Universal Principles of Art

92 TEMPORARY ART

IGNORING POSTERITY

Temporary, or ephemeral art, is designed to last for a limited period of time. Over the centuries, artists have often made temporary or occasional works, but in general, artworks have been regarded as precious objects and constructed with an eye toward permanence. In the twentieth century, however, some artists made works that were designed to change, decay, or collapse altogether in relatively short periods of time. The impetus for this approach grew out of anti-art movements such as Dadaism in the early twentieth century. It gained new strength from the Land Art and Conceptual Art movements in the 1960s and ’70s, whose adherents subscribed to the notion that the most important component of an artwork is not ...