Criticism of Minimal Art of the Sixties
Khabibullaeva Renata MA-S3265943University of Groningen Faculty of Arts
Master Thesis
Table of contents.
• Introduction.• List of illustrations. • Chapter 1. The Sixties.
• 1.1. Donald Judd (1928-1994) – “Specific Objects” (1965)………...13-17 • 1.2. Robert Morris (1931) – “Notes on Sculpture” (Part1, 2, 1966)………...……18-23 • 1.3. Clement Greenberg (1909-1994) - “Recentness of Sculpture” (1967)…………...24-28 • 1.4. Michael Fried (1939) – “Art and Objecthood” (1967)………..……..29-32 • 1.5. Lucy Lippard (1937) – “Eros Presumptive” (1967)………...……….33-36 • Chapter 2. The Seventies.
• 2.1. Robert Pincus-Witten (1935-2018) – Postminimalism (1977)………...…….41-44 • 2.2. Rosalind Krauss (1941) - Passages in Modern Sculpture (1977), The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernists Myths (1986)……….45-49 • Chapter 3. The Nineties and Two-thousandth.
• 3.1. Hal Foster (1955) - “The Crux of the Minimalism” (1996)………54-57 • 3.2. Anna Chave - “Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power” (1990), “Minimalism and
Biography” (2000)………...………...………58-62 • 3.3. Alex Potts (1943) – The Sculptural Imagination: figurative, modernist, minimalist
(2000)………..………63-68 • Conclusion.
List of illustrations.
1. Figure 1. – Donald Judd, Untitled (Stack)………..16
2. Figure 2. - Robert Morris, Box with the Sound of Its Own Making………...19
3. Figure 3. – Robert Morris, Untitled (L-Beams)………..20
4. Figure 4. – Keith Sonnier, Inflated Works………..…35
5. Figure 5. – Eva Hesse, Accession………...43
6. Figure 6. – Eva Hesse, Expanded Expansion……….43
7. Figure 7. - The Expanded Field, diagram by Rosalind Krauss..…………...…….49
8. Figure 8. - Dan Flavin, Diagonal of May 25………..59
Introduction.
The term Minimal Art first appeared in Richard Wollheim’s essay “Minimal Art” in 1965.1 He used it to describe the character of new works that appeared on the American art scene at the beginning of the sixties. It should be mentioned that minimalism is an art movement that involves not just painting and sculpture, but also music, theater, and design. The main characteristics of Minimal Art are the simplicity of forms and willful lack of expression. As an art movement, minimalism appeared at the beginning of the sixties and reached its apogee at the end of the decade.2 Early Minimal Art development in the USA was perceived as a reaction to Abstract Expressionism. However, the roots of Minimal Art could be found in European art at the beginning of the twentieth century. For example, The Malevich’s geometrical abstract work, the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp or Constantin Brancusi’s sculptures all have the idea of extreme reduction of forms and shapes.
The major characteristics of minimalism include the absence of dynamism and expression, since minimalists were deliberately against Abstract Expressionism and its values. In order to embody these concepts, artists used explicit, most often geometric forms, a reduction or total lack of color, large scale order, and seriality. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of minimalism in art is the repetition of forms. Such methods were used in order to erase emotional aspects and identity in the artwork. Prominent artists of the Minimal Art movement include Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, Frank Stella, Tony Smith, Richard Serra, Robert Morris, and Dan Flavin. In parallel, representatives of this art movement themselves became its theoreticians. In this manner, Donald Judd wrote the essay “Specific Objects” (1965). He proclaimed the new three-dimensional works as alternative forms of art which share some particular qualities with the mediums of painting and sculpture. Robert Morris in his essay “Notes on Sculptures” (1965) also insisted that minimal artwork is something more than sculpture. According to him it was a whole entirety consisting of light, space, the three-dimensional object or structure and the viewer, which implied phenomenology.
Today, Minimal Art in most publications dedicated to contemporary art is regarded as an art movement.3 However, there was a big polemic around its issues. It can be said that the discussion started with a general question whether minimalism is art or not. One of the main
1 Foster (1996), p. 40. 2 Strickland (2000), p. 258.
participants in the discussion that adhered to more traditional views, Clement Greenberg, said that Minimal Art could be regarded on the same level as doors, a blank sheet of paper, or table.4 While he targeted the art of the second half of the sixties, he was also talking about minimalism as a whole, which in his opinion contained all the most vivid manifestations of “art-denying look”.5
The debates on Minimal Art started at the end of the sixties. As was said, the artists who were part of this art movement wrote essays on Minimal Art as well. In this way, artists presented themselves also as art critics. That quickly made polemics an essential part of minimalism. The development of the discussion around minimalism has been one of the most significant things brought by it, since after its emergence, in the context of this discussion, many sophisticated topics have been developed. The main debate around Minimal Art was the question of whether the minimal object is art or not. It included a number of important issues such as materiality, authorship, theatricality, and perception, which was new and unclear in the American art scene in the sixties. In some sense, it was a break with or turn from traditions and values of modernist art, meaning the primacy of the abstract painting in the institutional and linguistic sphere and total denial of objectivity and its recognition as a kitsch.6 This subsequently led to a turn in the field of art criticism.
This paper aims to consider and analyze the issues of polemics in the context of Minimal Art movement and to determine its significance in art history. In particular, the initial rejection of minimalism as art and its subsequent adoption and revision of views on it. If this happened as outlined, then there was an apparent shift in the perception and understanding of art, which is theoretically justified by the texts selected for this study. So the central question of my study is what was that shift and how is this shift theoretically justified and explained in the texts by the prominent critics beginning from 1965 and till 2000, and of what its significance. Hence it is necessary to follow the development of the polemics around Minimal Art in order to consider this question.
In order to analyze the issue of polemics, it is necessary to determine the aspects of disagreement about minimalism. First, it is logical to start with consideration of the artist’s point of view since their publications are the primary sources of the art movement. Further we consider the position of two of the most prominent critics in sixties art; Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried. Since they represent the first response or reaction on Minimal Art and what is
4 Battock (1995), p. 180.
5 Briony Fer (1994), p. 435.
most important in the minimalist’s essays. After the analysis of these texts, the main aspects of debate will become clear. Further, I would like to make an analysis of texts by Robert Pincus-Witten and Rosalind Krauss in order to observe their reflections on the initial “conflict”. Those critics were first to interpret the art of the sixties in a new way with ten-year/decade perspective. Besides Krauss and Pincus-Witten, there were a number of other critics who have moved away from the views of Greenberg and treated art of the sixties in a different manner. However, Krauss’s thoughts have received wide prevalence and acceptance, so I decided manly to focus on her works.
The third part will be dedicated to a contemporary writers. They observe “the whole picture” of post-world war art development in general (contemporary art) and accordingly determine and explain the place and significance of minimalism polemics in context. The discussion will document and explain this break in the American art of the sixties, in the sense of what was before and after, and what had changed. The final step will be to analyze the shift in polemics, to determine the development of criticism towards the Minimal Art movement, and to formulate the present state of affairs.
In my opinion, the question about polemics during the sixties, has great significance in the context of the contemporary art development. It is important to note that other tendencies in American art of the sixties such as Pop Art, Kinetic Art, and Op Art were also extensively discussed by art critics. I chose to focus more profoundly on Minimal Art however, since it had received the loudest resonance. Secondly, there are relevant questions which were raised by critics and artists in the discourse about minimalism that still affects contemporary art. Last but not the least, minimalism has affected not only the sphere of visual and sculptural art but art culture as a whole as minimalism was developing in the field of music by John Cage, in the theater by Robert Wilson and choreography by Yvonne Rainer. Polemics in my opinion, still has a significant influence on art today because in many ways the American art of the sixties was an impetus to the development of conceptual art, land art, environmental art, site-specific art and so on. It is noteworthy that this shift left a bright lineage which can be traced through the dispute.
To begin, it is necessary to discuss the terminological context of this paper. In accordance with primary sources dedicated to the theory of the Minimal Art, the main theoreticians-artists such as Morris, Judd, and Stella do not refer their works of art as sculpture or painting. They call their works of art three-dimensional forms, objects, new works or structures that shared more or less the same qualities with the medium of painting and sculpture. Besides, art critic Michael Fried referred to minimalists as literalists and called their works literalist work. Some art historians also began to address minimalism in the same manner.
This paper will be carried out in accordance with the theoretical statements of this art movement, that is, it will be taken into account that three-dimensional objects or structures are the “private” form of art distanced from traditional ones. However, in the tradition of art history, most scholars, critics, and historians today consider the works of Minimal Art in the framework of sculpture. Many minimalists themselves tend to correlate their three-dimensional objects or structures with the medium of sculpture.
In order to conduct this study properly, the following methodological frames will be used: text analysis and comparative analysis of the textual materials. In order to analyze each text or point of view of a particular person, it is necessary to give some brief information about the author: their education, the field of preoccupation and contribution to the development of theoretical justification of minimalism. The analysis of each text will used to illuminate the following aspects: the main point of the text, the argumentations, and the goal of the author. As for the comparative analysis, the main differences in understanding and views will be stated and further analyzed.
As is said above, the first chapter of the study will include three primary sources of Minimal Art: Robert Morris’s “Notes on Sculpture” (1966), Donald Judd’s “Specific Objects” (1965) and subsequent strong reactions to minimal artworks and theory in publications by Clement Greenberg in his “Recentness of Sculpture” (1967), Michael Fried’s “Art and Objecthood” (1967), and Lucy Lippard’s “Eros Presumptive” (1967). The second chapter will be analyzing texts by the theorists-critics Rosalind Krauss in her book Passages in Modern Sculpture (1977), The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (1987) and Robert Pincus-Witten’s Postminimalism (1977). The third chapter will contain the chapter “The Crux of the Minimalism” from Hal Foster’s book The Return of the Real (1996), Anne Chave’s two articles “Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power” (1990) and “Minimalism and Biography” (2000), and the chapters regarding minimalism from Alex Potts’s book The Sculptural Imagination: Figurative, Modernist, Minimalist (2000).
Included will be significant publications concerning Minimal Art and its issues by art critics who were not creative artists. It is worthy to take them into consideration as secondary sources as many primary authors referred to them or discussed them in their own works. The fundamental basic publication concerning minimalism is Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology (1995) by Gregory Battcock. In general, this anthology is widely appreciated because it includes most all essential essays published between 1964 and 1967, the period when “disputes” around minimalism were at a peak. It includes for example Barbara Rose’s “ABC Art” (1965). She was
the first to coin the term “minimalism” and Richard Wollheim’s “Minimal Art” who was already mentioned, plus Greenberg’s “Recentness of Sculpture”, and Fried’s “ Art and Objecthood”.
James Meyer’s book Minimalism Art and Polemics in the Sixties (2004) is also an extremely detailed analysis of the time interval from 1960 to 1970 for events related to Minimal Art, beginning from a detailed description of the first Minimal Art exhibition and ending with a chapter that considers Minimal Art as the representative art of the USA in 1960’s on the series of international exhibitions in Berlin, Paris, London, Zurich, The Hague, and so on. It would be reasonable to include Meyer’s text into the third chapter of the current study. However, he does not consider Minimal Art in the context of the overall development of the post world war art and is more focused on the issue of exhibitions. Nevertheless, he made a profound analysis of Judd, Morris, Fried and Greenberg’s publications. Because of this, Meyer’s analyses have been used frequently for this paper. His book also includes an extensive bibliography listing necessary literature connected with Minimal Art.
There are a many general books dedicated to Minimal Art, for example, Minimalism: Art of Circumstances (1988) by Kenneth Baker. It has a reasonable general and introductory character but it avoids some rather important issues concerning Minimal Art. Minimal Art (2004) by Daniel Marzona or Minimal Art and Artists in the 1960’s and After (2005) by Laura Garrard much like the other books, regard only the main features, artists, and works of Minimal Art or contain mainly photographs and will not be used in this research because they have a general and introductory character and superficially considered the issue of polemics in Minimal Art. Current scholars that wrote abundantly on Minimal Art like Alex Potts and James Mayer, for example, do not refer to any of those authors and will also be avoided. As for the holistic introductory book, Minimalism (1997) by David Batchelor, he tried to touch on all topics related to minimalism and created a ground foundation of concepts considering Minimal Art.
It is however another matter concerning catalogs. They include essential information concerning artists, artworks, origins, theory, development, etc. and importantly they are accurate. It is through catalogs we can trace accurately all the twists and turns in the history of polemics around minimalism. I credit this to the fact that all the contributors of texts in catalogs were direct participants and viewers of the debate actively conducted at that time. As an example, Minimal Art: From the Marzona Collection (2018) by Alistair Ride. Ride describes the latest exhibition of Minimal Art in London that was held in April 2017. The Judith Neisser Collection: Minimal and Post minimal Innovation (2011) by James Rondeau catalog is dedicated to one of the largest and most prominent collections of minimal and post Minimal Art of the Neisser
family. The Stone family also owns a large collection of contemporary art and in particular, they have an extensive collection of minimal and conceptual artworks. These artworks are included in the catalog Contemporary Collecting: The Donna and Howard Stone Collection (2010) by James Rondeau.
An additional essential book dedicated to the critical issues within Minimal Art is Minimal Art: The Critical Perspective (1990) by Frances Colpitt. The basis of her book is the point of view of the minimal artists and argued all key points of Minimal Art from their side. By means of metacritical approach, Colpitt relied on the artist’s writings and interviews.7 Edward Strickland also published the book Minimalism – Origins in 2000 in an attempt to characterize the prehistory of minimalism.
In general, the number of various publications devoted to the art of minimalism, the issues associated with it and its subsequent influence is of high. Many consider the problems of materiality, transcendence, phenomenology, sociology, the role of the artist and the viewer. Recent publications disassemble minimalism in the context of its influence on the contemporary art and rely on primary sources (“Notes on Sculpture”, “Specific Objects”, “Art and Objecthood”) in one way or another.
7 Retrieved from:
https://bepl.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/default/search/detailnonmodal/ent:$002f$002fSD_ILS$002f0$002f SD_ILS:979907/ada
Chapter 1.
The Sixties.
Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculpture (1966) was the first and most celebrated exhibition dedicated to Minimal Art and denoted minimalism as an art movement as such. This event confirmed the validity of minimalism’s position in the American art scene of the sixties. This chapter aims to highlight the texts by major artists who were presented at that exhibition as primary sources of Minimal Art; Donald Judd’s “Specific Objects” (1965) and Robert Morris’s “Notes on Sculpture” (1966), and its two opponents Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried. The final part of the chapter one will be dedicated to the alternative point of view within the text of Lucy Lippard.
The first great exhibition dedicated to Minimal Art was Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculpture and was held in New York’s Jewish Museum in 1966. According to James Meyer it was a significant event that received great attention among the public and press. The New York Times - journalist Hilton Kramer stated that “a new aesthetic era is upon us” due to this event.8 The Primary Structures - exhibition presented works by Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Anthony Caro, and Robert Morris as well as other young artists like Tony Smith, Robert Smithson, Anne Truitt, David Annesley and others. The exhibition space of the Jewish Museum was designed in accordance with the early sixties “white cube” standards: spacious rooms, white walls, and track lighting. The curator of the Jewish Museum at that time was Kynaston McShine (1935-2018) and together with art critic Lucy Lippard (1937), organized this exhibition.
The word Structures in the exhibition’s title came from the minimalist’s concept that artworks are not sculptures nor painting, but it is something in-between.9 According to Judd and LeWitt, these works represented three-dimensional art that explores space, light, and materials, and shares some qualities with traditional media such as sculpture and painting. They felt the word Primary perfectly reflected the aesthetics of basic forms and shapes that minimalists used.
The Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculpture was an event that marked a point of no-return: these new tendencies in art demanded immediate attention from influential art critics in the United States. Before we analysis the texts that served as the first spiral in the polemics on Minimal Art, it is necessary to briefly overview the general state of art criticism at that time in America.
8 Meyer (2001), p. 13. 9 Meyer (2001), p. 13.
Art criticism in the fifties and sixties was under the influence of Clement Greenberg. American art by that time was developing independently from European art for more than twenty years and in some sense became the center of art as Europe was devastated by the war.10 Subsequently, the epicenter of art criticism gradually moved to America as well. As was with the case of art production, the roots of art criticism was also laid in Europe.11
Clement Greenberg occupied a leading position in the sphere of art criticism; in particular, he had become the apologist of Abstract Expressionism, which marked the beginning of a new and innovative development in art. Greenberg laid the foundations and cultivated formalism: the formal qualities of the painting or sculpture such as materials, color, shape, and texture and accordingly excluded the ideological and social content.12 He was continued and was inspired by the tradition of European formalism, which was represented by English critics such as Roger Fry and Clive Bell.13 Greenberg’s publications received appreciation and acceptance among art critics and scholars. Michael Fried and Rosalind Krauss were perhaps among the most prominent ones.
Michael Fried, as well as Greenberg, wrote on modernist painting. Unlike Greenberg, Fried used different argumentation in his prominent essay “Art and Objecthood”. In particular, he introduced and identified two terms: literalism and theatricality. The terms refer to the aspect of phenomenology – which was new and not completely clearly developed by that time. Fried drew attention to aspects of phenomenology which was further developed and expanded by a new “generation” of critics like Rosalind Krauss. Over time, both Greenberg and Fried abandoned art criticism at the end of the sixties,14 most likely due to the fact that formalism, whose apologists they were, could not include (in its model) a new art that went beyond the boundaries of the traditional canvas.
As was said before, there occurred a “shift” during the sixties. The traditional paradigm, where the “roles” of critic and artist were quite strictly differentiated, was challenged too. This can be vividly seen in the context of Minimal Art since such artists as Robert Morris, Sol LeWitt, Richard Serra, Donald Judd and others became theorists and critics simultaneously. They had received broader and more versatile educations in comparison to the artists of the previous generation. Donald Judd was an art critic prior and had served in the army.15 Morris was in the military as an engineer, had studied philosophy and took part in theater performances. Richard 10 Mack (1994), p. 341. 11 Harrison (2009), p. 37. 12 Tekiner (2006), p. 31. 13 Tekiner (2006), p. 31. 14 Carrier (1994), p. 22. 15 Newman, Elkins (2007), p. 187.
Serra studied English literature and worked in a steel mill. The so-called “mutation” had happened not only with art forms but also with traditional paradigms of artist and critic. Critics had a strong reaction to the artist’s invasion into their territory, as “Recentness of Sculpture” and “Art and Objecthood” were published after the Morris and Judd’s essays were published and both contained references to “Specific Objects” and “Notes on Sculpture”.
1.1.
Donald Judd “Specific Objects”
(1965).
Donald Judd (1928-1994) was an artist, critic and theoretic. Judd served as an engineer for the Army of the United States, stationed in Korea after he entered the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg where he studied philosophy. After that, he decided to continue studying philosophy and art history at Colombia University in the 1950s. While studying, Judd experimented with writing texts and making art. Around the sixties Judd was interested in the idea of materiality and its implementation in three-dimensional forms like reliefs. The main characteristics of his minimalistic works are serialism and the use of industrial materials. The first time Judd was presented art was in 1956 at the Panoras Gallery before the “minimal period”16.
Judd is also known for his contribution in collecting contemporary art. In 1979 he literally turned 340 acres of land north of the city of Marfa in Texas into a museum of minimalism. With the help of Dia Art Foundation organization he bought more than one hundred hectares of land and opened it as a public foundation17. The Chinati Foundation contains Judd’s own extensive collection of art and the works of contemporaries like Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Robert Irwin, Ilya Kabakov, Claes Oldenburg, and others.
Donald Judd is also known for his design of furniture. His furniture, as well as his art, has the same main characteristics: seriality and industrial materials. The “function defines form” – Judd took the celebrated principal of modernist architecture for his furniture too.
In 1965, Judd published his essay “Specific Objects” in Arts Yearbook. In his essay, Judd tried to deliberately justify what is the new three-dimensional work of art, and explain his thoughts by comparing specific objects with the mediums of sculpture and painting. Judd’s work was published one year earlier than Morris’ “Notes on Sculpture”; hence “Specific Objects” may have affected Morris’s essay heavily. It can be said that Morris's essay opposes itself to “Specific Objects”. (It will be considered in the next part of this chapter.) It is important to note that in the interview with Lucy Lippard, Judd said that his essay was commissioned as a report regarding the “today’s state of the art”18. He felt there was a need to stipulate and identify the values of new works directly from an artist’s point of view.
16 Retrieved from: http://aaep1600.osu.edu/book/11_Judd.php 17 Retrieved from: https://chinati.org/visit/missionhistory.php 18 Mayer (2001), p. 38.
The term specific in the title of Judd’s essay conveys the meaning of three-dimensional forms that structure the space around it and does not have any illusionistic, anthropomorphic, and/or interpretable qualities. It is meant as a pure abstraction.
Judd started his essay with a statement on the best works of recent years, which appeared to be neither painting nor sculpture “but there are some things that occur nearly in common”19. The three-dimensional work is an alternative form of art that does not consist in any art movement and rejects modernist values (meaning the primacy of the abstract painting in the institutional and linguistic sphere and a total denial of objectivity and its recognition as a kitsch). The main point of “Specific Objects” is a rejection of conventionalities in art. Judd in his essay aims to explain the nature of new three-dimensional works. He stateed that new work inherits the advances of abstract painting and overcomes its limitations. In order to justify his position, he considered the limitations of painting and explained how or which particular aspects enabled new works to overcome painting and sculpture. Speaking of the nature of new things, Judd mainly refers to his own works. For example, the relationship of two planes is specific; it is a form.20 This statement reflects the essence of his work: the repetition of plane and their unity or
wholeness in a single form.
Judd admited that the beginning of new works was laid in abstract art. In this way, “Specific Objects” stresses the works of several artists: Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Kenneth Noland, Barnett Newman, Jean Arp, and Constantin Brancusi. He names them more than once and gives their works as examples of particular relevant qualities inherent to three-dimensional works.
His first objection to painting is “a rectangular plane placed flat against the wall.” According to Judd the rectangular format of the painting dictates the composition on it. The plane has strict boundaries, which are not emphasized or stand out. While in the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko or Clifford Still the boundaries of a rectangular canvas in their works are emphasized through the composition. Due to that, the rectangular plane becomes a form. Thereby Rothko’s and Pollock’s paintings overcome this limitation of a rectangular plane. The main advance of the new painting is nearly an entity, one thing, and not the indefinable sum of group of entities and references, which further was inherent in new works. Thus Judd sees the roots of new three-dimensional works in Pollock’s and Rothko’s paintings. However, they are limited by the use of only one surface. What is more important is that the rectangular format of the painting is a given form that, even if it is blank, implies the limitations.
19 Judd (1965), p. 1. 20 Judd (1965), p. 2.
While nature of three dimensions isn't set, given beforehand, something credible can be made, almost anything.21
His second objection to painting it is its metaphorical space. Judd stresses that all paintings that seek to emphasize the rectangular format of the canvas loses the aspect of space; a necessary quality of three-dimensional work or even the essence. In this way, Rothko’s works of art are shallow and illusionistic in space, while Reinhardt’s paintings are indefinitely deep, but both occupy an illusionistic space. Judd insists on the inseparability of painting and illusionism, he states that any painting carries a reference to an object or figure in non-real space. However, Pollock’s paintings are “more” in real space since the drippings definitely are on the canvas. As the opposite, he refers to the shaped paintings of Frank Stella where the lines unify the surface and tears off the painting from the wall’s plane. The specific order of lines and colors allow to avoid any references to the image.
In this way, the new works went beyond the continuation of Rothko’s rectangles and Newman’s zips. The paintings of Abstract Expressionists share one the same qualities with Minimal Art; they both structure the space. However, in case of Rothko and Newman, the structuring takes place within the framework of the given rectangular plane. The three-dimensional forms overcome the abstract art and structure the space around it, actual space is more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface.
The third objection is the use of conventional materials. In the discussion of materials, Judd regards the superiority of new industrial materials and commercial paints over the traditional ones like oil based paints, wood, clay, and bronze. In his opinion, traditional organic materials have limitations and a “certain quality”, which can refer back to certain anthropomorphic associations. In new works, the issue of materiality really comes to the fore and plays a much larger role than ever before. The new works are not sculptures, so they do not need to fight or overcome the materials that they are made of as a traditional sculpture does. The three-dimensional objects are dematerialized; they do not have weight or any other illusionistic qualities.
Thus, Judd states that three-dimensional works have more in common with painting, while, as he admits, looking more like a sculpture. The main claim towards sculpture is its naturalism and anthropomorphism. Judd states that naturalism prevails more in sculpture rather than in painting: Di Suvero uses beams as if they were brushstrokes, imitating movements, as Kline did. The only aspect that the new three-dimensional works and sculpture share is that they are made of parts, however in different ways. In new works, the ordered part-by-part structure,
like in Judd’s column-like Untitled (1980) or earlier piece Stack (1967) can be seen at once as a whole. There is no dominant part, it is a whole. Such unity, in his opinion, is peculiar to Dada objects. Like Duchamp’s the bottle dryer (1914) (The Bootle Rack) or a well-known Fountain (1917). Judd also says that through this unity new works get rid of anthropomorphism and the imitation of movement.
Figure 1. – Donald Judd, Untitled (Stack), 1976, Lacquer on galvanized iron, twelve units, MoMA. Source: https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/donald-judd-untitled-stack-1967
As a final point, Judd wrote that a work of art needs only to be interesting. This notion was perceived as controversy for its broad meaning. Many critics in the sixties and seventies reflected on this idea, putting their own meaning into this term. It is hard to say what Judd meant by it, considering that he also said that “sure, anything could be art.” James Meyer’s book includes Judd’s interview where he clarified: “the discussion on the definition of value, we shall be dealing constantly with the motor affective life; that is to say, with instinct desire, feeling, will…It is necessary therefore to have a term which may be used to refer to what is characteristic of this strain in life and mind…The term interest is the most acceptable.”22
Summing up, new three-dimensional work has absorbed the advances of recent painting and sculpture. In its nature, new three-dimensional works rejects illusionistic space, illusionism, anthropomorphism and traditional materials. Judd also gives a very important statement that the
order in the new works is not rational since they aimed to escape the relational composition of European art, thus Minimal Art is not conceptual art in its nature. Judd determines new works as a space to move into, real space – it is what makes new works so powerful. Judd explains that the new work evolves above and beyond modern sculpture and painting with its humble beginnings from European art of the nineteenth century,.
Many scholars and critics find some points of Judd’s essay contradicting. The artist Robert Smithson in the catalogue of 7 Sculptors exhibition described Judd’s sculpture as “uncanny materiality... making these very definite works verge on the notion of disappearance.” The point is that Judd used mainly reflective or transparent materials that give a visual effect of dematerialization. It is a somewhat contradicting point since the effect of disappearance is illusionistic in its nature. Rosalind Krauss and Robert Smithson were the first who reproached Judd in contradiction of his theory and practice. Judd in his turn replied that everything that is in three-dimensional space in one way or another has a degree of illusionism.23
It is often that artist-theorists describe their own works while at the same time allude to the greater movement As we will see in Robert Morris’s text next, just as in Judd’s theory, the artist is discussing new three-dimensional works to mean their own works. The major matters of new works according to Judd are materials, seriality, order, wholeness, and large scale and all those qualities characterize his own artwork. However, Judd does not only talk about his personal art, but the art of the sixties that is in opposition to the values of European modern art. In case of the next Morris’ essay, as was said before; it more covers and justifies the practice and work of Morris himself.
1.2.
Robert Morris “Notes on Sculpture” (Part1, 2)
(1966)
The American artist Robert Morris (1931) is the “father” of Minimal Art theory.24 Apart from minimalism Morris also was preoccupied with theater, performance art, process art, and land art.25 Notably, he received a versatile education and I find it interesting that Judd’s education and career echo’s Morris’s. In 1948 he studied at Kansas City Art Institute after studying at the School of Art in California, which he did not finish. In 1951 he joined the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. After the Army, he studied philosophy and psychology at the Reed College in Oregon., then returned to California. At that time he was still under the influence of abstract painting, in particular Jackson Pollock and Clyfford Still. Morris experimented greatly, attempting to apply their techniques into his art. He was also involved in live theater and performance art since his wife Simon Forti was a well-known choreographer and dancer at that time.
He decided that the process of art making gave him much more satisfaction over the final result of the artwork so in the 1960’s Morris abandoned painting. He moved to New York where he began to study the history of art at the Hunter College in 1959.26
In the case of Morris, it is valuable to review his path in more detail as he is regarded as a “dissident” of Minimal Art. At some point in 1967-1968, Morris began to work with textiles and evolved the concept of anti-form, which is contradictory regarding minimalism even in its title. The concept of anti-form conveys the nature of the material’s quality as the determiner or “dictator” of its form.27 He argued that anti-form overcomes forms due to the fact that it is organic and inherent to the material.
During the sixties in New York, Morris started to experiment with sculpture. In 1963 at the Green Gallery was held his first exhibition. The reaction of the public and critics on his works was generally negative and controversial. His early works include I-Box (1962): a wooden box with door, shaped like a word I, behind the door is a photograph of naked a Morris. The idea
24 Ellen H. Johnson (1982), retrieved from:
https://books.google.nl/books?id=hC1NDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT143&dq=Robert+Morris+the+father+of+mi nimal+art&hl=ru&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZwNfeosfbAhUMblAKHcrkCkAQ6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q =Robert%20Morris%20the%20father%20of%20minimal%20art&f=false
25 Spivey (2009), p. 13. 26 Paul Elek (1978), p. 11.
behind this work is an obvious illustration of the word “I” in the meaning of existence. Morris was also concerned with the process of art making. Therefore, many of his early works, for example, I-Box or Box with the Sound of Its Own Making (1961), contain the aspect of interaction with the viewer in order to convey the aspect of the process. In this way, many scholars (as Morris himself) associate his early works to the concept of Duchamp’s ready-mades or found objects.28
Figure 2. – Robert Morris, Box with the Sound of Its Own Making, 1961, wood, internal speaker, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Source: https://www.wikiart.org/en/robert-morris/box-with-the-sound-of-its-own-making-1961
In 1964, again at the Green Gallery, was an additional Morris exhibition. This time his works completely moved away from the previous concepts. Robert Morris presented a series of sculptures made of plywood. His first work in these plywood series was made in 1961; it is the eight-foot gray column on the floor. On the Primary Structures Morris presented The Untitled (1965) – also a gray plywood structures better known as L-Beams. All structures have the same shape and size, “the known constant”.29 However, due to its placement with different angles, the viewer cannot perceive them as identical objects.
28 Bryan-Wilson (2013), p. 52. 29 Morris (1968), p. 234.
Figure 3. Robert Morris, Untitled (L-Beams), 1965-7, plywood, installation view at Green Gallery New York. Source: https://ocula.com/art-galleries/spruth-magers/exhibitions/hanging-soft-and-standing-hard/
Theoretical work by Morris had become no less famous than his works. He wrote the essay “Notes on Sculpture” that was published in two issues of Artforum - magazine in 1966. The first part was published six months after the Primary Structures showing and the second half printed eight months after in the February issue of Artforum.30 There was also a part three that was published in 1967 in the same periodical, but for our purposes, only the first two parts will be considered since the third part is unrelated in nature to the first two. Part four was published later after Fried and Greenberg’s essays.31 Today, “Notes on Sculpture” is regarded a significant publication since it is mentioned in a large number of anthologies and general books devoted to American art of the twentieth century. “Notes on Sculpture” is also quoted by almost all prominent critics of the second half of the twentieth century: Michel Fried, Leo Steinberg, Rosalind Krauss, Lucy Lippard, David Antin, Hal Foster, and many others.
Morris, as well as Judd, aimed to explain the nature of the new works, though Judd was a professional critic while Morris lacked such a skill.32 Unlike Judd, Morris states that the Minimal Art works have more in common with sculpture rather than with painting. Morris proclaims a reassertion of the non-imagistic as a condition or demand from the art today. In this way, he opposes illusionism and sees its most effective and powerful rejection in new works. Morris talks
30 Williams (2000), p. 38.
31 Charles & Wood (2003), p. 828. 32 Potts (2000), p. 235.
about recent sculpture that is anti-illusionistic in its nature as an argument in favor of his theory. Like Judd, Morris refers to constructivism as origins of Minimal Art since constructivists were the first who elaborated the autonomous form. As a final step, he states that the new work aims to awaken in a spectator a sense of gestalt, by means of the viewer’s inclusion into the space and pure geometrical forms that structure it.
Unlike Judd, Morris does not refer to the art of his contemporaries to give a definition to new works. His essay as a whole is much more intricate and complex. Much the same as “Specific Objects”, Morris’s essay mostly concerns itself with its author’s own works. In this way, “Notes on Sculpture” represents a kind of a manual for the spectator that explains how to experience his plywood structures. This is a very important aspect of Morris’s essay since it instantly marks a main difference between Judd and Morris’s texts - a phenomenological essence of new artworks.
Morris starts the first part of his essay with his concerns about the lack of definitive writing on present day sculpture.33 He says that sculpture has never been involved with illusionism, due to its physical qualities. While painting, by virtue of its literal qualities and sensibility, risks simply dematerializing itself. Morris refers to the Constructivists as the first who elaborated a non-imagistic structure as element detached from architecture and sculpture. He also refers to them as the first to use literal materials; it means that their only purpose was a physical presence. In this way, Morris speaks of the existence of certain forms that deny the traditional relations between properties (color, flatness, scale) in the works of art.
As well as Judd, Morris emphasizes that the new works can exist only in actual space. Hence, only three-dimensional or physical forms are suited for existence in real space. In this manner Morris rejects the use of color unlike Judd, stating that color makes a strong optical effect and even transcends natural light, hence color operates as a destroyer of physical qualities. According to him neutral colors or light are able to display or emphasize the physical qualities of the object correctly. In Morris’ theory the physical qualities of the sculpture are paramount. He asserts that perceptual amplifiers such as color distort them.
Simple geometrical forms are perceived as a whole, which causes in turn, a strong essence of gestalt – the goal of the new works. Morris himself was very interested in works by Edmund Husserl, who was the founder of the school of phenomenology.34 The relation of different parts implies the artist’s intervention and opticality as well. The Minimal Art work is a self-definitional whole – “object in itself”. That is what gestalt implies in itself. According to
33 Battcock (1995), p. 222.
Morris the separated solids like cubes and pyramids or simple polyhedrons are perhaps the most appropriate forms that create a strong sense of the whole. He considers three-dimensional shape as a pure visualization of extension, insisting that the painting due to its illusionistic qualities is not able to convey the shape it only can depict in non-real space.
According to Morris’ theory, the viewer’s presence and perceptions are simply necessary since without the viewer, gestalt does not exist. Although it would seem that the basis of gestalt should be the relations of the sculpture and its placement, it is however pointless if there is no viewer.
The second part of the “Notes on the sculpture” aims to continue considerations about physical qualities of the new works. Morris’ main concern here is how the viewer perceives certain physical qualities like size and scale.
Morris discusses the parameters of the objects based on the characteristics of human perception. He considers the questions of an object’s size and the differences in perceptions of things that are smaller or bigger than the viewer. The large-scale object does not create a sense of intimacy since in order to perceive them as a whole, the viewer must keep a distance with the object. Due to distance the object’s properties such as color, surface, and material are not perceived as individual parts or details in case with large-scale object.35 Oppositely, small-scale objects need to be perceived closely so the viewer would be able to recognize details.36 The viewer dictates that the object must be measured with the human body or larger.
Summing up Morris’s theory, the object becomes a self-contained part of the whole or in other words the situation. The traditional paradigm where the object is the central element is rejected in Morris theory.37 He sees new works as a whole: the viewer, object, light, and space which in total is a gestalt, however the key element is obviously the viewer. The viewer becomes an element, a piece of the total or a performer. The components of gestalt: object, space, light, and viewer seem to be equal in importance and cannot exist separately or without the viewer. Unlike Morris, Judd does not give any direct reference towards phenomenology or the importance of viewer perception of new works.
The phenomenological nature of new works consequently involves the aspect of time, particularly present time. Since the new work is the integral whole, the viewer, while being
35 Morris (1996), p. 232. : The better new works take s relationship out of the work and makes them a
function of space, light, and the viewer’s field of vision.
36 Morris (1996), p. 233. : The term detail is used here in a special and negative sense and should be
understood to refer to all factors in a work that pull it toward intimacy by allowing the specific to separate from the whole, thus setting up the relationship within the work.
37 Morris (1996), p. 234. : The object itself has not become less important. It merely become less
involved in the experience of the new work, exists in present time. New works are something akin to the scenery that builds the space around it. It is important that the viewer is not simply standing aside and perceives the work, but that he lives within it due to his movements around and across the work.
As for the comparison of Morris and Judd’s theories, it is interesting that both artists appear as the main theoreticians of Minimal Art but at the same time deny each other. While Judd sees that the medium of painting has more in common with new works rather than sculpture, Morris thinks the other way round. He emphasizes that the new three-dimensional work of art is a hybrid of painting and sculpture. Painting and sculpture are not able to satisfy the demand of becoming a function of the space. This demand is crucial to Minimal Art in the conclusions of Judd and Morris. In order to make the piece of art work and function, it must also separate from any aspect indicating that it was hand made.
1.3.
Clement Greenberg “Recentness of Sculpture”
(1967).
Clement Greenberg (1909-1994) was one of the most prominent art critics of the twentieth century and had an enormous influence in the fifties and sixties in America.38 He was an apologist of modernism; and in particular he introduced his own concept of Abstract Expressionism, in that abstractness is a total freedom from imitation and any reference to object.39 This in turn equated with freedom of identity. In his texts, he promoted the idea that Europe is no longer a center of art and that American art follows its own personal development. In regarding such artists as Jackson Pollock, Jules Olitski, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hofman, and Barnett Newmann, Greenberg asserts that American Abstract Expressionism breaks away from imitation and becomes pure abstract.
The defending and upholding of Abstract Expressionism was possibly caused by Greenberg’s personal views in life and politics. Before the war he proclaimed his commitment to freedom from any kind of totalitarianism or socialism.40
In order to analyze Greenberg’s “Recentness of Sculpture” (1967) it is important to read and understand his early essays. The most prominent of Greenberg’s essay is “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” (1939).41 “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” draws a dividing line between mass art, which he called kitsch, and high art – avant-garde. Greenberg treats modernism as an art freed from the demands of politics and social requests, like commissions, religion, and other systems of patronage. Proceeding from this, modernism is completely autonomous, free from anything relating to the visible environment. Kitsch, on the contrary, turns to everyday life by paying attention to socioeconomic issues, thus making art as a commercial product of capitalist society. James Meyer in his book mentioned that Greenberg did not express any desires to write and publish relating to contemporary art of the twentieth century. “Recentness of Sculpture” was commissioned as well as Judd’s “Specific Objects”. The essay was part of the catalogue of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) for contemporary sculpture practices and was
38 Meecham, P., Sheldon, J. (2005), p. 26.
39 Колленберг-Плотников (Collenberg-Plotnikov) (2015), p. 61.
40 Shone, R., Stonard, J.-P. (2014), p.132.
41 Greenberg (1988), p. 21. : Gradually, I had become much more interested in literature than in art
devoted to the American Sculpture of the 1960s exhibition.42 This involved Minimal Art but also Pop Art, Kinetic Art and other “novelty” art of the sixties.
As for Minimal Art, Greenberg openly treated it with skepticism. He saw in Minimal Art the dead end, since it rejected all modernist canons. Firstly he suggested that Minimal Art rejected the process of art making itself and contributed to a devaluation of the material, as minimalists used industrial materials. Because minimal artwork is a three-dimensional object, it instantly becomes figurative, while modernist art is a non-figurative pure abstraction. In his essay “Recentness of Sculpture” (1967) Greenberg accused Minimal Art of the absence of the artist’s personality, referring to the devaluing role of process of the art making. The opposite is from Morris’s essay: the creative process of the minimal artist was mainly calculation of form’s parameters. After calculations some artists sent the parameters to factories or workshops, where workers or factory machines produced the works of art. In addition, the use of industrial materials also was impersonal and lost the author personal signature, unlike the art of Pollock and Newman for example. Their works were immediately recognizable due to technique and use of material, and at the expense of this, the author’s “hand” was immediately recognizable.
“Recentness of Sculpture” was published in 1967, the next year after the Primary Structures- exhibition. Greenberg started his essay with a brief introduction of art in the forties and fifties. The art of the sixties he defined as Novelty Art, which included Pop Art, Kinetic Art, Environment, Assemblage, Erotic, and Minimal art.43 However, Minimal Art stands out from the rest, because it breaks with everything previously known as art. In “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” Greenberg determined the presence of identity in the work of art, by distinguishing high art from kitsch. New three-dimensional works, as well as Pop Art, did not weave peacefully into the Greenberg formalism paradigm where there was a division between high art and kitsch. So, perhaps Greenberg’s formalism was focused only on the autonomy of the medium and its formal qualities like color and form.
The main point that Greenberg tries to prove is that Minimal Art falls into the category of non-art, as does the rest of novelty art. As a main argument, Greenberg considers the strive for
42 Meyer (2001), p. 211.
43 North (2013), p. 188. : Greenberg’s first and most influential term for “the art made when “the new is
looted for new ‘twists’” was kitsch, but he came to favor Novelty Art, almost always with the added stigma of the capital liters, a term that situated such art in a very particular context. When he self-consciously defined this term in 1968, he said it meant novelty “in the old-fashioned sense on novelties sold in stores”. He meant in other words, to put Pop, minimalism, and conceptual art on the same dusty shelf with the whoopee cushions, the joy buzzers, and the dribble glasses.
far-outness in work of arts.44 In this way, according to him, the new works reaches its far-out as an end in itself. He blames and condemns novelty’s art in the look of non-art, which in his opinion implies three-dimensionality, use of industrial materials, rejection of the presence of the author's personality in artworks, and the use of idea behind the work instead of felt or discovered emotions.45
I think that the main goal for Greenberg was to defend the primacy of modernist’s values as true values of art, and once again he drew a line between high art and kitsch – Minimal Art, Pop Art, Op art, Kinetic Art, Environment Art, and so on.
Greenberg used the term “far-out” to refer to the extent to which a work can look like non-art before it really does not resemble art. He sees the limits of far-outness in the arbitrary character of Pollock’s painting for example.46 He asserts that the thin line between art and non-art lies in its three-dimensionality. The quality of three-dimensionality is - a coordinate that non-art has to share with non-art. However, he agreed that the blank canvas already exists as a picture. This notion raises another contradictory question: how “good” they should be aesthetically in order to count the blank canvas as piece of art? In this way, the distinction of high art and kitsch or any other separating category derived by Greenberg loses its integrity. Since the objectivity of Greenberg’s judgments about the art works no longer holds on theoretical base, but rather on subjective sense of taste.
His second main objection concerning Minimal Art is that its idea remains an idea, something deduced instead of felt and discovered. That is why Greenberg rejected all conceptual art. However, as was emphasized by Judd and Morris, there is no rational idea or concept behind the new three-dimensional works. According to Greenberg, the viewer can experience the minimal work only once; the re-experience of this work will not bring the endless aesthetic surprise like Pollock’s works do. In this way, he relates Minimal Art with cheap mass culture and its attributes of poor quality. It is easy for production and consumption. While high art has an endless aesthetic surprise since it conveys personal issues like inspiration and unconventional sensibility. Thus, Meyer identifies the characterization of Minimal Art in Greenberg’s text as
44 Greenberg (1967), p. 182. : In the sixties it has been as thought art – at least kind that gets the most
attention – set itself as a problem the task of extricating the far-out “in itself” from the merely odd, the incongruous, and the socially shocking.
45 Greenberg (1967), p. 184.
46 Greenberg (1967), p. 181. : Today Pollock is still seen for the most pars as essentially arbitrary,
“accidental”, but the new generation of artists has arisen that considers this an assert rather than a liability. By now we have all become aware that far-out is what has paid off best in avant-garde art in the long run – and what could be further out than the arbitrary?
something akin to fashion,47 which according to the Oxford dictionary a popular or the latest style of clothing, hair, decoration, or behavior.48
Greenberg confirmed that Minimal Art escaped the illusionistic or pictorial context, and strived to look as non-art, avoiding all references (in other words it is abstract.) The most quoted phrase regarding minimalism in Greenberg’s essay states that a minimal artwork is the same artwork as a door, table or a blank sheet of paper. Greenberg referred to the fact that minimal artworks lost the characteristic of belonging to the artist's hand. As well as a table or a spoon, it is produced in the same factory and made of the same industrial material. According to Greenberg, minimal artwork and a table are able to change its identification of being art or non-art simply by depending on the environmental context.
For Greenberg, the lack of artist’s identity in minimal works was a reason to refer to minimalism as something good designed. In this sense, he treated the new work of art comparable with something like an ornament or embellishment. However, minimalism rejects beauty as a goal or function. “Puritanism” in forms does not mean the striving for aesthetic beauty. The minimal artwork is like a machine, not the modern high-class car, but those that have a specific function such as trucks or buses. There is nothing superfluous in it as nothing decorating since it is simply not necessary; the truck is made with a definite function and nothing else extra. So as the minimal work of art made with a function to structure the space.
In the idea “good designed” Greenberg again tried to fit Minimal Art as well as the rest of the Novelty Art in frames of strict division between high art and kitsch. He used the term “designed” in order to highlight the lost of handmade value in the works of minimalists and consequently that it belonged to low art. For Greenberg’s theory of formal qualities, it was important to investigate the use of the traditional medium by a particular artist49 as in works of Pollock. The method and manner he made drips of paints on the canvas was spontaneous and live, but not deduced as works of Minimal Art.
Greenberg compared Minimal Art with the art of mannerism, which has characteristics listed as a loss of equilibrium and harmony, anxiety and hypertrophy. In general, it was something comparable to a protest because the art of mannerism broke with the High Renaissance. Similarly, Minimal Art broke with harmony and absolute of Abstract Expressionism or modernism.
Some of today’s scholars reproach Greenberg’s essay in subjectivity and contradiction. James Meyer, for example, compares Greenberg’s statements about the minimalists strive to far-
47 Meyer (2001), p. 215.
48 Retrieved from: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/fashion 49 Meyer (2001), p. 219.
outness with the emergence of the modernism movement, but Greenberg wrote that Minimal Art parted company with everything previously known as art. Meyer says that the same strife for far-outness was present in Claude Monet when he presented his Olympia – an attempt to match “Old Masters “painting by not repeating its convention.50 The presence of far-out in Monet’s painting was judged by the lack of artistry due to its complete deviation from academicism.
The statement that Minimal Art was in “trend” by that time is true, due to the high-profile resonance that the Primary Structures exhibition had received in press and media or with any other exhibition dedicated to Pop Art. The works of pop artists became the object of everyone's desire or at least must see/know. Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein became cult personas and still remains to this day. Much like Warhol’s famous Campbell’s Soupcan dress, one of the Primary Structures exhibition guests decided to literally match with the theme of the event by wearing a so-called “Primary Structures Dress”. It was a white dress in the form of a parallelepiped. After Primary Structures was closed, the July issue of Harper’s Bazaar invited Donald Judd and Ellsworth Kelly in as fashion designers. They designed “minimal” dresses and took part in a photo-shoot together with models. Before Primary Structures in 1964 was held, the Black, White, and Grey exhibition presented works by Robert Morris, Frank Stella, and Tony Smith. This exhibition served as a background for the Vogue magazine photo shoot.51 Greenberg’s notion that Minimal Art, in particular, and novelty art in general, were the products of consumerism has a very solid ground.
Minimalism in the fine arts is not so prevalent today. Maybe minimalism as a style in clothes and interior design was popular and easy to purchase, but minimalism in fine art was still not that “trendy” and easy to acquire as Pop Art. The works of most prominent artists like Judd, Sol LeWitt, Flavin, and Morris on the art market were not in demand in contradiction to Pop Art artists.52 By the end of the twentieth century the situation had changed, all the mentioned above artists found patronage, and today the biggest collections of Minimal Art belong to the Donna and Howard Stone collection, the Neisser family, and David Whitney. In addition, the degree of polemics caused by the Minimal Art was enormous, since every significant critic or scholar of that time expressed his opinion towards minimalism.
50 Meyer (2001), p. 213.
51 Retrieved from: https://www.canopycanopycanopy.com/contents/a-chair-is-a-chair 52 Meyer (2001), p. 215.
1.4.
Michael Fried “Art and Objecthood”
(1967).
Michael Fried (1939) was Greenberg’s student and today he is regarded as a very prominent art critic and art historian. He studied poetry and English literature at Princeton University where he also met Frank Stella, who later became one of the subject of Fried’s criticism. He also became acquainted with Clement Greenberg’s works and some time later in 1958 Fried met him personally. In the same year, Fried started his study of art at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford University. At the beginning of sixties, he was also studying philosophy at the University College London. Near that time he began to write his own texts about art. After his time working in England, Fried came back to the United States where he continued to study art history at Harvard University.
Michael Fried’s essay dedicated to minimalism is entitled “Art and Objecthood”. This article received wide recognition among scholars and is still regarded as a significant publication. Fried was against viewing minimal art in a socio-political or cultural context, since this causes distortion in the correctness of the appreciation of a single work of art.53 He also was opposed to those scholars and critics who believed that their opinion was objective.
“Art and Objecthood” was published in 1967 in an issue of Artforum - magazine. The general idea proposed by Fried was that the impact of art on the spectator should be instantaneous and imitate optical presentences, which is inherited by the best Modernist paintings. This idea corresponded to Greenberg’s doctrine and aims to classify art and determine what art is. The main conclusion Fried drew was counteractive to the nature of Minimal Art and Modernism. Despite the fact that the main subject of Fried's essay is minimalism, “Art and Objecthood” is perceived as the affirmation of some values of modernism. In this way, according to Fried, minimalism to some extent determined the boundaries of modernist painting and sculpture.
Fried’s aim was to defend Modernist Art, particularly the medium of painting from the threat of collapse, which was caused by the rethinking of sculpture after the World War. Greenberg pursued the same goal however, Fried’s arguments are more profound and sophisticated, which indicates that he studied the issues minimalism in depth. Firstly, Fried considered in his essay sculpture, unlike Greenberg who was focused solely on painting.
Secondly, Fried touches on the aspects inherited from phenomenology. Particularly, he talks about the aspect of time in context of experience duration caused by the minimal artworks.
Fried began his essay with the statement that he prefers to call Minimal Art as literalist art. He defines that the aim of literalist artworks is to reflect on modernist sculpture and painting and settle that it is an independent form of art. The two main claims of literalism towards painting are relational character of the painting and its inescapability of pectoral illusionism.
Unlike Greenberg, Fried directly refers to the texts of Morris and Judd and mentions the discrepancies in their theories. In particular, Morris refers to his works as something akin to constructivist’s sculpture while Judd states that his specific objects are not sculptures. However, Fried states that this difference is not so important as the similarities between artists’ theories. Thus, the two main issues that bring together Morris’s and Judd’s texts are wholeness and shape. These two elements preclude the part-by-part character in sculpture and hence eliminates anthropomorphism. Fried determined a common view of minimalists on painting, based on their claims: the medium of painting was dying. The major concern of painting was the organization of its surface and it has strict limitations in the solutions of this problem. Judd and Morris saw the solution for this in the transition from two-dimensionality to three-dimensionality.
Fried juxtaposes modernist painting and Minimal Art and concludes that painting resists its objecthood and overcomes it by the use of pictorial shape and sculpture by its amplification of optical syntax. While Minimal Art stakes everything on shape and aspires…to discover and project objecthood as such. Further, he refers to Greenberg’s notion about presentness (three-dimensionality) as a quality of non-art, which in terms is equal to Fried’s objecthood. The presentness in minimal works is something enforced and theatrical. It means that objecthood is a quality that contradicts the art, and that Minimal Art is an art that strives to discover and project objecthood, and is again as Greenberg said, is non-art.
It must be noted that in Greenberg’s meaning of presence was a look of non-art. It is the literal quality of an existing thing. It differs from Fried’s more phenomenological understanding. Minimal artwork aims to absorb the viewer’s attention and to distance him from oneself; that is what makes minimal artwork theatrical. In other words, theatricality is also the opposition to artistic values.
Fried says that presence by its nature is anthropomorphic, since it imitates the presence of another human, thereby denying Judd’s claim about minimalist’s anti-naturalistic nature. The anthropomorphism is a Dionysian referring to anything live. However, in works of minimalists, it is aggressively enforced anthropomorphism, so its presence is incurably theatrical. So Fried,
