What is the introduction of installation art?

Important Art Pieces

Obliteration Room (2012)
Installation by Yayoi Kusama
Queensland Gallery of Modern Art.
Starting with a room painted from top
to bottom in pure white Japanese artist
Yayoi Kusama then unleashed into it
thousands of kids armed with thousands
of coloured stickers.

The Sequence (2008) by Arne Quinze.
A wooden sculpture-installation at the Flemish Parliament in Brussels.
Postmodernist public art.

Instant Karma
Installation by Korean installation
artist Do-Ho Suh. An attempt to
represent the Theory of karma in
three dimensional visual art.

 

BRITISH INSTALLATION ART
For some of the best installation
artists, see: Turner Prize Winners.

Definition & Characteristics

Installation art is a relatively new genre of contemporary art - practised by an increasing number of postmodernist artists - which involves the configuration or "installation" of objects in a space, such as a room or warehouse. The resulting arrangement of material and space comprises the "artwork".

Because an installation usually allows the viewer to enter and move around the configured space and/or interact with some of its elements, it offers the viewer a very different experience from (say) a traditional painting or sculpture which is normally seen from a single reference point. Furthermore, an installation may engage several of the viewer's senses including touch, sound and smell, as well as vision.

Because of its flexibility and three-dimensionality, installation art is influenced by developments in computer art - such as software developments in video and film projection - as well as techniques used in avant-garde theatre and dance. Architectural and interior design are other influences.

Above all, installation is a form of conceptual art - a genre in which "ideas" and "impact" are regarded as being more important than the quality of a finished "product" or "work of art". (Remember, an installation is a purely temporary work of art. Unless it is photographed or documented in some way, there will be no evidence of its existence.) If a traditional work of art allows us to appreciate the craftsmanship of the artist, an installation allows us to experience the "artwork" and perhaps even rethink our attitudes and values.

As in all general forms of conceptual art, installation artists are more concerned with the presentation of their message than with the material used to present it. However, unlike 'pure' conceptual art, which is supposedly experienced in the minds of those introduced to it, installation art is more grounded and remains tied to a physical space. Conceptual and installation art are two of the most popular examples of postmodernist art, a general tendency noted for its attempts to expand the definition of art. Both forms are widely exhibited in many of the world's best galleries of contemporary art.

For other new art styles see Contemporary Art Movements (1970 onwards).

Three-dimensional work of art

An installation art of Mad crab created with waste plastics and similar non-biodegradable wastes at Fort Kochi.

Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called public art, land art or art intervention; however, the boundaries between these terms overlap.

History

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Visitors interact with a couple in bed, inside one of the many environments of La Menesunda (1965), one of the earliest large-scale installations in art history.[1][2]

Installation art can be either temporary or permanent. Installation artworks have been constructed in exhibition spaces such as museums and galleries, as well as public and private spaces. The genre incorporates a broad range of everyday and natural materials, which are often chosen for their "evocative" qualities, as well as new media such as video, sound, performance, immersive virtual reality and the internet. Many installations are site-specific in that they are designed to exist only in the space for which they were created, appealing to qualities evident in a three-dimensional immersive medium. Artistic collectives such as the Exhibition Lab at New York's American Museum of Natural History created environments to showcase the natural world in as realistic a medium as possible. Likewise, Walt Disney Imagineering employed a similar philosophy when designing the multiple immersive spaces for Disneyland in 1955. Since its acceptance as a separate discipline, a number of institutions focusing on Installation art were created. These included the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, the Museum of Installation in London, and the Fairy Doors of Ann Arbor, MI, among others.

Installation art came to prominence in the 1970s but its roots can be identified in earlier artists such as Marcel Duchamp and his use of the readymade and Kurt Schwitters' Merz art objects, rather than more traditional craft based sculpture. 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. Wolf Vostell shows his installation 6 TV Dé-coll/age in 1963[3] at the Smolin Gallery in New York.

Installation

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Allan McCollum.The Shapes Project, 2005/06

Installation as nomenclature for a specific form of art came into use fairly recently; its first use as documented by the Oxford English Dictionary 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."

Essentially, installation/environmental art takes into account a broader sensory experience, rather than floating framed points of focus on a "neutral" wall or displaying isolated objects (literally) on a pedestal. This may leave space and time as its only dimensional constants, implying 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".

Gesamtkunstwerk

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The conscious act of artistically addressing all the senses with regard to a total experience 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, ambience, and even the audience itself were considered and manipulated in order to achieve a state of total artistic immersion. In the book "Themes in Contemporary Art", it is suggested that "installations in the 1980s and 1990s were increasingly characterized by networks of operations involving the interaction among complex architectural settings, environmental sites and extensive use of everyday objects in ordinary contexts. With the advent of video in 1965, a concurrent strand of installation evolved through the use of new and ever-changing technologies, and what had been simple video installations expanded to include complex interactive, multimedia and virtual reality environments".

Art and Objecthood

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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 theater-goer does not forget that they have 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 they are 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". 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 brings 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 somewhat immersive experiences, but their unrelenting control over the rhythm of passing time and the arrangement of images precludes an intimately personal viewing experience. 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, 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.

Interactive installations

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An urban interactive art installation by Maurizio Bolognini (Genoa, 2005), which everybody can modify by using a cell phone.

An interactive installation frequently involves the audience acting on the work of art or the piece responding to users' activity.[4] There are several kinds of interactive installations that artists produce, these include web-based installations (e.g., Telegarden), gallery-based installations, digital-based installations, electronic-based installations, mobile-based installations, etc. Interactive installations appeared mostly at end of the 1980s (Legible City by Jeffrey Shaw, La plume by Edmond Couchot, Michel Bret...) and became a genre during the 1990s, when artists became particularly interested in using the participation of the audiences to activate and reveal the meaning of the installation.

Paul Kuniholm Installation Art, for Storefronts, a Shunpike program

Immersive virtual reality

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With the improvement of technology over the years, artists are more able to explore outside of the boundaries that were never able to be explored by artists in the past.[5] The media used are more experimental and bold; they are also usually cross media and may involve sensors, which plays on the reaction to the audiences' movement when looking at the installations. By using virtual reality as a medium, immersive virtual reality art is probably the most deeply interactive form of art.[6] By allowing the spectator to "visit" the representation, the artist creates "situations to live" vs "spectacle to watch".[7]

Gallery

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See also

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References

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Bibliography

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Contemporary installation organizations and museums

Installation art

• Electronic Language International Festival Interactive art installations and New media art.
• Media art center, Karlsruhe Germany one of the biggest center with a permanent collection of interactive installations.