Minimalism Conceptualism Post-Minimalism Robert Morris and

Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

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 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 2 x 4 wood painted gray, 1963. Morris theorized a “gestalt” all-at-once comprehension of the forms by the audience. The Morris Green Gallery installation marks the 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 his Sonnabend Gallery show, 1974 (right) I-Box, 1961 Neo-Dada, Duchampian mockery of Western modernism’s myths of the artist’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 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, 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. Minimalism (below) compare Jasper Johns, Flag, 1956 (in 1958 Castelli show) Proto-Pop

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

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, nonobjective, 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)

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

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 with “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

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. 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, 12 ft 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 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.

James Turrell (US, b. 1943) Spread, light installation, 2003 Los Angeles Light and Space Movement begun in the late 1960 s Not “conceptual” but “perceptual” http: //www. pbs. org/art 21/artists/turrell/clip 1. html#

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

Robert Irwin, 1234 Degree, openings cut 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 inches overall, Minimalism (right) compare influence: Frank Stella, Die Fahne Hoch, 1959, oil on canvas “non-relational” sculpture-painting

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 Le. Witt (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/05 lewi. html Holland Cotter (NYTimes) review of ongoing Lewitt show at Mass Mo. CA, opened in Spring, 2009

Sol Lewitt, Modular Open Cube Pieces (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 the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes the machine that makes the art. " Sol Le. Witt: "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 Le. Witt, 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 - Jews only - built up since 1967 on occupied land - The orange line is the line of wall under construction by Israel.

“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: 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, 62 in. H overall

Cildo Meireles (Brazil, b. 1948) in the early ’ 70 s

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/art 21/artists/nauman/clip 2. html# http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=6 x. Zskccr_Q 0

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 38 in. H 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

Eva Hesse, Rope Piece, 1979 “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. ”

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, 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. )

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