minimalism: Minimalism in the Visual Arts

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Encyclopedia—minimalism

Minimalism in the Visual Arts

Reacting against the formal excesses and raw emotionalism of abstract expressionism, the practitioners of minimal art (also sometimes called ABC art) strove to focus attention on the object as an object, reducing its historical and expressive content to the bare minimum. Many minimalist artists were sculptors concerned with reducing form to its utmost simplicity. They used flat surface colors, factory finishes, and industrial materials. The use of serial repetitions contributed to their goal. Artists such as Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Richard Serra, Donald Judd, and Dan Flavin were associated with the movement. The exhibition “Primary Structures,” held in New York in 1966, spotlighted works of this school. Minimalism gave rise to process art, land art, performance art, conceptual art, and installation art.

Sections in this article:

Introduction
Minimalism in the Visual Arts
Minimalism in Music

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Related content from HighBeam Research on: minimalism: Minimalism in the Visual Arts

Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties: (Review of books: what it meant to be minimal). (Art in America)

The minimalist aesthetic in the plastic arts and in music. (Minimalism Forum) (Perspectives of New Music)

BLAM! The explosion of pop, minimalism and performance, 1958-1964. (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York) (The Nation)

Minimalism: Origins. (Notes)

Arte Povera: the recount: with affinities to neo-Dada, Nouveau Realisme, Conceptualism, Post-Minimalism, Process art and performance, Italy's Arte Povera encompassed the most vital tendencies of the 1960s and early '70s. A major exhibition, now in midtour, documents the movement's breadth and energy. (Art in America)

Katy Stone at the Boise Art Museum.(Boise, Idaho)(post minimalism influences) (Art in America)

Minimalism isn't pretty (The Village Voice)

Russian Minimalism: From the Prose Poem to the Anti-Story.(Book review) (The Modern Language Review)

The year of living minimally: in response to several recent shows, the author rethinks Minimalism as the outcome of shifting formal imperatives, a global current, a forebear of postmodernism, a child of continental philosophy--in short, as anything but the monolithic movement its first exponents made it out to be.(Critical Essay) (Art in America)

Nothing Less Than Literal: Architecture After Minimalism.(books noted)(Brief Article)(Book Review) (Afterimage)

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