"It isn't necessary for a work to have lots of things to look at, to compare, to analyse, one by one, to contemplate. The thing as a whole, its qualities as a whole is what is interesting"……………Donald Judd in Stangos p252
Minimalism………arguably, the most problematic art for viewers.
Indeed the word Minimalism was problematic for the artists themselves, who, when Richard Wollheim coined the word in his essay of 1965, denied its existence. Other names had been mooted at the time and since; ABC Art, Rejective Art, Art of Circumstance, Objecthood, Reductivism, Neo Modernism, High Modernism & Literalism but it was Minimalism which remained firm.
It was in 1963 when artists such as Frank Stella, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt and Robert Morris commenced their new art. All centred in New York, they had become critical of "the exuberance and self- celebration of Abstract Expressionism". Critical of how "industry controlled the aesthetic physics of objects to a degree that no artist could, and they resorted to industrial fabrication in order to avail themselves of that control".
Not every one agreed. "Clement Greenburg and Michael Fried, for example, argued that this art was exactly at odds with the achievement of high modernism."
Whereas Rosalind Krauss found it convincing and eloquent, other critics have been on opposite sides of the fence in their analysis.
Small wonder it's been problematic for viewers.
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Works in order:
Die Fahne Hoch, Frank Stella, 1959
Equivalents 1 V111, Carl Andre, 1966
Copper, Enamel and Aluminium, Donald Judd, 1972
Two Open Modular Cubes, Sol LeWitt, 1972
Untitled, Dan Flavin, 1971
Accession II, Eva Hesse, 1967
Let us look at some of these works; what do they all seem to have in common? Rectangular or cubic, three dimensional (except Stella), they were arranged objects (not fixed together), lacking the plinth of a sculptural piece, industrial, all made to react with the gallery audience, all relating to consumerism, some relating to ready-mades and Duchamp, some to Brancusi, Flavin using fluorescent lighting tubes.
The artists themselves refused to call them sculpture but preferred names like "structure proposals" or just simply "objects". Because they particularly did not want an association to their work by label, many were just titled "Untitled".
There were really no rules, just that the artists thought traditional painting and sculpture as such was finished, it was time for them, to make a new art, a non-art. Time for the audience to have nothing to dwell on, no hidden meanings.
The man who really started this chain of thought was Frank Stella. He was painting, but in such a manner to make the viewer come out of the painting, not to hold their attention. His several works in grey, because he thought grey was a non-colour, had this effect, painted to the edge of the canvas, there was nothing to hold the viewer, the lines of bare canvas remaining, took your eye out of any picture.
Frank Stella's statement at the time was very significant, here are excerpts:
"I found, however, that I not only got tired of looking at my own paintings but that I also didn't like painting them at all. The painterly problems of what to put here and there and how to make it go with what was already there became more and more difficult and the solutions more and more unsatisfactory. Until it became obvious that there had to be a better way."
He went on to say he needed to face the two spatial and methodological problems and concluded: "The obvious answer was symmetry - make it the same all over."
And: "This was done by using the house painter's techniques and tools."
So here we have a pretty honest statement, coupled with Donald Judd's opening statement, it tells us many things about the artist's ideologies at the time.
The work first came to the attention of the British Public in 1976, when the Tate Gallery purchased 'Equivalents 1 V111 1966', Carl Andre's rectangle of 120 firebricks.
The popular press at the time had a field day. The debate of 'is it art?' continued for weeks. Public spending was questioned, but it achieved one good purpose in my opinion, it brought art into the limelight for a while as has Brit Art and the Turner Prize on many occasions since.
The other work illustrated which bears difference, is that by Eva Hesse.
Hesse had two significances; she came into what had previously been a male domain, and she moved Minimalism forward by exploring the movement's fetishness with surfaces and systems.
Her Accession II (1967) had obvious bodily connotations. The hand made thousands of threaded plastics tubes within the cube alluding to feminism, the vagina, entrapment.
But Hesse often stressed: 'Absurdity was often her most pressing theme'
In 1996, Carl Andre said "Perhaps I am the bones and the body of sculpture and perhaps Richard Serra is the muscle, but Eva Hesse is the brain and the nervous system extending far into the future" . Such a tribute to Eva Hesse some two decades after her death illustrates her influence.
"It isn't necessary for a work to have lots of things to look at, to compare, to analyse, one by one, to contemplate. The thing as a whole, its qualities as a whole is what is interesting"…………. Donald Judd in Stangos p252
Donald Judd remained true to his beliefs, moving later in his life to Marfa, Texas, and moving into furniture design and architecture. He acquired buildings to exhibit his work and that of many pieces collected over the years of his contemporaries.
Jacqueline Rose wrote: "Judd's rejection of illusionism is deeply rooted in the pragmatic tenet that truth to facts is an ethical value. For Judd, illusionism is close to immorality because it falsifies reality"
Therefore one can understand much the basis for Minimalism. All previous art was some form of illusion, an affront to the truth for Judd. For Stella it was "it became obvious that there had to be a better way", referring to Abstract Expressionist painting.
His famous quote "What you see is what you see"' being his intention.
But in spite of the artists intentions and their many writings on the same, it is curious how people still read hidden meanings within the work.
Anna Chave wrote in 1990: "Flavin's diagonal ….is clearly phallic, alluding to the characteristic angle of an erect penis on a standing man; Andre's Lever…..offers a schematic image of coitus; Stella's black paintings are like those bolts of fine pinstriped wool flannel used to make suits of bankers, executives and politicians; Noland's compositions are like military emblems; and Judd's repeated geometric forms relate to Albert Speer's Nuremberg Parade Ground" (Minimalism, page 70)
The time period for Minimalism was very significant. The artists at the time were very left wing. So Leftist presumptions, deconstructive techniques and accusations have all followed the artists since their work.
Minimalism was close to disenchanted countercultures, it was rebellious as was Dada in its time.
There has been speculation that Stella's Die Fahne Hoche (1959), translated means "Raise the Flag", a Nazi marching song phrase, is reference to Fascism.
But surely that is one of its conceptions; its relationship with an audience, the art is only art within its gallery environment. It was intended to elicit an intellectual response from the viewer rather than an emotional one.
The movement ran for about 12 years, 1963 to 1975, it was a phenomenal time for art in America. Pop Art, Assemblage, New Realism, Environments and Happenings, Post-Painterly Abstraction, Op, Kinetic and Light Art all commenced before it and ran concurrent until these movement finished around 1970. Whilst Conceptualism, Performance, Art Povera (Italy), Process Art, Earth and Land Art, Photorealism/Hyper Realism all commenced just after Minimalism and most running a longer term.
But was Minimalism new? Andre was very influenced by his visit to Stonehenge and Avebury in 1954. The earliest paintings were not on canvas or stone tablets but cave drawings. Early art was piles of repetitive stones.
Or was Flavin influenced by Malevich's Black Square (1915)?
Whereas were Judd, LeWitt and Morris influenced by Duchamp's readymades with their industrial processes?
It could be said the roots of Minimalism are much older than 1960.
But what a significant contribution Minimalism made to Art. It can be seen just about everywhere today; Architecture, Industrial Design, Music, Poetry, Literature, Interiors, Illustration and of course it is not lost to the art world.
It is still a reference for many works nowadays such as Damian Hirst's shark suspended in formalin, 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' (1991)
To conclude, looking back, one can understand the opposite views of critics at the time. It was revolutionary, a non-art theory, by its rebelliousness it had roots in Dada, perhaps roots from the stone age.
The critics made many opposing views, sensible, logical………and in their own way, by their thesis, they were all correct.
Minimalism was all of these things
Bibliography:
Books:
Baker K. Minimalism, Art of Circumstance, NY 1988
Batchelor D. Minimalism, Tate Gallery publication, London 1997
Harrison C. & Wood P, Art in Theory 1900-2000, England 2003
Hopkins D, After Modern Art, Oxford University Press, 2000
Thames & Hudson, Art Since 1960, London, 2002
Web Sites:
www.caarviews.org/reviews/meyer.html
www.caarviews.org/reviews/meyer2.html
www.artic.edu/saive/art/vap/archives/artist/artist.html?artist=40
(video from Maximum Import 9/12/01. The legacy of Minimalism lecture series - David Batchelor at the Arts Institute of Chicago.)