*Laocoon- Gotthold Ephriam Lessing
An essay upon the limits of painting and poetry, Noonday Press, New York, 1957
-Visual arts are static, unlike poetry that slowly reveals a narrative. A sculpture is physical and you can perceive it in an instant. Sculpture is separate from other media, such as poetry that deals with time.
-identifies sculpture with the idea of monument. It is symbolical.
*Bronze equestrian statue of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, Piazza del Campidoglio, Rome.
-She claimed that the sculpture served to link the government, which met in the surrounding buildings to the government of ancient Rome.
-Krauss notes “Because they function in relation to the logic of representation and marking, sculptures are normally figurative and vertical, their pedestals an important part of their structure, as they mediate between the actual site and representational sign”
*Auguste Rodin (different versions of) Monument to Balzac, 1891.
-Numerous versions. No original and the creator has made no real attempt to create s huge likeness.depiction of Balzac.
-More individualistic, deemed a failure at the time. Was a commission but was thought to say more about the artist and his art practise.
*1891- Sculptures began to change- traditional forms were lost.
*Constantin Brancusi, The Beginning of the World, 1920.
and The Cock, 1924
-Extreme example- closed down, self contained
-sculpture and plinth merge and inform one another. Pared down- very loose representation.
*Pablo Picasso, Guitar, 1914
-Rather than being self-contained and enclosed in one skin it was multi-part constructions. Cubism brought this idea of using multi-parts.
*Julio Gonzalez, Monsieur Cactus, 1939 and Naum Gabo, Head No. 2 1916, enlarged version 1964 are examples of this.
*Anthony Caro, Early One Morning, 1962
and Sun Feast 1969-70
-Drew upon cubist structure. All different elements of structure held in relation with one another.
-There is a sense of different sculptural elements joined, but spaces- a senses of empty paces within the elements.
*Specialised environments were created known as 'white cube' galleries. Uniform, white spaces where art can be shown under controlled lighting. Bare minimum in the room and every reference to the outside has been closed down.
-Within post-war America 'White Cube' became the used format. A uniform white wall is something we can set aside and focus upon the artwork.
*Brian Doherty 'Inside the White Gallery'. The art is isolated and distributed within a space that 'codes' them as art. Eg. Urinal by Duchamp
-These art objects seem to exist out of time- atmosphere and focused concentration.
-An early example os the Museum of Art in New York and is a format we have used up to the present day.
*Kenneth Noland, Pan 1969
* Jules Olitski, Lysander-1, 1970
-Both of these show a range of colour rather than an actual image. Still retains a sense of pictorial illusion- optical third dimension and indeterminate colour field.
*Donald Judd, Untitled 1968
-This sculpture is independent from it's context. 3D makes the space surrounding the piece part of the experience.
-It is suspended on the wall, linear and with a feeling of depth. Does not engage with colour field, but just bluntness of metal.
-Judd did not call himself a sculptor but an object maker.
*Michael Fried “Art and Objecthood”, in Art and Objecthood, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press)
-Fried claimed that the work of Anthony Caro suspended its objecthood by marrying “illusion and structural obviousness
- Fried argued that minimalist artworks were theatrical. Through this term he sought to draw attention to how minimalist works confronted the beholder with their physical presence, whilst emphasising, in contrast, to the instantaneous and entire presence of modernist art.
-He also argued that encounters with minimalist works were impoverished because they went on and on indefinitely, offering no point of culmination.
*Modernist work. Does not even give the sculptures a context. What is in the room that is not really the room?
-Not architecture, but not sculpture, it is sat somewhere between the two.
- Several different cuboid forms engaging with the gallery in different ways.
*Robert Morris, Mirrored Cubes 1965/71
-Work copies cuboid shape of gallery and viewers through use of mirrors. Viewers have three experiences- own body, walls and the piece.
*Michael Asher, Not Title, Installation at Pomona Art gallery, 1970
-Manipulation of shape and structure of gallery. Work that refers to the idea of the architecture enclosure.
*Richard Long, A Line Made By Walking, 1967
and A Line in the Himalayas, 1975.
-Marking journey of artist. Walking= exploring relations between time, distance, landscapes and bodily movement.
*Hans Haacke, Germania 1993
-Repressed history. Trauma within German culture. Sense of anxiety and repression.
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Conclusion
The development of this expanded field depended upon a fundamental shift in the perception of artworks that Krauss identifies in relation to a rupture in the “bounded conditions of modernism.” She goes on to consider that “within the situation of postmodernism practice is no longer defined in relation to a given medium – sculpture – but rather in relation to the logical operations on a set of cultural terms, for which any medium – photography, books, lines on walls, mirrors or sculpture itself might be used.”
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In other words sculpture could no longer be thought of as a privileged entity, capable of compelling the viewer’s attention, in ways that rendered the context of its presentation an irrelevance.
In other words sculpture could no longer be thought of as a privileged entity, capable of compelling the viewer’s attention, in ways that rendered the context of its presentation an irrelevance.
- Such sculptures, Krauss contended, now had to be perceived as being held in a state of oppositional tension with its context of presentation, and it was the recognition of this tension throughout the 1960s that, for Krauss, generated the proliferation of practices that she identified with the expanded field of postmodern art practice.
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