Warped Space ─ Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture

Beginning with agoraphobia and claustrophobia in the late nineteenth century,followed by shell shock and panic fear after World War I, phobias and anxiety came to be seen as themental condition of modern life. They became incorporated into the media and arts, in particular thespatial arts of architecture, urbanism, and film. This "spatial warping" is now being reshaped bydigitalization and virtual reality.Anthony Vidler is concerned with two forms of warped space. Thefirst, a psychological space, is the repository of neuroses and phobias. This space is not empty butfull of disturbing forms, including those of architecture and the city. The second kind of warpingis produced when artists break the boundaries of genre to depict space in new ways. Vidler tracesthe emergence of a psychological idea of space from Pascal and Freud to the identification ofagoraphobia and claustrophobia in the nineteenth century to twentieth-century theories of spatialalienation and estrangement in the writings of Georg Simmel, Siegfried Kracauer, and WalterBenjamin. Focusing on current conditions of displacement and placelessness, he examines ways inwhich contemporary artists and architects have produced new forms of spatial warping. The discussionranges from theorists such as Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze to artists such as Vito Acconci, MikeKelley, Martha Rosler, and Rachel Whiteread. Finally, Vidler looks at the architectural experimentsof Frank Gehry, Coop Himmelblau, Daniel Libeskind, Greg Lynn, Morphosis, and Eric Owen Moss in thelight of new digital techniques that, while relying on traditional perspective, have radicallytransformed the composition, production, and experience--perhaps even the subject itself--ofarchitecture.

Chrissie Iles is the Anne and Joel Ehrankranz Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.