Mapping the Field of Sound Art: René Block’s Diagrammatic Modernism

The author examines a series of diagrams produced by gallerist René Block in the 1980s that aimed to provide a genealogy for the nascent field of sound art. She assesses the broad narratives presented in these schematics and the people and practices omitted. She then compares them to other modernist diagrams, including Alfred H. Barr Jr.’s 1936 chart for the Museum of Modern Art asserting the trajectory of abstraction. Finally, she measures Block’s diagrams against today’s expanded field of sound art.