Eccentric Objects

Download or read book Eccentric Objects written by Jo Applin and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 71 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.