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    Anna Chave's article "Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power"

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    37 views26 pages

    Chave-Minimalism Rhetoric of Power-1990

    Uploaded by

    Caelulala
    Anna Chave's article "Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power"

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    ITS MYTHS POWER: ano mores IN AMERICAN ART 1961-1991 HOLLIDAY T. DAY with essays by Brian Wallis, Anna ©. Chave, and George £, Marcus, artists’ profiles by Catsou Roberts, ‘and a photographic essay by Christopher Scoates ‘and Deora Wilbur INDIANAPOLIS MUSEUM OF ART in cooperation with INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS ANDY WARHOL, RICHARD ARTSCHWAGER ROY LICHTENSTEIN DONALD 1U0B FRANK STELLA WALTER DE sami ROBERT HORRIS RicHaRD semeA viro Acconet ROBERT LONGO ‘onRIS BURDEN STEPHEN Laus JENNY HOLZER BRUCE NAUMAN GARBARA KRUGER Nancy suRsow CMDY SHERMAN Pere MALLEY cuxaa a auremanun ASHLEY BIoXERTON LOUISE LAWLER AIM sremmacH Tony TASSET JEFF KOONS RICHARD PRINCE Loma simpson knzyszror woDtezKo DeNwis Abas 20 an 100 116 a4 256 as7 158 159 CONTENTS Foroword by Brot Waller reface by Holliday T. Day ‘The Nature of Power Holiday T. Day Catalogue of the Exhibition and Artists’ Profiles Catsou Roberts Power, Gen Brian Wallis and Abstraction Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power Anne ¢, Chave Tho Powar of Contemporary Work fn an Ametioan Art Tradition to Mluminate Its Own Power Relations. Gorge E. Marcus Acknowledgments Lenders to the Exhibition Contributors Photography Credits Photographic Essay Conboys and Indians Curatorial Team MINIMALISM AND THE RHETORIC or POWER ANNA C, CHAVE Let me begin with an anecdote. while | was looking at Donald Judas aleaming brass floor box (fig. of 1968 from a distance in the galleries of the ‘Museurn of Modern Art last spring, ¢wo teenage girls strode over to this pristine work, kicked it, and laughed. They then discovered its reflective surface and used it for a while to arrange their hair until finally, they bent over ta kiss their images fon the cop of the box. The guard near by, watching all of this, said nothing. Why such an object might elicit both a kick and a kiss and why a museum guard might do nothing about st are at issue in this essay. [ will argue that the object's look of absolute or “plain power,” as Judd described it, helps explain the perception that it did not need or merit protecting, that it could withstand o even deserved such an assault, What concerns me about Minimalist art is what Teresa de Laitretis describes as "the relations of power involved in enunciation and reception, relations "which sustain the hierarchies of communication; ... the ideological construction of authorship and mastery, or mate plainly, who speaks to whom, why, and for whom." I want, further, to historicize those relations—to examine the rhetoric inscribed in Minimalism, and the discursive context af the movement in selation ¢o the sociopolitical climate of the time during which i emerged Richard Serra remembers thatin che (960s, “It was your job as an society by the values you were introducing, sathe: Buc did Minimalist art in any way propose, or elfect, 3 revaluation of values? And 4. Donald Judd, Untt 22x 48'/, 1 36. Co! ‘of Modern Art, New Yor 2968.Brass, ton The Museum . Gift f Phil st ta redefine han the other way around, how are we to understand its cool displays of power in relation to a'society that ‘was experiencing a violent ambivalence toward authority, a society where many were looking for the means of transforming power relations? By manufacturing abjects with common industrial and commercial mate rials in a restricted vocabulary of geometric shapes, Judd and the other Minimalist artists avail themselves of the cultural authority of the markers of industry and technology. Though the specific qualities of their abjects vary —from the corporate furniture-like elegance of Judd’s polished floor box, to the harsh, steel mesh of 2. Robert Mortis, Untitied, 1967. Stee! Robert Mortis cage: like construction of 1967 (fig. 2), to the industrial banaliy and stool mesh, 34 x 208 x 208, Private of Carl Andre's Zinc-Zine Plain of 1969 (fig. 3)—the authority implicit in the Collection. Courtesy Leo Castelll 6 ~\. identity of the materials and shapes the artists used, as well as in the scale and —— GTien the weight of thetr objects, has been crucial to Minimalism’s associative values from the outset.” In one of the first Minimalist group shows, Shape and Structure, at Tibor de Nawy in 1965, Andre submited a timber piece 30 massive i¢ almost caused the gallery's floar to collapse and had ta be removed. The unapologetic artist described his ambitions for that work in forceful and nakedly and hold the space of chat gallery. not simply fill i, but seize and hold shat space."* More recently, Richard Serra's territorial terms: "I wanted very much to seiz mammoth, curving, steel walls have equired even the floors of the Castelli 116 4. Terese de Late, Alice Dosen: Feminism, Samii, Clnems(Bloamieten: lana Uniersty Press, 1984), 179, 2. Hartt Senie,“TheRitSTUAtNews Maen 198455, 23. Mat Foster stone nas vented n pie however temstivey te tog much to sages tat ator (autortaian?) guise, a guise which eves tat, far from separate om powor aed region (as Enlgienmentsifacophy would have ty oouge0 ‘aris adisplaced wil to power..andutimatly is religion?” “The Ci of Minimalism,” In Howard Singuran, Inve: A Selected Histon of Contemporary ar 1945-1986 Newark: Abele 16s, forthe Museu of Contomporry At, Los Angles, c. 1986), 174, 4, Phys Tuenman, “An ints tn Catan. ‘Antform une 1970); 6. Insole a3 space or olds ae conentonsly coded a5 famine, ‘ombotefamatserualdorinatonis tissue re 5, See bonTery, "a6 TonScoptue als, reg Too," ew Yor Times, October 27, 1988, 16; sna uth Landa, “Soulture Crushes Two: Worker LocesLog ae 16Ton Pece Fal,” New York Day Hows, Ontber 27, 1988, 2, 3. Douglas Cimp sec the utsted sea of So's work as prot that the ait uses the gallay as “3 site of ste," utter en enisto veond afar hae mounts toa stg and there was no ste with the desler, who could not have been more accommodating 16, Carl Andre: Artworker itencew wan Jeanne Sigel, Stucto nteratonat 180: 927 November 1970):178, Ane ae, to 3 esser extent, Mor's were active inthe At Norers Coalition an anarchic body foxmeain 1989 whose pinpal or event 3s helping to organize tho Now York At Stee gaint ar, Raciam and Repression, whienclosed usmerous galeries and museums on May 22, in on th stops of the Metropolitan Museum, whieh 66 not close, ew about te uncres prtiipants. Te ANC crowa distin boteuer the poieang of arts. which it ured 3. Cart Andre, Zine-Zine Plain, 1968, Zine (36 plates), 72 x 72, each 42 x 12, Courtesy Paula Cooper Galery Gallery's industrial loft space to be shored up. damage to both life and property ‘The Minimalists! daminecring, sometimes brutal shetorie was breached in this country in the 1960s, a decade of brutal displays of power by both the American military in Vietnam and the police at home in the streets and on which did not prevent harrowing university campuses across the country. Corporate power burgeoned in the US in the 19608 100, with the tise of the “multinationals,” due in part to the flourishing of the military-industrial complex. The exceptionally visible violence of the state's military and disciplinary establishments in this period met witha concerted response, of course, Vested power became embattled on every front with the eruption of the civil rights alongside the feminist and gay rights movements. In keeping with the time-honored alignments of the avant-garde, the Minimalists were sel identified, but not especially clear-thinking, leftists. "My art will reflect ities buc the unanalyzed polities of my Iefe. Matter as matter rather than matter as symbol is a conscious political position | think essentially Marxist” said Andre, contradictorily, in 1970.* "A lot af people be- lieved that there were really changes Frank Stella recently observed, "I believed it too. It did seem that way. Alot of the work seems not necessarily conscious in the states, But it does seem that it didn’t do what it was supposed to do.”” However, Stella didn't specify what the art of the sixties was supposed to do, or why strenath Now, asin the 1960s, the dominant accounts of Minimalism do not portray it as an instrument of social change but, on che contrary, as art chat somehow was expected to accomplish its esrands generated and occupied a special sphere, aloof from politics and commerce and above personal feeling. The language typically used to describe Minimalism employs a rhetorte of purity, primacy, and immediacy in focusing an the artists means and on the objects! relations to the constitutive terms of their media. "The demand has been for an honest, diect, unadulturated experience in art... mings symbolism, minus messages and minus personal exhibitionism,” Goossen in £966", with Minimalism, "the very means of art have been isolated and exposed In the standard narratives, Minimalism forms the terse, but veracious, last word in a narrowly framed argument about what modern art is or should be, Asit happens, the person most responsible for framing wrote Eugene he stated two years later, ar 4. Robert Moni, Untitled (Cock/Cunt), 5. Dan Flavin, The Diagonal of Mey 25, £1963 (to Robert Rosentum), 1963. Coot white uorescent light, 96 x 3°/, ‘courtesy Leo Castelli Gallery; copyright and the palticiang ofa, which sno. Ie boas noting that that prime maiator of political ationin tre stasent septation, the det, ianottheeaten any ore menctscussed here 25, most of ther Fad sport years in tho military soe cases by choice—prar ta pursuing caress ftom 1942 1 1946 25.8 glider plot and covprogyenner inthe airforce, maiiyintne nts StaesbutaleninfgypeaneTurayzba sbasquenty sci art lack Mountin College and in Pai 2388, 807 3928, genes the ayn Korein anenginee’s wit, 1945-47 foto the outro oF me war tee); subsequent ne stud a the At Studorts League an a Columbia Unters fiom which he graduated In 1963 win 0 65 i iosoohyand hore rne pursued gradustestuales ina bistary rom 1958 1 1980, Sol Let, born 161928, enned a BFA rom Sracuse Unversiyin that argument, Clement Greenberg, finally distiked seeing his logic carried to its "Minimal works are seadable as art, as almost anything i today," he ‘including a door, a table, or a blank sheet of paper. it would seen chat a kind of art nearer the condition of non-art could not be envisaged or ideated at this moment. That, precisely, is the trouble, Minimal Art remains too much a feat of ideation, and not enough anything else." But it was an account of the history of modern art chat Greenberg had inscribed as the true history that enabled these objects, which verged on being non-art, to he lionized instead as att of the first importance, Andre's metal plates and Morris's cage could only be regarded a¢ works of art in the context of a discaurse in which they stood as compelling proof of the unfolding of a certain historical inevitability. Lay complained in 1967, spectators only recognize such objects as works of art (when or if they do so because they are Tocated in she legitimating contexts of the gallery and museum installed by curators and dealers in thrall (as the artists themselves were) to 4 particular account of history. Most of the artists and critics concerned would have agreed w that, with Minimalism, “the spectator is not given symbols, but facts", that it offers Goossen ro quarter 10 "the romantic mentality, which fails to appreciate experience for its ‘own intrinsic value and is forever trying to elevate it by complications and "= The present account is concerned precisely with how such pa: however, and is bent on describing those associations, Morsis's Cock/Cawe sculpture of 1963 (fig. 4), with ies schematic image of sexual difference and coitus, demonstrates plainly that highly simplified, abstract configurations may indeed be coded. A more charac teristic example, however—one that is nor literally, but metaphorically, "in seribed'—is Dan Flavin's seminal and canonical work advisedly) The Dizgowa of May’ 25, (963 (lo Robert Rosenblum) (fig. 5 done entirely n fluorescent light. tently nonnarrative artis “complicated” by "associations | choose my adjectives his firse work type of power involved here is, inthe first place, actual electrical power tosith the requisite cords and connections hidden so that that power’ contingency remain apparent), bu the igh las tube fr loo plainly phallic. This, iterally 2 hotrod, and lavincoyly relerred othe spect alee poised the tre atas-the diagonal of personal ecstasy," atuding ta the been recognized through light in virtaatly all epriual traditvons representative phrase, while alluding to the art's Roman Catholic upbringing" Flavia Frew to take a Though he called some ofthe first works he created with light icons, that his commercial light fixtures “differ from a Bh they are dumb—anonymous and ingloriaus ... They bring a limited light." He invoked his religious upbringing in different terms, moreover, telling of the “rank suppression’ he experienced ‘in the name of God the Father” at the hands of his, ‘own father, Daniel Senior, whom he described as tine Chsist held in majesty am ascetic, remotely male Irish Catholic trzant officer." In Flavin's mind, his Diagowal was less a reaffirmation of the posstbility for spiritual experience in contemporary society, than “a modern technological fetish'"”—a fetish being, estration and impotence, a symbolic surrogate for the female body's absent penis, From this perspective, Flavi may evince the sense of impotence visited an the once sovereign, universal (read: 's dependence on technological artifacts for his work 1949 ana men seed n he US Arvin Japan an ore in 4954-52, Mars, vom in £931, served win Keres as en enghneetonaa the ei ofthe Korean War he altensed nurerous waver: ‘and a seh, inciting the Catone Shoal ot Frets ana Reed Coleg, are grade work a: Hunter Colge in Ne Yorkin at istry. O90 Fauin, born 3933, bunahinsef 91965, bys cn aecount, “lot in Koes with an army of occupaton as an Ar Weather Sewie Odsoner he swsequontly attended Columbia Universi Ande, bor in 1935, studied at Philips Rndover Academy, 1951-53, a served! inthe ay 0 Nest Corona in 1955-69, Water De Maa, orn in 1985, eatned 9 BA in istry and at NK in sculpture atthe Universtiy of Clforia at eka and was not nthe malta. Frank St, mn 1936, expected to he sae on rating rom Frinton, butnasoxometeabecauseot tenons see mit sence, 7. Hom #0 unpublished secton of wanscrpss ot Intovews wth Stain eondietes in Came, ass.inDocerber 1985s 1984, pemary Dy Carine Jones, in Harr Uriverity Art Museum's aries, 6 5. Eusene Goossen, “Distilaton” 2966 (a text ‘ancomoanyig sn eatin ne atte Thor Nagy and Stabe gales in Serember 1966}, In Mima’ ar: Crivcl Arto, Grego) Bazook [Now York: FP Dutton, 1968), 168, 6. Carl Andro, Lover, 4966. 197 tre bricks, 41/,x 8'/, x 348, eneh 4¥/, « 81/, x 2'/,, Courtesy Nations! Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, male} subject by the ascendancy of technology. "Disenfranchised by an indepen. dently evolving technology, the subject raises its disenfranchisement to the level of consciousness, one might almost say to the level of a programme for artistic production," as Theodor Adorno observed."" Flavin’s Diagonal not only looks technological and commercial—like Minimalism generally—it is an industrial product and, as such, it speaks of the extensive power exercised by the commodity ina society where virtually everything is for sale—where New York Telephone can advertise love," "friendship, “and “comfort” for'as litele as ten cents call,” for instance, Further, in its identity as object or commodity, Flavin's work may arouse ‘our ambivalence toward those ever-proliferating commodities around us for which wwe have a hunger that is bound to be insatiable, as they witl never fully gratify Standard products, or commercially available materials, can also be seen 10 bear secondary meanings in Andre's famous Lever of 1966 (Fig. 6), done for the important Paimary Suactures show at the Jewish Museum in 1966. Artworks at their best spring from physical, erotic propositions," Andre stated, And with is bricks set side by side in a row 34'/, feet long, Lever manifests his determination 0 put ‘Brancusis Endless Colum on the ground instead af in the sky. Most sculpture is priapic with the male organ én the ai, In my work, Priapus is down on the floor The engaged position is to sun along the earch." In cerms of the artist's view of o Ht, then, Lever is closer to Morris's Cock/Cant than to Flavin's Diagonal, as it offers 4 schematic image of coitus with the floor serving as the (unarticulated} female clement. Significantly too, of course, a "lever" is a long, rigid tool used to pry or lif, while fever means to rise, raise, or life in French Though the critics have mostly ignored them, the suggestive titles of many ‘ones of the Minimalist movement prove that the artists themselves were prone to “complicating” their work by associa tions." In the (970s Brends Richardson and William Rubin, exceptionally, mined valuable information about che titles of Stella's black and metallic pinstripe of the objects now regarded as corner paincings, but without attempting any extended analysis of their implications for the work. Rubin suggested that Stella's titles have "a simple emotional straightfor= wardness that is akin to [the paintings'] emblematic mode,” but he also asserted that che "very fact of their [the titles existence . .. suggests the way in which Stella is drawn to associations whose ambiguities potentially subvert the formal and intellectual rigor of his art"—implying that the titles ate not so straightfor In an effort at safeguarding the art's (phallic) “rigor, Rubin warned however, with exaggerated deference to the artis’s wishes, that Stel ward alter 's titles constitute strictly “personal associations with the pictures and that "he would be horrified at the idea that a viewer might use them as a springboard to content.” I will argue that Rubin errs on both counts: thot the relation between words and work in Stella's case isnot straightforward, and that the titles' ambiguities do not dilute or obviate but enhance the complexity and, as Rubin cals it, the force" of the work Reichsiag of 1958 marks the first ume Stella “consciously set out to make 9 black painting," though it differs Irom the series of pictures that followed insofar as its stripes do not completely cover the canvas.” If Reichstag distantly evokes a schematic architectural plan, it bears no evident relation to the massive, neoclas, sical parliament building it was named for, A time-honored symbol of imperial Germany, the Reichstag is, in modern history, associated with'the rise of the Nazi party: when it was set on fire by aw arsonist in 1933, Hitler, then chancellor, 119 8, Frank Stella, le Fahne Hoch, 1969. Black enamel on eanvas, 124 */, x 73. Collection Whitney Muscum of American At Now York, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene M. SSchwarts and John |. H. Baur Purchase Fund: the Charles and Anita Blatt Fund: Peter M. Brant; B. Friedman; the Gilman Foundation, ne. Susan ‘Morse Milles; the Lauder Foundation: Frances land Sydney Lowls; the Albert A. List Fund: Philip Moris Incorporated; the National [Endowment forthe Arts; Sandra Payson; Mr and Mrs. Albrocht Saad; Mes. Perey Urs; ‘and Warnor Communications Ine with funds from the 7. Frank Stella, Untied, 1960. Pencil on paper Pronounced the fire to be part of s Communist conspiracy and exploited the incident to help proclaim himself Fabrer. In a sheet of sketches and nates that he made in (960 for a lecture at Pratt (fig. 7), Stella traced the thinking that led him through the use of ever-stricter symmetry and more continuous repetitions of basic patterns, to the formats of his classic black paintings. He sketched the ud, the penultimate one on the sheet, with the annotation ‘uening the corner.” Richardson observed simply, in a parenthesis, that this is “obviously a remark of both literal and metaphorical implication.” Presumably she alludes to the (literal) way that (wo ninety-degree corners are repeatedly turned. in the picture, a¢ well as to the (metaphorical) turoing point the burning of the Reichstag represented in Hitler's rise to power. Perhaps she alludes as well to the turning poine the painting represented in Stella's own ascendancy, however, as Reicbstag led immediately to the series of black pinstripe pictures that the Museum of Modern Art and the Castelli Gallery would vie with each other co exhibie first.” Inthe eyes of those best positioned to insure his future, Stella's elegant but drastic black paintings represented the erucial, historically necessary next step after the aré of the New York School, But others found the paintings troubling. Stella now says that the hostility and the charges of nihilism leveled at the black paintings irritated him, though such responses would seem to have reciprocated his own perception of the work more nearly than the genial embr cognoscenti. The artist has decribed the black paintings haltingly, in terms of force, fear, control, and confrontation. Jn conceiving the pictures, he aimed foran effect that was, like a punch, “direct—right to your eye." He achieved that effect by “forcling] illustonistic space out of the painting... by using 2 regulated pattern? What resulted was an ‘element of exclusion and an element of necessary rigidity." But the experience of painting these pictures taught him "how to be forceful and direct, and really just paint without fear sensing that he was on to something important when he began wark on those paintings—"I mean | had it there. [had it down and I had it under control"—but he was stl] ‘afraid it might go away—I wanted to hold it down and establish control." Finally, “they're very good from an argumentative point of view, the paintings and the enemy is clearly defined. te's anybody else." That control and force were central to the conception of the black paintings was alfirmedalso by the vtles of ewo of them especially: Arbeit Macht Fre of 1958, the first of the classic black paintings, and Dic Fabne Hock (fig, 8), done some months later in 1959. (irbeit Macht Fr is the same image as Die Fabve Foch ace of the Stella remembers because they take away 120 19, Eugene Goossen, The Art ofthe Rea USA. 1948-1969 (New Yorks Musoum of Modo Aa. 11968), 14; tis show reposonced the dobut of Minimalism atthe Museum of Modem At, though Ite not feature Minimalism exclusive. 10, clement reerberg,"Rocontnss ofSeuptre,” 1967, tin Batoock, Winrar 183, Io THe Cru” Foster eiseusses Minimalism aaty a8 represering at once sn utimateeatation of and bres wlth the Greenbergan modemist mode 411. Goossen, Art of the Ral 11. 12. Eugene Goossen, Et Young Artists," 1964 {anes scornpenyingan extitonsttne Hudson Ror Museum in Yorkers, Now Yorkin October 11968), In Baoock, Minimal A, 267 213 Such was the tite gen tothe drawing forthe ‘workin don Sith, Dar vi: uoroscantuight (ottawa: National Gal of Cnaca, 1960), 168; and Pain reterated the phrase when shoving a ‘eof the work st a eoture ot Hora Universiy In 1986, :L4 Motnda Wor, “Dan lan: EF. Hauserman ‘Company Showroom, Pacflc Design Centr." Arora anuary 1983): 82 15, Sith, Fain 178, 26. Fromavenomoustestinvhichhedemaansthe religious vanirg‘orcedupon im as an adolescent sonttogjuner seminary to fli otar's “ost orator.” The excesses of parent and eigious authori sted upon Flavinas child byhistates, and a other he calls ‘a sti, feshytyrant ofa worn,” propel hr, by His awn efsepoatod account into a fantasy if centered on extibons power in ther sores: Ne “aweied in serous fertosies of war doing pene ketones of World War devssetion asf rogressed,” and amin “unoredsof..draings ater the Homers of War Pictur cads of Gum, Inorporated, and suncy other wartime istration” Ravin. day oceolwhite’ An autobiographical Sketch,” Afoun {ecembor 1965): 21 {17a 1a aay = 26. 18. Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory ans. Lennox, 26. Gretel Adomo anc Ro Tedernann (Wondon: Rouge anc Kogon Paul, 1984), 35, oriented horizontally: the longer edges of both pictures have identical dimen. sions; the shorter edge is »foot shorter in Dir Fahne Hoch.) "Work makes [you] free” ‘was the motto inscribed over the gates of Auschwitz, while "The Flag on High" was the first phrase of the official marching song of the Nazi party, the Horst Wessel Song. In the sequence of annotated sketches Stella made in 1960 (Fig. 7), the ‘cruciform configuration that forms the basis for bath these paintings is the final ‘schema, and the caption below itreads: “the final solution. Richardson takes this note at face value as indicating that this schema represented the final resolution of the set of formal problems that culminated in the classic black paintings. Neither she nor anyone else mentions che well-known fact that "the final solution die Fudlosung) was the Nazi code phrase (coined at the Wannsce Conference in 1942} for the Third Reich's inlamous answer to the ‘lewish Problem’: the anil lation ofthe Jews, Whereas he wo paintings most divectly based on the cruciform schema are rectangular, the little sketch is square, framing an equal-sided cross more like the black Maltese cross, emblem of the Third Reich, If he had wanted to fit his titles straightforwardly to his images, Stella could have given his rectangular, cruciform paintings Christian tsles. In fact, he considered calling Arbeit Macht Frei “The Sacred Hear,” but finally decided to ‘eschew religious titles because, he said, they had ess referential potency over time than did political symbols or allusions" (though, for that matter, only 1wo of the titles in this series of twenty-three paintings—Arbeit Mac! Frei and Reichstag— have immediately recognizable political connotations).” If he had wanted his images to relate unambiguously to their titles, Stella could also have based the paintings with Nazi titles on a Maltese cross or a swastika. He more than once ‘considered and then dismissed the idea of using a swastika pattern, however, most notably in the case of a picture projected as the final painting of che black series, ‘a painting to be called "Valle de fos Caidos.” The Valley ofthe Fallen is a memorial north of Madrid built as Franco's comb and also supposedly to honor all the dead ‘ofthe Spanish Civil War, but Spaniards widely regard itstrictly as amonument co Franco and his forces: the monument's official meaning was, in other words, at ‘odds with its perceived meaning.” ‘Though he never painted the "Valle de los Caldas," Stella remained fascinated by such contradictory or unstable signs, with Arbeit Alacbt Frei being another case in point. Richardson describes the use of this phrase in is original context as “euphemistic," but deceitful might be closer to the mark. Wan argument ‘can be made that labor lsberates, it would of course not apply to forced-labor ‘camps where the only liberation, or at Ieast release, afforded the laborers was death. The meanings attaching to language are contingent on who uses it, who hears it, and who has the power to enforce a given point of view, to define the ‘official code. The phrases in Stella's Nazi titles are not inflammatory on the face of it; their history (underscored by their being in German) is what makes them potentially explosive—though cheir seeming innocuousness has effectually ren- dered them negligible in critics! eyes." Even Richardson, in her useful study of the black pictures, consistently uses tentative or reluctant formulations—like "It would be difficult to ignore, too, the relationship between the black of the painting and the 'Blackshirts' of the fascist parties—in assaying connections between works and words." For that matter, 0 wary have critics been of exploring ‘what Stella's art signifies that even the most unavoidable allusion has passed essentially unremarked: the likeness of the black paintings! patterns to those bolts aa 19. Scgo, “Andre: Arworker’ 478, and Dave Bouin, Car Ante: Sculpture 1980-1977 (New York: Jaap Reta, 1978), 27. Akoy work Acro cencetvea i 1960, but cout not fer to exeste Lu 1966, was Horn, consisting of @ single recanguerimberstancingonend. hettevetes toancertGreekroad markers, sel, ectngy, sone pilars oon mated by an eect pons and surmourted by a bust of Hermes, In 1963 Andre made a wooden scuoture aled Cookin evident homage to Broreust though "0k" does ot haw the exe slang connetaton in French tet ites in engism, 20, Wiiam S. Rubin, Frank Sta (Now Yor: Musoumot Medor At. 1970), 44-45. Stllaso ee sree people probing tho impliatons of pistes, ne need prowded ny, ofourse, lot stone sucn ingung ones, 21, Brn Flchoron, Frank Sta: Tne Sask Paintings (Baitinare: alin Museum of At, 3976), 12, 22, Richordson, Stel, 4, Dorlhy Miler pi four ofthe plenses in ner Seen Americans show in 11080; ane Aved Baw puchasea ne Mariage of ‘Reason and Squslor ler the muses ctecton. Stole rat soo sow at Castell 2960, 23, Rubin, Sta 30: from “Tre Pratt Lecture,” ‘etverc ay Stes tthe Prat Institute in 1960, pt in lenardsan, Stade, 78, 2A. Jones, rasan of rtrtaw with Sala, 1, £62, 90; Cahn Tomkins, “The Space Acund Real “Trg. Tho ew Yoray, September 10,1984, 68, 28, Jones, ransarinofntonion wih Sel, 6 ellos ae nthe arin eating pausesio the ants’ speech, 26, Rlchadson, Sto, 14, 79 27, Stla indicated aso, toweve,thathe “makes Ie sistinction between Churcnand Statoinrogad {o siaros of tual and ry of sructre lenercson, Sta 26, 28, Richardson, Stet, 9 of fine pinstriped wool flannel used for decades by Brooks Brothers and J, Press to make the suits of bankers, executives, and politicians. The lull connotations of the quintessential Power Fabric could scarcely have been lost on Stella, a 1958 araduate of Princeton University and an alumnus of Andover prep school.”* (On the subject of his Princeton education, Stella recently commented: A cology field trip to Bethlehem Steel was the highlight of my four years there. | was interested in the outside world, The worst slums seemed like the greatest places on earth, Of course it's not true, but everything looked interesting com pared with Andover and Princeton.” This youthful romanticizing of adversity surfaced in the titles of the paintings Stella did just after he left Princeton—such 4s Bethlehem’ Hospital of 1959, named for a once-notorious insane asylum in Lon- don To some, Stella's title may evoke & specthic institution for the demented and deviant, but to most viewers—who would recognize that asylum only by its colloquial name of "Bedlam'—the title might well suggest some ordinary mater: nity hospital, Hethlehem being Christ's birshplace, In Stella's mind the name Bethlehem’ was evidently most immediately associated with his cour of the Pennsylvania steel mills (as he had nat been to England, he had no such direct experience of Bethlehem Hospital), but he let that telling private association remain buried, awaiting the art historian’s spade. Here as elsewhere in his Ctling ‘of the black series both the title's private meanings and its more sinister meanings are obscured, though those grim associations are what best make sense of the paintings’ all-consuming darkness, repetition, and sameness. The glamorous titles of two other black paintings, Arandel Castle and Morro Cote, also conceal grim allusions: privately, Stella connected these titles, in the first instance, with the name of an apartment building in the Bedford. Stuyvesant ghetto of Brooklyn {where he had been employed briefly doing commercial painting jobs) and, inthe second instance, with a famous disaster, the burning of an American steamer named the Morro Castle en route from Havana ta New Yor.” Stella considered naming an entire series of paintings for disasters, but settled, in the black series, for a miscellany of titles related only by their association with what he mildly described as “downbeat or "depressed political” situations. Some ‘other paintings in the series are titled for seamy New York nightclubs, such as Zambezi, a Harlem club known for its male and female impersonators"*—another ance of something, or rather someone, being other than what is apparent, ‘What helped prompt the black series, by Stella's own account, was his initiation, Into the underside of New York City: “You stare at che bottam in New York, and the borcom is pretty hottomlike in New York. This gives you a good idea of what it’s Tike, It's still like this at the bottom in New York. These paintings are not inaccurate." When he made the black paintings, I was looking for limits, places shat | couldn't go back from! and he established those limits by covering ex: panses of canvas with nothing but black paint applied in uniform stripes eraced in simple patterns that echoed the pictures! rectangular supports, It was not those paintings titled for sites in New York (fewer than a third of the paintings ‘catalogued by Richardson) that inaugurated the black series, however, but Reichstag and Arbeit Mach! Fre-—titles which, with their indelible associations with Nazism and the Holocaust, underline the paintings’ liminal aspects and reinforce their chilling effget on the viewer. ‘To some critics the fact that most of the paintings én Stella's Black series do not have Nazi titles effectually readers his use of those phrases incidental or 12 28, Rosalind &. Krauss writes for three pages (262-65) In Passages im Modem Sculpture (Cambridge, Mass. The MIT Press, 1961} en le Fatne toon for example, witout ever mentioning the tte's meaning. She mentors the cross Christian significance and ite function a3 a schemetesinforapersonseenageinstaharzan, ut Iossis Uhl Stella fs deoing 9 = srcty Impersonal” ana “natu way with the “common repertory ot signs.” 20, Richardson, Stet 3. 231, Aswaltodueated, mide cass, vite Amerean rales, the inne ola of Minimaist artists was ganeraly socalzed to assume a pexspectie oF ‘authority (is Meiped sepseate them tom the contemporaneous Pop atts, neutng Joes and Reuschenberg, whose origins tended to be Impoverishe): but Ses had the most piieget background of al. He may not have been a stereotypical peaguereagertaconthe stapes nis tur, but ho proverb ol bys? network could ote served himbeter fhe has pursued 4 caer on Wal Stet. Soon ster he moved 19 New York, his Andover sehonimate, Andre, Irreduced him to Gaara Robe, Hen @ prea sunt inant stay at Columb, “After secing ne black paitngs she [lose] decided the Stella asthe most important artist of hor gereraion" Torok, Tho Spaco,"72},andshoseen became both Stel’ rst fen 1961) are a tic highly suppomne er Mamas at. The nest man at he ‘wedng naa flow Prcetanicn Michee! ed, soon fo become Stali's mast pasionste and aniculte supporter as we asthe mostiniventia ‘tc oftho day. Witam Seitz s00n torte power at the Museum of Modem Ar} and Rebert Rosenblum, who taught ar history at Princeton le Sta was vero bot encouraged anche pet im in numerous ways. Rosenoken infrodueed ‘Scola to Jesper Johes ang Rover Rauserenberg won he ated n New York nc went oto wit ‘he first falscate magazine cle and monosrech ons work(*FankStalla: Fe Yearsat Vansions onan'fredible There, Artorumtareh 49653: 20-25, 270 fank to Batiere: Penguin Books, 2970), Besides Fed, anther fiend and ow ‘tut 2 Pinoston was War Day Banna, who became 9 relowtavee in the Minimalist ‘movement and wo itodied Stella in 1988 to the venerable Greenberg Rubi, Stel, 155), benign—just one more kind of disaster among others. Given the paintings! very lextremeness, however, the extremeness of the Nazi titles might instead influence us to look at all the pictures in the series as abstract images of totalitarianism, of social disasters of a scrupulously planned, not accidental, nature, SOMECTITIC did peeceive the black paintings as nihilistic —that is, loosely, asa repudiation of all traditional beliefs or of the existence of any basis for establishing truth or knowledge. Historically, the Nihilists (active in Russia ca, 18601917) were a revolutionary, not a reactionary, group, but they formed a movement commitced to the use of violent means, including terrorism and assassination, in the effort to destroy existing social, political, and economic institutions. In their severity the violence they do to the conventions of art and in the ruthlessness they exhibit toward viewers—the black paintings, bike Minimalism generally, might well be described as perpecrating a kind of cultural terrorism, forcing viewers into the role of victim, 2 role that may or may aot bring with st a moment of revelation depending on the viewer's prior experience with ¥i also, Minimalist art was, to a degree, designed to work through the manipulation lof the media: I refer tothe extensive texts produced by several af chese artists (not including Stella) sna largely suceessful effort at dictating the serms in which their work would be received, and at locating it in the most opportune position relative to the dominant critical discourse Stella has never discussed his Nazi titles at length, maintaining that his choice of titles is "not a big thing. It's casual.” Michel Foucault observed that fascism has come "to be used as a floating signifier, whose function is essentially that of denunciation." Stella may have intended such broadly denunciatory gesture by using fascist phrases for his titles, but as he does not explicitly use them aseepithets, this remains perilously uncertain, Stella was only a child (of Cathalic, not Jewish background) when the concentration camps were liberated, but he was ‘old enough ro be impressed by some of the devastating images that emerged in the media a¢ the close of the war. He cold William Rubin that Die Faire Hoch had re minded him of images in old Nazi newsreels of big hanging flags; "That big draped swastika has pretty much those proportions." If Stella's offhandedness about his use of such titles (or, in more recent years, of his South Afpicae Diamond Mine titles is bound to offend some viewers, however, che evities have never berated ‘him for it, and he would likely be indifferent to such complaints in any case: "For the most part, he people that have the kind of drive and will to do the things they want to do, they don's honestly care that much about what other people think in the end ifthe truth be known," Given his callow or cof Nazt imagery by middle-clas lass, white, male oUghE in w ization, Like terrorism n, Stella's Nazi titles may evoke the use hhite boys in punk rock bands or by working. yote-wengs~A-Tlintation with extremes of violence can be seen in all these cases as appealing most deeply to some of those most insulated from violence by virtue of their race, nationality, and gender Unlike the Hitler Youth, the Surf Nazis, or the Hell's Angels, however, Stella did not employ the visual emblems of Nazism, the swastika ar the Maltese cross. Only tenuous and abstract relations exist between his images and their Nazi titles, in the paintings’ blackness and massiveness, and in their regimented and totalizing cffects Ife used Nazi rhetoric casually, Stella refused Nazi imagery outright and he would not paint paintings that presumed in any explicit way to depict fascism ‘orthe Hofocaust. fn this first instance he separated hieself from Walter De Maria, aa ). Walter De Maria, Museum Piece, 2966~ (87. Aluminum (solid, welded, and pol- shed), 4 x 36 x 36; and aluminum bat 347, (diameter. Courtesy Solomon R. ‘Guggenheim Museum, New York. 42, quate in Caine Jones, “Spaces snd the Emerpive of Painting,” Harvard Magan (Moy- ure 1984: 46 38, Ficharson, Sto, 2; Rubin Sol, 4 34. itsron, Stoo, 72 35 lnes, vant oF terse wth Stl, 9,92, Stal was peiingto Ate Mach Freier te ume he made ths corment. 236, Jones arse of ntenew wth Sto, 9 7. Brian 'Dahery, for example, calls tr ack aintngs “someone or piu len. They rave Me Stel the Oblomov ofa the Cézanne of him, the masta of nul” Fen Sels ae Criss of Notingness,” Mow York Tinos, January 19,1964, soo. 2:24, ascites infin, Sto 31 38, Jones, arse o itersow wth Stl, 56 39, Miche Foucaut, Power/Kouseage: Seietes lneanews andOver Wires, 1972-1977, 00.Com orden, tran, Calin Gort, st i ew Yor Partnoon Books, 1980), 139, 40. Rupr, Sta, 44 whose Museum Piece (fig. 9] isa swastika constructed of shiny aluminum troughs*, and in the second instance he separates himself from the Holocaust series done more recently by Robert Morris. ‘Though Stelia insisted about his pictures that "What you see is what you see" and that "The title seems to me the way the painting looks,"* his titles function to undermine such baldly positivist statements and to situate the work instead tn an unstable symbolic space, Broadly speaking, what the elliptical relations between Stella's paintings and his titles potnt to is the treacherous slinperiness and the multivalence of words and signs, including their private ‘versus their public meanings (and the politics of she Cold War may have helped sensitize him to that shiftiness). In their insistence on the fraudulence or bank: ruptey of existing systems of producing meaning, and in their very absoluteness, Stella's paintings make an unrelievedly negativistic statement. Here we find art on the brink of not being art, blacked-out paintings identified with Nazi slogans From this perspective, Stella's use of the notorious phrase from Auschwitz might evoke Adorno's saying that "To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric™ forthe poems" constituted by these graphic paintings are non-poems or the negatives of poems, with thin white lines where the black lines should be on a sheet of writing paper, and line alter line ineradicably deleted in black where the white spaces and the poem's text should be If Stella's black paintings mav be read as a kind of cancelled poetry that impedes or frustrates reading, the literature they most closely parallel could be the ‘writing of Samuel Beckett. "There is nothing fo express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no powerto express, na desire ro express, together with the obligation co express. so Beckett had described the modesn 's dilemma, Stella affirmed that ‘The Idea of repetition appealed to ma, and there were certain literary things that, ‘were inthe air that corresponded tot. Atthe time l was going to school, for example, Samuel Beckett was vety popular, Becket is pretty lean . but he is also slightly repetitive... don’t know why It struck me that bands, repeated bands would be ‘somewhat more like a Beckettiike situation than, say, abig blank canvas... There was something about Beckett that seemed kind of insistent about what Ite was there, It also seemed to fit me. The whole thing about pattern, regulated pattern, was to keep the viewer from reading the painting.” Stella's interest in preventing viewers from reading bis pictures is telling also {in light of his and ludd’s interest in creating 3 "nonrelational” art. By thes account, ‘his meant an art characterized by the subordination of parts toa formal totality, but the implications extended further, co encompass a kind of nonrelation to the viewer, Stella said of the surfaces of his metallic pinstripe paintings of 1960, "I was interested in chis metallic paint, and... it was the kind of surface that I wanted I'd have a real aggressive kind of controlling surface, something that would sort of seize the surface ... Lalso felt, maybe ina slightly perverse way, that it would probably also he fairly repellent, | Isked the idea, thinking about flatness and depth, that these would be very hard paintings to penetrate." The psychosential valence of this last remark bears underlining, as does the (repeated) interest in keeping viewers from straying past the picture's surface in search af its subjects (whether author or theme). Refusing the abstract artists' accustomed, humanistic 24 4 Tis eres ofan, sculpt, etal paintings — lie 60 mang spectacular popup books--asplay tears’ s muscular gesture witlrgeinexpensie motes lotus colors, end ter, and so exalt wnat tne back paintings ctegercaly dered: the 0at0"'ssibjocIMy. Cilles never exiled the oagrossveness of Stela's most Minimalist paitngs. however. astheshavehisexressonisic ‘wok, John Ruse described la Now Stla’s hae erections in metal make viewers “pysicaty ‘ee of evenyjet anata jumping and six ‘et outintoneroom,"he works “come at us the wera pit bul who know just whan tis her ‘unto get n there a ito” (Risky works. fom ‘Stella ctthe MoMA” Now York Times, etobo 8, 1987, soc. €,1). The question is where the “ek” es, aqueston mace mare pressinetytte ania’ cow" reference to the explosive county of South isca. Stella has Ive det ievemen I he complexe nary sky business of making hase ‘objets which nave evoked crieal acclaim for over ten yeas now: and tase Works are often Soli before thoyare shown, inotbeterthey reads, to corporat or nstitora collectors. ay of Sls paintings cou be characte 3 3, it wa te pinstine series of 1956-60, wich for eos wore scarey saleable. Lawrence bin, aho ‘eqresentad Stele Pai, ed erly one panting by him beeen 1960 and 1965 (fomiéns, “Tho Space," 78 Thestolacthe South atican Damen Mine sores, by conras. i ho favor artist of corporate coectors 42, Jones, weneerin of nenew wth Stell, 62 443. Museum Pieces pa of what De Maria finaly not inky) concave as ro of wotks: a {uss done in 1965-66. tho swzstia, done in 3906-67, anda Jewish Str cone in 1972, The ‘Guggenhoim Museum, whichowne to tho works, issued a handout when they wee fist exhisted ‘tot pairstokingy pote to the sig of a ‘veesynbois and minizeather moreistvcaly lrmesite conpotstons. na telephone interview win gran Walls, then a muscum sa member, the amit sessed the “purty of the symbol” insisting wilful et thepcoos srosldbo hough of as scalpures fist stots second ain no ‘way to bo thought of as gures or patcipalny Pieces,” a8 If iewers weve remote capeble of Petaming ay of hase sepexaions of perception 1 association (Deoamber 18, 1978, tensenotn CGuggennem Museum fle). The swastka thus senedeean ultiataltustentoftetinimalits resolution to make ar stipped of all reference. rhevorie about improving the spiritual or social well-being of the viewer through the expression of their avn inner visions or feelings, Stella insisted that he was producing plain objects incapable of expression, Taking @ cue from Barnest Newinan and Ad Reinhardt, Stella set the tone for what followed, for a visual language apparently disinvested of all private feeling, He brushed paint onto canvas in as uniform 3 way as possible, keeping it to the best of his ability ‘as good as it was in the can.“® For thelr part, the Minimalist sculptors had their work actory-made (as soon as they could afford to) with such antiseptic or imperson- al materials as galvanized, hot- and cold-rolled steel. (Judd sometimes proved an exception here, using brass, for example, which is warm and reflective, and also using richly sensuous, if chemical-looking, enamel colors, such as purples and greens.) In 1966 Brian O'Doherty lauded the “new object makers" for producing & kind of “aesthetic furniture” that "ean be all things to all men while remaining totally unchanged," as well as for the smart marketing strategy demonstrated by their avoidance of those "obsolescence cycles’ to whieh avant-garde art was notoriously prone." On the face of ¢, certainly, Minimalist objects are as inter: changeable, as neutral, and as neutered as standard consumer goods, That neu- tralization is crucial co capitalism, that "differences must be neutralized to come slobally under the law of the interchangeable,” of exchange value, has been persuasively argued by Jean-Francois Lyotard.” From this perspective, Minimalism ccan be seen as replicating—and at times, perhaps, as implicating —"those systems of mediation which have {over)determined our history: Money, the Phallus, and the Concept as privileged operators of meaning." The perceived neutrality of Minimalist objects might also be explained, however, by the fact that the qualities fr values they exemplify—unfeelingness and a will to control or dominate—are transparent by vircue of their very ubiquity. With closer scrutiny, in short, the blank face of Minimalism may come into focus as the face of eapital, the face of authority, the face of the father, Minimalism's partisans have all along insisted that it is wrongheaded to look far, let alone to interrogate, any found subject or author behind the art's patently object-like and de-subjectivized facade, Thus Douglas Crimp insists, for instance, that 'Characterizations of Serra's work as macho, overbearing, apres sive, seek to return the artist co the studio, to reconstitute him as the work's sole creator, and thereby to deny the rale of industrial processes in his sculpture "* We can be interested in Serra's use of industrial processes, however, and still hold him to account a5 the creator (not to say fabricator) af his work—work that plainly manifests certain personal ambitions and interests its industrial faccure notwith: standing." That Serra's artistic gestures have less in common with the sculptor's conventional rituals than with the rituals of the industrial magnate who merely lifts the telephone to command laborers to shape tons of steel according to his specifications, and the rituals of the foremen or construction bosses who oversee the processes of fabrication and installation, does not render those gestures altogether impersonal: Serta's choice of a metal with a particular surface quality and density and his decisions about the shape and proportions that metal takes represent on their own terms aset of gestures hardly less individual than those of, say, Rodin. ‘The materials used by Serra and the other Minimatists are indexed to, oF have a value within, the political economy, however, in a way that Rodin's clay ws 410. Tony Smith, Do, 1962. Stool, 72x 72 X72. Courtesy Paula Cooper Galery. The meres thing about sbsract af.” sais Sera in 1976, for example, “is that. the work remains free, n that does reed to seme any loool premise.” lteriew by Liza Bem, Februny 28,1978, nRioard Sea wth Ce Wayerral, Alena Sera: inceniews, Ft. 1970- 1980(Yonkrs, New Yor: Huda River Museu, 1980), 68 44. men Carine Jones questioned Stein about Noss resent work, which imoks elaborate ssombiages of cast rolets with diemembered body pats, inclucng fotuses and gett, ne wes vi derive: “He had thst home before ne Ines that kind of thin.” Jones: “Woul you sy and bronze do not. In their ambition to make something that would be somehow yin Judas "Specific Objects"), the Minimalists found ways of using or commanding inds: ty as another of the artist's tools. Working in heavy industry as a young man proved a deeply formative experience for Serta (as well as for Andre), contributing to his self-identity as a virile artist-worker.” A photograph of 1969, for in stance, shows Serra standing in work clothes with his arms and legs spread wide, swing ing 2 large metal Iadle over his head as he flings hot molten lead, Though he is executing a work of art, he looks like a man about to mortally fell someone (or something. is helmered, gogaled with slay.!™ Isaac Balbus has perceptively suggested (in a critique of Foucault) that “any more than or other than fine art (an ambition articulated mast for, as Rosalind Krauss puts it, "dressed as though for battle, he gas-masked. The field on which he stands is strewn True Discourse that relies on a disembodied founding subject does indeed hath mask and justiy the authoritarian process by means of which such a subject has (at least in part} been formed.” It follows that a True Discourse chat posits an embodied founding subject 3 a prerequisite for any material appeal against this very process." What partisans of Minimalism have had to gain by denying the art's identity asa private statement isa masking of the mechanisms by which it hasbeen elevated or empowered as a public statement of the first importance. Ta keep the public focus on the hi age, where the work would appear inevitable, the matter of the personal statement—who is speaking to whom, and by what authority—I would have to be suppressed. As soon as anyone was permitced t0 ask discussion: from a foundry, who such actions were addressed to and who they profited, the scaffolding of arguments holding that historic stege up to view as the centerstage for the only stage, was hound to start becoming visible Astor that big steel cube, Tony Smith's Die (ig. 10), a six-foot black cube done in 1962, has emerged with Stella's pinstripe paintings as another of the tical vost right or as soon, that is, as it was admitted ¢0 the level of a public why a grown man might fling lead at a wall, or order a big steel cube cornerstones and touchstones af Minimalism. Like Die Fahne H. Die was sym metrical, unitary, and made of commercial materials. More than Stella's painting however, Die set the stage for what followed in being an object with almost none of the standard signifiers of a work of fine art, excent for a title. When Smith said bf Dir—which is patently lacking in formal complexities —'This is a complicated piece, It has too many reierences to be coped with coherently," he must have been alluding in part to the multiple valences of the object's title. A die is one of a pair of dice, the small, sequentially marked cubes used for games of chance, but Smith's black cube offers only a fixed fate as all the sides are unmarked and identical and itis too big to roll, Die() is also. verb form, constituting a command—the crudest ‘command that the empowered can issue to the powerless; a murderer to his vietim, 1 judge to a convieted criminal, ora soldier to his enemy captive. The blackness, the seated state, and the human scale of Smith's cube help reinforce this reading of the title, which—considering that the command is directed a the viewer— renders the work a gruesome gesture. a bleak crypt presented to the viewer wish succinct instructions to perish. “Six feet has a suggestion of being cooked. Six foot box. Six faot under,” wrate Smith, who related Die alsa to-a passage by Herodotus about a chapel found in the enclosure of a cemple: a "most wonderful thing made of a single stone, the length and height of which were the same, each wall ‘at st Was not ely @ uncon OF te atst?™ ‘Stoll: “I's a furtion fhe acts te ean make ‘ame of. think Bob Mass problems that e's always star the tv. show. I dort Kron" (ranseopt of intentions, 33), Stos'ssusrcions ‘wo putinrkt by a rece inanow wth Momis— nose treme i ess the Now Heecaust tan the ‘potenti for nucsear locas. Desondirg Morris ‘88 "voyurofthe spocsypee,"PPaton ites: “vnat te recent work does represent nat £0 ‘much 2 poltical satenent—‘Creable potical cogs for tho ial tre not ner ens’ he thes wrtton—as atestament toa fascia, stil ‘sth, wit the possibity of apocalypse. of notingelse does he speak s pasionatet’es te posstillyofrucesr aniston, His eyes KaNCUP ‘nautingy— ar fsclntetby at pone. he sys. apes beck 10 Xen, the raw power to “cranteanempie Inthe 0thcentxy, th efleney of thas inceased exponetialy. R's fascinating, ‘te powor that makes poopie do and bulé hese things" Robert Mone snd to Fee Nxt Tine,” Art ews, 90-92, Stella eaurod Nex alusions Ia 8 more ‘blue, but every memorize, woy in his Polish Vilage seis of 1972, nvhichtnepattrgs ‘were named for synagogues destroyed by the Naas. t bears noting, 36 an sido, that Andy Wiarho! was collecting dhoographs frm Nai Germanyin nis photoes tartingin 1863, but not use them in is wor: see Raine Crone, Andy Wamot New Yor: Praeger, 1870), 28. 48. From 2 tntenow done in 1969; Rubin, ‘Stee, 44; fom an imanow dere In 1964, Bruce Glaser, “Questions Sota ana Ju,” e Lucy, LUppar in Bttcock Minimal Art, 158, 12. Donald Judd, Untitled, 1966. Paint cold-rolled steel (ten rectangles), 48x 120 X20, each 6 */, x 120 x 48. Collection Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Gift of Howard and Jean Lipman. being forty cubits square, and the whole a single block!"—a description of a rather mausoleum like structure. {Adie is also an industrial device that works by force, by pressure, or by a blow, to cut blanks in, or to mold, an object or raw material, Though the making. ‘of Die did not involve such a device, asa standard form made of steel in 2 factory it might evince such means of facture. “I didn't make a drawing, I just picked up the phone and ordered it," the artist boasted *! The "death" at issue with this blank ‘cube was not only that of the spectator, then, but also that of at, as Die effectively offers itself as the mold or die for the new non: art, aa machine that “stamps our artas we know it. A strange junket Smith organized in the early 1950s, anighetime ccatride on an unfinished freeway with a group of students, had persuaded him that art as such was finished: ‘Most painting looks preity pictorial after that [the car tide]. There is no way you can frame it, you just have to experience it." The experience of different spaces or “artificial landscapes’ was, in Smith's view, bound to take the place of art as we know it—the specilic example he singled out admiringly being Albert Speer's Nuremberg Parade Ground (fig. 11), "2 drill ‘ground... large enough t0 accommodate two million men. The entire field is ‘enclosed with high embankments and rowers. The concrete approach is three sinteen-inch steps, one above the other, stretching for a mile or $0" Like Andre, ‘Smith was intoxicated by the prospect of “seizing* or occupying space, and, ‘without considering what constellations of social forces might lead to the erection ‘of comparable sites in the United States, he decried the dearth of art on such a scale in this country; "I view art as something vast... Art today is an art of postage stamps." In his own work he increasingly aimed to make " cexpression[s]" that would be not “personal of subjective [but] tified monumental as urbane and objective as possible Fascist architecture, especially “the planning of Nazi Berlin’ and “Mussolini's

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