Minimalism: Encyclopedia II - Minimalism - Minimalism in visual art

Minimalism - Minimalism in visual art

A minimalist painting, for example, will typically use a limited number of colors, and have a simple geometric design. Minimalist sculpture on the other hand is greatly focused on the materials (see David Smith and Donald Judd). While many believe minimalism to be a movement specific to geometric representations, it extends far outside this constraint.

There were three notable phases of the minimalist movement:

First the distillation of the forms wherein the greatest contributors were probably the Russian Constructivists and the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuşi. The Russian Constructivists proclaiming the distillation was in order to create a universal language of art which the masses were meant to understand. It may have also supported the rapid industrialization planned for the massive country. Brâncuşi's work was much more of a search for the purity of the form and thus paved the way for the abstractions that were to come, such as minimalism.

The second (and most notable) phase in the movement came with artists including Carl Andre, Anne Truitt, Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt, Frank Stella, Donald Judd, Ad Reinhardt and Robert Smithson. It commenced in 1964 with the exhibition of Dan Flavin's 'Monument for V Tatlin' which was an assembly of neon lighting tubes. The tubes had not been modified in any way by the artist, merely arranged. The assembly did not signify anything other than itself. It simply existed. These 1960s artists were anti-Romantic. They very explicitly stated that their art was not self-expression, in complete opposition to the previous decade's Abstract Expressionists. Very soon they created a minimal style, whose features included: rectangular and cubic forms purged of all metaphor, equality of parts, repetition, neutral surfaces, industrial materials, all of which leads to immediate visual impact. Later minimal sculptors included Tony Smith, Larry Bell and John McCracken.

Ad Reinhardt summed up the style in these terms: 'The more stuff in it, the busier the work of art, the worse it is. More is less. Less is more. The eye is a menace to clear sight. The laying bare of oneself is obscene. Art begins with the getting rid of nature.'

This style was heavily criticised. It was called futile, mechanistic, mandarin, elitist, circular, pedantic and authoritarian. Some critics thought they were dealing with outright fraud.

Also notable are the post-minimalists, including Martin Puryear, Tyrone Mirchell, Melvin Edwards and Joel Shapiro. The keystone of post-minimalism is the often distinct references to objects without direct representation. This has become a predominant trend in modern sculpture.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Minimalism in visual art", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki