In the world of Process art, the means justify the end. The artist typically sets an event in motion and watches while it unfolds, thus prioritizing the making of art over the final product (an intended dismissal of the priceless objet... [more]

In the world of Process art, the means justify the end. The artist typically sets an event in motion and watches while it unfolds, thus prioritizing the making of art over the final product (an intended dismissal of the priceless objet d'art). Process artists engage the primacy of organic systems, using perishable, insubstantial, and transitory materials such as dead rabbits, steam, fat, ice, cereal, sawdust, and grass. The materials are often left exposed to natural forces: gravity, time, weather, temperature, etc. The artist might pour liquid on the floor and allow it to seek its own form (Lynda Benglis), or dangle malleable objects from the ceiling so that they eventually succumb to gravitational pull (Eva Hesse), or set up "weather systems" with water and air in plexiglas boxes (Hans Haacke). Many of these art pieces have, inevitably, processed themselves right out of existence -- but that's all part of the plan. It is said that the Process art movement sprang up as a reaction against the stability and structure of Minimalism. Certainly Jackson Pollock's motion-based drip paintings -- holistic environments unto themselves -- were antecedents. Emerging from the margins of the art world, and critiquing the establishment, Process art was for a time excluded from serious discussion. The movement was granted its fine-art "credentials" in 1969 by two shows at museums of stature -- New York's Whitney and the Berne Kunsthalle. [show less]