MINIMALISM

By: Ashley Banks

Cristina Bugescu
Also known as…
 ABC art

 Minimal art

 Reductivism

 Rejective art

 Literalist Art
 What is Minimalism?
 Minimalism describes movements in carious
forms of art and design, especially visual art
and music, where the work is stripped down
to its most fundamental form.
 It is identified with developments in post-
World War II Western Art.
 Most strongly with American visual arts in the
late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
 Features
 Geometric
 Often cubic forms purged of much metaphor
 Equality of parts
 Repetition
 Neutral surfaces
 Solid planes of color
 Normally precise
 Hard-edged
 Important Feature
 Reducing the work to
the smallest number of
colors, values, shapes,
lines, and textures, also
the simplest forms.
 Aim: No distractions of
composition,
theme…etc.
 Color not used to
express mood or
feelings.
 More Features…
 Normally cool hues or unmixed colors straight
from the tube
 Often based on a grid and mathematically
composed.
 Thrives on simplicity in both content and form
 Industrial materials
 The use of industrial materials was common in
order to eliminate the evidence of the artists
hand.
 Main Minimalist Artists
 Donald Judd
 Agnes Martin
 Frank Stella
 Robert Morris
 Influences

 Minimalists were influenced by composers

John Cage and LaMonte Young, poet William
Carlos Williams and the landscape architect
Frederick Law Olmsted.
Donald Judd
 American sculptor,
painter, and writer
 First artist to have a
one man exhibition
in 1957.
 In 1960-62 he went
from painting to
sculpting and
became leading
exponent in of
Minimalism.
 Donald Judd
 His work, Judd sought autonomy and clarity
for the constructed object and the space
created by it.
 Ultimately achieving a rigorously democratic
presentation without compositional hierarchy.
 Much of his work is of simple cubes or other
geometric units that stand on the floor or are
hanging from the wall.
 Donald Judd’s Early Work
 His first solo exhibition, of expressionist
paintings, opened in New York in 1957.
 Most of his output was in freestanding "specific
objects" that used simple, often repeated forms
to explore space and the use of space.
 He believed that art should not represent
anything, that it should unequivocally stand on
its own and simply exist.
 Donald Judd’s Work…

Born in Excelsior Springs, MO, 3 June 1928;

† in New York, 12 Feb 1994.
Donald Judd installation-
“Stack Without Title 1969”
Untitled 1971
Donald Judd
Untitled (S.
187-192)
-made in
Untitled -1980
 Agnes Martin
 Her signature style is defined by an emphasis
upon line, grids, and fields of extremely subtle
color.
 While minimalist in form, these paintings were
quite different in spirit from those of her other
minimalist counterparts, retaining small flaws
and unmistakable traces of the artist's hand;
she shied away from intellectualism, favoring
the personal and spiritual.
 More Agnes Martin
 Her paintings, statements, and influential
writings often reflect an interest in Eastern
philosophy, especially Taoist.
 Because of her work's added spiritual
dimension, which became more and more
dominant after 1967, she preferred to be
classified as an abstract expressionist
Stars
Praise- 1972
Spotlight- 1963
On A Clear Day 1973
 Frank Stella
 He is a significant figure in minimalism and
post-painterly abstraction.
 He is one of the most well-regarded postwar
American painters who still works today.
 he reacted against the expressive use of
paint by most painters of the abstract
expressionist movement, instead finding
himself drawn towards the "flatter" surfaces of
Barnett Newman's
 More Frank Stella
 He said that a picture was "a flat surface with paint on
it - nothing more".
 Many of the works are created by simply using the
path of the brush stroke, very often using common
house paint.
 This new aesthetic found expression in a series of
paintings, the Black Paintings (60) in which regular
bands of black paint were separated by very thin
pinstripes of unpainted canvas
 Also in the 1960s, Stella began to use a wider range
of colors, typically arranged in straight or curved
lines.
Sunset Beach, Sketch- 1967
Color Chart, Reinventing Color
1950-????
The Symphony-
1999 ????
Flin Flon- 1970
 Carl Andre
 Is an American minimalist artist recognized
both for his ordered linear format and grid
format sculptures
 While at Phillips Academy he became friends
with Hollis Frampton who would later
influence Andre's radical approach to
sculpture through their conversations about
art[5] and through introductions to other
artists
More Carl Andre
 His sculptures range from large public
artworks (such as Stone Field Sculpture,
1977 in Hartford, CT[1] and Lament for the
Children, 1976[2] in Long Island City, NY) to
more intimate tile patterns arranged on the
floor of an exhibition space (such as 144
Lead Square, 1969[3] or Twenty-fifth Steel
Cardinal, 1974).
Equivalent VIII 1966
Sulcus1980
Aluminum Steel Plain
1969
Unknown
 Minimalist Music
 Minimal art, along with the music of Erik Satie
and the aesthetics of John Cage, was a
distinct influence on minimalist music.
 Reacting against the complex, intellectually
sophisticated style of modern music, several
composers began to compose in a simple,
literal style, thereby creating an extremely
simple and accessible music.
Music Continued…
 La Monte Young, for example, composed a
number of electronic “continuous frequency
environments,” in which he generated a few
pitches and then electronically sustained
them, sometimes for days or weeks
 Young added very little to this texture and
virtually eliminated variation as a
developmental technique.
 They used simple harmonic and melodic
patterns in their highly repetitive music.
 Extra info: Donald Judd
 His signature works are box creations
designed for specific sites. Perhaps his most
important lasting legacy is the large complex
at Marfa, Texas, run by the Chinati
Foundation, which he established to exhibit
his own works, as well as other related artists
and artistic events related to the minimalism
movement.
Extra Info
 He preferred somewhat flatter surfaces, the
likes of which were to be found in the work
of Barnett Newman and Jasper Johns. Soon
enough Stella began painting insuch a way
as to emphasize identification of the objects
in his paintings as the objects themselves,
not just an expression of those objects. In
other words his work was readily identifiable
as what it was supposed to represent.
 He was reproducing paintings with aluminum
and copper paint. He had a fine sense for
geometry and many of his
early paintings used straight or curved lines,
often in arcs, to excess.
Extra Info: Agnes Martin
 One of the leading contemporary artists in 20th-
century America, Agnes Martin was known for her
monochromatic, geometric grid painting that
combined paint and faintly wavering pencil lines. She
is considered a forerunner of Minimalist art. She
began her career in New York, and spent her later
years in New Mexico from where she managed to
maintain a national reputation.
Extra Info: Carl Andre
 The experience with blue collar
labor and the ordered nature of
conducting freight trains would
have a later influence on Andre's
sculpture and artistic personality.
For example, it was not
uncommon for Andre to dress in
overalls and a blue work shirt,
even to the most formal
occasions.“ In 1969 Andre
helped organize the Art Workers
Coalition.
 In 1970 he had a one man
exhibition at the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, and has
had one man exhibitions and
participated in group shows in
major museums, galleries, and
kunsthalles throughout America
and Europe.