La ruina como proceso: Robert Overby, Gordon Matta-Clark, Francesca Woodman y su legado

Abstract

Since 2005, major art biennials, contemporary art centers, concept exhibitions, and galleries of all sorts have endeavored to include in their ranks artists who in one way or another use ruins or remains in their work. At the same time, there has been a parallel proliferation of scholarly work studying this theme. Existing literature clearly traces the precursor of this body of work to Gordon Matta-Clark. Such a lineage would locate the trajectory of these artists in a successive line of post-minimalist practices such as Earth Art, Arte Povera, or a key concept like Smithson’s entropy. The proliferation of this phenomenon has only made manifest the importance and necessity of a study that seeks to identify the true pioneer of what appears to be a new technique, one that has become so generally established that it may be compared to the previous introduction of the artistic use of wood or bronze. On the other hand, this metalinguistic explanation—one that explains an artistic practice exclusively from the perspective of artistic practice itself—might not be sufficient to explain the astounding resurgence of this phenomenon at the beginning of the twenty-first century. If a material as complex as the ruin has truly given rise to a new artistic technique, would it be possible to identify the characteristics of such a technique, or at minimum, a series of guidelines, behaviors, and interests common to its use? In an attempt to respond to these questions, this thesis addresses the relationship between the artist and the material of the ruin, in order to create a framework in which to study this contemporary practice. Through an examination of artistic materials and techniques, this study approaches the ruin-artist relationship from a transhistorical, transgeographical perspective, via the disciplines of art history, economics, anthropology, and philosophical definitions of space and ritual...