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| Die (1962)Artist: Tony Smith Artwork description & Analysis: The
artist's specifications for the sculpture were as follows: "a six-foot
cube of quarter-inch hot-rolled steel with diagonal internal bracing."
The dimensions were determined, according to Tony Smith, by the
proportions of the human body. Smith explained that a larger scale would
have endowed Die with the stature of a "monument," while a
smaller one would have reduced it to a mere "object." Weighing
approximately 500 pounds and resting on the museum floor, the sculpture
invites us to walk around it and experience it sequentially, one or two
sides at a time. Like other examples of Minimalism, its unreadable
surface and frank lack of visual appeal come across as almost hostile in
its undermining of traditional understandings of art as something
aesthetically or emotionally appealing, showing the artist's rejection
of Abstraction Expressionism's hands-on approach to art making.
The
sculpture's deceptively simple title invites multiple associations: it
alludes to die casting, to one of a pair of dice, and, ultimately, to
death. As Smith remarked, "Six feet has a suggestion of being cooked.
Six foot box. Six foot under." Rationality, evoked by Die's
purely geometric configuration, is countered by the sculpture's brooding
presence. Meaning becomes relative rather than absolute, something
generated through the interplay of word and object. Weaving together
strains of architecture, industrial manufacture, and the found object,
Smith radically transformed the way sculpture could look, how it could
be made, and, ultimately, how it could be understood. Steel - National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. |
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 | Lever (1966)Artist: Carl Andre Artwork description & Analysis: Carl Andre's Lever was the most audacious entry at the 1966 Primary Structures
exhibition that introduced the public to Minimalism. This row of 137
firebricks aligned to project out from the wall and straight across the
floor was likened by Andre to a fallen column. Lever startled gallery
visitors, interrupted their movement and, in its simplicity, was
annoying. Made from easily available building materials ("anyone could
do it: where was the art?"), Lever demanded respect from thoughtful
viewers while undermining traditional artistic values. Such provocations
became routine for Andre: "my ambition as an artist is to be the
'Turner of matter.' As Turner severed color from depiction, so I attempt
to sever matter from depiction." He went on to describe wood as the
"mother of matter" and praised bricklayers as "people of fine craft."
In this way, Andre's Lever
along with many Minimalist works challenged how art was situated in the
gallery and how viewers interacted with it. Art no longer was hung
discreetly on the wall or placed on a pedestal in the corner as
something to enjoy in a purely visual way. It now required a more
complex and thoughtful interaction from the viewer. This piece is made
of nontraditional materials that call to mind industrial or building
materials that require no manipulation from the hand of the artist.
While the work is nonrepresentational, the title is suggestive of manual
labor. Fireplace bricks - Collection of the Artist |
| Untitled (mirrored cubes) (1965/71)Artist: Robert Morris Artwork description & Analysis: This
group of four mirrored cubes illustrates the artist's development as
both a Conceptual artist and a Minimalist over a five-year period.
Robert Morris began by producing large grey painted plywood boxes that
were first used as stage props for a ballet company where he also
performed. Their regular geometry and inexpressive surfaces allied his
art with the developing Minimalist style, winning him both a solo
exhibition and a slot in the landmark 1966 Primary Structures show. By
that time Morris had achieved the status of a spokesman for the group
with a series of academic essays on sculpture published in Artforum,
which were widely debated.
These mirrored cubes advanced his
interest in the visual properties of materials and modes of perception.
The fact that Morris covers his cubes in mirrors forces the viewers to
confront themselves in the act of looking rather than simply and
placidly admiring the work of art. The size of the piece is roughly the
height of a table or countertop, so, like Carl Andre, Morris offers the
viewer a kinesthetic or somatic experience that is also outside the
traditional art experience. It is this invasion of the center of the
gallery space by an object and the concomitant evolving of the art
experience beyond the purely visual that led Micheal Fried to call the
movement "theatrical." Mirrored wooden boxes - Tate Gallery, London |
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| Untitled (1969)Artist: Donald Judd Artwork description & Analysis: Judd
was an important theoretician for Minimalism and one of the key
proponents of enlivening gallery spaces by placing objects in a
non-conventional manner, in his case by hanging art vertically on the
wall. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Judd created multiple versions of
this untitled work, always retaining the same scale but never using the
same color or materials. He wanted his work to exist in real
three-dimensional space rather than representing a fictive
three-dimensional space or narrative as in traditional painting and
sculpture. Referring to his sculptures as "primary structures," he
discarded conventional elements of sculpture (the plinth, the figure,
etc.), and instead created objects that, although oddly cold, everyday,
and industrial in appearance, emphasize the upright in a way that
strongly suggests a repetition of the observer's own body. Though they
hang on the wall like a painting, they extend from the wall like a
sculpture, thus challenging traditional distinctions between these two
media. Judd's use of prefabricated industrial materials in repeated
identical shapes reference factory-built commodities and the materiality
of the media, while also underscoring the Minimalist goal of reducing
the visible hand of the artist in order to free the work of any emotion
or referentiality, something that is further underscored by the work's
lack of a title. Brass and colored fluorescent Plexiglas on steel brackets - Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. |
| One Ton Prop (House of Cards) (1969)Artist: Richard Serra Artwork description & Analysis: Minimalist
works were often larger than life and, especially in the case of Serra,
sometimes pushed boundaries in ways that conveyed a sense of risk to
the viewer. While this piece offers the viewer yet another cube, it is a
cube that has been deconstructed. The four sides are propped against
one another and are only held together by their own weight and
resistance. Considering that each of the four plates weighs 500 pounds,
the parenthetical title "house of cards" is fairly ironic while also
suggesting the possibility that the four sides could easily collapse
like a house of cards. The size of the work and its seeming instability
could thus be seen as vaguely threatening for the viewer. In typical
Minimalist fashion, the work is made of starkly industrial materials
that show no manipulation from the hand of the artist. The work is
placed in the center of a gallery space that invites the viewer to walk
around it, something which yields no further enlightenment about its
meaning or any additional visual appeal, as the work is uniform on all
sides. Lead antinomy - MoMA, New York |
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| Two Open Modular Cubes/Half-Off (1972)Artist: Sol LeWitt Artwork description & Analysis: LeWitt
was a key intellectual of the Minimalist group and is most known for
his open-air, modular structures. He once wrote that "the most
interesting characteristic of the cube is that it is relatively
uninteresting." This comment speaks to what Minimalist artists aimed to
achieve, which was to use objects in and for themselves, not as symbols
or as representations of something else (as Frank Stella put it on
another occasion: "What you see is what you see."). This lack of meaning
is especially the case in works that remain untitled or that have
purely descriptive titles, as do LeWitt's. Despite claiming the cube as
uninteresting in itself, LeWitt would most often use this form as a
jumping off point for his works, often employing them in a grid-like
format that underscores his interest in systems and modules that could
be repeated and expanded indefinitely, sometimes to the point of
irrationality or visual chaos. The modularity, absence of color, and
geometric starkness of his pieces all fit within the Minimalist
aesthetic, as do their placement in the center of the gallery or museum
space. Enameled aluminum - Tate Gallery, London |
| The X (1965)Artist: Ronald Bladen Artwork description & Analysis: Bladen
was older than the other Minimalists and is sometimes considered a
father figure for the movement. This work is typical of his output,
which is characterized by large-scale sculptures that are often
monochromatic and made up of simple shapes, much like the works of other
artists in the group. Bladen's works differ slightly at times from more
mainstream Minimalism, as his pieces frequently moved beyond basic
geometric shapes that were most often used by others in the group. The
finish on the works was, however, typically slick, retaining a
factory-made quality that erased the hand of the artist, thus setting
the work apart from AbEx and modernism. The "X" is an inherently
negative symbol, as the letter is used to eliminate or "x things out."
Its use here, along with the choice of monochrome black as a color,
suggests the negation of traditional art, while its imposing size (24
feet) towers over the viewer to an even greater extent than works by
Serra, something which is more evident in a gallery or museum setting. Painted Aluminum - Estate of the Artist |
| Untitled (in honor of Harold Joachim) 3, 1977 (1977)Artist: Dan Flavin Artwork description & Analysis: Flavin's
works differ in some ways from those of other Minimalists, who shared
the same interests in prefabricated materials, transforming the
traditional viewing experience, and honoring the influence of Russian
Constructivism in their use of repetitive, modular forms. In Flavin's
work, however, the work of art is not comprised of the material itself,
in this case the fluorescent light fixtures and colored tubes, but is
instead the shape and color of the light emitted by the tubes. Flavin
literally sculpts and defines spaces with colored light, creating a
completely new form of art that is most notable for its lack of
materiality, yet seemingly solid presence that almost appears to invade
the viewer's space.
He used only prefabricated commercially
available tubes in their standard sizes, thus eliminating the hand of
the artist, but he would often arrange the fixtures to create various
shapes. In this example, the fixtures are placed to form a grid, a
traditional Minimalist shape because of its strict geometry and
mathematical precision. The work is dedicated to Harold Joachim, a
British idealist philosopher of the early twentieth century, who studied
truth and specifically how humans arrive at their knowledge or truth
claims. By naming the work after Joachim, Flavin may be making an
argument for the essential truth-value of his art and for his art as the
pared down essence of art. Fluorescent light fixtures and tubes - Collection of the Artist |