How can we think about the space of an artwork? How do artworks create their own environments and how are they co-constituted by the spaces environing them? This talk explores how at the beginning of the twentieth century the environment of an artwork was conceptualized as a "material articulation of space," specifically, as air and atmosphere. I will trace the transfer of knowledge between notions of “environment” in biology and physics and the literature of art history in the period.

**This presentation is full**