art.308:sculpture studio

hannah piper burns

project 1- process
analysis

One of the major differences between process-focused art and art that does not focus on process seems to be the actual concept of what art is- that is, is art a passive object to be gazed upon, is it static, is aesthetic value significant? Or is it transient, ambiguous, independent of aesthetic standards? Most process art does not fit neatly into one of these two groups, but it often can be aligned with the latter. It often emphasizes an idea, a belief, a compulsion, or an action as being the artistically significant component regardless of the product created from it.
The product that is created by process art is merely a reference to the process, a record of actions taken, or a documentation of the process taking place. It can be physical evidence of labor, like Hamilton’s multitudes of pennies in honey or Jeanine Antoni’s teeth marks. It can be a sequence of photographs recording the process as it happens and preserving the moment in time for future observation, giving evidence that the process actually occurred. It could be an altered landscape or object, as in the melted ice forms in Cai Guo-Qiang’s “Caressing Zaha with Vodka”.
Another way of thinking about process versus product is in terms of grammar. Object-oriented artwork is generally a noun, while process art is a verb. For example, a painting by Poussin is a noun, painting, while Joseph Beuys’ “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare” is a verb, explaining, just as Serra’s thrown lead pieces are also a verb, throwing. Object-orientated art concerns and imitates life, while process-oriented art concerns living.