Obsolescence
Art about things that have outlived their use: outdated machines, abandoned industry, dying formats and the debris of progress.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
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About
Every technology eventually goes out of date, and artists have been quick to notice what is left behind. Hubert Robert imagined the Louvre's Grande Galerie as a roofless ruin in 1796, projecting his own present into a future where it no longer served. Industrial economies sharpened the theme: the idea of planned obsolescence, circulating from the 1930s, named the practice of designing goods to be replaced.
Jean Tinguely built Homage to New York (1960) from scrap, a machine meant to destroy itself in front of an audience. Nam June Paik stacked old television sets into sculptures and walls of flickering screens, and Tacita Dean's FILM (2011) paid tribute to celluloid as film laboratories were closing. Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre photographed abandoned theatres, schools and factories in The Ruins of Detroit (2005–10). Look for dust, dead cables and machines kept for their shape after their function has gone.
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