Sherri Irvin, "Immaterial: Rules in Contemporary Art" (Oxford UP, 2022)

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast · Jun 10, 2022 · 1h 6m

Art forms have rules, usually implicit, that govern the experiences that artists want their audiences to have: for example, a representational painting should be hung right-side-up, the same sort of paint medium should be used in restoration, and the painting should not be touched. In Immaterial: Rules in Contemporary Art (Oxford University Press 2022), Sherri Irvin argues that contemporary conceptual art is constituted by custom rules as well as by their physical medium: the artist may specify that the work is intended to be handled, eaten, made out of anything, or even installed however the…