Summary

A summary of  UNMONUMENTAL: Going to Pieces in the 21^st Century  -  Laura Hoptman

Sculpture has come back into the spotlight recently with a new appearance.  Sculpture has moved out of a place where it was considered a moulded, cast or carved and is now varying as widely as physically possible in appearance. This new association, and the idea of assemblage, is a result of the large amount of choice we have and the thought that any material can be used as part of a sculpture, resulting in the process of making the sculpture being as important as the product itself.

Jean Dubuffet first used the word assemblage to describe works in the 1950s, however it was William Seitz, who held an exhibition in 1961 called “the Art of Assemblage”, that referenced Picasso and Duchamp’s works as assemblage therefore saying that the movement started well before the 50s and that the artists of the 50s and 60s were merely new recruits.  Having said this, the term assemblage never had enough momentum to become a movement, let alone and art period.

Rauschenberg’s series of “Combines”, which were a mixture of paintings and sculptures created between 1954 and 1964, is an example of assemblage’s height during the 50s and 60s.  The main point of many of the works of the assemblage period is the juxtaposition of everyday objects and the fact that two or more objects can live within the artwork and have both and individual and collective meanings.

In recent times assemblage seems to link more closely to that of the practice of appropriation, popular in the 80s, than the artwork of the 50s and 60s. Critics of the 80s thought that assemblage of the 60s closely resembled works of the 1910s; however close they looked in form they were completely different in meaning. For the majority of today’s sculptors they are not interested in pushing the boundaries of sculpture or art, they are more interested in the connection with the issues of the time. 

Contemporary assemblage is known as being unmonumental. An unmonumental sculpture intentionally lacks the values of massiveness, timelessness and public significance and is a representation of the sculptor, their beliefs and opinions.  These sculptures of the 21^st century are more personal than the art world has ever seen before and due to technology are easily available for the world to see.