DIANE SCILLIA

MINIMALIST ART
"Less is More" or the Paradox of Boredom

Marcel Duchamp painted Tu 'm (usually translated as "you bore me" or "tu
m'emmerdes") in 1918 and it was his last optical or retinal painting. This title
and translation was used in the 1950s and early 1960s and played a major
role in establishing boredom as an aesthetic criterion.* Compared with the
austereSuprematist- Constructivist works of Malevich (his White onWhite is
exactly contemporary with Tu 'm), Duchamp's painting is filled with images,
even though they were done intentionally in a mechanical way that left no
trace of the artist's hand. Indeed Duchamp hired a professional sign painter
to add the images to his painting!** Several Minimalist and Pop artists will
point to Duchamp's slick paint surface and his "outsourcing" of imagery as
justifications for their own way of working. Kasimir Malevich's paintings
have no images - just pure shapes and color - and his paint is brushed on
thickly. It is the evidence of the "hand" of the artist that we see on the
surface of Malevich's iconic White on White.*** Together, these two paintings
inspired the innovative art works grouped under the heading Minimalist.
The spare,austere,"industrial" lines of Bauhaus design in architecture and
other art forms picked up on Duchamp's "mechanical" paint surface and on
Malevich's "purism."***,r We see this especially in the Barcelona Pavilion
(192711929),which beautifully illustrates Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's dictum
"Less is more."2 Following Bauhausideals, applied decorationswere banished
as bourgeois and only a "revolutionary architecture" of pure form remained.
Mies' design can be summed up as beautiful materials, pure forms, crystalline

*David Joselit, Infinitq Regress: Marcel Duchamp, 1910-1941 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1998), pp.61,10, but especially p.69, note 85 (in which he quotes Rosalind Kraus' translation,
'n 'you'/'me').
that Tu is simply Compare Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp. A Biography (New York:
Henry Hall, 1996), pp.202-203.
**Joselit, Infinite Regress, p. 64, and Tompkins, Duchamp, p. 202. A. Klang signed his name
below the pointing finger.
***John E. Bowlt, Russian Art of the Avant Garde (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1976;
reprinted, 1988), pp. 116-135. Malevich's painterly brushwork will influence later artists, like
Jasper Johns (b. 1930) and Robert Ryman (b. 1930). Also see Troels Andersen, "Malevich,
Kasimfu," inThe Dictionary of Art, edited by Jane Turner (New York: Grove Dictionaries,1996),
Vol. 20, pp.192-196.

195
A-7. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Hus serliana XCW I, 195-206.
@ 2008 Springer.
 MINIMALIST ART r97
196 DIANE SCILLIA

reject
space.Modernity has stripped away the decadenticing of earlier styles. We Many viewers, when confronted by these Minimalist works of art,
"boring to look at" (there is nothing to see) or as being
seesomethingsimilar in Piet Mondrian's paintingsof the late 1930s.3These them visually as
(they have no subject and are about nothing)'r0
very spare,highly intellectualizedmodernist ideals had to be put aside when devoid of contentand meaning
of
war broke out in Europe in 1939. In this, the Minimalist works were different from the earlier examples
dating from the 1910s through the 1930s'"
With the end of World War 2, there was a revival of or a return to Bauhaus monochromeor "purist" artworks
design in American architecturein the late 1940s and 1950s, when Walter Malevich's Suprematist paintings were a new type of icon; Mondrian's
blue
Gropius was associatedwith the School of Design at Harvard and Mies van paintings defined the world in clear spatialrelationships.Ad Reinhardt's
not aspire to transcendence. His paintings
der Rohe was at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.aMies and or black paintings (1g57-lg60s) do
are aboui painting. Nevertheless,Reinhardt's slick surfaces (which sharetheir
Philip Johnson'sSeagramBuilding in New York (1951/1958)was amongthe 'm) may even make
most important and influential buildings constructedin the United Statesafter almost "mechanical" brushstrokes with Duchamp's Tu
or of
1945. Modern domestic structuresallowed wealthy individuals to relax and us long for the tactile pleasures(i.e., the physicality) of Malevich's
floor pieces or plains of the late 1960s, too,
enjoy their leisure without guilt. Mies' Farnsworth House (I949)-designed Mondrian's work.r2Carl Andre's
are relatively impoverished with regard to visual and tactile stimuli'r3
to sit in an open field as a weekendretreatfrom Chicago's messycentercity-
units
and Johnson'sGlassHouse (I949-1950s)-set in rural Connecticut-became There is no idiosyncratic touch of the artist in the tile-like metal
are just mechanically produced forms
icons of this style.5These,in essence,were the offspring of the country villas making up Andre's floor piece, they
that Mies had designedin the 1920s,but now with clear referehcesto some of and industrial surfacesthat do not give us images to ponder' Although they
viewers
Frank Lloyd Wright's ideasabout how housesshould relate to their landscape define space,we feel no need to walk into the art work-indeed,
of his floor pieces. Their walking on
settings. are reluctant to "break the frame"
is just a floor-like any other-and further
This all too briefly held ideal of a postwar world at peace faltered after Andre's work underscoresthat it
the Russiansexploded a nuclear bomb (1949), the start of the Korean War removes it from the status of a work of art. Donald Judd's boxes, dating
(ca.1950-1953),and the onset of the Cold war (ca. 1955).The concept of from about 1965, seem intentionally cold and without visual excitement.ra
"mutual assureddestruction" was developed in the early 1960s as a means His boxes take up space-our space-but they just sit there. Viewers cannot
of keeping the two supe{powersfrom launching a pre-emptive nuclear attack even interact with them; they do not move. The colors seem sprayedon' and
them
on each other. What had seemedto be a new period of peace and prosperity the manufacturednature of the materials(metal and Plexiglas) removes
of earlier Surrealist constructions. None
soon turned into one of heightenedanxiety with the awarenessthat it could from the handmadeartisantraditions
all end in a brilliant flash of light and a big mushroom cloud.6 This is the of this is especially enticing. All of these examples-whether by Reinhardt'
immediate background for my discussion of the Minimalist art movement Andre, or Judd-seem to deny us what we love about works of art, especially
and of the perplexing objects made in the mid 1960s(and into the 1970sand a narrative we can identify and the pleasurethat we get when we examine
1980s)that still challengeour conceptionsof what art is.7 beautiful forms made by skilled and careful craftsmen' No wonder many
Surprisingly, it was right around 1960 that boredom came back into the complain that Minimalist artworks arejust anotherversion of "The Emperor's
a joke
art world, but it now took a different form than that in Duchamp's Tu'm. New Clotfus5"-ft14t there is nothing there. And why they are seen as
WhereasDuchamp's title was thought to be pun about his finding optical or playedupon the viewing public'r't
retinal painting boring (which was why he hired a sign painter to paint parts Walking into a gallery where paintingsby Reinhardt,floor piecesby Andre,
for him)-and was so taught at that time-what we see in works made from and sculpturesby iudd aredisplayedcanbe very instructiveaswell asextremely
about 1960 to the 1970s was the aestheticsof boredom or the "boredom of frustrating to those of us who teach coursesin art history or aesthetics.Many
omission": the reduction or restricting of visual stimulation in the artwork viewers do not "get" Minimalist artwork; they refuse outright to accept the
itself.s This intentional making a work of art "in order to bore people"- challengeseach artist puts in his work, and their rejection goes beyond what
literally by omitting the usual expectationsof the viewer-was something we traditionally see as classbias or as reflections of differencesin education.
that Duchamp called a beautiful idea, but admitted that it was one he had Extremely well educated people and poorly educated people both dislike
never imagined.Duchamplikened this to John Cage's silences.e these *oikr.r6 The negative responsesmay be due to preferencesfor easier,
198 DIANE SCILLIA
more accessible (or more easily understood) works of art. In my experience,
many of the loudest critics of these artworks do not spend enough time
looking at them: They take a quick span of the gallery, make some negative
comment, and walk out. Every so often such a critic will walk through a
gallery and criticize-loudly and curtly----eachwork. If you engage one of
them in conversation before a work that he or she has just panned, after a
few minutes of simply looking at it and of talking about it (even negatively),
he or she frequently finds that it is more subtle and interesting than he or
she first thought. This is also true of any critic in front of any artwork from
another time period or culture. Perhaps Susan Sontag was right when she
defined boredom as "only another name for a certain speciesof frustration."lT
The frustration and the boredom reside in the critical viewer, not in the artwork.
For example, our hypothetical viewer needsto spend enough time with one
of Reinhardt's black paintings so that he or she can perceive the different
blacks put there by the artist. Reinhardt was adamant about not leaving any
trace of his hand or touch on his late canvases:These consistedof
A Square (neutral, shapeless) canvas, five feet wide, five feet tall. . . (not large, not small,
sizeless), trisected (no composition), one horizontal form negating one vertical form (formless,
not top, no bottom, directionless), three (more or less) dark (lightless) no contrasting (color less)
colors, brushwork brushed out to remove brushwork, a matte, flat, free-hand painted surface
(glossless, textureless, non-linear, no hard edge, no soft edge).18
Reinhardt forces the viewer to work hard at seeing the very slight differences
left on the surface. When his or her eyes adjust to the slight variations in
colors, the viewer can begin to appreciate the careful trisected arrangement
and to seehow light helps us sort out shadesof very similar colors, even ones
of extremely low intensity or extremely high intensity. What this experience
should do for the viewer is to trigger ideas about painting-about the act of
covering a uniform surface as opposed to one broken up in a grid as this one
is; about how "warm" and oocool"colors define spacein the painting, so we
perceivesomeof the color squaresas closerto us and othersas further away.le
He or she may even note the subtle brushstrokes remaining in Reinhardt's
colors. Reinhardt's painting, which at first looked flat and uniform black,
now has some of the same qualities as an early cubist still-life by Picasso.2o
It is the viewer's observation of the very subtleties put there by Reinhardt,
coupled with this engagedviewer's philosophical ruminations about painting
as an art form, that activates Reinhardt's painting, endowing it with the
traditional "painterly" characteristics associatedwith earlier masterpiecesof
modern art.21Reinhardt's painting is boring only to someonewho does not
know what is there to see-that is, has not taken the time to let it (the painting)
changewhat he or she sees.22
MINIMALIST ART r99
Andre's floor piecesalso need time so the viewer can begin to differentiate
the small variations in the almost identical metal units making it up.23Andre
did not just lay each one next to the other, he placed one and rotated the next
90 degrees.Every floor piece (and they are so called becausethey are on the
floor, look like tiled floors, and can be walked on) reflects the simple fact
that the manufacturing process "colorso' each metal (lead, copper, aluminum)
unit differently and that cutting each one also scars or polishes its surface
with different patterns when seen from an angle. Yet another point of view,
from the piece itself, is possible if the viewer walks on Andre's floor. Here,
the three-dimensional aspect of the floor piece is the major experience: As
the viewer "enters" the spaceof the floor piece, he or she is inside of it (and
is part of it), even as he or she is on top of it. Literally, the viewer becomes
part of the art object.2aInitially, the critical debate about Andre's floor pieces
focused on their decorative and coloristic or painterly rather than their spatial
or sculpturalqualities.25Andre's statementsmake it clear that his floor pieces
are three-dimensional art, that is, sculpture.26
Judd's objects are also sculptures,and they often sit in the middle of a
gallery, although he also made wall pieces that extend from the floor to the
ceiling.2l In both types, Judd plays with our perceptions of solid form. His
works are made of highly colored Plexiglas and polished metal plates, which
have different optical qualities that enhance his pure geometric volumes and
give the viewer additional views of the interior of the piece.28Judd earned
his M.A. in art history (from Columbia University) and, like Andre, was a
painter before he began exploring the possibilities that led to his objects.
He was frustrated with the ideal of painting as expressedby artists of the
abstract expressionistgeneration and with the egoism of these painters.2e
Judd's solution, outlined in his critical reviews between 1959 and 1963, was
to make "specific objects" rather than paintings or sculptures.30Thus, the
viewer needs to walk around Judd's objects in order to perceive how the
reflective surfaces work with the transparent Plexiglas surfaces. At the Art
Institute in Chicago, for example, one approacheswhat looks like a box sitting
in the middle of the gallery. As one moves around it, the metal plates reflect
one's image andithe rest of the gallery, while the Plexiglas plates give one
views of the interior of the box. These reflections and different views cause
one to wonder what is "outside" and what is "inside," and one realizes that
the dark shadow he or she has been "reading" as the interior floor could also
be seenas a hole extending severalfeet under the box.31
Judd's complex at Marfa, Texas, was a testing ground for many of his
experiments.32There he could control some of the environments in which
his artworks were displayed.His associationwith the Dia Foundation,which
200 DIANE SCILLIA MINIMALIST ART 201

predated his purchase of the Marfa complex, resulted in the inclusion of one down to the bare essentialsin their works so the viewer can recover what is
of Judd's seriesin the opening exhibition at Dia Beacon in 2003.33 there, but what is not readily apparent to the insensitive observer. Everyone
What our hypothetical viewer should understandabout Minimalist artworks can see what is apparent-that the work of art is there. What you see is what
(and especially those by the artists cited here) is that everything affects them you see.38what you get out of the work of art dependsupon what you put
and that even our major traditional museum may not take the care they into viewing it.
should with the particular gallery in which they are shown.3aThis is but one There are several steps one can follow when viewing these artworks to
reason artists like Judd tried to establish their own galleries to show their own begin the process of finding what the artist left for us to see and appreciate.
artworks.35 By this last word, I include all of the standard approaches,whether stylistic,
When looking at these Minimalist works, the viewer should be receptive iconographic,or sensuous,by which we usually "decode" a work of art. First,
to everything outside the "frame" (e.9., the light of the space, the time of the viewer should be as close to the artwork as he or she can get (without
day, the color of the gallery walls, the floor itself, the placement of the works setting off alarms) and should move around the work, seeing it from different
within the gallery-are they close to the window, to a doorway, to a wall, points of view and angles. when moving, the viewer should make sure to
in a corner, or to another work of art?) as well as to everything "inside"
take into his or her field of vision whatever else there is in the immediate
the frame (how is work attached to a wall or placed on the floor), how is
vicinity. This includes other viewers and other artworks. You need to see all
it lighted (spot-lighted?from above? from below?). In addition, he or she
360 degreesof a sculptureor all 180 degreesof a painting. These Minimalist
should be aware of the number of people in the room, what thoy are or are not
works do not exist in a vacuum! Frequently, reflective surfacesof one play
wearing, where each is standing in relation to the artwork in question and to
with those of an other, or the shadows cast by other people in the gallery
each other, their mood (collective and individual), if they talk with each other
enhancethe surfacesof another artwork.3eOr the shadowscast by the artwork
and what they say, the changesthat occur when each one of them moves, the
enhanceitself.aOOther viewers can also 'Join" the artwork you are viewing
heat of the room, and the natural or all-over artificial light in the room (as
opposed to that directed on the art work), as well as what the other viewers ftust as people seenthrough Duchamp's Big Glass (in Philadelphia)become
part of that painting for those seeing it from the other side]. Or spectators
are doing (What are they talking about? What are they looking at? Are they
walking on one of Andre's floor pieces define its vertical space for others
annoyed? Frustrated? Perplexed? Amused?), and how perceptive each one
in the same gallery. Color contrasts, surface reflections (particularly of other
of them really is all color our viewer's response.36 Once a viewer responds
viewers within the spaceor of windows or of lighting), textures,shadows,and
positively to one of the artworks in a gallery, he or she will approach another.
highlights and optical illusion can all be seen in these Minimalist artworks
Just one person having a positive experiencemay be sufficient for even others
and are part of what the viewer should be looking for and responding to.
to extend their stay and puzzle out "what is it that she saw in this thing?"
Minimalist artworks are difficult. They demand the participation of engaged
Thus, the setup or arrangementof artworks within a gaIlery demands special
intelligent viewers. These works are understandableon their own terms, and
care and consideration.
the experience of spending time with them is rewarding. One can experience
By themselves Minimalist artworks are challenging to many viewers
some of the same optical effects and distortions of perception as that caused
becausethe artist has removed so much of the "normal" stimulation we expect
by taking artificial,stimulants or mind- and mood-altering drugs, without any
to encounter with a work of art-a narrative (or at least some suggestive or
of the dangersthat that activity entails and without the risk of being jailed. The
evocative title rather than the ubiquitous "Untitled"), rccognizable images,
limiting of visual and sensory stimulation in order to enhance or to change
variations in color or brush strokes,marks of the artist's hands, and so on-
perception is something that came into postwar art from Zen. As John Cage
and the artist has thrown back to the viewer the task of seeing what remains
and of constructing the work.37 When one makes jokes about the artwork said, "Mushrooms are growing, we should be listening."al
or cnticizes it as an example of some fraud perpetrated upon the public, it
merely proves that such a viewer is really jaded and cynical or is intellectually Kent State Universitv
Iazy. Each of the artists discussedhere saw that "too much of a good thing"
got in the way of their intentions. Reinhardt, Andre, and Judd stripped things
202 DIANE SCILLIA
NOTES
1 For the Bauhaus, see Frank Whitford, Bauhaus (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1984),
and Sherban Cantacuzino, Great Modern Architecture (London: Studio Vista, 1966), especially
the section entitled "Walter Gropius: The Bauhaus, Dessau, Gemany," pp.28-35.
2 Peter Blake, Mies van der Rohe. Architecture and Structure (Baltimore: Penguin Books,
1964), pp. 23-70 (for Mies' career to 1940), p. 28 (for his famous dictum), and pp. 5l-57
(for the Barcelona Pavilion). Blake (p. 86) includes Edith Farnsworth's rejoinder to Mies: "We
know that less is not more. . . .It is simply less."
3 Harry Cooper, "The Surface in Time: Notes on an Aspect of Mondrian's Critical Reception,"
in Harry Cooper and Ron Sponk, Mondrian: Transatlantic Paintings (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2001), pp.24-66. For Mondrian's links to the Bauhaus, see Whitford, pp. Il7
and 124.
a David P. Handlin, American Architecture (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1985), pp.
232-267. Philip Johnson's role in reviving Bauhaus design was also linked to his role as curator
of architecture for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. There was a coresponding revival
of Bauhaus ideas and design in Europe.
s Blake, pp. 83-92. and especially pp. 84-85 (where he compares Mies' house with that built
by Johnson); and Handlin, pp. 239-240 (the Farnsworth House) md 234-244 (Johnson's Glass
House). . University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 20.For Mondrian's theosophical ties, see Robert Welch,
6 Serge Guilbert "Postwar Painting Game: The Rough and the Slick" in Serge Guilbert (editor)
Reconstructing Modernism: Art in New York, Paris and Montreal (London and Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1991) 3G-84; and Benjamin H. D. Buchlob "Coldwar Constructivism" in Reconstructing
Modernism 85-II2.
7 For the earliest critical accounts of Minimalism, see Richard Wollstein, "Minimal Art," Arts
Magazine 39, no. 4 (January 1965) 26-32; Barbara Rose, "ABC Art," Art in America 53, no.
5 (OctoberA.{ovember 1965) 57-69: Donald Judd, "Specific Objects," Arts Yearbook 8 (1965)
74-82; Jewish Museum Primary Structures: Young American and British Sculptors (exhibition
catalogue by Kynaston McShinn) (New York, 1966); Mel Bochner, "Primary Structures," Arls
Magazine 40, no. 8 (June 1966) 33-35: Michael Fried, "Art and Objecthood," Artforum 5,
no.10 (Summer 1967) 12-23; and George Battcock (ed.), Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology
(New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1968). In addition, Michael Fried, "Shape as Form:
Frank Stella's New Paintings," in New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970 (curated by
Henry Geldzahler) (New York: E. P. Dutton in association with the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, 1969), pp. 403425. Also see Jeremy Meyer, Minimalist Art and Polemics in the Sixties
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001).
8 The limiting of visual stimuli certainly stems from the modernist masterpiecesof Malevich,
Mondrian, Gropius, and Mies, but is now coupled with the postwar influence of Zen Buddhism,
which may best be seen in the koan-like statementsin Ad Reinhardt, Art as Art: The Selected
Writings of Ad Reinhardt, edited by Barbara Rose (New York: Viking Press, 1975), and in
Donald Judd, Complete Writings, 1959-1975 (Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art
and Design, 1977); and in excerpts included in Battcock, Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology,
cited in note 10.
e Pierre Cabanne,Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, translated from the French by Ron Padgett
(New York: Viking Press, 1971), p.99. For the importance of silence in Cage's music, see
John Cage, Silence: Lectures andWritings (Hannover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1973),
and David Revill, Roaring Silence: John Cage. A Lrfe (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1992).
Dorothy G. Shinn (Duchamp Effect: Influence of Marcel Duchamp on the Work of John Cage
MINIMALIST ART 203
and Allan Kaprow, M.A. thesis,Kent StateUniversity,1994,Kent, Ohio, pp. 74-75 and7719)
recounts the importance of Zen to Cage's activities at Black Mountain College in the summer
of 1952. For Cage's influence on the Minimalist and Conceptual artists, see Kathan Brown,
"Changing Art: A Chronicle Centered on John Cage," in A John Cage Reader in Celebration
of His 70th Birthday (New York: C. F. Peters, 1982), p. 129. Robert Rauschenberg's white
paintings of 1951 were done at Black Mountain College under the influence of both Cage and
Joseph Albers. Jasper John's White Target (1955) was painted within a year of his meeting
Cage. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki taught Zen Buddhism at Columbia University in the late 1940s
and early 1950s, when Donald Judd and Allan Kaprow were M.A. students in art history. Also
see Susan Hapgood, "Interview with Allan Kaprow (1992)," in Susan Hapgood, Neo-Dada.
Redejining Art 1958-62 (New York: American Foundation of Arts and Universe Publishing,
1994), pp. lI7-119, on Cage attending Suzuki's lectures at Columbia.
l0 I follow Wollheim in including Reinhardt's black paintings among the Minimalist works,
even though his earlier paintings were abstract expressionist. Reinhardt (b. 1913) is older than
Judd (b. 1928) and Andre (b. 1935), and he studied at Columbia University in the late 1930s and
1940s. The comments abstracted above were leveled at Reinhardt's black paintings.
ll For example, neither Reinhardt, Judd, nor Andre spoke of any spiritual or transcendent
aspects in their works. For Malevich's roots in icon painting, see Hans Belting, Likeness and
Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, translated by Edmund Jephcott (Chicago:
"Mondrian and Theosophy," in Piet Mondrian. Centennial Exhibitio,ru(New York: Solomon R.
GuggenheimMuseum,l97l),pp.35-5l,andVirginiaPittsRembert,"PietMondrian:'ClearVisions
of Reality'," in 600 Hundred Years of Netherlandish Art SelectedSymposiumLectures (Memphis,
TN:MemphisStateUniversityDepartmentofArt,1982),pp.65-79,especiallypp.68-T2.Theartists
and architects associatedwith the Bauhaus were not concerned with religious, spiritual, or mystical
verities, but the clean lines and "pure shapes" (and proportions) seen in their works bear some
mathematical or Platonic appreciation of the "ideal." Donald Judd's article on Malevich appeared
in Art in America (Malrchl Apil I97 Q and was reprinted inhis Complete Writings, pp. 2II-215 .
12 The matte quality of Reinhardt's surfaces draws the available light "into" the canvas; in
effect this works like a "light sink" (analogous to a "heat sink" or a black hole). The pictorial
space of a Reinhardt is compressed within the frame and does not extend in front of or beyond
it. Reinhardt's 1962 description of the black paintings as quoted in Art as Art (cited in note 11)
and in Thomas Crow, Rise of the Sixties. American and European Art in the Era of Dissent,
1955-69 (London: The Everyman Art Library, 1996), p. 118, bears further study, along with
Harold Rosenberg, Anxious Object. Art Today and lts Audience (New York: Horizon Press,
1966), pp. 52-54, and especially p. 53: "All of painting is to sink into Reinhardt's black, square
trapdoor, below the surface of which close scrutiny reveals a block-shaped cross marking the
tomb of modern art."
13 This empty sterilipy-together with the lack of content-was one of the most troubling
aspects of Minimalist art for many critics.
14 According to Judd (Complete Writings, p. 187), "It isn't necessaryfor a work to have a lot
of things to look at, to compare, to analyze one by one, to contemplate. The thing's a whole, its
quality as a whole, is what is interesting." The physicality or the physical presence of the work
should be enough. Also see David Joselit, American Art since 1945 (New York: Thames and
Hudson,2003), pp. 109-110, for an appreciation of Judd's use of optical illusion to elucidate
three-dimensional volume.
ls What such critics miss is that the "Platonic" purity of form coupled with the denial of
narrative content points to a new kind of meditative aft, one not based upon any single religious
204 DIANE SCILLIA
tradition. These objects were made to tell us something about the world, but this information is
experiential not narrative. Similar complaints were made about Rauschenberg's white paintings
of 1951, John's White Target (1955), and Ryman's white paintings of the 1960s, even though
surface plays a major role in those works. The lack of narrative seems, to me, to be the prime
reason for the rejecting or panning of Minimalist works.
16 Nor surprisingly, the well-educated dislike them because there are no literary illusions (or
narratives) and they have to work too hard at uncovering what the art works "means," while
the more poorly educated dislike them because they seem to negate the importance of the artist
himself. With their denial of the artist's touch (most frequently by subcontracting out the process
of manufacturing the object), it is clear that "anyone could make them." These positions are
echoed in the responses of critic Brian O'Doherty and sculptor Mark Di Suvero as quoted in
Daniel Marzona, Minimal Arr (Cologne: Taschen, 20M), p. 18. The same criticisms surface
during classroom discussions of Minimalist art.
t7 SusanSontag,Against Interpretation and Other Essays(New York: Dell, 1966), p. 303.
r8 For this statement of 1962, see Reinhardt, Art as Arl; Anne Rorimer, New Art in the 60s and
70s. Redefining Reality (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2001), 14-15; and Crow, Rise of the
Sixties,p. 118. Compare Rosenberg,Anxious Object, pp. 52-54.In addition, see Patterson Sims,
"Reinhardt, Ad(olph Dietrich Friedrich)," in Dictionary of Art, Yol. 26, pp. 126-127.
re Rorimer, New Art, p. 14, cites Reinhardt's distrust of color: "there iq something wrong,
irresponsible and mindless about color, something impossible to control." One also needs to be
able to view the paintings under the most trying of conditions, including where cast shadows
establish patterns on the surface that were not intended by the artist. This was the case with
Reinhardt's painting in Chicago last summer.
20 Picasso, one of the acknowledged masters of early twentieth-century painting, used a very
low-keyed palette in his cubist still-lifes painted between 1908 and 1912. These are spatially
complex works, and this space is constructed through the modulation of areas of closely related
colors. Viewers (and critics) see these paintings as visually more satisfying than Reinhardt's
spare, blank, and "touchless" surfaces. But Reinhardt uses color to construct space in the
same way.
2t This parallels what Donald Kuspit, Redeeming Art: Critical Reveries (New York: Allworth
Press and the School of Visual Arts, 2000), p. 310, calls the "dialectical or critical couple": the
art work and the receptive viewer.
22 Robert C. Morgan, End of the Art World (New York: Allworth Press and the School of
Visual Arts, 1998), pp. 51-53, outlines something similar with what he calls "our boredom in
relation to [Cezanne's] disinterestedness.
23 See Jeremy Lewison, "Andre, Carl," in Dictionary of Art, Yol. 2, pp. 12-13' for the key
publications on this artist.
24 Joselit, American Art since 1945, p. 101, analyzes this well. Andre intended that his floor
pieces be walked on. Once the viewer walks on the surface of the work, he or she cannot see it
in its entirety, but others in the gallery can. Compare Carla Gottlieb, Beyond Modern Arr (New
York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1976), p. 246 (citing Andre's rationale for making horizontal
sculptures): "so you can be in the middle of a sculpture and not see it at all-which is perfectly
all right." The full text appears in Phyllis Tuchman, "An Interview with Carl Andre," Artforum
8, no. 10 (June 1970) 57.
2s References to rugs and carpets run through early critical accounts of Andre's floor pieces.
As in prayer rugs, the space created by Andre's floor pieces is self-contained and self-limited
and architectural. Prayer rugs are literally portable architecture.
MINIMALIST ART 205
26 Diane Waldman, Carl Andre (New York: The
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1970),
p. 19, repeats Andre's statement that what he did was "to place Brancusi's Endless Column down
flat, thus voiding it of its active and aggtessive character: 'Most sculpture is priapic with the
male organ in the air. In my work Priapus is down to the floor. The engaged position is to run
along the earth.' "
27 Marzona, Minimal Art, pp.18-19
and 5ffi0.
28 The coloristic property and surfaces
ofhis materials have been the focal points ofdiscussion
of Judd's works since the late 1980s. Initially, it was the spare, austere handling of the industrial
materials and the mechanical application of color, which (starting in 1964) he outsourced to the
Bernstein Brothers. Critics, missing the nod to Duchamp, deplored Judd's contracting out of the
manufacturing of his boxes.
2e See Alfred Pacquement, "Judd,
Donald," in Dictionary of Art, vol. 17, p.677. Judd's
criticism (including that on exhibitions by abstract expressionists) appeared inArts from 1959 to
1961 and in Arts Magazine from 1962 to 1965. These are reprinted in Judd, Complete Writings,
op. cit.
30 Donald Judd, "Specific Objects," in Arts Yearbook (1965)
8 74-82, reprinted in Complete
Writings, 181-189. "Specific object" as a descriptive term had none of the architectural impli-
cations of "Primary Structure" or the graphic implications of "ABC Art," two designations used
for Minimalist works in the mid 1960s.
3r This is my response to seeing the
Judd in Chicago, most recently in late June 2O04.Judd's
Untitled (1969) in the City Art Museum of St. Louis, Missouri, is a very similar work but is
made up of several boxes; see Rorimer, New Art, p. 21, and compare Gottlieb, Beyond Modern
Art,pp.177-179 and240-244. Keith Miller, "Bridge over Blue, Review of Colour After Klein at
the Barbican Art Gallery," Times Literary Supplement (London) (June 10, 2005) 24, also touches
upon the visual delights of Judd's boxes.
32 Arthur Lubow, "The Art Land. The
Soul of Minimalism Deep in the Heart of Texas," Sunday
New York Times Style Magazine. Travel Spring 2005 (March 20,2005) 126-131. The published
photographs of Judd's series of concrete boxes set out in a field are especially evocative, but the
highly reflective boxes arranged in his gallery at Marfa share references with the surrounding
architecture. They look like they were designed to go in this space!
33 Michael Kimmelman, "The Dia
Generation," Sunday New York Times Magazine (Apil 6,
2003) 3U37, 58, 61, 72, and 7--77. Here, too, Judd's series of boxes take on an architectural
aspect. At Dia Beacon, the interior space was reconstructed specifically to show these works.
34 Compare Judd's statements in "Artists
on Museums" (originally in Arts Yearbook g (1967)
as reprinted in Complete Writings, pp. 195-196. These remain major criticisms of traditional
museum and gallery space by contemporary artists. Sometimes the artworks are too big for
the allotted space. At other times, the space is too big or grand and the artworks are "lost"
in their surroundings. Or the artworks "clash" with their surroundings. This can be seen in
two illustrations in Marzona, Minimal Art,pp.45 and 53, where the massive and space works
fight the Rococo and neoclassical decorations of the exhibition rooms. Other criticisms center
on poor lighting or the unsympathetic arrangement of artworks within an interior. For Judd's
comments, see "Complaints: part II" [originally in Arts Magazine (March 1973)] in Complete
Writings, pp.207-211. In recent years new museums of contemporary art, many of which are
housed in former factory or industrial buildings, have opened. The most famous of these are
Mass MoCA in North Hampton, Massachusetts, Dia Beacon in Beacon, New York, and the
Tate Modern in London. William Feaver, "Donald Judd [at the] Tate Modern, London," Art
News I03, no. 3 (May 2004) I59, cites how Judd's boxes work with the interior space of the
gallery.
206 DIANE SCILLIA

3s Miller, "Bridge over Blue," p. 24. The Judd sculpture in the collection of the Cleveland
Museum of Art, a vertical work of green boxes, is similar in format to that discussed by Miller,
but the color statement is stronger and the complex shadows (cast by multiple light sources)
played along the adjacent perpendicular wall, too, at least until that gallery was closed in spring
of 2005.
36 A[an Kaprow, "The Best Use of the Past (and Present) is Misuse," in "Jackson Pollock: An
Artist's Symposium, Part I," Art News 66, no. 2 (April 1967) 33 and 59-61. The environmental
aspects of viewing these works and the constantly changing nature of the viewing space have
received some attention from critics. This, of course, also links them to Happenings and other
examples of performance art that can be traced to the dance and theatrical works produced by
the Constructivists and at the Bauhaus.
37 Morgan, End of the Art World, p. 53 suggeststhat Cezanne might have had something like
this in mind in his 1904 Mont Sainte-Victoire (in Philadelphia): "Looking at this painting of
Mont Sainte-Victoire by Cezanne, to really come to terms with it, is to enter into the process
of boredom and begin building one's personal experience with the work. ln Zen, students or
disciples. . . are asked to build 'Mountains of the mind.' To look at Cezanne's mountain through
this painting is to begin to build step-by-step an experience that is beyond all the hyperbole. It
is an experience beyond what the media dictates. It is a level of understanding that exists on the
most intimate level of vision. Real mountains are hard to get at. One has to view them carefully
and begin climbing. Through boredom, one begins to take the first step, then the second, then
the third. Eventually, the experience of the mountain begins to happen. It begins to take hold.
Suddenly, you find yourself there."
38 Frank Stella's tautologic epigram was coined during a radio interview in 1964. For his full
statement, see Rorimer, New Art, 15. In a sense, these artworks are like a Rorschach test, but
without the ink blot.
3e Kaprow, "Best IJse," pp. 59-61; and "Interview with Allan Kaprow," in Off Limits. Rutgers
University and the Avant-Garde, 1957-1967, edited by Joan Marter (Newark, NJ: Newark
Museum, 1999), pp. 131-133, and especially p. I32 on his first responsesto Rauschenberg's
white paintings.
40 "Interview with Allan Kaprow," p. 132. Cage observed that Rauschenberg's white paintings
served as "airports for shadows and dust" and "mirrors of the air"; cited in Shinn, Duchamp
Effect, pp.7819.
41 Cage was a world-renowned mycologist, and he lectured on this subject at the New School
for Social Research in New York; see "Interyiew with George Segal," in Off Limits, p. 144.
Cage's mushroom statementfigured in several class discussionsin Donald Goodman's Aesthetics
course at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in the fall semester 1966, where
the cultural references ran the gamut from the psychedelic properties of various species to the
threat of nuclear annihilation. See note 12 for Cage's interest in and championing of Zen. Also
see "Interview with Letty Lou Eisenhauer, New York City (April 26, 1996)," in Off Limits, pp.
I49-I50, for the influence of Zen on the artists at Rutgers, and Hapgood, "Interview with Allan
Kaprow (1992)," pp. LI7-II9, for the influence of Zen on his art and that of his contemporaries.