Fried, Michael “Art and Objecthood” Artforum, vol. V no. 10, June 1967, pp12-23.

Written in 1967 Michael Fried's Art and Objecthood proclaimed that the new emerging art movement of Minimalism was a plea for a new genre of theatre which threatened to negate art. That the work wasn't concerned with art itself but with the circumstances under which it was beheld by the spectator. He suggests the survival of the arts (as he valued them) had come “increasingly to depend on their ability to defeat theatre”(21).

  Obviously Fried's fears were largely ignored- Minimalism continued to 'perform' and artists have continued to make art but I find the piece compelling in a historical sense. It seems by identifying this newly emerging mode of art presentation/ viewership he unwittingly, despite being opposed to it, played a part in establishing a theoretical discourse for the ideas to firmly embed themselves in future activities. The idea that an artwork can conspire with its audience and its environment to be understood and/ or experienced as opposed to existing entirely on its own plane has become well and truly absorbed into main stream contemporary art- most obviously installation.

  In thinking of how artworks now so commonly operate in this way  I remembered my first visit to the Turbine hall of the Tate Modern. In its architectural makeover from power-station to contemporary art museum, the enormous hall has been reserved entirely as an installation space to exhibit year- long site specific works on a massive scale, acting as a kind of theatre. When I visited Olaf Elliasson's Weather Project was installed. The only light emitted in the hall was generated by a huge half sun on the far wall with its other half  reflected in the the mirrored ceiling. After a few moments of adjusting to the light and taking in the sight I looked down to see that the floor was covered in people lying down gazing up at their own reflections bathed in the strange yellow glow, 'experiencing' the art - Playing subject to its performance.

  The piece strikes me as an almost painfully ironic example of everything Fried despised and believed to threaten in the arts, functioning in the arts- Not only its theatricality but its size, emphasis on nature, the mirrored ceiling acting to make the audience aware of their own presence, its dependence on its environment to function and its temporality. And to add insult to Frieds injury, played out in one of western arts most influential contemporary art museums.

Fried, Michael “Art and Objecthood” Artforum, vol. V no. 10, June 1967, pp12-23.

Groys, Boris “The Topology of Contemporary Art”,  Antinomies of Art and Culture, USA:Duke University Press, 2008, pp. 71- 80.