Sculpture in the Expanded Field
Sculpture in the Expanded Field, sculpture installation, Baker’s Beach, San Francisco, California, July 2014. Pipe-cleaners, clay, stick, acrylic paint.
This installation was inspired by Rosalind Krauss’s seminal essay, “Sculpture in the Expanded Field,” published in October magazine in Spring 1979.
In her article, Krauss summarized the development of the American Sculpture in 60s and 70s as two major trends: one trend is between architecture and not-architecture; the other one is between landscape and not-landscape. The former refers to the blending of sculpture and architecture, which ultimately leads to the development of [installation as a new genre]. The latter embraces a broader nature - humanity space, which is finally evolving into the form of Land Art. It is evident that these two trends result in the death of classical and modern sculpture.
Krauss writes, “The expanded field is thus generated by problematizing the set of oppositions between which the modernist category sculpture is suspended. And once this has happened, once one is able to think one’s way into this expansion, there are—logically—three other categories that one can envision, all of them a condition of the field itself, and none of them assimilable to sculpture . Because as we can see, sculpture is no longer the privileged middle term between two things that it isn’t. Sculpture is rather only one term on the periphery of a field in which there are other, differently structured possibilities. And one has thereby gained the ‘permission’ to think these other forms.”
In her article, Krauss summarized the development of the American Sculpture in 60s and 70s as two major trends: one trend is between architecture and not-architecture; the other one is between landscape and not-landscape. The former refers to the blending of sculpture and architecture, which ultimately leads to the development of [installation as a new genre]. The latter embraces a broader nature - humanity space, which is finally evolving into the form of Land Art. It is evident that these two trends result in the death of classical and modern sculpture.
Krauss writes, “The expanded field is thus generated by problematizing the set of oppositions between which the modernist category sculpture is suspended. And once this has happened, once one is able to think one’s way into this expansion, there are—logically—three other categories that one can envision, all of them a condition of the field itself, and none of them assimilable to sculpture . Because as we can see, sculpture is no longer the privileged middle term between two things that it isn’t. Sculpture is rather only one term on the periphery of a field in which there are other, differently structured possibilities. And one has thereby gained the ‘permission’ to think these other forms.”
© 2014 The Artist, Janet Silk.
