Minimalism: Art of Circumstance

Beginning in the 1960s, artists like Frank Stella, Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Robert Smithson, Walter De Maria, Richard Serra, Eva Hesse, and Joel Shapiro reacted against the flamboyance and self-indulgence of Abstract Expressionism by pursuing materials, forms, and procedures that remove the personal mark of the fabricator The art they produced has been called obstinately cerebral and unapproachably cold by some, but revolutionary by others, who recognized an unprecedented immediacy in it. This book examines how the Minimalists removed illusion and habits of perception from their art, essentially starting with nothing, and forced viewers to do the same. Illustrated with works ranging from small-scale sculpture to massive earthworks, the text traces the trends Minimalism succeeded, as well as those that succeeded it. The result is comprehensive critical history of one of the century’s most important and long-lived art movements.