Books, Articles and Publications on Minimal Art
If you want to know more about minimalism, Wikipedia is of course a good place to start. For those who want to learm even more, I’ve started collecting publications from around the web.
Note: I do not necessarily support the contents and insights expressed in these documents.
Essays
- Specific Objects – Donald Judd (1964)
In this manifesto-like essay, Judd finds a starting point for a new territory for American art, and a simultaneous rejection of residual inherited European artistic values.
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- Recentness of Sculptures – Clement Greenberg (1967)
Also available in German.
- Art and Objecthood – Michael Fried (1967)
In this essay, published in Artforum in June 1967, art critic Fried attacked the minimal art movement by referring to it as “literalism,” and those who made it as “literalists.” He accused artists like Judd and Morris of intentionally confusing the categories of art and ordinary object. According to Fried, what these artists were creating was not art, but a political and/or ideological statement about the nature of art. Fried maintained that just because Judd and Morris arranged identical non-art objects in a three-dimensional field and proclaimed it “art”, didn’t necessarily make it so. Art is art and an object is an object, Fried asserted (source).
- Minimalist Art vs. Modernist Sensibility: A Close Reading of Michael Fried’s “Art and Objecthood” – Merve Ünsal
Articles
- Introduction to Minimal Art – Maarten P. Kappert
I wrote an introduction piece on the topic, including its objectives, prominent artists and criticisms.
Academic / research papers
- Minimal (2005) – Christian Schrei
A diploma thesis by Christian Schrei, a student of Information Design at the University of Applied Sciences Graz, Austria. This excellent paper contemplates on similarities and differences between Minimal Art and Minimal Music.
Books
Interviews with minimal artists
- Richard Serra – Talk with Charlie Rose (2001) (Video)
An hour long conversation with sculptor Richard Serra about his exhibition at The Gagosian Gallery in New York City, his use of synthetic materials in art and his career in film.
Index
References
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