Abstract
How can elasticity be applied as an analytical category for the study of sculpture, here especially of the 1970s? The aim of this article is to circumvent binary, gender-bound approaches to materials. It discusses how elasticity moves from representation (Germaine Richier, Olga Jevrić, Naum Gabo) to materiality and medium, such as nylon and rubber/latex (Rosemary Mayer, Senga Nengudi, Eva Hesse, Claes Oldenburg), leaving behind the paradigm of minimalism in favour of eccentric, bodily and sensuous objects. Rosalind Krauss emphasized how in post-war American art, ‘sculpture and painting have been kneaded and stretched and twisted in an extraordinary demonstration of elasticity’. This breaking out of categories can be seen as a sociopolitical figure of thought, for example in Nengudi’s sculptures, where the (female) body is restrained by the material and enmeshed in a social web of heteronormative ideas, but also in the sociopolitical context, such as the Black Liberation Movement and demonstrations against the Vietnam War.
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