Gordon Matta-Clark
Gordon Matta-Clark | |
---|---|
New York, New York, U.S. | |
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Artist |
Spouse | Jane Crawford (1977-1978; his death) |
Gordon Matta-Clark (born Gordon Roberto Matta-Echaurren; June 22, 1943[1] – August 27, 1978) was an American artist best known for site-specific artworks he made in the 1970s. He was also a pioneer in the field of socially engaged food art.[2]
Life and work
Matta-Clark's parents were artists: Anne Clark, an American artist, and
He studied architecture at Cornell University from 1962 to 1968, including a year at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he studied French literature. In 1971, he changed his name to Gordon Matta-Clark, adopting his mother's last name.[5] He did not practice as a conventional architect; he worked on what he referred to as "Anarchitecture".[6] At the time of Matta-Clark's tenure there, Cornell's architecture program was guided in part by Colin Rowe,[7] a preeminent architectural theorist of modernism.[8]
Matta-Clark used a number of media to document his work, including film, video, and photography. His work includes performance and recycling pieces, space and texture works, and his "building cuts". He also used puns and other word games as a way to re-conceptualize preconditioned roles and relationships (of everything, from people to architecture). [citation needed]
In February, 1969, the "
In 1971 Matta-Clark,
In the early 1970s and in the context of his artistic community surrounding FOOD, Matta-Clark developed the idea of "anarchitecture" - a conflation of the words anarchy and architecture - to suggest an interest in voids, gaps, and left-over spaces.[11] With his project Fake Estates, Matta-Clark addressed these issues of non-sites by purchasing at auction 15 leftover and unusably small slivers of land in Queens and Staten Island, New York, for $25–$75 a plot. He documented them through photographs, maps, bureaucratic records and deeds, and spoke and wrote about them - but was not able to occupy these residual elements of zoning irregularities in any other way.[12]
In 1974, he performed a literal
For the
For his final major project, Circus or The Caribbean Orange (1978), Matta-Clark made circle cuts in the walls and floors of a townhouse next-door to the first
Following his 1978 project, the MCA presented two retrospectives of Matta-Clark's work, in 1985 and in 2008.
Death and legacy
Matta-Clark died from pancreatic cancer on August 27, 1978, aged 35, in New York City.[21] He was survived by his widow, Jane Crawford. The Gordon Matta-Clark Archive is housed at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal.[22][23]
In 2019, his 1974 piece Splitting was cited by The New York Times as one of the 25 works of art that defined the contemporary age.[24]
Videography
- Program One: Chinatown Voyeur (1971)
- Program Two (1971–1972)
- Tree Dance (1971)
- Open House (1972)
- Program Three (1971–1975)
- Fire Child (1971)
- Fresh Kill (1972)
- Day's End (1975)
- Food (1972)
- Program Five (1972–1976)
- Automation House (1972)
- Clockshower (1973)
- City Slivers (1976)
- Program Four: Sauna View (1973)
- Program Six (1974–1976)
- Splitting (1974)
- Bingo/Ninths (1974)
- Substrait (Underground Dailies) (1976)
- Program Seven (1974–2005)
- Conical Intersect" (1975)
- Sous-Sols de Paris (Paris Underground) (1977–2005)
- The Wall (1976–2007)
- Program Eight: Office Baroque (1977–2005)
Selected books
- Odd Lots: Revisiting Gordon Matta-Clark’s Fake Estates, introduction and interviews by curators Jeffrey Kastner, Sina Najafi, and Frances Richard, Essays by Jeffrey A. Kroessler and Frances Richard (New York: ISBN 9781932698268, 1932698264
References
- ISBN 978-0-262-62156-4.
- S2CID 202255118.
- ^ Gordon Matta-Clark Biography, Guggenheim Museum; accessed 2017-07-10
- ^ Smyth, Ned. "artnet.com Magazine Features - Gordon Matta-Clark". artnet. Artnet Worldwide Corporation. Retrieved February 8, 2022.
In 1976, Gordon's twin brother committed suicide by jumping from Gordon's loft...
- ^ Profile, museum.cornell.edu; accessed July 10, 2017.
- ^ a b William Hanley (April 11, 2007). "Gordon Matta-Clark at the Whitney". ARTINFO. Retrieved 2008-04-21.
- ^ Cornell Festschrift honors Colin Rowe, one of architecture's most influential scholars Cornell Chronicle, 1996-03-2; accessed 2015-07-28
- ^ Petit, Emmanuel, ed. (2015). Reckoning with Colin Rowe: Ten Architects Take Position. New York: Routledge.
- .
- ^ Steven Stern (September 2007). "Gordon Matta-Clark". Frieze Magazine. Retrieved 2017-07-10.
- ^ Jeff Rian (June 1993). "Rocking the Foundation". Frieze Magazine. Retrieved 2017-07-10.
- ISBN 9781932698268.
- ^ "Bingo Ninths". YouTube. Archived from the original (video) on 2013-07-29. Retrieved 2008-10-27.
- ^ "Bingo". Retrieved 2008-10-26.
- ^ Jenkins, Bruce (2011). Gordon Matta-Clark: Conical Intersect. London: Afterall Books.
- ^ "Gordon Matta-Clark - Day's End".
- ^ "Gordon Matta-Clark: You Are the Measure". Artdaily. 2008. Retrieved 2011-06-13.
- ^ "History of the MCA". Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Archived from the original on 2011-07-25. Retrieved 2011-06-13.
- ^ "Gordon Matta-Clark: You Are the Measure". Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Retrieved 2017-07-10.
- ^ "Gordon Matta-Clark: You Are the Measure" (PDF). Press Release. Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. 2008-01-01. Retrieved 2011-06-13.[permanent dead link]
- ^ Profile, davidzwirner.com; accessed March 28, 2015.
- ^ Gordon Matta-Clark Archive, cca.qc.ca; accessed 2015-07-29.
- ^ Profile, nytimes.com; accessed March 28, 2015.
- ^ Lescaze, Zoë; David Breslin; Martha Rosler; Kelly Taxter; Rirkrit Tiravanija; Torey Thornton; Thessaly La Force (15 July 2019). "The 25 Works of Art That Define the Contemporary Age". T. The New York Times. Archived from the original on 1 February 2022. Retrieved 24 March 2022.
External links
- Gordon Matta-Clark at the Museum of Modern Art
- Finding aid for the Gordon Matta-Clark Collection, Canadian Centre for Architecture (digitized items)
- Gordon Matta-Clark at David Zwirner
- Selected Press at David Zwirner
- Profile on Artnet.com
- EAI: Gordon Matta-Clark Biography and a list of video works by the artist