In response to Rosalind Krauss’  Sculpture in the Expanded Field.

I found this essay quite hard to read, but the main idea of this essay raises a very important message that needs to be understood.

Rosalind Krauss, the art historian, published an essay, “Sculpture in the Expanded Field,” in which she defined the structural parameters of sculpture, architecture, and landscape art through the precise diagram. Through this diagram, she defines what sculpture is and shows that “sculpture is rather only one term on the periphery of a field in which there are other, differently structured possibilities” (Krauss 38).

Written in 1979, this essay explains that looking back over the previous century the definition of art and sculpture has become much broader. Krauss claims that the traditional logic of sculpture transformed into something different. Instead of making something pretty “logical” or narrative-based, sculptors are able to express their own personality and convey their voice in their work.

Sculpture after the Post-modernism period became something way more different from what it was before. Not only Duchamp’s Fountain started an era of unpredictable sculptures and installations. This is where the term ‘combination of exclusions’ comes into play. She is talking that a sculpture needs a landscape or some other context to be viewed, as in Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty or Robert Morris’ Green Gallery Installation.

 

Just like in Cromar’s Foreword, the main message is that sculptors should kill the boundaries that divide our conception of sculpture because basically anything could be named sculpture. And this statement can (and should) be applied to all other artists, including digital artists.