Theory of Incompleteness, from Abstraction to Fragmentation, The Correlation between Mary Miss' Art and Deconstructivism

Abstract

This dissertation delves into an overarching interrelation between the philosophical, historical, aesthetical, and architectural perspectives surrounding the term Incompleteness. In philosophy, Incompleteness is traced back to the time of the ancient Greek Presocratics, at the period when the concepts of abstraction and polarity were commonly used in the methodical process of early Greek truth-claims. In history, Incompleteness was bounded within the concept of fragment during the time when the Roman ruins were studied, recaptured, and restored―ever since the modernity of late Italian Renaissance up to the transition between the architecture of polarized tendencies of Neoclassicism versus Eclecticism in France. In art, Incompleteness is perceptually scoped within the vast spectrum of movements in modern art between the dualistic tendencies either toward restorative but inorganic abstraction or toward degenerative but organic fragmentation. Until the late 1960s when the cultural reform propelled art toward experimentations and concepts beyond conventionalized aesthetics or institutionalized establishment of art form, the demise of late Abstract Expressionism infused the advent of Minimalism and Conceptualism. Ultimately, Land Art exemplified by the work of Mary Miss extends Modern art and eventually developed into a type of anti-aesthetics in spatial experience, within which lies the theoretical fabric of Incompleteness―identified in six operative terms; three of which catalyze the stabilized tendencies, while the other three catalyze the opposites. In Architecture, due to the shared grassroot fundaments of regenerative partiality and degenerative fragmentation, the theory of Incompleteness is comparatively analyzed in correlation to the architecture of Deconstructivism. While the Theory of Incompleteness identifies the stabilized tendencies upon the work of Mary Miss; this theory highlights the destabilized traits or disjunctive blueprints behind the constructs of Deconstructivism. In the contemporary world, the architecture of Incompleteness is reestablished among the group of so-called Japanese Constellation Architects who are currently redefining the scope of their stabilized design through the renewed realization of abstraction, through the reformulated concept of Japan-ness, and through the decisive synthesis of control upon the altogether excess of open-endedness, indeterminacy, and destabilization.

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