Site Specificity and the Pyramids

Miwon's Chapter 'Genealogy of Site Specificity' was a very good orientation to the concept of 'site specific' art. I couldn't help but think how helpful the 'Genealogy of Situationism' would have been. Anyway, there are three basic types of site specificity, the first has to do with the physical "site" and this is the origin of the genre of art. The second is institutional critique of museum spaces, and the last is where the site is more abstract, often intangeable.

The second chapter dealt with the issues of originality and debated the authenticity of reproduced works of site specific art. I started thinking about art I've seen outside the museum and how these ideas apply to it. One thing I thought of (though i'm not so sure how well this applies) were the pyramids of Ancient Egypt. The first pyramid I would consider site specific, because the Ancient Egyptians were very much concerned with aesethics in their art and planned their burials decades in advance, so it makes sense to assume they would have made the monument to harmonize with it's environment. The ancient egyptian kings and nobles liked to on up each other and stay in fashion when it came to their burial, and so the later kings made bigger, better pyramids, yet all the same basis as the first. As far as I know they never (purposely) made a flat-topped or 3 sided pyramid. So would all the other pyramids be considered authentic? They were planned out for their location and individualy crafted, but they are still just imitations of the first. Perhaps the improvement is active enough that Kwon would use this as the basis of their originiality... It's also kind of funny that even though the pyramidss were all copies of the first they retained their importance and even grew in importance (as evidenced by the Great Pyramid's size), until, of course the country was not stable enough to handle such ridiculous projects and the kings opted for security over showyness and scrapped the pyramid for a cave....

Q! Would commissioned art, like for a hotel lobby, be comsidered site specific? It would be specially designed for a particular environment, but the motive behind it is common and interahangeable.

Q! What exactly is modernism, as refered to by Kwon? Kwon talks of modernist art as being self contained and not relying on it's location for meaning. However, isn't this what site specific art is, when the site is an idea communicated by the piece?