Yale University

Introduction: The Field of Sculpture

Author(s): JENNIFER R. GROSS
Source: Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin, , State of the Art: Contemporary Sculpture
(2009), pp. 26-33
Published by: Yale University, acting through the Yale University Art Gallery
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I
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Introduction: The Field of
Sculpture
JENNIFER
R. GROSS
The Yale
University
Art
Gallery
Bulletin
pro-
vides the
increasingly
rare
opportunity
in
the museum field to
publish
new
scholarship
pertaining
to the
discipline
of art
history
and
artistic
practice.
The dedication of the
2009
Bulletin to modern and
contemporary
art
yielded
the
prospect
of
addressing
a
topic
germane
to current artistic
practice
and the
corresponding parsing
of such work
by
writ-
ers on
contemporary
art. A review of
gifts
and
acquisitions
to the
Gallery's Department
of Modern and
Contemporary
Art in the last
ten
years-
works
by
artists as diverse as Vito
Acconci,
Janine
Antoni,
Matthew
Barney,
William
Kentridge, Mingwei
Lee,
Barry
Le
Va, Josiah McElheny,
Robert
Morris,
Ree
Morton,
Richard
Rezac, Joe
Scanlan,
Jessica
Stockholder,
Do Ho
Suh,
and Richard
Tuttle
-
revealed that the
presentation
and
teaching
from these
sculptures
at the Yale
University
Art
Gallery
were
engaging
a much
more
complex
set of issues than had the
modernist works that had
previously repre-
sented this
discipline
in the collection.
Sculp-
ture,
as
exemplified
in these
ranks,
no
longer
gives primacy
to
questions
of
representation,
abstraction, surface,
or
materiality,
as hewn
in bronze and stone.
Rather,
it
engages
issues
as diverse as
capitalist enterprise,
architecture,
design, performance, psychology, drawing,
appropriation,
and institutional
critique,
utilizing
materials that are
purchased
at a
dollar
store,
manufactured
by factory
work-
ers,
or are even the
by-product
of a United
States
patent.
In discussions with
artists,
art
historians,
and curatorial
colleagues,
it became clear
that
along
with the
changing
forms and
definitions of
sculpture,
the
discipline
had
undergone
little recent focused
scholarly
evaluation. A review of the
teaching
of this
subject
in the studio and classroom showed
that the foundation for
assessing
the critical
issues
surrounding
the term
sculpture
remained
primarily
rooted in Rosalind Krauss s evalua-
tion of the field in
1977
in
Passages
in Modern
Sculpture
and in her
groundbreaking essay
of the
following year, "Sculpture
in the
Expanded
Field,"
and its identification of the
"field,"
or the broader
physical
and
concep-
tual realm
beyond
traditional aesthetic terms
in which
sculptural activity
was and could
exist.
And,
in
fact,
bringing together
a
group
of
artists,
art
historians,
and curators to dis-
cuss the
practice
and definition of
sculpture
today
revealed that the delineation of this
discipline
remains
unwieldy
and broad
-
Jeff Koons, Balloon
Dog (Magenta), 1994-2000.
Installed at the Salon d'Hercule, Chteau de Versailles,
September 2008-January 2009. High-chromium
stainless steel with
transparent
color
coating,
10 ft. 1 in.
11 ft. 11 in.
45
in.
(307.3

363.2

114.3 cm)
27
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Ree Morton, Souvenir Piece, 1973. Acrylic
and
flocking
on wood and canvas, table: 16%
38

75
in.
(43

96.5

190.5 cm),
canvas:
93^6

$jVi
in.
(237

146 cm).
Yale
University
Art
Gallery,
Katharine
Ordway
Fund,
2008.32.1
more
extensive, even,
than the
expanded
field invoked
by
Krauss s
essay
and still more
expansive
than the wider net of contextual-
ization
engaged by postmodernist theory
and the
bracing
load of
analytic
rubrics that
it
brought
to bear as
possible interpretations
for the
experience
of an
object beyond
its
physical
state.
Clearly,
the
subject
of
sculp-
ture was
ripe
for
review, discussion,
and
rvaluation.
The authors who contributed articles
to this volume-
Johanna
Burton,
Miwon
Kwon, Josiah McElheny, Jessica
Stockholder,
and I
-
met via conference and conference
call to assess the current state of the
practice
of
sculpture.
The conversation
began
with a
question
that the
following writings
reassess
as
remaining
unanswered: what is
sculpture?
In the academic
community
at Yale Univer-
sity, sculpture
is the broadest
discipline open
to artists who use
video,
record
sound,
per-
form,
and make
objects.
For
many
artists
working today,
such an academic distinction
remains anathema to their own
thinking,
as
their
practice
is not defined
by
formal con-
cerns but
by
a
propensity
to utilize
any
and
all means to best effect aesthetic
inquiry.
The
field of art is understood to be both
physical
and
conceptual,
and how an artist chooses to
operate
within this aesthetic
dialogue
deter-
mines the form of his or her
endeavor,
which
28
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Richard Rezac, Untitled, 1993.
Painted wood, vjVi

i8V4
151/2
in.
(44.5

46.4

39.4 cm).
Yale
University
Art
Gallery, Janet
and Simeon
Braguin
Fund, 2001. 1
5.1
can shift from
project
to
project,
from
space
to
object
to
place.
Ten
years ago
the term
sculpture
would
most
readily
have been used as a
damningly
traditional
qualifier
in the
description
of a
contemporary
artist s work.
Sculpture
was
understood to be an
object
that offered an
obdurately physical experience deployed
in
time and
space
and that conceded to the
physical parameters
defined
by
the context of
its
presentation,
either within a museum or
exhibition
space
or,
even more
specifically,
on
a
pedestal. Today
the term embraces a
range
of
object making
and
selecting
that tran-
scends formal concerns to include
conceptual
and theoretical
questions.
As
Jessica
Stock-
holder comments in "Swiss Cheese Field
-
And
Sculpture Mingled," perhaps
the
category
of
sculpture
is an able default mode for
engaging
the arena of the third dimension in
art. She
writes,
"I do not know who invented
the word
sculpture.
The word has become
difficult to
define,
and there are now
many
other words
being applied
to the
activity
of
filling up
the field-
performance,
instaation,
sound
works,
conceptual gestures.
I would like
to
hang
on to that word
sculpture
and
enjoy
its
expanded
definition. The words we use in
its
place
are no more
meaningful."
In
fact,
today many
artists make or
choose
sculptural
form without a
primary
concern for the
history
of the
discipline,
and
one is
hard-pressed today
to find a
sculptor
s
29
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Jessica Stockholder, Untitled, 1994.
Pink couch, oil
and
acrylic paint,
wood, hardware, electric
wiring,
newspaper
mch,
plastic,
twine,
clothing, string,
and
nail, 34
61
46
in.
(86.4

154.9
x 116.8
cm).
Yale
University
Art
Gallery,
Gift of Eileen and Michael
Cohen, 2007.85.1
Martin
Puryear,
installation view of Martin
Puryear,
Museum of Modern Art, New York, November
4,
2007-January 14,
2008
sculptor,
one whose
thinking
and
practice
are
led
solely by
traditional concerns for material
and form.
Contemporary sculptors
distill
their
thinking through
a wide
range
of disci-
plines
that include traditions as diverse as
those of the
craftsperson,
the
archivist,
the
painter,
the
architect,
the social
historian,
and the
photographer.
The
sculptors eye
on
aesthetic discourse has become
multifaceted,
giving
the
practice
the
diversity
of a
flys-eye
compounded
view of the
possibility
of aes-
thetic and theoretical
systems.
In the art world at
large,
the term
sculp-
ture is considered
alongside
the term installa-
tion, which rose to
prominence
in the
1970s
as a means to embrace artists who
engaged
space
and
place.
Such work did not
accept
the terms of the "white cube" of the
gallery
or museum but
questioned
the
experience
of
30
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place
that could be
foregrounded by
the rev-
elation of the
delivery systems
of information
that frame our
experience
of art. Installation is
often
loosely
used
today
to describe the
prac-
tice of
consciously placing objects
or informa-
tion within a
space, taking
into account how
that
placement,
or
recognition
of the field of
this
activity,
directs how the viewer
experi-
ences information and forms aesthetic values.
Installation art in contrast to
sculpture
is often
thought
to
give primacy
to the
physi-
cal
experience
that reveals the
conceptual
undergirding
inherent in the realm of aes-
thetic
practice. Sculpture,
in its obdurate
physicality
or
"thingness,"
continues to roll
out its
engagement
of the viewer in
time,
in the material
experience brought
to bear
every
time a viewer is
physically present
in its
31
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place.
As both
Josiah McElheny
and Miwon
Kwon review in their
essays
in this
volume,
the
question
that remains for artists and
scholars to further deliberate is whether the
social and institutional
agendas
that underlie
the ideals
explored
in the form of
sculptural
installation have or do not have
primacy
over
its material terms in
defining
the field.
A number of recent
exhibitions,
such as
Part
Object/Part Sculpture (2005-6,
Wexner
Center for the
Arts, Columbus, Ohio),
The
Uncertainty of Objects
and Ideas
(2006-7,
Hirshhorn Museum and
Sculpture
Garden,
Washington,
D.C.),
and Unmonumental:
The
Object
in the 21st
Century (2007-8,
New
Museum of
Contemporary
Art,
New
York),
confirmed that there remains a continued
commitment
by
artists to a
practice perpetu-
ated and focused on the
making
and
selecting
of
things
and to create an
object-based expe-
rience. These
objects
demand the attention of
the viewer as his or her Descartian other and
provide
the
possibility
for the
physical
and
psychological power
and
potential
such an
encounter
portends.
In her
essay, Johanna
Burton
poses
the
question
as to how and if art is
keeping up
with the
changes
in the
way
the viewer sees
in a culture where
experiences
of time and
place
are
perpetually fragmented through
film,
photography,
and the virtual realities
enabled
by technology.
In
fact,
while the
modernization of
society
reasserts an
engage-
ment with information and
experience
based
on visual
practices
mediated
by technology,
drawing
attention to our
physical engage-
ment with the world and
reinforcing
the
unique
value of
subjective experience
remain
inherent to the
primary
concerns of the
sculptor
and,
in
fact,
may
reinforce the cul-
tural
significance
of such endeavors.
Josiah McElheny,
Verzelinis Acts
of
Faith
(Glass
from
Paintings of
the
Life of
Christ), 1996. Display,
text, and
blown
glass, 78V2

72V2

14%
in.
(199.4

184.2
x
37. 5 cm).
Yale
University
Art
Gallery,
Katharine
Ordway
Fund, 2003. 109.
ia-11
33
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