Art history cold cases: artists’ labour in the factory

This paper calls into question the context in which artistic production related to industrial history may enter art official narratives. Drawing on the examples of the Voltron sculpture series by David Smith (1962); Yvonne Rainer’s performance Carriage Discreteness (1966) and Stuart Brisley’s work at the Hille Fellowship Poly Wheel factory (1970), I will propose that observing the production of artworks within industrial environments implies a twofold commitment for art history. On the one hand, investigating artworks relying on industrial materials and production modes calls for the analysis of the “concrete and direct evidence” that materials provide (Didi-Huberman, 2015; Domínguez Rubio, 2012). On the other, they invite consideration of informal archives and “suspect evidence” related to the tacit knowledge of production, subjective self-documentation and oral history (Rosnow and Fine, 1976).
Seen from this perspective, artists’ production in the context of industrial culture and workers’ practices of self-managed time both contribute another point of view on how the inscription within the realm of high and low culture is done in art history. At a time when contemporary artistic and curatorial practices show a renewed interest in “outsiders’” artefacts, the different work models and modes adopted by the proposed case studies enable a reading of potential art historical narratives through the lens of working-class studies and the contemporary material turn.