Process art
Description
Process art is an artistic movement where the end product of art and craft, the objet d’art (work of art/found object), is not the principal focus; the process of its making is one of the most relevant aspects if not the most important one: the gathering, sorting, collating, associating, patterning, and moreover the initiation of actions and proceedings. Process artists saw art as humans partnering with intrinsic material expression. Process art is primarily interested in demonstrating forces on matter and defends the idea that the process of creating the work of art can be an art piece itself. Artist Robert Morris refers to the artistic approach as “anti-form”, meaning there is no inherent relation to the physical object. Read more ↗
Key Artists
Robert Morris
Key theorist and practitioner of Process art whose 1968 'Anti-Form' essay and cut felt installations championed gravity, chance, and material behavior over fixed geometry.
Richard Serra
Central Process artist whose 1967 'Verb List' (to roll, to crease, to fold, to splash) governed physical actions performed directly on molten lead, rubber, and steel.
Barry Le Va
Pioneering Process and distribution artist who scattered, dropped, and threw felt, glass fragments, and ball bearings across gallery floors to record the physical act of dispersion.
Giovanni Anselmo
Arte Povera and Process sculptor whose works harnessed active physical forces like gravity, torsion, magnetism, and natural decomposition.
Jannis Kounellis
Process and Arte Povera artist who introduced live animals, fire, coal, and wool into gallery spaces to emphasize real-time material transformations.
Robert Smithson
Land and Process artist whose poured asphalt slopes and earthworks explored physical entropy, geological time, and irreversible material flows.
Famous Artworks
Fun Facts
In his seminal 1968 essay 'Anti-Form,' Robert Morris argued that art should make visible the literal physical actions - cutting, dropping, hanging, splashing - and intrinsic properties of the materials used.
↗ Source: guggenheim.org
Richard Serra compiled a famous 1967 drawing titled 'Verb List' consisting of 84 transitive verbs ('to roll, to crease, to fold, to bend, to twist...') that served as the operational score for his Process artworks.
↗ Source: moma.org