Literature Review

Temporal Reference in Artwork
Almost any artwork that was created without the implicit expectation of object fixity can be considered a reference to time, in the sense that its creation must anticipate the changes that will occur to it in the absence of human intervention. All artwork makes some expectation of its audience and their ability to decode visual or symbolic messages.

Some artworks manifest an expectation of decay or mandate its effects. Others make use of the temporal nature of the audience's encounter with the work by incorporating motion. Works that are the result of elaborate procedures can provide some element of further signification given a knowledge of the process of their generation. The complex interface of photography in particular provides a rich source of temporal encoding in its artifacts.

The most striking works for this investigation will be those at two extremes. On one hand, there are the works whose interpretations are most likely to undergo the most drift over time. In other words, those artworks who make the most assumptions about their audiences. These are in one sense the most fragile: even if their material form is preserved they retain the least of their original impact. The other extreme consists of those works who make the most explicit reference to time, by compressing its effects into a static display or by referring explicitly to our metrics of time. These works are often agnostic to social evolution since they are working to expose social considerations of time and changes in these considerations serve merely to amplify the power of the artworks' statements.

Decay, Drift

• Robert Smithson
  
• Andy Goldsworthy
  
• (Other Land Artists...?)
  
• (plastic art) Naum Gabo [http://www.slate.com/id/2221963/]
  
• Eva Hesse
  

Durational Experience

• Pol Bury
  
• Alexander Calder
  
• Jean Tinguely
  

Elaborate Procedures

• (Gutai Group)
  Kazuo Shiraga's "Challenging Mud" (1955)
  N7429.W45 1997
  
• Adel Abdessemed: Helicoptere
  
• Jackson Pollock
  

Photography

• Alfred Stieglitz
  
• Henri Cartier-Bresson
  
• Hiroshi Sugimoto
  
• Michael Wesely
  

Fragile Interpretive Frames

• Josef Albers
  
• Kazimir Malevic
  
• Michelangelo
  
• Egyptian Heiroglyphics
  
• Primitive/Native Artwork
  

Static Displays of Time

• Etienne-Jules Marey
  
• Harold Edgerton
  
• (Slit Scanning) George Silk [http://www.flong.com/texts/lists/slit_scan/]
  

Reference to Metrics

• On Kawara