- Related Artists:
- Yayoi Kusama
- Tony Smith
- John Adams
- Ellsworth Kelly
- Philip Glass
Minimalism
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What is Minimalism in art?
Minimalism, an American art movement from the 1960s, is characterized by extreme simplicity and objectivity. Arising in New York City, Minimal art emerged from artists' dissatisfaction with Abstract Expressionism, which they viewed as too personal.
Minimalists aimed to remove any extra-visual association from their work, focusing on hard edges, simple forms, and linear approaches to emphasize two-dimensionality and immediate visual response. Minimalist sculpture employs simple, geometric forms in industrial materials, while hard-edge painting utilizes simplified geometric shapes and unmodulated color. The movement influenced music by exploring the essential elements of timbre and rhythm.
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When and where did the Minimalism art movement begin?
The Minimalism art movement emerged in New York City in the late 1960s. It is a chiefly American movement in visual arts and music characterized by simplicity and objectivity.
Minimal art is the culmination of reductionist tendencies in modern art. Minimalists adopted the viewpoint that a work of art should not refer to anything other than itself and attempted to remove any extra-visual association from their works.
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What are the main features of Minimalist art?
Minimalism, which originated in New York City in the late 1960s, is characterized by simplicity of form and an objective approach. Minimalist artists believed art should not reference anything beyond itself and aimed to remove extra-visual associations from their works.
Hard-edge painting, a component of this movement, uses simplified geometric forms, precise contours, and unmodulated color on flat surfaces. Minimalist sculpture employs simple, geometric forms made of industrial materials, presented objectively and without expression. The movement influenced music by exploring the essential elements of timbre and rhythm.
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Who are some well-known artists connected to Minimalism?
Minimalism, emerging in New York in the late 1960s, is characterized by simplicity and objectivity.
Several artists are connected to the Minimalism movement:
* Carl Andre
* Anthony Caro
* Gene Davis
* Dan Flavin
* Donald Judd
* Craig Kaufman
* Ellsworth Kelly
* Sol LeWitt
* John McCracken
* Robert Morris
* Kenneth Noland
* Tony Smith
* Frank Stella
* Agnes MartinThese artists rejected the personal expressionism of the precedingAbstract Expressionism movement. Instead, they focused on reducing their works to essential forms, using industrial materials and emphasizing the physical experience of the artwork.
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How is Minimalist art different from other art movements like Abstract Expressionism?
Minimalism emerged in the late 1960s in New York City as a reaction against Abstract Expressionism, which was perceived as too personal and insubstantial. Minimalist art is characterized by extreme simplicity, objective approach, and reductionist tendencies.
Minimalists believed that a work of art should only refer to itself, thus ridding their works of any extra-visual association. They used hard edges, simple forms, and linear approaches to emphasize two-dimensionality, allowing viewers an immediate, purely visual response. In contrast to the free, spontaneous, and personal emotional expression of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism sought to eliminate personal, gestural elements to reveal the objective, purely visual elements of art.
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How has Minimalism influenced modern art and design?
Minimalism, emerging in New York in the late 1960s, is characterized by simplicity and objectivity. As a culmination of reductionist tendencies in modern art, it surfaced from roots in Kazimir Malevich's work. Minimalists aimed to strip art of extra-visual association, using hard edges, simple forms, and linear approaches to allow immediate visual response, influencing hard-edge painting and minimal sculpture. The movement influenced music by exploring the essential elements of timbre and rhythm.
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Minimalism, chiefly American movement in the visual arts and music originating in New York City in the late 1960s and characterized by extreme simplicity of form and a literal, objective approach.
Minimal art, also called ABC art, is the culmination of reductionist tendencies in modern art that first surfaced in the 1913 composition by the Russian painter Kasimir Malevich of a black square on a white ground. The primary structures of the Minimalist sculptors Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Tony Smith, Anthony Caro, Sol LeWitt, John McCracken, Craig Kaufman, Robert Duran, and Robert Morris and the hard-edge painting of Jack Youngerman, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, Kenneth Noland, Al Held, and Gene Davis grew out of these artists’ dissatisfaction with Action painting, a branch of American Abstract Expressionism based on intuitive, spontaneous gesture that had dominated American avant-garde art through much of the 1950s. The Minimalists, who believed that Action painting was too personal and insubstantial, adopted the point of view that a work of art should not refer to anything other than itself. For that reason they attempted to rid their works of any extra-visual association. Use of the hard edge, the simple form, and the linear rather than painterly approach was intended to emphasize two-dimensionality and to allow the viewer an immediate, purely visual response. They turned for inspiration to the impassive, quiet works of Barnett Newman and Ad Reinhardt, exponents of the colour-field branch of Abstract Expressionist painting.
Hard-edge painting is characterized by large, simplified, usually geometric forms on an overall flat surface; precise, razor-sharp contours; and broad areas of bright, unmodulated colour that have been stained into unprimed canvas. It differs from other types of geometric abstraction in that it rejects both lyrical and mathematical composition because, even in this simplified field, they are a means of personal expression for the artist. Minimal hard-edge painting is the anonymous construction of a simple object.
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Minimal sculpture is composed of extremely simple, monumental geometric forms made of fibreglass, plastic, sheet metal, or aluminum, either left raw or solidly painted with bright industrial colours. Like the painters, Minimalist sculptors attempted to make their works totally objective, unexpressive, and non-referential.
Minimal art, along with the music of Erik Satie and the aesthetics of John Cage, was a distinct influence on Minimalist music. Reacting against the complex, intellectually sophisticated style of modern music, several composers began to compose in a simple, literal style, thereby creating an extremely simple and accessible music. La Monte Young, for example, composed a number of electronic “continuous frequency environments,” in which he generated a few pitches and then electronically sustained them, sometimes for days or weeks. Young added very little to this texture and virtually eliminated variation as a developmental technique. Like Young, Morton Feldman tried to eliminate variation. His works explored innovative instrumental timbres through a slowly paced succession of unrelated soft sounds. Another group of composers—Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Cornelius Cardew, and Frederic Rzewski—was influenced by the music of India, Bali, and West Africa. They used simple harmonic and melodic patterns in their highly repetitive music.
In both music and the visual arts, Minimalism was an attempt to explore the essential elements of an art form. In Minimalist visual arts, the personal, gestural elements were stripped away in order to reveal the objective, purely visual elements of painting and sculpture. In Minimalist music, the traditional treatment of form and development was rejected in favour of explorations of timbre and rhythm—musical elements largely unfamiliar to Western listeners.