Process art

Process art emerged in the United States and Europe in the mid-1960s as a response to Minimalism. Where Minimalist sculpture was machined and finished, process art put the act of making first: gathering, pouring, cutting, hanging and dropping were allowed to determine the final form, and materials were left to behave as materials do - sagging, hardening, wrinkling, decaying. Robert Morris, who called the approach 'anti-form', defined it in a landmark Guggenheim exhibition and essay at the end of the decade; Eva Hesse's sagging latex and cheesecloth structures, shown in the Whitney's 1969 exhibition 'Anti-Illusion: Process/Materials', gave it its most memorable shapes. Drawing on Pollock's poured drip paintings, Dada chance and performance art, process artists let gravity, time and improvisation act as co-authors of the work.

Defining characteristics

• Making recorded in the finished form: pours, drops, cuts, stacks, gravity pulls
• Materials left to behave naturally - sagging, hardening, wrinkling, decaying
• Eccentric, irregular forms in erratic arrangements instead of composed geometry
• Nontraditional and perishable materials: wax, felt, latex, rubber, lead, steam, organic matter
• Impermanence and instability treated as content, not defect
• De-emphasized finish and edges; often no single canonical final form

Key figures

• Robert Morris (1931-2018) — Theorist of 'anti-form' whose felt, earth and modular works defined the approach
• Eva Hesse (1936-1970) — Her sagging latex and fiberglass structures gave process art its most memorable forms
• Richard Serra (1939-2024) — Cast, splashed and propped lead and rubber works that record the act of making
• Lynda Benglis (b. 1941) — Poured latex, foam and pigment works that let material flow dictate form

Example works

• Addendum — Eva Hesse (1967)
• Expanded Expansion — Eva Hesse (1969)
• Untitled (Pink Felt) — Robert Morris (1970)

Sources

• Process art - Wikipedia encyclopedia
• Eva Hesse - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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