Minimal Art,
Post-Minimal,
and Conceptual Art
Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965, wooden folding chair, photographic copy
of a chair and photographic enlargement of a dictionary definition of a chair
Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965
Installation view of the 1970 Information exhibition, MoMA NYC, which marks the
institutional “success” of text-based Conceptual art documented by photographs.
Dennis Oppenheim, Reading Position for Second Degree Burn, 1970, Stage 1 and
Stage 2, book, skin, solar energy, exposure time 5 hours, Jones Beach, New York, color
photography and collage, 216 x 152 cm . Photographs “were there simply to indicate a
radical art that had already vanished….necessary only as a residue for communication.”
Bruce Nauman, Eating My Words, and Self-Portrait as a Fountain, from Eleven Color
Photographs, 1966/67-70, chromogenic color print / performed for the camera only
John Baldessari (United States, b. 1931) (“Father” of Pictures Generation”)
(left) Wrong, 1966-68, acrylic, photo-emulsion on canvas, 59 x 45 in.
(right) Astronauts and Businessmen, 1988 , photograph with applied paint,
Museum of Fine Art, Houston
Ed Ruscha (U.S. b. 1937), Flying A, Kingman, Arizona,
from Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1963, photographic book,
sold for $3.50 Minimalist and California Pop (anti)aesthetic:
serial repetition and deadpan view of contemporary reality
Book cover
Through his deliberate lack of
style, Ruscha draws attention
“to the estranged relationship
of people to their rural
environment, but without
staging or dramatizing the
estrangement.”
Compare Ruscha’s (1963) vision of
the American West (above) with
Ansel Adams’ interpretation based on
19th century Romantic landscape
aesthetics, (right) Moonrise over
Hernandez, NM. October 31, 1941.
Adams made “Art” and did not work
in other media.
Ansel Adams, Grand Tetons and the Snake
River, 1942
The artist’s road trip from California to Oaklahoma
Albert Bierstadt, The Rocky Mountains, 1863
Ed Ruscha, Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas, 1963, oil on canvas, 5’5” x 10’
Ed Ruscha took the photographs
of Sunset Strip with a motorized
Nikon camera mounted to the back
of a pick-up truck. This allowed
him to photograph every building
while driving – first down one side
of the street and then the other.
The pictures were then pasted in
order they were shot, and the
individual buildings were labeled
with their respective address
numbers.
Ed Ruscha, The Old Trade School Building, 2005, synthetic polymer on canvas
54 x 120 in, from The Course of Empire Series, US Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2005
(bottom) Blue Collar Trade School, 1992, Synthetic polymer on canvas, 54 x 120
Robert Smithson, “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey,” 1967
from Artforum, vol.6, no.4, December 1967, pp. 48-51.
Robert Smithson (American Environmental Artist, 1938-1973), Spiral Jetty, 1970, Great
Salt Lake. Earthwork
Hans Haacke, detail of Shapolsky et al, Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real Time
System as of May 1, 1971, 1971, two enlarged photographs, 142 black and white
photographs with typewritten data sheets, six charts and one explanatory panel
Bernhard and Hilla Becher
Conceptual (typological) photography
(left) Gas Tanks, 1963
(right) Water Towers, 1980, 9 b/w photographs mounted on board, 62inH overall
Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954), Sommerstrasse, Düsseldorf, 1980, Gelatin silver
print, 16 1/2 x 22 1/2 in., Dallas Museum of Art
Thomas Struth (Germany, b.1954, student of Bechers)
Shinju-ku (Skyscrapers), Tokyo, 1986
(right) Ferdinand-von-Schill-Strasse, Dessau, 1991
Candida Höfer (Germany, 1944, student of Bechers)
(left) Stiftsbibliothek Klosterneuburg III, 2003, C-print, 68 in. H
Ca' Rezzonico Venezia II, 2003, C-print, 74 in. Width
Thomas Ruff (German, b.1958), House #9 II, 1991, 72 in. H
one of series taken in early morning, apartment blocks in Eastern Germany
Thomas Ruff, (left) Portrait, 1989, 63in. H
(center and right) from Portrait series, 2001, conceptual typologies
“absolute objectivity” like passport photos except for scale
'... Like archetypal passport photos...
young people with dead eyes and
empty faces.' Ruff
Martha Rosler, detail of The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems, 1974, 45
black and white photographs mounted on 24 mat-board panels, each panel 25 x 56 cm
Compare the following
piece from a recent NY
Times…
Barbara Kruger (U.S. b. 1945), (left) Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face),
1981, gelatin silver print, 72 x 48 in.; (right) Untitled (I Shop Therefore I Am), 1987.
“Pictures Generation”
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/09/05/arts/rosler-audioss/index.html
2008 New York Times slide show: Rosler talking about her work 1960’s-2008
Martha Rosler (US, 1943) Cleaning the
Drapes, from series, Bringing the War
Home: House Beautiful, 1967-72
Cindy Sherman (US, b.1954) Untitled Film Still #27, 1979
69 film stills from 1977 (23 years old) to 1980.
She stopped making film stills, she has explained, when she ran out of clichés.
Cindy Sherman, (left) Untitled Film Still #35, 1979; (right) Untitled Film Still #54. 1980
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 8 x 10” glossies just like “real” film stills.
"She's good enough to be a real actress.“
Andy Warhol
Cindy Sherman, (left) Untitled Film Still #37, (right) UFS #13, 1979
(left) Cindy Sherman, Untitled #188, Chromogenic color print, 43 ½ x 65 ½,“
1989
(right) Hans Bellmer (German, 1902-1975) 'Poupee' (Doll) in Hayloft, 19351936 (historical source for Sherman)
(left) Sherrie Levine (US Postmodern Appropriation artist, b.1947) Untitled (After
Alexander Rodchenko: 9), 1987
(right) Alexander Rodchenko (Russian Constructivist, avant-garde modernist), 18911956), Portrait of Mother, 1924
Postmodern “Appropriation” of “high” art challenged modernism’s key values of
“originality” and “aura.” Key text: Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction” http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm
(left) Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans, 1981 – a photograph of reproduction of a
photograph
(right) Walker Evans, Hale County, Alabama, 1936. (Or is it the other way around?)
Key text: Rosalind Krauss: “The Originality of the Avant-garde and other Modernist
Myths” Post-structuralism – postmodern revision of modern theory
Richard Prince (American, born 1949), Untitled (four single men with
interchangeable backgrounds looking to the right), 1977, Mixed media
on paper, 23 x 19 in. Metropolitan Museum, NYC
Richard Prince, (left) Untitled (cowboy), 1981, Ektacolor photograph, 20 x 24 in
(right) Untitled (cowboy) 1980-84, Ektacolor photograph, 27 x 40 in.
“Pictures Generation” appropriation from mass visual culture: advertising photography
Louise Lawler (American, born 1947), Pollock and Tureen, Arranged by Mr. and Mrs.
Burton Tremaine, Connecticut, 1984, silver dye bleach print, 28 x 39 in.
Jeff Wall (Canadian, 1946), Picture for Women, 1979
transparency in light box, approx. 5 x 7ft
(left) Jeff Wall, Picture for Women, transparency in lightbox, 1979, around 5ft x
7ft; compare (right) Edouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, oil on canvas,
1882 / Art historical quotation is characteristically postmodern.
(left) Jeff Wall, Picture for Women, transparency in lightbox, 1979, around 5ft x
7ft; compare (right) Diego Velazquez (Spanish Baroque), Las Meninas, 1656.
scale, complex composition drawing attention to the unity of reality and illusion,
uncertain relationship between the viewer and the figures depicted.
Jeff Wall (Canada, b. 1946) Installation view of the exhibition Documenta 8, Kassel,
Germany, 1987, showing The Storyteller, cibachrome transparency, lightbox, 1986
Jeff Wall, A Sudden
Gust of Wind (After
Hokusai),
transparency in light-box,
1993, 7ft x 12ft.
Hokusai, Ejiri in Suruga Province
c.1831-3, woodblock print from
series, 36 Views of Fuji, 26 x 38 cm
Felix Gonzalez-Torres (American b. Cuba 1957- NYC 1996), Untitled, 1991. As
installed for The Museum of Modern Art, New York "Projects 34: Felix Gonzalez-Torres“
May 16 - June 30, 1992: 2 of 24 locations throughout New York City
"EMERGING WOR(L)DS": June 2007 - October 2008: http://www.tinab.com/content.php?akce=section&lang=en&season=2007&id=12
Gonzalez-Torres represented the United States at the 2007 Venice Biennale
Christian Boltanski (French, b. 1944) Jewish School of Grosse Hamburgstrasse in
Berlin in 1939, 1991, moving photographs, fans, florescent lamps, dimensions variable
http://www.monumenta.com/2010/english/monumenta/Monumenta-2010.html
Christian Boltanski at the Grand Palais, Monumenta 2010
Monument (Odessa),
1989-2003, gelatin silver
prints, tin biscuit boxes,
lights, and wire
Minimalism
Robert Morris
“…the significant artist
strives to reduce the
technical and psychical
distance between his
artistic output and the
productive means of
society. Duchamp,
Warhol, and Robert
Morris are similarly
directed in this respect.”
Jack Burnham, Systems
Esthetics, 1969
Robert Morris, Box with the Sound of
Its Own Making, 1961
Tony Smith
•
Not typically associated with Minimalism, Tony
Smith nevertheless created one of the most
enduring icons of the minimalist esthetic., Die.
It was supposedly inspired by an index card
file, but its scale (72 x 72 x 72 inches) and
fabrication were a response to an
advertisement for the Industrial Welding
Company in Newark, New Jersey, which read:
“You specify it: we fabricate it.” The
dimensions, according to Smith, were
determined by the human body, as in
Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing of the Vitruvian
man, whose outstretched arms and legs are
inscribed within a circle and a square. Smith
said that larger dimensions would have
implied the work was a “monument,” while
smaller ones would have reduced it to the role
of a mere “object.” This observation became
the subject of key debates among the
philosophers of the minimal-art generation,
including Robert Morris and Michael Fried.
Smith’s deceptively simple title has multiple
allusions: to industry (die casting), to chance
(roll of the dice) and to death, as implied in the
title and based on Smith’s other observation,
“Six foot box. Six foot under.”
Tony Smith, “Die,” 1962/68, Steel,
overall 72 x 72 x72 inches
Larry Bell
Larry Bell, “Untitled,” anodized glass, 1975
Larry Bell, “Untitled,” anodized glass, 1969
Sol Lewitt
(b. 1928) creates simple
forms in series like white
or black cubes, either
open or closed. Although
he later added primary
colors, LeWitt stresses
that art should “engage
the mind rather than the
eye or emotions.”
Donald Judd, Untitled, 1969
Robert Morris, Untitled, 1967
Solid Geometry
• Minimalist, like Hard Edge
painters, eradicated the
individual’s handprint, as
well as any emotion, image,
or message. To attain such
a “pure,” anonymous effect,
they used prefab materials
in simple geometric shapes
like metal boxes or bricks.
Carl Andre, “Sulcus,” 1980 Western
red cedar wood overall 150 x 90 x
90 cm
Carl Andre
(b. 1935) went to the opposite extreme from traditional
vertical, figurative sculpture on a pedestal. Instead, he
arranged bricks, cement blocks, and flat slabs on the floor
in a horizontal configuration, as in his 29 –foot-long row
of bricks on the ground.
Equivalent
VIII
Copper Galaxy
• Metal shelves attached to a gallery
wall, panes of glass on a gallery
floor, a plank leaning against a wall
are all Minimalist art.
• The ultimate Minimalist exhibit was
French artist Yves Klein’s show of
nothing at all, just a freshly
whitewashed gallery containing no
object or painting (two patrons even
bought nonexistent canvases –
Klein demanded payment in gold).•
“Compared to them,” art dealer Leo
Castelli said, “Mondrian is an
expressionist painter.”
For these sculptors, minimum form
ensured maximum intensity. By taking
away “distractions” like detail, imagery,
and narrative – i.e., everything – they
forced the viewer to pay total attention
to what’s left. “Simplicity of shape does
not necessarily equate with simplicity
of experience,” said Robert Morris
Dan Flavin
 (b. 1933) sculpts with light, attaching
fluorescent tubes to the wall in stark
geometric designs giving off fields of color.
Hint: Look at the light, not at the tubes.
Robert Morriss
His “Untitled” sculpture is a great
example of Minimalism. Made in
the years of 1965-71, the sculpture
consists of four mirror plated glass
and wood cubes arranged as if they
had been placed in the four corners
of a square.
(b. 1931) is known for large-scale,
hard-edge geometric sculptures like
big, blocky right angles. “Unitary
forms do not reduce relationships,”
he said. “They order them/.” Morris
also does antiform sculpture in soft,
hanging material like felt. The pieces
droop on the wall, sculpted by
gravity.
Robert Morris, installation in the Green Gallery,
New York, 1964. Seven geometric plywood
structures painted grey.
Robert Morris, Untitled (L Beams), 1965
Robert Morris, Untitled 1969 felt 284.0 (h) x 363.2 (w) x 111.8 (d)
cm
Robert Morris, Untitled 1969 felt 284.0 (h) x 363.2 (w) x 111.8 (d)
cm
Claes Oldenburg, French Fries, 1966
Eva Hesse, Accesion, 1969
Robert Morris, Untitled, felt, 1967
Robert Morris, Untitled, felt, 1970
Richard Serra
Art 21 Season 1
 (b. 1939) became infamous for
his huge metal sculpture “Tilted
Arc,” which aroused such hatred
in a public square in New York
that it was removed in 1989.
Serra’s entry for the 1991
Carnegie International art show
consisted of two black
rectangles, each hanging on a
different wall, one placed high
and the other near the floor.
Richard Serra
Hand Catching Lead http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NBSuQ
LVpK4
Splashing Lead http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjvVEN2
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Interview with Charlie Rose http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4Ah0c
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Richard Serra
Donald Judd, Untitled, 1968
Donald Judd, Untitled, 1968
Donald Judd, Untitled, 1969
Donald Judd, Untitled
Donald Judd, Progression
Donald Judd, Untitled. Marfa, Texas.
Minimalism in Music
Beginnings
• Minimalism began as ‘Systems Music’ in the 1960s.
(Today, in the realm of computer music, "systems music" refers to fractal-based,
computer-assisted composition, and in particular iterated function systems music, in
which a function "is applied repeatedly, each time taking as argument its value at the
previous application" (Gogins 1991).
• Features of systems music were repetition, simple melody, and
slowly changing harmony.
• Stockhausen’s ‘Stimmung’ (1968) is a prime example. It consists of
51 sections (called "moments") and is considered to be "the first
major Western composition to be based entirely on the production of
vocal harmonics.“ Listen to a clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjK7iG_5hIU&feature=related
Terry Riley
In C consists of 53 short, numbered musical
phrases, lasting from half a beat to32 beats; each
phrase may be repeated an arbitrary number of
times. Each musician has control over which
phrase he or she plays: players are encouraged to
play the phrases starting at different times, even if
they are playing the same phrase.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjR4QYsa9nE
Steve Reich
• Reich, who took part in the first
performance of In C, was greatly
influenced by Riley’s ideas.
• He developed a style based on the idea of
gradual change – of texture, rhythm and
harmony
• He also explored the concept of Phase
Shifting
Clapping Music
• In this piece, written in 1972, Reich takes
one rhythmic pattern and repeats it 156
times.
• Clap 1 never changes. Clap 2 moves the
pattern one quaver forward after each 12th
repeat.
Reich’s influences
John Tavener
John Adams
Chris Martin
Philip Glass
Mike Oldfield
Tomasz Sikorski
Michael Nyman
Arvo Part
Photography out of
Conceptual (Pop &
Minimal, and
performance) Art
Barbara Kruger Untitled
(You are Not Yourself), 1981
Why has photography moved
from the margin to the center of
contemporary art in the last 40 years?
Gilbert and George, The Singing Sculpture, 1970, photograph of performance
(Gilbert Proesch, b.1943, Italy; George Passmore, b. 1942, England). “Banal”
photographic documentation of ephemeral works, like this “living sculpture.”
Gilbert & George with Ginkgo series,
British pavilion Venice Biennale 2005,
This series was included in the 2008
San Francisco G & G retrospective.
Annette Messager (French, b. 1943) My Vows (Mes Voeux), 1988-91, gelatin-silver
prints under glass and string, dimensions variable
detail
Annette Messager, My Vows,
1990. Gelatin silver prints and
string. Dimensions vary with
installation, approx.: 140 x 73
inches. Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, 2007 purchase
Catholic votives