Installation Art as Real Space: An examination of contemporary installation art in dialogue with David Summer’s Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western modernism Katy (Katherine) McIntyre [email protected] Carleton University Ottawa, Canada Half or more of the best new work in the last few years has been neither painting nor sculpture. –Donald Judd (1965) Today in the twenty-first century, we can visually roam the planet through the internet, travel to distant parts of the world in a matter of hours by airplane, and even bungee jump safely off mile-high bridges. Compared to these corporeal and communicative experiences offered to us by advances in contemporary technology, it could be argued that traditional painting and sculpture can no longer compete. Moreover, the conventional terms ‘visual arts’ or ‘fine arts’ appear to be reductive and outdated nomenclature to refer to the variety of art-making practices that characterize artistic activity within our post-modern age. An alternative paradigm through which to discuss the history and practice of art is presented by David Summers in his landmark text Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western modernism . Summers, an art historian and professor at the University of Virginia, presents a complex account of world art history to prepare a theoretical basis for a more intercultural art history. Featuring an analysis of art focused on spatiality, rather than an occularcentric approach, his text represents a unique position from which to discuss the future of art. It is precisely the opportunity for discourse offered by Summers’s analysis of the history of the spatial arts that I would like to examine in this study. I will supplement his account of the rise of Western modernism by expanding his framework to include a consideration of installation art, a dominant contemporary spatial art practice. Focused through a discussion on installation art, I would like to consider how an art history based on spatiality challenges traditional conceptions of the art institution, the role of a visitor, and the character of art discourse. Through an analysis of the metaoptical framework presented in Summers’s text, the 1 real space of installation art will be revealed as a fertile common ground for the instigation of inter-cultural art discourse. First, this paper will define the category of ‘real space’ and consider why real space is an appropriate foundation for art historical discourse. Next, we will examine how real space is related to metaoptical space. We will also consider an application of his paradigm of real space in the history of installation art. Central to this paper will be a discussion on the role of the gallery visitor as a ‘subject’. This will be motivated by an analysis of Summers’s arguments, as well as an analysis of subjective experience within art experience as related to installation art. This will reveal the dual nature of subjectivity that a visitor becomes aware of in an encounter with a work of installation art. This study will also feature an examination of how real space is manifest within the contemporary art institution. Finally, this paper will conclude with an argument that presents installation art as a stalwart vehicle for inter-cultural dialogue on the function of art in contemporary global society. Real space within a metaoptical framework David Summers defines real space as the “the space we find ourselves sharing with other people and things”. 1 Real space, then, is local, immediate and scaled to the individual. Summers identifies sculpture and architecture as the principal arts which are contingent upon real space, whereas painting is as art that takes place in a ‘virtual’ space; “space represented on a surface”. 2 Real space has two categories: personal space and social space. Describing sculpture as the art of personal space, he states that this personal space is articulated by the "relations of artifacts to the real spatial conditions of our embodied existences, that is, our sizes, uprightness, facing, 1 Summers, 43 2 Ibid 2 handedness, vulnerability, temporal finitude, capacities for movement, strengths, reaches and grasps." 3 Architecture extends beyond the relational scope of sculpture because it is an art of social space, the place where our ‘embodied existences’ interact with one another. Architecture represents the “actual arrangements”4 of our embodied existences beyond their particular manifestations. Because all art fulfils conditions of space, either real or virtual, Summers asserts that an examination of the spatial conditions of world art can provide a methodological basis for an intercultural art history. The way that Summers defines real space and virtual space is categorical, dependent upon conceptions of personal, social and virtual space that arguably are absolute. Moreover, the attempt to categorize art history using spatial conditions is not an attempt to prove that all art addresses the condition of space in the same way. Rather, Summers acknowledges that because all art can fit into spatial categories, “all art has a certain universality, even if it is also a principle of difference and division". 5 This reveals that his use of spatial categories aims to provide a universal base for analysis not present all art as unified in spatial ‘harmony’. Summer’s definition of real space is dependant upon the finite spatiotemporality of the human body. Real space, he argues, is grounded in the “typical structure, capacities and relations" of a human body. 6 We are most familiar with real space as the spatial arena in which we conduct our daily affairs: walking through a city, passing through a building, meeting other people in a specific location. The real space of an individual is also dependent upon time, as real space can only be experienced through the passing of ‘real’ time. 7 Throughout his text, Summers traces the historical foundations for his notion of a ‘spatial art history’, following the 3 Summers, 43 4 Ibid 5 Summers, 38 6 Summers, 36 7 Summers, 38 3 development of both real and virtual space in several seminal historical and cultural art-works up to the rise of Western modernism. Departing from the methodology of his mentor George Kubler, Summers’s presents spatiality as a foundation for an art historical method permits multidisciplinary analysis. Because the concept of ‘space’ allows for simultaneous analysis of its finite, temporary, local and universal characteristics, spatiality serves as an encompassing, but also flexible, mode of analysis. Other modes of analysis, such as formalism or iconography, often have been proven too reductive and not applicable across cultures. On the restrictions of formalism, artist and philosopher Joseph Kosuth posits that: “Formalist criticism is no more than an analysis of the physical attributes of particular objects that happen to exist in a morphological context”. 8 Formalism doesn’t offer opportunity for dialogue in any capacity other than evaluation of physical attributes. Without consideration of function, meaning, social context, and history of use, art historical analysis rooted in formalism proves to be nothing more than a survey of physical appearance. In contrast, using spatiality as a foundation for analysis encourages dialogue that includes formal, contextual and iconographical analysis. David Summers introduces the term ‘metaopticality’ to discuss the changes in the conception of spatiality in the modern period. Metaoptical space describes a notational proposition of a ‘universal grid’ in three-dimensional space. He focuses his discussion of metaoptical space through a consideration of several historical theories of vision, including an analysis of the development of pictorial perspective and the role that light plays in human sight. Central to his argument is an analysis of the contribution of the Muslim scientist Alhazen to theories of vision and optics. Alhazen helped to shape the modern scientific understanding of 8 Kosuth, “Art After Philosophy”, 1969 4 the “universal economy of physical light”. 9 A concept of universal space was integral to the description and discussion of physical light. Summers notes that in relation to this notational framework, “all force may be described, predicted and controlled”. 10 Through the consideration of physical light in notational space, light could be measured as ‘objectively’ as possible. As a consequence of Alhazen’s proof of the theory of intromission, the ‘subjective’ perspective that previous theories of vision encouraged could no longer be maintained. As metaoptical space became the dominant notational framework within which to approach questions of time, space and subjectivity, artists also began to explore image-making and representation with the consideration of this new conception of space. Developments in scientific theories of vision and light are often reflected by applications of those theories in art- making. The development of conventional pictorial perspective was dependent upon advances in Renaissance mathematics and science. Likewise, developments in the articulation of metaoptical space were reflected in the image-making traditions of modern artists. One of the key elements of metaoptical space is that it demands a reconsideration of the role of a ‘subject’ within a given space. Summers employs the term ‘subject’ to refer to the conception of an embodied individual self. 11 However, he also charges this understanding of ‘self’ with the idea that subjectivity is also what is “conditionally and cardinally human”, that responds and engages with human life as a greater phenomena. 12 The primary way that the subject engages with ‘life’ is through the physical senses. The occurrence of force in metaoptical space is the base of sensation as experienced by humans. Summers states that the brain processes this force through ‘schematic intuition’ which “accounts for the fact that we all make 9 Summers, 555 10 Summers, 685 11 Summers also extends this discussion of self as subject in his consideration of the human mind as counterforce.