Mid-Modern and Minimalism.

 What is Minimalism?

    Minimalism, as the name suggests, is an art form which stays bare bones and relies on a show but don't tell mentality to convey its meaning. Minimalism is something that tries to remain calm and not something that shows off using mostly simple colors and shapes to create something bigger than the individual elements that make up the whole. 

    It rose to prominence during the 1950s and became popular widely during the 1960s. It is a sort of off-shoot of absurdist and abstract art, using unusual shapes and features but minimalism differs in how it is presented. It mirrored the trend that followed through out the 60s, in the era of the Space Race everything took on a sleek yet simple aesthetic. It also emerged as a response to abstract art, seeing it as too emotionally invested. Artists tended to keep emotional influence out of their work, putting more thought into the work itself rather than what it was meant to invoke.

Examples of Minimalism

Untitled - Dan Flavin (1971)

 
    Flavin's work is characterized by his exclusive use of your typical, off the shelf florescent light. As a staple of minimalism, everything is very featureless and smooth in an almost sanitized kind of way being left almost "blank" as to let the viewer fill in the rest themselves. It radiates the sort of space age feel that flowed in the artwork of the era, the piece itself wouldn't feel out of place in an episode of classic 60s star trek or similar.  

        It speaks of the extreme economic means of which minimalism uses, it uses nothing fancy but rather things you can have commonly available and easy to acquire. Flavin used great amounts of florescent lights which are easily to get a hold of at your average hardware store. The building chosen is also nothing spectacular as it is just an empty warehouse. It is a branch of art that takes pride in keeping things to a reduced form, its very much a statement that anyone can be an artist and the materials to do it are readily available to use. It's very aesthetically pleasing to me, I enjoy "quiet" art if that makes any sense. Art that leaves it up to the viewer rather than being upfront, show but don't tell.  

Barrier of Blue - Dan Flavin (1968)

    True to Flavin's characteristic style, there is a great use of simple and easy to acquire lights arranged and this time with the addition of repurposed picture frames to help form the base to put the lights on. This again shows the simplicity that minimalism captures where anyone can create something alluring since the supplies needed are not hard to get a hold of. A feature that would be come quite common in this style of art is the used of simple shapes, here the use of square frames is used to help give body and structure to the rest of the piece. 

    Like Flavin's other works color is subdued and mostly ambient and soft with brighter blue lights supplemented by much dimmer red ones to provide a greater contrast. Again the surrounding area where this is all set up is also quite spartan and bare letting your mind run wild with ideas as to the purpose of it all. 

Maquette for One, Two, Three - Sol LeWitt (1979)

A fair portion of LeWitt's sculptures tended to use a lot of cuboid structures, he liked cubes for their simplicity and how no one really attributed much to cubes. Instead of aluminum as prior, this is composed of balsa wood and regular white paint. Made as a part of a commission given by the General Services Administration, it would serve as the proof-of-concept for a much larger version that would return to using aluminum but scaled up massively from 22 inches long to over 29 feet long. 

It follows the trend of using things that are unassuming being used to create something much grander while maintaining a simple aesthetic. LeWitt's work in sculptures, while not some of my favorite in the field of minimalism, is impactful to the field as a whole as he has served as an inspiration to other minimalist artists in both painting and sculptures. 

Wall Drawing #260 - Sol LeWitt (1975)

LeWitt over the course of his career would go on to create 1,400 different paintings and drawings that would cover entire walls. He would not only work on these himself but extent invitations to work alongside him in creating his iconic wall drawings, embracing the tenet of minimalism in where the artist themselves isn't too important but the work itself.

#260 as an example uses a clean, stark black canvas on a wall using simple strokes of white paint to produce geometric shapes, intricate swirling lines. The beauty of this kind of art comes from the simplicity as it does not rely on the skill of the artist but rather the outcome of what they make. It does not rely on complex color contrasts or intricate detail but what the artist wants to do.

Untitled - Donald Judd

Judd was a person who hated being associated with minimalism but has ironically become widely viewed as one of the founding fathers of the genre. A lot of his artwork tended to be different from the rest of the minimalist field with a greater use of more vibrant colors compared to others where the color was often a bit muted and serve a more supplementary role. However it continues the use of readily available materials that hallmark this kind of work, here it is aluminum and plexiglass given a navy blue hue. Aluminum is a popular choice for crafting thanks to how easy it can be to shape into different forms with simple tools or cut down into smaller pieces which makes it a very flexible material.

There is great conjecture and debate on whether or not it is a sculpture or painting since it uses elements of both, it is a sculpture in its use of physical pieces which could be shaped but also as a painting since the other main feature is painted on, that being the blue paint hue. It sort of spearheaded a new kind of art which blended the elements of the two into a single new form.

Untitled - Donald Judd (1965)

A lot of Judd's work does not have a name, a lot of it is just untitled letting the artwork do the speak for itself. One of Judd's paints it keeps to the elements which shaped his work with more use of color than most other minimal artworks, a single red line stretching from the lower left to the upper right taking a series of twists and turns on a black background with some red smudges here and there. Like most other forms of art in its genre it is about the perspectives people often differ in. Its like the rabbit-duck image, some see a duck while others a rabbit. I see a dog, someone else could see a rabbit, another an insect. 

Minimalism is all about showing and not telling, a lot of pieces do not have concrete names and are often left just untitled as to avoid emotional impacts. Artists who worked with this kind of art keep their own emotions and techniques to a minimum and kept that for titles as well, pieces which do have genuine titles are often keep vague and simplistic. Titles like "here and now" or "primary structures", things that don't immediately invoke something. This does much the same, it lets the mind wander and come up with its own answers. 

Thoughts on Minimalism:

 As a genre of artwork, I quite like it. I like things that let the mind come up with its own solutions to questions and are not blatantly upfront with what exactly is going on. Don't feed people the answer to questions but rather let them come up with it themselves and learn from differing perspectives. Seeing how one can do a lot from what is very little is also quite inspiring since it gives the impression that art isn't taught but learned naturally, you do not need to spend years studying vigorously to hone your skills at painting or sculpting but practicing and finding it out for yourself. Its uplifting to read stories of some of these artists just heading over to their local hardware store and getting what they need from readily available stocks rather than waiting for a specialize item to arrive from the mail. Anyone can do it if they just try.

References:

Guggenheim - Dan Flavin 

Guggenhein - Dan Flavin - Barrier of Blue. 

What Are The Main Characteristics Of Minimalism Art? - Anita Louise 

Two Open Modular Cubes/Half-Off 

Maquette for One, Two, Three - Smithsonian 

 Famous Minimalist Art That Defined the Genre - The Artling

Minimalism 101 - The Artling 

List of Artwork - Judd Foundation