Process art is an artistic movement where the final product, the objet d’art (work of art/found object), is not the primary focus; instead, the creative process itself constitutes a primary, if not the paramount, focus. This process encompasses activities such as collection, categorization, arrangement, correlation, and pattern formation, alongside the initiation of various actions and procedures. Proponents of Process art conceptualized artistic creation as a collaborative engagement between humans and the inherent expressive qualities of materials. This movement fundamentally explores the manifestation of forces upon matter, asserting that the very act of artistic production can be considered an artwork in its own right. Artist Robert Morris characterized this artistic methodology as “anti-form,” signifying a detachment from any intrinsic relationship to the resultant physical object.
History and Movement
Emerging in the mid-1960s within the United States and Europe, Process art developed as a creative movement in direct opposition to Minimalism. Generally, practitioners of Process art eschewed the concept of a singular, completed artifact, instead prioritizing the inherent artistic process. A significant precursor was Jackson Pollock's drip painting technique, characterized by the vigorous application of paint onto a horizontal canvas, utilizing the artist's full bodily engagement to cover the entire surface. Emphasizing indeterminacy in their exploration of flux and ephemerality, Process artists also derived inspiration from performance art and the Dada movement. In 1968, Robert Morris presented a seminal exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, accompanied by an essay that elucidated the principles of Process art. The museum's official website articulates:
Process artists engaged with themes related to corporeality, aleatory events, improvisation, and the emancipatory potential of unconventional materials, including wax, felt, and latex. Employing these mediums, they generated unconventional forms within unpredictable or asymmetrical configurations, achieved through actions like cutting, suspending, and dropping, or via natural phenomena such as growth, condensation, freezing, or decomposition.
The Process art movement exhibits a direct relationship with the environmental art movement. According to the Art and Culture website:
Process artists prioritize organic systems, employing ephemeral, insubstantial, and transient materials such as animal carcasses, steam, rendered fat, ice, grains, sawdust, and vegetation. These materials are frequently subjected to natural forces, including gravity, temporal decay, meteorological conditions, and temperature fluctuations.
Within Process art, akin to the Arte Povera movement, nature itself is celebrated as art, often leading to the rejection of its mere symbolization or representation.
Interdisciplinary Connections and Related Movements
Process art exhibits fundamental commonalities with several other domains, notably expressive therapies and transformative arts. Both these fields emphasize how the creative engagement in artistic endeavors can foster personal insight, facilitate individual healing, and catalyze social transformation, irrespective of the perceived aesthetic or market value of the resulting artifact.
Furthermore, Process art is integral to arts-based research, a methodology that employs creative processes and artistic expression to explore subjects that prove recalcitrant to conventional descriptive or representational modes of inquiry.
Notable Works
- Expanded Expansion, by Eva Hesse, comprises rubber-covered cheesecloth suspended from fiberglass poles. The variable width of these poles across different installations serves to illustrate the inherent process of the installation's construction.
- Untitled (Pink felt), by Robert Morris, features pink felt fabric pieces arranged in a heap on the floor. This work incorporates gravity as an integral component of the artistic process, thereby emphasizing the inherent randomness of the composition.
- Splash Piece: Casting, by Richard Serra. His early oeuvre utilized materials such as rubber, neon, latex, fiberglass, and lead. These compositions explored the intrinsic fluidity and structural properties of materials, employing techniques like pouring and splashing for sculptural formation. Serra's subsequent works evolved into monumental installations crafted from materials such as forged steel and concrete, where form and scale became primary mediums.
- Contraband, by Lynda Benglis, involved the application of latex to form an irregular, abstract pour directly onto the ground, intended to symbolize environmental pollution.
- Mattress Piece, by Gary Kuehn, explored the utilization of tension between distinct forms as a means to critique the rigid, hard-edged minimalist aesthetic prevalent during the 1960s.
- Accumulated Vision, a collection by Barry Le Va, showcases his artistic output from the 1960s to 2005, incorporating diverse materials such as broken glass, meat cleavers, wool felt, powdered chalk, linseed oil, a typewriter, and a gun.
- Bruce Nauman's video piece, Art Make-Up, depicts the artist progressively applying various colored make-up to his face and torso, ultimately creating the illusion of a photographic negative. Although initially conceived for simultaneous projection across four walls, this concept was not realized in the original work but was subsequently explored in later projects.
- Richard Van Buren's 2010 creation, Batambang, composed of thermoplastic, acrylic paint, and shells, critically examines the trajectory and inherent constraints of sculpture as an art form.
References
Wheeler, D. (1991). Art Since the Midcentury: 1945 to the Present.
- Wheeler, D. (1991). Art Since the Midcentury: 1945 to the Present.
- Morris, R. (1993). Continuous Project Altered Daily: The Writings of Robert Morris.
- Andersen, W. V. (1975). American Sculpture in Process: 1930-1970. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co.
- Krauss, R. E. (Ed.). (1986). Richard Serra / Sculpture. New York: The Museum of Modern Art.
- Rorimer, A. (2004). New Art in the 60s and 70s: Redefining Reality. London: Thames & Hudson.