Minimalism

Description

The term Minimalism was coined to describe the work of a group of American artists who, in the 1960s, produced a decidedly unexpressionistic, reductive work with a hard industrial feel. While numerous minimalist painters exist, among them Robert Ryman, Robert Mangold and Brice Marden, most of the key Minimalists - Andre, Flavin Judd, LeWitt and Morris - produced sculptures or, as some put it, 'specific objects' or 'objects in a world of objects'. Although none of the artists actually accepted the term 'Minimalism', their common use of serial, modular or repeating forms (from Carl Andre's floor sculptures of readymade bricks or Judd's stacked boxes), as well as the abstraction and industrial production of the work, drew these artists' work together. These artists' aim was to create an art that was non-hierarchical (no single part of the work takes precedence of any other) and thus democratic. In his introductory Survey, James Meyer explains the key characteristics and issues involved in this much-debated movement, while the extensive images in the Works section, with explanatory commentary, illustrate the surprising variety in the work and offer a view of the many artists also associated with Minimalism, among them Eva Hesse, Frank Stella, Anne Truitt, Robert Smithson and Agnes Martin. With direct access to many of the artists' archives, never-before-published material and texts which first appeared in little-known or out-of print catalogues, this book is the most comprehensive and definitive sourcebook on Minimalism available.

James Meyer is a writer and art historian who has been teaching contemporary art and critical theory at Emory University, Atlanta, since 1994. He is a noted specialist and lecturer in Minimalism, as well as other forms of American art of the 1960s, and contemporary forms of institutional critique. Meyer has written extensively on Minimal artists. Publications include Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the 1960s (Yale, 2001); he has contributed essays to Mel Bochner: Thought Made Visible 1966 1973 (Yale, 1995); Ellsworth Kelly: Sculpture for a Large Wall, 1957 (Matthew Marks Gallery, 1998); Eva Hesse: A Retrospective, ed. Elisabeth Sussman (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2002); Conceptual Art: Theory, Myth, Practice (Cambridge, 2004) and A Minimal Future (Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2004). He is the editor of Carl Andre, Cuts=Texts, 1999 2004 (MIT Press, 2005) and has contributed to journals Artforum, Art Magazine, Flash Art and Parkett.

'Readers will learn as much about the subject as one book can be expected to deliver.' Barry Schwabsky, Bookforum 'well written - an excellent 'Documents' section that allows a proper investigation of the movement's theoretical bases' Art Review