On Site-Specificity: A Genealogy Público

Webb, Emily Taub (2010)

Permanent URL: https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/ks65hc46z?locale=pt-BR
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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 20

CHAPTER 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 84

Locating 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" 130

Introducing 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 185

CONCLUSION: 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 206

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