On Site-Specificity: A Genealogy Público
Webb, Emily Taub (2010)
Abstract
This dissertation provides the first historicized reconstruction
of the initial development
of site-specific art by focusing on art production, exhibition, and
criticism from 1967-
1969. Reacting to minimalist art and challenging the modernist
paradigm of a timeless
and placeless sculpture, artists began to create works that
responded to, and remained
linked to, their individual locations. Siting an artwork came to
entail more than choosing
its location; for creators of process art, conceptual art, and land
art, site emerged as an
essential problem of artistic conception.
In structuring my analysis of the extensive and diverse body of
works described as site-
specific, I locate a set of terms that appears essential to a range
of artistic practices and
their critical reception, notably scale, context, space, place, and
situation. Furthermore, I
identify distinct iterations of the relationship between an artwork
and its site: physical,
conceptual, and social.
Devoting a chapter to each year's production, I trace the
progression from the physical
and oftentimes superficial association between a work and its
location towards a more
complete and complex site-specificity in which an artwork remains
tied to its site in
physical form, conceptual formulation and social function.
Presenting several
unconventional shows from 1967, Chapter One focuses on the role of
exhibition
organizers in encouraging the production of artworks not suited to
the gallery space and
examines the significance of scale and context for the development
of site-specificity.
Chapter Two explores the artistic and curatorial turn to
alternative sites in 1968 and
distinguishes between the general concern for space and the
specific revelation of place
in artworks created for two related exhibitions on college
campuses. Chapter Three
defines the term situation and introduces the significance of
additional circumstances
surrounding an artwork - like time and climate - that factor into
its final form. The 1969
museum exhibition to first canonize earth art serves as the
discussion's focus.
This dissertation ultimately provides the first close look at
the early years of site-
specificity's development, offers a framework through which to
closely examine it,
argues for the involvement of artists, curators, and critics alike,
and reveals its unsettled
nature.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION: SITUATING SITE-SPECIFICITY 1
The Discourse of Site-Specificity 3
Prefiguring Site-Specificity: The Development of Installation in American
Art of the 1960s 20CHAPTER ONE: 1967: "BUILD THE BIG THING AND GO SEE IT" 29
Exploding Scale 31
Exposing Context: Thematic Framework and Physical Environment 43 Engaging Place 54
Revealing Place 65
CHAPTER TWO: 1968: "PLACING AS A VERB AS WELL AS A NOUN" 72
Confronting Space: Making the Invisible Visible 76
Differentiating Space and Place 84Locating Place: Physical Site and Social Function 86
Alternative Siting Introduced 100
Alternative Siting Examined: Out into the World 104
Alternative Siting Examined: Expanding the Gallery System 119
CHAPTER THREE: 1969: "THE TERRESTRIAL STUDIO" 130Introducing the Element of Time: Site versus Situation 133
Investigating the Relationship between Time and Place 142
Conceiving "Earth Art" 143
Executing "Earth Art" 145
Exhibiting "Earth Art": The Works on View 149
Robert Morris 154
Hans Haacke 154
Dennis Oppenheim 162
Robert Smithson 169
Framing "Earth Art": A Shared Set of Terms 179
The Persistence of Time and Space 185CONCLUSION: NEW DIRECTIONS FOR SITE-SPECIFIC ART 193
"New York - Nevada" - The Two Sites of Double Negative 193
Defining Site-Specificity 200
On the Question of Permanence 202
WORKS CITED 206About this Dissertation
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