The Brooklyn Rail

The Guest Critic is charged with suggesting a topic or theme that can be explored and debated for this special section of the Rail. On the occasion of the re-staging of Jenny Holzer’s 1989, architecturally encompassing piece at the Guggenheim, I have chosen the theme of site-specific Art. To my mind, Holzer’s Guggenheim project is one of the great site-specific works of my generation. It is also part of a larger history that has grown in some very interesting ways.

Having said that, the concept of site-specificity is often taken for granted, while also being very vaguely defined, and lumped into the broad term “installation art,” which has become an almost obligatory part of every artist’s practice. Installing art is always a part of art’s eventual presentation, but site-specific art is not just an aesthetic technique or an ability to install an appealing-looking art presentation. Site-specific art forms a deeper and more rigorous connection to a building or place. At its best, it is a work of art that to some degree derives its content from the site it embraces. This content can be formal, personal, confrontational, political, even mystical.

It is not a recent development. Susan Rothenberg talked of the ancient caves at Altamira as site-specific wall paintings, and inspiration for some her earliest paintings. Similarly, Cecilia Vicuña writes of her memories of ancient landscapes in her home country of Chile. C.D. Dickerson III describes the site-specific tendencies of sculptors from ancient Greece to the Middle Ages and to the great Baroque master Bernini.

One could argue that modern site-specificity began with artists’ responses to architecture. The result were new types of investigations into the relationship between art content and architectural content. Daniel Buren and Mark Rosenthal point out that twentieth century architecture has provided new challenges for artists to manipulate, critique or refresh.

Perhaps the most personal architectural site for an artist is the studio, which is often just thought of as a background for invention and production. In his “Mapping the Studio,” Bruce Nauman meditates on it as an eerily empty container, laying in wait for the artist, who is sleeping while numerous night cameras placed by the artist have been placed to monitor the atmosphere.

Over the years, the physical and contextual support for art has not simply been a room or building, but what has come to be known as “site,” outside of architecture. Site-specificity has been a partner with Earth or Land art, but it has its own place within that broader term. It is not just the act of placing a work of art in the Great Outdoors, as if it were a neutral space. It refers to places that have a history that inspires the form or content of a work of art. These can be places of religion, mysticism, trauma, family and community. The texts by or about Tadao Ando, Jenny Holzer, Jessica Fuentes, Alan Michelson and Eiko Otake all point to sites with these types of content.

The following texts present my personal and diverse view of the history of site-specific art. The goal is to both bring a sharper focus on the meanings of site-specificity, while also opening a wider lens to its possibilities. There will be some who take issue with my widening this lens. And there will be others who will want to know why there weren’t more artists or approaches included. From my view, thinking about what is included and what is not is a good thing in terms of a re-imagining of the topic. Through the process of researching different approaches, I have learned that site-specificity has not been static. It is a moving target, fluid with personal definitions. Perhaps that’s why it has lasted so long.