Materiality

Materiality is the perceptible qualities and physical presence of the materials that make up an artwork or object. It includes how a material looks, feels, behaves, and bears traces of its making or use.

Material: A substance or matter used to make or form something. Materiality concerns the qualities of the substances from which an artwork or object is made.
Mixed media: Art made by combining different materials or artistic media in one work. Juxtaposed materials make contrasts in texture, weight, and behavior part of the work.
Marcel Duchamp's Fountain: A 1917 work by Marcel Duchamp that presented a commercially made urinal as art. Its industrial porcelain and manufactured form challenge assumptions about artistic making.
Representation: The depiction or substitution of something through signs, images, or other forms. Materiality concerns the artwork's actual substance, not only what its images depict.
Texture: The surface character of something, perceived through sight or touch. Surface texture makes material differences perceptible at close range.
Assemblage: A work of art made by joining disparate objects or materials into a composition. Assemblage foregrounds the physical identity and prior uses of its components.
Joseph Beuys's Fat Chair: A 1964 sculpture by Joseph Beuys combining a wooden chair with fat. Its unstable organic material makes physical change central to the sculpture.
Form: The perceptible arrangement or structure of an object or artwork. Form describes organization, while materiality attends to the substance that takes that form.
Tactility: The quality of being perceptible through touch or evoking a sense of touch. Tactility describes how an object's material presence invites or suggests bodily contact.
Found object: An ordinary object presented or incorporated as a work of art. A found object's existing material history remains present within its artistic use.

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