Week 9-Site-Specific Art

This one is kind of a no-brainer: Site-specific art is a work that was designed specifically for, and can only function in, a particular space.

Site-specific art was designed to combat the trend towards work being treated as a commodity, bought and sold in galleries.  Site-specific artists don't want their work to be something you can pick off of a wall and place in your living room, like an end table from Ikea.  They believe art should be tailor made for the space it will occupy.  It can't be transported.  It isn't flexible.  It's not multipurpose.

Last semester I took Aesthetics (AVT 307).  In that class we read "Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees", sort of a long-form interview/biography of artist Robert Irwin.  Irwin is one of the artists credited with popularizing site-specific art.  He is meticulous about designing his pieces for their intended place of residence, often spending days refining the most minute of details.  For one piece he agonized over achieving a perfect match between the cast shadow of a sculpture and the paint on the wall behind it.  Eventually, he was able to perfectly match both colors so that the sculpture created no visible shadow and seemed to eerily float at an indiscernible depth.  He does not allow his work to be photographed, as he believes it is only possible to truly experience the piece by sharing space with it.  The work isn't the materials, or a tangible object.  If you see an Irwin sculpture, the physical object is not the artwork he is creating.  The experience is the art.  The sculpture is simply the delivery system necessary to convey the work.