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Minimalism
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Because of a tendency in Minimalism to exclude the pictorial, illusionistic and fictive in favor of the literal, there was a movement away from painterly and toward sculptural concerns. Donald Judd had started as a painter, and ended as a creator of objects. His seminal essay, "Specific Objects" (published in Arts Yearbook 8, 1965), was a touchstone of theory for the formation of Minimalist aesthetics. In this essay, Judd found a starting point for a new territory for American art, and a simultaneous rejection of residual inherited European artistic values. He pointed to evidence of this development in the works of an array of artists active in New York at the time, including Jasper Johns, Dan Flavin and Lee Bontecou. Of "preliminary" importance for Judd was the work of George Ortman[1], who had concretized and distilled painting's forms into blunt, tough, philosphically charged geometries.
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Minimalism is most appealing because it accepts the user and all his/her foibles. It structures the documentation around the fact that people do not like manuals and if they read them, they do it haphazardly (Rettig). Minimalism garners the energy of the task at hand; users are already doing things when it comes to learning and documentation should address that "rich context". Most importantly, Minimalist theory addresses the paradox that "to learn, [users] must interact meaningfully with the system, but to interact with the system, they must first learn" (Nurnberg 77). Step-by-step instruction does not provide meaningful interaction, but submerging the user in a task is far more conducive to learning.
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Minimalism rejects the need for social comment, self-expression, narrative, or any other allusion to history, politics, or religion. It is based on creating objects of interest and beauty. Minimalists reduced their work to the smallest number of colors, values, shapes, lines, and textures. David Burlyuk first used the term in an exhibition catalogue for John Graham’s paintings at the Dudensing Gallery in New York in 1929. The term was later applied to the movement in the 1960’s. Other names for the movement include ABC art, minimal art, reductivism, and rejective art.
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Minimalism was primarily an America Movement, in the sense it was born there,. it stemmed mostly from the work of Frank Stella, whose Black Paintings were first exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1959.these paintings inspired many artists to adopt this new style. Minimalism as a movement was never an organized one. Neither was it a self-proclaimed one. Minimalism as an art form gained more popularity amongst sculptors than painters, though there were a sizable number of artists involved in this art form. The 1966 exhibition in New York entitled "Primary Structures" was a key event in the history of the movement.
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The ethos of Minimalism was anticipated in the Suprematist paintings of Kasimir Malevich. Starting from the initial premise that art should be reduced to simple geometric forms and strong, plain colours, Malevich eventually took Suprematism to its ultimate conclusion with his white-on-white paintings, in which geometric elements are delineated in white on a white background. Minimalism ... has antecedents in the ready-made sculpture of Marcel Duchamp. The catalyst for the development of Minimal art was, however, the reaction of certain artists against Abstract Expressionism, a movement that, by the late 1950s, seemed to them to be distasteful for its excessive emotional content and lack of aesthetic discipline.
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Minimalism ... exists within the realm of filmmaking. Minimalist filmmakers tend to reduce their works to the bare essentials, both in terms of mis-en-scène, narrative, and filmic construction. Long takes, static frames, distinct framing/composition, as well as stories dealing with more internal narratives are common place.
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Minimalism