Rules are Made to be Broken
May 27, 2021
Rules are made to be broken when it comes to hanging art. Now I’m not denying most of the time the rules work: hang around 60” from the ground to align with the average eye level; put small intimate pieces on small walls and so on…
However…..some of the most impactful installations of art break the rules. Of course you can’t just break them for the sake of breaking them….that would be shallow and anarchic. This is where creativity and the art of hanging comes in….if you break the rules with intention, like an oversized piece on a smaller wall….you can create an entirely new dimension in the room. Sol LeWitt was the master of this manipulation of space through line and color, and artists such as Katharina Gross and Yayoi Kusama have also created entirely new ways of experiencing space through the breaking of so-called rules.
