This thesis provides an account of the events of the first ten years of Printed Matter, Inc., a distribution center for artists’ books established in New York City in 1976. Included are descriptions of the individuals who formed Printed Matter’s first board, their objectives, books published by Printed Matter, and the windows installation program. This thesis also describes challenges the board members faced, including lack of organization, difficulty cultivating a broad public audience, and inadequate income. In addition, it recounts the gradual streamlining of business practices, and the realignment of goals and expectations for the genre as board members accepted the fact of a limited audience for artists’ books. The conclusion offers a brief summary and a look at Printed Matter, Inc.’s current operations.

This study constitutes the first critical history of dematerialization. Coined by critics Lucy Lippard and John Chandler in their 1968 essay, “The Dematerialization of Art,” this term was initially used to describe an emergent “ultra-conceptual” art that would render art objects obsolete by emphasizing the thinking process over material form. Lippard and Chandler believed dematerialization would thwart the commodification of art. Despite Lippard admitting in 1973 that art had not dematerialized into unmediated information or experience, the term has since entered art historians’ lexicons as a standard means to characterize Conceptual Art. While art historians have debated the implications of dematerialization and its actuality, they have yet to examine closely Lippard and Chandler’s foundational essay, which has been anthologized in truncated form. If dematerialization was not intrinsic to Conceptual Art, what was it? By closely analyzing “The Dematerialization of Art” and Lippard and Chandler’s other overlooked collaborative essays, this dissertation will shed light on the genealogy of dematerialization by contending they were not describing a trend limited to what is now considered Conceptual Art. By investigating the socio-historical connections of dematerialization, this dissertation will advance a more far-reaching view of the ideology of dematerialization, a cultural misrecognition that the world should be propelled toward immateriality that is located at the intersection of particle physics, environmental sustainability, science-fiction, neoliberal politics, and other discourses. This analysis then focuses on three case studies that examine singular works of art over a twenty-year period: Eva Hesse’s Laocoön (1966), James Turrell’s Skyspace I (1974), and Anish Kapoor’s 1000 Names (1979-85). In doing so, this dissertation will accomplish two objectives. First, it looks at how these works materially respond to the ideology of dematerialization and provide a means for charting how this cultural desire unfolds across space and time. Second, this dissertation contends that contrary to Lippard and Chandler’s prognostication, dematerialization—and immateriality—does not correlate to emancipation from capitalization. Rather, it will be shown that dematerialization, its rhetoric, and its strategies can actually be enlisted into the service of the commoditizing forces Lippard and Chandler hoped it would escape.

The research done for this investigation deals with both the motivation of the artist, the personal history and the individual's artistic process. This process is examined through two bodies of art work dealing with the home as a metaphor. The shared themes of belonging, loss and longing are further reinforced by "visual cues" represented in the photographic works. For the Home Divided series, I approached the style of the photographs and the subject matter through indexical photographs of multi-unit homes and the visual representation of a distinct and bilateral division of the structure. The imagery presented in this series deals directly with the historical use of landscape in photography and the house or home as the subject. This series is motivated by my personal experience with a fractured family unit and experience with the fractured notion of the home. The second part of this study examines and records the artist's exploration of space and surroundings in the series, Chez Moi. The images document occupied structures at night with a visual focus being on a light source within the structure. There are shared elements that exist between both bodies of work that elicit feelings of searching and belonging. The separation from the viewer and the subject is further reinforced by the layer created that separates the photographer from the subject through the lens of the camera. The concept of the flâneur, introduced by Charles Baudelaire is an integral part of the artist's process, finding a sense of place and belonging in a foreign environment. The written portion of this investigation gathers materials and information that deals with the conception of the family unit and the house that is literally, and metaphorically, utilized in the notion of home. This focus on the structure as a metaphor for home has further reaching v implications than the structure itself. Findings show that a Western view of community and belonging is rooted in a place of stability in one's community. The basis for personal growth within that community has a direct impact on an individual's development in it. (Goldburgh, 67) The fractured nature of my experience and emotions tied with the notions of home, are expressed through both A Home Divided and the Chez Moi series photographic series. Within this investigation there are references to the artist's memories and experiences that are in contrast and discord with the traditional concept of acceptance and belonging.