The 1960s and 1970s:
Minimalism, Post-Minimalism and Conceptual Art

Many Minimalist artists reacted against the emotive Abstract Expressionist movement and sought to create an art devoid of emotional gestures. They wished to strip art to its barest and most simplified elements.

These artists questioned the need for a subject in art. The materials became the subject. Emotion was unimportant. They wished to remove the artist's unique mark, preferring impersonal mass-produced materials available commercially. Artists Dan Flavin and Donald Judd challenged traditional sculpture by defying the need for frame or pedestal, placing their art directly on the floor or between walls.

One Minimalist artist, Ad Reinhardt defined the style in the following terms:

"The more stuff in it, the busier the work of art, the worse it is. More is less. Less is more. The eye is a menace to clear sight. The laying bare of oneself is obscene. Art begins with getting rid of nature."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism

Conceptual artists developed this idea a step further. They wished to explore art at its most fundamental. For Conceptual artists the important thing was the idea behind an artwork, and not the object that was produced.

"In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art."
Sol LeWitt
Quoted in Paragraphs on Conceptual Art by Sol LeWitt, Artforum, June 1967.

 
 

Dan Flavin Untitled (to Jan and Ron Greenberg) 1972–73

Dan Flavin creates sculptures using coloured fluorescent light tubes. His titles usually reflect dedications to people who influenced him. For Untitled (to Jan and Ron Greenberg), 1972-73, Flavin strips his sculptures down to the three elements of light, colour and space. It becomes a fusion of all these elements that the viewer must engage with to fully comprehend.

Untitled (to Jan and Ron Greenberg), 1972-73 is comprised of multiple yellow and green flourescent tubes set vertically in the centre of a corridor. Flavin has ingeniously left the width of one fluorescent tube open at one end, enabling light from the other side to be seen and the colours to fuse. This creates a narrow but intense contrast of light that pierces the corridor space. The wall of light becomes an architectural feature as well as the source of light. The light and colour bounces from the walls and ceiling enveloping the viewer and shadows play on each surface depending on the position of the viewer within the space.

Flavin has deconstructed his sculptural form to its essence – light and colour. The viewer must encounter the work from both sides to experience it as a whole. Flavin challenges the illusionary aspects of traditional use of light and colour in art. The form of his work circumvents the need for a frame or a pedestal.

Interpretation and Meaning

Some critics have interpreted Flavin’s sculptures as spiritual. Flavin spent a short time in the seminary as a young man, so many critics suggest that his light sculptures are like a literal interpretation of light as the symbol of enlightenment or God and an attempt to transcend time and space. It is not difficult to imagine such a response, because in effect you have to feel rather than see the sculpture.

Dan Flavin finds these very lofty interpretations too complicated. In response to this perspective, he has said:

It is what it is, and it ain’t nothin’ else...There is no overwhelming spirituality you are supposed to come into contact with...It’s in a sense a “get-in-get-out” situation. And it is very easy to understand. One might not think of light as a matter of fact, but I do. And it is, as I said, as plain and open and direct an art as you will ever find.
Dan Flavin
Quoted in The Strange Case of the Fluorescent tube, by Michael Gibson, Art International 1 (Autumn 1987), p.105

Materials and Techniques

Flavin reassessed the types of materials that could be used for artwork. He did not want his fluorescent light tubes to be custom made. He was very determined that all the lights he used were standard commercially produced tubes that could be easily purchased in a hardware store. In doing so, Flavin took the common object out of its usual context to pioneer a challenging and new approach to sculpture. The simplicity of the singular light tube and the immediacy of the ambient light and colour are important features of his work. The uniformity and repetition of the materials is also significant for Flavin.

I am constantly for clarity and distinction...first in the pattern of the tubes and then with that of the supporting pans. But with or without colour, I never neglect design.
Dan Flavin
Quoted in Dan Flavin, Proposals for the visible, by Beatrice von Bismarck, p.16

Some critics interpret this use of commercial materials as a ‘Neo-Duchampian readymade’. (See Art in America: in another light -– fluorescent light art, Dan Flavin, Dia Centre for the Arts, Guggenheim Museum, PaceWildenstein, New York, New York, by Richard Kalina, p. 1)

This refers to a controversial Dada artist named Marcel Duchamp. He placed ordinary objects in an art gallery and declared them to be art. An infamous example was when he signed a urinal "R.Mutt" and entited it Fountain 1917. Apart from shocking the public, he was primarily challenging the traditional idea of what art should be.

The Minimalists sought to remove emotion from their art work, quite opposite to the Abstract Expressionists who used gesture to convey an expressive personal response to their subject. Flavin's choice of commercially manufactured flourescent tubes contributes to creating that cool, clean, non-emotive aesthetic.

Robert Morris, a Minimalist artist, wrote:

The object has not become less important. It has merely become less self-important.
Robert Morris
Quoted in Dan Flavin, Proposals for the visible, by Beatrice von Bismarck, p.14

 
 

Donald Judd Untitled 1971

For Untitled, 1971, Donald Judd reduces his sculptural forms to the most basic of structures: the box. For Judd, order and simplicity are the most important elements of his work. The objects attain a sterile, almost aloof presence. The cubes show no evidence of who made them or how they were constructed. Judd also uses repetition of specific singular forms to emphasize feelings of uniformity. The objects do not communicate anything apart from existence.

They are encountered objectively and despite Judd’s preoccupation with stripping his artworks of emotional content, Untitled, February 22, 1971 creates a dramatic statement that cannot be ignored. For Judd the context of the work is just as important as the artwork itself. Rather than using plinths, he places his pieces directly onto the floor. His work therefore takes on an architectural quality.

Comparing Flavin and Judd

Dan Flavin described his artworks as proposals and Donald Judd described his sculptures as specific objects. Both artists were challenging the way artists made and conceived artworks and the way in which viewers respond to them. It is almost as if they were challenging the viewer to ask, what is the purest and most essential element of art?

Some social commentators claim that ‘the simple life’ has been engulfed by mass media and huge corporations, manipulating how we think and act. The 1960s and 70s were a time of considerable political and social upheaval. Media coverage of the Vietnam War, the Feminist movement and the Civil Rights movement raised public consciousness of equality, conscription and other social and political issues.

Judd and Flavin are provoking the viewer to reassess what is important. They are not simplifying objects for their own sake but reconsidering ideas about sculpture to get to the essence of art.  Carl Andre stated of Minimalist art:

‘Minimal’ means to me only the greatest economy in attaining the greatest ends.
Carl Andre – Minimalist artist
Quoted in Minimalism- Art of Circumstance, Cross River Press Press, 1988, p.14

Donald Judd stated:

Actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface.
Quoted in Donald Judd, Specific Objects, 1964. Arts Yearbook 8 (1965). p. 94, reprinted in, Donald Judd: Early Works 1955-1968 (exhibition catalogue) by Thomas Kelliein New York: D.A.P., 2002

 
 

Middle Years

4.1 Making Your Own Light Sculptures

Senior Years – VCE Art & VCE Studio Arts

4.2 Research Duchamp and Flavin

4.3 Discussing and Debating Art