By Gray Chapman
SCAD-Atlanta art history professor Emily Webb gave a lecture to a full crowd on Oct. 30 as part of the Art History and Liberal Arts Lecture Series. Her lecture explored the concept of site-specificity in artwork, particularly in three-dimensional work. Webb explained that, though many early works like the Acropolis and Stonehenge were constructed with special attention to physical location, this factor became particularly important in the late 1960’s and onward. From that point forward, according to Webb, site became an essential part of the artistic decision-making process in many works, both large and small-scale. Webb also examined the physical, conceptual and social relationships between certain works of art and their individual places.
Webb spoke about artists who use space and physical location as part of the work itself, so that the work could not serve its artistic function in any other place. According to Webb, scholars have termed this concept “site-specific practice,” which became heavily associated with artists like Robert Smithson and Richard Serra. Smithson’s large-scale earthwork “Spiral Jetty” and Serra’s steel “Tilted Arc” are, according to Webb, “textbook examples” of this concept.
“Spiral Jetty,” located at the Great Salt Lake in Utah, is a monumental sculpture made of basalt rocks and earth from the site itself. “Smithson chose this specific site for the work, and then developed the work around the location,” said Webb. Smithson’s choice for this site was based on the unusually high salt content of the lake, which accounts for a reddish hue to the color of the water. He also chose the site, according to Webb, based on a myth that there is a whirlpool in the lake that leads down to the center of the earth. The resulting work, a 1500-foot long spiral, is based on the surrounding site itself, recalling the form of a whirlpool and created from the materials of the site.
Richard Serra’s “Tilted Arc” was another example given by Webb of site-specificity. A structure made from over 72 tons of steel, the arc was created specifically for the Federal Plaza in New York City. “The size itself interrupts any person traveling through the city,” said Webb, “and would interrupt someone no matter how they tried walking through the Plaza.” Therefore, according to Webb, “Tilted Arc” was sited by Richard Serra for this specific place.
Webb went on to explain that the term “site-specific” developed over time to become applicable to many different artistic practices and contemporary works. Webb referenced some Atlanta-specific works, such as Sol LeWitt’s “54 Columns,” a structure that recalls the Atlanta skyline, located in Atlanta’s historic Old Fourth Ward. Webb also mentioned Dennis Oppenheim’s “Alternative Land Art,” an outdoor installation that the sculptor completed on the SCAD-Atlanta campus with the help of SCAD-Atlanta students. “These two works exemplify contemporary local site-specific artwork,” said Webb.
Webb also spoke about the origins of site-specificity, which began in the 1960’s. “During the course of the 1960’s, a new kind of art exemplified by these images challenged the modernist paradigm of sculpture,” said Webb. Webb defined modernism as a tendency of artists to reject the standards of the Renaissance, beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing until the 1960’s. In sculpture, according to Webb, this resulted in a movement away from figurative sculptures and toward more abstract works created with new, unconventional materials. This began to change, however, with the rise of interest in site-specificity in the late 1960’s. “Beginning in the mid-1960’s, an abstract monument capable of being relocated from the artist’s studio, to the gallery, to the landscape without any alteration of its meaning was no longer the norm,” said Webb. During this shift to postmodernism, artists began to redefine the relationship between art and place. “A new, refined conception of place appeared as a prevailing critical concern for a large number of artists, and in turn shaped the multitude of contemporary practices,” said Webb.
Webb examined the evolution of site-specificity throughout different media over the course of time, as artists began to create works that, according to Webb, “responded to and remained linked to their individual locations.” Webb explained this evolution apparent in works like Claes Oldenburg’s “Placid Civic Monument,” where Oldenburg hired a gravedigger to dig a hole six feet deep in Central Park, adjacent to Cleopatra’s Needle, and subsequently refill the hole, which remained visible as a spot that lacked grass in the area. Oldenburg specifically chose this site for its personal meaning, according to Webb, because he had spent a significant amount of time at Cleopatra’s Needle as a child. This was, according to Webb, an instance where “placed remained integral to both [the work’s] physical form and its conception,” because the work was materially bound (as it was unable to be relocated) and conceptually bound (for the significance of the nearby monument) to its place in Central Park.
Web closed the lecture by asking attendees to consider site-specificity when encoutering a work fixed to its site. “How exactly is it bound to its location? Does it relate to its site physically? Conceptually? Socially? Does the form derive in any way from its location? Does the place dictate the concept of the work? Webb then introduced the concept of the relationship between art and place on a global scale, a delineation of site-specificity that has recently gained popularity within the contemporary art world — but first, according to Webb, “One must first begin with an investigation of the primary events that demonstrate this transformation.”