A collective right to the city A collective right to the city was seminally articulated by the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre, a right understood not simply as individual access to the goods, services, and spaces of the city but as the right to change the city in accordance with our deepest desires, to steer the very process of urbanization and the way in which the city nurtures the kinds of people we wish to become. Michael Sorkin, 20 Minutes in Manhattan The Help-Yourself City rights
The Finish Fetish Artists An Essay www.getty.edu For others, perhaps especially those artists who worked with light and transparency and were involved in the birth of the Light and Space Movement, an immaculate surface is a prerequisite. Helen Pashgian explained this very clearly: “On any of these works, if there is a scratch... that’s all you see. The point of it is not the finish at all – the point is being able to interact with the piece, whether it is inside or outside, to see into it, to see through it, to relate to it in those ways. But that’s why we need to deal with the finish, so we can deal with the piece on a much deeper level”. The importance of a pristine surface calls for a very low tolerance to damage by the artists. The feeling is shared by Larry Bell: “I don’t want you to see stains on the glass. I don’t want you to see fingerprints on the glass... I don’t want you to see anything except the light that’s reflected, absorbed, or transmitted” Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One SeesThe light that hits the glassPhenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface lightartinterfacesmaterial