James Nesbit: Visiting Art History Scholar

Immersive Waters, or Notes Towards a Genealogy of Water Art James Nisbet, University of California, Irvine As a long-standing and vital element in the production of visual art, water had been employed variously—as subject, liquid base for pigments, and fundamental to the cleaning and maintenance of tools—from time immemorial through the mid twentieth century. Today, the use of water as an artistic material in the production of different forms of sculpture, performance, and installation art is so common that it would be all but impossible to systemically track its use. In the interim—that is, during the latter half of the twentieth century, coincident with dramatic ecological changes at a planetary level—the element of water began to be employed in the work of the postwar neo-avant-garde, and, increasingly, throughout subsequent experimental movements of the twentieth century. Taking select contemporary practices as a point of departure, this paper will consider the range and genealogy...