouse, Chicago, 2019. Image: Jim Prinz. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340 42. F  elix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled,” 1991. Billboard. Dimensions vary with installation. Photo: Sang Tae Kim. Photo courtesy of Samsung Museum of Art. Installation view: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Double. PLATEAU and Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, June 21–September 28, 2012. Billboard location: Adjacent to Korea Post Office, Seoul. Courtesy of The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation. © Felix Gonzalez-Torres.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343

398   

64214int.indd 398

22-05-12 4:47 AM

4 3. A  nn Hamilton, (habitus • sweater), 2016. Sweater, edition of 1. In collaboration with the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist. © Ann Hamilton. Photo: Jeff Hazelden.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347 4 4. Pierre Huyghe, Untitled, 2011–12. Living entities and inanimate things, made and not made. Dimensions and duration variable. Courtesy of the artist; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York; and Esther Schipper, Berlin. Commissioned and produced by Documenta (13) with the support of Colección CIAC AC, Mexico; Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la création, Paris; and Ishikawa Collection, Okayama, Japan. © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352 4 5. M  artin Puryear, Ad Astra, 2006–7. Various woods (ash, Sitka spruce, hickory, and pine) and found wagon wheels. 756 × 74 × 104 inches (1920.2 × 188 × 264.2 cm). Installation view, Martin Puryear, November 4, 2007–January 14, 2008, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photographer: John Wronn. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY. © 2007 Martin Puryear.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 4 6. U  rsula von Rydingsvard, Droga, 2009. Cedar, graphite, 54 × 115 × 99 inches (137.2 × 292.1 × 251.5 cm). Courtesy of the artist. © 2022 Ursula von Rydingsvard / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365 47. I nstallation view of Alison Saar’s High Cotton, 2017, an assembly of five individual sculptures. Courtesy of L.A. Louver, Venice, California. © Alison Saar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367 4 8. T  om Sachs, Prada Death Camp, 1998. Cardboard, ink, and adhesive, 27 ¼ × 27 ¼ × 2 inches (69.2 × 69.2 × 5 cm). Courtesy of the artist. © Tom Sachs.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370 49. J  eanne Silverthorne, Big Grief, 2003, and Blink, 2001, detail of installation view of the exhibition Materials, Metaphors, Narratives: Works by Six Contemporary Artists, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, October 4, 2003–January 4, 2004. Courtesy of the artist. © Jeanne Silverthorne.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373 5 0. K  iki Smith, Teaching of the Snakes I, 2011. Bronze, 8 feet 8½ inches × 8 feet 1 inch × 3 inches (265.4 cm × 246.4 cm × 7.6 cm). © Kiki Smith, courtesy of Pace Gallery. Photograph by Melissa Christy, courtesy of Melissa Christy / Walla Walla Foundry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377

    399

64214int.indd 399

22-05-12 4:47 AM

64214int.indd 400

22-05-12 4:47 AM

INDE X

Italicized fig. indicates illustrations. Endnotes and footnotes are referenced with “n” followed by the note number. “ABC Art” (Rose), 11, 189, 238n, 243n, 245n “About the Work” (Lin), 271, 309–11 Abstract Expressionism, 5, 9, 78, 80, 189, 193, 234 abstraction: advocates of, 9, 21–22n22; art as, 70, 82, 376; color as, 256; legacy of, 104; representation vs., 5–6, 21–22n22; as style description, 7, 29, 30, 80, 335, 359 Académie de la Grande-Chaumière, 84 action, value of, 36 “Action” painting, 10, 78, 120 Ad Astra (Puryear), 354, 359, 360, 361, 362fig. adulthood, as death, 36 advertising, 19, 183–85, 371 Air-Conditioned Nightmare, The (Miller, H.), 15 Ai Weiwei: artist collective memberships, 316; biennales curated by, 318; blogs of, 319–20; early years, 315–16; exhibitions, 318, 320; film productions, 320–22; influences on, 316–17; repetition, symbolism of, 317–18; social consciousness and activism, 17–18, 317, 318, 319–22; teaching positions, 321; U.S. immigration, 316; Black Cover Book, The, 318; Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 318; Grey Cover Book, The, 318; Remembering, 320, 321fig.; Study of Perspective series, 318; White Cover Book, The, 318 “Ai Weiwei with Phong H. Bui,” 315–22 Akston, J. J., 184 Albers, Anni, 79 Albers, Josef, 79, 106, 195 Alberto Giacometti (exhibition), 21n20, 75 Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 373fig. Aligning Reeds (Lin), 15 Alison Saar: Topsy Turvy (exhibition), 367fig. Alloway, Lawrence, 12, 23n36 Altar 2 (Heizer), 294fig., 295 Altar series (Heizer), 269, 291–93, 294–95, 294fig. Altars (exhibition), 269, 291–93, 294–95, 294fig. Amarillo Ramp (Smithson), 267 ambiguity, 18, 94, 178, 270, 313, 317 American life patterns, 189, 199 Americans 1963 (exhibition), 192 Amica (Truitt), 236fig. Ancient Games and Ancient Places (Nevelson), 129 ancient sculpture: criticism of, 38, 41, 42, 45; pre-language, 1; quality and influence of, 33, 35, 40, 45, 366 Andre, Carl, 6–7, 11, 13, 193, 195, 238fig., 247 Andrea Rosen Gallery, 344–45 Anecdoted Topography of Chance, An (Spoerri), 258 anonymity, 67, 186 Anselmino, Luciano, 109 anthropomorphism, 206–7, 247 Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials (exhibition), 24–25n60 Anti-War Naked Happening (Kusama Yayoi), 25n65 Antoni, Janine: creative process, 18, 325; influences on, 10, 323; Conduit, 18, 323–25, 324fig. “Apropos of ‘Readymades’“ (Duchamp), 72, 74 Arcade Suite (Saar), 368 architecture: building reclamation projects, 16, 270–71, 306–8; criticism of, 125, 127; defining

character of, 232; habitable space themes, 357–58; human bodies as, 325; postwar sculptural commissions, 76; as sculptural style, 21n17, 195, 209, 252, 275–78, 311, 357; as sculpture, 117, 125–27; sculpture and painting combined with, 213, 240 Arctic (Price), 162fig. Arena #10 (Dogs) (Kelley), 150 Arensberg Collection, 4, 6, 7 Ark, Pyramid (Thek), 119 Armory Show, 7, 8 Arp, Jean (Hans), 7, 8, 21n20, 30, 67–68, 204 Art: Conversations with Paul Gsell (Rodin), 33 art, overview: as abstraction, 70, 82, 376; character of, 33, 55–56, 82, 112, 140, 256, 279, 307; definitions, 214, 279; discipline categorization traditions, 9, 156; freedom of, 163; morality debates, 9; purpose and motivation, xiv, 52, 55, 78, 161, 236; qualities of, 16; role of, 9–10, 55 art à la source, L’ (Roy), 360 “Art and Reason” (Artschwager), 194, 243–44 Art and Technology Program (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), 26n74, 190, 298–99 Arte Povera, 118, 270 Art Institute of Chicago, 77, 93–94 artists: advice to young, 279, 361, 363; artistic expression as right of, xiv, 20n1; artwork’s relationship with, 236–37; cultural confinement of, 281–82; cultural labor divisions, 16, 17, 342; everyone as, 137, 139; future roles of, 183–85, 186; mission of, 257; open door philosophies and identity distinctions, 23n44; as products of own time, 54; public relationships, 54; roles of, 154; self-criticism of, xiv; social responsibilities of, 16–17, 29; societal usefulness of, 27, 33 Artists’ Club, 5, 23n39, 122, 179 artists’ collectives and circles, 5, 78, 122, 179, 268, 316 artists’ communities, 67, 193, 236–37 artists in residences, 184–85 “Artists Say, The” (Flavin), 240–41 Artists’ Sessions at Studio 35, 5 “Artist’s Statement” (Bontecou), 233–34 Art Make-Up, Nos. 1–4 (Nauman), 196 Art of the Assemblage, The (exhibition), xviiin9, 8–9, 79, 80 Artschwager, Richard: artist’s statements, 11, 194, 243; early career, 194; gallery representation, 194; influences on, 13; physical vs. social space, 194; style descriptions, 193, 194, 204; Organ of Cause and Effect III, 194; Table with Pink Tablecloth, 193–94; Untitled, 194 Asawa, Ruth, 79, 106–8, 107fig. “As of Now” (Silverthorne), 372–74 Asphalt Rundown (Smithson), 15 assemblage: architectural spaces and trends in, 11; communal collaborations in, 79, 109–10; criticism of, 9; early, 3, 27–28, 330; exhibitions featuring, xviiin9, 8–9, 79, 80; mixed-media, 118, 122, 135; painting as, 74; with recycled materials, 28, 50, 72, 74, 79, 80, 118, 196–97; as sculptural environments, 117, 128–29

401

64214int.indd 401

22-05-12 4:47 AM

At One Moment Opening Six Holes (Murakami Saburō), 79 attitude, as sculptural element, 80, 112 Auping, Michael, 258–62, 360 authorship, 67, 185, 252–53, 372, 374 Autobodys (Oldenburg), 160 automatism, 104 Bacon, Francis, 6 Baker, Betsy, 241 ballet performances, 66 Bard College, 25n62, 197, 266 Barr, Alfred H., Jr., xiii, xviiin9, 20n8 Barraca–o (concept), 169 barrels (materials), 17, 267, 274–77 Bask (Puryear), 355 Baudelaire, Charles, 2, 175 Bauermeister, Mary, 185, 186, 274 Bauhaus, 2, 4, 30, 156 beauty, 38, 70–71, 104, 243, 311 “Becoming Co-sculptural” (Eliasson), 329–32 Bed (Rauschenberg), 173 Bedroom Ensemble (Oldenburg), 159 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 54 Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Yale University), 77, 90–91 “Being and Circumstance” (Irwin), 190, 213–18 Bell, Graham, 299 Benjamin, Walter, 344 Bergson, Henri, 31 Berkson, Bill, 194 Betty Parsons Gallery, 76, 171 Beuys, Joseph, 10, 11, 118, 137–39 Bichos (Clark), 121, 166–67 Bicycle Wheel (1913 original, Duchamp), 6, 72, 172 Bicycle Wheel (1964 replica, Duchamp), 73fig. Big Grief (Silverthorne), 373fig. Bird in Space (Brancusi), 37fig. Black Cover Book, The (Ai Weiwei), 318 Black Monk, xiii Black Mountain College, 10, 79, 106, 122 Blackouts (Oldenburg), 159 Black Vessel for a Saint (Gates), 336 Bladen, Ronald, 11, 77, 194, 204, 245 Blink (Silverthorne), 373fig. Blossoming (Lipchitz), 75 Boccioni, Umberto, 3, 28, 38–43 Boetti, Anna: cadavre exquis games with, 109–10; Happy Doll Urinates on the Bicycle, The, with Oppenheim and Lupo, 110; King Has Fallen into Relativity, The, with Oppenheim and Lupo, 110; Motorcycle Feels the Pain of the City, The, with Oppenheim and Lupo, 110 Bolide series (Oiticica), 168–69 Bonino Gallery, 186 Bonnard, Pierre, 81 Bonney, Anne, 323 Bontecou, Lee, xviii, 8, 192, 195, 204, 206, 233–34 boredom, 2, 35, 38, 113, 175, 279 Bourdelle, Antoine, 40, 84 Bourdieu, Pierre, 220 Bourgeois, Louise: early career, 5; exhibitions, 24n60, 78; immigration, 78; painting vs. sculpture debate, 5; sculpture purpose, 78; in studio, 101fig.; style descriptions, 78; themes, 78, 100–102; Cells series, 100–102, 101fig. Brancusi, Constantin: apprentices of, 76; artist group associations, 7; artist’s statements, 36; associatesadvocates, 7; collections featuring, 6; display methods, 7; distinctions, 2, 3; early career, 6, 27–28;

exhibition debates on, 6; influence of, 6–7, 234; on simplicity, 36; studios of, 7, 37fig.; style descriptions, 7, 28, 204; Bird in Space, 37fig.; Endless Column (1918), 6, 37fig., 193, 240, 275; Endless Column I (ca. 1925), 37fig.; Kiss, The, 37fig.; Târgu Jiu sculptural ensemble, 77 Braque, Georges, 8, 29 Brecht, Bertolt, 34 Brecht, George, 10, 204, 207 Bruce Nauman: Mapping the Studio I (Fat Chance John Cage) (exhibition), 261fig. Brummer Gallery, 7, 36 Brunelleschi, Filippo, 205 Buchholz Gallery, 20n7, 75 Bui, Phong H., 17, 315–22 building ruins and reclamation projects, 16, 270, 271, 306–8 Bull’s Head (Picasso), 3–4, 28, 49, 50 Burning Mirror, The (Merz), 118, 134–36 business collaborations, 184–85 cadavre exquis drawings, 79, 109–10 Cage, John: art style descriptions, 208; associates, 274; collaborations, 185, 186; influence of, 122, 190; Nauman titles referencing, 259–60; noise intrusion theories, 9–10; technological philosophies, 185 Cahill, Zachary, 17, 333–41 Calas, Nico, 176 Calder, Alexander: art journals featuring, 21n20; early career, 64; education, 30; exhibitions, 64; Mondrian studio visits, 30, 64; music performance sets designed by, 64, 66; spatial conceptions, 3; studios of, 65fig., 361; style descriptions, 30, 66 Campbell’s Soup Cans (Warhol), 317 “Care” (exhibition proposal), 222–24fig. Caro, Anthony, 80, 114–15 Castellane Gallery, 132 Castellani, Enrico, 204 Catch Basin (Holt), 283, 284 Catholicism, 326, 376 Cedar Lodge (Puryear), 357 Cedar Tavern, 5, 122 Celant, Germano, 13 Cells series (Bourgeois), 100–102, 101fig. Centre Georges Pompidou, 349n Cézanne, Paul, 67, 81, 205 C.F.A.O. (Puryear), 18, 359–60 Challenge to the Mud (Shiraga Kazuo), 78–79 Chamberlain, John: artist contemporaries, 234; on artist’s autonomy, 113; artist’s statements, 112–13; creative process, 112–13, 206; exhibitions, 8, 80; sculpture’s elements, 80, 112; style descriptions, 80, 204, 206, 207 Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière, 360 Chase Manhattan Bank, 77, 91fig., 92 childhood, 36, 118, 135–36 Christo: advice to artists, 279; artist’s statements, 267, 279; associates, 274; business collaboration proposals, 185; creative process, 267; early art career, 273; exhibitions, 267, 273, 274, 275, 276, 279; influences on, 275; interviews with, 273–79; legal risks, 275; lifestyle descriptions, 274; materials, 273–74; in studio, 278fig.; studios of, 274, 278fig.; style descriptions, 267, 273–74, 275, 276; themes, 17, 173, 275, 278, 279; on unrealized projects, 278; Cratères series, 273; Daiba Project, The, with Jeanne-Claude, 279; Floating Piers, The, with Jeanne-Claude, 278–79; Houston Mastaba, with Jeanne-Claude, 276; Inventory, 273–74; Iron Curtain—Wall of Barrels, The, with Jeanne-Claude,

402

64214int.indd 402

22-05-12 4:47 AM

17, 267, 274, 275, 277, 278; Köln Mastaba, The, with Jeanne-Claude, 267; Mastaba (1968), with Jeanne-Claude, 275–76; Mastaba for Abu Dhabi, The, with Jeanne-Claude, 267, 276, 277–78, 278fig., 279; Pont Neuf Wrapped, Paris, The, with Jeanne-Claude, 267, 276; Running Fence, with Jeanne-Claude, 267, 275; Stacked Oil Barrels and Dockside Packages, with Jeanne-Claude, 275; Surfaces d’Empaquetage, 273; Umbrellas, Japan-USA, The, with Jeanne-Claude, 267; Wall, The, with Jeanne-Claude, 267; Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, with Jeanne-Claude, 267, 276 “Christo in Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist” (Obrist), 273–79 C.I.A. (Central Intelligence Agency), 184 Cigarette (Smith, Tony), 200fig. Circumbent (Puryear), 355 circumstance, 217–18 Civil Rights Memorial, The (Lin), 271, 309, 310, 310fig. Clark, Lygia: art philosophies, 121, 164–66; influences on, 121; style descriptions, 11; themes, 121; viewers’ roles, 121, 166–67; Bichos, 121, 166–67 classical sculpture, 33, 35, 38, 41, 45 clay, 161 colonialism, 359–60 color: as abstraction, 256; advantages of, 41, 80; ancient sculpture and addition of, 45; autonomy of, 210; LASER technology and death, 183; perspective of, 44–45; sculpture and lack of, 190; spatial qualities of, 203 Combines (Rauschenberg), 122, 173 Come Unto These Yellow Sands (Truitt), 236fig. commodification, 22n26, 119, 149, 190, 253, 255 “Complaints” (Judd), 12 Complex One, City (Heizer), 269, 270, 291–92, 295 computer technology, 185 Conceptualism, 12, 191, 229–32 Concerto for TV Cello and Videotapes (Paik), 187fig. “Concrete Art” (Arp), 67–68 Concretism, 30, 67–68, 78, 102–5 “Conditional” (Irwin), 213–18 Conduit (Antoni), 18, 323–25, 324fig. Confederate Prisoners Being Conducted from Jonesborough to Atlanta (Walker), 358–59 Congregation B’nai Israel, 77 “Constructive Idea in Art, The” (Gabo), 29, 55–56 Constructivism, 2, 29, 30, 55–56, 62–63, 117, 209 consumerism, 19, 119, 369–70, 371 containment, 334–35, 336, 337 “Contemporary Art and the Plight of Its Public” (Steinberg), 1 Contingent (Hesse), 249fig., 250 continuity, 117, 125, 127, 207 “Conversation with Cindy Nemser” (Hesse), 246–48, 250 “Conversation with Joseph Beuys” (Beuys), 137–39 “Conversation with Ruth Asawa, A” (Simon), 106 “Conversation with Terry Winters, A” (Winters), 174–78 Cooper Union, 189, 190, 200 Corcoran Gallery of Art, 192, 328fig. Cornell, Joseph, 9, 76, 88–89, 204 co-sculpting, 19, 330 cosmic consciousness, 271 cosmology, 29, 30 Cotton (Saar), 367fig., 368 Courthion, Pierre, 52 Coyne, Petah, 18, 326–28, 328fig. Craft Morphology Flow Chart (Kelley), 150fig., 151 craft objects, 149 Cratères series (Christo), 273 “Create, Then Obliterate” (Kusama Yayoi), 132–33

Creleisure (concept), 169 critics, 12–13, 25n62 Cross Corner and Single Wall Projections (Turrell), 269 “Cubi” series (Smith, David), 210 Cubism, 77, 81–82, 128 Cubism and Abstract Art (Barr), xiii, xviiin9 “Cultural Confinement” (Smithson), 281–82 cultural labor, divisions of, 16, 17, 342 Cummings, Paul, 12 Cunningham, Merce, 10, 11, 122 curators, criticism of, 281–82 Curt Valentin Gallery, 20n7 Dadaism, 10, 105, 122, 172–73, 204 Daiba Project, The (Christo and Jeanne-Claude), 279 dance, 10, 11, 66, 77, 122, 190 Dark Star Park (Holt), 284 Dawns and Dusks: Taped Conversations with Diana MacKown (Nevelson and MacKown), 128–31 Dawn’s Wedding Feast (Nevelson), 117, 129–30, 130fig. Daybook: The Journal of an Artist (Truitt), 235–37 Dead Tree (Smithson), 350 Deaf-man Glance (Wilson), 143–44 death, 59, 101, 118, 183 death masks, 59 Déjeuner en fourrure, Le (Oppenheim), 109 De Kooning, Willem, 4, 6, 10 Delaunay, Robert, 68 Delaunay, Sonia, 68 De Maria, Walter: artist collaborations, 293; creative process, 268; environmental consciousness, 14; site selection trips, 16; Lightning Field, The, 15, 268–69, 287–90, 289fig.; Mile Long Parallel Walls in the Desert, 287 Dessange, Jacques, 273 Dia Art Foundation, 265, 287 Dia Beacon, 197 Dia Center for the Arts, 261fig. “Diary Entry from January 24, 1947” (Cornell), 88–89 Dick, Philip K., 351 dimensionality: Conceptual art and, 323; fourth, 128; as sculptural quality, 69–70; specific objects and, 201–7 direct cutting, 82 Displaced/Replaced Mass (Heizer), 269, 295 Dissipate (Heizer), 292 Distant Place, A (Puryear), 361 Di Suvero, Mark, 203, 216 Dixon, Tom, 371 Documenta 5, 119, 142, 256, 267, 281–82 Documenta 13, 350 Documentas (exhibition series), 221 “Documentation Book for Five Card Stud Tableaux and the Sawdy Edition” (Kienholz), 145 Doesburg, Theo van, 30 d’Offay, Anthony, 259–60 dolls, 150–51 Dōmoto Hisao, 104 Donald Young Gallery, 356 Double Negative (Heizer), 15, 269, 292 Double Negative in Central Park (Huyghe), 353 Doyle, Tom, 234, 246 Dragged Mass Geometric (Heizer), 292, 293 drawing: character of, 256; as creative process component, 118, 191, 231, 251, 276; as dreaming, 196; games of collaborative, 79, 109–10; line, 47; as media preference, 246; multidisciplinary practices with, 174, 250, 376; sculpture representations using, 151; spirit of synthesis and primitive, 63 Droga (Von Rydingsvard), 365fig.

403

64214int.indd 403

22-05-12 4:47 AM

Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (Ai Weiwei), 318 Dubuffet, Jean, 274, 275 Duchamp, Marcel: art philosophies, 4, 176, 178; associates, 7, 8; collections featuring, 4, 6, 7; creative process, 176; on doubt, 318; exhibitions, 4, 6, 8–9, 79; influence of, 119, 204; panel discussions featuring, 9; public presence of, 7–8; reviews and reception, 4, 6, 8, 9, 22n26, 247; style descriptions, 4, 11, 68, 204; themes, 31; viewers’ roles, 220–21; Bicycle Wheel (1913 original), 6, 72, 172; Bicycle Wheel (1964 replica), 73fig.; Fountain, 31; Green Box, The, 176; Large Glass, 6; Tu m’, 9; Urinal, 9. See also Readymades (Duchamp) Duchamp-Villon, Raymond: exhibitions, 4; Horse, The, 4; Rider, 4 Duncan, Robert, 360 Dwan, Virginia, 13, 287 Dwight, James, 292 earth-body works, 15, 197, 266 Earthworks: character of, 14; forest/tree projects, 15, 270; indoor, 280; influences on, 14, 15, 268, 283; land sculpting, 3, 15, 16, 25n69, 267, 269–70, 291–92, 299–300, 299fig.; natural material sculpture photographs, 270–71; site selection trips for, 13–16 Eating My Words (Nauman), 196 Eccentric Abstraction (exhibition), 24n60 “Echo” (Goeritz), 96 Eclipsed Time (Lin), 311 Ecole des Arts-et-Métiers, 83 Ecole des Beaux-Arts, 83 Eden (Oiticica), 121, 168–69 “Eden” (Oiticica), 168–69 Effigy Tumuli (Heizer), 292, 293 Egyptian art, 28, 38, 45, 63 Eiffel, Gustave, 195, 252 Eighth Street Club, 5 Elderfield, John, 357 Eliasson, Olafur: environmental consciousness, 19, 331–32; experimental art schools of, 329; movement experiments, 329; sculpture, defined, 330; studios of, 19; viewer encounter theories, 330, 332; fiercely affectionate sculpture, A, 330; Ice Watch, with Rosing, 331fig. embodied simulation, 330 emotion: as artistic goal, 51, 78, 114, 115, 116, 169, 327; as content, 101–2, 328, 330 Empathy Displacement: Humanoid Morphology (2nd and 3rd Remove) (Kelley), 151 “Empty Full, The” (Clark), 121, 164–66 Endless Column (1918) (Brancusi), 6, 37fig., 193, 240, 275 Endless Column I (ca. 1925) (Brancusi), 37fig. Endless House (Kiesler), 117, 120, 125–27 Endless Love Show (Kusama Yayoi), 132–33 “End of the Object” (Goossen), 96 environmental consciousness, 14, 15, 19, 271, 283–86, 311, 331–32 environment(s): aesthetics epiphanies due to, 189, 200; architectural monuments integral to, 311; as creative process component, 375; human experimental campuses, 121, 168–69; multimedia immersive, 117–18, 132–33; Non-Site theories on, 14, 267, 280, 353; postwar influences on, 11; processional, 118; puzzle-like assemblages creating, 117; sculptural, 76–77, 90–92, 91fig.; sculpture and architecture creating, 271; sculpture as, 77, 95–96, 117, 125–27, 129; terminology criticism, 193, 241; total art concepts, 11, 120,

152–55, 156–58; unpredictability situations within, 349–50. See also Earthworks; Happenings; site art; site-specific art Environments–Situations–Spaces (exhibition), 11 Enwezor, Okwui, 221 ESSAYONSCULPTURE1964 (Andre), 193, 238fig. Every Square Needs a Circle (Gates), 333–41, 340fig. Expanded Studio, The, 19 Expédition scintillante, L’ (exhibition), 353 expression: art elements for, 55; as art purpose, xiv, 20n1, 161, 236, 307; art’s value judgment and ideological, 253; character of, 214; importance of, 93; as material’s language, 178; power of, 71; as sculptural quality, 70; writing as form of, 192 “Extended Notes from Sight Point Road” (Serra), 195, 251–55 Family from the Dust Bowl (Marisol), 180 fear, 100, 102, 344 Feldman, Morton, 9–10 Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Double (exhibition), 343fig. Felix Gonzalez-Torres (exhibition), 344–45 Feng Boyi, 318 Ferber, Herbert, 4, 5, 21n17, 76, 77, 95–96 Ferguson, Bruce, 342 Ferus Gallery, 8, 119 fiercely affectionate sculpture, A (Eliasson), 330 15 Americans (exhibition), 76, 77 figuration: artist’s embodiment of, 366; assemblage style of, 27; craft objects as, 150–51; Futurist principles on, 41; in multimedia installations, 119, 147–48; postwar styles in, 75–76, 77; representation vs. abstraction debates, 5–6; space defined by, 95; studies in, 84–85, 87; usefulness of, 111 First Gutai Art Exhibition, 79 Fishbach Gallery, 24n60 Fish series (Marisol), 181–82 Five Car Stud (Kienholz), 119, 145, 146fig. Five Spot Café, 5 Flavin, Dan: artist’s statements, 11, 193, 240, 241–42; Byzantine art, 239; creative process, 193, 241, 242; exhibitions, 240; influences on, 11, 193; materials, 193, 206, 240–41, 298; style descriptions, 3, 11, 193, 204, 241–42, 298; Monument 7, 241 Floating Piers, The (Christo and Jeanne-Claude), 278–79 Floor Burger (Oldenburg), 9, 207 Fluxus, 123, 268 Focillon, Henri, 31 Forest of Lines (Huyghe), 351–52 forests, 270, 301–3, 351–52 Foster, Hal, 7 Fotodeath (Oldenburg), 159 Fountain (Duchamp), 31 “4 Sentences for Art in America“ (Artschwager), 243 Fourteen Americans (exhibition), 76, 77 fourth dimension, 128 Frampton, Hollis, 6 Frankenthaler, Helen, 80 Fred Sandback Museum, Winchendon, 197, 265 freedom, 138–39 Fried, Michael, 11, 189, 209n, 210 Friedrich, Caspar David, 221 “From a Maker’s Standpoint” (Price), 161–63 From Rodin to Brancusi (exhibition), 20n7 Fuck Off (exhibition), 318 Fuller, R. Buckminster, 10, 331 functionality, 57–58, 254

404

64214int.indd 404

22-05-12 4:47 AM

“Future: Notes on Architecture as Sculpture, The” (Kiesler), 117, 125–27 Futurism, 3, 29, 39, 40–41 Gabo, Naum, 29, 55–56, 190, 209 Gagosian New York, 269, 291, 294fig. “Galaxy” (Kiesler), 96 Galeria Bonino, 187fig. Galerie Haro Lauhus, 274 Galleria Il Fauno, 109 Gallese, Vittorio, 330 Garden of the Yale Beinecke Library, The (Yale University) (Noguchi), 77, 90–91 garden sculptures, 77, 90–92, 91fig. gargoyles, 323–25, 324fig. Garrett Aerospace Corporation, 269, 299 Gates, Theaster: arts center projects, 338; exhibitions, 333–41, 340fig.; themes, 17, 335; Black Vessel for a Saint, 336; Every Square Needs a Circle, 333–41, 340fig.; Madonna and Child, 334–36, 337, 338; Rothschild’s Liquor, 338, 339; Slaves Ex-Slaves, 333 Gates of Hell (Rodin), 6 Gayety (Oldenburg), 159 Geometric Land Sculpture (Heizer), 292 German Expressionism, 368 German Gothicism, 38, 45 gestalt, 13, 189, 210–11 Giacometti, Alberto: art education, 83; art journals featuring, 21n20; associates, 274; exhibitions, 6, 21n20, 75; figuration development, 75–76, 83–85, 87; studios of, 86fig.; style descriptions, 75–76; Man Walking (plaster study), 86fig.; Palace at 4 a.m., The, 75; Tall Figure, 6 Gift Horse (Haacke), 220fig. gifts, as theme, 119, 149 Gilbert and George, 10, 121, 170 Giles, William, 234 Glueck, Grace, 179 Goeritz, Mathias: “Echo,” 96 Golden Fleece (La Toison d’or) (Huyghe), 350, 351 Goldsworthy, Andy: Hanging Stones, 16, 270, 271, 306–8; Ice Piece, 15; Northdale Head House, 306; Redwall, 306 Goldwater, Robert, 78 González, Julio: artist comparisons, 80; collaborations, 3; creative process, 29, 53–54; materials, 29, 53; on Picasso as sculptor, 47–48; style descriptions, 195, 252; viewers’ roles, 54 Gonzalez-Foerster, Dominique: 7000 Oaks, 350 Gonzalez-Torres, Felix: ambiguity theories, 18; artist’s social consciousness responsibilities, 16–17; character of works, 344; event-based portraitures, 343; exhibitions, 343fig., 344n; influences on, 344, 345; interviews with, 342, 343–44; lecture excerpts, 344–45; stack works, 344–45; style descriptions, 342; “Untitled”, 343fig. Goossen, E. C., 96, 193 Grabner, Michelle, 17, 333–41 Graham, Dan, 242 Graham, Martha, 66, 77 Grand Central Moderns Gallery, 117 Gray Warehouse, 333–41, 340fig. Great Stream, xiv, 1, 75 Greco, el, 54 Greek sculpture, 33, 35, 38, 40, 45 Greenberg, Clement: artist associates, 80, 114; criticism of, 12; Minimalist discourses, 11, 12; modern sculpture advocacy, 5, 21–22n22, 75, 189 Green Box, The (Duchamp), 176

Green Gallery, 240 Green Horses (Nauman), 196 Green Light Corridor (Nauman), 196 Grey Cover Book, The (Ai Weiwei), 318 Griffiths, Marian, 327 Grosvenor, Robert, 77 Grotto of Meditation (Kiesler), 125 Groupp, Doc, 234 Gruen, John, 122, 183 Gsell, Paul, 27, 33 Guggenheim Museum, 23n36, 127, 352 “Gutai Art Manifesto” (Yoshihara Jiro), 78, 103–5 Gutai Bijutsu Kyokai, 78, 103–5 Gwangju Biennale, 221 Haacke, Hans: artist’s statements, 219; political art interviews with, 219–21; studies of, 17; style descriptions, 191; teaching career, 190; themes, 190, 219–21; Gift Horse, 220fig. habitus (Hamilton), 18, 346–48, 347fig. (habitus • sweater) (Hamilton), 347fig. Haiku poems, 183 Haint Blue (Saar), 368 Hamilton, Ann: habitus, 18, 346–48, 347fig.; (habitus • sweater), 347fig. Hanging Stones (Goldsworthy), 16, 270, 271, 306–8 Hansa Gallery, 157–58 Hansen, Al, 10 “Hans Haacke Responds to Questions from Texte Zur Kunst“ (Haacke), 219–21 Happenings: concept descriptions, 10; practitioners of, 10, 12, 25n65, 117–18, 132–33; as scripted events, 120, 159–60; site locations for, 14, 25n65 happiness and joy, 35, 102, 118, 134, 136, 241 Happy Doll Urinates on the Bicycle, The (Oppenheim, Boetti and Lupo), 110 Happy’s Curios (Price), 120–21 Hare, David, 5, 21n17, 21n20, 75 Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated) (Walker), 358 Haus der Kunst, 320 Heizer, Michael: artist collaborations, 293; artistic goals, 295; creative process, 269; environmental consciousness, 14; exhibitions, 291–93, 294–95, 294fig.; influences on, 13, 269, 293; interviews with, 269, 291–95; painting techniques, 294; site selection trips, 14, 16; style descriptions, 269, 294–95; title choices, 292; viewer experience goals, 295; Altar 2, 294–95, 294fig.; Altars series, 269, 291–93, 294–95; Complex One, City, 269, 270, 291–92, 295; Displaced/ Replaced Mass, 269, 295; Dissipate, 292; Double Negative, 15, 269, 292; Dragged Mass Geometric, 292, 293; Effigy Tumuli, 292, 293; Geometric Land Sculpture, 292; Levitated Mass, 292; Potato Chip, 295; Rift, 292; Track Painting, 292, 293 Held, Al, 194 Hepworth, Barbara, xviiin9 heroism, 194, 245 Hesse, Eva: art education, 195; art/life philosophies, 195, 247, 250; creative process, 246–47, 248; exhibitions, 24n60; health and priorities, 195; influences, 13, 195; interviews with, 195, 246–48, 250; materials, 195, 246; motif preferences, 247; repetition, 248; style descriptions, 195, 248, 250; Contingent, 249fig., 250 Higgins, Richard, 10, 203 High Cotton series (Saar), 367–68, 367fig. highways, 15, 189, 200 Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 197, 356

405

64214int.indd 405

22-05-12 4:47 AM

Holocaust, 19, 369, 371 Holt, Nancy: artist associates, 268; environmental consciousness, 14, 283–86; film productions, 15; site selection trips, 13, 14; style descriptions, 268, 283; Catch Basin, 283, 284; Dark Star Park, 284; Locators series, 268; Sky Mound, 16, 268, 283, 284–85, 285fig.; Sun Tunnels, 15, 268, 285; Views Through a Sand Dune, 283 Homage to Rodin (exhibition), 20n7 Home, The (Oldenburg), 159 homme qui march, L’ (The Walking Man) (Rodin), 34fig., 330, 332 Hopps, Walter, 8, 192 Horse, The (Duchamp-Villon), 4 Host and the Cloud, The (Huyghe), 353 Household (Kaprow), 24n65 House of the Sleeping Beauties, The (Kawabata Yasunari), 327 Houston Mastaba (Christo and Jeanne-Claude), 276 How to Look at Modern Art in America (Reinhardt), xiii Hudson River Landscape (Smith, David), 99fig. Hulté, K. G. Pontus, 15 Hummel figurines, 119, 147–48 humor, 18, 30, 191, 325, 373 Huyghe, Pierre: creative process, 349–50; exhibitions, 349, 350, 352, 353; fiction vs. real, 351; films featuring, 353n; interviews with, 349–53; style descriptions, 18, 340; viewers’ roles, 351–52, 353; work descriptions, 349; Double Negative in Central Park, 353; Forest of Lines, 351–52; Host and the Cloud, The, 353; Journey That Wasn’t, A, 353; Monster Island, 349–50; Toison d’or, La (Golden Fleece), 350, 351; Untitled, 350, 352fig. Hyde, Lewis, 119 Ice Piece (Goldsworthy), 5 Ice Watch (Eliasson and Rosing), 331fig. idea(s): art movements based on, 191, 229; as communal, 141; in creative process, 62, 82, 93, 269; material experimentation developing, 93; as scuptural quality, 70 identity, 4, 78, 134, 179–80, 197, 371 imagination, 148 imitation, 38, 39, 40, 47, 63, 67 immersion, 96 Impressionism, 28, 40, 44–46, 81 “Impressionism in Sculpture” (Rosso), 44–46 “ . . . ‘in daylight or cool white.’: An autobiographical sketch” (Flavin), 239–40 Indigo (Saar), 367fig., 368 individuality, 75, 141, 142, 243 Infanta (Velázquez), 46 Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field (Kusama Yayoi), 132 Infinity Room (Kusama Yayoi), 117 influence, value of, 78 “In Pursuit of an Image” (Roszak), 93–94 Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 26n82 Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, 275 Institut für Raumexperimente, 329 intention, 120, 138, 160, 163, 215, 251, 350 interest, as art quality, 31, 205, 229, 231, 247 “Interview with Jacques Lipchitz, An” (Sweeney), 81–82 Interview with Robert Rauschenberg, An (Rose), 122, 171–73 “In the Image of Man” (Kelley), 119, 149–51 intrusions, 10, 197, 264 intuition: Conceptual art principles and, 229; for construction, 63; as creative process component, 80, 93, 112; sculptural theories based on, 31; trust in, 2, 29, 30, 375

Inventory (Christo), 273–74 Iron Curtain—Wall of Barrels, The (Christo and Jeanne-Claude), 17, 267, 274, 275, 277, 278 Irwin, Robert: interviews with, 190; phenomenal/ conditional art, 213–18; sensory deprivation experiments, 190, 269, 298–99; style descriptions, 190, 269; Varese Portal Room, 217fig. Ishiguro, Kazuo, 327 “Janine Antoni in Conversation with Douglas Dreishpoon” (Antoni), 323, 325 “Jasper Johns: In the Studio, A Conversation with Terry Winters” (Winters), 174–78 Jeanne-Claude: advice to artists, 279; creative process, 267; exhibitions, 275, 276; style descriptions, 267, 275–76; themes, 17, 275; Daiba Project, The, with Christo, 279; Floating Piers, The, with Christo, 278–79; Houston Mastaba, with Christo, 276; Iron Curtain—Wall of Barrels, The, with Christo, 17, 267, 274, 275, 277, 278; Köln Mastaba, The, with Christo, 267; Mastaba, The (1968), with Christo, 267, 275–76; Mastaba for Abu Dhabi, The, with Christo, 267, 276, 277–78, 278fig., 279; Pont Neuf Wrapped, Paris, The, with Christo, 267, 276; Running Fence, with Christo, 267, 275; Stacked Oil Barrels and Dockside Packages, with Christo, 275; Umbrellas, Japan-USA, The, with Christo, 267; Wall, The, with Christo, 267; Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, with Christo, 267, 276 Jewish Museum, 194 Johns, Jasper: artistic identity, 174; art philosophies, 122, 174, 175, 178; creative process, 176, 177–78; early art experiences, 174, 175; exhibitions, 8, 175; influence of, 143, 195; influences on, 10, 176; interviews with, 174–78; on religion, 177; studio mates, 122; style descriptions, 122, 174, 175–76, 204; Target paintings, 122; Usuyuki, 176 Johnson, Ray, 185, 186 Johnson Publishing Company, 336, 338–39 Journey That Wasn’t, A (film), 253n Journey That Wasn’t, A (Huyghe), 353 joy and happiness, 35, 102, 118, 134, 136, 241 Judd, Donald: art critic criticism, 12–13; art criticism, 189, 192; artists’ perceptions of, 13; artist’s statements, 11, 189; influence of, 13, 195, 345; political perspectives, 190; site selection trips, 13; specific art principles, 12, 13, 189, 201–7; style advocacy, 189; style descriptions, 11, 12, 189; tributes to, xiv Judson Dance Theater, 190 Jung, Carl, 141 junk, 112, 149, 282. See also recycled materials Kabakov, Emilia, 120, 152–53, 155 Kabakov, Ilya, 120, 142–43, 155, 340 Kahnweiler, Daniel-Henri, 47, 48–49 Kanayama Akira, 105 Kandinsky, Vassily, 30, 68 Kaprow, Allan: art discipline hybridity advocacy, 120, 156; art environment debates, 14; business collaboration proposals, 185; creativity philosophies, 10, 11, 156–58; exhibitions, 11, 157–58, 157fig.; Happenings, 10, 24n65; influences on, 10; site selection trips, 13; Household, 24n65; Tree, A Yam Festival, 25n65; Yard, 11, 157fig. Kawabata Yasunari: House of the Sleeping Beauties, The, 327 Kaymar Gallery, 240 Kelley, Mike: exhibitions, 151; style descriptions, 119, 149–51; themes, 119, 149, 150–51; Arena #10 (Dogs),

406

64214int.indd 406

22-05-12 4:47 AM

150; Craft Morphology Flow Chart, 150fig., 151; Empathy Displacement: Humanoid Morphology (2nd and 3rd Remove), 151; More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid, 150; Plush Kundalini and Chakra Set, 150 Kelly, Kevin, 26n76 Kerouac, Jack, 15 Kienholz, Edward: exhibitions, 8, 119; galleries cofounded by, 119; style descriptions, 11, 119, 204; themes, 119; Five Car Stud, 119, 145, 146fig. Kiesler, Frederick: architecture as sculpture theories, 21n17, 117, 125–27; continuity theories, 117; cultural criticism, 117; exhibitions, 127; style descriptions, 117; Endless House, 117, 125–27; “Galaxy,” 96; Grotto of Meditation, 125; Multi-Purpose Theater for Ford Foundation, 125; Shrine of the Book, 125 Kim, Christine Y., 296–300 kinetic compulsion, 95 kineticism, 3, 30, 230, 295 King, Phillip, 204 King Has Fallen into Relativity, The (Oppenheim, Boetti and Lupo), 110 Kinoshita Yoshiko, 104 Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig, 368 Kiss, The (Brancusi), 37fig. Klein, Yves: style descriptions, 202, 204, 206; Leap into the Void, 325 Klougart, Josefine, 332 Kluver, Billy, 183 Kollwitz, Käthe, 368 Köln Mastaba, The (Christo and Jeanne-Claude), 267 Kootz, Samuel M., 21n17, 75, 76 Kosuth, Joseph, 343 Krauss, Rosalind, 12, 25n62 Kröller-Müller Museum, 276 Krupp, Ed, 296 Kubler, George, 190, 208 Kunsthaus Bregenz, 353 Kusama’s Peep Show (Kusama Yayoi), 132–33 Kusama Yayoi: creative philosophies, 10; exhibitions, 132; materials, 132; style descriptions, 10, 11, 117, 204, 206; themes, 117–18, 132, 133; Anti-War Naked Happening, 25n65; Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field, 132; Infinity Room, 117; Kusama’s Peep Show (or Endless Love Show), 132–33; Mirror Performance, New York, 133fig. L.A. Louver, 367fig. Ladder for Booker T. Washington (Puryear), 358, 361 landfill site reclamation projects, 16, 268, 284–86, 285fig. language, 17–18, 178, 281, 320, 326. See also expression Lanier, Albert, 79, 107–8 Large Glass (Duchamp), 6 LASER, 183 Lassaw, Ibram, 5, 21n17, 21n22, 23n38, 111n Latour, Bruno, 331 laziness, 113 Leap into the Void (Klein), 325 Lebel, Robert, 4 Leo Castelli Gallery, 192, 194 Leonardo da Vinci, 2, 16 “Letter to Pierre Matisse” (Giacometti), 83–85, 86 Levitated Mass (Heizer), 292 LeWitt, Sol: art philosophies, 189, 191; Conceptual art principles, 229–32; creative process, 191; influence of, 195; Minimalism criticism, 12, 230; style descriptions, 191; Wall Drawing #1268: Scribbles: Staircase (AKAG), 231fig. Lichtenstein, Roy, 180, 202

life: absurdity of, 195, 247, 250; art as expression of, 71, 121, 168, 246–47, 327; art as synonymous with, 122, 126, 165, 344; art contrast to, 85; artist’s values at end of, 108; art qualities compared to, 16; art reflecting, 134, 136, 162; Concrete art impact on, 67–68; creative process compared to, 119; drawing compared to, 196; gap between art and, 10, 121–22, 171; Happenings reflecting everyday, 23n44, 120; love compared to, 118, 133; motifs symbolizing, 91; patterns of organic American, 189, 199; technology and, 16, 35, 58, 123; walking as metaphor for, 270, 305 light: function of, 3, 40, 61, 95, 269, 296–97; meaning impacted by, 94; painting as imitation of, 47; philosophies on, 3, 28, 44; Quaker concepts of, 297; sculptural process use of, 60; as sculpture quality, 81, 210; and white color, 129–30. See also lights, electric Light and Space movement, 190, 269, 297–98 Lightning Field, The (De Maria), 15, 268–69, 287–90, 289fig. “Lightning Field: Some Facts, Notes, Data, Information, Statistics, and Statements” (De Maria), 287–90 Light Prop for an Electric Stage (Moholy-Nagy), 3 lights, electric: clothing made from, 105; fluorescent, 193, 206, 240–41, 298; as Futurist material of choice, 41, 43; for immersive environments, 132–33, 133fig. Light-Space Modulator (Moholy-Nagy), 3 Lin, Maya: artistic goals, 271, 309; artist’s statements, 309–11; text and reading, 310; themes, 15, 271, 309, 310–11; viewers’ roles, 271, 309; Aligning Reeds, 15; Civil Rights Memorial, The, 271, 309, 310, 310fig.; Eclipsed Time, 311; Topo, 309; Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 271, 309, 310, 311; Wave Field, 309; Women’s Table, 271, 309, 310 line: drawings, 47; qualities of, 106–7, 264; straight, 41, 42, 43, 282 Lipchitz, Jacques: abstract art theories, 82; art journals featuring, 21n20; on Cubism, 81–82; exhibitions, 75; immigration, 75; interviews with, 81–82; modern art theories, xiv, 1, 75; Rodin admiration, 75; Rodin studio visit, 2; on sculptural techniques, 82; state of sculpture, 82; style descriptions, 75, 81; Blossoming, 75; Myrah, 75; Transparencies, 75; Yara, 75 Lippard, Lucy, 12, 13, 24n60 Lippold, Richard, 4, 21n20, 21n22, 77 Lipton, Seymour, 7, 21n17, 21n22, 75 Livingston, Jane, 26n74 Locators series (Holt), 268 Long, Richard, 15, 270, 304–5 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 26n74, 190, 298–99 Louis, Morris, 210 love, as theme, 117–18, 132, 133 Lupo, Roberto: cadavre equis games with, 109–10; Happy Doll Urinates on the Bicycle, The, with Oppenheim and Boetti, 110; King Has Fallen into Relativity, The, with Oppenheim and Boetti, 110; Motorcycle Feels the Pain of the City, The, with Oppenheim and Boetti, 110 Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age, The (exhibition), 15 MacKown, Diana, 128–31 Madonna and Child (Gates), 334–36, 337, 338 Maillart, Robert, 195, 252 Maillol, Aristide, 2, 172 maintenance art, 17, 191, 222–25fig.

407

64214int.indd 407

22-05-12 4:47 AM

Maja de Yerba, La (Mendieta), 197, 266 Malevich, Kazimir, 11, 214 MANIFESTO FOR MAINTENANCE ART 1969! (Ukeles), 17, 191, 222–25fig. manifestos: Constructivist, 29, 30, 55–56; Futurist, 28, 38–43; Gutai (Japanese Concrete art), 78, 103–5; maintenance art, 17, 191, 222–25fig. Man Walking (Giacometti), 86fig. Mapping the Studio I (Fat Chance John Cage) (Nauman), 196, 258–62, 261fig. Marey, Étienne-Jules, 330 Marilyn Monroe (Warhol), 317 Marisol: art club memberships, 122; audience, 180, 182; exhibitions, 8, 122, 181fig.; interviews with, 122, 179–82; reviews and response, 122, 179–80; style descriptions, 122, 179; themes, 181, 182; Family from the Dust Bowl, 180; Fish series, 181–82; Party, The, 180 Martha Jackson Gallery, 11, 76, 157fig. “Martin Puryear with David Levi Strauss” (Strauss), 354–61, 363 Marxism, 29–30, 138, 370 Mastaba (1968) (Christo and Jeanne-Claude), 275–76 Mastaba for Abu Dhabi, The (Christo and JeanneClaude), 267, 276, 277–78, 278fig., 279 materials: abstraction quality of, 70; artist’s knowledge of, 30, 93; artists’ relationship with, 112, 129, 173, 363, 367; experimentation with, 30, 93, 104–5, 232; financial challenges impacting choice of, 273; for functional objects, 57–58; Futurist, 42–43; with history, 173, 368; idea development prior to working with, 93–94; impermanent, 195, 246; as language, 178, 326; multidiscipline hybridity and mix of, 122, 174; from nature, 270–71; as priority, 232; properties and interrelated features of, 57; sculptural process and articulation of, 60, 61; sculpture as marriage of space and, 53–54; site-specific architectural, 252; space as, 327; of specific art, 205–6; status and, 149, 161, 173; truth to, 7, 28, 31, 36, 69; wartime associations, 29, 53. See also Earthworks; recycled materials Materials, Metaphors, Narratives: Works by Six Contemporary Artists (exhibition), 373fig. Mathieu, Georges, 104 Matisse, Henri, 29, 51–52, 235 Matisse, Pierre, 21n20, 75, 76, 82–85, 86 “Matisse Speaks to His Students, 1908: Notes by Sarah Stein” (Matisse), 51–52 matter, 78, 103–5 Matthews, Max, 185 McCarthy, Paul, 10, 119, 147–48 McLuhan, Marshall, 16, 26n79, 185–86 McShine, Kynaston, 194 Mead, Margaret, xv “Memo to M.F.A. Students Who Use Clay” (Price), 161 Mendieta, Ana: exhibitions, 197; style descriptions and themes, 15, 197, 266; Maja de Yerba, La, 197, 266 Merz, Marisa: artists compared to, 118; art philosophies, 11, 118; exhibitions, 134; on identity, 134; materials, 134–35; style descriptions, 11, 118, 135; Burning Mirror, The, 118, 134–36 Merzbau (Schwitters), 79 Metropolitan Museum of Art, 234 Meunier, Constantin, 40 Meyer, James, 12 Michelangelo, 16, 38, 40, 61 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 195, 252 Mile Long Parallel Walls in the Desert (De Maria), 287 Miller, Dorothy C., 20n9, 76, 129, 192 Miller, Henry, 15

mini-art, 230 Minimalism, 11–13, 24–25n60, 194, 195, 230 Miracle (Ruscha), 262 Mirror Performance, New York (Kusama Yayoi), 133fig. MIT Chapel bell tower, 21n17 “Mobiles” (Calder), 64, 66 modeling: direct cutting vs., 82; ideas best processed by, 82; sculpture as light, 81; technology vs. hand, 374; traditions of, 21–22n22, 28, 35 modern art, development of, xiii–xiv, 1–4 Moholy-Nagy, László: on sculpture, 30, 59–61; Light Prop for an Electric Stage (also Light-Space Modulator), 3 Mondrian, Piet, 30, 64, 210, 211, 213, 215 Monet, Claude: exhibitions, 176–77; Nymphéas, 20n8 Mono Lake (film), 15 Mono Lake Nonsite (Smithson), 25n69 Monster Island (Huyghe), 349–50 Monte, James, 13, 24–25n60 Monument 7 (Flavin), 241 Monument to Apollinaire (Picasso), 48 Monument to the Third International (Tatlin), 193, 253 Moon Garden + One (Nevelson), 117, 129 moon shoes, 134–35 Moore, Henry, 7, 30–31, 69–71, 80, 216, 254 Moorman, Charlotte, 10, 187fig. morality, 9, 184 More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid (Kelley), 150 Morris, Robert: artist collaborations, 190; sculpture theories, 12, 189, 190, 208–12; site selection trips, 13; style descriptions, 11, 12, 204, 207 Morton, Timothy, 332 Motherwell, Robert, 76, 80 Motonaga Sadamasa, 105 Motorcycle Feels the Pain of the City, The (Oppenheim, Boetti, and Lupo), 110 movement: as creative process component, 301, 304, 311; as reality element, 84; sculpture and embodied simulation theories, 330; in space, 244, 329; viewers’ perceptions through, 94, 95, 132, 166–67, 330 Multi-Purpose Theater for Ford Foundation (Kiesler), 125 Murakami Saburō: artist association memberships, 78, 105; style descriptions, 105; At One Moment Opening Six Holes, 79 Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires, 353 Musée National d’Art Moderne, 7 Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 192 Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 192, 293 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA): Americans series at, 76, 117, 121, 129–30, 130fig., 192; as artistic influence, 234; assemblage exhibitions at, xviiin9, 8–9, 79, 80; chapel-like installations at, 117; core missions of, 30n8; Duchamp talks at, 72, 74; figuration-themed exhibitions at, xviiin9, 6; Monet exhibitions at, 176–77; permanent exhibits at, 358; Puryear retrospective exhibitions at, 354; Rodin exhibitions, 20n7; symposiums hosted by, 4–5, 77–78; technological-themed exhibitions at, 15; twentieth-century sculpture exhibitions at, xviiin9, 2–3, 4; women artists and underrepresentation at, xviii Museum of Natural History, 234 Museum of the Void (Smithson), 14 museums: authorship focus, 252–53; criticism of, 14, 281–82; exhibition experiences, 96; relevance of, debates on, 14. See also names of specific museums music, 41, 64, 66, 185, 186, 208 Muybridge, Eadweard, 330

408

64214int.indd 408

22-05-12 4:47 AM

“My Own Work” (Caro), 114–15 Myrah (Lipchitz), 75 Napack, Jonathan, 318 nationalism, 21–22n22 nature: art and, 35; character of, 282; Concrete art principles on, 30, 67; cosmic consciousness and communing with, 270; earth-body works, 15, 197, 266; environmental interventions in, 270–71; faith in, 77; as model, 58; observation of, as sculpture quality, 70; organic abstraction based on, 7, 30; organic patterns in, 189, 199; symbolic meaning of, 266; walking in, 303, 304, 305, 307. See also Earthworks Nauman, Bruce: creative process, 196; exhibitions, 24n60, 261fig.; influences on, 13; interviews with, 258–62; style descriptions, 3, 196; Art Make-Up, Nos. 1–4, 196; Eating My Words, 196; Green Horses, 196; Green Light Corridor, 196; Mapping the Studio I (Fat Chance John Cage), 196, 258–62, 261fig.; Pacing Upside Down, 259; Setting a Good Corner, 259; Stadium, 258; Staircase, 258; Wax Impressions of Knees of Five Famous Artists, 196 Nemser, Cindy, 122, 179–82 Neo-Concretism, 121 Nevelson, Louise: artistic motivation, 128; artist identity, 180; creative process, 129; exhibitions, xviii, 8, 117, 129–30, 130fig.; fourth dimension, 128; materials, 117, 128–29, 131; style descriptions, 11, 117, 128; working process, 131; Ancient Games and Ancient Places, 129; Dawn’s Wedding Feast, 117, 129–30, 130fig.; Moon Garden + One, 117, 129 New Bohemia, The (Gruen), 122 New Images of Man (exhibition), xviiin9, 6 Newman, Barnett, 11, 189, 190, 194, 202, 203, 208 New Sculpture, The (symposium), 4–5, 77–78 “New Stone Gardens” (Noguchi), 90–92 New York City Department of Sanitation, 191 Nixon, Richard, 182 Nochlin, Linda, xv Noguchi, Isamu: apprenticeships and internships, 76; architecture/sculpture compatibility, 21n17; art journals featuring, 21n20; collaborations, 77; exhibitions, 76; influences on, 7; panel discussion participation, 9; philosophies, 76; style descriptions, 7; Garden of the Yale Beinecke Library, The (Yale University), 77, 90–91; Sunken Garden (Chase Manhattan Bank), 77, 91fig., 92 noise theory, 9–10 Noland, Kenneth, 80, 202, 203 Non-Site (theory), 14, 267, 280, 353 Northdale Head House (Goldsworthy), 306 “Notations” (González), 53–54 “Notes on Sculpture” (Morris), 12, 190, 208–12 “Notes on the Creation of a Total Art” (Kaprow), 120, 156–58 Nouvea Réalisme, 274 Novgorod School, 239 nudes, 29, 38, 39 Nymphéas (Monet), 20n8 Object (Oppenheim), 79 Obrist, Hans Ulrich, 267, 273–79, 344 Oiticica, Hélio: immigration, 121; influences on, 121; leisure concepts, 169; style descriptions, 11, 121, 168; themes, 121; viewer roles, 121, 168, 169; Bolide series, 168–69; Eden, 121, 168–69; Parangolés, 121; Penetrables, 121, 169 Oldenburg, Claes: artist’s statements, 159–60; creativity philosophies, 10, 23n45, 159–60;

exhibitions, 159; influence of, 195; materials, 206; site selection trips, 13; style descriptions, 9, 120, 204, 206–7; Autobodys, 160; Bedroom Ensemble, 159; Blackouts, 159; Floor Burger, 9, 207; Fotodeath, 159; Gayety, 159; Home, The, 159; Ray Gun Theater, 9, 159, 160; Snapshots from the City, 159; Stars, 159–60; Store, The, 120, 159; Store Days II, 159 Olitski, Jules, 210 Oliver, Steve and Nancy, 258 Olson, Charles, 10 “On Cells” (Bourgeois), 100–102 On Growth and Form (Thompson), 31, 79, 375 Ono, Yoko, 10 open door philosophies, 10 Opening (event), 352n Operating Manual for Spaceship (Fuller), 331 Oppenheim, Meret: communal collaborations, 79, 109–10; early career, 79; exhibitions, xviiin9, 109, 110; style descriptions, 79, 110; Déjeuner en fourrure, Le, 109; Happy Doll Urinates on the Bicycle, The, with Boetti and Lupo, 110; King Has Fallen into Relativity, The, with Boetti and Lupo, 110; Motorcycle Feels the Pain of the City, The, with Boetti and Lupo, 110; Object, 79; Souvenir of the Breakfast in Fur, 109 Organ of Cause and Effect III (Artschwager), 194 Oxenaar, Rudi, 276 Pacing Upside Down (Nauman), 259 Pack-Mules in the Mountains (Walker), 359 Paik, Nam June: artist collaborations, 186; artists’ future roles, 183–85, 186; associates, 274; business collaborations, 184–85; on celebrity, 186; descriptions, 122–23, 183; exhibitions, 186; influences on, 10; interviews with, 183–86; pattern data scanning, 184; picture telephone concerns, 184; poetry, 183; style descriptions, 123, 185, 186; technological theories, 185–86; themes, 123, 185; title choices and symbolism, 185; Concerto for TV Cello and Videotapes, 187fig. pain, 100–102, 181, 182, 364, 365 painted sculpture: classical traditions of, 45; as style, 47, 48–49, 77, 80, 84, 114, 128, 276–77 painting(s): “Action,” 10, 78, 120; art and life relation to, 121–22, 171; as assemblage, 74; environmental presence created by, 96; Gutai manifestos on media experimentation with, 104–5; as imitative art, 47; as inspiration, 80; sculpture assisting creative process of, 52; sculpture combined with architecture and, 213, 240; sculpture comparisons and debates, 2, 5, 9, 21n22, 38, 39, 45, 208–9; specific art principles and criticism of, 12, 189, 202–3, 204–5; theatrics combined with, 120. See also painting-sculpture hybridity painting-sculpture hybridity: advocacy for, 5, 12, 189, 213; mixed-media style, 122, 173, 174, 195, 250; pictographic three-dimensional works, 269, 295. See also painted sculpture Palace at 4 a.m., The (Giacometti), 75 Paleolithic sculpture, 1 Palmer, John, 11 Panofsky, Erwin, 208 Paolozzi, Eduardo, 6 “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” (LeWitt), 12, 229–32 Parangolés (Oiticica), 121 parks, 281–82 Party, The (Marisol), 180 Pasadena Museum of Art, 4, 8 Passaic Tours, 13–14 “Pattern of Organic Life in America” (Smith, Tony), 189, 199

409

64214int.indd 409

22-05-12 4:47 AM

Pavia, Philip, 9, 23n38, 23n39 pedestals: classical view of, 84; liberation from, 77, 95, 253; site-adjusted categories, 216; tradition of, effects, 253–54; utilization of, 291–92 pedestrian space, 264–65 Penetrables (Oiticica), 121, 169 Penone, Giuseppe: creative process, 301–3; movement associations, 270; style descriptions, 270; Tre alberti intrecciati, 15 perception: conception vs., 230; land ethics and location, 16, 282; movement impacting, 94, 95, 132, 166–67, 330; principles of, 230; psychological studies on, 296; sculpture and visual truth, 44–45 perfection, 16, 19, 27, 56, 268 performance art: body focus, 196; consumerism themes, 119; daily routine as, 121, 170; earth-body works, 15, 197, 266; Japanese Gutai, 78–79, 105; Japanese-mask face painting, 179; urination apparatuses for, 323–25, 324fig.; walking, 15, 45, 270, 303, 304, 305, 307. See also Happenings perfume, 101 Peridot Gallery, 78 Petah Coyne: black/white/black (exhibition), 327, 328fig. Pevsner, Antoine, 29, 190, 209 phenomenal art, 213–18 Philadelphia Museum of Art, 4, 6, 7 physical transcendentalism, 39 Picasso, Pablo: artists compared to, 80; collaborations, 29; creative process, 47, 48, 50; exhibitions, 8, 79; influence of, 29, 122, 172; interviews with, 47, 48–49; materials, 28, 49; photographic critiques, 49; sculpture theories, 50; style descriptions, 3, 28, 47–49, 195, 252; temperament, 48; Bull’s Head, 3–4, 28, 49, 50; Monument to Apollinaire, 48 “Picasso as Sculptor” (González), 47–48 “Picasso Sculpteur et Les Cathédrales” (González), 53 Piene, Otto, 185, 186 Piero della Francesca, 235 Pierre Huyghe (exhibition), 349n Pierre Matisse Gallery, 21n20, 75 Pilgrim, Nicea (Truitt), 236fig. Pine Barrens (film), 15 Plush Kundalini and Chakra Set (Kelley), 150 poetry, 41, 94, 182 Polanyi, Michael, 214 politics: art relationship to, 219–21, 278; Berlin Wall, 275, 278; Chinese government protests, 315–22; factual information vs. commentary, 309; Russian bureaucracy, 152, 340 Pollock, Jackson: criticism of, 189; exhibitions, 6; influence of, 78, 104, 120; legacy of, 9, 10, 202; style descriptions, 120, 202, 202n2, 203, 210 polyhedrons, 210–11 Pont Neuf Wrapped, Paris, The (Christo and JeanneClaude), 267, 276 Pop Factory, 11 Portal (Truitt), 236fig. portraiture, 59, 122, 179, 273, 343, 374 post-Minimalism, 13, 195–96 Poston Relocation Center, 76 Potato Chip (Heizer), 295 “Practices: The Problems of Division of Cultural Labor” (Gonzalez-Torres), 342 Prada Death Camp (Sachs), 19, 369–71, 370fig. Pratella, Balilla, 41 Price, Ken: creative process, 161–63; Happenings of, 120; specific art comparisons, 204; on university art education, 163; Arctic, 162fig.; Happy’s Curios, 120–21

Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculpture (exhibition), 194 printmaking, 368, 376 “Private Myth, A Symposium, The” (Stankiewicz), 111 “Problem of the Relationship between Man and Object: Let Us Declare War on Chests of Drawers and Sideboards” (Tatlin), 57–58 Projection Pieces (Turrell), 300 “Propos” (Brancusi), 36 “Provisional Theory of Non-Sites, A” (Smithson), 280 public art: categories for, 215–17; description, 215; maintenance and sanitation themes, 17, 191, 222–25fig., 226–27fig.; total art projects, 152–55. See also site art Public Projects or the Spirit of a Place (Kabakov and Kabakov), 152–55 Puryear, Martin: advice to artists, 361, 363; ambiguity as art quality, 18; commission works, 356; creative process, 356–57, 363; early years, 354–56; exhibitions, 354, 356; gallery representation, 356; interviews with, 354–61, 363; reviews of, 360; studio fire destruction, 355; themes, 357; title choices, 358, 361; Ad Astra, 354, 359, 360, 361, 362fig.; Bask, 355; Cedar Lodge, 357; C.F.A.O., 18, 359–60; Circumbent, 355; Distant Place, A, 361; Ladder for Booker T. Washington, 358, 361; Some Tales, 355; This Mortal Coil, 360–61; Where the Heart Is, 357 Putzel, Howard, 75 Quakerism, 297 questions, as theme, 101 “Question–What Are Your Influences, The” (Smith), 97–98 Rabinowitz, Sherrie, 313 racism and civil rights, 114, 145, 309, 339–40, 358–59, 367–68 “Radio Happenings,” 9–10 rage, as theme, 19, 94, 100–101, 145, 328, 367 Rainer, Yvonne, 11, 247 Rauschenberg, Robert: creative process, 121–22, 171; exhibitions, 8, 121, 171; influence of, 143; influences on, 10, 122, 172; interviews with, 122, 171–73; inventiveness, 171–72; materials, 122, 172, 173; musical collaborations, 10; real vs. unreal objects, 172; in studio, 172fig.; studio mates of, 122; style descriptions, 122, 204; Bed, 173; Combines, 122, 173; Untitled, 173 Ray Gun Theater (Oldenburg), 9, 159, 160 Read, Herbert, 22n29, 31 reading: as creative process analogy, 327; as viewer participation, 310, 311, 319 readymades aided, 73, 74 Readymades (Duchamp): concept descriptions, 4; exhibitions of, 8–9, 79; influence of, 119, 204; reviews and responses to, 4, 22n26; talks on, 72, 74; works of, 6, 9, 31, 72, 73fig., 172 Reagan, Ronald, 255 “Realistic Manifesto, The” (Gabo and Pevsner), 29 reality: art philosophies on, 36, 56, 71, 256, 257; Constructivist categories of, 56; fiction as part of, 351; sculptural renewal and achievement of, 42; simplicity for, 36 reason, 67, 243–44 reclamation projects: building, 16, 270–71, 306–8; land, 16, 268, 284–86, 285fig. recycled materials: acquisition methods, 78–80, 110, 122, 173, 371; aesthetic trends in, 4, 23n36, 28; assemblage construction of, 28, 50, 72, 74, 79, 80, 117, 128–29, 196–97; availability of, 173, 273–74, 367;

410

64214int.indd 410

22-05-12 4:47 AM

criticism of, 9; exhibitions featuring, 8–9, 79, 80; with history and narrative, 367; ordering of, 341; personification of, 111; philosophies on, 79; as practice, 326; for printmaking, 368; sculptural environments of, 80, 117, 128–29; valuelessness of, 28, 49 Reddin, Nancy, 119 Redwall (Goldsworthy), 306 regionality, 339–40 Reinhardt, Ad: panel discussions featuring, 9; style descriptions, 11, 202, 203; How to Look at Modern Art in America, xiii relief: criticism of, 209–10; as sculptural style, 3, 47, 77, 126–27, 174, 192, 206; specific art comparisons, 204, 206 religion, 277, 326, 376 “Remarks on My Sculpture” (Sandback), 263–65 Rembrandt, 235 Remembering (Ai Weiwei), 320, 321fig. Renaissance, 45–46, 61, 67, 156 repetition, symbolism of, 317 “Reply to a Question on Contemporary Art” (González), 54 Restany, Pierre, 274 rhetorical (term meaning), 342 Rice, Tamir, 339–40 Rice (Saar), 367fig., 368 Richards, Judith Olch, 257 Richier, Germaine, xviiin9, 6 Richter, Gerhard, 279 Rider (Duchamp-Villon), 4 Rift (Heizer), 292 Ritchie, Andrew Carnduff, xviiin9, 2–3, 4–5 Rivers, Larry, 176 road trips, 13–14, 15, 189, 190, 200 Rodchenko, Alexander, 11, 190, 209 Roden Crater (Turrell), 269–70, 299–300, 299fig. Rodin, Auguste: admiration for, 2, 75, 81; exhibitions, 20n7; influences on, 27; philosophies, 27, 33, 35; social consciousness, 19; style descriptions, 3, 27, 40, 61, 330; viewers’ roles, 330; Gates of Hell, 6; Study for The Walking Man, 34fig.; Walking Man, The (L’homme qui march), 34fig., 330, 332 “Rodin’s Conception of Art and Nature” (Rodin), 35 Roebling, John, 195, 252 Roman sculpture, 22n22, 41, 45 Rose, Barbara: artist questionnaires, 11; Artschwager’s art objectives, 194, 243; Bladen’s artist statement, 245; Flavin’s art description opposition, 242; influence of, 190; Minimalism discourses, 11–12; modern sculpture views, 208; Rauschenberg interviews with, 122, 171–73 Rosenquist, James, 180, 204 Rosing, Minik: Ice Watch, with Eliasson, 331fig. Rosso, Medardo, 3, 28, 39, 40, 44–46 Roszak, Theodore: architectural sculpture commissions, 21n17; art philosophies, 77; creative process, 93–94; early career, 5; exhibitions, 6, 76, 77; influences on, 7, 75, 77; painting vs. sculpture debate, 5; studios of, 94fig. Rothko, Mark, 76, 96, 189, 202, 203 Rothschild’s Liquor (Gates), 338, 339 Roy, Claude, 360 Ruby, Andreas, 330 Running Fence (Christo and Jeanne-Claude), 267, 275 Ruscha, Ed: Miracle, 262 Ruth Asawa: Life’s Work (exhibition), 107fig. Saar, Alison: artist’s statements, 366–68; early years, 366; exhibitions, 367fig.; influences on, 366–67, 368;

materials, 367, 368; printmaking, 368; style descriptions, 366; themes, 19, 367, 368; Arcade Suite, 368; Cotton, 367fig., 368; Haint Blue, 368; High Cotton series, 367–68, 367fig.; Indigo, 367fig., 368; Rice, 367fig., 368; Si J’etais Blanc, 366; Sugarcane, 367fig., 368; Tobacco, 367fig., 368 Saarinen, Eero, 21n17 Sabbatino, Mary, 326–28 Sachs, Tom: influences on, 369–71; themes, 19, 371; Prada Death Camp, 19, 369–71, 370fig. el-Salahi, Ibrahim, 277 Salon of 1846, 2, 175 Samsung Museum of Art, 343fig. “Samuel Wagstaff, Jr.: Talking with Tony Smith” (Wagstaff), 199–200 Sandback, Fred, 196–97, 263–65 Sand Child (Truitt), 236fig. Sandler, Irving, 5, 11 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 344n sanitation themes, 17, 191, 226–27fig., 228fig. Sartre, Jean-Paul, 76 Satie, Erik, 10, 11, 64, 66 scale, 254, 257, 294 Schubert, Franz, 185 Schwitters, Kurt: exhibitions, 8, 9, 72; influence of, 122, 173; Merzbau, 79 science, 35, 55–56, 137–38 sculptors, overview: common characteristics of, 30; creative process descriptions, 2; as painters, 5, 9; panel discussion inclusions, 5; requirements of, 128; solidarity and networking, 5; women and institutional underrepresentation, xv, xviiin9 sculptural consciousness, 16–17, 189, 200, 235, 313. See also environmental consciousness; politics; social consciousness sculpture, overview: architecture relationship with, 21n17, 213, 232, 240; artist’s relationship with, 236–37; characteristic requirements, 209–10; characteristics of, 1, 2, 3, 69–71, 78, 137, 376; comical definitions, xiii; criticism of, 2, 38–39, 175; critics’ promotion of, 21n22; development of modern, xiii–xiv, 1; Futurist renewal requirements for, 39–43; history of, 1–2, 5–6, 21n22; painting comparisons and debates, 2, 5, 9, 21n22, 38, 39, 45, 208–9; representational aspects of, 59–60; specific art comparisons to, 203–4; symposiums and panel discussions on, 4–5, 9; traditions views of, 95; viewer response goals of, 51, 78, 114, 115, 116, 169. See also painting-sculpture hybridity “Sculpture as Environment” (Ferber), 77, 95–96 Sculpture Center, 327 “Sculpture” (Moholy-Nagy), 59–61 Sculpture of the Twentieth Century (exhibition), xviiin9, 2–3, 4 “Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects, A” (Smithson), 14 Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees (Irwin and Weschler), 190 Segal, George, 25n65, 204 Seitz, William C., xviiin9, 8–9, 79, 80 self-referentiality, 252–53 Selz, Peter, xviiin9, 6 sensory deprivation experiments, 190, 269, 298–99 “Sentences” (LeWitt), 12 Sentinel (Truitt), 236fig. Serpentine Galleries, 273 Serra, Richard: creative process, 195, 251–53, 254–55; identity, 16; influences on, xiv, 7, 13, 195, 252; sculpture principles, 195, 216, 251, 253–54, 255; style descriptions, 195–96, 253; Tilted Arc, 195

411

64214int.indd 411

22-05-12 4:47 AM

Setting a Good Corner (Nauman), 259 7000 Oaks (Gonzalez-Foerster), 350 sexuality, 112, 119, 132–33 Shallow Spaces (Turrell), 269, 300 Shimamoto Shōtō, 78, 105 Shiraga Kazuo: art association memberships, 105; Challenge to the Mud, 78–79 Shrine of the Book (Kiesler), 125 sickness, as theme, 102 Sidney Janis Gallery, 159 signatures, artist’s, 67 Si J’etais Blanc (Saar), 366 silence, mystic of, 179–80 Silverthorne, Jeanne: ambiguity as work aspect, 18; artist’s statements, 372–74; creative process and authorship issues, 372, 374; exhibitions, 373fig.; materials, 372–73; themes, 18, 372; Big Grief, 373fig.; Blink, 373fig. site-adjusted art, 216, 254 site art: advocates for, 119; architectural, 195–96; assemblages, 197; categories for, 215–17; definition, 215; land ethics and location perceptions, 16, 282; Non-Site theories, 14, 267, 280, 353; sculptural environments, 77, 90–92, 91fig. See also Earthworks; Happenings; site-specific art site-conditioned/determined art, 216–17 site-dominant art, 216 Site/Non-Site (theory), 14, 267, 280, 353 site-specific art: advocates for, 119; architectural, 275–78, 311; building reclamation projects, 16, 270, 271, 306–8; challenges of, 253, 255; concept descriptions, 216, 264; creative process, 253; criticism of, 255; land ethics and location perceptions, 16, 282; land reclamation projects, 16, 268, 283–86, 285fig.; lightning fields, 268–69; location searches for, 13–16; nature projects using natural materials, 270–71; sociopolitical themes for, 275–78. See also Earthworks “situations,” 193, 241–42 Sixteen Americans (exhibition), 120fig., 121, 129–30, 130fig., 171n size determinations, 231 Sky Mound (Holt), 16, 268, 283, 284–85, 285fig. Skyspaces (Turrell), 269, 300 slavery, 358–59, 367–68 Slaves Ex-Slaves (Gates), 333 Smith, David: artists compared to, 80; art journals featuring, 21n20; art philosophies, 20n3; early career, 5, 77–78; exhibitions, 8; identity, 4, 16, 78; influence, value of, 78; influences on, 77, 97–98; outside workshop, 99fig.; painting/sculpture reciprocity, 5, 77; production process, 21n16; style descriptions, 21n17, 195, 209, 210, 252; symposium panel participation, 4, 77–78; “Cubi” series, 210; Hudson River Landscape, 99fig. Smith, Dick, 204 Smith, Kiki: ambiguity as work aspect, 18; art history theories, 1–2; artist’s statements, 375–76; creative process, 375–76; influences on, 376; interviews with, 375–76; Teaching Snakes I, 377fig. Smith, Tony: art philosophies, 189, 199–200; creative process, 375; influence of, 293; road trips and aesthetic consciousness, 15, 189, 200; specific art comparisons, 204; teaching positions, 200; Cigarette, 200fig. Smithson, Robert: artist associates, 268; artist’s statements, 267; art philosophies, 14, 16, 267–68, 281–82; environmental consciousness, 14; exhibitions, 267; film productions, 15; influence of, 323; influences on, 13; Site/Non-Site theories, 14,

267, 280, 353; site selection trips organized by, 13–14; Amarillo Ramp, 267; Asphalt Rundown, 15; Dead Tree, 350; Mono Lake Nonsite, 25n69; Museum of the Void, 14; Spiral Jetty, 16, 267 Snapshots from the City (Oldenburg), 159 social consciousness: art contributing to, 137, 219; as artist responsibility, 16–17, 342; Chinese cultural oppression, 17–18, 315, 317–22; consumerism, 19, 119, 369–70, 371; corruption, 17, 221; ecological issues, 14, 15, 19, 271, 283–86, 311, 331–32; maintenance themes, 17, 191, 222–25fig.; racism and civil rights, 114, 119, 145, 309, 339–40, 358–59, 367–68; sanitation themes, 17, 191, 226–27fig., 228fig.; social class critiques, 180–81; women’s issues, 118, 309. See also politics Socialist Realism, 221 Société Anonyme, 7 Society of Independent Artists, 31 Some Tales (Puryear), 355 So Sorry (exhibition), 320 Souvenir of the Breakfast in Fur (Oppenheim), 109 space: architecture vs. sculpture competition of, 255; art’s relationship in, 121, 164, 165–66; Conceptual art and determinations of, 231–32; Constructivist view of, 60; creative process and consideration of, 231–32; dance collaborations and kinetic set designs, 64, 66; definitions, 231; Futurist principles on, 40–41, 43; Gutai manifestos on creation of, 104; habitable, 307, 357–58; harmony and balance in, 53; light effects in, 298; as material, 327; materials defining, 171; movement experiments exploring, 329; multidisciplinary media defining, 193, 240, 241–42; of paintings, 202–3; pedestrian, 264–65; philosophies on, 3, 53–54, 76, 93; physical vs. social, 194, 243–44; scale and, 245; as sculptural quality, 69–70; sculpture defining, 76–77, 80, 95–96, 112, 254, 329–30; of specific objects, 201–7; transparency impact on, 106. See also environment(s) Space Division Constructions (Turrell), 269, 300 “specchio ardente, Lo” (Merz, Marisa), 134–36 “Specific Objects” (Judd), 12, 13, 189, 192, 201–7 spectators. See viewers Spector, Nancy, 352n Spiral Jetty Film (film), 15 Spiral Jetty (Smithson), 16, 267 Spoerri, Daniel, 258, 264 Stable Gallery, 122, 181fig. Stacked Oil Barrels and Dockside Packages (Christo and Jeanne-Claude), 275 Stadium (Nauman), 258 Staircase (Nauman), 258 stance, as sculptural element, 80, 112 Stankiewicz, Richard, 8, 79, 80, 111 Staritsky, Anna, 274 Stars (artist collective), 316 Stars (Oldenburg), 159–60 Steinberg, Leo, 1, 2, 3–4, 175 Stella, Frank, 11, 143, 202, 204, 206, 207 Stevenson, Bryan, 339 Steyerl, Hito, 340 Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 274 Stoney Island Arts Bank, 338 Store, The (Oldenburg), 120, 159 Store Days II (Oldenburg), 159 Storr, Robert, 18, 349–53 Strauss, David Levi, 18, 354–61, 363 Structural Cuts (Turrell), 300 struggle and strife, 4–5, 79, 94 Study for The Walking Man (Rodin), 34fig. Study of Perspective series (Ai Weiwei), 318

412

64214int.indd 412

22-05-12 4:47 AM

stuffed toys, 149–51 “Substance Substitute” (McCarthy), 119, 147–48 suffering, 100, 102, 182, 365 Sugarcane (Saar), 367fig., 368 Sugarman, George, 23n38, 263 Sumi Yasuo, 78, 105 Sunken Garden (Chase Manhattan Bank) (Noguchi), 77, 91fig., 92 Sun Tunnels (Holt), 15, 268, 285 Surfaces d’Empaquetage (Christo), 273 Surrealism: artists of, 75, 79, 142–43; Concrete artworks as, 68; criticism of, 9; drawing games, 79; exhibitions featuring, 3, 8; as influence, 30, 31, 142, 200; movements in protest of, 172–73 Sweeney, James Johnson, xiv, 1, 75, 81–82 Sydney Opera House, 351–52 Symbolism, 156 symposia, 4–5, 9 synthesis, spirit of, 63 System of Mineralogy, A (Dwight), 292 Szeemann, Harald, 119, 135, 140–44, 195, 267 Table with Pink Tablecloth (Artschwager), 193–94 Tall Figure (Giacometti), 6 Tanaka Atsuko, 78, 105 Tapié, Michel, 104 Target paintings (Johns), 122 Târgu Jiu sculptural ensemble (Brancusi), 77 Tate Modern, 331fig. Tatlin, Vladimir: influence of, 190, 193; influences on, 29, 30; philosophies, 29–30, 57–58; sculptural works memorializing, 241; style descriptions, 11, 29, 209; Monument to the Third International, 193, 253 Teaching Snakes I (Smith, Kiki), 337fig. “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture” (Boccioni), 28, 38–43 technium, 16, 26n76 Technological Reliquaries (Thek), 118 technology: artists’ use of, 15–16, 123, 183–86; authorship vs., 185; computer, 185; criticism of, 19, 27, 33, 35, 45, 117, 125, 126; Earthworks production process, 15; environmental concerns and, 283–84; exhibitions with theme of, 15–16; Futurist comparisons, 42; picture telephones and morality issues, 184; scanning pattern, 184; and time, 274 telephones, picture, 184 Texte Zur Kunst (magazine), 219–21 theanyspacewhatever (exhibition), 352n Theaster Gates: Every Square Needs a Circle (exhibition), 333–41, 340fig. Thek, Paul: art philosophies, 140; creative process, 141–42; exhibitions, 118–19, 141, 142; imagery symbolism, 140–41; influences on, 143; interviews with, 140–44; lifestyle descriptions, 118; style descriptions, 11, 118, 142–43; theatrical roles, 143–44; themes, 118, 140, 141; Ark, Pyramid, 119; Technological Reliquaries, 118; Tomb, The, 140 theories, views on, 64, 280 This Mortal Coil (Puryear), 360–61 Thompson, D’Arcy Wentworth, 31, 79, 375 “Thoughts about Prada Death Camp” (Sachs), 19, 369–71 “Thousand Word: Bruce Nauman Talks about Mapping the Studio, A” (Auping), 258–62 “Three American Painters” (Fried), 209n Tiananmen Square protest, 317 Tiger’s Eye (journal), 5, 21n20 Tilted Arc (Serra), 195 time, 108, 270, 271, 310–211, 374 Titian, 235 Tobacco (Saar), 367fig., 368

Toison d’or, La (Golden Fleece) (Huyghe), 350, 351 Tomb, The (Thek), 140 Tominaga Sōchi, 104 Tomkins, Calvin, 300 Topo (Lin), 309 Torres-García, Joaquín, 8, 30, 62–63 total art, 11, 120, 156–58 Touch Sanitation Performance (Ukeles), 228fig. touch (sense), 23n44, 35, 45, 335 “Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey, A” (Smithson), 13 Tours, 13–16 Track Painting (Heizer), 292, 293 Transparencies (Lipchitz), 75 transparency, 79, 84, 102, 106, 134 Tre alberti intrecciati (Penone), 15 Tree, A Yam Festival (Kaprow), 25n65 trees, 270, 301–3, 351–52 Truitt, Anne: artist colony residences, 193, 236–37; artistic expression, 192; artist’s journey metaphors, 192, 235; artist’s statements, 11; exhibitions, 192; influences on, 11; journal excerpts, 235–37; notebooks and writings of, 192–93; specific art comparisons, 204; studios of, 236fig.; style descriptions, 192; Amica, 236fig.; Come Unto These Yellow Sands, 236fig.; Pilgrim, Nicea, 236fig.; Portal, 236fig.; Sand Child, 236fig.; Sentinel, 236fig. Tuchman, Maurice, 26n74, 190 Tucker, Marcia, 13, 24–25n60 Tu m’ (Duchamp), 9 Turrell, James: creative process, 300; early years, 296–97; environmental consciousness, 14; interviews with, 296–300; Light and Space movement, 297–98; in Los Angeles, 297; sensory deprivation experiments, 190, 269, 298–99; site selection trips, 16; studios of, 298; style descriptions, 3, 269, 297–98; Cross Corner and Single Wall Projections, 269; Projection Pieces, 300; Roden Crater, 269–70, 299–300, 299fig.; Shallow Spaces, 269, 300; Skyspaces, 269, 300; Space Division Constructions, 269, 300; Structural Cuts, 300 Tuttle, Richard, 11, 13, 196, 256–57 Ukeles, Mierle Laderman: artist in residencies, 191; environmental consciousness, 16; style descriptions, 191; themes, 17, 191; MANIFESTO FOR MAINTENANCE ART 1969!, 17, 191, 222–25figs.; Touch Sanitation Performance, 228fig.; WHY SANITATION CAN BE USED AS A MODEL FOR PUBLIC ART, 119, 226–27fig. Umbrellas, Japan-USA, The (Christo and JeanneClaude), 267 unconscious, the, 18, 111, 248, 266, 325 Unconsoled, The (Ishiguro Kazuo), 327 Understanding Media (McLuhan), 16 “Unit One” (Moore), 69–71 unity: light contributing to, 28, 44; requirements of, 50, 62, 63, 191, 202, 206, 207; tradition sculpture and, 45 Untitled (Artschwager), 194 “Untitled” (Gonzalez-Torres), 343fig. Untitled (Huyghe), 350, 352fig. Untitled (Rauschenberg), 173 “Untitled Statement” (Haacke), 219 urban renewal projects, 284 Urinal (Duchamp), 9 Usuyuki (Johns), 176 Valentin, Curt, 2, 20n7, 75, 76 Van der Marck, Jan, 193, 241–42

413

64214int.indd 413

22-05-12 4:47 AM

Vander Weg, Kara, 269, 291–95 Vantongerloo, Georges, 190, 209 Varese Portal Room (Irwin), 217fig. Velázquez, Diego: Infanta, 46 Velvet Underground, 11 Venice Biennale, 321, 349 Vie des forms, La (Focillon), 31 Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Lin), 271, 309, 310, 311 viewers (spectators): artists’ understanding of, as intended audience, 120; categories of, 120, 153–54; common expectations of, 221; craft figures and response of, 150; embodied experiences of, 330, 332; environment site challenges, 14; expectations of, 54; Happenings and roles of, 10, 120; interpretive roles, 178, 220–21; kinetic compulsion and aesthetic experiences of, 94, 95–96; participatory roles of, 85, 120, 121, 152, 153, 167–69, 190, 265, 271, 309, 351–52, 353; total art and responsibility of, 158 Views Through a Sand Dune (Holt), 283 Viso, Olga, 197 Visser, Martin, 276 Vitalism, 7, 22n29, 31, 70, 80 Volpe, Stefan, 173 Von Rydingsvard, Ursula: artistic motivation, xiv, 364–65; Droga, 365fig. voyeurism, 78, 100, 102 Waldberg, Paul, 110 Waldorf Panels on Sculpture, 5, 9 Walker, Kara: exhibitions and exhibits, 358; reviews, 358; style and theme descriptions, 358; Confederate Prisoners Being Conducted from Jonesborough to Atlanta, 358–59; Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 358; Pack-Mules in the Mountains, 359 Walker Art Center, 336 walking: as sculpting in space, 329; as sculptural performance component, 15, 45, 270, 303, 304, 305, 307; site conditioned/determined requirements of, 216; as viewer response, 85, 95, 168, 196, 216, 254, 288, 330 Walking Man (L’homme qui march) (Rodin), 34fig., 330, 332 Wall, The (Christo and Jeanne-Claude), 267 Wall Drawing #1268: Scribbles: Staircase (AKAG) (LeWitt), 231fig. Wang Fen, 321 Ward, Eleanor, 76, 122 Warhol, Andy: commercialism, 254; criticism of, 180; environmental installations, 11; influences on, 13; quotes, 318; style descriptions, 11, 204; women artist associates, 180; Campbell’s Soup Cans, 317; Marilyn Monroe, 317

Washington, Booker T., 358 Wave Field (Lin), 309 Wax Impressions of Knees of Five Famous Artists (Nauman), 196 “We Are Only Human Sculptors: Two Text Pages Describing Our Position” (Gilbert & George), 121, 170 “weight” (Hamilton), 346–48 Weschler, Lawrence, 190 What Is Art? (Beuys), 137–39 Wheeler, Doug, 269 Where the Heart Is (Puryear), 357 white (color), 129–30 White Cover Book, The (Ai Weiwei), 318 Whitney Museum of American Art, 24–25n60, 77, 192, 293, 358 “Why Do I Make Art” (Von Rydingsvard), 364–65 “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists” (Nochlin), xv “Why Is Sculpture Boring” (Baudelaire), 2, 175 WHY SANITATION CAN BE USED AS A MODEL FOR PUBLIC ART (Ukeles), 119, 226–27fig. “Why Sanitation Can Be Used as a Model for Public Art” (Ukeles), 119, 226–27fig. “Will to Construct, The” (Torres-García), 62–63 Wilson, Robert, 143–44 women artists and sculptors, xv, 179–80. See also specific names of women Women’s Table (Lin), 271, 309, 310 Wool, Christopher, 345 “Words after the Fact” (Long), 304–5 “Work is Justification for the Excuse” (Tuttle), 256–57 Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, The (Benjamin), 344 Wortz, Edward, 190, 269, 299 Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin (Christo and JeanneClaude), 267, 276 Yaddo artists’ colony, 193, 236–37 Yale University, 77, 90–91, 309 Yalkut, Jud, 183 Yamazaki Tsuruko, 78, 105 Yara (Lipchitz), 75 Yard (Kaprow), 11, 157fig. Yoshida Toshio, 78, 105 Yoshihara Jirō, 78, 103–5 Young, La Monte, 11 Young-Hoffman Gallery, 356 Zerbib Gallery, 110

414

64214int.indd 414

22-05-12 4:47 AM

Founded in 1893,

University of California Press publishes bold, progressive books and journals on topics in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences—with a focus on social justice issues—that inspire thought and action among readers worldwide. The UC Press Foundation raises funds to uphold the press’s vital role as an independent, nonprofit publisher, and receives philanthropic support from a wide range of individuals and institutions—and from committed readers like you. To learn more, visit ucpress.edu/supportus.

64214int.indd 415

22-05-12 4:47 AM