relational art

Relational art or relational aesthetics is a mode or tendency in fine art practice that emerged under various names in the 1990s. In 1998 French art critic Nicolas Bourriaud defined esthétique relationnelle (relational aesthetics) as "a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space." The artist can be more accurately viewed as the "catalyst" in relational art, rather than an author at the center. While helpfully moving aesthetics beyond the sole concerns of the individual into a larger social sphere, relational art as Bourriaud defines it stays within the human realm, reflecting a humanist value system rooted in modernism. This sets relational art and aesthetics in contrast to its immediate predecessor, Brooklyn Immersionism, a posthumanist art movement which began in the late 1980s and involved dozens of creative groups in a sustained and transformative relationship with a living urban ecosystem. Both systems aesthetics shared some of the features of social practice art and all three had roots in the process art of the 1970s and "web of life" philosophies of Native Americans.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Relational art”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

relational art is tendency in fine art, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 11 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶