Defining Contemporary Art: Postmodern art in response to Modernism’s Minimalism

“Mr. Puryear once said of Minimalism, “I looked at it, I tasted it, and I spat it out.” But he has taken a lot from it, and used it better and more variously than many of his contemporaries.” While rejecting Minimalism’s ideal of being completely nonreferential, he said yes to its wholeness, stasis and hollowness, to sculpture as an optical, imagistic presence that nonetheless can’t be known completely without walking around it. Above all he applied the Minimalist embrace of new materials in a retroactive manner: using wood in so many different ways that it feels like a new material, both physically and poetically.” (Smith, New York Times) ‘"Mr. Puryear is a formalist in a time when that is something of a dirty word," Roberta Smith writes. Why is Puryear a formalist? His work draws on "the history of objects, both utilitarian and not, and their making. From this all else follows, namely human history, race included, along with issues of craft, ritual, approaches to nature and all kinds of ethnic traditions and identities.”’ While rejecting Minimalism’s ideal of being completely nonreferential, he said yes to its wholeness, stasis and hollowness, to sculpture as an optical, imagistic presence that nonetheless can’t be known completely without walking around it. Above all he applied the Minimalist embrace of new materials in a retroactive manner: using wood in so many different ways that it feels like a new material, both physically and poetically.” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/arts/design/02pury.html?_r=1

An installation view, Martin Puryear Retrospective, November 4, 2007-January 14, 2008, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

‘"Mr. Puryear is a formalist in a time when that is something of a dirty word," Roberta Smith writes. Why is Puryear a formalist? His work draws on "the history of objects, both utilitarian and not, and their making. From this all else follows, namely human history, race included, along with issues of craft, ritual, approaches to nature and all kinds of ethnic traditions and identities.”’ http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/11/01/arts/1102-PURY_2.html Is Puryear then a kind of formalist postmodern artist? Martin Puryear, Ladder for Booker T. Washington, 1996, wood, Installation view at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas

‘"Mr. Puryear is a formalist in a time when that is something of a dirty word," Roberta Smith writes. Why is Puryear a formalist? His work draws on "the history of objects, both utilitarian and not, and their making. From this all else follows, namely human history, race included, along with issues of craft, ritual, approaches to nature and all kinds of ethnic traditions and identities.”’ http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/11/01/arts/1102-PURY_2.html Is Puryear then a kind of formalist postmodern artist? Installation — Martin Puryear, Untitled, 1994-1995 (Mortared fieldstone sculpture installation with red cedar). Oliver Ranch, Sonoma County, CA

By the early 1960s, what is next for formalism, the modernist paradigm expoused by art critic Clement Greenberg that became so dominant even as it excluded so much art? In other words, what was “the next move” for self-contained, non-referential art that was about itself, its medium?

Donald Judd, Untitled, 1967, stainless steel and plexiglass- new, industrial materials Formalism in sculpture, by the early-mid 1960s- culminates in the medium’s reduction to the literal or physical nature of the support in a movement called Minimalism; like formalist painting it was intended as a self contained object, separate from anything external, and thus autonomous and present in its entirety immediately. Art-as-object that increasingly focused on rightness of proportion, scale, and surface

Donald Judd, Untitled (Stack), 1967, stainless steel and plexiglass (his works that run floor to ceiling are called stacks)

Scott Listfield, Chewbacca in Cloud City with Art, 2007, oil on canvas EJG: Yeah, and I think that the Star Wars characters kind of exist in that fictional future-time that the 2001 astronaut also does. Scott Listfield: Yeah. I spent a lot of time, when I first started these paintings, thinking, “Is there a supermarket on the Death Star? They’ve gotta shop for groceries, right?” The very first Star Wars reference I ever did was Chewbacca running through Cloud City, and he stumbles on a Minimalist art show. There’s like a Donald Judd on the wall, and a Richard Serra sculpture, and it occurred to me—do they look at art in Cloud City? https://newamericanpaintings.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/2010-a-space-odyssey-studio-visit-with-scott-listfield/ Scott Listfield, Chewbacca in Cloud City with Art, 2007, oil on canvas

Robert Morris, Installation view of an exhibition at Green Gallery, New York City, 1964-65, originally plywood, later versions made in fiberglass and stainless steel

Minimalism was “the next move” for formalism, according to art critic Michael Fried, Greenberg’s closest ally. In Fried’s support of Minimal sculpture, he warned against its “theater”- its need for an audience to complete it by walking around it, its falling between media. Fried’s criticism of Minimal sculpture as theatrical, as experienced in time and not immediately as an object, was embraced by Postminimalism for what artist Robert Morris, initially a Minimalist, called its “open ended situation.”

Robert Morris, Untitled (L-Beams), 1965, originally plywood, later versions made in fiberglass and stainless steel. Minimalism, Meaning-as-context, meaning made through how they surface into the experience of the viewer; although each L-beam is identical in dimension, thickness, and weight, we cannot see all three of their shapes as the same because of real space’s effects (sense of gravitational pull on one, sense of light on another) Phenomenology of Perception- meaning as a function of the body’s immersion in the world vs.

Michelangelo, David, 1501, 17’ tall Representational sculpture Meaning-as-representation

A Postmodern and Contemporary Beginning: Postminimalism and Process art This begins a series of movements in the 60s and 70s that are critiques of art-as-object, loosely termed conceptual art. For conceptual art, idea is the work of art. Its form is not the primary concern. Its form is the record of aesthetic expression, not the expression itself.

Postminimalism and process art Post-1965, much art can be loosely defined as “conceptual” “Conceptual” Postminimalism and process art Site-Specific- “sculpture in the expanded field,” Earthworks, Splittings Conceptual art movement proper Body art,Fluxus, Happenings and Performance art

Eva Hesse, Ingeminate, 1965, enamel paint, cord, and papier-mache over two balloons connected with surgical hose Louis Bourgeois, Portrait, 1963, latex wall piece Works included in the “Eccentric Abstraction” exhibition at the Fischbach Gallery in 1966, curated by Lucy Lippard; “formal muddling” Postminimalism and Process art

Robert Morris, Untitled, 1967-68, felt, installation at the Leo Castelli Gallery Postminimalism and process art Robert Morris, Felt, 1967-68, felt, installation at the Leo Castelli Gallery Postminimalism and process art

Sans II refabricated Eva Hesse, Sans II, 1968, latex Postminimalism and Process art

Eva Hesse, Expanded Expansion, 1969 In 1969 it’s a flexible, ethereal, multipaneled piece composed of fiberglass and latex, sheets of rubberized cheesecloth; it was able to lean against a wall and shudder with a passing breeze Postminimalism and Process art

Expanded Expansion in 1988, darkened and brittle but still multipaneled and able to lean Expanded Expansion in 2008, installation view at the J. Paul Getty Museum, too fragile to be lifted out of its horizontal fittings, its rubberized cheesecloth is too hardened to shudder and the work deemed completely unexhibitable

Eva Hesse, Contingent, 1969, fiberglass and polyester resin, latex on cheesecloth Postminimalism and process art

Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirror Room-Phalli’s Field, 1965, sewn stuffed fabric, plywood mirrors, dimensions variable Postminimalism Accumulation (of phalli), repeated ad infinitum; “obsessive repetition”- hybrid of regular Minimalist units and serial Pop images Feminism- a different kind of critique of patriarchy through the symbolic phallus