How the Artist's Studio Has Evolved

The French philosopher Roland Barthes famously announced the “death of the author” in 1967. The following year, the American Land artist Robert Smithson predicted the “fall of the studio”, which he hoped would mean artists escaping a prison of narcissism to engage with the world more directly and more humbly. Today’s most celebrated artists’ studios, such as Olafur Eliasson’s in Berlin, are more likely to be home to a multidisciplinary collective of talent than a solitary masculine boudoir from la vie bohème. Studio Olafur Eliasson is—at least in part—open to public inspection, a far cry again from the traditionally cultivated professional exclusivity of the artist’s studio.