Installation art is art that uses sculptural materials and
other media to modify the way we experience a particular space.
Installation art is not necessarily confined to gallery spaces
and can refer to any material intervention in everyday public
or private spaces.
Installation art incorporates almost any media to create
a visceral and/or conceptual experience in a particular environment.
Installation artists often use the space of the gallery directly.
Materials used in contemporary installation art range from
everyday and natural materials to new media such as video,
sound, performance, computers and the internet. Some installations
are site-specific in that they are designed to only exist
in the space for which they were created.
History
This genre of contemporary art came to prominence in the
1970s. Many trace the roots of this form of art to earlier
artists such as Marcel Duchamp and the use of readymade objects
rather than more traditional craft based sculpture, and Kurt
Schwitters Merz art. The intention of the artist is paramount
in much later installation art whose roots lie in the conceptual
art of the 1960s. This again is a departure from traditional
sculpture which places its focus on form. Early non-Western
installation art includes events staged by the Gutai group
in Japan starting in 1954, which influenced American installation
pioneers like Allan Kaprow.
Installation as nomenclature for a specific form of art came
into use fairly recently; its first use as documented by the
OED was in 1969. It was coined in this context in reference
to a form of art that had arguably existed since prehistory
but was not regarded as a discrete category until the mid-twentieth
century. Allan Kaprow used the term “Environment”
in 1958 (Kaprow 6) to describe his transformed indoor spaces;
this later joined such terms as “project art” and
“temporary art.”
Nobody has managed to come up with a definition of installation
art that satisfies everybody, perhaps because it is more representative
of a sea change in the practice of art appreciation than of
any decisive breakthrough in a specific medium. Essentially,
installation/environmental art takes into account the viewer’s
entire sensory experience, rather than floating framed points
of focus on a “neutral” wall or displaying isolated
objects (literally) on a pedestal. This leaves space and time
as its only dimensional constants, and it promises to engender
or at least embrace a comprehensively critical mode of experience.
This implies dissolution of the line between art and life;
Kaprow noted that “if we bypass ‘art’ and take
nature itself as a model or point of departure, we may be
able to devise a different kind of art… out of the sensory
stuff of ordinary life” (Kaprow 12).
The conscious act of artistically addressing all the senses
with regard to the viewer’s experience in totality made
a resounding debut in 1849 when Richard Wagner conceived of
a Gesamtkunstwerk, or an operatic work for the stage that
drew inspiration from ancient Greek theater in its inclusion
of all the major art forms: painting, writing, music, etc.
(Britannica) In devising operatic works to commandeer the
audience’s senses, Wagner left nothing unobserved: architecture,
ambiance, and even the audience itself were considered and
manipulated in order to achieve a state of total artistic
immersion.
In “Art and Objecthood,” Michael Fried derisively
labels art that acknowledges the viewer as “theatrical”
(Fried 45). There is a strong parallel between installation
and theater: both play to a viewer who is expected to be at
once immersed in the sensory/narrative experience that surrounds
him and maintain a degree of self-identity as a viewer. The
traditional theatergoer does not forget that he has come in
from outside to sit and take in a created experience; a trademark
of installation art has been the curious and eager viewer,
still aware that he is in an exhibition setting and tentatively
exploring the novel universe of the installation.
The artist and critic Ilya Kabakov mentions this essential
phenomenon in the introduction to his lectures “On the
“Total” Installation:” “[One] is simultaneously
both a ‘victim’ and a viewer, who on the one hand
surveys and evaluates the installation, and on the other,
follows those associations, recollections which arise in him[;]
he is overcome by the intense atmosphere of the total illusion”
(Kabakov 256). Here installation art bestows an unprecedented
importance on the observer’s inclusion in that which
he observes. The expectations and social habits that the viewer
takes with him into the space of the installation will remain
with him as he enters, to be either applied or negated once
he has taken in the new environment. What is common to nearly
all installation art is a consideration of the experience
in toto and the problems it may present, namely the constant
conflict between disinterested criticism and sympathetic involvement.
Television and video offer immersive experiences, but their
unrelenting control over the rhythm of passing time and the
arrangement of images precludes an intimately personal viewing
experience (Kabakov 257). Ultimately, the only things a viewer
can be assured of when experiencing the work are his own thoughts
and preconceptions and the basic rules of space and time.
All else may be molded by the artist’s hands.
The central importance of the subjective point of view when
experiencing installation art, like the evolved stages of
software distribution, points toward a disregard for traditional
Platonic image theory. In effect, the entire installation
adopts the character of the simulacrum or flawed statue: it
neglects any ideal form in favor of optimizing its direct
appearance to the observer. Installation art operates fully
within the realm of sensory perception, in a sense “installing”
the viewer into an artificial system with an appeal to his
subjective perception as its ultimate goal.
