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What does the future hold for today's art works that employ ephemeral materials or rapidly obsolescent components? Below, an overview of the ways that artists, collectors and museums are rethinking the idea of longevity.

Here is Stedelijk conservator Kees Herman Aben's description of what the Amsterdam museum must contend with each time it wants to exhibit the Mario Merz igloo Dal Miele Alle Ceneri (From Honey to Ashes, 1984) that is in its permanent collection:

Dal Miele Alle Ceneri comes unassembled with a tubular aluminum frame and supporting iron bars, forty-seven tablets or panels of beeswax on gauze, six steel sheets, two fir-cones covered in wax, machine parts and the head of an antelope.... It takes at least two people a full working day to put up the igloo. There are fifteen pages of instructions, complete with drawings and photos.[1]

Although Merz accepts signs of the physical aging of the components as part of the work, it is still considered too fragile for long-term display. "Rather than being on permanent exhibition," says Aben, "it is kept carefully packed away, waiting for the moment it can go on show; and that is only possible on very special occasions."

As the range of forms and materials used by artists has expanded, so have the demands on the individuals and institutions that collect contemporary art. The prevalence of installation art today, which may run the gamut from modest wall arrangements to colossal environments like those of Jason Rhoades, is particularly telling. Depending on their level of complexity, such works may come with detailed instruction sheets and documentation, and may require art handlers or studio assistants to be dispatched to aid in installation. The work may also be accompanied by something like an extended warranty or service contract, with both gallery and artist involved not only in the initial configuration of the work in a specific space but also in the repair or replacement of elements if they break down or decay.

The frequently unstable materials found in many of today's sculptures and installations have required artists, collectors and museum conservators to consider questions surrounding the longevity of these art works. In some cases, artists may specify that materials which will change radically in appearance over time should be allowed to take their course. In other instances, artists might require all or part of a piece to be remade each time it is displayed. Of course, concern over the alteration of unstable materials is hardly unique to the contemporary moment, as discussions of the yellowed newspapers in Cubist collage or Robert Rauschenberg's early Combines attest. What is new is the expanding range of problems presented by aging found elements or by works made from unusual or hitherto untested materials. New, too, is the increasingly active involvement of artists in deciding whether to intervene in the aging process and under what circumstances to consider refabrication or replacement.

Some Assembly Required

Interestingly enough, it is the widespread acceptance of a procedure derived from Conceptual art, the use of certificates in which the artist defines the nature and constituents of the work, that has helped to establish a market for pieces that might otherwise be regarded as ephemeral. This practice is, in fact, doing much to free artists from the expectation that art-making necessarily means the production of objects that have a continuous physical life.

It was in 1967 that Sol LeWitt began to produce wall drawings that could be realized by others on the basis of his written instructions. By 1987, one of these wall drawings, consisting of a signed certificate of authenticity and instructions, was successfully auctioned at Christie's. The sale of works consisting of a set of instructions took another twist in 1991, when New York and Munich dealer Jorg Schellmann began to offer editions of installations under the rubric "Wall Works." The buyers of these works--around 40 different pieces have been editioned--receive a certificate as well as everything they need for installation. The gallery helps potential owners to visualize the piece with sketches or (for a small fee) a computer-simulated image of the work installed in the collector's home. The commitment required to realize the work can, however, be significant, since it is likely to involve hiring professionals with skills ranging from silkscreen transfer to electrical wiring.

And if the owner decides to move the work? Any necessary replacement parts can also be ordered from the gallery, likewise for a fee. Only two of the Schellmann editions require the artist's active participation. Donald Judd's paired rectangular recesses, designed to be cut into a wall and backed with colored Plexiglas or galvanized iron, were meant to be installed only under his supervision, since changed to the supervision of his estate. With the LeWitt edition, the purchaser is instructed to write the words "wall drawing" in any size and medium on a wall, photograph the installation and send the photograph to LeWitt; the artist signs and returns the photo, which becomes the work's certificate.

There is obviously an important distinction between the re-creation of work for the convenience of the collector and instances where the collector is in fact obligated to refabricate the work each time that it is shown. The late Felix Gonzalez-Torres required that his works involving stacks of printed sheets of paper or piles of candy be remade each time they were exhibited. This stipulation was linked to his invitation to viewers to take away the elements of the works; the resulting cycle of disappearance and regeneration was an elliptical reference to the process of vanishing wrought by the AIDS epidemic. Perhaps it was his own awareness of mortality that led Gonzalez-Torres to plan with such precision for the future of his works, specifying the obligations of the future owner of the different pieces he produced.

Often the artist's decision to spell out the owner's obligations in the form of a certificate takes place only when works involving a potentially ephemeral process begin to be noticed and collected. Such was the case with Kara Walker's wall installations, in which she uses large-scale cut-paper silhouettes to create provocative and often disturbing tableaux set in the antebellum South. Walker begins each composition by drawing in chalk on the back of black paper and then cutting out the forms freehand with a knife. The black paper is waxed and attached to the wall to create the installation. As these works began to sell, however, problems with their fragility became more of an issue, as did the fact that the black paper was not archival.

"We already knew that they could tear, and Kara had remade some elements herself, but she didn't want to become a factory of remaking things," says Michael Jenkins, director of Brent Sikkema Gallery in New York, which represents the artist.[2] When tests with other materials proved unsatisfactory, Walker eventually settled on a procedure for using the initial exhibition copy as the basis for a template in rag paper that is used to generate further black-paper exhibition copies as needed. While the work is thus inherently reproducible, the authorization to do so is limited. Unauthorized creation of multiple copies is also unlikely because of the time and resources necessary to produce them. "This isn't something that anybody can do themselves," says Jenkins.

The black paper that Walker uses is best suited to temporary exhibition. When Peter and Eileen Norton wanted to install her 1996 African't in one of their homes on a long-term basis, they knew they would only be able to accommodate a portion of the 60-foot-long work, and they were concerned about the upkeep required by the paper's tendency to ripple with humidity changes. With Walker's permission their curator, Susan Cahan, engaged a sign painter to create stencils that would allow the figures to be painted directly on the wall. And as long as Walker is involved, such variations are possible. Otherwise, however, subsequent refabrications are supposed to re-create the work's first instance, as documented in installation photographs, as exactly as possible.

Negotiating the Work of Art