Post-Minimalism

• think of minimalism as an approach/position instead of a unified style
• approaching making art at a transitional period (high modernism & post modernism)
• Sol LeWitt (entirety of defining a cube) refusal to gloss over anything, impossible project

untitled (L-beams)- robert morris
1965, 8x8x2 ft
originally plywood
highlight absurdity of art making & romanticizing artist in studio
highlight structure of exhibition by making things large that it's hard to walk around
visually looks the same as the other minimal objects
michael fried calls out as being theatrical, relies on viewer's interaction to garner meaning

untitled (pink felt)- robert morris
1970
let it fall as it falls
material defining the structure?
playing the same game as nauman; taking out the mystery & romanticism; de-mystify

• greenberg defined good art as a medium being what it is; he romanticized the artist

untitled (scatter piece)- robert morris
1968-69
drawing attention to/reinterprets the space
pointing out the architecture/structures that make artwork visible
intentionally annoying, are we supposed to walk through it?

• dialectic: the art of investigating or discussing the truth of opinions; looking at the 2 extremes existing in same space- they need each other; contradiction in terms/existence

what's the point of art? make you think & feel, something to look at; exists to facilitate & frame conversation

• artwork used to be seen in domestic setting but abstract work got larger & necessitated a new exhibition space w big, new, white walls

richard serra throwing molten lead for "splashing" piece
1968/1995
low boiling point so easily melted & thrown
"pollack" expressionism

product of ^: 

gutter corner splash/night shift
once cool, takes them down

one ton prop (house of cards)- richard serra
one ton of metal, balanced
playing w minimalist cube
1969, 48x48x1 in
uber masculine (material, weight, entirety of his practice,
"ejaculation of material", claiming of space)

verbalist
list of ways to make art- richard serra
different verbs

• post minimalism opens back up the style/ways to make artwork; inclusive

wing- lynda benglis
some kind of foam poured over wire meshed form
built on site, large in scale, architectural

ingeminate- eva hesse
1965
each balloon 56 cm

hang-up- eva hesse

accession 11- eva hesse
strong internality
metal coming out inside of cube
metal but looks soft
strong inside/outside
playing w the idea of minimalist cube
accession: a new item added to an existing collection of books, paintings, or artifacts-
perhaps referring to adding yet another cube/square into"minimalism"

asphalt rundown- robert smithson
1969, rome, italy
exists in the earth
contradiction in materiality

spiral jetty- robert smithson
great salt lake, utah
1970
existing in geological time, eventually erode away

following- vito acconci
randomly selected & followed individual passersby
in New York City, followed until the person entered a building

trademarks- vito acconci
markmaking inherit to him (biting himself)

transfixed- chris burden

self portrait as fountain- bruce nauman
1966

from hand to mouth- bruce nauman
1967
literal

Readings: Bruce Nauman- Hal Foster; The Kimbell's new Modigliani; Michelle White on "Between Land and Sea"

BRUCE NAUMAN- HAL FOSTER

• 1917: Marcel Duchamp- "art is whatever the artist names as such"

Bruce Nauman:

-"art was whatever an artist did in his studio"
-"art became more of an activity and less of a product"
-"failure is a persistent theme in Nauman"
-"relies on his own body, his presence is not guaranteed"/ "'withdrawal as an art form'"
-Retrospective @ MoMA "Disappearing Acts"- absence is conveyed
-favorite stand in for the figure = chair
-concern w "'underside and backside of things'" = central to early work =saw humanity as "steeped in misunderstanding and cruelty...aims to humanise us through the bits of our being that often seem the most inhuman"

1960s: Nauman, Serra, Hesse stressed process over product (led them to Jasper Johns)

-what they got from Johns:
   "foregrounded art as making...used simple devices like stencils and rulers"
   "'sometimes it's necessary to state the obvious'"/"meaning is never simple"
-Johns led Nauman to Duchamp (casts parts of the body)
   "there's a kind of restraint and morality in Johns' that [Nauman] admired" --> "transformed this sufferance into resistance: 'doing things you don't particularly want to do...to find out why you're resisting'" --> studio = stage for psyche turned inside out

• Nauman's motivation: anger & frustration... 1970s: work took on violent edge, "locates this aggression in humour and sexuality"
• early 1970s: "period of neo-imperial adventures under Reagan and Thatcher and authoriarian crackdowns" --> work w steel cages, claustrophobic corridors... oppressive sense of discipline and punishment, security and surveillance" --> shows thin line btwn perceptual experiment & behaviourist manipulation 

-psychic, political, technological, scientific = "all rooted in a fundamental splitting of the self"
-"our mirror image...is actually divided and alien, and that narcissism easily flips into aggression"

Video art
Rosalind Krauss: "aesthetics of narcissism"
Nauman: saw relay btwn camera & monitor, self and image as delayed & sometimes broken; explored breaking up of body & ego
compare to pollack's action & horizontal canvas- he dances around the canvas

• theatre of cruelty: "impotence triggers violence in a nihilistic way"

In class discussion: 

-action vs. performance

• Nauman's "Dance or exercise on the perimeter of a square"

-making a bad joke calling it square dance

-repetition & geometry

-Nauman has a studio & instead of just making art, he says anything he does in the studio is art (illogical step) --> creates possibility & a situation in which almost anything can be art, pushing boundaries, makes things visible as art

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THE KIMBELL'S NEW MODIGLIANI

Kimbell Art Museum director: Eric Lee 

• Kimbell’s recent acquisition of a rare Amadeo Modigliani sculpture, Head (c. 1913)

-only about 27 Modigliani sculptures survive

-gift from collector Gwendolyn Weiner

-first modern sculpture in the Kimbell’s collection

-round & elongated forms/heads (moved back & forth btwn the 2 styles)

-strong link btwn ivory coast work & Modigliani work (roundness)

-in addition to african masks, Modigliani looked at cycladic, greek, egyptian art

-resemblance to celtic head

-jacques lipschitz (about Modigliani): "taken w the notion that sculpture was sick...too much modeling in clay, too much mud... start carving again, direct carving in stone"

-chisel marks all over the sculpture, "look like three dimensional brushstrokes of cezanne"

-"stone itself made very little difference, the important thing was to give the carved stone the feeling of hardness"

-known as a painter now but considers himself a sculptor

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MICHELLE WHITE ON "BETWEEN LAND AND SEA"

• Michelle White's Menil exhibition “Between Land and Sea: Artists of the Coenties Slip”

-"looks at the early work of Chryssa, Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, Lenore Tawney, and Jack Youngerman, all of whom who lived in the Coenties Slip...neighborhood set apart from the rest of the Manhattan art world"

-considers moments of communication and influence

-Coenties Slip: lower seaport of lower Manhattan

-why did so many artists congregate there? it was removed & away from midtown & heterosexual environment; remove self from more mainstream trends & abstraction

-these artists were looking to natural world to derive abstraction; instead of removing nature, they were bringing it back in

teasel- Ellsworth Kelly, 1949

seaweed- lenore tawney, 1961
fiberwork
articulating aquatic plants by drawing w thread

horizon- agnes martin, 1960
language of landscape
tension btwn abstraction & representation
mountain-like forms

Rochetaillée- Jack Youngerman, 1953
light reflecting off the side of a rocky cliff
made in paris

rouleau blue- ellsworth kelly, 1951

• deriving abstract forms from looking out at the world

untitled- jack youngerman, 1955
tension btwn abstraction & figuration
natural forms seeping in

tablet #65- ellsworth kelly, 1960s

• images of brooklyn bridge; most of the artists' studios have view of the ocean & bridge

tablet #213- ellsworth kelly, 1950s

• document of tracing the origins of kelly's abstract paintings; forms are already invented & he's just seeking it out in the world

small white letters- chryssa
spent time w agnes martin
about how light moves across the surface
light reflecting off of water as an influence?

cycladic book no. 5- chryssa, 1955
white tablets

compare to:

the book- agnes martin, 1959
white forms seen as a book but also holes in brooklyn bridge

compare to:

coenties slip- robert indiana, 1960

GOG- robert indiana, 1960
came across brass stencils

gingko- robert indiana, 1959
gesso on board
gingko leaves
about relationship w ellsworth kelly

Minimalism (the Minimal Field- Art and Polemics in the 1960s)

die fahne hoch (raise high the flag)- frank stella
1959

six mile bottom- frank stella
1960, 118x71 in.
not a rectangle, not a black square in the middle- it's a hole
lines = raw canvas showing through, the grey/white = paint
shows you exactly how it's made by copying/responding to the shape of the canvas,
doesn't transcend it, lend itself to copying, to a lesser approach
what would greenberg say about this: lacks expressive quality that elevates it

-frank stella uses very thick canvas= 3 1/2- 4 inches off the wall
-changes how you interact w it in space
-uncomfortable amount of space btwn painting & wall --> first steps of painting becoming an object
-depth pushes it from painting

donald judd:

-he doesn't make his own object, fabricators make it w his specifications

-based on own logic of construction
-designed minimalist furniture

• judd coming out of abstract expressionist painting, what's he taking from it?

-paint on a surface, paint acts as paint
-industrial materials
-more non-objective works bc nothing is representational; it is what it is
-big, american scale

chose just one color & painted everything that color

neither painting nor a sculpture
extreme formal elements

day bed- donald judd
furniture may look like sculpture &
the sculpture might look like furniture to confuse the "line"

clean & well integrated artwork in his living space
(but he was a slob & there's no dresser)
how does the minimalism of the room integrate w living? ignores the down & dirty

• sculptures used to be on pedestals but judd takes that away & puts things flat on the ground or on the wall
• primary structures exhibit: marker in art history

primary structures exhibit dress

robert morris

box for standing- robert morris
structure that mimics an upright coffin, he fits just right in it
sculptural (existing in space) but not sculpture
background in theatre; can build props= marriage btwn theatre & art
exists in time like a performance
continuously creates theatrical interactions

green gallery show- robert morris, 1964
objects activate/highlight the space
triangle for the corner
less of distinct objects/sculptures
don't exist in the language of sculpture, not individualized
dependent on the space
all one color, like judd

• michael fried: if the idea is that the artist curates how the viewer sees/interacts w the work, then the artwork stops existing once viewer is not there; accuses minimalism of being theatrical
• minimalism isn't necessarily geometric shapes but it is industrial in nature, color is inherent, new materials, big, depends on/curates viewers

lever- carl andre
bricks in a straight line coming out of the wall
primary structures
ties back to architecture
creates a low boundary
texture, color, logic of structure is inherent to material

12th copper corner- andre
steel slats in the corner
curates how you move through the space (whether you walk on it or walk around it)

• when andre had his first international exhibit in london, the critics had a field day. they went to construction sites & compared his work w bricks there. the thing is that andre is still artful w his work. he puts it together in a certain way & they are all the same colors & purposeful
• avant-garde practice: making things that are invisible, visible; making things that are unknowable, knowable
• minimal work calls attention to the power of the exhibition space

Sol LeWitt:

• LeWitt's buildings cubes

-how many ways can you go about it

-challenging to look at & understand; cool & detached

-thinking about logical conclusions & seriality, taking it as far as he can

• LeWitt's wall drawings

-instructions on how to create the wall drawings & the curator/whoever has it follows the instructions

-looks different every time

-dependent on the person putting it up

-removes himself from the construction

Dan Flavin:

-sees himself as painter making paintings out of light/industrial materials

-judd sees these as objects

-using architectural spaces (corners, hallways)

Anne Truitt:

-doesn't fit into minimalism, post-painterly abstraction, post-minimal painting

-refers to every she makes as a painting even if it's 3D

-someone would fabricate her works & she would gesso & sand them down & put layers of acrylic paint until she had exactly what she wanted

-colors aren't inherit to material like in minimalism, she chose the colors & added on top

allusion of representational

watagua- anne truitt

• by putting her in minimalism, it recomplicates minimalism