Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America - Hardcover

Applin, Jo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300181981 ISBN 13: 9780300181982

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2012

Synopsis

In America during the 1960s, sculpture as an artistic practice underwent a series of radical transformations. Artists including Lee Bontecou, Claes Oldenburg, Lucas Samaras, H. C. Westermann, and Bruce Nauman offered alternative ways of imagining the three-dimensional object. The objects they created were variously described as erotic, soft, figurative, aggressive, bodily, or, in the words of the critic Lucy Lippard, "eccentric."

Looking beyond the familiar and canonic artworks of the 1960s, the book challenges not only how we think about these artists, but how we learn to look at the more familiar narratives of 1960s sculpture, such as Pop and Minimalism. Ambivalent and disruptive, the work of this decade articulated a radical renegotiation—rejection, even—of contemporary paradigms of sculptural practice. This invigorating study explores that shift and the ways in which the kinds of work made in this period defied established categories and questioned the criteria for thinking about sculpture.

About this title

About the Author

Jo Applin is lecturer in the history of art department at the University of York.

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0300181981
• ISBN 13: 9780300181982
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 176