Lucy Lippard | Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object

Lucy Lippard

Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object

London, UK: Studio Vista, 1973. 

272 pp., 22 x 18.5 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

It’s difficult to measure the impact of Lucy R. Lippard’s groundbreaking 1973 book, whose full title is eighty-eight words long: 

Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972: a cross-reference book of information on some esthetic boundaries: consisting of a bibliography into which are inserted a fragmented text, art works, documents, interviews, and symposia, arranged chronologically and focused on so-called conceptual or information or idea art with mentions of such vaguely designated areas as minimal, antiform, systems, earth, or process art, occurring now in the Americas, Europe, England, Australia, and Asia (with occasional political overtones), edited and annotated by Lucy R. Lippard.

Now over fifty years old, the volume helped cement the legacy of conceptual art, which Lippard defines as "work in which the idea is paramount and the material form is secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious and/or ‘dematerialized.’"

Artists featured in the book include Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Eleanor Antin, Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner (who wrote a negative review of it in Art Forum: "To document the history of six years of extremely active and possibly radical art requires a sense of responsibility to the spirit of the art itself. The bibliographic processes must be systematic, clear, informed, and consistent within the chosen theoretical framework. Lippard’s book does not satisfy these criteria.”), Daniel Buren, Hannah Darboven, Marcel Duchamp, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, On Kawara, Les Levine, Sol Lewitt, Lee Lozano, Ursula Meyer, Bruce Nauman, The N.E. Thing Co., Yoko Ono, Adrian Piper, Robert Ryman (who Lippard was married to for six years), Michael Snow, Jeff Wall, Lawrence Weiner and many others. 

As the title Six Years suggests, the book is presented as a timeline, with key moments in the development of the genre appearing as titles, with supporting documents such as contemporaneous letters, interviews, and reviews. Lippard quotes herself liberally, mistrusting memory and privileging her own first-hand accounts over hindsight. For example, the timeline includes the publication date of her essay The Dematerialization of the Art Object (written with John Chandler in the Fall of 1967, and published in February of 1968):

"During the 1960s, the anti-intellectual, emotional/intuitive processes of art-making characteristic of the last two decades have begun to give way to an ultra-conceptual art that emphasizes the thinking process almost exclusively... The studio is again becoming a study. Such a trend appears to be provoking a profound dematerialisation of art, especially of art as object, and if it continues to prevail, it may result in the object's becoming wholly obsolete."

The essay, and the book it inspired has become an essential historical survey and reference book for sixties art and conceptualism in particular. 

"At age eighteen I discovered a book called Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object by Lucy Lippard. To me this book reconfirmed that a concept can be equally as beautiful as its aesthetics. I was so excited that I read it too quickly, not fully appreciating its content, and had to read it again. Following a Christmas tradition, my grandmother would ask my mother to buy a present for her to give to me on Christmas morning. My Mum later passed the task to me, so I bought a reissue of Six Years, which my grandmother then gave back to me on Christmas morning. I acted surprised, as promised, when unwrapping it. “Thank you, Grandma. A book on the dematerialization of the art object, just what I always wanted.” She wrote a note on the inside front cover, and I treasure it over all other books [see below]. Six Years made me realize that art and design were no longer disciplines that were motivated purely by aesthetics. I wanted to relate Lippard’s ideas of dematerialization to graphic design, exploring objectivity, systems, and concepts, and remove as many aesthetic decisions from the design process as possible. I asked myself whether graphic design can be dematerialized, or whether the graphic can be informed by a concept.”

- Daniel Eatock