Frank Stella once complained about what he saw as a kind of timidity in Italian painting before Leonardo, something 'in the acceptance of commissioned configurations, in the attitude towards covering a given surface that held painting back ... Artists before Leonardo accepted the given surface and made the best of it.' Today, it seems to me, artists who make installations find themselves in a comparable position: confronting spaces of a certain size or shape which they have to fill. The task doesn't square easily with what we imagine of the artist's need for autonomy: his urge to realise the imaginative space that he has in mind rather than decorate the actual space with which he is presented.

LRB 11 February 2010 | PDF Download