Gordon Matta-Clark Drawing on Architecture

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Gordon Matta-Clark: Drawing on ArchitectureAuthor(s): Stephen WalkerSource: Grey Room, No. 18 (Winter, 2004), pp. 108-131Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20442673 .

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Gordon Matta-Clark. RealityProperties: Fake Estates(Maspeth Onion), 1973.

Collage: 4 black-and-whitephotographs mounted onseparate board, deed, map.Dimensions variable. Allphotographs courtesy of theEstate of Gordon Matta-Clarkand David Zwirner Gallery,New York; ? 2004 ArtistsRights Society (ARS), NewYork, and DACS, London.

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Gordon Matta-Clark:.Drawing on Architecture

STEPHEN WALKER

Part 1:Design DrawingsAt the Drawing Board; Architectural Representation and Abstract SpaceWhen aMeasurement Daesn't Work ... aMare Intimate Nation ofSpace Beginings [sic] ...

-Gordon Matta-Clark1I don't know what the word "space" means.... I keep using it. B ut I'mnot quite sure what itmeans.-Gordon Matta-Clark2The artist Gordon Matta-Clark frequently expressed his interest inhuman experience that lay beyond objective measurement and wascritical of attempts to restrict experience to that which could be measured. Following his training as an architect at Cornell in the 1960s,he was particularly concerned with architecture's implication in the

maintenance of this restrictive situation, and his subsequent artisticoeuvre contested this in a variety of ways. One enduring aspect of his

work involved his redeployment of architectural drawing: althougharchitects use a variety of techniques, the convention of orthographicdrawing traditionally epitomizes an architect's activity. Intimatelyassociated with this convention is the abstract space that under

writes the drawing of plans and sections. However, as Henri Lefebvrerepeatedly pointed out, to conflate abstract space with architecturaldrawing is as erroneous as attributing creative priority to these drawings in the production of architectural space.

Indeed, in The Production of Space Lefebvre discusses what he callsthe three "formants" of abstract space, which in addition to the referential space of geometry also presuppose the dominance of the senseof vision, and certain sociopolitical power relations. He concludesthat "Abstract space is thus repressive in essence and par excel]ence-but thanks to its versatility it is repressive in a particularlyartful way."3He traces a series of reductive steps that are consequenton the geometrical formant and that link its repressive versatility:

Euclidean space is defined by its "isotropy" (or homogeneity),a property which guarantees its social and political utility. Thereduction to this homogeneous Euclidean space, first of nature's



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space, thenof all social space,has conferred a redoubtablepowerupon it.All themore so since that initial reduction leads easilyto another-namely, the reduction of three-dimensional realitiesto two-dimensions (forexample, a "plan,"ablank sheet of paper,something drawn on that paper, amap, or any kind of graphicrepresentation or projection).4

The complicity of such graphic representation with the broadermachinations of abstract space is rarely acknowledged by the discipline of architecture,5 though the issues raised in Lefebvre's analysisare strikingly similar to the those identified byMatta-Clark.6Beyondthis coincidence, Matta-Clark's projects can demonstrate approachesto theproduction of space thatLefebvre's own theoreticalwork overlooks. These issues can be explored initially by referring to one ofMatta-Clark's early projects, Reality Properties: Fake Estates (1973).

At the Estate Agent with Gordon Malta-Clark (Buying)Science is, according to science, thedefinition ofmankind.-Denis Hollier7Pursuing Hollier's line of thinking, onemight suggest that forestateagents space is defined by the definitions peddled by real estateagents. The real estate agent's literature-where the "lot,"exemplarof private property, appears at the intersection of the bureaucratic,legal, and economic systems identifiedby Lefebvre's abstractspace8works according to its own logic,which was developed to follow theeconomic system of exchange, allowing themarket to determine"value"on its own terms by narrowing thedefinition of space towarda specific understanding intended to further the exchangeability ofproperty. In so doing, it denies other factors and claims that might bemade regardingproperty or space.By examining the relationship between theway space is represented in the literature of real estate and the properties that it purports to describe, doubt can be cast on the definitive status claimedfor thedescription, highlighting itscontingency. InReality Properties:Fake EstatesMatta-Clark deployed the criteriaand procedures of realestate agency to draw attention to this contingency, to subvert theprocesses of real estate, and to refute any claims itmight make to provide the definitive means of spatial representation.At auction in 1973 he bought some small pieces of land in Queensand Staten Island,New York City, which had reverted to the ownership of the City due to nonpayment of taxes by previous owners.Each propertywas a small, irregularlyshaped plot between buildings,known as "curbproperty" or "gutterspace."These were aberrationswithin the property system, forwhich Matta-Clark paid between

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$25 and $75 each.In an interview Matta-Clark described how he was drawn to theauction by the description of the properties as "inaccessible," andhow this had led him to enter the market as a buyer in order to highlight the contradiction within the parceled definition of space thatboth permitted and drove this system.When Ibought those properties at theNew York City Auction,the description of them that always excited me themost was"inaccessible." They were a group of fifteen micro-parcels ofland in Queens, left over properties from an architect's drawing.One or two of theprize ones were a foot [wide] strip downsomebody's driveway and a square foot of sidewalk. And theothers were kerbstone and gutterspace thatwouldn't be seen

and certainly not occupied. Buying them was my own take onthe strangeness of existing property demarcation lines. Propertyis so all-pervasive.Everyone'snotion of ownership is determinedby the use factor.9Through his purchase Matta-Clark began to erode the definition

of space established according to the "use factor" and began to revealthe gaps in the apparent logic of the exchange system. He hoped toexpand the notions usually allied to the "value" of space, pushingthem to include qualities less easily determined by the market.Discussing the issue of evaluation more broadly, he stressed the distinction between two possible approaches, and argued thatwhat wasat stake in theirdifference was thequality of architectural experience:

architectural politics reduces down to the issue of evaluation.Evaluating what kinds of things need to be clarified in order tomake the distinction between what ismade available in termsof usable space ... that's one issue . .. and what is needed foran extended experience of architecture ... which is an entirelydifferent issue. There are so many things not in the commoninterpretation of use that are necessities, needs that have noexplicit determining factor. If you can just get away from theconventional conception of what is useful or necessary, then,and only then, can you start probing the issue.10It is instructive to compare Matta-Clark's desire for an extended

experience of architecture with that ofGeorges Bataille, who madesimilar observations and shared similarmotivations. Relevant instancesoccur throughoutBataille's oeuvre. Perhaps the earliest is his 1933essay "On the Notion of Expenditure" (La notion de depense). Hebegins the essay with a section entitled "The Insufficiency of thePrinciple of Classical Utility," noting that " [e]very time themeaning ofa discussion depends on the fundamental value of the word useful ...

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it ispossible to affirm that the debate isnecessarily warped and thatthe fundamental question is eluded.""1Bataille wanted tochallenge this elusion and tohighlight what hefelt were the "real needs of society." In away that anticipates MattaClark and directly influenced Lefebvre, he called into question thenarrow definition of useful, arguing that the term served a social conception that admits only production and conservation, is organizedaround a drive foraccumulation, and obeys the "economic principleof balanced accounts." In this way the fundamental value of the worduseful isperverted from itsproper address and becomes the criterionagainst which all human values are measured.12 That which fallsoutside such restricted economies of accumulation is often seen aswaste by "homogenous" society, though forBataille thiswaste couldbe low or high, turd or transcendent: "The heterogeneous worldincludes everything resulting from unproductive expenditure . . .everything rejected by homogenous society as waste or as superiortranscendent value."913Moreover, what is considered as "waste"by any restricted systemcan be aproduct of the idealizing system itself,where the placing ofeach thing creates a deformitywithin the system due to that thing'sloose fitwithin its category."Each individual formescapes [the]com

mon measure and is, to a certain degree, amonster," Bataille notes.14Thus, in the establishment and maintenance of the norm, waste isproduced by the system as thatwhich escapes the common measure.If this waste product is revealed fromwithin, the homogenizingsystem can be exposed as artificial, as a construct rather than as adefinitive measure, and its claims to supremacy can be demonstratedto be reliant upon awider heterogeneity (which Bataille terms theGeneral Economy) that it fails toaccount for.Reality Properties: FakeEstates operates in thisway. The project's initial target is the deferred"use value" assumed to exist within the real estate market, for thesale of the plots assumes a deferred usefulness that underpins thesystem of real estate and exchange: the notion that any real estateon the market must be usable. This notion is challenged by the"inaccessible" plots thatMatta-Clark bought, because instead of usefulness theiruselessness ishighlighted.

The mechanics of this process stem from the representation of theproperties on the architectural drawing of the city block plan,whichignoresa very real distinction between these "useless" plots and their"useful" neighbors. (See Reality Properties: Fake Estates (MaspethOnion) [1973].)The logic of this representation isunderpinned by asupposition that each plot will enjoy a deferred usefulness; yetaccording to the real estatemarket's own definitions of usefulness,they remain useless. In a strange reversal of fortunes, the normal distinctions pertaining between properties in different locations are

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irrelevant here. The omnipresent view assumed by the space of thearchitectural drawing is trumped by a space that is truly nowhereand everywhere the same:whether inQueens or inManhattan theseplots deny use-value. These interstitial spaces are too small, too inaccessible, and too geometrically awkward to enter themarket on thegrounds of usefulness, and they remain "useless" regardless of location.Many arebeyond any kind of recuperation, as even purchase byadjacent landowners (following the logic of accumulation that themarket implicitly espouses) would be short-circuited simply by theirphysical size. The New York City Authority chose to deny all thisand put them up for sale following the usual conventions.Reality Properties: Fake Estates plays the spaces and processes ofreal estate at its own game. Matta-Clark became a buyer, not to makecommercial gain from his "investment" but to demonstrate themechanics of partition that define themarket. His investment opportunity came about as a result of the operations of partition undertaken in the drawing of an architect's plans. However, the partitionof space indicated on such plans does not necessarily map the location in an entirely logicalway, asMatta-Clark's gestures demonstrate.Recalling Bataille's observations about internal deformities occurring as a consequence of the operations of categorization, we canregister such deformities on the architect's drawings, but they areimpossible to locate in situ without the plans. The particularmodeof their invisibility complicates Yve-Alain Bois's general observationthat "waste"within theproperty system remains "imperceptibleuntilthe point of no return has been reached," for as has just been stressed,the limited physical size and awkward shape ofMatta-Clark's plotshighlights their difference in kind to the properties that surroundthem:15their particular invisibility is a characteristic of (and guaranteed by) the drawing process rather than a consequence of theirinvolvement in the cycles of decay and renovation undertaken by thecity as awhole. The City Authority's move to reintroduce these plotsinto the prevailing system of exchange was effectively an attempt tocover up these monsters: Matta-Clark played along and thereby clearlydemonstrated their actual status as the internal waste of that system.Lefebvre indirectly acknowledges that such internal irregularitycould occur: "Abstract space is not homogeneous; it simply has homogeneity as itsgoal, itsorientation, its 'lens.'''16atta-Clark'ssubsequent

work on Reality Properties: Fake Estates demonstrated a differentkind of irregularity, externally produced as an interference patternthat resulted fromviewing the same space through different lenses.Out of the Box and into the Art Gallery (Selling)Matta-Clark intended Reality Properties: Fake Estates to exceed thegesture of the land purchase, though it is not clear inwhat format the

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gesture was first exhibited. Some initial thoughts shared with thejournalistDan Carlinsky indicate that he proposed a gallery-basedwork involving written documentation and a full-size photographicwork, appropriately reminiscent of Borges's tale "OfExactitude inScience."The implicationwas that thesewould establish a relationshipwith the third part of the work, the plot of land itself, in away thatechoes theSite/Non-site projectsofhis earlymentor,RobertSmithson.17Although an early version of the projectwas exhibited while thework was still inprogress, once the documentation process was morecomplete, Matta-Clark boxed up all the documents relating toRealityProperties: Fake Estates and gave them toNorman Fisher, a local artcollector, with the instructions "put them together however youwant."18This state of affairswas precipitated byMatta-Clark's inabilityto pay the taxes due on his little property portfolio; the projectwasnot shown again during his lifetime.The contents of the box indicate thathis intentions forexhibitingthe project had developed beyond the early proposals sketched outtoCarlinsky, though these still involved a combination of writtenand photographic work.When the box was returned to the Estate ofGordonMatta-Clark after the deaths of both the artist and Fisher thesuggestion that the pieces be assembled "however you want" wastaken up, and theprojectwas prepared for exhibition. In this versiontheprojectwas (re)presented in frames, plot by plot through a juxtaposition of the architecturaldrawingof thecityblock plan, the title deed,and a documentary photographof theplot. (SeeReality Propeities:FakeEstates [MaspethOnions]) Broadly, eachplot received this same treatment: fourteenplots, fourteen frames. (The fifteenthEstate has neverbeen exhibited, as it is landlocked and impossible tophotograph.)19Beyond the differences immediately apparent between mediafavored by each discourse, amore thoroughgoing disparity existsbetween the various modes of description brought togetherwithineach frame, each mode "accounting for" the plot in a different languageor according to the rules of a different economy. Architectural space,legal space, and documentary (photographic) space are juxtaposed.As a consequence, threepurportedly definitive discourses areplayedoff againstone another, thoughnone gains theupper hand.Photographic"evidence" (the camera never lies), architectural (geometric) definition, and legal ownership fail to coincide completely with the plotsthemselves, an inconsistency stemming from the differing interestsheld by each account. Following this failure to add up, it becomesapparent that there aregaps between theparameters of thediscoursesthat constitute each frame,and the tensions involved inmaking theproject are thus reinforced by the inconsistencies highlighted byits (re)presentation.This juxtapositionof conflictingaccountsupsets thepresuppositions

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of general equivalence that underwrite themovement of real estate.Instead, the system of real estate is contested from outside, as otherclaims to spatial definition arewitnessed alongside it, amove thatdenies the establishment of a single, "correct" account. This selfreflexivity demands a constructive reading that is based on a noncommercial interactionbetween the spaces,which revealsan economyof nonfunctional use-value, an issue that preoccupied Matta-Clarkduring much of his work. Drawing on a linguistic analogy in aninterview, he noted that this level of nonfunctionality was exploredthrough a process like "jugglingwith syntax":

Most of the things that Ihave done that have "architectural"implications are really about non-architecture . .. anarchitecture.... We were thinkingaboutmetaphoric voids, gaps, left-overspaces, places thatwere not developed ... metaphoric in thesense that their interest or value wasn't in theirpossible use....You mean you were interested in these spaces on some nonfunctional level?Or on a functional level that was so absurd as to ridicule theidea of function.... It's like jugglingwith syntax or disintegrating some kind of established sequence of parts.20

The (re)presentation of Reality Properties: Fake Estates can beunderstood toperform a similar juggling operation: the contingencyof the syntax proper to each of the systems brought togetherwithineach frame is demonstrated by their lack of agreement about thespaces described. These spaces are prevented from assuming theirusual associations and forced instead to acknowledge a new relationship that the (re)presentation sets up and which addresses thegeneral (spatial) economy upon which each system isquietly reliant.This project calls into question the illusory space of the drawingthat predicates the system of real estate and reveals it as underwritten by "non-architecture." According to Shields, Lefebvre made asimilar observation regarding the spaces of the city: "The city was anoeuvre, much like the work of art, and this was only barely coveredover by the commodification of its spaces along property lines into'lots."''21efebvre hoped todemonstrate the possibility of exceedingthe commodification thatwas brought about by abstract spatialization to further certain vested interests of those in power. Matta

Clark's project enacted many of Lefebvre's observations but alsopointed toward other opportunities forbecoming involved with thecity as oeuvre by revealing the contingency and overdeterminationof its spaces. These did not register in Lefebvre's work, because of hisown approach to economics: good Marxist that he was, his Productionof Space remains within a political economy. Although Lefebvrefollows Bataille and admits that useless expenditure can occur, he

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does not admit this insight into the political economy grounding hisdiscussion of abstract space, where "value" remains geographicaland tied to conventional urbanism.22 But Reality Properties: FakeEstates demonstrates an equal affinity with Bataille's broader economic analysis, highlighting the contradictions produced by theinternal deformities or those presented by exceeding the particularlogic of any system.It isparadoxical, then, orperhaps appropriate, that the last laughgoes to the inexorable system of commodification, which returns andcovers overMatta-Clark's own oeuvre of Reality Properties: FakeEstates. For the framingprocess itself introduced another space andreminds us that thiswork will be "consumed" within the conventional architectural space of the artgallery,where frequently the only"value" that is not neutral-or indeed neutralized-is that ofexchange value demanded by the artmarket itself.Against the intentions of both the artist and his estate, the arrangement for the firstposthumous exhibition of the project has been received as the definitive version, with no further shuffling of the composition.23 In thissense Reality Properties: Fake Estates failed to escape the homogenizing intentions of the economic space of capitalism, which heresucceed in suppressing Matta-Clark's anarchitectural intentions:"ANARCHITECTURE-WORKING N SEVERALDIMENTIONS [sic]... KEEPING ITAN ONGOING OPEN PROCESS NOT FINISHINGJUSTKEEPINGGOING AND STARTINGOVER &OVER."24The petrifaction of theproject into its current framed-up arrangement, despite Matta-Clark's suggestion that thevarious pieces of documentation from all the different plots could be put together andcontinuously rearrangedhowever one wanted, is due in part to themachinations of the art market, precipitated by the action of one ofitsmore influential players, theGuggenheim Museum, which purchased one of theworks only to discover this ambiguity regarding itsprovenance and arrangement. Subsequent tacit agreement on the"correct" version grants thework the authority, authenticity, stability,and originality that reassured the institution.Matta-Clark's little project anticipates theworks forwhich he isbetter known, the so-called building dissections. The role traditionally ascribed to architectural drawing, its relationship to the possibilities of experiencing (producing) space, and the economics ofabstract space that predicate thesemoments, were deployed andmanipulated much more deliberately and radically both inMattaClark's initial gestures thatproduced the dissections and in the subsequent re-presentations he made. Before examining some of theseprojects in detail, it is important to rehearse certain aspects ofspatial-representation techniquesmore thoroughly.Lefebvremakes ageneral criticism of representational techniques wherein "[t]heclaim

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is that space can be shown by means of space itself,"25and he picksup this themewith specific reference toarchitectural representation:"Architectureoffers plenty of instances of procedures of this kind....This relationship between cutting-up and representation, as it refersto space, has already found its place in the order (and the disorder)of the connections we have been examining [in the production ofspace]."26Lefebvre's worry is that for architects space is alwaysalready reduced to "architectural space,"which is the samewhetherit is found on a drawing, on a building plot, or on a building.Although explicit architectural interest in "space" only emergedwith the developments of modernism,27 the tendency that Lefebvreobserves can be tracedmuch further back into architecture's history,a continuity that can be read in both in the production of images andthe quiet relationship between cutting up and representation.Interlude: Back to the Drawing BoardIfneeded we work todisprove the common belief thatall startswith theplan. There are forms without plans-Dynamic orders and disorders.-Gordon Matta-Clark, Anarchitecture 28

Matta-Clark's anarchitectural aphorism clearly attackedmodernism'sassumption that architectural formwas a static principle of a building.Formswithout plans would upset the traditional priority of static form, both in the sense that this form was temporally prior to abuilding's existence and that itwas the location fromwhich authoritywas issued and towhich judgmentwould have to be referred.MattaClark's building dissections explore the consequences of this suggestion. The role played by the conventions of the architecturalimage and, in particular, the "relationship between cutting-up andrepresentation" that concerned Lefebvre warrant examination. Justas Lefebvre stressed there was no "innocent" space, so the use of thetermform is itself fraughtwith difficulties that stretch back at leasttoPlato.Plato used theword eidos (e&oJ) for both the imperfect form ofworldly things (form-as-shape apprehended by the human senses)and theunchanging ideal formworldly things referred to (form-ideacomprehended by the intellect).ForPlato, how one proceeded beyondthe surface of a thingandnegotiated this complex relationshipbetweensurface form-shape and form-idea was crucial, and he believed thatthemethod he established for this negotiation would guarantee thesupremacy of his philosophy.29The importance of Plato'sbroad position in thepresent context is thathis philosophical method providedthemodel he recommended for"skillful" or "scientific practitioners"of artistic production.30Henri Bergson's criticisms of Plato'smodelcan help our exploration ofMatta-Clark's "forms without plans."

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Significantly, Bergson links themeaning of Platonic eidos (8C6o;)directly todrawing:The word eC6o;, which we translate here by "Idea," has, in fact,this threefoldmeaning. It denotes (1) the quality, (2) the formor essence, (3) the end or design (in the sense of intention) ofthe act being performed, that is to say, at bottom, the design(in the sense of drawing) of the act supposed accomplished.31Bergson's final clause isparticularly relevant, as itpoints to how

the notion of eidos has been taken up by art and architectural theoryin away that has established a strong linkbetween "form," intellect,and drawing. Indeed, we can read a similar relationship in Vasari'sdefinition of disegno (itself a complex term signifying both drawingand design):

Seeing that Design [disegno], the parent of our three arts,Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, having its origin in theintellect, draws out frommany single things a general judgement, it is like a form or "idea" of all the objects in nature, mostmarvelous in what it compasses.... Seeing too that from thisknowledge there arises a certain conception and judgement,so that there is formed in the mind that something which afterwards, when expressed by thehands, is called design [disegno],

we may conclude that design [disegno] is not other than a visibleexpression and declaration of our inner conception and of thatwhich others have imagined and given form to in their idea.32

ForVasari, disegno was the foundation or animating principle of allthe fine arts.Within his theory the physical aspect of the artisticoperation becomes a transparent term, ideally an unobstructed conduit between idea and receiving intellect.33The consequences aresignificant. Vasari's privileging of "disegno," or the intellectualaspect of artistic production separated the task of the artist from theproduction of objects, perhaps most famously and decisively inarchitecture,where Vasari argued that "because itsdesigns [disegno]are composed only of lines, which so far as the architect is concerned,are nothing else than the beginning and the end of his art, . . .all therest ... ismerely the work of carvers and masons."34

Matta-Clark often discussed the role that drawing played in hiswork, thoughhis use of the termdrawing demands amore expansivedefinition than usual, in order to accommodate his "simple cut orseries of cuts [that]act as apowerful drawing device."35Although notstrictly interchangeablewith the activity of cutting, his drawingwasfrequently the work of carver and mason: in an interview with LizaBear, he discussed the similarities and differences between a cut seenas a graphic thing only and a cut deployed as an analytical probe

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and in this regard, his notion of drawing carries some of the intellectual operations included inVasari's disegno (and Plato's eidos, ifwe recallBergson's translation)while simultaneously exceeding thesphere of architectural activity that Vasari sanctioned.36 Indeed,Pamela M. Lee has suggested that Matta-Clark deployed "drawing"toward "the undoing of stable form" and that his "line, whether cutor drawn, might be read as literalizing the fundamental tenets of theearlier models [of art history, namely Vasari and Wolfflin] only toreveal the relative 'indeterminacy' of form that such theories implicitly suggest."37With these issues inmind, we can accompanyMattaClark onto the building site.Part II:Working DrawingsOn the Building SiteSeveral ofMatta-Clark's building dissection projects literallyenactedobjective, intellectual approaches todividing the form-shapeofwholebuildings. A W-Hole House: Datum Cut (1973) inscribed a datum,conventionally established as an abstract horizontal plane againstwhich the relative vertical position of points can be established.Splitting (1974) inscribed a vertical cut conventionally used in orthographic drawing to produce an architectural section (see image below,which itself follows these orthographic conventions, presenting thebuilding in elevation). Bingo (1974) took Colin Rowe's method ofsuperimposing a grid on the drawing of a building's plan or facadeto demonstrate the "regulating lines" of that building's formal composition.38 On the idealist account of form that is implicated in theprocess of disegno, theconsequence of shifting theseobjective analysesout of the realm of the intellect by bringing them to bear so tangiblyon things would be that the forms attained fail to achieve clarity,because the cuts would prevent form from escaping the mundaneworld. However, these projects are comprehensible. If they elude Gordon Matta-Clark. Splitting,1974. Color photograph.

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formal clarity, it is not because they have removed form in a dumb,antiformalist gesture but because they provided more form than idealism could register.Rather than their form eluding clarity, it refusesto give itself up totally to the objective, scientific clarity sought byidealism.For example, a visitor's experience of Splitting would change astheymoved around the dissected building, stepping over the split astheymoved from room to room and from story to story. This movement through the building, horizontally and vertically, in plan andin section, would have been interrupted by the physical presence ofthe cut, the "ideal" section writ large in the fabric of the building,which would begin to call into question the tacit assumptions thatarchitecture makes on our behalf and to counter any claims that thearchitecture might make toward attaining a "whole object" qualitythat can be understood once and for all. Rather than being just the"snapshot"work thatMatta-Clark criticized, available forconsump

tion from a single point of view, and rather than allowing the observation "from nowhere" that the privileged architectural systempresumes, andwhich predicates the logic of orthographic drawing,Splitting demanded an operative viewing, where the visitor wouldhave had to reconcile the different spatial accounts provided simultaneously by these differing systems. Just as the (re)presentations ofReality Properties: Fake Estates demonstratedmultiple claims to thesame plot, the repercussions ofMatta-Clark's cuttings were such thatthemodality of formal clarity had to expand in order to respond tothe variety of forms that these projects revealed within the samebuilding: formno longerbore the absolute truth butwas now raisedas a question.Matta-Clark'sdrawing enacted something of a reductioad absurdumon theprinciples of architectural form as these had developed sincetheRenaissance. By lodging itself firmly in the stuff of theworld, hisdrawing deliberately attempted tocarryoverprinciples from the realmof the intellect and maintain them in things. Drawing thus became aproperty of the building and not just a generating principle: bothaspects were important toMatta-Clark, "it's as much the idea of a cutas the functional construct that interestsme."39What is challenged bythis reductio is the alleged reduction or purification of form; itdemonstrates that "form" cannot be located: itmust substantiallyoverflow any single location in thematerial object, in architecturaldisegno, or in the intellect. These drawings give not one form but several, all ofwhich can be understood, but none ofwhich aredefinitive:they refer neither to a static form-object nor to a form-idea but returnthe formof the actual building as a positive source of ambiguity.Matta-Clark's building dissections disrupted easy access todefinitive form and thereby challenged theway inwhich they could

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become intelligible. His targetwas the reductive experience offeredby the static form of modernism, though the consequences of hiswork were to alter the role that form plays in the establishment ofmeaning. Bergson's own reexamination of Platonic form (e8Co;) sinstructive in this regard:We might, and perhaps we ought to, translate eC4o;by "view"or rather by "moment." For eC&oo;s the stable view taken of theinstability of things: the quality, which is amoment of becoming; the form, which is amoment of evolution; the essence,which is themean formabove and below which the other formsare arranged as alterations of themean; finally, the intention ofmental design which presides over the action being accomplished, and which is nothing else, we said, than thematerialdesign, traced out and contemplated beforehand, of the actionaccomplished.40Bergson and Matta-Clark are expressly or implicitly critical,respectively, of Plato's theory of forms, arguing that itmoves in thewrong direction (toward the eternal and immobile) from an improperstarting point. Bergson's revised translation,which provides for anintelligibility and instability, offers to articulate the repercussions ofcutting thatMatta-Clark explored.Matta-Clark's work demonstratesan alternating modality of form (asboth eidoV and disegno) where

it assumes a role as both an active destabilizing and clarifyingprinciple. For this situation to remain beyond paradox requires thatform enjoy two kinds of clarity. The first draws on the "mean form"for a stable "view" thatpermits intelligibility, but this is no longerthe static form that acted as the defining principle of things (for

Bergson, stable form is a provisional agreement between matter andintellect). The second, obscure clarity, draws on the alterations ofthis mean form, referred to earlier as "ambiguity" but which cannow be more precisely approached as a formal clarity not availableto the intellect, the domain of form that escapes reason but allows itto function.41According toLefebvre's well-known analysis, space is a productof human activity. But it is also the setting where such activity takesplace: as with "form," it is polyvalent and available to both the mindand the senses.42Matta-Clark's inscription of disegno into the stuffof building plays on this polyvalence, and any subsequent reading ofthis "drawing"would similarly involve not only the intellect (and itsexclusive liaison with the sense of vision) but other bodily senses(including nonoptical aspects of vision) and a durational aspect.Matta-Clark acknowledged the roleplayed by polyvalence while distinguishing between two kinds of complexity available within thebuilding dissections:

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Obviously themere cutting through from one space toanotherproduces a certain complexity involving depth perception andviewpoint. Yet what interests me more than the unexpectedviews thatwere being generated by removals is the element ofstratification ... which reveals ... how a uniform surface getsestablished. All of this ispresent to sight.There is another complexity, covert and durational rather than overt and immediate,which comes in takingan otherwise completely normal, albeitanonymous situation and redefining it, retranslating it, intooverlapping multiple readings of situations past and present.43

This approach to the experience of space that is not just visual, thatinvolves different registers of complexity (echoing the two typesof clarity noted earlier)-and indeed the notion that it can exceedinvariable measure-takes issue with the purist demands of modernism, according towhich space was associated with legibility.Sustaining themythical innocence of architectural space,modernisminparticular allied itself to a conception that ignored the covert anddurational in favor of spatial purity and universality and that consequently enjoyed "the illusion of transparency [that]goes hand inhand

with a view of space as innocent, as free of traps or secret places."44Bergson suggests that the temptation to accept space as innocentand legible is deeply rooted in theKantian tradition and thoroughlyupheld by modernism, whereby "intelligence . . . is bathed in anatmosphere of spatiality."45Matta-Clark's dissections did not set outto overcome this legibility but rather to supplement its reductiveabstract spatialitywith other readings, and he pursued this interestin his attempts to record the experience of the dissections using avariety ofmedia.PhotomontagesMatta-Clark's attempts todevelop amethod of representing the spatial experience of thebuilding dissections follow theunderlying concerns that led him to reformulate the process of disegno. Hedescribed various stages of evolution that culminated in aparticularapproach tophoto-collage, moving from "snapshot documentationto a realpreoccupation with this sort of documentation/time evolution of the piece ... to a kind of time and movement that it takes toexperience thepiece, and thenbeyond that towhat happens topeoplein the piece."46He used this technique toproduce numerous collagesof the kind reproduced in the image of Splitting (1974).The results of these experiments in representation can not only bereadback over,and clarify, the kind of kinesthetic experience availablewithin the buildings; they can arguably extend and complicate it.BrianO'Doherty discusses this relationship between "performance"

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and representation in his well-known essays on theWhite Cube,where he observes that "avant-garde gestures have two audiences:one which was there and one-most of us-which wasn't."47He contests approaches that relegate any (photographic) image to being apale substitute for "reality," suggesting that the later, nonpresentaudience might actually be able to get more from re-presentations ofthe "original" artwork.Moreover, ifwe recall thatMatta-Clark sustained the process of drawing-or, more precisely, disegno-beyondits "proper" phase as animating principle of artistic production byinscribing directly within thematter of buildings, his photo-collagesevidence another aspect of the complex temporal relationshipbetween representation and experience which runs across much ofMatta-Clark's oeuvre, where it is no longer possible, or at least nolonger straightforward, to discuss projects in termsof before, during,and after, or conception, execution, and documentation.Despite O'Doherty's encouragement, Matta-Clark's attempt tocommunicate the time andmovement involved inexperiences of thedissections, and the consequent impact this had on visitors, clearlyraises questions. Is there any way inwhich his demand that "youhave towalk"48 to experience thebuilding dissections fully can bereconciled with aphoto-collaged representation? There are (at least)twopossible responses tomove thisbeyond paradox: the firstconcernsMatta-Clark's attempts to exceed the snapshot; the second involvesthe suggestion that the experience of the space itself already involvesrepresentational techniques akin to those of thephoto-collages.Matta-Clark clarified what he understood to be the differencesbetween photographic representation and experience when hediscussed how his photo-collages manipulated the relationshipsbetween them:

I started out with an attempt to use multiple images to try andcapture the "all-around" experience of the piece. It is anapproximation of this kind of ambulatory "getting-to-know"

Gordon Matta-Clark.Splitting, 1974. Black-and-whitephoto-collage.

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what the space is about. Basically it is away of passing throughthe space. One passes through in a number of ways; one canpass through by just moving your head; or [by] simple eyemovements which defy the camera. You know it'svery easy totrick a camera, tooutdo a camera.With the eye's peripheral fieldof vision, any slightmovement of the head would give us moreinformation than the camera ever had.49

Matta-Clark's interest in outdoing the camera was allied towaysof passing through space other thanby walking, such asmoving thehead or using peripheral vision. The photo-collages address theseothermodes of passage, frequently taking them as a compositionalprinciple: they operate by establishing a coherent motif (a recognizable perspectival or photographic space, a cut, a progression of cuts,and so on) according towhich the constituent photographs arearranged. The remaining content of these constituent photographsclearly contest the coherence of this central armature.Beyond providing a number of viewpoints simultaneously, the arrangement ofindividually recognizable constituents with reference to an equallyrecognizable armature actively prevents their simple combination orreconciliation into a final whole. They are polyvalent and pullagainst one another. The photo-collages clearly give the viewermoreinformation than a single photograph, but,more important, they givemore modes of visual experience, inscribing both the clear accountassociated however erroneously with the snapshot and the obfuscation of this clarity that stems from thevarious devices that "defy thecamera," those incorporated aspects of vision that defy the clarityexpected by themind's eye.The suggestion that the photo-collages offer a polyvalence ofvisual experiences, as well as opening onto the familiarity of everyday spaces, highlights a similarity between them and the operationof thebuilding dissections themselves. It also emphasizes theway inwhich the different modes of visual experience within the dissections operate tocomplement and contest the kinesthetic experienceof the spaces (you might have had towalk, but you also had to look).JonathanHill has argued the benefits of considering the experiencewithin buildings as amontage, where "the sense of somethingmissing ... ensure[s] that the viewer or occupant has a constructive rolein the formulation of awork.... A montage of gaps and absenceswould not be shocking and then acceptable, but remain unresolved,tobe continually re-made by each user."50The awkwardness involved in associating imageswith kinestheticexperience has been explored by Yve-Alain Bois in an article onRichard Serra's sculpture, where he argues thatwhether a view isstatic or peripatetic, theobserver instills movement out of a desire to

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complete the object viewed. However, Bois suggests that this desirewill always be frustrated, on his reading of Serra at least, because theexperience of amoving observer cannot be reconciled with any a priori logic underlying the arrangement of Serra's sculpture: one cannotpass (touse terms introduced earlier) from form-moment to staticform.51Bois's analysis accommodates this frustrated reconciliationby positing all of Serra's work as an art of montage. Clearly, MattaClark's work raises a number of similar concerns, but, significantly,theviews available in the building dissections frequentlywould havehad both whole and fragment available. The issues ofmontaging donot disappear as a result; indeed itmay still be tempting to describeMatta-Clark's work ingeneral as an artofmontage by following Bois.However, the presence of montage runs differently forMatta-Clark,and any such suggestion must acknowledge thathis is an art that ismindful of theworkings of "decoupage and montage" (Lefebvre)already at play in the architectural or real estate spaces he workedwith. It is around such an assertion that we can return to the broaddiscussion ofMatta-Clark's work on architectural drawing.Part III:The Beginning and the EndDecoupage andMontageIn spite of the similarities that have been noted between certainaspects of Lefebvre's andGordon Matta-Clark's points of view, significant disparities remain. The following quotation fromLefebvrerehearsesmany of his complaints regarding the complicity of imagesand architectural space; it ends with a concession that on occasionthis can be overcome. Paradoxically, asmuch asMatta-Clark mightbe a figure for one of these occasions, he achieves this status by doingalmost everything that Lefebvre warns against. How is this so?Wewill take these warnings in turn. First, Lefebvre at length:

The claim is that space can be shown by means of space itself.Such a procedure (also known as tautology) uses and abuses afamiliar technique that is indeed as easy to abuse as it is touse-namely, a shift from the part to the whole: metonymy.Take images, forexample: photographs, advertisements, films.Can images of this kind really be expected to expose errorsconcerning space?Hardly.Where there is error or illusion, theimage is more likely to secrete it and reinforce it than to revealit.No matter how "beautiful" theymay be, such images belongto an incriminated "medium." Where the error consists in a segmentation of space,moreover-and where the illusion consistsin the failure toperceive this dismemberment-there is simplyno possibility of any image rectifying the mistake. On the contrary, images fragment; they are themselves fragmentsof space.

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Cutting things up and rearranging them, decoupage andmontage-these are the alpha and omega of the art of imagemaking. As for error and illusion, they reside already in theartist's eye and gaze, in the photographer's lens, in the draftsman's pencil and on his blank sheet of paper. Error insinuatesitself into the very objects that the artist discerns, as into thesets of objects that he selects. Wherever there is illusion, theoptical and visual world plays an integraland integrative,activeand passive, part in it. It fetishizes abstraction and imposes itas the norm. It detaches the pure form from its impure content-from lived time, everyday time, and from bodies withtheir opacity and solidity, theirwarmth, their life and death.After its fashion, the image kills. In this it is like all signs.Occasionally, however, an artist's tenderness or cruelty transgresses the limits of the image. Something else altogether maythen emerge, a truth and a reality answering to criteria quitedifferent from those of exactitude, clarity, readability and plasticity. If this is true of images,moreover, itmust apply equallywell to sounds, towords, tobricks andmortar, and indeed tosigns in general.52

Matta-Clark's projects discussed above show space bymeans ofspace itself,whether this involves his poker-faced adoption of realestate protocol or the enthusiastic application of disegno. Moreprecisely, his projects show space by means of the incriminatedmetonymic techniques Lefebvre gestures toward. It ishelpful at thispoint to return toBataille, who despite an enduring interest in theheterogeneous was not in the business of denying the role of selfreferential discourses per se. His aimwas rather to expose them assecondary and to subordinate themwithin abroader context. He recognized the folly of ignoring the extent towhich technical or scientific methods had become a part of our lives, but in contrast toLefebvre he determined to use these very methods tohighlight theirdominance, arguing that "it is possible to use [science] to limit itsown movement and to situate beyond its own limits what it willnever attain" and advocating attempts to subjugate science "throughtheuse ofweapons borrowed from it."53In several essays Bataille exaggerated thequasi-scientific strategyof metonymy to his own use. By isolating parts of various bodies,both human and architectural, "Mouth," "Eye," "The Big Toe," and"FactoryChimney" operate by overdetermining the value of thepartin relation to its "proper" whole and thus force the part to take on ameaning beyond that of simply being a component within a definedsystem. Exceeding the possibilities permitted by their respective

wholes, they lie beyond any explanation that can be offered by

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the anatomies or "definitive" discourses that they belong to yet setout to contest. Matta-Clark's building dissections and the (re)presentations of Reality Properties: Fake Estates operate and produceresults similarly.Bataille's essay "TheBig Toe," for example, illustrates how the isolated part is involved in a variety of economies simultaneously,regardless of its apparent claim to the grandeur of rational humanity. These other economies, or the "general economy" towhich thetoemight belong, are brought into stark relief by the stabbing painthey can provide, apain that can interrupt any attempt atwholenessmade by the "definitive" anatomy involved. The general economy isthe thorn in the side of-or, in this case, the corn on the toe of-the'restricted economy" of human nobility.

Blind, but tranquil and strangely despising his obscure baseness,a given person, ready to call to mind the grandeurs of humanhistory, as when his glance ascends amonument testifying tothe grandeur of his nation, is stopped inmid-flight by an atrocious pain in his big toe because, though the most noble of animals, he nevertheless has corns on his feet; in otherwords, hehas feet, and these feet independently lead an ignoble life.54Such forced awareness of simultaneous involvement in differenteconomies also occurs inMatta-Clark's building dissections, resulting both from the initial cutting and from subsequent photo-collagedre-presentationsof theseworks. Like "TheBig Toe," the cut of Splittingoverturns the usual importance of thearchitectural "whole" by revealing that the parts thatmake itup belong to other economies besides

that of architecture. The framework of architectural rules that theeconomy of thewhole-object usually hides away was presented tothe few who visited the piece in the short time that it existed andto the viewer of the photo-collages made from the object. Similarly,in the (re)presentations ofReality Properties: Fake Estates momentsusually held apart are revealed together.Unlike other "fragmentary" images, such as the paintings ofanalytic Cubism, the apparent contradictions opened up byMattaClark's technique cannot easily be overcome by a synthesizing returnto "normal"experience: it is difficult toestablish a clear-cut distinction between experience and representation. Although Lefebvreargues that any such synthesis would "betray [the] truly dual nature[of space]," his attempt to avoid this betrayal in his own integratedsystem ("unity theory") returns too frequently to adialectical subli

mation; the dualism he aims at finds a better model in Bataille's economics than in his own.56 Unlike Cubism, which gives up its partialviews to the ultimate logicof coherence,Matta-Clark'sprojects demonstrate that the object need not necessarily be considered "whole" to

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begin with and that the possibility of a synthesized experience thatreturns to a "whole" isproblematic.In contrast to the ease with which Lefebvre, and indeed Vasari,determine the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end of imagemaking or disegno, Matta-Clark carries on regardless, and the production of space is returned as apossible social oeuvre. Architecturehere is radically incomplete, and the "drawing" of architecture(disegno) continues over and over, spilling not just onto thework ofcarvers and masons but also inviting the involvement of those whouse or enjoy the building.57 The experience inside one of MattaClark's building dissections and an account of his more successfulphoto-collages can be discussed in strikingly similar terms,with anormal spatial situation being interrupted by other views or imagesthatclearly contest theexpectations of "normality."The consequenceis that viewers can no longer easily assume a single viewing positionand remain "outside the frame,"as theymight with traditionalpainting, or "within the building," as theymight with architecture. Instead,thepassivity of traditionalviewers, sustained and policed by the system of abstract spatiality, is unsettled; they are put not inmore thanone viewing position (Cubism)but rather are offeredmore than onemode of reception, a situation thatappeals both to their reflective faculty (partial views to be synthesized) and to their body's scale andhabit (Big Toe, etc.). The projectedwhole reconstituted by the intellect runs alongside thehabitual spaces inhabited, drawn, and redrawnby thebody.ForLefebvre as forMatta-Clark, to acknowledge this relationshipbetween human activity and the production of space was not only toacknowledge the general contingency of space in contrast tomodernism's idealist version but also toaddress its inherently social andpolitical dimensions. Within the spatial complexity that is realestate, recognition that the authority of the system is self-imposedand self-installed would reveal its claims of total revelation to be illusory. Although real estate is partially reliant on the space of the architectural drawing, Reality Properties: Fake Estates demonstrates thatother systems can also lay claim to these locations, changing theproperties of these properties in the process. The building dissectionsmore actively applied architectural drawing techniques beyondtheirproper address,with similar results. Importantly,Matta-Clark'sprojects were not about collapse. His approaches did not deny theparticular usefulness of restricted economies such as architecturalrepresentation per se.By drawing attention to attempts at total revelation, they revealed the existence of various contingent (spatial)readings, thus allowing for an experience neither foreclosed by onepreestablished definition of space nor self-defeating in itscomplexity.

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NotesAcknowledgments are due to the British Academy for their financial assistance,which has supported my archival research into the work of Gordon Matta-Clark;to my colleague Peter Blundell Jones for his many helpful comments during thepreparation of this text; to the staff of the Arkiv/Studienraum at the EA GeneraliFoundation in Vienna; and in particular to Jane Crawford, Matta-Clark's widow, forher limitless advice, help, and hospitality.

1. Gordon Matta-Clark, Moaauromont and the Plan (c. 1972), in Estate of GordonMatta-Clark, Weston, CT, Articles and Documents 1942-76.

2. Gordon Matta-Clark, interview by Judith Russi Kirshner, 13 February 1978,Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; cited by Kirshner in Judith Russi Kirshner,

"Interview with Gordon Matta-Clark," in Gordon Matta-Clark, ed. M. Casanova(Valencia: IVAM Centro Julio Gonzalez, 1993), 394.

3. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (1974), trans. Donald NicholsonSmith (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1991), 318. The three formants are introduced and discussed on 285ff.

4. Lefebvre, 285.5. However, writings on architectural representation are as old as the discipline

itself, and the topic continues to attract attention. Recent work in this area?suchas the major contributions of Robin Evans, The Projective Cast: Architecture and ItsThree Geometries (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995); or Alberto P?rez-G?mez and LouisePelletier, Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge (Cambridge: MITPress, 1997)?expresses a discomfort with any claims to neutrality made by or forarchitectural representation. Of these two, The Projective Cast explores a far moreambiguous relationship between representation and meaning; what Robin Evansintroduces as equivocation is instructive in thinking through this ambiguity, not

because he denies architectural representations or architectural objects any meaning, but because he suggests that there might be more than one meaning, that these

meanings might conflict, and that the production of such meanings might not lieonly with the architect and within architecture, but that they might come frombeyond their range.

6. Although the original publication of Lefebvre's The Production of Spacealmost exactly coincided with Matta-Clark's Reality Properties: Fake Estates, thisshould not be taken to suggest that there was any particular link between them orthat Matta-Clark was influenced by, or even aware of, Lefebvre's work.

7. Denis Hollier Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille (1974),trans. Betsy Wing (Cambridge: MIT Press), 86.

8. For an analysis of Lefebvre's discussion of the "lot," see Rob Shields, Lefebvre,Love and Struggle: Spatial Dialectics (London: Routledge, 1999), 177-78.

9. Gordon Matta-Clark, interview by Liza Bear, in Liza Bear, "Gordon MattaClark: Splitting (The Humphrey Street Building)," in Avalanche (December 1974):35; repr. in Gordon Matta-Clark, ed. Casanova, 375.10. Interview between Wall and Matta-Clark: Rough Draft (c. late 1975-early1976), in Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark, Articles and Documents 1942-76, 8. Selectionsfrom this interview, which were subsequently heavily edited by Matta-Clark, formthe basis for an article that first appeared as Donald Wall, "Gordon Matta-Clark'sBuilding Dissections," Arts Magazine 50, no. 9 (May 1976): 74-79.

11. Georges Bataille, "On the Notion of Expenditure" (1933), in Visions of Excess:Selected Writings, 1927-1939, trans. Allan Stoekl, Carl R. Lovitt, and Donald M.Leslie Jr., ed. with an introduction by Alan Stoekl (Minneapolis: University of

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Minnesota Press, 1980), 116.12. Bataille didn't contest the importance of production or conservation per se

but attempted to "assign a relative value to utility." Bataille, "On the Notionof Expenditure," 129; emphasis in original. For a clear exposition of Bataille'seconomics, see Paul Hegarty, Georges Bataille (London: Sage Publications, 2000),esp. ch. 2.

13. Bataille, "The Psychological Structure of Fascism" (1933), in Visions of Excess,ed. Stoekl, 142; emphasis in original.14. Georges Bataille, "The Deviations of Nature" (1930), in Visions of Excess, ed.

Stoekl, 55.15. Yve-Alain Bois, "Zone," in Yve-Alain Bois & Rosalind Krauss, Formless:

A User's Guide (New York Zone Books, 1997), 228. Bois's analysis in this section isframed within an entropie economy, which operates most successfully at largescales but makes no adjustment for the jump in scale between Matta-Clark's tinyplots and the parking lots photographed by Edward Rusha.

16. Lefebvre, 287; emphasis in original.17. Dan Carlinsky, "'Sliver' Buyers Have a Field Day at City Sales," New York

Times, 14 October 1973, Real Estate sec, 1,12. Jane Crawford, Matta-Clark's widow,suggested Matta-Clark may have intended to add site tours or amap of directions tothe final exhibition (which never took place), similar to Smithson's "The Monumentsof Passaic," in Artforum 7, no. 4 (December 1967): 48-51. Crawford's correspondence with me, June 19, 2002.

18. Carol Goodden has confirmed that Matta-Clark exhibited an early version ofthe project, comprising the first batch of the properties he had documented, at 112

Greene Street, New York, though there is no record of how this documentation wasarranged. Jane Crawford, interview by author, 7 January 2002.

19. Jane Crawford, letter to author, 19 June 2002.20. Matta-Clark, in Bear, 35; repr. in Gordon Matta-Clark, ed. Casanova, 375-376.21. Shields, 142.22. Lefebvre, 334.23. Crawford, interview.24. Gordon Matta-Clark, Note card no. 1218, in Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark,

Anarchitecture Period c. 1973.25. Lefebvre, 96.26. Lefebvre, 104.27. See Adrian Forty, Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary ofModern Architecture

(London: Thames and Hudson, 2000), 256.28. Gordon Matta-Clark, untitled, two sheets of detail paper from Anarchitecture

Period, c. 1972, in Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark, cat. no. 502.29. See R. Hackforth's commentary to Plato, Phaedrus, XXI, in his translation of

the same (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952).30. See, for example, Plato, Timaeus, 28, sec. 3 (Prelude) Timaeus, and Critias,

trans. Desmond Lee (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971) or Plato, Phaedrus, 277 B.c.31. Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell (London: Macmillanand Co., 1911), 332.

32. Giorgio Vasari, On Technique: Being the Introduction to the Three Arts ofDesign, Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, Prefixed to the Lives of the MostExcellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1550; 2nd ed. 1568), trans. Louisa S.Maclehose (1907; New York: Dover Publications, 1960), sec. 74 ("The Nature andMaterials of Design or Drawing"). Sees. 74-75 were added with the second edition.

33. See Vasari, sec. 74.

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34. Vasari, sec. 75, "Use of Design (or Drawing [disegno]) in the Various Arts";emphasis added.

35. Gordon Matta-Clark, interview (unknown interviewer), inMatta-Clark, exh.cat. (Antwerp: Internationaal Cultureel Centrum, 1977), 8ff.

36. Matta-Clark, in Bear, 35; repr. in Gordon Matta-Clark, ed. Casanova, 375.37. Pamela M. Lee, "Drawing in Between," in Reorganizing Structure by Drawing

Through It, exh. cat., ed. Sabine Breitwieser (Vienna: Generali Foundation, 1997),28-29.38. Although these building dissections can be grouped together because of their

similarity in approach (borrowing from orthographic drawing to generate the cut)this should not be taken to distinguish them from Matta-Clark's broader explorations of cutting. Other dissections were generated with Platonic forms (Cones,Conical Intersect [1975]; Spheres, Circus: Caribbean Orange [1978]) as well as morecontextual or celestial generators (sun path for Day's End [1975], mug stains forOffice Baroque [1977]).

39. Matta-Clark, in Bear, 3; repr. in Gordon Matta-Clark, ed. Casanova, 375.40. Bergson, 332; emphases in original.41. This domain of form would approach Bataille 'snotion o? Informe or Formless,

an active principle that operates to prevent the domination of scientific or "mathematical" systems of form. In Formless Bois and Krauss bring Bataille 's Informe tobear directly on Matta-Clark's work. In particular, see 180-191 and 224-231. Fora fuller discussion of Bataille 's Informe in the context of architectural production,see my "Animate Form: Architecture's Troublesome Claims to Formlessness," in

Formless: Ways In and Out of Form, ed. Pat Cowley and Paul Hegarty (Oxford: PeterLang, 2004).

42. Lefebvre, 85.43. Interview between Wall and Matta-Clark, 6.44. Lefebvre, 28.45. Bergson, 215.46. Matta-Clark, in Kirshner, 393.47. Brian O'Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space,

expanded ed. (California: University of California Press, 1999), 88.48. Matta-Clark, in Kirshner, 390.49. Matta-Clark, in Kirshner, 393; emphasis added.50. Jonathan Hill, The Illegal Architect (London: Black Dog Publishing, Ltd.

1998), 46.51. Yve-Alain Bois, "A Picturesque Stroll around Clara-Clara," trans. John Shepley,

October 29 (Summer 1984): 34.52. Lefebvre, 96-97.53. Georges Bataille, "The Pineal Eye" (c. 1929), in Visions of Excess, ed. Stoekl, 80-81.54. Georges Bataille, "The Big Toe" (1929), in Visions of Excess, ed. Stoekl, 22.55. Lefebvre, 355.56. On this aspect of Lefebvre's project, see Shields, 172: "Although he is a greatnarrator, much of the 485 pages of The Production of Space is thus a failure in

Lefebvre's own terms."57. The clause is from Principle One of the Royal Institute of British Architects

Code of Professional Conduct (1997), and refers to those it assumes come along afterthe architectural process has finished: "A member shall faithfully carry out hisduties applying his knowledge and experience with efficiency and loyalty towardshis client or employer, and being mindful of the interests of those who may beexpected to use or enjoy the product of his work."

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Gordon Matta-Clark Drawing on Architecture

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