The Game-as-Art Form: Historic Roots and Recent Trends

Among the many new art forms realized in the 1970s, one largely unacknowledged form is the game as art. Reviewing art since World War I, the author finds not only important works proliferating in this form recently but also a definite history to be traced. The form first appears in the work of Marcel Duchamp, who was the first major artist to place the game of chess in an artistic context. Öyvind Fahlström made moveable paintings and some of the first original game-as-art works. Later, a large number of artists from diverse artistic backgrounds explored the game-as-art form. Some of these artists made innovations in traditional games, others used the form for a specific impact and still others created works to encourage social interaction. What is lacking is a set of criteria for judging the aesthetic qualities of a game-as-art work. The game-as-art form holds an aesthetic challenge to today’s artists and promises to be an important art form of the future.