April 21, 1999
    Notes whilst reading:

    1.Minimalism: Art of Circumstance by Baker. (1988)
    2."A" and "U-V" of Minimalism: Origins. by Strickland (1993)
    3.Wollheim, Rose, Morris, Bochner, from Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology edited by Battock (1968)


    Baker presents several definitions of Minimalism "as a historical moment, not a style" (9). He identifies New York as the center of activity for the movement's evolution, which then expanded Westward in America. He says there are two styles of this art, refined pieces of which "ask how art depends on its viewers" (9). (Does this lead to a criteria of judgement for how well a piece is executed?) The first is "geometry emphasized and expressive technique avoided" (9). Of this style are sculptors Judd and Smith, and painter Mondrian. The second style is a "presentation of things indistinguishable from raw materials or found objects" (9). Of this technique, sculptors Andre, Flavin and Morris, were three.
    Baker presents the impulse of minimalism as "The drive to clarify the terms in which art takes place in the world" (10). It can easily be seen that this will lead to a total reduction of materials and/or physical labor in order to inspect the relationship of the viewer to the art. A good example of this is Andre's sculpture "Herm", which is a rectagular box of wood, standing on end. This can easily be seen as just a piece of firewood with little signifigance, but with title in hand--"Herm" referring to Hermes, the Greek god of sex and information--the viewer finds a completely new relationship to the piece. (Incidentally, many of Andre's works have been mistaken as firewood and as a result have had to be reconstructed.)
    There are quite large differences between European Minimalism and American Minimalism, to the point where there are no similarities between the respective pieces. European Minimalism used materials that had metaphorical suggestiveness. Such a piece is a chair will mounds of real fat resting atop. American Minimalism tried to eliminate metaphor and create a lucidness the artists felt had been lost. Such examples are Stella's paintings and Flavin's light sculptures. Furthermore, the difference between the two is apparent when their histories are concerned. American artists had the simplistic influences of Shaker furniture styles, pragmatist philosophy, and precisionist painting of that time. Furthermore, as Baker proposes, American minimalism was a "spasm of revolt against 'vulgar prosperity' spawned by the collision of democratic politics and capitalist ambition" (14).
    At the same time of American Minimalism, there was also Pop-Art. Baker compares the two: Pop-art was wry, campy, cynical; Minimalism was cool, philosophically severe, dead-set against seduction and entertainment (17). (It is obvious both were comments on American capitalist society, but Minimalism becomes much more of a challenge to art aesthetics through its reinspection of the audience.)
    Above all, Baker states his thesis as follows: "Minimal art made possible new strains of art experience, but minimalists' methods inevitably failed to fix or objectify those possibilities of experience in ways that enable us to know whether or not we can still partake of them" (20). He later adds, "Minimalism's weakness [was] a failure to seal itself or its meaning against erosion by circumstances that were certain to change" (21). So in a way, the viewer is so displaced by the new position that whether or not he is experiencing art is up for grabs, and over time this position erodes because of the instability of how the message is conveyed--which is ironic since minimalist structures are very taut. Ultimately, the Minimalists believed that "viewing an object under a changed assumption alters your relationship to it" (45).
    Minimalism presented a "revision of aesthetics"; painted Frank Stella aimed for "clear vision" and asked "where fullness lies" (34, 38). Dadaist Duchamp admits to making an "intellectual game of exposing the art object as a cultural institution" , whereas Andre creates things "to be contemplated as a new way of seeing the world" (43).

    Strickland provides a stunning account of minimalism--one which shows admonishment and disdain simultaneously--as a "former groupie", or the first person in the "scene". Though it is riddled with sour takes on the selling out of several founding artists (Glass, Rauschenberg), Strickland gives a contemplative look at how Minimalism has developed (and died) over the past 50 years--which is debatable since he believes minimalism began in the 1940's with Onement 1, by Newman. I feel he gives a good representation of the "Art World" which "has more to do with a futures market than a studio" (2), but leaves little credit for the artists that participated in Minimalism's popularity after the 1960's.
    Strickland gives his definition of "Minimalism is here used to denote a movement, primarily in postwar America, towards an art that makes it statement with limited, if not the fewest possible, resources, an art that eschews abundance of compositional detail, opulance of texture, and complexity of structure" (7). Whereas Baker used the term as a noun--a "historical moment"--Strickland uses it as an adjective. Perhaps this is just as good as Baker's since a fundamental tenent of art in the 60's was an evasion of content, or a critique by description (Sontag). However, it is troublesome to me when Strickland says about his study: "[It] tends to ignore the deeper philosophical distinctions and concentrates on the physical facticity of the artworks, an approach validated by their own muteness" (8). First of all, I don't consider any minimalist art to be more mute than any other art. It speaks reams. Second of all, what important distinctions upon appearance are to be made between Reich's clapping music and Glass' finger tapping music? I think he would have to say they are the same even though one deals with phasing and the other deals with altering downbeats.

    It has always bothered me: What justification is there for a "piece of art" with which the artist had little to do with? Duchamp, and Koons, are obvious examples, in which their ready-mades are made ready by other people. Just because these two artists present their works are art, the pieces themselves do not automatically obtain a different status. In the case of Pollock, and Cage, a similar question arises: What justification is there for a composition which is derived under spurilous laws of randomness, which the artists employs in the process. Both questions can be combined:

Is Art justified as art when it is derived from intense skilled work from an artist?
The same question can be mirrored by considering the artist instead of the output:
Is an Artist justified as artist when the amount of skilled work on a piece is large?
    Of course before the 20th century these questions would have been trivial in the contemporaty art world, though definitely contributed to the rift between fine arts and folk arts. However, with the rise of modernism completely new concepts come into play replacing almost all of the old. With the efforts of artists like Cage, Mallarme, and Rauschenberg, new definitions of "Art", "Artist", "good", "bad", etc. need to be revisioned to suit. Richard Wollheim makes an honorable attempt in his article "Minimal Art".
    The weaknesses of the questions above exist in the terms "skilled work", and "large [amount of skilled work]". In America since Jamestown, the Puritan work ethic has been the crux of America's dominance. Hard labor, long days and short nights, strong reverence for what may pass, are the qualities of "good American people." Something is good if hard labor was used to create it. With the invention of machinery more work could be done by less hands. Large amounts of skilled work is respected, because this can be identified with. This of course explains the horror with which American people viewed the likes of Pollock, and Rauschenberg--artists who have put large amounts of meaningless effort into chance artistry, or little effort creating a seemingly meaningless piece that wastes valuable space. However, the only work that exists is not exclusively physical.
    I believe over the past 100 years there has been a trend of physical work being replaced by mental work, at least in the middle and upper classes of American society. The Puritan work ethic has been revised to include the mental efforts of today. But unfortunately at the same time, art as art is being devalued, and art as commodity is becoming inflated. (People will complain about paying for works that have little physical effort, but will not pay as much as an artist wants for a highly skilled piece with a lot of painstaking detail--asian arts are popular for this because they are cheap cheap cheap.)
    The inclusion of mental effort in the term "work" is Wollheim's strategy. "I suspect that our principle reason for resisting the claims of Minimal Art is that its objects fail to evince what we have over the centuries come to regard as an essential ingredient in art: work, or manifest effort...Indeed the historical significance of [minimal art objects] is largely given by the way in which they force us to reconsider...what is the meaning or 'work' in the phrase 'work of art'" (395).
    Thus the demonstration of "work" is not only long periods of intense construction, and a decision to stop when enough has been done, but it is generalized as the genesis of the idea, the execution of the idea, and the presentation of the idea, as a piece of art-work. But here we are stuck again to find a definition of "a piece of art-work."

    Rose in her "A B C Art" essay of 1965, acknowledges the existence of a "new sensibility" (Sontag), but admits that what it consists of is unclear. (This is predictable since she is working within the construction of the new aesthetic, and cannot remove herself to objectively comment on the entire situation.) Almost immediately into the essay she says: "In 1913, Kasimir Malevich, placing a black square on a white ground that he identified as the 'void', created the first suprematist composition" (275). How exciting! (If read quickly with a low New England accent this resembles the opening of Spalding Gray's "Swimming to Cambodia".) Then she remarks that just one year later Duchamp exhibited his first ready-made art-piece.
    Later on she mentions a nice passage that explains the reductive modernism: "It was almost as if, toward the Gotterdammerung of the late fifties, the trumpets blared with such an apocalpytic [sic] and Wagnerian intensity that each moment was a crisis and each 'act' a climax. Obviously, such a crisis climate could hardly be sustained; just to be able to hear at all again, the volume had to be turned down, and the pitch, if not the instrument, changed" (280). This is supported by the barococo enthusiasm, and the fact that music in general becomes a background process, as long as it doesn't draw too much attention. (But why the Mahler rediscovery??)
    Of minimalist art Rose comments: "In the face of so much nothing, he is still experiencing something, and usually a rather unpleasant something at that" (281). For myself, to attend an exhibition of new art-works, or music compositions, I become so confused in the idea of criticism that I fall mute. I find it painfull not to be able to discuss the work; I feel indecisive, and somewhat alienated from my innability to make a "simple" decision. This reaction though does not come from the pieces (not just Minimalism I am talking about but new work in general), but from a clash of what I have learned with what I am faced to learn. It is difficult to unlearn and relearn, especially, I am finding and have known about other people, when one becomes older. Rose confirms my pain be quoting  T.E. Hulme: "the problem is to keep from discussing the new art with a vocabulary derived from the old position" (282).
    But with each new art, are we faced than with a decision to create a new vocabulary? I don't think this is the case, as it is impossible to do. During a contemporary art period, things are inevitably discussed with terms of the old. After all, the art could not have just appeared without an influence from generations of art-work and art theory. Styles do not just appear. (I once wrote a short history of music from Bach to Babbitt and Cage, and each style of music from Baroque, to Classicism, Romantic, Chromatic, Pantonal, Serial, Aleatoric/Electronic, appeared with a brief mighty BANG! from a composer saying "I think I will do this.") Art doesn't occur like that as it is not exclusive from life. It evolves--never maturing--and it will continue to do so (until Plato's Socialist Republic is realized and Art is outlawed).
    Pantonal music of Schoenberg can not be discussed in terms of the romantic, but could be discussed--though with limits--in terms of the chromatic, for example unusual scales, motifs, tonal vagueness. It took time for pantonality to be theorized with rows, and sets, and tables of inversions and retrogrades. Serialism can then not be described in terms of chromaticism, but could in terms of pantonality--with limited success. Aleatoric music is the same way with serialism, in the idea that the composer has so much control that he actually has so little control of the outcome.
    With each new art then, we are faced with the fashioning of a new language which will guide the future arts.