The Individual Identity of Art
In Matta Clark's early and arguably most famous work, "Splitting (1974)," he tackles what he saw as the primary culprit for dull architecture: an emphasis of a building's efficiency and practicality over its uniqueness.
In this piece, Matta-Clark transformed a condemned house in residential new York into a state-wide attraction by removing all the furniture inside and simply bisecting the entire building. A simple transformation, of taking one full house and unchanging it besides splitting it into halves, nevertheless had a massive impact and, until the house was finally demolished, many citizens of New York came to marvel at the exhibition. The act of bisecting a house was not a random choice; by cutting a house in half, cutting through insulation and electrical wires and plumbing, Matta-Clark removed all functionality from the house and made it uninhabitable. Yet, in doing so, he also made this house, and the neighborhood It contained, wildly famous. "Splitting (1974)" is largely considered Matta-Clark's career defining work precisely because of what it represents, the core of Anarchitecture and the antithesis to Federal Modernism: that architecture doesn't have to be functional in order to have worth, and that, in fact, some buildings' worth comes from their lack of functionality.
Literally and metaphorically, "Splitting (1974)" represents a change in architectural perspective. A residential house represents the most simplistic of buildings that everyone has firsthand experience with, and the last thing that the average viewer would find interesting. In the above photograph that Matta-Clark displayed at exhibitions, there are no secret passages or aspects of a house revealed that the average resident wouldn't be able to see on their own, but the novelty comes from the angle that the viewer gets to see all the mundanity.