Evolution of Installations

Evolution of Installations

Evolution of Installations Installation art is a genre of contemporary art. It flourished in the 1970s.

Opinions on Root

A group links this form to the works of earlier champions such as Marcel Duchamp’s readymade and to Kurt Schwitters’ Merz art objects.

Another group opines that it roots in the conceptual trends of the 1960s.

This genre in Japan is an earlier phenomenon pampered by the Gutai group since 1954 and that inspired American pioneers in the same form like Allan Kaprow and Carsten Holler.

But all this shows drastic shift from conventional sculptures.

Installation as a name of specific form did not occur until1969. It was not recognized as a discrete category before the mid-twentieth century. Allan Kaprow called the form as “Environment” in 1958 to tell about his altered indoor spaces; later on it was described as “project art” and “temporary art.” Basically, installation/environmental art appeals to the spectator’s entire visual experience, in contrast to the appeal of framed points of foci suspended from a “neutral” wall or showcasing discrete objects on different pedestals. Thus it fixes dimensional constants only on space and time.

Richard Wagner, first in 1849, consciously addressed all the senses of observers’ viewing experience in totality in his work Gesamtkunstwerk including all major forms music, poetry and painting. The critics of millennium have observed that the works of this genre created during the 1980s and 1990s typically consist of complex architectural settings, environmental sites and extensive use of everyday objects in ordinary contexts. As soon as video came in 1965, a coexisting string of installations evolved through exploiting new and ever-changing technologies gradually incorporating multimedia and virtual reality environments.

From the 1980s, several institutions, like Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh and the Museum of Installation, London, began focusing on this form to be treated as separate discipline.