Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

1. Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism “The sensuous object, resplendent with compressed internal relations has had to be rejected.” Robert Morris

2. 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

3. 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 Green Gallery installation marks the effective advent of Minimalism

4. 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.

5. Robert Morris, (left) Poster for his Sonnabend Gallery show, 1974 (right) Robert Morris, I-Box, 1961Neo-Dada, Duchampian, postmodernist parody of Western modernism’s myths of the artist: masculine, original, individualist genius

6. (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

7. 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?

8. Frank Stella (US, b. 1936) (right) Die Fahne Hoch!, 1959, oil on canvas, 122 X 73 inches. Minimalism / non-relational / elimination of painterly touch(below) compare Jasper Johns, Flag, 1956 (in 1958 Castelli show)Proto-Pop

9. Frank Stella, The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, II. 1959enamel 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)

10. Frank Stella, Quathlamba, 1964, metallic powder in polymer emulsion, 6’5” x 13’7”Painting-sculpture (shaped canvas) to comprehend in a glance

11. Historical sources for Minimalism (left) Barnett Newman with Cathedra, 1958 Abstract Expressionist “Sublime” (right) Kasimir Malevich, Russian Suprematism, White on White, o/c, 1918

12. Ad Reinhardt (US, 1907-1967), Painting, 1954-58, 78 x 78 in, Oil on canvas A source for Frank Stella and Minimalism after 1960s

13. 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, non-linear, 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 self-conscious 'no unconsciousness' ideal, transcendent, aware of no thing but art - absolutely no ‘anti-art.’ (Ad Reinhardt)

14. 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

15. Humility, the beautiful daughterShe cannot do either right or wrongShe does not do anythingAll of her ways are emptyInfinitely light and delicateShe treads an even path.Sweet, smiling, uninterrupted, free. . . . Agnes Martin 1973 Agnes Martin in her studio, 1973

16. Agnes Martin, The Dark River, (detail right) o/c, 75” square, 1961Platonic idealism, meditative practice of “joy” – the look of Minimalism with “sublime” content intended by artist Detail of The Dark River

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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

22. Richard Serra (b. 1939, US), Splashing, 1968, molten lead left to harden, Leo Castelli warehouse. Action / Process Sculpture

23. (left) RichardSerra, One-Ton Prop, 1969(right) installation, 1969 of Serra’s “prop” sculptures

24. 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

25. GSA = New York City General Services Administration

26. Document from legal battle to retain sculpture Federal Plaza before (above) and after (below) removal of Tilted Arc with planters and benches

27. 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.

29. 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.

31. For his exhibition Agua Caliente/Hot Water, the Spanish artist Carlos Rodríguez-Méndez (Pontevedra, 1968) installed a gigantic minimal sculpture in the Kunst Nu room at S.M.A.K. (Ghent). It comprises thirty-nine huge white PVC tubes, each thirty-five metres long, which are literally stuffed into the room. Each tube is filled with five litres of vegetable oil, and in the course of the exhibition this will gradually begin to leak out. March 2011 – Postminimalism

32. Agua Caliente/Hot Water, Carlos Rodríguez-Méndez, 2011, S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium

34. James Turrell (US, b. 1943) Spread, light installation, 2003Los Angeles Light and Space Movement begun in the late 1960sNot “conceptual” but “perceptual”http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/turrell/clip1.html#

35. Robert Irwin (US, b. 1928), Untitled, acrylic disks and light, 1969Los Angeles Light and Space Movement

36. Robert Irwin, Disk 2, 1967

37. Robert Irwin, 1234 Degree, openings cut out of windows, MCA San Diego, 1997

38. 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. Copenhagen, UTOPIA series, 2010-11 http://www.arken.dk/ “For me Utopia is tied to our ‘now’, to the moment between one second and the next.” 

39. 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

40. Walking on a Carl Andre sculpture at the Beaubourg, Paris, 2005

41. Carl Andre, (left) Twelve Copper Corner, 1975; (right) Seven Steel Row, 1975Brancusi, (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)

42. 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/2008/12/05/arts/design/05lewi.html Holland Cotter (NYTimes) review of ongoing Lewitt show at Mass MoCA, opened in Spring, 2009

43. Sol Lewitt, Modular Open Cube Pieces(9 x 9 x 9) Floor/Corner 2 (Corner Piece), 1976

44. 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

45. 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.

46. Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing No. 681 C / A, 1993Instructions: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.

47. 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

48. 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

49. 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."

50. Map showing the real Green Line and the politics of Alÿs’ poetic (aesthetic) artwork, Green LineThe 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.