ART-TRIBUTE: Minimalism

One of the art movements that in their process affected Architecture, Design, and the contemporaty way of life is Minimalism. There are examples of the Minimalist theory being exercised as early as the 18th century when Goethe constructed an Altar of Good Fortune made simply of a stone sphere and cube. From the 1920s artists such as Malevich and Duchamp produced works in the Minimalist vein. Minimalism has basic differences in every field of art and life, but also in the East and the West. Another concept give in Minimalism the American artists, other the Japanese Architects and other the Swedish Designers, and that because that in every culture covers other needs. We thing back onthe movement that is known chiefly by its American exponents such as Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin and Donald Judd who reacted against Abstract Expressionism in their stark canvases, sculptures and installations.

By Dimitris Lempesis

Through the ‘50s, the dominant Art Movement in the U.S.A. was Abstract Expressionism. The expressionist artists seeked to express their personal emotions through their work. A branch of Abstract Expressionism was called Action Painting. This was a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas. In the early 1960′s, a new movement emerged “Minimal Art”. The Minimalists felt that Action Painting and Abstract Expressionism was too personal, pretentious and insubstantial. They rejected the idea that art should reflect the personal expression of its creator. Instead, they adopted the point of view that a work of art should not refer to anything other than itself. Their goal was to make their works totally objective, unexpressive, and non-referential. One of the first painters to be specifically linked with Minimalism was Frank Stella. His “Black Paintings” (1958-1960), were included in the exhibition “16 Americans” at the MoMA in 1959. In these paintings regular bands of black paint were separated by very thin pinstripes of unpainted canvas, contrasted the emotional canvases of Abstract Expressionism. In the next generation there were many theorists who became important spokespersons for the movements of both Minimal and Conceptual art. These artists and writers helped determine the aesthetics and the critical reception of both styles. Donald Judd’s essay “Specific Objects” was a touchstone of theory for the formation of minimalist aesthetic. Robert Morris wrote the three-part “Notes on Sculptures”, in which he called for the use of simple forms that could be grasped intuitively by the viewer and argued that the interpretation of Minimalist works was dependent on the context and conditions in which they were perceived, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” by Sol LeWitt contributed to the development of Minimal and Conceptual Art. Carl Andre published poetry that had both literary and visual appeal, the latter created by the artistic shaping of the text of the poem as if the words were a solid medium. As a result of all these theoretical underpinings, the Minimalism movement found the setting to expand. Minimalist paintings are usually precise and ‘hard-edged’, referring to the abrupt transitions between color areas. Hard-edge painting is characterized by large, simplified, usually geometric forms on an overall flat surface, precise, razor-sharp contours and broad areas of bright, unmodulated colour that have been stained into unprimed canvas. It differs from other types of geometric abstraction in that it rejects both lyrical and mathematical composition because, even in this simplified field, they are a means of personal expression for the artist. Minimal hard-edge painting is the anonymous construction of a simple object. In installations the use of florescent light tubes to create art further emphasized the Minimalist move away from traditional art forms. Dan Flavin used light and color from commercially available tubes to sculpt space into color zones. While the tubes were sometimes arranged in geometric shapes such as grids or simple lines, the focus of the art was typically on the light emitted rather than the form of the tubes themselves. The minimalist sculptors were chiefly interested in how the viewer perceives the relationship between the different parts of the work, and of the parts to the whole thing. Minimalist sculptures encouraged the viewer to be conscious of the space. The artwork was arranged to emphasize and reveal the architecture of the gallery, often being presented on walls, in corners, or directly onto the floor. By eliminating the pedestal or base on which it sat, the minimalist sculptors sought to reject traditional sculpture. Minimalist artist preferred industrial materials, prefabricated and/or mass-produced, concrete, wood and stone are also returning materials. The materials were either left raw, or were solidly painted with bright industrial colours. The result are objects of charged neutrality, objects that reveal everything about themselves but little about the artist, objects whose subject is the viewer. By the late ‘60s, Minimalism was beginning to show signs of breaking apart as a movement, as various artists who had been important to its early development began to move in different directions. However, critics agree that Minimalism formed a “Crux” or turning point in the history of modernism, and the movement remains hugely influential today.