The initial idea for this book derives from an article published in the Oxford Art Journal in 2012, ‘Indifference of Material in the Work of Carl Andre and Robert Smithson,’ in which I attempted to follow the different meanings of the terms ‘materiality’ and ‘materialism’ in the critical discourse surrounding the work of these two artists. (The original article has been split into two according to its subjects, and each expanded, for this book.) This theme developed out of previous research on American art in the 1960s, and at the time when I was first formulating the ideas in the article I was only vaguely aware of the so-called ‘material turn’ in the humanities. On one hand, subsequent research on the work of Lawrence Weiner, Eva Hesse and Richard Serra convinced me that the theme deserved more extensive treatment as defining important aspects of the art of the late 1960s, and that there was a kind of internal argument between the artists (or between the works themselves) concerning the definition of the materiality of the work of art, the different positions of which could be reconstructed. On the other hand, the problem of the definitions of materiality and materialism in play were bound to be informed by the developing discourse on the ‘new materialisms’ over the last ten years, although of course this discourse is far from unified, and can be subjected to various criticisms. There is a reciprocity between these two sides that I hope has resulted in a portrayal of the art of the 1960s that will be of theoretical interest now. There is an important proviso to be made, however, which is that understandings of materiality and materialism in the 1960s have their own historical content, which is different from the content of our contemporary materialisms. It is these historical understandings, arising out of close readings of the texts that are its historical material, that are privileged in this book.
Over the last twenty years, the scholarship on this period has expanded greatly, mostly, as one would expect, in North America itself. Anyone working elsewhere on the same material is bound to be indebted to this work, as well as to the critical approaches associated with the journal October (out of which the recent literature has often developed). There is also a significant body of scholarship in Europe, emerging from different intellectual traditions. I hope the references in the book adequately signal the range of this existing work. I owe an intellectual debt to my own education (the M.A. in the Social History of Art at the University of Leeds, led at the time by Fred Orton), and to the group associated with the ‘Marxism in Culture’ seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, especially Gail Day, Steve Edwards and Warren Carter. I would also like to thank friends and colleagues at the University for the Creative Arts at Canterbury, where I work, for their conversation, especially Silke Panse, Mike Marshall, and Joan Key, and the institution itself for practical assistance, particularly for a research sabbatical in 2019. Thanks to Gail and Joan, and to Christian Berger, for their critical readings of chapters 3, 4, and 5 respectively. I am grateful to the Oxford Art Journal for permission to reprint material from ‘Indifference of Material in the Work of Carl Andre and Robert Smithson,’ and to the publishers Brill for their support with this project, particularly Liesbeth Hugenholtz, and the series editor, Ann-Sophie Lehmann. Thanks to Paul Parkyn for proofreading the manuscript. For occasional distraction, thanks to Redd Tape and the Government Officials. Finally, the book is for Britta.