Art, enterprise, and collaboration: Richard Serra, Robert Irwin, James Turrell, and Claes Oldenburg at the Art and Technology Program of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1967--1971.

Abstract

This dissertation examines three artistic collaborations pursued in the context of an institutional program, Art and Technology (A&T), that was developed in order to introduce artists to the new technologies of modern industry. Active from 1967 through 1971, this program was sponsored by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and hosted as many as seventy-eight established and emerging artists. The three projects examined here serve as exceptional examples of productive collaboration and depart substantially from more mainstream artistic appropriations of technology during the period, some of which were found in the A&T Program. The four artists who were involved in these projects are: Richard Serra, Robert Irwin and James Turrell, and Claes Oldenburg. This study illustrates how these artists used the context of an unusually structured collaboration with industry to arrive at solutions to problems within each of their respective artistic practices. Serra first recognized steel as a potential medium during his residency at Kaiser Steel. Irwin, who was still working with painted objects, dramatically shifted his artistic practice toward new non-objective and environmental forms by the end of his collaboration. Turrell used his partnership with Irwin and the Garrett Corporation to definitively break with the practice of painting and to further clarify his inquiries into an art based on projected-light. Finally, Oldenburg used collaboration with Disney and Gemini G.E.L. as an opportunity to refine his developing interest in large-scale public sculptures. In this study, the author draws evidence from archival sources, participant interviews, formal interrogation of works, and broader contextual sources to demonstrate how artists used collaboration for productive ends. In contrast to the mainstream art and technology movement---in which technology was closely aligned with the issue of appealing to a mass audience---these artists considered multidisciplinary collaboration in terms of specific avant-garde concerns inherent in their individual practices. This reconfiguration generally enabled the artists to approach discursive structures of their own field self-reflexively and in ways that not only generated new works of art but also experimental modes of artistic inquiry that continued to impact their working methods long after the conclusion of the temporary collaborations.