History

Without a doubt, the 1960s and 1970s were decades of change. The struggles for civil rights and the Vietnam War overseas contributed to a certain feeling of uncertainty. Although the following passage from The American Pageant emphasizes the social aspects of the youth culture in 1960s, it serves as an example to the overall rebellious and changing atmosphere of the 1960s:

The struggles of the 1960s against racism, poverty, and the war in Vietnam had momentous cultural consequences. The decade came to be seen as a watershed dividing two distinct eras in terms of values, morals, and behavior.

Everywhere in 1960s American a newly negative attitude toward all kinds of authority took hold. Disillusioned by the discovery that American society was not free of racism, sexism, imperialism, and oppression, many young people lost their traditional moral rudders. Neither families nor churches nor schools seemed to be able to define values and shape behavior with the certainty of shared purpose that many people believed had once existed. The upheaval even churned tradition-bound Roman Catholic church, among the world’s oldest and most conservative institutions. Clerics abandoned their Roman collars and Latin lingo, fold songs replaced Gregorian chants, and meatless Fridays became ancient history. No matter what the topic, conventional wisdom and inherited ideas came under fire. ‘Trust no one over thirty’ was a popular sneer of rebellious youth. (Bailey 959)

As this passage states, much of the people of the 1960s felt disillusioned. Just as society changes, art also changes to communicate or mirror the overall themes and ideas of its historical era. And this is where and when minimalism emerges: a time and place in the twentieth century when civil rights and the standard cultural values seemed to be crumbling into debris. Minimalism communicates the desire to simplify art just as the culture in which the art emerged wanted to find simplified truth and values. Minimalism helps us understand the rebellious atmosphere of its changing times.

Minimalism developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in opposition to abstract expressionism, which dominated the art world in the 1950s. David Burlyuk first used the term Minimalism, one that would later title this art movement, in an exhibition catalogue in 1929 to describe John Graham's paintings at the Dudensing Gallery in New York. Other terms for the Minimalist movement are ABC art, Reductivism, Minimal Art, and Rejective Art--the term Rejective Art precisely communicates the rebellious and avant-garde essence of the entire movement. Like many art movements in the past, Minimalism was a reaction against a preceding philosophy in art; in this case, it was against the ostentatious and pompous embodiments in the arts of Abstract Expressionism, while its foundation were derived from Pop art, Conceptual art, and Cubism.

Furthermore, Minimalism originated in America, much of its foundations rooting from the work of Frank Stella and his Black Paintings exhibited in 1959 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which drew numerous artists away from the expressive art of the past and toward the plain and simple Minimalist artwork. In addition, the art piece "Primary Structures," displayed in 1966 at the exhibition in New York, was a crucial event in the history of Minimalism in that it stirred ideas and opinions. Although there were various Minimalist painters, Minimalism dominated in sculptures and installation works.

Minimalism was therefore an attempt to seek and experiment with the nature of art and its role in society, much like other movements in Modern Art - usually referring to the arts of the twentieth century in Europe and the Americas. Minimalism roots into the abstract category of Modern Art and away from the representational works, one such exemplified in the painting "American Gothic," by Grant Wood. Although some viewed Minimalist art as plain and mundane, others felt the movement communicated a revolutionary concept of pure aestheticism and "art for art's sake." It was this mantra which helped Minimalism to contribute to post-modern art tremendously.

Click here to read about Minimalism and how it coincided with American politics.

Click here to view a timeline.

Impact

Art

A number of art movements have spawned in reaction to Minimalism including Post-Minimalism, Earth Art and Post-Modernism. Post-minimalism was a reaction against the Minimalist movement and its insistence on the use of geometric shapes. Earth Art used land and organic materials to mold the Earth into its own form of art. Post-Modernism was a reaction against Modernism. Like Minimalism, it attempted to reform contemporary art.

The aesthetic quality of Minimalism resulted in the further writing and evolution of contemporary art theory. Minimalism's revolutionary tendencies had a great impact on art critics and writers who attempted to understand its meanings.

Click here to view artwork that spawned from Minimalism. *need adobe reader*

Architecture

Minimalism also had a great impact on contemporary architecture such as the work of German architect Mies van der rohe. This movement was referred to as corporate modern architecture.

Click here to view architecture that was influenced by Minimalism. *need abobe reader*

Performance

Merce Cunningham- Known as the leader of innovative art, he is an American modern dancer and choreographer. Many know him for his idea of "choreography by chance," in which the selected motions in the dance are given a sequence by a random method. This method treated movement as its own subject matter. He often worked with other contemporary composers and with innovative painters such as Americans Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg-- modern artists that created pop art, an indirect, subsequent, effect of modern art and Minimalism. A few examples of his works in his style include: Suite by Chance, the first electronic modern dance score, by American Christian Wolff (1952); How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run (1965); and Canfield (1969). In the following decades, his work has included excerpts from various dances and dances specifically composed for videotaping.

Music

Steve Reich, La Monte Young, Philip Glass and many others have all been coined as "Minimalist" composers. There relationship with Minimalism comes with their similar approach to the artistic process. Minimalist compositions consist of simple, repeated themes. Many of these composers were also active in collaborating with many Minimal artists. For example, La Monte Young and Walter De Maria were known to have worked together on several projects together.

Definitions

“Minimalism - Spare in appearance and restrained in mood, Minimalist Art emerged in the 1960s. The term can refer to the extreme simplicity of a work of art or to the suppression of detail and gesture in favor of a rational, at times machine-made quality.” -nga.gov

“The term Minimalism was coined to describe the work of a group of American artists who developed a new kind of whole or serial geometry abstraction during the 1960s.” -James Meyer

“Although never exactly defined, the term ‘Minimalism’ (or ‘Minimal art’) denotes an avant-garde style that emerged in New York and Los Angeles during the 1960s, most often associated with the work of Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt and Robert Morris, and other artists briefly associated with the tendency. Primary sculpture, Minimal art tends to consist of single or repeated geometric forms. Industrially produced or built by skilled workers following the artists instruction, it removes any trace of emotion or intuitive decision making, in stark contrast to the Abstract Expressionist painting and sculpture that preceded it during the 1940s and 1950s. Minimal work does not allude to anything beyond its literal presence, or its existence in the physical world. Materials appear as materials; colour (if used at all) is non-referential. Often placed in walls, in corners, or directly on the floor, it is an installational art that reveals the gallery as an actual place, rendering the viewer concious of moving through this space.” -James Meyer

"Minimalism questioned the nature of art and its place in society. Although some deemed Minimalist Art to be unapproachable and barren, others saw the revolutionary concept of pure aestheticism and the strong affect that Minimalist theory had on post-modern art." -World Wide Art Resources

Criticism and essays

"Early proponents of Minimalism, such as Hunter College professor Eugene Goossen, lauded the art of Andre and his peers for affording a "direct, unadulterated experience ... minus messages" and free of any "boring display of personality... [4] German philosopher Edmund Husserl's directive--"Go to the things themselves"--led off an essay by Mel Bochner, who paradoxically described the work of Andre and others as rigorously excluding individual personality while being profoundly "solipsistic... [5] 'Matter matters' was the maxim Andre used to encapsulate work that evidently, taciturnly insists on its strict facticity or sheer materiality. There is further and conflicting evidence, however: that of Andre's imagistic title, Lever, which points to a metaphorical aspect in the work, and that of the sculptor's invoking, and simultaneously denying, a relation between the work's elongated form and that of "the male organ." [6] The absence of the imprint of the artist's hand apparently discourages reading into Lever an y additional, more personal meanings on his part--I say "apparently" because Andre would in fact regale audiences with the tale of his paternal grandfather, a bricklayer who built his boyhood home in Quincy, Massachusetts. The sculptor further characterized bricks as "Almost a personal emblem, or a psychological emblem, that relates to earliest experiences." [7] In short, if Minimalism is more emphatically depersonalized than any prior visual art idiom, Minimalism and biography, nevertheless, are not such utterly incommensurable terms as they at first appear." -The Art Bulletin 3.1.2000 Anna C. Chave

Recent plans on the WTC memorial have been criticized as "minimalist."
"Nowhere in the official descriptions of the World Trade Center memorial design will you encounter the word 'minimalism.' It only surfaced in criticism. ‘This is minimalism, and you can't minimalize the impact and the enormity of Sept. 11,’ said Anthony Gardner. - The Record ( Bergen County, NJ); 1/15/2004; John Zeaman, Staff Writer

"Mies van der rohe, the most successful minimalist architect of the twentieth century (as well as the unintentional source of the debased late version of the International Style known as Corporate Modern), famously described his unadorned, glass-walled, metal-framed buildings as beinahe Nichts, or "almost nothing." The New Republic; 6.19.2000.

"Including a door, a table or a blanks heet of paper... it would seem that a kind of art nearer the condition of non-art could not be envisaged or ideated at this moment. That, precisely, is the trouble. Minimal art remains too much a feat of ideation, and not enough anything else." - Clement Greenberg

"Bricks are not works of art. Bricks are bricks. You can build walls with them or chuck them through jewellers' window, but you cannot stack them two-deep and call it sculpture"[...]"In this cul-de-sac I would place all the piles of bricks, twisted girders, heaps of sand and sheets of blank cardboard to which the avant-garde has been reduced. In the center there would be a large placard, signed by the Director. It would read: "WE WERE ALL CONNED." (And it would be regarded, by suckers, as a work of art)." -Keith Waterhouse, Daily Mirror. 2.19.1976.