Material Dispersions: Sculpture, Photography, and International Interventions in Italy, 1962-72.

Abstract

The twenty-five years following the end of WWII witnessed an explosion of experimental sculptural projects that embraced new materials and ephemeral installation tactics. These works were often large in scale and displayed in unconventional spaces. While these tendencies emerged internationally in the postwar period, Italy provided an especially active if informal network of progressive patrons, whose support was necessary to facilitate the realization of increasingly ambitious projects. This dissertation focuses on four sculptural works created in Italy by foreign artists, David Smith’s Voltri series (1962), Yayoi Kusama’s Narcissus Garden (1966), Robert Smithson’s Asphalt Rundown (1969), and Joseph Beuys’ Arena – dove sarei arrivato se fossi intelligente! (1972), to examine the emergence of these tendencies. It asserts that as materials and display became more transitory and contingent, photography became a fully integrated element, not a mere document, of the work. While diverse in scope and intent, these four projects presented sculpture as a node, a center of transaction that was consciously dispersed through photographic components. Each fully embraced the possibilities of the photographic image while remaining committed to the making and display of three-dimensional, physical phenomena. The combined presence of sculptural object and photograph created a fragmented but conjoined work of art that offered a new model of what sculpture could be; not a singular, autonomous “thing,” but an active, dispersed arena of engagement with the physical world, with photographs operating within the sculptural phenomena they depict.