John Deamond / Sources

Gordon Matta-Clark was an avant-garde artist of the 1970s who is best known for his building cuts and ideas on “anarchitecture.” However, this is only the surface of a multi-layered attack on traditional values in Western society. Intent on the creation and preservation of community, Matta-Clark was instrumental in the creation of a haven for artists in SoHo that fulfilled their necessary creative and physical support. He lived his life to dismember the old hegemony and erect a new system in every way he could.

As Matta-Clark’s building cuts are the most well known of his works, they seem the best place to exhibit his ideas. These were basically sculptural transformations of abandoned buildings, often slated for demolition and worked on secretly (McGuirk 1). The end products were meditations on the gaps and in-between spaces, the interplay of light and line (Lee II 1). Gordon was not that interested in the objects themselves, but focused on the whole and the movement through space (Morris 37). These art objects were not works of art in the traditional Western sense, as they were neither finished, whole, rational, nor self-contained (Lee I xiii-xiv), asserting that a work of art is never really a finished thing. They were more of a topic, the beginning of a conversation, an offer for a continued dissection and destruction not of the particular building, but of architecture and society in general (Walker 132). The building cuts would only achieve their full capacity through visitors’ actions and interactions (Lee II 1). Working at a time when idea was emphasized over object and the art object as such was nearly eliminated (Lee I xiv), Matta-Clark took on the most real and tactile materials and methods he could think of. Wielding a chainsaw and hacking through the physical and liminal boundaries of walls and floors, Gordon confronted viewers with a real and tangible experience that they could not ignore or think their way out of. The building cuts demand a sort of “operative viewing,” bringing into question architecture’s usual claims to a whole object or snapshot viewing paradigm (Walker 131). This was non-architecture, a process of dismantling and reclaiming space, not an alternative architecture (Morris 40-41). The complex nature of Gordon’s building cuts reveals him as someone who has unlearned architecture. As Derrida argues, in order to totally disregard a principle in a sustained challenge, one must have been well versed in it (Walker 129). The great care taken to, in Splitting for instance, cut a house directly in half with a one inch gap, cut a wedge out of the foundation, and tilt half of the house back five degrees (Walker 131), shows a great deal of technical skill and architectural knowledge. While the dismantling of buildings was definitely work in its most literal sense, Matta-Clark also argued that his art was more of a play than art-work: a game of unbuilding where every work was a practice or experiment (Lee I xiii). These were serious games, however, about the reclamation of things approaching social exhaustion, about the people’s right to the city and an alienation from capitalism and the state (Lee I xiv). At a time when the politics of property rights was changing drastically in New York City (Lee I xviii), Gordon’s cuts were a criticism of developers’ idea of buildings as urban currency (McGuirk 1).

The building cuts were based in a “sacrificial economy,” the same sort of ideas that made up Bataille’s “general economy.” The general idea is that of expending energy that cannot be harnessed for growth in the development of culture. Productivity is lost to some degree by neutralizing a space’s potential and leaving it as a space that does not serve an economic function (Lee I xv). In our society, architecture has one purpose; function is sacrificed for stability and permanence. In a system where accumulation is sacred, sacrifice becomes about minimizing loss instead of celebrating it (Walker 135-136). Gordon reverses our usual idea of progress and history as cumualtive, stating that “only our garbage heaps are soaring as they fill up with history” (Lee I xvi). He presents an alternative to the collective imperative to waste – a non-productive use of energy that preserves objecthood but wastes energy (Lee I xv).

Since Matta-Clark’s death, there has been a struggle to preserve his art, combating the transient qualities that he valued so much. A year after his death, the last of the building cuts (in Belgium) was slated for demolition to erect cooperative apartments (Crawford 1). A friend of his decided to save the piece entitled “Office Baroque” by uniting Gordon’s artist friends in an action. They donated millions of dollars worth of art to the Belgian government and managed to raise enough money to buy the building. Despite this, the owner refused to sell and demolished the building (Crawford 1). Seemingly, Gordon did everything necessary to ensure that his art objects would not survive in their pristine state.

Matta-Clark’s other major projects were centered around the network of artists in SoHo who established a cooperative community network based around the restaurant “Food,” the magazine “Avalanche,” the exhibition and performance space “112 Greene St,” and the artists’ think tank “Anarchitecture.” Food and Anarchitecture were the brainchildren of Matta-Clark. These were community-based businesses and projects with the goal of supporting and sustaining the art community (Morris 12). Though none of these groups sustained themselves beyond the 1970s, they were successful because in operating outside of the accepted system they managed to change that system (Morris 21). Food, beyond its immediate function as a restaurant, was a political, economic, and artistic project, a spatial and temporal experiment operating in Rauschenberg’s idea of a space between art and life (Morris 21). Food was a collaborative work created and maintained by a group of five friends, giving artists a place to work that they could leave when they had a show coming up and be guaranteed a job when they had a chance to work again. By the end of its life, Food had supported three hundred people (Morris 28). This was an experiment in levels of community: the creation of a small cell aided in the support of the larger body of artists by providing a service to the greater community. Food gave people a venue to show off their cooking skills as well as do food-based performances and find inspiration and a climate conducive to generating ideas (Morris 28). Matta-Clark’s obsession with food existed for the same reasons as his fascination with architecture. Food was a basis for hospitality and sustenance, but it was also a living and mutating medium based in superimposition, envelopment, consumption, and digestion. These were also ways of transforming space to fit one’s needs (Morris 17).

Gordon Matta-Clark’s work appeals to me because of its community base and desire to create alternatives to contemporary society. His ideas on liminality and space vs. place intrigue me, as they are concepts that I have been considering myself. The disregard of rules and social mores created an atmosphere conducive to growth away from the current system. I have also found inspiration in Gordon’s community’s goals of creating a self-sustaining community. The idea of “we need something, so let’s make it happen” has always appealed to me, and seems to blend well with art practices since art is all about creating things that you want to exist. Additionally, I am interested in the levels of a community and the way that those levels can interact. Matta-Clark’s organizational strategies are based on anarchist logic of small cells acting as independent parts of a larger communal group, which then interacts with other groups and the outside world. This structure makes sense to me, as it puts the power in the small group and allows people’s interests to be better met.

The artwork of Gordon Matta-Clark existed in the liminal spaces between life and art, making his life an artwork and his artwork more important to life than most is. He understood that in order to create the life he advocated, he must both live it and work at it.