The year of living minimally

Art in America

Volumn 92, Issue 11, 2004, Pages

  Karmel, Pepe ^a  

^a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34249345291     PISSN: 00043214     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (52)

1. Ann Goldstein, A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968, Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, 2004
2. with essays by Diedrich Diederichsen, Jonathan Flatley, Carrie Lambert, Lucy R. Lippard, James Meyer and Anne Rorimer. "A Minimal Future?" was, in effect, a prequel to an earlier exhibition, "Reconsidering the Object of Art: 1965-1975," organized by Goldstein and Rorimer at MOCA in 1996. It should also be noted that Goldstein's decision to approach Minimalism by considering closely related kinds of art corresponds to James Meyer's argument that "Minimalism ... is best understood... as a field of difference, as a strategic game with potential positions to be occupied."
3. See James Meyer, Minimalism Art and Polemics in the Sixties, New York and London, Yale University Press, 2001, p. 4. See also my review of Meyer's book in A.i.A., Jan. '02, pp. 35-37. Meyer's concept of the "field"' also applies to LACMA's more international survey
4. See "Chronology" in William S. Rubin, Frank Stella, New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1970, p. 155
5. Oddly enough, this document states that Stella and Andre met at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., while the "Chronology" in David Bourdon, Carl Andre, New York, Jaap Rietman, 1978, p. 71, says that they met only in 1958-59
6. For more on the contrast between New York and Los Angeles art, see James Meyer, "Another Minimalism," in Goldstein, A Minimal Future?, pp. 33-49
7. Lynn Zelevansky, Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form, 1940s-70s, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2004, with contributions by Valerie L. Hillings, Miklos Peternak, Brandon LaBelle, Peter Frank, Ines Katzenstein and Aleca Le Blanc
8. Lisa Dennison and Nancy Spector, with Susan Cross, Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated): Art from 1951 to the Present, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2004, with essays by Mark C. Taylor, Deyan Sudjic, Andrea Codrington, Bruce Jenkins, Gia Kourlas and Drew Daniel
9. The controversy provoked by the Guggenheim's deaccessioning of early modern works to pay for the Panza collection was discussed in a special issue of Art in America (July '90) on the theme of "Art and Money." Issues of authorized and unauthorized production of Minimal artworks, based on artists' plans, were discussed by Susan Hapgood in "Remaking Art History," pp. 114-23 and 181
10. Philip Weiss addressed the ethical issues surrounding museum deaccessioning in "Selling the Collection," pp. 124-31
11. Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art: 1863-1922, 1962 (reissued in paperback, New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1971), p. 178; revised edition by Marian Burleigh-Motley, London, Thames & Hudson, 1986
12. See the brief but important discussion of this topic in Meyer, Minimalism: Art and Polemics, p. 290, n. 144
13. Bruce Glaser, "Questions to Stella and Judd," a 1964 interview edited by Lucy Lippard and originally published in Art News in Sept. '66
14. reprinted in Gregory Battcock, ed. Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, New York, E.P. Dutton, 1968; Stella's remarks appear on p. 149
15. Sol LeWitt, "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art," Artforum, June '67
16. reprinted in Sol LeWitt, New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1978, p. l66
17. See Lawrence Alloway and James N. Wood, Max Bill, Buffalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1974; Alloway's text, pp. 11-13, offers a brief but acute evaluation of Bill's relationship to Minimalism
18. The complex web of artistic relationships among Germany, Switzerland, Brazil and Argentina in the 1940s, '50s and '60s is explored by Valerie L. Hillings in her catalogue essay, "Concrete Territory: Geometric Art, Group Formation, and Self-Definition," in Zelevansky, Beyond Geometry, pp. 49-75
19. For a period view of the importance of kinetic art, see Jack Burnham, Beyond Modern Sculpture, New York, Braziller, 1968
20. On the relationship between Hesse and Uecker, see Maria Kreutzer, "The Wound and the Self: Eva Hesse's Breakthrough in Germany," in Helen A. Cooper, ed. Eva Hesse: A Retrospective, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1992, pp. 79-80
21. Mel Bochner, "Serial Art, Systems, Solipsism," Arts Magazine, Summer '67
22. reprinted in Battcock, Minimal Art, pp. 94-102
23. Judy Chicago, Through the Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist, Garden City, Doubleday, 1977, pp. 36, 43
24. Rosalind Krauss, "Sense and Sensibility. Reflections on Post '60s Sculpture," Artforum, vol. 12, no. 3 (Nov. 73)
25. reprinted in Amy Baker Sandback, ed., Looking Critically: 21 Years of Artforum Magazine, Ann Arbor, U.M.I. Research Press, 1984, pp. 149-56
26. See Rosalind E. Krauss, Passages in Modern Sculpture, New York, Viking, 1977
27. and The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1985
28. and Hal Foster, "The Crux of Minimalism," in Individuals: A Selected History of Contemporary Art, 1945-1986, Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, 1986, pp. 162-83
29. Haacke's Condensation Cube thus corresponds to Barthes's description of critical theory as a form of model-making, in "The Structuralist Activity," 1963, trans. Richard Howard, Partisan Review, vol. 34, no. 1 (Winter '67), pp. 82-88
30. reprinted in Richard and Fernande DeGeorge (eds.), The Structuralists: From Marx to Levi-Strauss, Garden City, N.J., Doubleday/Anchor, 1972, pp. 148-54
31. also reprinted in Roland Barthes, Critical Essays, Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1972, pp. 213-20
32. Barbara Rose, "Looking at Amercan Sculpture," Artforum, vol. 3, no. 5, Feb. '65, p. 30
33. Donald Judd, "Nationwide Reports: Hartford," Arts Magazine, Mar. '64
34. reprinted in Donald Judd: Complete Writings 1959-1975, Halifax, Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and New York, New York University Press, 1975, p. 117
35. Similarly, Mel Bochner argues that the putative boredom of the viewers of Minimal art "may be the product of their being forced to view things not as sacred but as they probably are - autonomous and indifferent." (Bochner, "Serial Art,"in Battock,Minimal Art, p. 102.)
36. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1921, trans. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961, p. 3
37. A revised edition of Wittgenstein's later Philosophical Investigations was issued by Basil Blackwell in 1 95 8. On Robert Morris's use of Wittgenstein, see "Robert Morris: Formal Disclosures [interview]," A.i.A, June '95, pp. 88-89
38. See Joe Raffaele and Elizabeth Baker, "The Way-Out West: Interviews with 4 San Francisco Artists," Art News, vol. 66, no. 4, Summer '67, p. 76
39. Michael Fried, "Art and Objecthood," Artforum, June '67
40. reprinted in Battcock, Minimal Art, pp. 116-47
41. The most relevant essays by Cavell, linking Wittgenstein and the concept of "theatricality," are "Knowing and Acknowledging" and The Avoidance of Love: A Reading of King Lear," in Stanley Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say? A Book of Essays, London, Cambridge University Press, 1976, pp. 238-66 and 267-353. It should be noted that Fried and Cavell were both Junior Fellows at Harvard, where they became friends; Fried cites the as-yet-unpublished "Avoidance of Love" in a note to "Art and Objecthood."
42. Glaser, "Questions to Stella and Judd," in Battcock, Minimal Art, p. 151
43. Wylie Sypher, Loss of the Self in Modern Literature, New York, Random House, 1962, pp. 79-83
44. Sypher, Loss of the Self, pp. 107, 110, 115
45. have discussed other aspects of the relation among Sypher, Dubuffet and Minimalism in "Jean Dubuffet: the would-be barbarian," Apollo, vol. CLVI, no. 489 (New Series), Oct. '02, pp. 13-14
46. Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea, 1938, trans. New York, New Directions, 1964, passim
47. Alain Robbe-Grillet, The Erasers, 1953, New York, Grove Press, 1964, esp. pp. 152-53
48. Alain Robbe-Grillet, "A Future for the Novel," 1956, trans. in For a New Novel Essays on Fiction, New York, Grove Press, 1965, p. 19
49. Rose, "ABC Art," in Battcock, Minimal Art, pp. 291-92
50. Fried, "Art and Objecthood," p. 128
51. Jonathan Flatley develops a similar argument that "for Judd and Warhol the only affecting art was one that appeared to be utterly affectless," in "Allegories of Boredom," in Goldstein, A Minimal Future?, pp. 50-75
52. See Flatley's superb description of the play of light within a Judd stack piece, in "Allegories of Boredom," pp. 58-60