Rosalind Krauss, Sculpture in the Expanded Field

In the article, ‘Sculpture in the Expanded Field’ Rosalind Krauss describes her own intention as being an attempt to map out the determinant structure that developed from the sculptural practices of the 1960s and 70s (Krauss, p44). It is a structure that served to release the new types of art that Krauss had observed around her from the genealogical definitions that other critics had created in the own attempt to define what was happening in art at the time. This genealogical historicising was, according to Krauss, inaccurate since it connected sculpture to other practices of object making that had functions entirely separate and distinct from the functions of art. At the time that Krauss was writing, the function of sculpture had moved away from the investigation of pure negativity, “the combination of exclusions” (Krauss, p36) that was the end point of approximately 100 years of experimenting with sculpture as a thing in itself, which is to say, it was the end of Modernity. It had expanded into a consideration of the meaning derived from the network of relationships that exists between (and beyond) such concepts as landscape, architecture and sculpture itself. Krauss’ diagram (p38) clearly accounts for this development by redefining the terms with which sculpture is understood. It is also part of a larger theoretical development, postmodernism, that redefined how meaning is generated.
Whilst ‘Sculpture in the Expanded Field’ lays out in clear terms the beginning of the collapse of disciplines that is an essential element of postmodernism, there is a major error in Krauss’ thinking. Her insistence that the art she is talking about arose at a “specific moment” and is a “historical event” (Krauss, p44) is at odds with her desire to remove the reliance on genealogical explanations to understand art. A specific moment does not exist in isolation, since there is time before it and time after it, with activities of art making that may just as easily fit into the description that defines the “specific moment” as be excluded from it. By identifying and defining a shift in art making practices, Krauss inadvertently revealed the difficulty to dispense entirely with a genealogical approach to history. Accompanying this attitude is Krauss’ equally questionable reading of Minimalist artworks as “pure negativity,” a widely held assumption at the time that corresponds with the belief that Modernism ended at a specific point. In ‘Minimalism and Biography’, Anna Chave has outlined part of the problem with excluding certain details from the reading of Minimalist works (and any other art for that matter). By denying that there were personal motivations for the creation of certain forms and retelling the story that the objects were produced with industrial techniques (without any trace of human touch) one actually further reinforces the Modernist notion that artworks exist in a world unto themselves and that no reference to categories outside of art, (such as culture and economics) needs to be made in order to understand them. This is again in conflict with Krauss’ program of opening up the reading of sculpture as per the expanded field.
An interesting issue here involves the unavoidable desire to categorise our experiences in order to understand them, and the consequent loss of information once categorising is complete. Regardless of how multifaceted and open ended one’s system of definitions may be, reassessment will always be necessary if the goal is to free an activity from the constraints of imprecise classifying.

References

Chave, Anna, ‘Minimalism and Biography’, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 82, 2000, pp149-163.
Krauss, Rosalind, ‘Sculpture in the Expanded Field’, October, Vol.8, Spring, 1979, pp30-44.