Critical Studies Two - The Expanded Field

Infinitely malleable, Sculpture is one of those terms that manipulates and forms to the current social context. Rosalind Krauss explores this in her 1979, outdated piece 'Sculpture in the Expanded Field'. It is history that is documented by Sculpture she states. To be created in a single time and place. Rodin's "Gates Of Hell" as described in 'Sculpture in the Expanded Field' uses 'Gates of Hell' as an example for Sculpture to be recreated in a site but non existent in it's original, therefore eliminating it's association with time and place. Which is the beginning for sculpture to become something much more.

It is the Vanguard aesthetics, the ideology of the new, that sculpture reinvests itself with. A slow process, but yet something that does happens effectively. "The new is made comfortable by being made familiar" krauss states in 'Sculpture in the Expanded Field'. Without significant leaps being recorded as a new significant leap, it is the history of sculpture that takes the blow, lessening the gap between old and new. An effect that has allowed sculpture to have such a manipulative term.

Everything may be considered new but it is all translated differently between people. Therefore it is reduced to time and space. The allowance of indexes, indices and signs are used to familiarize ourselves with the unfamiliar. More than art, we've taken sides with the unfamiliar- embraced it or treated it as hostile. For example Lakshmi, the eight limbed baby born with isciopagus. (Surgery on eight-limbed baby Lakshmi 'a success' 2) Warmed and worshipped by some, or rejected by others. It is the distance between science and faith. If we have been taught anything from children books and Hollywood cinema it is that we throw sides between the unfamiliar. We take example in Trousdale and Wises' Beauty and the Beast, Spielberg's E.T, with the understanding of a free willing mind against an older inhospitable mind.

Is it with time we become more hostile within ourselves? Critical of the new, less opening to the new experience, I personally find myself pondering what critical parts of my life do I take for granted. Pushed to stand my ground with what I know and what I don’t, or am unwilling to change. Is it a natural reaction to redefine the unfamiliar with what we know already in order to understand it? And if this is the case, restriction of the process can only create a future that falls short.


Roaslind Krauss, "Sculpture in the Expanded Field", October, Vol.8 (Spring, 1979), pp.30-44

O'Connor, Ashling. "Surgery on eight-limbed baby Lakshmi 'a success'". Times Online. 7 Nov. 2007. The Times 29 April 2009.

Dir. Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise. "Beauty and the Beast". Paige O'Hare, Robby Benson. Walt Disney Feature Animation, 1991.

Dir. Steven Spielberg. "E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial". Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Robert MacNaughton, Drew Barrymore. Universal Pictures, 1982.