Minimal Art,

Post-Minimal,

and Conceptual Art

Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965, wooden folding chair, photographic copy of a chair and photographic enlargement of a dictionary definition of a chair

Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965

Installation view of the 1970 Information exhibition, MoMA NYC, which marks the institutional “success” of text-based Conceptual art documented by photographs.

Dennis Oppenheim, Reading Position for Second Degree Burn, 1970, Stage 1 and Stage 2, book, skin, solar energy, exposure time 5 hours, Jones Beach, New York, color photography and collage, 216 x 152 cm . Photographs “were there simply to indicate a

radical art that had already vanished….necessary only as a residue for communication.”

Bruce Nauman, Eating My Words, and Self-Portrait as a Fountain, from Eleven Color Photographs, 1966/67-70, chromogenic color print / performed for the camera only

John Baldessari (United States, b. 1931) (“Father” of Pictures Generation”)(left) Wrong, 1966-68, acrylic, photo-emulsion on canvas, 59 x 45 in.(right) Astronauts and Businessmen, 1988 , photograph with applied paint, Museum of Fine Art, Houston

Ed Ruscha (U.S. b. 1937), Flying A, Kingman, Arizona, from Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1963, photographic book, sold for $3.50 Minimalist and California Pop (anti)aesthetic: serial repetition and deadpan view of contemporary reality

Book cover

Compare Ruscha’s (1963) vision of the American West (above) with Ansel Adams’ interpretation based on 19th century Romantic landscape aesthetics, (right) Moonrise over Hernandez, NM. October 31, 1941. Adams made “Art” and did not work in other media.

Through his deliberate lack of style, Ruscha draws attention “to the estranged relationship of people to their rural environment, but without staging or dramatizing the estrangement.”

Albert Bierstadt, The Rocky Mountains, 1863

Ansel Adams, Grand Tetons and the Snake River, 1942

The artist’s road trip from California to Oaklahoma

Ed Ruscha, Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas, 1963, oil on canvas, 5’5” x 10’

Ed Ruscha took the photographs of Sunset Strip with a motorized Nikon camera mounted to the back of a pick-up truck. This allowed him to photograph every building while driving – first down one side of the street and then the other. The pictures were then pasted in order they were shot, and the individual buildings were labeled with their respective address numbers.

Ed Ruscha, The Old Trade School Building, 2005, synthetic polymer on canvas 54 x 120 in, from The Course of Empire Series, US Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2005

(bottom) Blue Collar Trade School, 1992, Synthetic polymer on canvas, 54 x 120

Robert Smithson, “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey,” 1967 from Artforum, vol.6, no.4, December 1967, pp. 48-51.

Robert Smithson (American Environmental Artist, 1938-1973), Spiral Jetty, 1970, Great Salt Lake. Earthwork

Hans Haacke, detail of Shapolsky et al, Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real Time System as of May 1, 1971, 1971, two enlarged photographs, 142 black and white photographs with typewritten data sheets, six charts and one explanatory panel

Bernhard and Hilla Becher Conceptual (typological) photography

(left) Gas Tanks, 1963 (right) Water Towers, 1980, 9 b/w photographs mounted on board, 62inH overall

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954), Sommerstrasse, Düsseldorf, 1980, Gelatin silver print, 16 1/2 x 22 1/2 in., Dallas Museum of Art

Thomas Struth (Germany, b.1954, student of Bechers) Shinju-ku (Skyscrapers), Tokyo, 1986

(right) Ferdinand-von-Schill-Strasse, Dessau, 1991

Candida Höfer (Germany, 1944, student of Bechers) (left) Stiftsbibliothek Klosterneuburg III, 2003, C-print, 68 in. H

Ca' Rezzonico Venezia II, 2003, C-print, 74 in. Width

Thomas Ruff (German, b.1958), House #9 II, 1991, 72 in. Hone of series taken in early morning, apartment blocks in Eastern Germany

Thomas Ruff, (left) Portrait, 1989, 63in. H(center and right) from Portrait series, 2001, conceptual typologies

“absolute objectivity” like passport photos except for scale

'... Like archetypal passport photos... young people with dead eyes and empty faces.' Ruff

Martha Rosler, detail of The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems, 1974, 45 black and white photographs mounted on 24 mat-board panels, each panel 25 x 56 cm

Compare the following piece from a recent NY Times…

Barbara Kruger (U.S. b. 1945), (left) Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face), 1981, gelatin silver print, 72 x 48 in.; (right) Untitled (I Shop Therefore I Am), 1987. “Pictures Generation”

Martha Rosler (US, 1943) Cleaning the Drapes, from series, Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful, 1967-72

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/09/05/arts/rosler-audioss/index.html 2008 New York Times slide show: Rosler talking about her work 1960’s-2008

Cindy Sherman (US, b.1954) Untitled Film Still #27, 197969 film stills from 1977 (23 years old) to 1980.

She stopped making film stills, she has explained, when she ran out of clichés.

Cindy Sherman, (left) Untitled Film Still #35, 1979; (right) Untitled Film Still #54. 1980 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 8 x 10” glossies just like “real” film stills.

"She's good enough to be a real actress.“Andy Warhol

Cindy Sherman, (left) Untitled Film Still #37, (right) UFS #13, 1979

(left) Cindy Sherman, Untitled #188, Chromogenic color print, 43 ½ x 65 ½,“ 1989 (right) Hans Bellmer (German, 1902-1975) 'Poupee' (Doll) in Hayloft, 1935-1936 (historical source for Sherman)

(left) Sherrie Levine (US Postmodern Appropriation artist, b.1947) Untitled (After Alexander Rodchenko: 9), 1987 (right) Alexander Rodchenko (Russian Constructivist, avant-garde modernist), 1891-1956), Portrait of Mother, 1924

Postmodern “Appropriation” of “high” art challenged modernism’s key values of “originality” and “aura.” Key text: Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

(left) Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans, 1981 – a photograph of reproduction of a photograph(right) Walker Evans, Hale County, Alabama, 1936. (Or is it the other way around?)Key text: Rosalind Krauss: “The Originality of the Avant-garde and other Modernist Myths” Post-structuralism – postmodern revision of modern theory

Richard Prince (American, born 1949), Untitled (four single men with interchangeable backgrounds looking to the right), 1977, Mixed media on paper, 23 x 19 in. Metropolitan Museum, NYC

Richard Prince, (left) Untitled (cowboy), 1981, Ektacolor photograph, 20 x 24 in (right) Untitled (cowboy) 1980-84, Ektacolor photograph, 27 x 40 in. “Pictures Generation” appropriation from mass visual culture: advertising photography

Louise Lawler (American, born 1947), Pollock and Tureen, Arranged by Mr. and Mrs. Burton Tremaine, Connecticut, 1984, silver dye bleach print, 28 x 39 in.

Jeff Wall (Canadian, 1946), Picture for Women, 1979transparency in light box, approx. 5 x 7ft

(left) Jeff Wall, Picture for Women, transparency in lightbox, 1979, around 5ft x 7ft; compare (right) Edouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, oil on canvas, 1882 / Art historical quotation is characteristically postmodern.

(left) Jeff Wall, Picture for Women, transparency in lightbox, 1979, around 5ft x 7ft; compare (right) Diego Velazquez (Spanish Baroque), Las Meninas, 1656.scale, complex composition drawing attention to the unity of reality and illusion, uncertain relationship between the viewer and the figures depicted.

Jeff Wall (Canada, b. 1946) Installation view of the exhibition Documenta 8, Kassel, Germany, 1987, showing The Storyteller, cibachrome transparency, lightbox, 1986

Hokusai, Ejiri in Suruga Provincec.1831-3, woodblock print from series, 36 Views of Fuji, 26 x 38 cm

Jeff Wall, A SuddenGust of Wind (After Hokusai),transparency in light-box, 1993, 7ft x 12ft.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres (American b. Cuba 1957- NYC 1996), Untitled, 1991. As installed for The Museum of Modern Art, New York "Projects 34: Felix Gonzalez-Torres“ May 16 - June 30, 1992: 2 of 24 locations throughout New York City

"EMERGING WOR(L)DS": June 2007 - October 2008: http://www.tina-b.com/content.php?akce=section&lang=en&season=2007&id=12

Gonzalez-Torres represented the United States at the 2007 Venice Biennale

Christian Boltanski (French, b. 1944) Jewish School of Grosse Hamburgstrasse in Berlin in 1939, 1991, moving photographs, fans, florescent lamps, dimensions variable

http://www.monumenta.com/2010/english/monumenta/Monumenta-2010.html Christian Boltanski at the Grand Palais, Monumenta 2010

Monument (Odessa), 1989-2003, gelatin silver prints, tin biscuit boxes, lights, and wire

Minimalism

Robert Morris

Robert Morris, Box with the Sound of Its Own Making, 1961

“…the significant artist strives to reduce the technical and psychical distance between his artistic output and the productive means of society. Duchamp, Warhol, and Robert Morris are similarly directed in this respect.”

Jack Burnham, Systems Esthetics, 1969

Tony Smith• Not typically associated with Minimalism,

Tony Smith nevertheless created one of the most enduring icons of the minimalist esthetic., Die. It was supposedly inspired by an index card file, but its scale (72 x 72 x 72 inches) and fabrication were a response to an advertisement for the Industrial Welding Company in Newark, New Jersey, which read: “You specify it: we fabricate it.” The dimensions, according to Smith, were determined by the human body, as in Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing of the Vitruvian man, whose outstretched arms and legs are inscribed within a circle and a square. Smith said that larger dimensions would have implied the work was a “monument,” while smaller ones would have reduced it to the role of a mere “object.” This observation became the subject of key debates among the philosophers of the minimal-art generation, including Robert Morris and Michael Fried. Smith’s deceptively simple title has multiple allusions: to industry (die casting), to chance (roll of the dice) and to death, as implied in the title and based on Smith’s other observation, “Six foot box. Six foot under.”

Tony Smith, “Die,” 1962/68, Steel, overall 72 x 72 x72 inches

Larry Bell

Larry Bell, “Untitled,” anodized glass, 1969

Larry Bell, “Untitled,” anodized glass, 1975

Sol Lewitt

(b. 1928) creates simple forms in series like white or black cubes, either open or closed. Although he later added primary colors, LeWitt stresses that art should “engage the mind rather than the eye or emotions.”

Donald Judd, Untitled, 1969

Robert Morris, Untitled, 1967

Solid Geometry• Minimalist, like Hard Edge

painters, eradicated the individual’s handprint, as well as any emotion, image, or message. To attain such a “pure,” anonymous effect, they used prefab materials in simple geometric shapes like metal boxes or bricks.

Carl Andre, “Sulcus,” 1980 Western red cedar wood overall 150 x 90 x 90 cm

Carl Andre(b. 1935) went to the opposite extreme from traditional vertical, figurative sculpture on a pedestal. Instead, he arranged bricks, cement blocks, and flat slabs on the floor in a horizontal configuration, as in his 29 –foot-long row of bricks on the ground.

Equivalent VIII

Copper Galaxy

• Metal shelves attached to a gallery wall, panes of glass on a gallery floor, a plank leaning against a wall are all Minimalist art.

• The ultimate Minimalist exhibit was French artist Yves Klein’s show of nothing at all, just a freshly whitewashed gallery containing no object or painting (two patrons even bought nonexistent canvases – Klein demanded payment in gold). “Compared to them,” art dealer Leo Castelli said, “Mondrian is an expressionist painter.”

• For these sculptors, minimum form ensured maximum intensity. By taking away “distractions” like detail, imagery, and narrative – i.e., everything – they forced the viewer to pay total attention to what’s left. “Simplicity of shape does not necessarily equate with simplicity of experience,” said Robert Morris

Dan Flavin (b. 1933) sculpts with light, attaching

fluorescent tubes to the wall in stark geometric designs giving off fields of color. Hint: Look at the light, not at the tubes.

Robert Morriss

Robert Morris, installation in the Green Gallery, New York, 1964. Seven geometric plywood structures painted grey.

His “Untitled” sculpture is a great example of Minimalism. Made in the years of 1965-71, the sculpture consists of four mirror plated glass and wood cubes arranged as if they had been placed in the four corners of a square.

(b. 1931) is known for large-scale, hard-edge geometric sculptures like big, blocky right angles. “Unitary forms do not reduce relationships,” he said. “They order them/.” Morris also does antiform sculpture in soft, hanging material like felt. The pieces droop on the wall, sculpted by gravity.

Robert Morris, Untitled (L Beams), 1965

Robert Morris, Untitled 1969 felt 284.0 (h) x 363.2 (w) x 111.8 (d) cm

Robert Morris, Untitled 1969 felt 284.0 (h) x 363.2 (w) x 111.8 (d) cm

Claes Oldenburg, French Fries, 1966

Eva Hesse, Accesion, 1969

Robert Morris, Untitled, felt, 1967

Robert Morris, Untitled, felt, 1970

Richard Serra

(b. 1939) became infamous for his huge metal sculpture “Tilted Arc,” which aroused such hatred in a public square in New York that it was removed in 1989. Serra’s entry for the 1991 Carnegie International art show consisted of two black rectangles, each hanging on a different wall, one placed high and the other near the floor.

Art 21 Season 1

Richard SerraRichard SerraHand Catching Lead - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NBSuQLVpK4Splashing Lead - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjvVEN2v8rYInterview with Charlie Rose - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4Ah0cDewcwhttps://www.google.com/search?q=lawrence+weiner&hl=en&prmd=imvnsob&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=1MQ9T5rRCMe62gXvremSCA&sqi=2&ved=0CEEQsAQ&biw=1600&bih=731#hl=en&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=richard+serra+artist&oq=Richard+Serra+artist&aq=0&aqi=g1g-S2&aql=&gs_sm=1&gs_upl=56260l57931l3l60199l13l12l0l0l0l3l172l1146l9.3l12l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=102f773c1c9175d6&biw=1600&bih=731

Donald Judd, Untitled, 1968

Donald Judd, Untitled, 1968

Donald Judd, Untitled, 1969

Donald Judd, Untitled

Donald Judd, Progression

Donald Judd, Untitled. Marfa, Texas.

Minimalism in Music

Beginnings

• Minimalism began as ‘Systems Music’ in the 1960s.(Today, in the realm of computer music, "systems music" refers to fractal-based, computer-assisted composition, and in particular iterated function systems music, in which a function "is applied repeatedly, each time taking as argument its value at the previous application" (Gogins 1991).

• Features of systems music were repetition, simple melody, and slowly changing harmony.

• Stockhausen’s ‘Stimmung’ (1968) is a prime example. It consists of 51 sections (called "moments") and is considered to be "the first major Western composition to be based entirely on the production of vocal harmonics.“ Listen to a clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjK7iG_5hIU&feature=related

Terry RileyIn C consists of 53 short, numbered musical phrases, lasting from half a beat to 32 beats; each phrase may be repeated an arbitrary number of times. Each musician has control over which phrase he or she plays: players are encouraged to play the phrases starting at different times, even if they are playing the same phrase.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjR4QYsa9nE

Steve Reich

• Reich, who took part in the first performance of In C, was greatly influenced by Riley’s ideas.

• He developed a style based on the idea of gradual change – of texture, rhythm and harmony

• He also explored the concept of Phase Shifting

Clapping Music

• In this piece, written in 1972, Reich takes one rhythmic pattern and repeats it 156 times.

• Clap 1 never changes. Clap 2 moves the pattern one quaver forward after each 12th repeat.

Reich’s influences

Philip Glass

Tomasz Sikorski

John Tavener

Mike Oldfield

John Adams

Michael Nyman Arvo Part

Chris Martin

Photography out of Conceptual (Pop &

Minimal, and performance) Art

Why has photography moved from the margin to the center of

contemporary art in the last 40 years?Barbara Kruger Untitled (You are Not Yourself), 1981

Gilbert and George, The Singing Sculpture, 1970, photograph of performance(Gilbert Proesch, b.1943, Italy; George Passmore, b. 1942, England). “Banal” photographic documentation of ephemeral works, like this “living sculpture.”

Gilbert & George with Ginkgo series,British pavilion Venice Biennale 2005, This series was included in the 2008 San Francisco G & G retrospective.

Annette Messager (French, b. 1943) My Vows (Mes Voeux), 1988-91, gelatin-silver prints under glass and string, dimensions variable

detail

Annette Messager, My Vows, 1990. Gelatin silver prints and string. Dimensions vary with installation, approx.: 140 x 73 inches. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2007 purchase

Catholic votives