Leo Steinberg , in his essay The Flatbed Picture Plane,1972, describes that certain artists, such as Robert Rauschenberg, Dubuffet and Duchamp started working on pieces that ‘tilt the pictorial plane’. Steinberg claims that the ‘tilt in the picture plane from vertical to horizontal’ is ‘the most radical shift in the subject matter of art’. Steinberg explains that before the 1950s we were used to seeing pictures as if we were looking through a window; ‘the picture as representing the world’. He compares a new way of making pictures to the ‘flat bed printing press’ as a metaphor to represent the two dimensional aspect of this new picture plane. Richard Serra, in his essay The Yale Lecture, 1990, explores ideas about site specific work and its fundamental relationship to its immediate environment, in contrast to modernist sculpture which ‘function critically only in relation to the language of their own medium’. He goes on to discuss how art can be used by organisations to counter ‘cynicism of commercial and political manipulation’, and argues that it is the artists responsibility to speak out against this use of art for unethical corporate gain.

Both authors say that there was a shift in their respective areas of focus during the period around the 1950s.

En.wikipedia.org. (2017). History of printing. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_printing#Flat-bed_printing_press [Accessed 7 Dec. 2017].

Theoria.art-zoo.com. (2017). The Yale Lecture – Richard Serra | ART THEORY. [online] Available at: http://theoria.art-zoo.com/the-yale-lecture-richard-serra/ [Accessed 7 Dec. 2017].

Web.mit.edu. (2017). The Flatbed Picture Plane. [online] Available at: http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/othercriteria.pdf [Accessed 7 Dec. 2017].