Minimalism

Paper Summary:

This paper defines Minimalism as the tendency by a new generation of artists towards non-allusiveness and decontextualisation from tradition, impersonality in tone, and the flattening of perspectival schema?s though the emphasis on surface, and the subsequent neutralization of depth cues. The author states that there is little agreement as to when the movement officially came into being, and who if anyone was its innovator. The paper states that Minimalism emerged primarily as a reaction against Pop and Abstract Expressionism.

Table of Contents
The Emergence of Minimalism
The Influences of High Modernism
Robert Rauschenburg?s ?White on Whites?
Frank Stella?s Black Paintings
Carl Andre and the Influence of Brancusi
Dan Flavin and the Russian Avant-Garde
Sol LeWitt and the Opening Up of Space
Robert Morris and Phenomenological Vision
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"Superficially Minimalism was everything that motion-painting was not, and indeed it's physical characteristics embodied, at least for the American critic Clement Greenberg, the very elements that modern formalistic abstraction had strove so hard to escape from. It's closest physical relative was early Constructivism, whilst its ideology could be said to have been initiated by Kasimir Malevich's Suprematism movement. Both Constructivism and Suprematism renounced the need for art to be visually complex, Malevich through his Black Square and Vladimir Tatlin's via his Counter-Corner relief's, although these cannot really be seen as anything more than a indicative forerunner of this new aesthetic. "

More papers on Minimalism:

• Research Paper # 94896 : "Minimalism in Interior Design"
• Analytical Essay # 18404 : "Minimalism"
• Descriptive Essay # 114129 : "Minimalism in Ni Zan's "The Rongxi Studio"

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