The idea of installation art is usually considered something that arose from what was referred to as 'Happenings' and 'Environments' and the scene that somewhat centered around the artist/provocateur Allan Kaprow in the US in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
In 1960 Jim Dine created Car Crash, a happening that played out in an elaborate construction that both performers and the audience where immersed in.
Another prototypical installation is Claes Oldenburg's The Store, seen here re-created in a museum setting.
Again the border between 'Environment' and 'Performance' are blurred. This was also the case with Judy Chicago's Womanhouse, but her later work The Dinner Party existed purely as an environment where the viewer moved through the piece.
Gordon Matta-Clark's work physically deconstructing architecture is known mostly through documentation, although he did create 'souvenir' cuttings of his buildings to circulate as product.
Sometimes the artifacts of a performance become an installation, as seen in Carolee Schneemann's Up to and Including Her Limits,
Many of installation art's pioneers kept re-inventing the form, as we see in Yayoi Kusama's interactive Obliteration Room.
Some artists wanted to make their installations more accessible over time, like Dan Graham.
And also Ann Hamilton, whose The Event of a Thread becomes an amusement-park-like spectacle.
This can be taken to the monumental level, as with James Turrell's work in process, Roden Crater.
Video can be placed in a site in a way which perfectly integrates with it, as seen in Bill Viola's Tiny Deaths.
Or it can totally dominate the architecture, as seen in the retrospectives of Pipilotti Rist. Although primarily working in video, abstraction informs much of their work.
Judy Pfaff's installations reference nature but also embrace abstraction.
Rachel Whiteread's work uses the literalness of the imprint, creating a negative reproduction of her subject matter.
Sarah Sze uses everyday objects in a way that defies their former functions and transforms them into formal constructions.
Danish artists' group Superflex constructs a fake McDonalds here, which they flood, with the final work consisting as a semi-documentary video. Often work falling into the installation realm defies categorization.
Rirkrit Tiravanija's Untitled (Free/Still) serves free curry in a very intentionally constructed, though makeshift looking, environment.
Although solidly viewed in an art context, teamLab is actually a for-profit company, pushing the boundaries between fine art and entertainment.
