Minimalism, Conceptualism &
Post-Minimalism
“The sensuous object, resplendent with compressed internal
relations has had to be rejected.”
Robert Morris
April 3: No Quiz / Recommended reading: Michael Fried, “Art and
Objecthood” (excerpt); Sol Lewitt, “Sentences on Conceptual Art”;
Martha Rosler, “Statement,” available on “Readings” page of course
website
Robert Morris, and Carolee Schneeman, Site, 1964, performance, New York
(compare: below, left) Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863 (avant-garde icon)
Morris’s mask is by Jasper Johns
“art about art” at the beginning of the avant-garde
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.
Morris’s installation at the Green Gallery marks the effective advent of Minimal
Art
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 his Sonnabend Gallery show, 1974
(right) Robert Morris, I-Box, 1961
Neo-Dada, Duchampian, postmodernist parody of Western modernism’s myths
of the artist: masculine, original, individualist genius
(right) Linda Benglis, Artforum ad,
November 1974. This picture (a response
to Robert Morris’s self-portrait ad,
below), appeared as an ad for Benglis’s
show at the Paula Cooper Gallery.
First wave Feminism
Linda Benglis, Latex floor painting, 1969
Art in New York, said 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, oil on canvas, 122 X 73
inches. Minimalism / non-relational /
elimination of painterly touch/ repetitive/
preconceived
(below) compare Jasper Johns, Flag, 1956
(seen by Stella in a 1958 Castelli show)
Proto-Pop
What did Stella say about Johns’ Flag
paintings? (see Fineberg, p. 282)
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, Quathlamba, 1964, metallic powder in polymer emulsion, 6’5”
x 13’7”
Painting-sculpture (shaped canvas) to comprehend in a glance
Historical 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
A source for Frank Stella and Minimalism after 1960s
A square 'neutral, shapeless' canvas, five feet wide, five feet high, as
high as a man, as wide as a man's outstretched arms 'not large, not
small, sizeless', trisected 'no composition', one horizontal form
negating one vertical form 'formless, no top, no bottom,
directionless', three 'more or less' dark 'lightless' no- contrasting
'colorless' colors, brushwork brushed out to remove brushwork, a
matte, flat, freedhand painted surface 'glossless, textureless, nonlinear, no hard edge, no soft edge' which does not reflect its
surroundings; a pure, abstract, non-objective, timeless, spaceless,
changeless relationless, disinterested painting, an object that is selfconscious 'no unconsciousness' ideal, transcendent, aware of no
thing but art - absolutely no ‘anti-art.’
(Ad Reinhardt’s “rules” See Fineberg p. 282)
“The laying bare of oneself . . . is obscene.”
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
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
Agnes Martin in her studio, 1973
Agnes Martin, The Dark River, (detail right) o/c, 75” square, 1961
Platonic idealism, meditative practice of “joy” – the look of Minimalism but
with abstract “sublime” content intended by artist
Detail of The Dark River
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
Know Fineberg’s interpretation and Michael Fried’s thesis in “Art & Objecthood”
Studied philosophy at Columbia and earned an MA in art history
under Meyer Schapiro, Judd theorized his work in a 1965 essay,
“Specific Objects,” as “non-relational” objects that supersede the
traditions of painting and sculpture.
Untitled, 1967 Donald Judd
The essence of sculpture is its reliance on space: “a work can be as
powerful as it can be thought to be. . . . Actual space is intrinsically more
powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface… A work need only be
interesting”
(Donald Judd)
Theatricality and the “end” of Greenbergian modernism
Sotheby installation: (left), Donald Judd, Untitled, 1965, a stack of 10 stainless
steel and red fluorescent plexiglass units stacked vertically in 9-inch intervals
(right) Frank Stella, Nunca Pasa Nada, 1964, 110 x 220”, metallic powder in
polymer emulsion on canvas
Detail of a stacked sculpture
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 (b. 1939, US), Splashing, 1968, molten lead left to harden,
Leo Castelli warehouse. Action / Process Sculpture
(left) Richard Serra, One-Ton Prop, 1969
(right) installation, 1969 of Serra’s “prop” sculptures
Richard Serra, Tilted Arc, 12ft x 120 ft x 2.5 in, cor-ten steel, Federal Plaza,
NYC, 1981-1989, Site-specific commissioned public artwork
GSA = New York City General Services Administration
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 single heroic 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.
James Turrell (US, b. 1943) Spread, light installation, 2003
Los Angeles Light and Space Movement that began 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
Robert Irwin, 1234 Degree, openings cut
out of windows, MCA San Diego, 1997
“For me Utopia is tied to our ‘now’, to the moment between one second and the next.”
Olafur Eliasson, Your Blind Passage, 2010, 90-metre-long tunnel in which viewer’s
body is surrounded by dense fog. With visibility at just 1.5 metres, alertness of other
senses than sight are needed to orient oneself.
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: geometic repetition of equal units preconceived
Ann walking on a Carl 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 (American Minimalist Conceptual Artist, 1928-2007) Floor Structure
Black, 1965, painted wood, 18 ½ x 18 x 82 in. Modular “structures” (not
sculptures) originating from the cube.
“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 > Conceptual Art)
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/12/05/arts/1205-LEWI_index.html
Images from ongoing Lewitt show at Mass MoCA, opened in Spring, 2009, will be on view 8 years
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, 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 performance art
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
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
up to 2007- Jews only - built
up since 1967 on occupied
land
- The orange line is the line of
wall under construction by
Israel.
Francis Alÿs, When Faith Moves Mountains, video performance, 2002, 500
people, dressed in white shirts and jeans took up shovels in Lima to move a
sand dune ten centimeters / http://youtu.be/4eNuqLnFaYA more videos:
http://www.francisalys.com/
“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
Joseph Kosuth (US, b. 1945) One and Three Chairs, installation, 1965
Conceptualism. Tautology / hermetic art about art
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, b. 1948) in the early ’70s
Cildo Meireles, Insertions into ideological Circuits: Bank Note Project (Who
Killed Herzog?) 1970, rubber stamp and bank note. Shown in the Museum of
Modern Art, NYC exhibition, Information, 1970
Cildo Meireles, Insertions into ideological Circuits:1. Coca-Cola Project, 1970
printed stickers on Coca-Cola bottles, dimensions variable, collection the
artist
“The way I conceived it, the Insertions would only exist to the extent
that they ceased to be the work of just one person. The work only
exists to the extent that other people participate in it. What also arises
is the need for anonymity. By extension, the question of anonymity
involves the question of ownership. When the object of art becomes a
practice, it becomes something over which you can have no control or
ownership.”
(Cildo Meireles)
Bruce Nauman (US, b. 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.”
MFA from the University of California, Davis in 1966.
Bruce Nauman (US 1941) (left) Wax Impressions of the Knees of Five Famous
Artists, 1966, fiberglass and polyester resin (not wax), 15 5/8 in. x 85 1/4 in. x
2 3/4 in. Collection SFMOMA . Knee impressions are all Nauman’s
(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 on Bruce Nauman’s viewers, 2009
Bruce Nauman, Art Makeup, White, Black, Pink, Green, 1967-8, performance
video stills
http://www.vdb.org/smackn.acgi$artistdetail?NAUMANB
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.
Bruce Nauman video clips:
Art 21 and Venice Biennale, 2009
http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/nauman/clip2.html#
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xZskccr_Q0
Eva Hesse (American b. Germany, 1936-1970, 34 years), Metronomic
Irregularity, 1966. Post-Minimalism
Eva Hesse, notebook page, 1965-66
(right), Hesse, 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
(botttom) 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 began working with fabricators in 1968
Artist was diagnosed with brain
tumor in 1969
Eva Hesse, 1970. Fiberglass over polyethylene over aluminum wire.
7 units each 78 in. x 40 in. Berkeley: University Art Museum
Eva Hesse, Rope Piece, 1970
“I remember I wanted to get to non art, non
connotative, 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?
It’s all in that.”
Hesse with
Rope Piece,
studio
installation,
1970
Compare Eva Hesse, Rope Piece, 1970, 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,
b. 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.)
This can be called PostMinimal. Why?
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