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These Minimalist artists below all express simplicity through different mediums of art in order to accentuate them as keys to understanding the message of the integration of art into the environment. One thing they share in common despite their different mediums of communication is their message of deeper meaning within simplicity. Many of them accentuated the importance of position and bare aesthetic value, often utilizing the third-dimension to immerse the viewer into the environment of the art piece. Although many Minimalists might command to merely look without analyzing their art, it is apparent that a superficial gaze is far more difficult and that it goes against human nature, in which people tend to connect seemingly irrelevant occurrences and concepts. Although a paradox to explain their art, they still communicated a message of simplicity - one that impacted the art of the second half of the twentieth century.
Dan Flavin (1933- )
“One of the most significant developments in the twentieth-century art was the introduction of non-art materials as legitimate vehicles of expression. Dan Flavin’s forty-year exploitation of fluorescent light tubing is one of the most remarkable achievements in this long tradition. Using a minimum of means, he realizes a maximum of effect, as the incandescence of light is not merely depicted, but made into the physical subject of the work.” -Whitney
"One might not think of light as a matter of fact, but I do. And it is, as I said, as plain and open and direct an art as you will ever find." -Dan Flavin, 1987.
Click here to listen to an NPR report on Dan Flavin.
Donald Judd (1928-1994)
"No exploration of minimalism would be complete without considering the influence of American sculptor Judd (1928-94). His work--spare, boxlike structures in glowing colors, reflective materials, and natural wood--was elegant in its simplicity but challenging in its subtle variations and progressions of design." -Library Journal, Ilene Skeen, 6.15.2004
“Actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface.” -Donald Judd
"The main thing wrong with painting is that it is a rectangular plan placed flat against the wall. A rectangle is a shape itslef; it is obviously the whole shape; it determines and limits the arrangement of whatever is on or inside of it." -Donald Judd
Ellsworth Kelly (1923- )
Painter Ellsworth Kelly's works have always stood out from those of his contemporaries. While other painters struggle to integrate form and content into their works, Kelly has never found this task difficult. He not only reinvented European abstraction, he also developed a unique way of working that combined chance and recombination with an indexical tracing of motifs. Many of Kelly's best works were products of this technique. -Artform International, James Meyer, 10.1.96
"Look, try not to think. Just look.'' -Ellsworth Kelly
Sol LeWitt (1928 - )
“Sol LeWitt gives primacy to the originating idea of a work of art rather than to its execution. Seeking a way to escape the dominance of Abstract Expressionism—with its large-scale paintings and emotionally loaded brushwork—he began in the early 1960s to explore a new method of making art” […] “Based on the unit of an open rather than solid cube, the works peel away what he perceived as the decorative skin on traditional sculpture, revealing their underlying skeleton, or structure. Though he has created structures in a range of scales and shapes—the permutations growing more intricate over the last four decades—LeWitt has maintained the use of white cubes with a ratio of 1:8:5.” -Whitney
"Sol LeWitt is a minimalist by style and a conceptualist by inclination and faith. Between minimalism and conceptualism -- which in his work and in that of many other artists of his generation butted up against each other, overlapping to the point where they are by now often inseparable -- he created a new and a fresh art." -St. Luis Dispatch, David Bonetti, Visual Arts Critic 10.3.2004
Carl Andre (1935- )
"Andre defines the term 'Minimal' as he understands it, and the degree to which he accepts its applicability to himself as an artist who has 'drained and rid himself of the…cultural-burden that stands shadowing and eclipsing art…' The sculpture Andre constructs, within those terms, is clearly “minimalism—stripped down, purified. Following Brancusi’s lead, he transformed the traditional base or pedestal into a work of sculpture itself. But Andre carried his premises to an extreme by placing bricks, or even lower-profiled square sheets of metal, one by one, uniformly adjacent to each other, right on the floor by our feet. In these floor pieces, and in his bales of hay or rocks assembled out-of-doors, sculpture’s traditional vertical thrust became horizontal extension, for which his term 'sculpture as place' is appropriate." - Ellen H Johnson
"Matter matters" -Carl Andre
Click here to read an interview with Carl Andre on Minimalism
Click here to view a compilation by Carl Andre which contains criticism on his use of bricks.
Brice Marden (1938- )
In "Grove IV," one notices the spare, differently colored panels--all of which are free of any sign of brushstrokes. Often times, Marden used a spatula to smooth out the paint, which created the smooth surface seen in his paintings. Different from many other minimalist artists, Marden draws his inspiration from nature.
"The boons the New York art world bestows on its favorites have been lavished on Brice Marden. Good. He's earned them with his pictures, which are stately and entrancing and abstract and exact." –Washington Post, Paul Richard, Staff Writer . 5.30.1999
Frank Stella (1936- )
"Frank Stella’s declaration, 'My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there,' is a cornerstone of the minimalist doctrine. Equally important is Judd’s insistence on abolishing compositional arrangement of relational parts." - Ellen H. Johnson
"Stella brings more pictorial feeling from abstract art then anyone else alive" -Time
Click here to listen to an NPR interview with Frank Stella
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