In Steinburg’s text he first says that Art is constrained by the perspective of the vertical alignment of the human frame and that this is true even through cubism and abstract expressionism. The notion of the ‘flatbed picture frame’ has been coined by the author to describe an innovation that was introduced from the 1950s by artists such as Rauschenberg. This is illustrated by his piece of ‘square patch of growing grass held down with chicken wire’ displayed in ‘nature in art exhibition’. The horizontally flat grass patch was rotated ninety degrees into traditional vertical plane for viewing art. We still hang these pieces vertically just as we do ‘maps’. However, there is no longer equivalence with the human visual frame but instead with ‘operational processes’.

Rauschenberg ‘proposed the flatbed or work-surface picture plane as the foundation of an artistic language that would deal with a different order of experience’. He explored different processes such as: ‘turning his back on the model’; ‘objects placed on blueprint paper and exposed to sunlight’; ‘used newsprint to his prime canvases’; ‘included intrusive non-art attachments’; ‘photographic transfers’; ‘collage elements’. According to Steinburg, ‘perhaps Rauschenberg’s profoundest symbolic gesture came in 1955 when he seized his own bed, smeared paint on its pillow and quilt coverlet, and uprighted it against the wall’.

Richard Sierra built site-specific works in steel. He had supported his education working in steel mills. He brought consideration of manufacturing processes to sculpture, seeking to become ‘active producer within a given technology’. Site specific work reorganises the concept and perception of the site. He never sought to ‘decorate, illustrate or depict’ a site. The work is constrained in concept and perception by the specifics of the site and its social and political characteristics. One should be watchful of ‘governmental, corporate, educational and religious’ parties who seek to corrupt for their own purposes.

Considering similarities between Art based on the flat bed picture plane and site specific sculpture, there is some conceptual equivalence between the picture plane and the site. Both provide the context for the work. There is also a focus on the producing process.