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Tactility: the interrogation of medium in art of the 1960s
Author(s) -
Potts Alex
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
art history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8365
pISSN - 0141-6790
DOI - 10.1111/j.0141-6790.2004.02702005_4.x
Subject(s) - materiality (auditing) , sculpture , impulse (physics) , consumerism , aesthetics , interrogation , art , visual arts , sociology , political science , law , physics , quantum mechanics
This article intervenes in current debate about medium by looking back to the 1960s, a moment located on the cusp between medium‐based and post‐medium conceptions of art. It examines a body of sculptural work where tactile qualities were given priority to the point where the formal values constituting sculpture as a medium were effectively negated. This situation illuminates a larger split emerging in the art world between the focus on materials and physical processes and the impulse to be liberated from the constraints of medium specificity. Such a split, it is argued, relates to divided perceptions of economy at the time when a preoccupation with the materials and processes of industrial production coexisted with a new focus on consumerism. What implications does the subsequent intensification of a consumer‐orientated economy have for understandings of the materiality of the art work in a post‐medium art world?