Site-specific art is
artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork. Site-specific art is produced both by commercial artists, and independently, and can include some instances of work such as
sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
,
stencil graffiti
Stencil graffiti is a form of graffiti that makes use of stencils made out of paper, cardboard, or other media to create an image or text that is easily reproducible. The desired design is cut out of the selected medium and then the image is trans ...
,
rock balancing
Rock balancing (also stone balancing, or stacking) is a form of recreation or expression in which rocks are balanced on top of one another, often in a precarious manner.
Conservationists and park services have expressed concerns that the arran ...
, and other art forms. Installations can be in urban areas, remote natural settings, or underwater.
History
The term "site-specific art" was promoted and refined by Californian artist
Robert Irwin but it was actually first used in the mid-1970s by young sculptors, such as
Patricia Johanson
Patricia Johanson (born September 8, 1940, New York City) is an American artist. Johanson is known for her large-scale art projects that create aesthetic and practical habitats for humans and wildlife. She designs her functional art projects, c ...
,
Dennis Oppenheim
Dennis Oppenheim (September 6, 1938 – January 21, 2011) was an American conceptual artist, performance artist, earth artist, sculptor and photographer. Dennis Oppenheim's early artistic practice is an epistemological questioning about the natu ...
, and
Athena Tacha Athena Tacha ( el, Αθηνά Τάχα; born in Larissa, Greece, 1936-), is a multimedia visual artist. She is best known for her work in the fields of environmental public sculpture and conceptual art. She also worked in a wide array of materials ...
, who had started executing public commissions for large urban sites. For ''Two Jumps for Dead Dog Creek'' (1970), Oppenheim attempted a series of standing jumps at a selected site in Idaho, where "the width of the creek became a specific goal to which I geared a bodily activity," with his two successful jumps being "dictated by a land form." Site specific environmental art was first described as a movement by architectural critic Catherine Howett and art critic
Lucy Lippard
Lucy Rowland Lippard (born April 14, 1937) is an American writer, art critic, activist, and curator. Lippard was among the first writers to argue for the " dematerialization" at work in conceptual art and was an early champion of feminist art. S ...
. Emerging out of
minimalism
In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...
, site-specific art opposed the
Modernist
Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...
program of subtracting from the artwork all cues that interfere with the fact that it is "art",
Modernist art objects were transportable, nomadic, could only exist in the museum space and were the objects of the market and commodification. Since 1960 the artists were trying to find a way out of this situation, and thus drew attention to the site and the context around this site. The work of art was created in the site and could only exist and in such circumstances - it can not be moved or changed. Site is a current location, which comprises a unique combination of physical elements: depth, length, weight, height, shape, walls, temperature. Works of art began to emerge from the walls of the museum and galleries (
Daniel Buren, Within and Beyond the Frame, John Weber Gallery, New York, 1973), were created specifically for the museum and galleries (
Michael Asher, untitled installation at Claire Copley Gallery, Los Angeles, 1974,
Hans Haacke
Hans Haacke (born August 12, 1936) is a Germany, German-born artist who lives and works in New York City. Haacke is considered a "leading exponent" of Institutional Critique.
Early life
Haacke was born in Cologne, Germany. He studied at the ''S ...
, Condensation Cube, 1963–65,
Mierle Laderman Ukeles
Mierle Laderman Ukeles (born 1939) is a New York City-based artist known for her feminist and service-oriented artworks, which relate the idea of process in conceptual art to domestic and civic "maintenance". She has been the Artist-in-Residence ...
, Hartford Wash: Washing Tracks, Maintenance Outside, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, 1973), thus criticizing the museum as an institution that sets the rules for artists and viewers.
Jean-Max Albert
Jean-Max Albert (born 1942) is a French painter, sculptor, writer, and musician. He has published theory, books on artists, and a collection of poems, plays and novels inspired by quantum physics. He perpetuated experiments initiated by Paul Klee ...
, created
Sculptures Bachelard
''Sculptures Bachelard'' is an ''In Situ'' work by French artist Jean-Max Albert installed in 1986 in the Parc de la Villette, Paris, France. It is named after the author of ''The Poetics of Space'', Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard (; ; 27 ...
in
Parc de la Villette
The Parc de la Villette is the third-largest park in Paris, in area, located at the northeastern edge of the city in the 19th arrondissement. The park houses one of the largest concentrations of cultural venues in Paris, including the Cité de ...
related to the site, or ''Carlotta’s Smile'', a
trellis construction related to Ar. Co,’s architecture
Lisbon
Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...
, and to a choreography in collaboration with Michala Marcus and
Carlos Zingaro
Carlos Zíngaro (or Carlos "Zíngaro" Alves, born 15 December 1948 in Lisbon, Portugal) is a Portuguese violinist and electronic musician active in free improvisation.
Biography
Zingaro studied classical music at the Lisbon Music Conservatory fr ...
, 1979.
When the public debate over ''
Tilted Arc
''Tilted Arc'' was a controversial public art installation by Richard Serra, displayed in Foley Federal Plaza in Manhattan from 1981 to 1989. It consisted of a 120-foot-long, 12-foot-high solid, unfinished plate of rust-covered COR-TEN steel. ...
'' (1981) resulted in its removal in 1989, its author
Richard Serra
Richard Serra (born November 2, 1938) is an American artist known for his large-scale sculptures made for site-specific landscape, urban, and architectural settings. Serra's sculptures are notable for their material quality and exploration o ...
reacted with what can be considered a definition of site-specific art: "To move the work is to destroy the work."
Examples
Outdoor site-specific artworks often include
landscaping
Landscaping refers to any activity that modifies the visible features of an area of land, including the following:
# Living elements, such as flora or fauna; or what is commonly called gardening, the art and craft of growing plants with a goal o ...
combined with permanently sited
sculptural
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
elements; it is sometimes linked with
environmental art
Environmental art is a range of artistic practices encompassing both historical approaches to nature in art and more recent ecological and politically motivated types of works. Environmental art has evolved away from formal concerns, for example ...
. Outdoor site-specific artworks can also include
dance
Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...
performance
A performance is an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function.
Management science
In the work place ...
s created especially for the site. More broadly, the term is sometimes used for any work that is more or less permanently attached to a particular location. In this sense, a building with interesting
architecture
Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...
could also be considered a piece of site-specific art.
In Geneva, Switzerland, two Contemporary Art Funds of the city have been looking to integrate art into the architecture and the public space since 1980. The Neons Parallax project initiated in 2007 was conceived specifically for the Plaine de Plainpalais, located in the heart of the city. The challenge of the artists invited was to transpose commercial advertising signs of the harbour into artistic messages.
Site-specific performance art, site-specific visual art and interventions are commissioned for the annual
Infecting the City
Held in Cape Town, South Africa Infecting the City is a public arts festival that is committed to making art freely available to everyone. The festival hosts a range of different types of site-specific art, art intervention and performance art i ...
Festival in
Cape Town
Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...
, South Africa. The site-specific nature of the work allows artists to interrogate the contemporary and historic reality of the Central Business District and create work that allows the city's users to engage and interact with public spaces in new and memorable ways.
Gallery
Image:Spiral-jetty-from-rozel-point.png, Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson (January 2, 1938 – July 20, 1973) was an American artist known for sculpture and land art who often used drawing and photography in relation to the spatial arts. His work has been internationally exhibited in galleries and mu ...
, ''Spiral Jetty
''Spiral Jetty'' is an earthwork sculpture constructed in April 1970 that is considered to be the most important work of American sculptor Robert Smithson. Smithson documented the construction of the sculpture in a 32-minute color film also tit ...
'' from atop Rozel Point, 2005.
File:Eberhard Bosslet Intervention Begleiterscheinung XI Era Lanzarote 2008.jpg, ''Side effect X'', Eberhard Bosslet
Eberhard Bosslet (born 1953) is a German contemporary artist who has been producing site-specific art and architectural-related works, such as sculpture, installation, light art and painting, all indoors and outdoors, since 1979.
Biography
...
; Tias, Lanzarote, 2008.
File:Bauen.jpg, View of an installation from Strandbad Seedorf, Switzerland, 2015.
File:Stone Balancing In The Morning.jpg, A rock balance, England, 2013.
File:The_Sphere_Knockan_cropped.jpg, ''The Globe'', Knockan Crag National Nature Reserve, Scotland, 2007.
File:Olafur Eliasson's Waterfalls under the Brooklyn Bridge.jpg, Olafur Eliasson
Olafur Eliasson ( is, Ólafur Elíasson; born 5 February 1967) is an Icelandic–Danish artist known for sculptured and large-scale installation art employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer's ...
's ''Waterfalls under the Brooklyn Bridge'', 2008.
File:Blue Lapis Light Aerial Dance Maya.jpg, Site specific dance by Blue Lapis Light at the Texas State History Museum in Austin, Texas, 2010.
File:O milton-becerra.jpg, O, Die Stimme in der Kunst, Klinikverwartung, Milton Becerra
Milton Becerra (born 1951) is a Venezuelan artist who pioneered land art in Venezuela in the 1970s.
Early works
He graduated from the Cristóbal Rojas School of Arts (1972) under the Jesús Soto promotion. From 1973 to 1980 Milton Becerra ...
, Germany, 1989.
See also
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Aerial dance
Aerial modern dance is a subgenre of modern dance first recognized in the United States in the 1970s. The choreography incorporates an apparatus that is often attached to the ceiling, allowing performers to explore space in three dimensions. ...
*
Digital art
Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process, or more specifically computational art that uses and engages with digital media.
Since the 1960s, various names ...
*
Ecological art
Ecological art is an art genre and artistic practice that seeks to preserve, remediate and/or vitalize the life forms, resources and ecology of Earth. Ecological art practitioners do this by applying the principles of ecosystems to living species a ...
*
Environmental art
Environmental art is a range of artistic practices encompassing both historical approaches to nature in art and more recent ecological and politically motivated types of works. Environmental art has evolved away from formal concerns, for example ...
*
Environmental sculpture
Environmental sculpture is sculpture that creates or alters the environment for the viewer, as opposed to presenting itself figurally or monumentally before the viewer. A frequent trait of larger environmental sculptures is that one can actually en ...
*
Greenmuseum.org (online museum of environmental art)
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Independent public art
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Karriere Bar
Karriere Bar was a bar and restaurant in the Meatpacking District of Copenhagen, Denmark, co-founded by Berlin-based, Danish artist Jeppe Hein in 2007. The establishment featured interactive and Site-specific art by a range of international ar ...
*
Land art
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Land Arts of the American West
Land Arts of the American West is a studio-based field program that seeks to construct an expanded definition of land art through direct experience connecting the full range of human interventions in the landscape—from pre-contact indigenous to ...
*
Lock On art
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Plop art
Plop art (or plonk art) is a pejorative slang term for public art (usually large, abstract, modernist or contemporary sculpture) made for government or corporate plazas, spaces in front of office buildings, skyscraper atriums, parks, and other pub ...
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Rock balancing
Rock balancing (also stone balancing, or stacking) is a form of recreation or expression in which rocks are balanced on top of one another, often in a precarious manner.
Conservationists and park services have expressed concerns that the arran ...
*
Street Installations
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Public art
Public art is art in any Media (arts), media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and phy ...
*
Yarn bombing
Yarn bombing (or yarnbombing) is a type of graffiti or street art that employs colourful displays of knitted or crocheted yarn or fibre rather than paint or chalk. It is also called wool bombing, yarn storming, guerrilla knitting, kniffiti, urb ...
References
External links
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{{Branches of the visual arts , expanded
Visual arts genres
Artistic techniques
Site-specific
Contemporary art
Sculpture
Site-specific
Landscape design history
Landscape architecture
*Art
la:Ars situs propria