MINIMAL ART AND ARTISTS

This book is is a study of Minimal art and artists, particularly painters, sculptors, 3-D, installation and land artists.

All of the key practitioners and theoreticians of the still-influential 1960s Minimal art movement and style are studied here: Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Carl Andre, Frank Stella, Robert Ryman, Robert Smithson, Brice Marden, Dan Flavin, Eva Hesse, Sol LeWitt, and many land artists (such as Robert Smithson, Christo, James Turrell and Michael Heizer).

Chapters include: Minimal aesthetics; Minimal painting and painters; Minimal sculptors and sculpture; Minimal art and land artists; and Minimal art today.

Fully illustrated. 232 pages. Large format.

The text has been fully revised for this edition, with new illustrations added. www.crmoon.com.

The Minimal artists did not consider themselves a group; they did not produce manifestos; they did not agree on aesthetics or working practices (though some were friends); they tended not to be directly involved in political art (Minimal art was more conservative than counter-culture); and they disliked the term 'minimalism'.

It tended to be the critics (as usual) who came up with the terms for the new art. Lucy Lippard used the term 'structurist', 'dematerialization' and 'eccentric abstraction'; Michael Fried had 'literalist' and 'objecthood'; Peter Hutchinson used 'Mannerist'; Barbara Rose coined 'ABC Art'; Lawrence Alloway had 'systematic painting'; Robert Morris took up 'unitary forms' and 'anti-form'; and Donald Judd employed 'speci c objects'.

Probably the premier Minimal artist (and philosopher) is Donald Judd; Judd stands at the centre of Minimal art, and no account of Minimalism is complete without placing Judd in the foreground. Robert Smithson, Frank Stella, Donald Judd, Ad Reinhardt, Robert Morris and Carl Andre have been among the most lucid of theorists among artists.

In the 1960s and 1970s, it seemed as if every artist went through a Minimal period at some time in their career, as well as a painting-as-sculpture period, and a brush with performance art (and perhaps body art). Both a Conceptual art phase and an on-going installation art preoccupation were mandatory for contemporary artists, it seems. All contemporary art can be viewed as basically Conceptual art, and a increasing proportion of it is installation art

The Subject of Minimalism advocates for minimalism as an approach to daily life. Utilizing a wide range of theoretical and creative texts, Thomas Phillips offers an examination of subjectivity as considered, enacted, and embodied. Provocatively, he makes the claim that lived experience is capable of being refined according to the paradoxically rich parameters of a minimalist aesthetic. What is finally at stake for one who engages with certain texts, the book argues, is a selfhood that may become at once 'minimized' and advanced in the psychology and materiality of its everyday life.

This book undertakes a critical reappraisal of Minimalism through an examination of three key painters: Robert Mangold, David Novros, and Jo Baer. By establishing their substantive engagements with Minimalist discourse, as well as their often overlooked artistic exchanges with their sculptor peers, it demonstrates that painting crucially informed the movement's development, serving not only as an object of critique but also as a crucible for its most central tenets. It also poses broader disciplinary implications as it historicizes and challenges Minimalism's "death of painting" critiques that have been so influential to theories of modernism and postmodernism in the visual arts.

The explosion of minimalism into the worlds of visual arts, music and literature in the mid-to-late twentieth century presents one of the most radical and decisive revolutions in aesthetic history. Detested by some, embraced by others, minimalism's influence was immediate, pervasive and lasting, significantly changing the way we hear music, see art and read literature. In The Theory of Minimalism, Marc Botha offers the first general theory of minimalism, equally applicable to literature, the visual arts and music. He argues that minimalism establishes an aesthetic paradigm for rethinking realism in genuinely radical terms. In dialogue with thinkers from both the analytic and continental traditions - including Kant, Danto, Agamben, Badiou and Meillassoux - Botha develops a constellation of concepts which together encapsulate the transhistorcial and transdisciplinary reach of minimalism. Illustrated by a range of historical, canonical and contemporary minimalist works of different media, from the caves of early Christian ascetics to Samuel Beckett's late prose, Botha offers a bold and provocative argument which will equip readers with the tools to engage critically with past, present and future minimalism, and to recognize how, in a culture caught between the poles of excess and austerity, minimalism still matters.

This profusely illustrated book is the first full-length study of the Canadian-born sculptor David Rabinowitch. Working in New York since 1972 and extensively in Europe since the early 1980s, Rabinowitch became Professor of Sculpture at the Staatliche Kunstakademie, Dusseldorf, in 1984. Whitney Davis closely analyzes six groups of works produced by Rabinowitch between 1963 and the present, comparing their rigorous constructivism with the "minimalism" of American sculptors such as Donald Judd. Davis also explores Rabinowitch's relations to the work of modern painters and sculptors from Cezanne to David Smith, and his involvement with the wider history of art.

This title is published in conjunction with an exhibition which opened at the Fogg Museum in September 1996.

In Six Years Lucy R. Lippard documents the chaotic network of ideas that has been labeled conceptual art. The book is arranged as an annotated chronology, into which is woven a rich collection of original documents including texts by and taped discussions among and with the artists involved and by Lippard, who has also provided a new preface for this edition. The result is a book with the character of a lively contemporary forum that provides an invaluable record of the thinking of the artists - an historical survey and essential reference book for the period.

Stretching lengths of yarn across interior spaces, American artist Fred Sandback (1943 2003) created expansive works that underscore the physical presence of the viewer. This book, the first major study of Sandback, explores the full range of his art, which not only disrupts traditional conceptions of material presence, but also stages an ethics of interaction between object and observer. Drawing on Sandback's substantial archive, Edward A. Vazquez demonstrates that the artist's work with all its physical slightness and attentiveness to place, as well as its relationship to minimal and conceptual art of the 1960s creates a link between viewers and space that is best understood as sculptural even as it almost surpasses physical form. At the same time, the economy of Sandback's site-determined practice draws viewers' focus to their connection to space and others sharing it. As Vazquez shows, Sandback's art aims for nothing less than a total recalibration of the senses, as the spectator is caught on neither one side nor the other of an object or space, but powerfully within it.

Jen Alkema's minimalism goes beyond an economy of language and material; it is a way of perceiving the world, a personal attitude rather than an application of style or method. Alkema's primary objective is not to produce a definitive work of beauty. Rather, he creates the conditions that allow beauty to surface. The design claims its own existence, developing into an undeniable reality. The architect becomes his own instrument, no longer the master. If we see minimalism as a derivative of modernism in art, architecture and music, Jen Alkema is not a minimalist. If, however, minimalism is regarded as a way of thinking shared by numerous cultures throughout the ages, Jen Alkema is a minimalist pur sang. His minimalism goes beyond an economy of language and material; it is a way of perceiving the world, a personal attitude rather than an application of style or method. After receiving his degree at The Academy of Architecture (Amsterdam) and reaching the finals of the prestigious Prix de Rome competition in 1995, Jen Alkema turned his focus to the pure essence of architecture: mass, light, structure, repetition, volume, material. His designs, although austere almost to the point of being chaste, incorporate an innate luxury achieved through the exacting use of materials and attention to detail, a perfection in execution. Paradoxical as it may seem, the creation of this sensuous simplicity demands tremendous skill and discipline.

What happens when you not only observe one of the most famous artists of our time, but do so in the company of one of the best art historians, as well? You get an unusual publication, the reading of which opens the eyes in the truest sense of the phrase. In this book the American art historian Richard Shiff-with his gaze schooled in phenomenology and his sense of detail-joins readers for a look at the exceptional art of Donald Judd. These essays open up a multi-layered, sumptuous panorama of the American artist's oeuvre. Without drawing attention to themselves, the essays completely aid in the perception of Judd's art. Shiff's rich framework allows it to shine brightly in constantly new, yet unique ways.

In the 1960s, a group of Los Angeles artists fashioned a body of work that has come to be known as the "LA Look" or West Coast Minimalism. Its distinct aesthetic is characterized by clean lines, simple shapes, and pristine reflective or translucent surfaces, and often by the use of bright, seductive colors. While the role of materials and processes in the advent of these truly indigenous Los Angeles art forms has often been commented on, it has never been studied in depth -- until now. Made in Los Angeles focuses on four pioneers of West Coast Minimalism -- Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, and John McCracken -- whose working methods, often borrowed from other industries, featured the use of synthetic paints and resins as well as industrial processes to create objects that are both painting and sculpture. Bell, for example, coated plate glass with films of material that alter the way the light is absorbed, reflected, and transmitted, while Kauffman employed a process usually reserved for commercial signs for his work. McCracken coated plywood with fiberglass then spray painted it with countless layers of automotive paints, and Irwin spray-painted discs of hammered aluminum or vacuum-formed plastics. The detailed study of each artist's work is presented in the context of the emergence of modern art in Los Angeles, the burgeoning mid-twentieth-century gallery scene, and the light-infused LA cityscape. Initially undertaken as part of the Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A.1945-1980 initiative, this volume combines technical art history and scientific analysis to investigate conservation issues associated with the work of these artists, which are often emblematic of issues in the conservation of contemporary art in general.

At the age of 81, Yvon Lambert is one of the most influential collectors of our time. He was only 14 years old when he used his pocket money to buy his first work of art. In 1966, he opened his own gallery in Paris, which soon became a top venue for contemporary art. It was Lambert who introduced the minimal art, land art and conceptual art movements to a wider European audience at a time when they were still relatively new. Besides his work as an art dealer, Lambert has spent the past fifty years creating one of the most prominent collections of contemporary art. In 2011, he donated more than 600 of his works to the French state, which are now on display in a specially dedicated museum in Avignon. In the context of the art project Skulptur Projekte Munster 2017, the Pablo Picasso Art Museum in Munster brings the Lambert Collection to Germany for the first time. In particular, the exhibition features works of artists who have been part of the Skulptur Projekte programme since its early years. Some of their works include installations that still exist in the city today.

..". a landmark work, the first attempt to write a pre-history of minimalism that embraces all the arts. Its importance cannot be overestimated." K. Robert Schwarz, Institute for Studies in American Music

"All told, this book is mandatory reading for anyone who wishes to understand the history and nature of minimalism." i/e NINE

"The death of Minimalism is announced regularly, which may be the surest testimonial to its staying power," says Strickland in this study, the first to examine in detail Minimalist tendencies in the plastic arts and music. Investigating the origins of Minimalism in postwar American culture, Strickland redefines it as a movement that developed radically reductive stylistic innovations in numerous media. A survey with wit."

BRICE MARDEN

The American artist Brice Marden (b. 1938) is one of the great contemporary painters.

Brice Marden's first works were the Minimalist monochrome panels of the 1960s, large, austere, 'implacable' oil and wax paintings characterized by a precise coolness. In 1975 Marden had a one-man show at the Guggenheim Museum.

Laura Garrard looks at Marden's artistic career, from the early works, the multi-panel works of the 1970s, the Sea Paintings, Grove Group, Greek and landscape works, and the 'Annunciation Series' and Thira.

In the 1980s, Brice Marden developed a 'calligraphic' or 'Oriental' art, which appeared in many prints as well as large canvases.

Brice Marden studied at Florida Southern College, Lakeland, and Boston University School of Fine and Applied Arts, receiving aBachelor of Fine Arts in 1961. That year, he worked at Yale NorfolkSummer School in Connecticut. In 1963 he was awarded a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from Yale University at New Haven.He moved to New York City, and worked as a guard in the JewishMuseum. At this time he was married to Pauline Baez, the sister ofJoan Baez, the singer, and had a son, Nicholas.

In the mid-1960s, Marden began to have one-man exhibitions (typically at Bykert Gallery, where he had many shows). In 1966 he became an assistant to Robert Rauschenberg. In the late 1960s, Marden began making multi-panel paintings. He worked as a painting instructor at the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1969-74. He had solo shows and group shows in Europe (Milan, Turin, Paris, Dusseldorf). In 1975 there was the ten-year retrospective at the Guggenheim in New York, unusual for so young an artist. From 1973, Marden visited Greece every year.

Other major shows included a one-man exhibition of drawings (1964-74) at Contemporary Arts Museum, a drawing retrospective at Kunstraum Munich, and the Whitechapel and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam one-man shows of 1981. An exhibition of prints 1961-91 travelled to the Tate Gallery, London, Baltimore Museum of Art and the Musee d'art moderne de la ville de Paris.

This is the only full-length appraisal available. Fully illustrated, with new illustrations. This book has been revised. ISBN 9781861713766. 196 pages. www.crmoon.com

This book undertakes a critical reappraisal of Minimalism through an examination of three key painters: Robert Mangold, David Novros, and Jo Baer. By establishing their substantive engagements with Minimalist discourse, as well as their often overlooked artistic exchanges with their sculptor peers, it demonstrates that painting crucially informed the movement's development, serving not only as an object of critique but also as a crucible for its most central tenets. It also poses broader disciplinary implications as it historicizes and challenges Minimalism's "death of painting" critiques that have been so influential to theories of modernism and postmodernism in the visual arts.

The explosion of minimalism into the worlds of visual arts, music and literature in the mid-to-late twentieth century presents one of the most radical and decisive revolutions in aesthetic history. Detested by some, embraced by others, minimalism's influence was immediate, pervasive and lasting, significantly changing the way we hear music, see art and read literature. In The Theory of Minimalism, Marc Botha offers the first general theory of minimalism, equally applicable to literature, the visual arts and music. He argues that minimalism establishes an aesthetic paradigm for rethinking realism in genuinely radical terms. In dialogue with thinkers from both the analytic and continental traditions - including Kant, Danto, Agamben, Badiou and Meillassoux - Botha develops a constellation of concepts which together encapsulate the transhistorcial and transdisciplinary reach of minimalism. Illustrated by a range of historical, canonical and contemporary minimalist works of different media, from the caves of early Christian ascetics to Samuel Beckett's late prose, Botha offers a bold and provocative argument which will equip readers with the tools to engage critically with past, present and future minimalism, and to recognize how, in a culture caught between the poles of excess and austerity, minimalism still matters.

Pinelli's painting offers the image of an energy source that seems to arise spontaneously from the spirit of the place. Considered today as work that moves in real space with the lightness of a gesture that suddenly takes shape, depositing itself on the walls of places in which it happens to be, Pino Pinelli's painting offers the image of an energy source that seems to arise spontaneously from the spirit of the place, displaying its infinite possibilities of being, breathing, imagining, and generating new solutions; the fruit, as Pinelli's friend, the poet Carlo Invernizzi, said in one of his first interventions dedicated to the artist at the end of the 1980s, "of an irrepressible yearning to be de-localised, so as to be a wandering centre on the margins and beyond the boundaries in a prefiguration of the world that is created as a possibility of the boundlessness." In this, Pinelli's painting never fails to go beyond the sensory perception one can have of space, of material-colour, even beyond the idea of painting itself. Text in English and Italian.

"So perspicuous was Battcock's choice of articles in "Minimal Art that his book has proved to be an exceptionally telling index of the critical discourse of its time. This is the key primary source book--for that matter it remains the key book--on the subject of Minimal Art, a movement that has lately, newly become a topic of consuming interest to many modern art historians, critics, curators and artists."--Anna C. Chave, author of "Mark Rothko: Subjects in Abstraction

"Good criticism of contemporary art movements is both rare and scattered, and readers with access to a wide range of periodicals and catalogue introductions are few. . . Minimal Art is so obviously the most important movement of the 1960s, and equally certainly will continue to be so in the early 1970s, that this anthology will be a valuable compilation of statements by artists and assessments by critics."--David Irwin, "Apollo