Enchantments summary

Enchantment installations can be categorised as those that fully surround and envelop the viewer on a physical and psychological level, transporting them to a phantasmagorical realm far removed from the architecture of the site.  Autonomous environments are created dependent on the suspension of disbelief, rendering the site of enchantment installation arbitrary.

Modern explorations of enchantments were pioneered by Kurt Schwitter, whose work ‘Merzbau: Cathedral of Erotic Misery’ involves the invasion of every surface of his home with three-dimensional formalist structures, creating a large-scale physical field of art in which the viewer is completely immersed. The combination of a wide range of materials and the interaction with the architecture renders this a Gesamtkunstwerk – a synesthetic culmination that underpins installation art. Schwitter’s concept was one which could be transposed quite easily to another location, detracting significance from the work’s interaction with the site.

            Schwitter’s work was paralleled by installation experimentation within Dada, Bauhaus, Russian Constructivism and Dutch De Stijl, and was famously utilised by Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dali. Duchamp’s works ‘1200 Bags of Coal’ (1938) and ‘Etant donnes’ (1946-66) subvert and harness the gallery space as a means of luring the viewer in, as only with their engagement and connection will the artwork be complete. Dali’s ‘Le Taxi Pluvieux’ (1938) and ‘Dream of Venus’ (1939) created worlds in which the surreal, bewitching, perplexing and frightening were to dominate above all else, including the space in which it was situated.

            With the construction of Disneyland in 1955, a fascinating comparison was drawn between the ‘world of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy’ created by Walt Disney purely for leisure purposes, and the immersive, theatrical nature of enchantment installations. These expectations of entertainment within art led to the expansion of the tableaux format to the creation of live, performative ‘happenings’, led by artists such as Alan Kaprow. Again, the focus of these phenomena was viewer engagement and involvement to further the belief in the artist’s manufactured situations.

            The creation of contained worlds is continued by Ilya Kabakov, in his use of devices such as doors and walls separating the space from the gallery; Johnathan Borofsky in his works’ movement around and across adjacent surfaces – a principle survived through contemporary video installation artists. 

In all of these enchantments, through their creation of foreign worlds in which to encapsulate the viewer, the physical space it they are situated in is forgotten, and as a result, easily changed.