Olafur Eliasson is a contemporary Danish installation artist
who currently produces works that manifest his particular interest
in science and provide an immersive environment for the viewer.
On the screen is a video providing a quick glimpse into some of
the featured pieces in Eliasson’s “Take Your Time” exhibit at the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2008, which should give
you an idea of the immersive interactive environments he is known
for. The exhibit is a compilation of 18 works that he created
between the years of 1993 and 2007. Eliasson’s work appears to be
on the forefront of contemporary installation art, however the
works themselves cannot hide the fact that many of his ideas stem
from past traditions in art. Despite being forward thinking Olafur
Eliasson’s “Take Your Time” is rooted in the intellectual nature of
the minimalist movement by subscribing to their principle
doctrines in his installation pieces. I will demonstrate these
parallels between Eliasson’s “Take Your Time Exhibit” and his
predecessors, the minimalists, by delving into the formal,
contextual, and conceptual aspects of his work to recognize the
cues Eliasson takes from past artists. Minimalism came into being
in defiance of the Abstract Expressionist movement, with
characteristics like absolute simplicity, devoid of decoration,
placing focus on the object itself, and rejection that the work is
autonomous to the environment. Minimalists were prominent in
mostly the 1960s and 70s with only a few artists continuing on in
later decades. Artists never functioned as an official organized
group but nevertheless artists produced pieces with synonymous
styles and theories.
Eliasson’s ideas about the formal elements in his work fall
right in line with the minimalist tradition of using industrial
materials. The main feature incorporated in Eliasson’s pieces and
the minimalists is their use of industrial materials. On the screen is
Tony Smith’s Die of 1962 which includes six huge six-by-six
plates of steel. Donald Judd’s works were made of materials like
iron, brass, stainless steel, aluminum, and wood. Robert Morris had
a penchant for felt, while Dan Flavin’s whole design was just
fluorescent tubes. Likewise Eliasson exhibits a preference for
materials like stainless steel, mirrors, wires, and bulbs. Beauty of
1996, the picture on the screen consists of simply a spotlight, hose,
motor, nozzle, and wood. All of these industrial materials are
commonly found at the local Home Depot or home supply store.
These types of materials lack the ornament and decoration of the
other art forms because they ordinarily serve more functional
purposes.
The deeper implications of this non-ornamental functional
material choice is a more mechanical and constructed feel to the
work instead of appearing meticulously worked over by the artist’s
hand. This strategy introduces the idea of fabrication in the art and
employing a team to help materialize the work. Pictured is Richard
Serra’s Torqued Ellipses. To complete this piece his team searched
all over the world for a steel fabricator that would attempt to build
such a complex and unworkable piece. Richard Serra and his team
dreamed up the models but required steel fabricators to actually
produce the piece.i Serra would be involved only in the idea
process and not the actual production of his own piece. This tactic
was common amongst other minimalists who dealt with large
industrial materials that required more experienced welding and
building; or even in construction of oversized works, like Ronald
Bladen’s X of 1968, pictured on the left or Tony Smith’s Smoke of
1967, pictured on the right. The utilization of industrial materials
and the nature of constructed pieces completely removed the
artist’s hand from the work. No details on the surface of the
materials would lend itself to a particular artist.
Eliasson not only took the minimalist idea of fabrication but
also multiplied it exponentially to create a sort of super team that
effectively helps in every aspect of the creation and conception.
The picture on the screen gives a peek into his studio and creative
laboratory. At Eliasson’s studio and headquarters in Berlin the
artist employs thirty-five people. Those employees are responsible
for helping create new ideas, setting up exhibits, contextualizing
the work, and keeping Eliasson on the forefront of the
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contemporary art scene.ii Eliasson’s hand is removed from the
work for the same reason as the minimalists because both use
ready-mades like steel and other functional materials. In the
fabrication process both construct several ready-mades together to
create the final work seen in Eliasson’s Multiple Grotto 2004,
which is composed of stainless steel and mirrors. The embrace of
such ready-mades, and prefabricated materials help to achieve that
sense of construction and removal of the artist’s presence from the
formal qualities of their work. Eliasson does not coincidentally
share these common formal characteristics with the minimalist but
embrace the same principle doctrines of industrial materials,
fabrication, and loss of the artist’s hand. The connections between
Eliasson and the minimalists go beyond just the formal elements
but they share common theories about the contextual aspect of
their works of art as well.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the French philosopher, transcended
generations affecting the minimalists, and currently Eliasson with
his writing Phenomenology of Perception that ushered in this focus
on perception & emphasis on the viewer.iii This philosopher led to
artists staunchly promoting that the entire body plays a role in
perception and how the presence of the body is essential to how
one perceives a transpiring event. Robert Morris would advocate
the Gestalt theory in his “Notes on Sculpture” in order to explain
the viewer art interaction. The goal was to have an object in a
confined space, forcing the viewer to confront the piece, seen in
Morris’ Untitled 1969. (awkward) Morris surmised that the next
reaction of the viewer would be to use their body as the standard of
measurement to determine how large or small the object was in
comparison to them.iv The viewer needed to take an active role in
the piece.
Eliasson feels the commentary or insight a person gains from
being increasingly self-aware and cognizant of their experience is
key, much like Robert Morris. Eliasson is not looking to solve
anything but rather give the spectator more to think about, this is
how Eliasson took perception beyond what the minimalists did.
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The nature of Eliasson’s exhibits provide a much more immersive
environment that heightens their sense of perception due to the
involvement of more of the senses. This is 360 Degree Room of
2002, it is all about the sense of sight and paying close attention to
how the eyes detects color. As the projector displays the various
colors on the wall, the retina will respond from the affects of the
changing color; resulting in the viewer seeing the complimentary
color of the previous color displayed. Eliasson pushes beyond just
an object but creates an environment that gives the viewers a more
powerful bodily reaction. The attempt is to move away from just
looking at the object but to focus solely on the perception.
However it is not just about the bodily experience but integrated
with what the viewer brings to the work in the way of past
knowledge and preconceived notions; For the minimalists their
pieces were not supposed to draw these types of conclusions.
Eliasson specifically creates works that have a familiarity to them,
situations that most people have encountered in their life outside of
the museum walls. The purpose is to draw out these associations
from the viewer and this is seen in the work Your Strange
Certainty Still Kept from 1996 where water sprays from a tube
being accentuated by a pulsating strobe light, which is imitating
the commonplace occurrence of falling rain. Such experiences help
the viewer draw conclusions about how they not only perceive the
work but the bigger concept of how they perceive real life. For
minimalist the perception of the work was very much an individual
experience but with Eliasson it is collective. The other visitors in
the space become a part of the exhibit as their bodies act as the
canvas; this idea is seen in Room for One Color 1997. Eliasson
baths the gallery space with monochromatic yellow lamps. This
intense coloration forces the eyes to adjust because all of the color
has been removed. The other people in the room help the viewer to
realize how they perceive the mono-frequency lighting. People
may look flat or could possibly make a person feel a greater sense
of depth and a more acute awareness of the space. It isn’t just
about the individual. It was first the minimalists who stressed
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perception but in later years Eliasson would use those same
contextual ideas as a jumping off point to arrive at his own
personal ideology on the subject.
Even though differences between Eliasson and the
minimalists materialize conceptually, Eliasson still shares the
fundamental similarity of simplicity. The minimalist artist Ann
Truit said, “I’ve struggled all my life to get maximum meaning in
the simplest possible forms.” Truitt sums up nicely the main
objective of the minimalists and what Eliasson were trying to
achieve—to say as much as possible with as little as possible.
Playing again is the video of some of the installation pieces from
“Take Your Time” to make evident the absence of complication.
Both the minimalists and Eliasson’s simplicity was made clear
through the formal characteristics and their desire to for their
works to be expressive is evident through their contextual theories.
This is the point where Eliasson’s ideas depart but build upon the
minimalists in that Eliasson draws further connections with the art
that the minimalists do not. Eliasson accepts his place within art
history and does not cut himself off from the past. He embraces
and utilizes ideas and materials used by past artists or movements.
The obvious connection is minimalism but the influence of James
Turrell, Buckminster Fuller, and many others can also be seen.
Minimalists, on the other hand, wanted to abandon all previous art
historical connections and wanted to be succinctly different than
anything that had ever been created previously. Contextually
Eliasson shares the same overarching goal of the minimalists but it
is in the subset that the contemporary artists variance becomes
apparent.
Eliasson is in no way a pure minimalist, but he exhibits many
key characteristics, inherent to the minimalist movement.
Interesting how their ideas have been resurrected in contemporary
art of today, specifically in Olafur Eliasson’s installation pieces.
He shares the formal qualities of industrial materials, which
repercussions lend itself to fabrication and absence of the artist
touch. Eliasson’s ideas about phenomenology and experiencing art
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are synonymous with the minimalists, as well as both parties
taking a strong initiative for simplicity but. Scholars have yet to
scrutinize his art beyond a simple review of this exhibit, “Take
Your Time.” The hope with this paper is that more questions will
be raised about Eliasson’s other influences and how they play a
role in shaping his art, which will ultimately help determine his
place and contributions in the art world.
List of images
1. Video of exhibit
2. Tony Smith Die 1962*
3. Beauty 1993
4. Richard Serra Torqued Ellipses
5.
Bladen’s X of 1968
6.
Tony Smith’s Smoke of 1967
7.
Eliasson Studio & headquarters picture
8.
Olafur Eliasson Multiple Grotto 2004
9.
Morris’ Untitled 1969
10. Olafur
Eliasson 360 Degree Room of 2002
11. Olafur
Eliasson Your Strange Certainty Still Kept 1996
12. Olafur
Eliasson Room for One Color 1997
13. Video of “Take Your Time”
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Images
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