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William Anastasi (American, born 1933)
Free Will, 1968
In 1968, at the height of the political, social, and cultural turmoil of the 1960s, William Anastasi made Free Will, a video sculpture that engaged the space of the gallery by focusing on one of its most mundane and overlooked features: the corner. A camera fixed on top of a monitor is trained on a corner, its image relayed in real time on a black-and-white monitor screen. The live image of the gallery corner in Free Will both suggests the depth of the space and, by turning it into an image, flattens it.
The placement of the video monitor on the floor references the shift made in Minimalist sculpture by moving objects from the pedestal to the floor and walls, insisting upon an engagement between the object and the surrounding space. The lack of movement in the live image draws attention to the sculptural nature of the corner, rather than revealing any sense of action around or within it. Made at the height of the Vietnam War (1964-75), Free Will's focus on an empty corner also suggests the spiritual dead end that Anastasi and others of his generation felt art and politics had reached.
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About William Anastasi
Born 1933, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Lives in New York, New York
Considered to be among the first "classical" conceptual artists, Anastasi is known for rediscovering the radical through painting, sculpture, collage, photography and drawing. Inspired by his friend the composer John Cage, Anastasi has, since the early 1960s, grounded his work in the ideology of chance. Anastasi's "unsighted" works of the 1970s attempted to separate artistic creation from conscious thought. For example, in his Subway Drawings, Anastasi closed his eyes, allowing the vibrations of a subway train to move his hand, recording the train's motion in a collection of completely random lines on paper.
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Page 4 of 16 | On the next page:
Robert Morris (American, born 1931)
Finch College Project, 1969 (recreated 2001)
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