Water as Artistic Medium: From Conceptual Transubstantiation to Public Fountains

An article on Artribune explores the paradoxical role of water in visual arts, despite its lack of form, taste, or odor. The authors Carlo and Aldo Spinelli argue that water has been a protagonist in art, citing examples from Leonardo da Vinci's vortices to Canaletto's canals, Paolo Uccello's deluge, Théodore Géricault's raft waves, Pino Pascali's seas and puddles, Studio Azzurro's pool, Fabrizio Plessi's waterfalls, John Cage's faucets and bathtub, Hans Haacke's Condensation Cube, and Gino De Dominicis's attempt to form squares instead of circles around a falling stone. The article focuses on conceptual works involving a glass of water: Michael Craig-Martin's An Oak Tree (1973), exhibited at Rowan Gallery in London in 1974, where a glass of water on a high shelf is declared to be an oak tree through transubstantiation, referencing Marcel Duchamp's Fountain. Luca Pancrazzi's Bottiglia perfetta (2007) uses two glasses of water to cast the shadow of a bottle. The article also discusses public fountains: Serena Vestrucci's dragon-headed drinking fountains in CityLife park, Milan, replacing traditional "vedovelle" taps, and Michael Asher's 1991 granite fountain at the University of California, San Diego, which replicates military camp water dispensers, reversing Duchamp's readymade concept by placing a sculptural object in a functional context.