Major and minor architectural issues in the work of Gordon Matta-Clark

This thesis explores a range of architectural issues that are raised by the oeuvre of the artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978). In particular, it examines the ways in which his oeuvre might expand our understanding of the central tenets of architectural modernism, and valorise some issues that modernism downplays or denies. The thesis developed as a response to an awkwardness observed around the reception by both architects and the art world of Matta-Clark's work. It proposes that recent changes in this reception have involved the erasure rather than the acknowledgement of the causes of such awkwardness. In contrast to this general tendency, the thesis suggests that these causes are significant, and that for architecture in particular they provide a resource that can raise a number of important questions for the contemporary situation.