minimalism in visual art
sometimes referred to as
"literalist art" and "abc art" emerged in new york in the 1960s. it
is regarded as a reaction against the painterly forms of abstract
expressionism as well as the discourse, institutions and ideologies
that supported it. as artist and critic thomas lawson noted in his
1977 catalog essay last exit: painting, minimalism did not reject
clement greenberg's claims about modernist painting's reduction to
surface and materials so much as take his claims literally.
minimalism was the result, even though the term "minimalism" was not
generally embraced by the artists associated with it, and many
practitioners of art designated minimalist by critics did not
identify it as a movement as such. in contrast to the abstract
expressionists, minimalists were influenced by composer john cage,
poet william carlos williams, and architect frederick law olmsted.
they very explicitly stated that their art was not self-expression,
in opposition to the previous decade's abstract expressionists. in
general, minimalism's features included: geometric, often cubic
forms purged of all metaphor, equality of parts, repetition, neutral
surfaces, and industrial materials. robert morris, an influential
theorist and artist, wrote a three part essay, "notes on sculpture
1-3," originally published across three issues of artforum in 1966.
in these essays, morris attempted to define a conceptual framework
and formal elements for himself and one that would embrace the
practices of his contemporaries. these essays paid great attention
to the idea of the gestalt- "parts... bound together in such a way
that they create a maximum resistance to perceptual separation."
morris later described an art represented by a "marked lateral
spread and no regularized units or symmetrical intervals..." in
"notes on sculpture 4: beyond objects," originally published in
artforum, 1969, continuing to say that "indeterminacy of arrangement
of parts is a literal aspect of the physical existence of the
thing.” the general shift in theory of which this essay is an
expression suggests the transitions into what would later be
referred to as post-minimalism. one of the first artists
specifically associated with minimalism was the painter, frank
stella, whose early "stripe" paintings were highlighted in the 1959
show, "16 americans", organized by dorothy miller at the museum of
modern art in new york. the width of the stripes in frank stellas's
stripe paintings were determined by the dimensions of the lumber,
visible as the depth of the painting when viewed from the side, used
to construct the supportive chassis upon which the canvas was
stretched. the decisions about structures on the front surface of
the canvas were therefore not entirely subjective, but
pre-conditioned by a "given" feature of the physical construction of
the support. in the show catalog, carl andre noted, "art excludes
the unnecessary. frank stella has found it necessary to paint
stripes. there is nothing else in his painting." these reductive
works were in sharp contrast to the energy-filled and apparently
highly subjective and emotionally-charged paintings of willem de
kooning or franz kline and, in terms of precedent among the previous
generation of abstract expressionists, leaned more toward less
gestural, often somber coloristic field paintings of barnett newman
and mark rothko. although stella received immediate attention from
the moma show, artists like ralph humphrey and robert ryman had
begun to explore monochromatic formats by the late 50's. because of
a tendency in minimalism to exclude the pictorial, illusionistic and
fictive in favor of the literal, there was a movement away from
painterly and toward sculptural concerns. donald judd had started as
a painter, and ended as a creator of objects. his seminal essay,
"specific objects" (published in arts yearbook 8, 1965), was a
touchstone of theory for the formation of minimalist aesthetics. in
this essay, judd found a starting point for a new territory for
american art, and a simultaneous rejection of residual inherited
european artistic values. he pointed to evidence of this development
in the works of an array of artists active in new york at the time,
including jasper johns, dan flavin and lee bontecou. of
"preliminary" importance for judd was the work of george ortman[1],
who had concretized and distilled painting's forms into blunt,
tough, philosphically charged geometries. these specific objects
inhabited a space not then comfortably classifiable as either
painting or sculpture. that the categorical identity of such objects
was itself in question, and that they avoided easy association with
well- worn and over-familiar conventions, was a part of their value
for judd. in a much more broad and general sense, one might, in
fact, find european roots of minimalism in the geometric
abstractions painters in the bauhaus, in the works of piet mondrian
and other artists associated with the movement destijl, in russian
constructivists and in the work of the romanian sculptor constantin
brâncuşi. this movement was heavily criticised by high modernist
formalist art critics and historians. some anxious critics thought
minimalist art represented a misunderstanding of the modern
dialectic of painting and sculpture as defined by critic clement
greenberg, arguably the dominant american critic of painting in the
period leading up to the 1960's. the most notable critique of
minimalism was produced by michael fried, a greenbergian critic, who
objected to the work on the basis of its "theatricality". in art and
objecthood (published in artforum in june 1967) he declared that the
minimalist work of art, particularly minimalist sculpture, was based
on an engagement with the physicality of the spectator. he argued
that work like robert morris's transformed the act of viewing into a
type of spectacle, in which the artifice of the act observation and
the viewer's participation in the work were unveiled. fried saw this
displacement of the viewer's experience from an aesthetic engagement
within, to an event outside of the artwork as a failure of minimal
art. fried's opinionated essay was immediately challenged by artist
robert smithson in a letter to the editor in the october issue of
artforum. smithson stated the following: "what fried fears most is
the consciousness of what he is doing--namely being himself
theatrical." other minimalist artists include: richard allen, walter
darby bannard, larry bell, ronald bladen, mel bochner, norman
carlberg, erwin hauer, sol lewitt, brice marden, agnes martin, jo
baer, john mccracken, paul mogensen, david novros, ad reinhardt,
richard serra, tony smith, robert smithson, and anne truitt ad
reinhardt, actually an artist of the abstract expressionist
generation, but one whose reductive all-black paintings seemed to
anticipate minimalism, had this to say about the value of a
reductive approach to art: 'the more stuff in it, the busier the
work of art, the worse it is. more is less. less is more. the eye is
a menace to clear sight. the laying bare of oneself is obscene. art
begins with the getting rid of nature.' also notable are the
postminimalist artists, including eva hesse, martin puryear, joel
shapiro and hannah wilke.
