Public Experience/Private Authority

Abstract

“A beam on its end is not the same thing as the same beam on its side,” wrote Robert Morris in his 1966 Notes on Sculpture, Part II, succinctly articulating the degree to which, in the context of minimalism, the identity of a work does not reside in a self-contained physical form, and is instead deflected outward to the relationship established between object and surrounding space.1 It also happens that Morris was not necessarily concerned about whether the simple geometric shapes he created during the mid-1960s as part of his exploration of the viewer’s spatial and temporal experience maintained a continuous physical existence. To the extent that the work could be disassembled and built again as needed (the same configuration, but different plywood and gray paint), this alternate way in which the same work might not be the same links his profoundly physical expression with a form of dematerialization more often associated with conceptual art. There is an obvious debt to minimalism in the ways that Félix González-Torres’s work occupies the environment traversed by the viewer— with the stacks of paper and candy sitting directly on the floor, or the interplay between work and setting for the light strings and bead curtains. Yet it is equally clear that many of González-Torres’s pieces can vary quite dramatically and still be understood as the same work of art. In addition to the decisions made by curators and collectors for each initial installation, there are ongoing changes to the candy arrangements and paper stacks as a result of viewer interaction. Public participation is an essential element, particularly in relation to the invitation to pick up a wrapped sweet or a sheet of paper. Even so, the work is also intensely private with respect to the bond established between artist and owner via