Robert Morris, and Carolee Schneeman, Site, 1964, performance, New York
(compare: below, left) Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863 (avant-garde icon)
“The sensuous object, resplendent with compressed internal relations has had to be
rejected.”
Morris’s mask is by Jasper Johns
art about art
Robert Morris (US, b. 1931) Installation at the Green Gallery, New York,
polyhedrons made from 2x4 wood painted gray, 1963
Morris theorized a “gestalt” all-at-once comprehension of the forms by the
audience.
Effective advent of Minimalism
Robert Morris, (right) Untitled (Tangle) cut felt 1967,
(left) Untitled, (Pink Felt) 1970, cut felt, dimensions vary with installation.
Process Art – “anti-form” or “post-minimal” sculpture dependent upon
gravity and chance, simple cutting process, use of “industrial” not-art material
Industrial felt is
arranged by chance
for each installation.
The artist’s supervision
is not necessary.
Robert Morris, (left) Poster for Sonnabend Gallery show, 1974
(right) I-Box, 1961
Neo-Dada, Duchampian mockery of Western modernism’s myths
of the art’s masculinity, originality, individualist ego, and genius
(right) Linda Benglis, Artforum ad, November
1974. This picture (a response to Robert
Morris’s self-portrait ad, below), appeared in
the front of the issue as an advertisement for
Benglis’ show at the Paula Cooper Gallery.
First wave Feminism
Linda Benglis, Latex floor painting, 1969
Art in New York, says Benglis, is "all
about territory," so there is only one
pertinent question: "How big?" How
big is the zone you capture and
occupy with your painting, your floor
sculpture, your video piece, your
public persona? How powerful is the
image that establishes your presence?
Frank Stella (US, b. 1936) (right) Die
Fahne Hoch, 1959 o/c.
(below) compare Jasper Johns, Flag,
1956 (in 1958 Castelli show)
Post-Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism
Frank Stella, The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, II. 1959, enamel on canvas, 7' 7“ H
“My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. All I want
anyone to get out of my paintings and all I ever get out of them is the fact that you can
see the whole idea without any confusion. What you see is what you see.”
- Stella
Frank Stella (US b. 1936)
Quathlamba, 1964, metallic powder in polymer emulsion, 6’5” x 13’7”
Painting-sculptures to comprehend in a glance
Formal sources for Minimalism
(left) Barnett Newman with Cathedra, 1958 Abstract Expressionist
“Sublime”
(right) Kasimir Malevich, Russian Suprematism, White on White, o/c, 1918
Ad Reinhardt (US, 1907-1967), Painting, 1954-58, 78 x 78 in, Oil on canvas
Source for Stella and Minimalism of 1960s
Agnes Martin (Canadian-born American Minimalist Painter, 1912-2004)
(left) Bones #2, 1959, Oil on canvas, 72 x 48
(right) Untitled, oil, ink & wash on canvas, 12” square,1961
Agnes Martin, The Dark River, (detail right) o/c, 75” square, 1961
Platonic idealism, meditative practice of “joy”
Detail of The Dark River
Humility, the beautiful daughter
She cannot do either right or wrong
She does not do anything
All of her ways are empty
Infinitely light and delicate
She treads an even path.
Sweet, smiling, uninterrupted, free.
. . . Agnes Martin 1973
Photo of Martin in studio, 1973
Donald Judd (US, Minimalist sculptor, 1928-1994), (left) Untitled, cold rolled steel, 1964
(right top) Judd, Untitled, 1978-9 six brushed aluminum hollow rectangles set at 14-inch
intervals (below right) Judd, Untitled, 1964, aluminum boxes
Non-relational, “literal” objects
A philosophy major at Columbia, Judd theorized his work in a 1965 essay,
“Specific Objects,” as “non-relational” objects that supersede the traditions of
painting and sculpture
Theatricality and the “end” of Greenbergian modernism
Sotheby installation: (at left), Donald Judd, Untitled, a stack of 10 stainless steel and
red fluorescent plexiglass units stacked vertically in 9-inch intervals (detail on far left)
(at right) Frank Stella, Nunca Pasa Nada, 1964, 110 x 220”, metallic powder in polymer
emulsion on canvas
detail
Donald Judd, (left) artillery shed interior with permanent installation of 100
titled works, mill aluminum, (each) 41 x 51 x 72 in. The Chinati Foundation,
Marfa, Texas
Richard Serra, Splashing, 1968, molten lead left to harden,
Leo Castelli warehouse. Action / Process Sculpture
(left) Serra, One-Ton Prop, 1969; installation, 1969 of “prop” sculptures
Serra, Tilted Arc, 12ft x 120 ft x 2.5 in, cor-ten steel, Federal Plaza, NYC,
1981-1989, Site-specific commissioned public artwork
Document from legal
battle to retain sculpture
Federal Plaza before (above) and after (below) removal of Tilted Arc with planters and benches
Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, polished black granite, 1982, Washington DC
(below left) Frederick Hart, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1984
Fills minimalist form with new democratic memorial content that subverts the idealization
of the lone warrior leader. Compare Washington obelisk, below right
Richard Serra (left) Torqued Ellipses, cor-ten steel, 1997, Dia Foundation poster
(right) Bilbao Guggenhein, 2005, A Matter of Time: a huge permanent installation of
eight bent steel sculptures, possibly the largest installation to ever be housed in a
museum gallery. The work is 1,200 tons and over 430 feet long in a 32,000 square foot
gallery.
Dan Graham, Urban Rooftop Project, Dia Foundation, Manhattan (closed),
2002
Composed of two-way mirror glass, and is therefore both translucent and
transparent, reflective and opaque, depending upon the light.
James Turrell (US, b. 1943) Spread, light installation, 2003
Los Angeles Light and Space Movement begun in the late 1960s
Not “conceptual” but “perceptual”
http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/turrell/clip1.html#
Robert Irwin (US, b. 1928), Untitled, acrylic disks and light, 1969
Los Angeles Light and Space Movement
Irwin, 1234 Degree, openings cut
out of windows, MCA San Diego, 1997
Carl Andre (American, b. 1935), 10 x 10 Altstadt Copper Square, Düsseldorf, 1967
copper, 100 units, 3/16 x 197 x 197 inches overall, Minimalism
(right) compare influence: Frank Stella, Die Fahne Hoch, 1959, oil on canvas
“non-relational” sculpture-painting
Walking on an Andre sculpture at the Beaubourg, Paris, 2005
Carl Andre, (left) Twelve Copper Corner, 1975; (right) Seven Steel Row, 1975
Brancusi, (center) Endless Column, Tirgu Jiu Public Park, Rumania, 1938
“Brancusi is to me the great link into the earth and the Endless Column is, of course,
the absolute culmination of that experience” (Carl Andre)
Sol LeWitt (US, b.1928) Floor Structure Black, 1965, painted wood, 18 ½ x
18 x 82 in.
“Ideas can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may
eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.” “Paragraphs
on Conceptual Art,” 1969
Minimal Art to Conceptual Art
Sol Lewitt, Modular Open Cube Pieces (9 x 9 x 9) Floor/Corner 2 (Corner
Piece), 1976
Lewitt, A Wall Divided Vertically into Fifteen Equal Parts, Each with a
Different Line Direction and Color, and All Combinations 1970
"In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the
work . . . all planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is
a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes the machine that makes the art."
Sol LeWitt: "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art," Artforum, summer issue, 1967
Lewitt, Wall Drawing #146, September 1972. All two-part combinations of
blue arcs from corners and sides and blue straight, not straight, and broken
lines; blue crayon, Dimensions vary with installation.
Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing No. 681 C / A, 1993
Instructions: wall divided vertically into four equal squares separated and
bordered by black bands. Within each square, bands in one of four directions,
each with color ink washes superimposed, colored ink washes, (120 x 444 in.)
Vito Acconci, Following Piece documentation, installed in 1969 at Barbara Gladstone
Gallery, NYC, black and white photographs with text and chalk, text on index cards.
Concept: Follow a different person every day until person enters private place.
“I was a passive receiver of someone’s time and space.” (Acconci)
Conceptual art
“Can an artistic intervention truly bring about an unforeseen way of thinking?
Can an absurd act provoke a transgression that makes you abandon the
standard assumptions on the sources of conflict? Can those kinds of artistic
acts bring about the possibility of change?”
- Francis Alÿs 2005
Art in the age of doubt = post-avant-garde
(Do you still believe that art change things?)
Francis Alÿs (Belgian, lives in Mexico City, b. 1959), photographs of a 1995 project
in which he painted a green line along an armistice boundary originally drawn on a
map in green grease pencil by the Israeli leader Moshe Dayan in 1948.
"For the moment, I am exploring the following axiom: Sometimes doing something
poetic can become political and sometimes doing something political can become
poetic."
Map showing the real Green Line
and the politics of Alÿs’ poetic
(aesthetic) artwork, Green Line
The faint green dotted line (the
'Green Line') represents the
armistice line established after the
1948 Arab-Israeli War. Land to the
right of the line was taken by Israel
in 1967, and is still occupied today.
The purple blobs on the map are
new Israeli settlements - Jews only built up since 1967 on occupied land
- The orange line is the line of wall
under construction by Israel.
Francis Alÿs on his walk through
Jerusalem in 2005, in which he
retraced the Green Line with a
leaky paint can. Video still.
“Poetic license functions like a
hiatus in the atrophy of a social,
political, military or economic
crisis. Through the gratuity or
the absurdity of the poetic act,
art provokes a moment of
suspension of meaning, a brief
sensation of senselessness that
reveals the absurdity of the
situation. . . .”
- Alÿs
For more information about Alÿs,
see Artforum essay:
http://www.encyclopedia.com/do
c/1G1-145872683.html
Joseph Kosuth (US, b. 1945) One and Three Chairs, installation, 1965
Conceptualism
Kosuth, One and Three Tables, 1965, Installation, wooden table, gelatin
silver photograph, and photostat mounted on foamcore
Hans Haacke (German, b.1936), Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a
Real-Time System, as of May 1, 1971, 1971: 142 photographs of New York apartment
buildings, 2 maps of New York's Lower East Side and Harlem with properties marked, 6
charts documenting business relations within the real estate group.
Bernhard and Hilla Becher (German, born 1931 and 1934 respectively)
Conceptual (typological) photography
(left) Gas Tanks, 1963
(right) Water Towers, 1980, 9 b/w photographs mounted on board, 62inH
overall
Cildo Meireles (Brazil, 1948) in the early ’70s
Cildo Meireles, Insertions into ideological Circuits: Bank Note Project (Who
Killed Herzog?) 1970, rubber stamp and bank note
Cildo Meireles, Insertions into ideological Circuits:1. Coca-Cola Project, 1970
printed stickers on Coca-Cola bottles, dimensions variable, collection the artist
Bruce Nauman (US 1941) (left) Eating My Words, and (right) Self Portrait as
a Water Fountain, from Eleven Color Photographs" (1966-1967/70)
“If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the
studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a
product.”
Bruce Nauman (US 1941) (left) Wax Impressions of the Knees of Five
Famous Artists, 1966, fiberglass and polyester resin, 15 5/8 in. x 85 1/4 in. x
2 3/4 in. Collection SFMOMA
(right) Hand to Mouth, wax over cloth, 1967 (cast from wife’s body)
"If they're not puzzled, they're not getting it."
- Robert Storr (MoMA NYC)
on Nauman’s viewers
Nauman, Art Makeup, White, Black, Pink, Green, 1967-8, performance video
stills
Nauman, Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk) (1968). Video, 60 min
My name as though it were written on the surface of the moon.
Bruce Nauman, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths
(Window or Wall Sign), 1967. Neon tubing with clear glass tubing suspension
supports; 59 X 55 x 2 in
Original made for the artist’s San Francisco street-front studio window: the
private thought made as public as a commercial beer sign. Conceptual art is
a poetic intervention into conventional (unquestioning) modes of “thought.”
"The most difficult thing about the whole
piece for me was the statement. It was a
kind of test - like when you say something
out loud to see if you believe it. Once
written down, I could see that the
statement [...] was on the one hand a
totally silly idea and yet, on the other hand,
I believed it. It's true and not true at the
same time. It depends on how you interpret
it and how seriously you take yourself. For
me it's still a very strong thought."
- Nauman
Nauman, South American Triangle, 1981, welded steel beams (each 165”
long) and cast iron chair. Inspired by Jacobo Timerman’s account of his
torture by the Argentinean military regime.
Bruce Nauman, Hanging Carousel (George Skins a Fox), 1988, taxidermist
forms and suspension of South American Triangle signify victimization and
violence.
http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/nauman/clip2.html#
Eva Hesse (American born Germany,1936-1970, 34 years), Metronomic
Irregularity, 1966. Post-Minimalism
Hesse, notebook page, 1965-66; Hang Up, acrylic on wood, cloth, steel, 1966
Hesse in New York apartment holding Ingeminate, 1966; Hesse Ingeminate 1965,
surgical hose, papier-mâché, cord and sprayed enamel over balloons (detail)
Eva Hesse (left) Accession II 1967 galvanized steel, rubber tubing, c. 30”square
Hesse with Accession II in 1968
Hesse, Sans II (two views),1968 fiberglass polyester resin 5 units, each
38inH
detail
Compare Minimalist sculpture of
Donald Judd, Untitled, 1964
Hesse, Repetition Nineteen III, fiberglass and polyester resin, 1968
Hesse, 1970. Fiberglass over polyethylene over aluminum wire.
7 units each 78 in. x 40 in. Berkeley: University Art Museum
Hesse, Rope Piece, 1979
“I remember I wanted to get to non art, non
connotive [sic],
non anthropomorphic, non geometric, non,
nothing. . . .
question how and why in putting it together?
Can it be different each time? Why not?
How to achieve by not
Making?
Compare Eva Hesse, 1969, with Marcel Duchamp, Sixteen Miles of String,
1942, part of Duchamp’s installation for the First Papers of Surrealism, Peggy
Guggenheim’s Art of this Century gallery, NYC
Tara Donovan (American,
1969) Untitled (Plastic
cups), 2006, millions of
transparent plastic cups in a
tight grid, stacked into
curves and waves. (The
work is re-made each time
it is shown and can be
expanded or contracted to
fit the space.)
Tara Donovan, Untitled (Plastic Cups) 2000 installation
Tara Donovan, Untitled (Glass), 2006. Sheets of stacked tempered glass;
one corner of each pane is struck with a hammer and shattered into tiny
pieces that stay in place. “If you bump into this and knock a corner off it, it
can’t be repaired or remade with the same materials. It has to be made over
again.” When the show is over, "it gets taken away with a shovel.”
Tara Donovan, Untitled (Styrofoam cups), 2006 installation