Reality Warped
Donald Judd, Untitled, 1987 - Anodized aluminum with red and black acrylic sheets, 10 x 40 x 10 inches.
In his 1996 book The Return of the Real, in the essay called “The Crux of Minimalism,” the art critic Hal Foster discusses the Minimalist movement of the 1960s. The present essay aims at focusing on the new paradigm, or new reality, created by the Minimalist artists, through the analysis of Hal Foster’s discussion of this art movement. In his essay, Foster attempted to demonstrate that at the center of artistic activities during the 60s, minimalism had opened up a whole new operative space for the practice of the arts to come. I totally commend him for this redressing of art history but I contend that he fails to clarify the fact that these artists did not express any kind of engagement with society at large, except for their exceptionally intelligent dialog with the Fine Arts. However, I am particularly intrigued by the profound effect they inflicted in reality, and I go further to assert that they created a new reality.
It is worth noting that when this book was written, about thirty to forty years had passed since the emergence of the Minimalist practice. The author had enough spectrum of time at his disposal to take a historical view of what had emerged as the consequences of the movement. The new reality forged by the Minimalist artists had its historical counterparts, the reality established by the “formalists,” whose spectral presence is suggested in the title of the book. These are the two issues that the present discussion will concentrate on. In sum, I want to answer two questions. First, what was the nature of the new reality professed by minimalism, and what was the concept of reality they were fighting against? Second, what doors did minimalism open for the practice of the arts as stated by Hal Foster until he wrote his book? Moreover, I will attempt to shed some light on how the new reality the minimalist artists created was perceived from the perspective of yet another twenty years or so after the publication of Foster’s influential publication.
Carl Andre, 10 x 10 Altstadt Copper Square, 1967
In his essay “The Crux of Minimalism,” Foster emphasized that the art of minimalist artists such as Carl Andre, Larry Bell, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol Le Witt, Robert Morris, Richard Serra, and others was originally qualified as idealist, juvenile, and dismissible. He demonstrated through the memorialization of the movement’s crucial texts—“Specific Object” by artist Donald Judd, “Notes on Sculpture” by artist Robert Morris, and “Art and Objecthood” by art critic Michael Fried—what the practitioners were interested in at the time, and how critics were callously annoyed by their art and their predicaments.
By doing so, Foster cleverly delineated a path of connection from minimalism, to both late modernism forward to the late 90s (when the book was written), and backward to the transgressive avant-garde of the pre-war years, namely to Marcel Duchamp and his entourage. By redefining the mapping of the visual arts in such a way, he resurrected the minimalist movement as crucial to the understanding of contemporary visual arts. Hal Foster’s critical work on minimalism intended to rescue the movement from misinterpretations and dismissals from the part of canonical critics, such as Michael Fried and Clement Greenberg, and repositioned its legacy in a prominent place in history. Hence the title of the essay, “The Crux of Minimalism,” which suggests the infliction of torment, the annunciation of a bewildering and challenging problem, and the author’s drive to correct what had gone wrong.
Larry Bell, Untitled, 1959, cracked glass, gold paint, wood, mirror, 11 x 12 x 4 inches.
Going deeper into Foster’s analysis of the mechanism with which Minimalist artists were operating, I concluded that the new reality that these artists were designating was not simple and one can sense an evolution of ideas and some slight contradictions between artists. However, Frank Stella’s assertion that “So what you see is what you see,” provides the perfect point of entry to start looking in the right direction. As Foster states, “perception is made reflexive in these works and so rendered complex.”
How does this happen? My interpretation of Foster’s claim is that, with minimalism, the viewer is re-positioned as the paramount agent for interpretation, and her perception, in the here and now, is at the center of the relationship between the spectator and the work of art. By doing so, minimalism incorporated the notion of time into the notion of space, which until then was foreign to the visual arts. This notion of time is added, in the sense that the spectator’s perception is located in the present tense.
Dan Flavin, Untitled (to Sonya), 1969, yellow and green fluorescent light, approx. 32 ft. long overall left section; modular units, each made with two 4-foot vertical fixtures and 4-foot horizontal fixtures. Right section: modular units, each made with 8-foot vertical fixtures and two 8-foot horizontal fixtures.
Taking off from Foster’s ideas, I argue that for the minimalists the mental “inside” world of the perceptive viewer, and the physical “outside” world of the work of art meld and become one in spacetime. The binding mechanism at play to create this passage from the “inside” to the “outside” is via the suppression of the symbolic function and the opening of the consciousness of the physical world in the present time. The natural penchant of the human symbolic function is thus subdued and enters into the epistemological and the metaphysical. Additionally, I speculate that this is the part of the operation that was annunciated when Foster says that perception is made “reflexive” and turned “complex.” The viewer as such is liberated from all artistic conventions of the readership of such artifacts and is engaged only perceptually and directly.
According to Foster, minimalism acknowledges the physical site that surrounds the work of art. It is no longer positioned in a distinct location in space but is part of the space and is affected by it through the senses of the viewer. By voiding the relationship of the viewer and the workpiece of all the conventions of interpretation, a whole new space, or abstract reality, opened up. I would add that it is a world of perception, which, by subtracting from it all meaning, exercises a magical operation on reality, accessing a new terrain for the entire field of the arts. Returning to Foster’s argument, he states that this new world of perception brought about the collapse of the nicely constructed world of the fine arts as understood by the accepted notions of it at the time. Not only did it collapse the established reality of the arts, but it unveils its artificial nature and its fictional character. A very annoying gesture for the High Arts establishment indeed.
Donald Judd, Untitled, 1963, cadmium red light oil on wood with violet acrylic sheet, 20 x 48 5/8 x 47 5/8 inches.
With this set of maneuverings, minimalism broke with what Foster calls “the transcendental space of most modernist art.” This repositioning was deemed as a loss for the arts and produced much irritation to the critics of the movement at the time. They concentrated their criticism on what they saw as the return, on one hand, of the transgressive avant-garde of the early twentieth century, and on the other, the renewed attack on the institution of art in general, by disrupting the formal categories of institutional art. These institutions were the bastions and architecture of the fine arts as they were known until then and were the “constructed” fictional reality of modernism.
As stated by Foster, minimalism prepared for an in-depth analysis of the conditions of perception within art practices, leading to a critique of the institution of art, including the critique of the physical spaces of art, of its exhibition conventions, and its commodity status. These preoccupations manifested themselves in the art of the 1970s and 1980s. Foster, rightly so, declared his concern for minimalism’s disregard for the viewers “sexual-linguistic constitution,” or its indifference to the subject’s historical and sexual affect. Moreover, Foster acknowledges that these omissions were later the center of attention in feminist art from the middle of the 1970s through the middle of the 1980s and judges that this is the most productive critique of the movement until the writing of his book.
Robert Morris, Untitled, 1965-1970, Stainless Steel 96 x 96 x 24 inches.
Nevertheless, what was new at that point about the marginalization of women from the practices of “High Art” or any cultural manifestation? Additionally, I find impressive the fact that in 1996 Foster does not utter the words “race,” “gender,” or “political.” I would argue that at its origins, minimalism was a very First World and male preoccupation that could create this alternative perceptive reality for the lack of additional disadvantageous existential and political conditions.
According to my view, there is one additional aspect of the minimalist operation that is particularly interesting, especially from the perspective of the present time, in the late 2010s. This is minimalism’s suppression of the anthropomorphic stance. One of the goals of minimalism was its intention to reduce the artist’s ego and to provoke the death of the author in favor of the birth of the viewer. However, I speculate that it could also represent a liminal stage towards the decentering of the view of humankind as the most important actor on Earth and beyond, and a seminal acknowledgment that we might not be as crucial as a species as we had thought until then (the 1960s) and now (the 2010s). Since the 1960s, there has been a growing recognition within many fields of knowledge (philosophy, anthropology to name the most relevant) that it is to the advantage of the planet and of human knowledge to reconsider the long-held notion of the supremacy of humankind over every other living thing. Minimalism intended to suppress all subjective coordinates (historical, political, sexual, racial) and inquired about reality only through perception. The collateral consequence of such a move puts the viewer in the perspective of any other non-human one. Through the consciousness of the present and the present only, there is a democratization of the components of reality that rewards the viewer with a singular warping of reality: the manifestation of a world of existence of the non-human on equal ground with the human.
Installation View, “Sol LeWitt”, MOMA, 1978.
Hal Foster’s illuminating essay on minimalism presents a competent argument on a significant art movement of the 1960s and relocates it in a prominent place in the history of the visual arts. The progression from the formalist aesthetic supported by Greenberg and his fellow art critics, to the one adopted by minimalist artists in opposition to formalism, makes total sense following Foster’s line of thoughts. His justification of minimalism’s preeminent importance in the development of the fine arts is also amply explained. What remains obscure is the absolute determination of its practitioners to negate all the gruesome events that emerged during the 60s. The artists remained oblivious to a world in disruption, focusing only on the reality of the high arts, and Foster offers no elucidation on this fact.
Richard Serra, Intersection, 1992, weatherproof steel, four identical conical sections inverted relative to each other - two 12’ 1 1/2 inches high x 42’8 along the chord x 2 1/8 inches thick - two 12’ 1 1/2 x 40’ 10 inches along the chord x 2 1/8 inches thick.
