DiscoverLYGIA CLARK RETROSPEKTIVE5 Clark’s concept of the "organic line" a destabilizing force within the canon
5 Clark’s concept of the "organic line" a destabilizing force within the canon

5 Clark’s concept of the "organic line" a destabilizing force within the canon

Update: 2025-11-10
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Art history professors Elize Mazadiego (Universität Bern) and Irene V. Small (Princeton) in conversation

A fundamentally new and important concept coined by Lygia Clark is the "organic line" that is discussed in this episode by the scholars Elize Mazadiego and Irene V. Small. Clark deployed this line to break the frame and is a line or several lines of space that lie in between. From a conceptual point of view, Small argues, these lines could be considered as important as the void in Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square or John Cage’s 4’33’’ but never got this attention due to the dominant mechanisms of canonization. Elize Mazadiego and Irene V. Small belong to the youngest generation of academic scholars that shed light on aspects of art history theorization and writing neglected so far. "As an interval between entities, the organic line can be harnessed toward the recursion or dissolution of its bounding systems and even come to act as an autopoietic entity in and of itself" explains Irene Small. This concept has, due to its seminal importance, influence on art production up now and most likely also in the future.


www.ikg.unibe.ch/ueberuns/personendaten/profdrmazadiegoelize / https://irenevsmall.princeton.edu / [www.zonebooks.org/books/159-the-organic-line-toward-a-topology-of-modernism / www.kunsthaus.ch ](http://www.zonebooks.org/books/159-the-organic-line-toward-a-topology-of-modernism /)

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5 Clark’s concept of the "organic line" a destabilizing force within the canon

5 Clark’s concept of the "organic line" a destabilizing force within the canon

Elize Mazadiego, Irene V. Small