Learned
Understanding Minimalist intent as an inward gaze to the primary decisions in art practice makes the work produced a viable gauge for the understanding of the role of artists. Making anything requires addressing some common problems regarding size, colour, number, and location. Very formal ideas that, for some artists, are just a means to a beginning are integral to every creative person. This process of logical thinking, which is often associated with Minimalist works of the 60’s/70’s, is tied directly to an understanding of a goal. You can’t know how to proceed logically unless you know where you are going, where you should be. I think that this ability for Minimalist art to act as a barometer for its contemporaries has served to extend its shelf life beyond a short-live movement to an institutional device for the art world.
I’ve heard it said that “minimalism stands as the fulfilment of modernist intentions” (Walker, H. 2011) and I can understand the rationale. If the modernist ethos was to attain a purity of artistic expression, opposed to the romantic era that preceded it, then it’s possible that the artists who were labelled as Minimalists in the 60’s achieved that end. An art for that speaks only of art and, more specifically, only the form of art employed. The hybridization of painting and sculpture put an end to the idea of painterly use of materials and opened the door for the incorporation of objects into wall-mounted canvas. It homogenised the critical approach to painting and sculpture and demanded a unified vocabulary. Judd’s assertion that his works were ‘specific objects’ and Sol LeWitt’s promotion of the word structure over sculpture required that the works be acknowledged for their own content and requested a loosening of the bonds to long established modes of art. A critic no longer had to refer to any external concepts when discussing a work, every piece said clearly and concisely only what it was intended to say. Every work of Minimalist art stands as the assertion of a confident fact of it’s own status; there is no need for interpretation. Artists such as Judd, LeWitt and Morris crafted precise vocabularies around their work, often intentionally sidestepping established categories in order to assert a new truth about art practice. By separating their work from interpretation and humanistic response Minimalists caused a reductive response from critics as criticism of their work very quickly dilated to a physical description. I think this can be seen as the natural conclusion of the modernist endeavour, art about art, materials as materials and the expression of a single mind.
How could Minimalism survive in a post-modern world of indistinct categories, a blurring of lines directly opposed to the certainty of a modernist artist? If modernism was the assertion of truth in purity then post-modernism is the acknowledgement of the absence of universal truth, a gradual abandonment of purity in favour of reality, art can only be as truthful as the world that makes it.
The clearest distinction between modernist and postmodern art production seems to be the critical opinion of what art should be. The unveiled statement of an artistic intent, for instance the self assured expressions of Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) versus the broad and encompassing expression of an artists life as seen in Tracey Emins (1963) My Bed (1998)which seems to be a more holistic approach to sculpture in the comparison. If Minimalism was born in a climate of singular attention what changes have happened to address the multi-faceted extroverts of the 21st century? Old minimalism + X= new minimalism, solve for X.
One possible solution to this problem may be variety of expression. Judd’s work is tied together by the consistent approach to construction and the directness of material engagement. He spent his career producing and maintaining austere objects that never strayed from his principles of art. With a very clear palette of materials he set about producing a vast catalogue of works that spoke of the same theme, the same attention to material qualities with no room for distraction. Judd’s work can be viewed as the sustained expression of a single line of thought. Unlike artists like Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), who is a key figure in the Cubist and Futurist movements as well as effecting the Found art movement, and Bruce Nauman (1941); who has used video, sculpture, neon lighting and performance, Judd’s vocabulary for expression and intention describes a very small area within the bigger picture of art. The same can be said for many of his peers, for instance Dan Flavin’s persistence with fluorescent tube lighting and Sol LeWitt’s serial employment of cubes and cube segments. This same approach, one note struck over and over, is hinted to in Creed’s work but it seems to be a repetition of tone with a variety of notes. This distinction is possibly the result of a broader pool of reference for expression but the same singularity of intention and I feel it is one of the most important developments in postmodern Minimalism.
I see Donald Judd and Martin Creed as exemplars of their respective contemporary conditions, one as the intellectual male that largely categorised the 60’s and the other as the controversial celebrity that largely symbolises my generation. I think that this comparison helps me to understand the evolution of Minimalism and how it has continued to influence art practice through 50 years. Judd is well known in artistic academia for his critical writings. Through reviews of his contemporaries and numerous essays on the condition of art and the function of the art gallery he was responsible for shaping a large part of the way his peers were categorised and assessed. This is not something exclusive to Judd as a Minimalist; Robert Morris’ Notes on Sculpture (1996) has been reprinted as recently as 2005, nor is it a trait exclusive to Minimalists. What makes it so affecting to the course of Minimalist art is that it’s so focused on the formal and practical that it is easily applied to art in general. At either end of the Minimalist spectrum Judd and Creed represent bodies of work that are succinct in their intention to such a degree that it has to be confronted as the content of the work. To talk about Judd is to talk about the rejection of figuration and reference and the open display of materials. To talk about Creed is to talk about the absence of illusion and the presentation of simple facts. I see their approaches as the polar sides of a single intention, one positive the other negative. While Judd reduced his practice to assert truth, Creed reduced his practice to avoid lies. Both approaches culminate in work that communicates about itself as an object in simple and direct terms while also engaging directly in discussion about the nature of art.
For me Creed represents the legacy of decades of Minimalist art production re-imagined in the postmodern era. Creeds works suggest a Minimalists disposition but seems to have shaken off the platonic aesthetic and instead engages a much broader range of materials and forms. No longer is the work constructed of materials employed only by craftsmen and engineers, with Creed the blu-tac in an office or the chair I’m sat in is subject to the same reductive gaze. Thanks to the shift in status of artists from reclusive, elite genius’ to public celebrities I can comfortably say that Martin Creed is my favourite artist, to me this is a distinction between a pure respect for the work and an encompassing appreciation for the celebrity and an awareness of how my interest in the celebrity contributes to my reputation. This makes his work very important to my practice. As an exponent of ideas that are close to my practice and a hugely successful artist I am susceptible to his influence and feel a need to be vigilant of the effects. He also serves as a barometer for annotating the specifics of my interests and the values or themes that I see as important to contemporary art practice. I’ll try to use his body of work to explain what I have learnt about myself as an artist.
Creeds references or influences clearly include the found object as art that has almost 100 years of history dating back to 1912 when Picasso and Braque began including scraps of paper into still life works (Heiser, J. 2008, p22). His use of ready-made objects and untreated industrial materials demands a critical charting of Duchamp’s influence with a final stop at the material choices of 60’s Minimalism. In my mind it’s a formula to reinvigorate Minimalism with real life visuals, to direct a historically trained and consciously restrained eye onto the world around us. Sometimes I read this as a result of folding in the media of Pop art into the intentions of Minimalism. The idea of using objects as materials, acquiring a fully formed, recognisable product and assembling constructions, has been developing in my practice and it is made acceptable as a mode of making art by the efforts of Pop artists and Minimalists equally.
The employment of series is a theme continued from the 60’s that is regularly present in the work of Creed and was seen through a number of works in the exhibition Down Over Up. This has been observed throughout minimalist criticism and was describe by Mel Bochner in 1967 as a “convenient regulating device” (Bochner, M. 1968, p101). Personally the choice to hand over decision making to numerical devices and material choices to industrial products allows me to avoid making personal expression, to avoid a fragile and fickle personal viewpoint in favour of an inhuman statement. I find this to be comfortingly echoed in the unwillingness of Creed to make statements of universal truth. When asked “ do the lines of thought seem clear to you?” a simple question that merely tries to decipher whether or not he, the artist, knows what his work is about Creed responds; “I try and just look at things and not see the lines of thought” (Millar, Iain 2011)). It’s this impetus to side step the opportunity for certainty that I relate to in Creed’s work. For me making work is not to say that I know something about the world but instead to offer up a chance to see something of the world that wasn’t there before.
I’ve heard it said that “minimalism stands as the fulfilment of modernist intentions” (Walker, H. 2011) and I can understand the rationale. If the modernist ethos was to attain a purity of artistic expression, opposed to the romantic era that preceded it, then it’s possible that the artists who were labelled as Minimalists in the 60’s achieved that end. An art for that speaks only of art and, more specifically, only the form of art employed. The hybridization of painting and sculpture put an end to the idea of painterly use of materials and opened the door for the incorporation of objects into wall-mounted canvas. It homogenised the critical approach to painting and sculpture and demanded a unified vocabulary. Judd’s assertion that his works were ‘specific objects’ and Sol LeWitt’s promotion of the word structure over sculpture required that the works be acknowledged for their own content and requested a loosening of the bonds to long established modes of art. A critic no longer had to refer to any external concepts when discussing a work, every piece said clearly and concisely only what it was intended to say. Every work of Minimalist art stands as the assertion of a confident fact of it’s own status; there is no need for interpretation. Artists such as Judd, LeWitt and Morris crafted precise vocabularies around their work, often intentionally sidestepping established categories in order to assert a new truth about art practice. By separating their work from interpretation and humanistic response Minimalists caused a reductive response from critics as criticism of their work very quickly dilated to a physical description. I think this can be seen as the natural conclusion of the modernist endeavour, art about art, materials as materials and the expression of a single mind.
How could Minimalism survive in a post-modern world of indistinct categories, a blurring of lines directly opposed to the certainty of a modernist artist? If modernism was the assertion of truth in purity then post-modernism is the acknowledgement of the absence of universal truth, a gradual abandonment of purity in favour of reality, art can only be as truthful as the world that makes it.
The clearest distinction between modernist and postmodern art production seems to be the critical opinion of what art should be. The unveiled statement of an artistic intent, for instance the self assured expressions of Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) versus the broad and encompassing expression of an artists life as seen in Tracey Emins (1963) My Bed (1998)which seems to be a more holistic approach to sculpture in the comparison. If Minimalism was born in a climate of singular attention what changes have happened to address the multi-faceted extroverts of the 21st century? Old minimalism + X= new minimalism, solve for X.
One possible solution to this problem may be variety of expression. Judd’s work is tied together by the consistent approach to construction and the directness of material engagement. He spent his career producing and maintaining austere objects that never strayed from his principles of art. With a very clear palette of materials he set about producing a vast catalogue of works that spoke of the same theme, the same attention to material qualities with no room for distraction. Judd’s work can be viewed as the sustained expression of a single line of thought. Unlike artists like Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), who is a key figure in the Cubist and Futurist movements as well as effecting the Found art movement, and Bruce Nauman (1941); who has used video, sculpture, neon lighting and performance, Judd’s vocabulary for expression and intention describes a very small area within the bigger picture of art. The same can be said for many of his peers, for instance Dan Flavin’s persistence with fluorescent tube lighting and Sol LeWitt’s serial employment of cubes and cube segments. This same approach, one note struck over and over, is hinted to in Creed’s work but it seems to be a repetition of tone with a variety of notes. This distinction is possibly the result of a broader pool of reference for expression but the same singularity of intention and I feel it is one of the most important developments in postmodern Minimalism.
I see Donald Judd and Martin Creed as exemplars of their respective contemporary conditions, one as the intellectual male that largely categorised the 60’s and the other as the controversial celebrity that largely symbolises my generation. I think that this comparison helps me to understand the evolution of Minimalism and how it has continued to influence art practice through 50 years. Judd is well known in artistic academia for his critical writings. Through reviews of his contemporaries and numerous essays on the condition of art and the function of the art gallery he was responsible for shaping a large part of the way his peers were categorised and assessed. This is not something exclusive to Judd as a Minimalist; Robert Morris’ Notes on Sculpture (1996) has been reprinted as recently as 2005, nor is it a trait exclusive to Minimalists. What makes it so affecting to the course of Minimalist art is that it’s so focused on the formal and practical that it is easily applied to art in general. At either end of the Minimalist spectrum Judd and Creed represent bodies of work that are succinct in their intention to such a degree that it has to be confronted as the content of the work. To talk about Judd is to talk about the rejection of figuration and reference and the open display of materials. To talk about Creed is to talk about the absence of illusion and the presentation of simple facts. I see their approaches as the polar sides of a single intention, one positive the other negative. While Judd reduced his practice to assert truth, Creed reduced his practice to avoid lies. Both approaches culminate in work that communicates about itself as an object in simple and direct terms while also engaging directly in discussion about the nature of art.
For me Creed represents the legacy of decades of Minimalist art production re-imagined in the postmodern era. Creeds works suggest a Minimalists disposition but seems to have shaken off the platonic aesthetic and instead engages a much broader range of materials and forms. No longer is the work constructed of materials employed only by craftsmen and engineers, with Creed the blu-tac in an office or the chair I’m sat in is subject to the same reductive gaze. Thanks to the shift in status of artists from reclusive, elite genius’ to public celebrities I can comfortably say that Martin Creed is my favourite artist, to me this is a distinction between a pure respect for the work and an encompassing appreciation for the celebrity and an awareness of how my interest in the celebrity contributes to my reputation. This makes his work very important to my practice. As an exponent of ideas that are close to my practice and a hugely successful artist I am susceptible to his influence and feel a need to be vigilant of the effects. He also serves as a barometer for annotating the specifics of my interests and the values or themes that I see as important to contemporary art practice. I’ll try to use his body of work to explain what I have learnt about myself as an artist.
Creeds references or influences clearly include the found object as art that has almost 100 years of history dating back to 1912 when Picasso and Braque began including scraps of paper into still life works (Heiser, J. 2008, p22). His use of ready-made objects and untreated industrial materials demands a critical charting of Duchamp’s influence with a final stop at the material choices of 60’s Minimalism. In my mind it’s a formula to reinvigorate Minimalism with real life visuals, to direct a historically trained and consciously restrained eye onto the world around us. Sometimes I read this as a result of folding in the media of Pop art into the intentions of Minimalism. The idea of using objects as materials, acquiring a fully formed, recognisable product and assembling constructions, has been developing in my practice and it is made acceptable as a mode of making art by the efforts of Pop artists and Minimalists equally.
The employment of series is a theme continued from the 60’s that is regularly present in the work of Creed and was seen through a number of works in the exhibition Down Over Up. This has been observed throughout minimalist criticism and was describe by Mel Bochner in 1967 as a “convenient regulating device” (Bochner, M. 1968, p101). Personally the choice to hand over decision making to numerical devices and material choices to industrial products allows me to avoid making personal expression, to avoid a fragile and fickle personal viewpoint in favour of an inhuman statement. I find this to be comfortingly echoed in the unwillingness of Creed to make statements of universal truth. When asked “ do the lines of thought seem clear to you?” a simple question that merely tries to decipher whether or not he, the artist, knows what his work is about Creed responds; “I try and just look at things and not see the lines of thought” (Millar, Iain 2011)). It’s this impetus to side step the opportunity for certainty that I relate to in Creed’s work. For me making work is not to say that I know something about the world but instead to offer up a chance to see something of the world that wasn’t there before.