What do we value? The questions of Rachel Whiteread’s House

Abstract

On 25 October 1993, British artist Rachel Whiteread revealed her most ambitious sculptural work to date ‐ House. The solidified space of this Victorian-era, terraced home physically existed for a mere 80 days; yet, during this time it became the subject of an intense media interest and heated public debate which reached the United Kingdom’s Houses of Parliament. While House has been discussed in depth within art historical scholarship for almost 30 years, trends in this academic body of work tend to focus on absence and memory in a highly contested public space, as well as thoughts on loss, death, architecture, the art market, politics and gentrification in London’s East End during the latter part of the twentieth century. What is lacking, however, is an examination of House within the larger context of visual culture and what it may, or may not, mean for contemporary viewers. Analysing the historical context of the work’s location through a Marxist lens, reveals the dehumanization which occurred within the East End’s class constructs throughout the nineteenth century, and its effect on housing policies well into the twentieth century. Reading the sculptural work itself, using the methodologies of semiotics, unveils mythologies regarding what is and is not expendable in our western spaces; particularly, the working class, houses and works of art in post-industrial capitalist societies. The ideologies embedded within these mythologies continue to appear in our mass media images to this day, leaving unanswered questions regarding what is truly valued in our societies. Thus, Whiteread’s unique work is an artistic intervention into an image-saturated environment, asking the viewers and readers of cultural texts to consider at what point in time we will seek to change how we treat that which has been arguably undervalued.