Materiality in art

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Is it art if you attach a bicycle wheel to a stool, if you fire a gun at tins of paint, or if you stir up a real sandstorm? In the 20th century, many artists moved on from traditional art materials and explored the materiality of the world around them. 

Some materials have been used for thousands of years to create art. Artists have moulded clay, chipped away at stone, cast in bronze and painted on panels, canvases and walls. But in the past century, they have also moved beyond the traditional territory of art, in search of new forms of expression and the materials to achieve them.

The modern era of industrialisation and urbanisation gave rise to a new form of sensibility, and to new interpretations of what art is. Marcel Duchamp invented the readymade – objects he found around him and declared to be art. Advertising and commercial images were also selected and used as art. Even industrial materials and production processes were adopted by artists.

Another tendency was that artists stopped using materials altogether. In conceptualism, it is the idea itself that is the work of art. Photo-based artists such as Cindy Sherman, on the other hand, used themselves as material in their images to explore identity.

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