The Architecture of Minimalism
Art and architecture - all the arts - do not have to exist in isolation, as they do now.
This fault is very much a key to present society. Architecture is nearly gone, but all the
arts, in fact all parts of society, have to be rejoined, and joined more than they have ever
been. This would be democratic in a good sense, unlike the present increasing fragmentation
into separate but equal categories, equal within the arts, but inferior to powerful
bureaucracies.
[Donald Judd], αναφορά στο The Architecture of Minimalism, Spain, 1997.
The terms of Minimalism or Minimal Art usually refer to the work produced during the 1960s
by a group of American artists, among them Robert Morris, Carl Andre, Anthony Caro, Donald
Judd, Tony Smith, Frank Stella, Robert Ryman, Walter de Maria, and later, Sol LeWitt,
Richard Serra, Dan Flavin, Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer, Joel Shapiro and even James
Turell.
Despite similarities, mutual collaborations, and friendships among these artists, however,
obvious differences in their work stand out. When we speak of Minimal Art we refer not to a
homogeneous movement based on shared principals, but rather to a group of contemporary
artists in whose work we can detect certain similarities. In a sense, it is actually
simplification to which critics inevitably cling. In some cases we could speak of Abstract
Art (Frank Stella, Sol LeWitt), since it is no coincidence that some of their most
immediate references are the paintings of Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Ad Reinhardt, or
in other cases, of landscape artists (Walter de Maria, Robert Smithson).
Donald Judd himself was one of the people who fought most strongly against having the term
Minimalism applied to his work. He considered his sculptures by no means to be minimal. On
the contrary, what had driven him to create those objects was the will to move far away
from appearance and representation, and to create objects whose force lies in the concrete
presence in a place, developing properties such as scale, the relationship with the
immediate surroundings, direct work with materials, reflections, texture-hardly minimal, in
other words.
Among Minimalists are painters, sculptors, creators of installations, and artists who work
with light or even with topography and land. In practically all their works the formal
resources employed are minimal. They transmit a certain conceptual coldness. They often use
methods of mathematical composition such as serialization or repetition. What unites the
work of all Minimalists is the will to create a specific work whose meaning stems not from
a discourse on what the work evokes or on how it was executed, but rather from direct
observation of the work and its relationship to its surroundings.
Francisco Asensio Cerver, The Architecture of Minimalism, Spain, 1997.