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Diarmuid Costello, Could the Artist Not Be Wrong? A Critical Notice of Sherri Irvin's Immaterial: The Rules of Contemporary Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 82, Issue 4, Fall 2024, Pages 441–448, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpae050
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Abstract
This article is a critical notice of Sherri Irvin’s Immaterial: Rules in Contemporary Art (2022). After introducing Irvin’s project, notably how she understands the role of “custom rules” for the display and conservation of, and participation in, works of contemporary art, I focus on two case studies that motivate her argument: Jan Dibbets’ work, All shadows that occurred to me (1969) and Sarah Sze’s Migrateurs (1997). According to Irvin, both works require the participation of museum conservators not merely for their preservation, but also realization. Granting the latter, I consider its implications. Prior to the involvement of conservators the works in question appear indeterminate in crucial respects. The conservators’ role is to seek enough clarity about various rules governing the work to afford future installations of the work without consulting the artist. But both case studies reveal considerable artistic whimsy when it comes to abiding by the rules supposedly underwriting these works’ identity, raising worries for their persistence over time. Given their constitutive role, I consider whether there is room, on Irvin’s account, for the conservators to be right and the artist wrong about the nature of the works in question.
