Charles Harrison Notes On The Gallery Space

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In Charles Harrison’s An Introduction to Art and Brian O’Docherty’s Notes on the Gallery Space, both authors discuss the influence that the gallery setting may have on the visitor’s experience of the artwork on display. Harrison believes that the visitor’s experience is improved when the gallery places equal focus on history and aesthetics, whilst O’Doherty argues that the gallery context should isolate art from the outside world.

Harrison states that few artworks are produced with the intention of being placed in a gallery (15) - especially excavated artefacts - therefore, information should be provided which gives the visitor an insight into a work’s historical origins (23). However, he warns that simply studying this information may neglect the work’s individuality, so a historic approach should be combined with an aesthetic approach concerning the work’s formal characteristics (24). Harrison stresses the importance of balancing both these approaches, stating that conditions for interpretation are optimised in galleries …show more content…

O’Docherty discusses this idea in relation to Modernist easel paintings, stating that such works are longer self-contained illusory spaces but are now ‘shallow literal space(s),’ in other words, objects in their own right. According to the author, this means that they will inevitably transfer significance onto their surroundings, because both their content and context now reside within the same space (29); therefore, each work must be given sufficient space in order to render its entire effect (34). Whilst O’Docherty’s text provides a strong argument for an aesthetic approach, it is almost exclusively concerned with Modernism and is far less focused on explaining how to improve historic interpretations of

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