Cutting Buildings

This chapter presents a detailed description of Gordon Matta-Clark’s 1975 art work Conical Intersect, its interpretation in art history, and the position that it occupies in Matta-Clark’s oeuvre and in late twentieth-century Paris (esp. the destruction of Les Halles and the building of the Centre Pompidou). Discussion examines Matta-Clark’s architectural cutting art in terms of action and performance, and the spectation of the cut. The chapter concludes with an extended discussion of the relevance that Conical Intersect has for the reader’s understanding of the pit-houses at Măgura and other sites like it in terms of cutting as destroying, as participation, as knowing (and opening), as part of the visual field, and as an object within a political context.