Gordon Matta-Clark (born Gordon Roberto Matta-Echaurren; June 22, 1943 – August 27, 1978) was an American artist best known for site-specific artworks he made in the 1970s. He was also a pioneer in the field of socially engaged food art.
Life and work

Matta-Clark's parents were artists: Anne Clark, an American artist, and
Roberto Matta
Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren (; November 11, 1911 – November 23, 2002), usually known simply as Matta, also as Sebastián Matta or Roberto Matta, was one of Chile's best-known Painting, painters and a seminal figure in 20th ...
, a
Chilean Surrealist
Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...
painter, of
Basque
Basque may refer to:
* Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France
* Basque language, their language
Places
* Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France
* Basque Country (autonomous co ...
,
French, and
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas
**Spanish cuisine
**Spanish history
**Spanish culture
...
descent. He was the godson of
Marcel Duchamp
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, ; ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, Futurism and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Pica ...
's wife,
Teeny. His twin brother Sebastian, also an artist, died by suicide in 1976. They both are survived by another brother, the artist/musician Ramuntcho Matta, who resides in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
.
Gordon studied
architecture
Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...
at
Cornell University
Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...
from 1962 to 1968, including a year at the
Sorbonne in Paris, where he studied
French literature
French literature () generally speaking, is literature written in the French language, particularly by French people, French citizens; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of Franc ...
. In 1971, he changed his name to Gordon Matta-Clark, adopting his mother's last name. He did not practice as a conventional architect; he worked on what he referred to as "
Anarchitecture".
At the time of Matta-Clark's tenure there, Cornell's architecture program was guided in part by
Colin Rowe, a preeminent architectural theorist of
modernism
Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
.
Matta-Clark used a number of media to document his work, including film, video, and photography. His work includes
performance art
Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...
and recycling pieces, space and texture works, and his ''building cuts''. He also used puns and other word games as a way to re-conceptualize preconditioned roles and relationships (of everything, from people to architecture).
In February, 1969, the ''
Earth Art'' show, curated by
Willoughby Sharp at the invitation of Tom Leavitt, was realized at Andrew Dickson White Museum of Art at
Cornell University
Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...
. Matta-Clark, who lived in
Ithaca, New York
Ithaca () is a city in and the county seat of Tompkins County, New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake in the Finger Lakes region of New York (state), New York, Ithaca is the largest community in the Ithaca metrop ...
at the time, was invited by Sharp to help the artists in ''
Earth Art'' with the on-site execution of their works for the exhibition. Sharp then encouraged Matta-Clark to move to
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
where he introduced him to members of the
postminimal New York art world, featured him in ''
Avalanche Magazine''. In the fall of 1970, Matta-Clark's work ''Museum'', that was shown at
Klaus Kertess'
Bykert Gallery, was listed and illustrated on pages 4–5 of ''
Avalanche
An avalanche is a rapid flow of snow down a Grade (slope), slope, such as a hill or mountain. Avalanches can be triggered spontaneously, by factors such as increased precipitation or snowpack weakening, or by external means such as humans, othe ...
#1''.
In 1971 Matta-Clark,
Carol Goodden, and
Tina Girouard co-founded
FOOD
Food is any substance consumed by an organism for Nutrient, nutritional support. Food is usually of plant, animal, or Fungus, fungal origin and contains essential nutrients such as carbohydrates, fats, protein (nutrient), proteins, vitamins, ...
, an artist's restaurant in Manhattan's
Soho
SoHo, short for "South of Houston Street, Houston Street", is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Since the 1970s, the neighborhood has been the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, art installations such as The Wall ...
neighborhood that was owned, managed, and staffed by
post-minimalist artists. The restaurant turned dining into an event with an open kitchen and exotic ingredients that celebrated cooking. The activities at FOOD helped delineate how the art community defined itself in downtown
Manhattan
Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
.
The first of its kind in SoHo, FOOD became well known among artists and was a central meeting-place for groups such as the
Philip Glass Ensemble,
Mabou Mines
Mabou Mines is an experimental theatre company founded in 1970 and based in New York City.
Founding and history
Mabou Mines was founded by David Warrilow, Lee Breuer, Ruth Maleczech, JoAnne Akalaitis, and Philip Glass, at the house of Akalaiti ...
, and the dancers of
Grand Union
A grand union is a rail track junction where two double-track railway or tramway lines cross at grade, often in a street intersection or crossroads. A total of sixteen railroad switches (sets of points) allow streetcars (or in rarer install ...
. He ran FOOD until 1973.
In the early 1970s and in the context of his artistic community surrounding FOOD, Matta-Clark developed the idea of "anarchitecture"— a conflation of the words anarchy and architecture — to suggest an interest in voids, gaps, and leftover spaces. With his project Fake Estates, Matta-Clark addressed these issues of non-sites by purchasing at auction 15 leftover and unusably small slivers of land in
Queens
Queens is the largest by area of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located near the western end of Long Island, it is bordered by the ...
and
Staten Island
Staten Island ( ) is the southernmost of the boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Richmond County and situated at the southernmost point of New York (state), New York. The borough is separated from the ad ...
,
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
New York may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* ...
, for $25–$75 a plot. He documented them through photographs, maps, bureaucratic records and deeds, and spoke and wrote about them — but was not able to occupy these residual elements of zoning irregularities in any other way.
In 1974, he performed a literal
deconstruction
In philosophy, deconstruction is a loosely-defined set of approaches to understand the relationship between text and meaning. The concept of deconstruction was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who described it as a turn away from ...
, by removing the facade of a condemned house along the
Love Canal
Love Canal was a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, United States, infamous as the location of a landfill that became the site of an environmental disaster discovered in 1977. Decades of dumping toxic chemicals killed residents and harm ...
, and moving the resulting walls to
Artpark, in his work ''Bingo''.
For the
Biennale de Paris in 1975, he made the piece titled ''Conical Intersect'' by cutting a large cone-shaped hole through two townhouses dating from the 17th century in the market district known as
Les Halles
Les Halles (; 'The Halls') was Paris' central fresh food market. It last operated on 12 January 1973 and was replaced by an underground shopping centre and a park. The unpopular modernist development was demolished yet again in 2010, and replac ...
which were to be knocked down in order to construct the then-controversial
Centre Georges Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...
. Also in 1975 he did a similar art intervention named "Days End, Conical Inversion" by cutting a round aperture into the structure at Pier 52 on the
Hudson River
The Hudson River, historically the North River, is a river that flows from north to south largely through eastern New York (state), New York state. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains at Henderson Lake (New York), Henderson Lake in the ...
in Manhattan.
For his final major project, ''Circus or The Caribbean Orange'' (1978), Matta-Clark made circle cuts in the walls and floors of a townhouse next-door to the first
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art art gallery, museum near Water Tower Place in the Near North Side, Chicago, Near North Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is on ...
, building (237 East Ontario Street), thus altering the space entirely.
Following his 1978 project, the MCA presented two retrospectives of Matta-Clark's work, in 1985 and in 2008. The 2008 exhibition ''You Are the Measure'' included never-before-displayed archival material of his 1978 Chicago project. ''You Are the Measure'' traveled to the
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...
, New York, and the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's ori ...
.
Death and legacy
Matta-Clark died from
pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic cancer arises when cell (biology), cells in the pancreas, a glandular organ behind the stomach, begin to multiply out of control and form a Neoplasm, mass. These cancerous cells have the malignant, ability to invade other parts of ...
on August 27, 1978, aged 35, in
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
. He was survived by his widow, Jane Crawford. The Gordon Matta-Clark Archive is housed at the
Canadian Centre for Architecture im
Montreal
Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...
.
Profile
nytimes.com; accessed March 28, 2015.
In 2019, his 1974 piece ''Splitting'' was cited by ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' as one of the 25 works of art that defined the contemporary age.
Videography
*''Program One: Chinatown Voyeur'' (1971)
*''Program Two'' (1971–1972)
**''Tree Dance'' (1971)
**''Open House'' (1972)
*''Program Three'' (1971–1975)
**''Fire Child'' (1971)
**''Fresh Kill'' (1972)
**''Day's End'' (1975)
*''Food'' (1972)
*'' Program Five'' (1972–1976)
**''Automation House'' (1972)
**''Clockshower'' (1973)
**''City Slivers'' (1976)
*''Program Four: Sauna View'' (1973)
*''Program Six'' (1974–1976)
**''Splitting'' (1974)
**''Bingo/Ninths'' (1974)
**''Substrait (Underground Dailies)'' (1976)
*''Program Seven'' (1974–2005)
**''Conical Intersect" (1975)
**''Sous-Sols de Paris (Paris Underground)'' (1977–2005)
*''The Wall'' (1976–2007)
*''Program Eight: Office Baroque'' (1977–2005)
Selected books
* ''Odd Lots: Revisiting Gordon Matta-Clark’s Fake Estates,'' introduction and interviews by curators Jeffrey Kastner, Sina Najafi, and Frances Richard, Essays by Jeffrey A. Kroessler and Frances Richard (New York: Cabinet Books, 2005).
References
External links
*
Finding aid for the Gordon Matta-Clark Collection
Canadian Centre for Architecture
digitized items
Gordon Matta-Clark at David Zwirner
Selected Press at David Zwirner
EAI: Gordon Matta-Clark Biography
and a list o
video works
by the artist
{{DEFAULTSORT:Matta-Clark, Gordon
1943 births
1978 deaths
Artists from New York (state)
American people of Chilean descent
American conceptual artists
Deaths from pancreatic cancer in New York (state)
Deconstructivism
Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning alumni
Love Canal