Recent three-dimensional work with its emphasis on a wide range of actual materials and locating the making with possibilities of behaving or acting on the material in relation to (rather than in control of) its existential properties brings very clearly into focus that art making is a distinct form of behavior. This is underlined even more now that the premises of making shift from forming toward stating. Around the beginning of the ‘60s the problem presented itself as to what alternatives could be found to the Abstract Expressionist mode of arranging. The Minimal presented a powerful solution: construct instead of arrange. Just as that solution can be framed in terms of an opposition (arrange/build) so can the present shift be framed dialectically: don’t build . . . but what? Drop, hang, lean, in short act. If for the static noun of “form” is substituted the dynamic verb of “act” in the priority of making, a dialectical formulation has been made. What has been underlined by recent work in the unconstructed mode is that since no two materials have the same existential properties, there is no single type of act that can easily structure one’s approach to various materials. Of course the number of possibilities for the basic kinds of interactions with materials are limited and processes do tend to become forms that can be extrapolated from one material interaction to another. But what is clear in some recent work is that materials are not so much being brought into alignment with static a priori forms as that the material is being probed for openings that allow the artist a behavioristic access. What ties a lot of work together is its sharing of the “automated” step in the making process which has been enlisted as a powerful ally in the recovery of means or time and in increasing the coherence of the making phase itself.
Not only in plastic art but in art that specifically exists in time there have been recent moves made to reduce that existential gap between the studio preparation and the formal presentation. Some theater and dance work now brings rehearsal and literal learning sessions for the performers into the public presentation. One could cite other instances in film and music where the making process is not behind the scenes but is the very substance of the work.
Peckham speaks of the necessity of preserving a “psychic” insulation within which the strain of disorienting art moves can be made.¹⁴ Studios, galleries, museums, and concert halls all function as insulated settings for such experience. Much recent art that is being discussed does not require a studio and some recent plastic art does not even fit inside museums. In contrast to the indoor urban art of the ‘60s much present work gets more and more beyond studios and even factories. As ends and means are more unified, as process becomes part of the work instead of prior to it, one is enabled to engage more directly with the world in art making because forming is moved further into the presentation. The necessary “psychic insulation” is within one’s head.
1. Morse Peckham, Man’s Rage for Chaos, Schocken, New York, 1967.
2. George Kubler, “Machu Picchu,” Perspecta 6, 1960.
3. Annette Michelson, “Robert Morris,” The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Garamond/Pridemark Press, Baltimore, Md., p. 23.
4. Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology, Hill and Wang, New York, 1967, p. 54.
5. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, Philosophical Library, New York, 1959, p. 133.
6. Anton Ehrenzweig, The Hidden Order of Art, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967, p. 220.
7. Peckham, Ibid., p. 321
8. De Saussure, Ibid., p. 123.
9. Marcel Duchamp, “The Creative Act,” Robert Lebel, Marcel Duchamp, Trianon Press, Paris, 1959, p. 77.
10. No art writing can avoid carrying some political load due to the structure of the art community—i.e., the general silence of artists in print, the economics and psychology of elitist art which identifies quality with scarcity, a tendency for those who support art to be able to hear about it better than see it. Such an ambience tends to elevate (reduce?) criticism to a form of power broking. I do not wish to ignore individuals relevant to the issues here but I want to underline the fact that the constructs presented are my own. For me to cite an established artist as an example of a structure that goes beyond his own personal work does not involve the presumption of speaking for him, promoting him, or collecting him as a follower. Obviously the ideas discussed in this article are grounded in my own work as well as in those I cite as examples. This preempts me as an artist from citing recent work by younger artists from citing recent work by younger artists in the interest of speaking more to issues than for individuals.
11. Bruno Bearzi, Donatello, San Ludovico, Wildenstein, New York, n.d. (1948), p. 27.
12. Robert Morris, “Beyond Objects,” Artforum, Vol. VII, No. 7, April, 1969.
13. Robert Morris, “Notes on Sculpture, Part II,” Artforum, Vol. V, No. 2, October 1966.
14. Peckham, Ibid., p. 82.
