Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America

Applin, Jo

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Description: Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America

BOOKEccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America

Jo Applin

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00043

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15439

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.

Author

Jo Applin

PublisherYale University Press

Print publication date October 2012 (in print)

Print ISBN 9780300181982

EISBN 9780300233544

Illustrations 40 color + 38 b/w illus.

Print Status in print

Publisher (in print)

WorldCat

Google Books

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Contents

Jo Applin

Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America

Contents

Author

Jo Applin

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00043.001

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15440

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Acknowledgements

Jo Applin

Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America

Acknowledgements

Author

Jo Applin

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00043.002

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15441

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Introduction: Local Histories

Jo Applin

Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America

During the early to mid-1960s the Minimalist artist and critic Donald Judd produced essays on Claes...

Author

Jo Applin

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.1-11

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00043.003

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15442

Chapter subject tags:Sculpture, American--20th centuryArt criticism--United States--History--20th centuryMinimal art--United States--ExhibitionsMinimal art

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1. ‘Threatening, and Possibly Functioning Objects’: Lee Bontecou

Jo Applin

Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America

Between 1959 and 1967 Lee Bontecou made a large number of wall-mounted metal and fabric abstract relief works that were unlike anything then being produced by her peers in New York. The reliefs varied in size...

Author

Jo Applin

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.13-41

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00043.004

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15443

Chapter subject tags:Minimal artBontecou, Lee, 1931-2022Sculpture, American--20th centuryFound objects (Art)Art criticism--History--20th centuryChamberlain, John, 1927–2011Women artists--United States--20th century

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2. Gross Anthropomorphism: Claes Oldenburg

Jo Applin

Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America

A photograph taken during the installation of Claes Oldenburg’s solo show at the Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles, in October 1963 depicts the artist’s wife and collaborator, Pat Oldenburg, perched, legs...

Author

Jo Applin

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.43-61

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00043.005

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15444

Chapter subject tags:Sculpture, American--20th centuryArt criticism--United States--History--20th centuryPop art--United StatesMinimal artOldenburg, Claes, 1929-2022

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3. Encrypted Objects: Lucas Samaras

Jo Applin

Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America

During the sixties, at the start of an otherwise eclectic career encompassing performance, painting, writing, photography and sculpture, Lucas Samaras returned time and again to the format of the small-scale box. The boxes Samaras used were for...

Author

Jo Applin

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.63-83

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00043.006

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15445

Chapter subject tags:SurrealismSamaras, Lucas, 1936–Sculpture, American--20th centuryKaprow, AllanCornell, JosephBochner, Mel, 1940-Kubler, George, 1912-1996. Shape of time

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4. Bric-a-Brac: H. C. Westermann

Jo Applin

Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America

The small box and house sculpture Mysteriously Abandoned New Home (1958) is one of a series made by H. C. Westermann from the late fifties (fig. 51). In form, it is a hexagonal rocket-shaped tower with the windows and door boarded up. It...

Author

Jo Applin

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.85-111

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00043.007

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15446

Chapter subject tags:Westermann, H. C. (Horace Clifford), 1922–1981Lévi-Strauss, ClaudeAssemblage (Art)--United States--20th centurySculpture, American--20th century

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5. Hauntings: Bruce Nauman

Jo Applin

Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America

In September 1966, Lucy Lippard included a small number of sculptures by Bruce Nauman in ‘Eccentric Abstraction’, just a few months after he had graduated from the University of California at Davis with a master’s degree in fine arts. For the show, Lippard selected works from the series of roughly moulded latex, gauze, fibreglass and resin strips that the young artist had begun to make a year earlier in 1965, the year Nauman gave up painting for sculpture...

Author

Jo Applin

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.113-135

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00043.008

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15447

Chapter subject tags:Moore, Henry, 1898–1986Nauman, Bruce, 1941-Art, American--20th century--ExhibitionsLippard, Lucy R.Sculpture, American--20th centuryWestermann, H. C. (Horace Clifford), 1922–1981Recycling (Waste, etc.) in artSmithson, Robert. Spiral JettyMinimal art

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Conclusion: Looking Sideways at the Sixties

Jo Applin

Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America

The Minimalist artist Sol LeWitt in 1967 presented his friend Eva Hesse with a square table, the surface of which he had painted with a meticulous grey grid (fig. 83). In a spirit of friendly artistic exchange, Hesse re-gifted the table back to...

Author

Jo Applin

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.137-141

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00043.009

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15448

Chapter subject tags:LeWitt, Sol, 1928–2007Sculpture, American--20th centurySamaras, Lucas, 1936–Minimal art

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