Use of Ephemeral Materials
Art made from short-lived substances, such as ice, food, smoke, flowers, fire or fog, that decay or vanish by design.
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About
Bronze and marble were chosen to last. Ephemeral works do the opposite: they accept melting, rotting, burning or evaporation as part of the piece, so time itself becomes a material. Many cultures made temporary art long before modernism, from Tibetan Buddhist sand mandalas, swept away once complete, to festival decorations and flower carpets.
In the 1960s artists took up short-lived materials to resist the permanence of the art object. Dieter Roth let chocolate, cheese and sausage decay in his works, Otto Piene made drawings with smoke and fire, and Fujiko Nakaya created her first fog sculpture for the Pepsi Pavilion at Expo '70 in Osaka. Eva Hesse's latex pieces have darkened and cracked with age. Cai Guo-Qiang draws with gunpowder explosions, and Andy Goldsworthy makes works from leaves, ice and stones that last only as long as the weather allows. Look for documentation, since photographs often outlive the work.
