What can One do with a Paving Stone?
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- What can One do with a Paving Stone?
- Mit lehet egy utcakővel csinálni?
- 1971/2012
- 15 b&w photographs mounted on cardboard
- 70 x 80 cm
The artistic approaches of minimalism, conceptualism, and land art appeared in the work of Dóra Maurer at the end of the sixties. At this time, she carried out particular actions, which were documented through photographs and camera work. She discovered the cobblestone as an artistic medium together with her husband Tibor Gáyor in 1971 and both of them used it in a separate action. The specificity of this medium derives from the fact that it simultaneously has artistic and political allusions. On the one hand, its form evokes the basic element of minimal art, the cube, while it also refers to the everyday material aesthetic of Fluxus. On the other hand, the cobblestone is strongly connecting to the semiotics of uprising and resistance, especially to the Revolution of 1956, which was a taboo subject at that time. In regard to these meanings, Maurer treated the cobblestone in a totally ordinary manner: threw it, hid it, tied it, wrapped it, and even caressed it so her actions alluded not only to conceptualism, but also to identity politics, including feminist criticism. S.H.