From Minimization to Infinity：Study on the Concept of “ Space Field ” in the Works of Robert Morris

• Main Authors: WANG YA-LUN, 王雅倫
• Other Authors: Joseph WANG
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/xnpmk7

博士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 美術學系 === 97 === Robert Morris (1931- ), in his 5 decades of sculpturing, is one of the few American or international artists who have never limited themselves to a particular style. He focuses on expressing mutual spatial relationships in his works, using a wide variety of mediums, even his own body. However, people usually explore his art forms and overlook the whole concept of his creations, or just regard his work as “Minimal Art.” Few people try to make the connection of his visual works to his written articles or try to figure out the relationship among his numerous works, not to speak of making the connection between his creative works and his many other fields. According to his concept, which is “to establish a face-to-face meeting between the viewer and the sculpture,” Morris identifies with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Perception. He endows his new sculpture with a different definition that “ it doesn’t exist alone.” It makes us aware that our body is the subject of our consciousness, namely, how the viewers establish a relationship with a work of art. The motivation of this study is to probe into the multi-field characteristics of the works of Robert Morris in contemporary art and his intensions in terms of people, time and space. First, since the beginning of Minimal Art Morris has committed himself to liberating sculpture from the theory of abstract paintings – he makes art a form of the process of behavior from which he interprets its effect on the viewers’ experiences. Second, he uses too many philosophical theories of “negation” to establish the strategy between his works and the viewers; in his work “Field,” it rejects from its beginning to its end the criticisms stated in art history which tried to assimilate him. Moreover, from Morris’s works we can see the form of conflict he consistently emphasizes and the dialectics of dualism he obsesses himself with, embodying the conception of infinite confrontation and conflict. Finally, this study is to organize and demonstrate on the key factors of why, since the 1960’s, quite a few researchers have such diverse interpretations of Robert Morris’s works and the reflection his works bring to this generation. The research method of this dissertation focuses on the verification of historical facts by comparing and examining related documents. It will also analyze conceptual artists, Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology and other factors which influenced modernism and contemporary aesthetics and how they are hidden throughout Morris’s works. The conclusion examines Morris’s long-term use of a variety of diverse mediums and his attempt to find the healing ways in the creations, namely, the question he will forever face, his anxiety and persistence of the body that every individual artist faces in their endeavor toward “ human – body – consciousness” in history.