La sculpture comme lieu : mise en théorie et mise en oeuvre dans le travail de Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Richard Serra et Robert Smithson entre 1966 et 1973
(2010)
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- Authors
- Supervisors
- Dekoninck, Ralph
- Abstract
- (en) The main goal of this doctoral dissertation is the study of the concept of "place" in the field of sculpture in the late 1960s and early 1970s. While, from a historiographic point of view, this concept usually refers to artistic practices challenging the institutional, social or political dimension of a site – that is, challenging the principle of self-referentiality characteristic of the modernist condition of sculpture –, we have put forth the hypothesis that the critical dimension of the concept of « place » laid elsewhere : a critical response to the modernist sculptural model. Indeed, the historic study of the production of the artists associated with the emergence of this issue has lead to the conclusion that this concept critically addressed the prevalence of vision and its immediacy postulated by the modernist theory when experiencing a sculpture. More precisely, these artists reacted to the nature of the sculptural space implied by these two assumptions. That is, a space apprehended immediatelly in all its dimensions by the omniscient gaze of the viewer. A space in which the viewer himself did not seem to be involved. A modernist sculpture should reveal itself to the viewer through an act of immediate visual intuition. But these artists shared the necessity to remind of the incomplete and lacunar nature of the viewer's gaze because of the peculiar point of view and the inherence to the space imposed to him by his own body. That is to say that the formal content of a sculpture is not univocal, but is determined by the contingent and ever changing mode by which the viewer apprehend it. Therefore, according to them, one could not consider a sculpture regardless of how it presents itself to the viewer. We then showed how, at the time, this issue turned into or was articulated around the question of the point of view, in practice as well as in theory. While seeking to prevent sculptures from being perceptible immediately, as if their content preceded their concrete and physical experience, artists like Morris, Smithson, Andre and Serra developed sculptural strategies making it necessary to cast different glances from different points of view and to move physically in order to apprehend the whole piece. Ultimately, what was referred to as « place » was the cohesion and the unity of the sculptural space experienced by the viewer through a complex visual perceptions and physical movements. The first chapter of this dissertation deals with the critical response adressed by Minimal art to modernism. By comparing Michael Fried's reflections on sculpture on the one hand with Morris's on the other hand, what is at stake is the differences between the experience of sculpture and the role of spectator postulated respectively by modernism and minimalism. The second chapter shows how Morris, Serra and Smithson simultaneously reformulated the issue of sculpture thanks to a dialectic between the ground point of view and the plan view. The latter symbolizes the ideal modernist point of view giving immediate access to the whole work. In the third and last chapter, we then showed that the conceptualization of the « place » by Andre was based on the same premises : to challenge the prevalence of vision and the uniqueness of its act. For Andre, the sculpture becomes a place when it leads the viewer to experience the cohesion of an area created by the sculpture thanks to the spatial links bound with its site. Quotes by Morris, Serra, Smithson and Heizer indicate that they understood this concept in this very sense. That is the reason why this concept could also be used to analyze the functioning of their own earthworks.
- Affiliations
Citations
Lejeune, A. (2010). La sculpture comme lieu : mise en théorie et mise en oeuvre dans le travail de Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Richard Serra et Robert Smithson entre 1966 et 1973. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/93952