Installation as "Power Field" : historical precedents and contemporary practice with Canadian examples and a case study of the art of Liz Magor
Date
1994
Authors
Culjat, Alexandria
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Abstract
Installation art has been a prevalent mode of Canadian art practice for more than two decades. In this thesis, I have attempted to define the term "installation," to construct an historical overview of its development, to examine the work of two artists whose production brackets the period from 1965 to 1992, and to undertake a case study of the art of one of its practitioners, Liz Magor, over an eighteen-year period. In my investigation, I have examined visual and written materials, interviewed artists, dealers, collectors, art historians and curators; recalled installations I have seen; and looked in greater detail at Magor's work.
Installation came to prominence in the 1970s, arising out of the Happenings and Assemblage of the 1960s. The definition of installation has changed over time, however. Where once it was seen as site-specific (a concept coming out of the Land art movement), ephemeral and temporary (strategies from Performance art and film), it is better defined by Rosalind E. Krauss who wrote in 1979 of "sculpture in the expanded field." Krauss suggested that nearly everything had been expanded to be categorized as sculpture, since sculpture itself had become almost infinitely malleable. I propose that if we regard the "field" as the space where the work is positioned by the artist, and any and all elements in that space as a form of expanded sculpture, we are moving towards a definition of installation in 1994.
The conceptual roots of installation lie in the recurring wish of artists to control the viewing space, an aspect I investigate in this thesis. There is no hint of this motivation in standard definitions of the term, such as that proposed by Michael Greenhalgh and Paul Duro:
"An installation is a site-specific artwork created for a gallery or outdoor location. Isntead of the site simply being a neutral backdrop to the exhibition for individual art objects, as in a traditional hanging, the ensemble of elements that make up the installation are arranged so as to interact wit hthe site chosen and provide the beholder with the sensation of physically entering an art space..."
In this thesis, I undertake an expansion of the definition of installation and attempt to explain its prevalence by looking at nature and function of installation, an at aspects of patronage and artists motivations. I have traced its history and discussed media and method employed by artists in order to reveal the richness and complexity of installation art, emphasized and further demonstrated through a study of the work of Canadian artist Liz Magor.