Space plays an important role for artwork. In order to fully grasp a sense of space around a thing, we must see the thing as a place and that is does not belong to a place. In the short essay by Martin Heidegger titled Art and Space, he attempts to define what a space is in regard to things. Both art and work uses space in diverse ways. Heidegger mentions that he doesn’t directly ask what space should be but rather determines the manner of space. Whether a being contributes to a space may be left undecided. A space has two functions that Heidegger points out: a space has the ability to create a special character and that special character creates a “clearing-away.”
Heidegger quotes, “… how can we find the special character of a space?” (Heidegger 5). In order to find the special character in a space, there has to be an action of “clearing-away” or Räumen. Essentially, this term means to clear out, to free from wilderness. Räumen brings forth the free, it allows openness for a persons’ settling and dwelling. It brings a sense of locality for the dwelling and creates a secular space, a privation of often sacred spaces. Räumen, or clearing-away, is a release of places; a place where gods have disappeared. Clearing-away is a happening, it speaks and conceals itself at once. A space is very difficult to determine and is often overlooked.
So how does clearing-away happen? A place opens a region that allows a gathering of things and their belonging together. But an arrangement of things or simply making-room (Einräumen) for the things is not a clearing-away. Making-room suggests something, it creates guidelines that grants the appearance of a thing and sees human dwelling as a consigned spot. There must be a liberating shelter of things in their region. The term region is translated as a free expanse, allowing openness to emerge from the thing and allowing it to rest in itself. A place isn’t a pre-given space.
In order to understand the interplay between art and space, we must understand an experience outside the place and region. Art should be seen as sculpture, not occupying space. Heidegger quotes, “Sculpture would not deal with space” (Heidegger 7). Sculpture is the embodiment of places, they preserve and open a region. Sculpture embodies a bringing-into-the-work of places, regions of possibility lingers with the things surrounding the human. Sculpture is the embodiment of truth, an unconcealment of being. Heidegger quotes, “Even a cautious insight into the special character of this art causes one to suspect that truth, as unconcealment of being, is not necessarily dependent on the embodiment” (Heidegger 6).
Heidegger, M. (1973). Man and World. The Hague, NL: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers