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BY 4.0 license Open Access Published by De Gruyter Open Access July 30, 2019

Object-hood’s Indecencies: Tilted Arc and the Lessons Learnt in Breakdown

  • Emily Dickson EMAIL logo
From the journal Open Philosophy

Abstract

This essay looks to re-evaluate sculptor Richard Serra’s famous claim that “to remove the work is to destroy it.” Using OOO, and particularly Graham Harman’s interpretation of Martin Heidegger’s tool analysis, in order to analyze the now famous moment when Tilted Arc was de-installed from Federal Plaza, Manhattan in 1989, this paper argues that the work was not in fact destroyed but rather that its ontological autonomy was even more absolutely revealed in that moment as such. Although it is the case that art objects and sites are prone to discursive co-construction and evaluation, it is this analysis’ claim that they both are possessive of a deep, substantive form also, a form resistant to appropriation. Tilted Arc therefore revealed something even more insidious and dangerous to those who opposed it than the power of art to speak back to its surroundings. Rather, it uncovered the substantive objecthood of the site itself.

References

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Received: 2019-04-30
Accepted: 2019-07-08
Published Online: 2019-07-30

© 2019 Emily Dickson, published by De Gruyter Open

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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