Room installation
In a room installation , the room becomes a complete component of the art , one cannot be separated from the other, it is a unit that is holistically designed by the artist and thus should be experienced by the viewer. It represents an extension of sculpture .
In addition to Marcel Duchamp and the Dadaists and Surrealists , the approaches of two American artists made a decisive contribution to the emergence of this now independent art form : Donald Judd , who questioned the independence of the work of art, and Robert Morris ' theatrical approach to art. Both are important representatives of Minimal Art .
Donald Judd (1928–1994) started out as a painter, but did not want his pictures to hang on the wall. He experimented with free-standing objects, but - as has been the case up to now - he was not only concerned with their external form. He was looking for something that was neither painting nor sculpture , but rather combined both. With the “specific objects” he succeeded in bringing space into the picture through cuts and stripes, and through multiplication the third dimension came into play. Judd created floor boxes that were placed in the room without a pedestal and directly related to their surroundings. The artist took over the design of the rooms more and more.
Robert Morris (1931–2018) was also looking for fundamental forms of expression that should enter into a relationship with their surroundings and sensitize people's perception . He wanted works of art that combined the movement of the viewer in space and the spatial effect of objects.
Just as important for the development of the room installation were performances that changed the role of the viewer in art, as well as a new view of the room as a socio-political creative space that cannot be separated from people ( social sculpture , situationism ).
In the contemporary room installation, the basic ideas of Minimal Art, the merging of art and everyday life , manipulation of the viewer and reduction of forms, reinterpreted and placed in different contexts, live on.