Assemblage and Installation Art

Explore assemblage and installation art in this course, expanding our concepts of what art is and isn't while studying originators like Duchamp and Cornell to grow your artistic consciousness.

Investigate assemblage and installation art as site-specific, three-dimensional practices transforming found objects into sculpture and environments, guided by Duchamp readymades and surrealist influences.

Explore assemblage and installation art by combining readymades on a base to create evolving three-dimensional forms, inspired by Duchamp and Joseph Cornell, highlighting constants, variables, light, and shadows.

Explore Joseph Cornell's assemblage work, where boxed, glass-encased objects—cups, egg, pipe, birds—evoke an artistic impression, using constants and variables in repeatable, framed arrays.

Create small horizontal assemblages using a container as base to arrange items from travel, family, and daily life; evaluate composition and lighting for possible vertical or mobile display.

Explore surrealist assemblages and installation art that fuse a fur-covered saucer, plate, and spoon, inspired by a conversation with Picasso and the embrace of unusual combinations.

Explore Daniel Spoerri's assemblage and installation art, transforming dishes, silverware, and remnants into vertical, three-dimensional compositions that reveal deliberate organization behind apparent randomness.

Explore how assemblage and installation art deploy readymades on shelves to create non-linear compositions, drawing on Duchamp and Warhol, with surf fin readymades, a drying rack, and stacked pots.

Explore how Wang Yong Ping uses site-specific installation art, with the snake winding through the Grand Palais in Paris.

Explore assemblage and installation art through the slab of steel framed by coal bags, highlighting texture, material heft, and site-specific presentation in Italian-inspired practice.

Delve into Helen Escobedo’s site-oriented assemblage and installation art, from geometric cylinders and cones to the refugees series, addressing ecological and urban issues through powerful, gestural sculpture.

Explore Anish Kapoor's assemblage and installation works featuring hollowed concave forms and reflective surfaces, including Cloud Gate at Millennium Park, Chicago, and the use of marble, fiberglass, and resin.

discover how Hessy, a German-born American pioneer of installation art, crafts soft, illusive hanging assemblages and tactile sculptures that explore repetition, variation, and shadow.

Explore Rebecca Horn's installation art, where light and space transform time-bound works—from planetary maps with straw baskets to prisms projecting planes—tying sculpture to flight motifs and cinema.

Explore assemblage and installation art through Damien Hirst's works, influenced by Eva Hesse and Body Worlds, using animals and medical imagery—Plexiglas cases and body models—to provoke surprise, fear, and reflection.

This lecture investigates assemblage and installation art through fluxus-inspired questions that challenge what counts as art, using everyday objects, manipulated forms, and even live animal installations.

Explore the course catalog as a catalyst for assemblage and installation art, weaving numbers and repeated phrases into a study of disruption and narrative.