The majority of Minimalist artists work with simple geometric figures. Squares or cubes are often used as they are considered ideal because of their identical side lengths. The objects are related to the room in a natural way, situated parallel to the walls and the grain. The material itself is hardly processed by the artist as it is mostly automatically prefabricated and standardized. So it already meets the minimum requirements for a sculpture, namely spatiality, mass and material1, and only in a few cases the artist exceeds this minimum. Another essential aspect is the critical stance of Minimalists towards art in general and towards traditional galleries in particular, which becomes visible for instance by the unwieldy objects that seem totally oversized for small exhibition rooms.
Protagonists of the Minimalist Movement
Minimalism is considered mainly an American phenomenon, although its historical development is not limited to the USA. However, in art and music only Americans are considered to be the most important representatives, mostly working in New York. To be more precise, in Minimal Art mainly the five artists Carl Andre (born in Massachusetts in 1935), Dan Flavin (born in Jamaica, NY, in 1933; died in Riverhead, NY, in 1996), Donald Judd (born in Missouri in 1928; died in New York in 1994), Sol LeWitt (born in Connecticut in 1928; died there in 2007) and Robert Morris (born in Kansas City in 1931) are worth mentioning. The representativesof Minimal Music are Philip Glass (born in Baltimore in 1937), Steve Reich (born in New York in 1936), Terry Riley (born in California in 1935) and La Monte Young (born in Idaho in 1935). Nevertheless, the classification of their works was not suggested by themselves but, as is often the case, by art and music critics. The term Minimal Art appears for the first time in Richard Wollheim’s essay with this very title. As for Minimal Music, however, it is unclear whether the concept was first used to name the Minimalist movement by Michael Nyman (born in London in 1944) in 1968 or by Tom Johnson (born in Colorado in 1939) in 1972.3 Some artists were opposed to subsuming the different approaches under the concept of Minimalism. According to Steve Reich such a musical label does not have a positive impact on musical thinking for it mostly determines who the artist is and defines him. This is what a composer wants to avoid at all costs because he wants to become part of something unknown.
History of Minimal Art
Although in 1967 such an attentive critic as Lucy Lippart helplessly explained that Minimalism was a virgin birth5 the idea of radical reduction as the basic principle of minimal concepts did not emerge with Minimal Art but was already used by Kasimir Malevich in Suprematism around 1912. Malevich’s Black Square on White Ground (1913) exemplifies the reduction of elements to a basic quadratic form, seeming to be detached from the picture itself. There are also concrete analogies with Russian Constructivism in the early 1920s, considering for instance Vladimir Tatlin (born in Moscow in 1885; died therein 1953) and Alexander Rodtschenko (born in St. Petersburg in 1891; died in
Moscow in 1956) who wanted to integrate industrial production into an artistic environment. Further approaches, though not so much in an aesthetic but in a more conceptual way, were taken by Marcel Duchamp (born in Blainville-Creon in 1887; died near Paris in 1968) who provoked a far-reaching scandal in the art world with his Readymades already in 1914. In Duchamp’s view the definition of art should include the selection of materials used. Following this definition, he simply exhibits
a urinal named Fountain in a museum. The reduction of his artistic work
reveals clear parallels to Minimal Art and especially Duchamp’s art criticism is very closely tied to Minimalism. However, at a closer look slight differences can be found. Duchamp tries to convert the existing conventions in the art world into subjects of irony, whereas Minimal Art aims at revolutionising them. The art historian Irving Sandler, too, describes it as an art that is exclusively created to criticise art, without any other purpose.6 This intended possibility of Non-Art holds also true for Pop Art, emerging at the same time as Minimalist approaches
to art in around 1962. Yet, only from 1965 onwards attention is drawn
to Minimal Art in larger exhibitions in New York. While Pop Art elevates objects of mass culture to objects of art, this concept is totally rejected in Minimal Art. Contrary to contemplating previous movements that had an impact on Minimal Art, it does not appear reasonable to go into detail concerning the history of Minimal Art itself at this point, as conventional art chronologies do not live up to the expectations of a differentiated discussion of this topic. In this context, the art critic Peter Schjeldahl is worth mentioning who is of the opinion that the history of Minimal Art cannot yet be written as it is still not finished.7 This remarkdating from the year 1984 is still true and confirmed by the fact that, above all,formal criteria of Minimal Art are still applied in architecture and design. By contrast, Minimal Music has had a relatively low impact on comparable movements in other fields.
1 Lippert, Werner: 1965. Fragmente einer Reise durch die Kunst. 1975. In: Kunsthalle
Bielefeld (ed.), Concept Art, Minimal Art, Arte Povera, Land Art. Marzona
Collection. Bielefeld 1990, p. 29.
2 Urmetzer, Reinhold: Abschied von der Kopfmusik. In: NZ 12/1984, p. 18.
3 Schaefer, John: New Sounds. A Listener’s Guide to New Music. New York 1987,
p. 64.
4 Lovisa, Fabian R.: minimal-music. Darmstadt 1996, p. 15.
5 Stemmrich, Gregor (ed.): Minimal Art. Eine kritische Retrospektive. Dresden/
Basel 1995, p. 559.
6 Gibson, Eric: Was Minimalist art a political movement? In: The New Criterion,
Vol. 5, No. 9, May 1987, p. 63.
7 Schjeldahl, Peter: Minimalism. In: Art of Our Time: The Saatchi Collection, Vol. 1.
New York 1984, p. 17.
8 Adorno, Theodor W.: Philosophie der neuen Musik. Frankfurt am Main 1976,
p. 46.
9 Glaser, Bruce: Questions to Stella and Judd. In: Art News, Vol. 65, No. 5, September
1966, p. 58.
10 Heere, Heribert: Ad Reinhardt und die Tradition der Moderne. Frankfurt am
Main 1986, p. 44.
11 Schwarz, K. Robert: Minimalists. London 1996, p. 9.
12 Schoenberg, Arnold: Probleme des Kunstunterrichts. In: Musikalisches Taschenbuch
1911, Vol. 2., Vienna 1911.
13 Gibson, Eric: Was Minimalist art a political movement? In: The New Criterion,
Vol. 5, No. 9, May 1987, p. 63.
Text From:CHRISTIAN SCHREI,MINIMAL
