WEEK 1: dematerialisation of art

Dear Members,

This week we are looking at 'the dematerialisation of art' (1968) by lucy r. lippard and john chandler.

I have attached a URL to an artwork referenced in the text 'Wavelength' (1967) by Michael Snow. Although it is only a partial section from the original work, hopefully you can get the gist of what the authors mean by watching it. 



Some of you may not be very well acquainted with academic texts on art and that is absolutely fine.

For that reason I ask everyone to write a short summary of the text between 200 - 500 words.
In addition to the summary I kindly ask everyone to choose a term or a word they have never seen before in the text, define that term and bring it to the group.

If there are no new words in the text for you please choose a term that you are familiar with but don't have full clarity on and elaborate on that.

And if two people have the same term it can be even more fun to see the different findings! I think this is a great method to improve vocabulary with technical terms for example, determinism, entropy, nominalism, etc.

The last task I want you to do  is to choose an artwork that the authors are referring to from the time of writing (1960s -- early 70s) and an artwork from today that could fit the description of the text.

These tasks are totally voluntary and if you don't want to undertake them I sincerely have no problem with that.

Lastly, I am still unsure on the format of discussion but because I find zoom quite unpleasant at times I have made this forum instead as a potential alternative.

I hope we can respond thoughtfully through text as well and if there comes a time where a vocal discussion is necessary we should do it on zoom, based on interest.

With that, please respond to this post with any questions about the text, your responses (incl. chosen term and artworks).

Happy reading!!

Warmly,

Éimear  

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