Summary - Interventions

Installation has been used by artists to further explore the relationship between the artwork and it’s surroundings.  Interventions are a string of the art movement in which the viewer’s ideas of art are challenged and the artist creates confrontation and confusion for the viewer.  The 1960s brought on many changes in the art world which involved attacks on the traditional view of art.  This was demonstrated in sculpture movements such as minimalist, post-minimalist, earth and conceptual art, where the sculptures branched out from the walls and plinths of art galleries and museums and into the real world.  The viewer, while engaging with the artwork, is also engaging in the location and sharing the surroundings alongside the artwork which is a challenge for the viewer who is used to viewing art traditionally on a wall or a plinth.  This is shown through Carl Andre’s work where the viewer is confronted with a tricky situation in regards to whether the floor bound work can be walked over or not.  The viewer is allowed to be part of the artwork which breaks thoughts of traditional art viewing and thrusts the viewer into a foreign and challenging world.

Even though minimal art is not often site-specific it does work in unison with the selected space and the space can alter of influence its meaning.  Often however the artwork can be moved and a new artwork/location influence is formed.  Richard Serra was one of the artists that challenged this idea.  Serra wanted to “attack” a given space rather than work beside it. Serra and Bruce Nauman both created works which were aggressive towards the viewer, forcing participation and placing the viewer in an unpleasant situation.  Even though they are both interventions there is a clear contrast between Andre’s work where the viewer can choose if they want to participate and Serra and Nauman's work where they are forced.

During the mid 1960s the principles of the museum also changed.  What was once something to aspire to, having your art hanging in a gallery, was now the subject of critique and even anger.  With this, artists such as Michael Asher created works that were challenging the idea of a museum or art gallery.  In the Claire Copley Gallery in 1974, Asher removed all the internal walls of the gallery meaning the viewer was confronted by all the internal workings of the gallery. The location, the space itself is the artwork. 

With site-specific installation the artwork is made completely for that space and that space only.  If you were to move it, it would no longer have meaning.  The artwork is not just an object, but an object attached to a space in which it inhabits, and in the extreme case of artists like Asher, the actual space itself.