Art, Artist and Spectator

Bruce Barber, “Found Situations 1970-1972”, ZX #4: Situations, ed. Paul Cullen & Grant Thompson, Auckland: Manukau School of Visual Arts, 2008, pp. 10-14.


Bruce Barber is an artist, curator, writer, and educator. In his article Found Situations 1970-72, he discusses his background, interests, and influences in his art practice. Barber’s practice, particularly his early performance pieces were influenced by conceptual art, International Situationists, arte povera, Fluxus, and the Marcel Duchamp readymade.

Barber (10) noted that during his early career as an artist, he was challenged by Duchamp’s ‘rendezvous with the ready-made’ and his proposal, ‘artist only does part of the work which the spectator completes’. Readymade is produced by transforming a manufactured object in a process of cancelling its own function and giving new thought to the object. This process is giving the artist the power to call their choice of object or art. Duchamp's theory, "its art if you say it is" is evidence to the principle of what is art is defined by the artist. If making a choice is the artist’s role as an example, what is the spectator’s role towards the completion of the work? In addition, what is the artist’s responsibility to her or his spectator? For Duchamp, the artist is a 'mediumistic being' who does not really know what he is doing or why he is doing it. In addition, the spectator is the one who, through a kind of 'inner osmosis', deciphers and interprets the work’s inner qualifications, relates them to the external world (qtd. in Tomkins 3). For him, the role of the spectator is equally important to the role of the artist’s.

Duchamp’s theory "it's art if you say it is", has for years been influencing lots of artists untill the present bringing up many positive and negative issues. One of the issues can be seen in Emily Vey Duke’s article Suffering, Empathy, Art and the Greater Good written in 2005. Duke (9) argues that the influence of Duchamp’s theory creates problems in the contemporary art world because art is suffering such a crisis of irrelevance to the public at large. I cannot totally agree with this, but her point of view is convincing. It is true that work produced by contemporary artist is not appealing to many non-art-initiated viewers. This could be caused by the expanded field of modernism continuously developing from what is already available in the art world at present. The world of art gets more and more complex and harder to understand, it limits the spectators into those who have relevant knowledge to be able to actually engage with the work. Artists are producing work using their own personal skills and knowledge in a contemporary art field and spectators also needs their own personal knowledge and experience in order to engage and make interpretations of the work through their perception. I think this issue cannot be fixed within artist’s abilities, but are artists at least trying to take responsibility? Or is this problem even an issue to contemporary artists today? “Fuck-you-if you-don’t get-it” attitude is really not helping, neither is the equally popular “it-doesn’t-matter-if-it-means-anything-to-you-this-is-about-me (Duke 9)."



Duke, Emily V. “Suffering, Empathy, Art and the Greater Good.” C Magazine Issue 85 Spring 2005: 8-10.

Tomkins, Calvin. The Bride & the bachelors. New York: Viking press, 1965.

Sculpture in the Expanded Field

Rosalind Krauss, "Sculpture in the Expanded Field", October, Vol.8 (Spring, 1979), pp.30-44.


Rosalind Krauss is an American art critic, professor, and theorist. She attempts to understand the phenomenon of modernist art, in its historical, theoretical, and formal contexts. In her 1979 essay Sculpture in the Expanded Field, Krauss summarizes the development of American sculpture in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the main ideas from this article is showing the issues dealing with the category of sculpture, as it became almost infinitely malleable in the contemporary context (Krauss 30).

Krauss adopted the term ‘expanded field’ from Robert Morris as an extended physical and mental terrain for understanding ‘sculpture’ (Rendell 41). In the term ‘expanded field’, sculpture like in all other categories of art, lost its own logic. Sculpture was inseparable from the logic of the monument functioning as commemorative representation until the late nineteenth century. However in the expanded field as Krauss expresses, the boundaries between sculpture and architecture, sculpture and landscape, and landscape and architecture became unclear. The territory of sculpture has been, and still is continuously extending while artists are experimenting with its limits, seeking to understand what sculpture is. The field of sculpture with mode of practice are constantly evolving, therefore issues with territory are no longer seen as a big topic. For example, contemporary art institutions like Elam School of Fine art offer an interdisciplinary studio environment to allow students to experiment with a broad range of art and gain insight into developing infinite possibilities.

Furthermore, I agree with Krauss’s viewpoint of how the category of sculpture has been extended to include just about anything (30). This could be impacted by Duchampian paradigm, “Its art if you say it is.” A work by conceptual artist Martin Creed, Work No 79, some Blue-tack kneaded, rolled into a ball and depressed against a wall 1933, can be seen as extended physical and mental form in the contemporary sculpture. This installation piece is also dealing with the issue of art being dysfunctional outside of art an institutional frame. A piece of Blue-tack depressed against a wall can be easily found in our everyday life evidencing the idea of sculpture as being infinitely malleable. In addition, like in Duchampian paradigm, anything can be art if the artist says so? Today we are not so sure how to define sculpture. I think Krauss’s point of view is convincing especially in the context of the period it was written and some of the ideas and issues she discussed are clearly still valid in the world of contemporary art today.


Rendell, Jane. “The Expanded Field.” Art and Architecture: A Place Between. New York: I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd, 2006.