Sol Lewitt Wall Drawing Instructions

"The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible."

1 of 7

"The main actor in the total installation, the main center toward which everything is addressed, for which everything is intended, is the viewer."

"The work itself has a complete circle of meaning and counterpoint. And without your involvement as a viewer, there is no story."

3 of 7

"Just as the development of Earth art and Installation art stemmed from the idea of taking art out of the galleries, the basis of my involvement with public art is a continuation of wall drawings."

4 of 7

"I like to take man-made objects and push them to the point where they almost lose their reference, so that they become something else, take on other alliances."

"Aesthetic autonomy and the public sphere in Installation art are, in fact, inseparable."

"I didn't want a completely passive viewer. Art means too much to me. To be able to articulate something visually is really an important thing. I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn't walk away; he would giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful."

7 of 7

Summary of Installation Art

Installation art is a term generally used to describe artwork located in three-dimensional interior space as the word "install" means putting something inside of something else. It is often site-specific - designed to have a particular relationship, whether temporary or permanent, with its spatial environment on an architectural, conceptual, or social level. It also creates a high level of intimacy between itself and the viewer as it exists not as a precious object to be merely looked at but as a presence within the overall context of its container whether that is a building, museum, or designated room. Artworks are meant to evoke a mood or a feeling, and as such ask for a commitment from the viewer. The movement remains separate from its similar forms such as Land art, Intervention art, and Public art yet there are often overlaps between them. The ideas behind a piece of Installation art, and the responses it elicits, tend to be more important than the quality of its medium or technical merit. Artists champion this genre for its potential to transform the art world by surprising audiences and engaging viewers in new ways.

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

• Installation art champions a shift in focus from what art visually represents to what it communicates. Installation artists are less focused on presenting an aesthetically pleasing object to viewers as they are enfolding that viewer into an environment or set of systems of their own creation. Tweaking the subjective perception of the viewer is the artist's desired outcome. Pieces belonging to this movement resonate with our own human experiences - like us they exist within, and are always in conversation with, their lived environments.
• Installation artists are preoccupied with making art a less isolated concept - by installing work beyond the galleries and museums and by using more utilitarian components such as found objects, industrial and everyday items, commonplace materials, and technologies of the populous. This movement has broadened the scope of what qualifies as artwork.
• Because Installation art is especially difficult to collect and sell, this movement pushes against the commodification of art, thereby defying the traditional mechanisms used to determine the value of artworks.
• Attempts to sell installations have raised questions about the process of dismantling and reinstalling work that was conceived for a particular location, and how that might or might not decrease the original meaning and value. It has also provoked dialogue within the art and archival communities about whether or not a temporary piece might be reconstructed and sold in the guise of its original, or whether a non-permanent piece may be recreated ad infinitum to perpetuate its existence.

Overview of Installation Art

"I was totally interested in the physical world and would always be making something," Rachel Whiteread said of her childhood, "Playing around with bits and pieces, changing them from one thing into another," became the early inspiration for her installation work.

Key Artists

• 

  The French artist Marcel Duchamp was an instrumental figure in the avant-garde art worlds of Paris and New York. Moving through Dada, Surrealism, readymades, sculpture, and installation, his work involves conceptual play and an implicit attack on bourgeois art sensibilities.

• 

  Judy Chicago is an American feminist artist and author. Originally associated with the Minimalist movement of the 1960s, Chicago soon abandoned this in favor of creating content-based art. Her most famous work to date is the installation piece The Dinner Party (1974-79), an homage to women's history.

• 

  Damien Hirst is a British installation and conceptual artist, and in the 1980s was a founding member of the Young British Artists (YBAs). His best known work is Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), comprised of a dead tiger shark suspended in a vitrine of formaldehyde.

• 

  Sol LeWitt was an American artist commonly associated with the Minimalist and Conceptual movements. He rose to prominence in the 1960s with the likes of Rauschenberg, Johns and Stella, and his work was included in the famous 1966 exhibit Primary Structures at the Jewish Museum. LeWitt's art often employed simple geometric forms and archetypal symbols, and he worked in a variety of media but was most interested in the idea behind the artwork.

• 

  Nam June Paik worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the first video artist. Paik is credited with coining the term "information superhighway" and was known for making robots out of television sets.

• 

  Tracey Emin is a British artist and a member of the famed YBA's (Young British Artists). She is best known for her provocative and sexually-charged works, often in the form of personal traumatic events exhibited in an unapologeticly and willfully to the public.

• 

  Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese multimedia artist, best-known for her awe-inspiring and captivating installations of polka dots and psychedelic colors. Through her installations, poetry, paintings, performances, and film she importantly contributed to many of the post-war art movements.

• 

  Richard Serra is an American Process and Minimalist artist. His sculptures have ranged from hurled drips of molten lead to gigantic steel pieces installed in public places.

• 

  Tanning is an American painter and poet heavily influenced by Duchamp, Ray, Tanguy and perhaps most of all Max Ernst, her former husband, Tanning created a number of paintings in the 1940s that are now considered seminal to the Surrealist movement, including her dream-like self-portrait Birthday.

• 

  Ai Weiwei is a Chinese Conceptual artist and activist. His pieces explore many themes, including history, society, human rights, and the freedom of speech. Weiwei's open critique of the Chinese government has caused him many problems with Chinese authorities and challenged the establishment in an epic way.

• 

  Jean Tinguely is best known for his sculptural machines, known as metamechanics, that were made in the Dada tradition. His art often satirized the mindless overproduction of material goods in advanced industrial society.

• 

  Niki de Saint Phalle explored the various roles and representations of women in society. Her innovative use of found objects, unconventional materials, natural environments, graphic aesthetics, and assemblage in her art made her a prominent figure of 1960s Nouveau Realisme.

• 

  Edward Kienholz was an American installation artist and sculptor, frequently associated with the California-based Funk art movement. His work, which explores issues of sexual exploitation, abuse of political power, racism, and religion, is known for its highly critical stance on modern culture and society.

Do Not Miss

• 

  Conceptual art describes an influential movement that first emerged in the mid-1960s and prized ideas over the formal or visual components of traditional works of art. The artists often challenged old concepts such as beauty and quality; they also questioned the conventional means by which the public consumed art; and they rejected the conventional art object in favor of diverse mediums, ranging from maps and diagrams to texts and videos.

• 

  Post-Minimalism refers to a range of art practices that emerged in the wake of Minimalism in the late 1960s, such as Body art, Performance, Process art, Site-Specific art, and aspects of Conceptual art. Some artists created art objects that do not have the representational function of traditional sculpture, objects that often have a strong material presence; others reacted against Minimalism's impersonality, and reintroduced emotionally expressive qualities.

• 

  Video art is a medium that employs moving images of various types, but often contains no narrative, characters or discernible storyline. Not to be confused with, for example, the experimental film or cinema, Video art first developed in the 1960s further avant-garde movements such as Performance, Intallation, and Feminist art.

Important Art and Artists of Installation Art

Étant donnés (1966)

Artist: Marcel Duchamp

Étant donnés was one of the first works to set up a specific and controlled viewing environment for audiences, which today remains a central tenet to Installation art. Duchamp surprised the art world with this three-dimensional tableau, since most believed he had decidedly retreated from art-making almost a quarter century before this, his final piece, was revealed.

The piece was described by the artist Jasper Johns as "the strangest work of art in any museum." At the time, it was. Imagine peering through two peepholes in a wooden door to find a reclining cast of a nude woman in the forefront of a lusciously painted landscape. By crafting an experience of voyeurism, rather than simply showing a traditional nude painting on the wall, Duchamp forced the viewer into a sense of complicity. Only one person at a time could peek in, making this a very enveloping experience and creating an intimate encounter with the work's enigmatic inhabitant.

The Dinner Party (1974-79)

Artist: Judy Chicago

The Dinner Party, an installation artwork that has become an icon of Feminist art, consists of a large triangular table adorned as a ceremonial banquet, with 39 place settings, each honoring an important woman. Each setting comprises embroidered runners, gold eating utensils, and porcelain plates that unapologetically resemble the female vulva and that vary in motif based on each specific honoree. The list of honorees includes, among others Sacajawea, Virginia Woolf, and the goddess Kali. The names of another 999 women are inscribed in gold on the white floor beneath the banquet table.

By creating this emulation of an event that audience members could easily relate to -the honorary dinner - and by designing the piece in a triangular fashion that would promote many people walking around and reviewing the place settings simultaneously, the artist sparked dialogue about these women who had been under-documented in history. Viewing the piece became an event in itself. By delivering her message through a three-dimensional, physical piece rather than a written manifesto or painted tableau, she proved the power in the presence signature to Installation art.

Wall Drawing #260, On Black Walls, All Two-Part Combinations of White Arcs from Corners and Sides, and White Straight, Not-Straight, and Broken Lines (1975)

Artist: Sol LeWitt

Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawing #260 is one among hundreds of wall drawings started in 1969, which the artist continued to produce throughout his prolific career. Not only would LeWitt create a drawing for one specific location, he would then maintain detailed instructions on its composition so that others could duplicate it in other spaces going forward, even after his death. Even if LeWitt's Wall Drawings are ephemeral and endlessly replicated, the idea behind their initial conception lives on undiluted.

This seminal line of work inaugurated a new relationship between drawing and architectural spaces, furthering Installation art's site-specificity. By claiming entire walls, LeWitt's drawings responded to the spaces they occupied and enclosed viewers in work that alternated between soothing symmetry and dazzling randomness.

These drawings were also radical inclusions into the Installation art canon because they challenged the preciousness and permanence that is expected from fine art. They are birthed in conceptualism and carried out with simple tools. They are not confined to the originating artists' hand and they can be duplicated in multiple settings ad infinitum.

Useful Resources on Installation Art

Content compiled and written by Alicia López

Edited and revised, with Summary and Accomplishments added by Kimberly Nichols

"Installation Art Movement Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Alicia López
Edited and revised, with Summary and Accomplishments added by Kimberly Nichols
Available from:
First published on 15 Jun 2017. Updated and modified regularly
[Accessed ]

Sol Lewitt Wall Drawing Instructions

Source: https://www.theartstory.org/movement/installation-art/

Posted by: cochranhaustrand.blogspot.com

Share this post