Comments on Does Sculpture Exist? Or The Search for Traction

Jen, you may also enjoy these for a chuckle:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/36211486@N00/sets/462348/

How does a net provide traction? I have never stepped, skidded, or otherwise engaged in frictional interaction with a net. But maybe that's just me.

I am not happy with the idea that what you label the work (other than the decision to classify it as art and not craft or utilitarian object) has such an enormous impact on the work itself. What's wrong with "installation"? Drawing a line between sculpture and installation at least attempts to communicate something; rejecting a perfectly good word in favor of "setup" is just pissy.

I've listened to that podcast a couple of times, and I think you might have erroneously attributed the quotes; I believe it was actually Charles Long who derided installation art, and the grossly arrogant comment about sculpture has Rachel Harrison written allover it-I really think that it was she who said it.
I have to say though, reintroducing some delineation to the mediums is refreshing. I am TIRED of installation art. And I actually get the 'net' comment-there is something to be said for parameters. But, to assert that anything other than the viewer completes a work is horse****.

Jen - would love to get your comments on the discussion going on over at the Olympic Sculpture Park photo group in Flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/36699021@N00/discuss/72157594479395673/

http://thestranger.com/blog/2007/01/sculptr_on_flickr

It's rare that you get two writers - in this case one quoting another - so specifically ignorant about their chosen (even professed) focus.

The point of reference here is the hardly obscure essay "Art and Objecthood", by Michael Fried. A nearly thirty year old essay, it should be said.

In attempting to oversimplify and co-opt Fried's central, landmark thesis on what he termed "theatricality", Burton gives uninformed Graves just enough rope to (publicly) hang herself with.

Does any object exist as art without the viewer? I am old enough to have been taught that the function of art is communication, regardless of the medium. This sense of the word communication covers everything from sitcoms to Kurosawa, from Archie to Proust, from Post It notes to air raid shelter signs. Without a viewer, the process of making art is onanistic: satisfying but not communicative.
What makes discussions like these interesting is the tension between intent and perception. This is the crux of the experience of art as culture, and the history of art in the past century can perhaps be seen as a dialog seesawing back and forth between the intent of the artist and the perception of the viewer. There are a variety of argumentative positions on the importance of intent, but without the perception of the viewer I don"t believe you have art.