Customer Reviews

Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Exceptionally important critical anthology of early writings on Minimal and Conceptual Art. This 454 pages illuminating volume includes essays by Gregory Battcock (the volume's editor) and texts by a garden variety of art historians, critics and curators:

Lawrence Alloway (Systemic Painting),
Michael Benedikt (Sculpture as Architecture),
Mel Bochner (Serial Art, Systems, Solipsism),
David Bourdon (The Razed Sites of Carl Andre),
Nicolas Calas (Subject Matter in the Work of Barnett Newman),
Michael Fried (Art and Objecthood),
Bruce Glaser (Questions to Frank Stella and Donald Judd),
E.C. Goossen (Two Exhibitions),
Clement Greenberg (Recentness of Sculpture),
Peter Hutchinson (Mannerism in the Abstract),
David Lee (A Systematic Revery from Abstraction to Now),
Allen Leepa (Minimal ARt and Primary Meanings),
Lucy R. Lippard (Eros Presumptive),
Robert Morris (Notes on Sculpture),
Toby Mussman (Literalness and the Infinitte),
Brian O. Doherty (Minus Plato),
John Perreault (Minimal Abstracts),
Yvonne Rainer (A Quasi Survey of Some "Minimalist" Tendencies in the Quantitatively Minimal Dance Activity Midst the Plethora, or an Analysis of Trio A),
Barbara Rose (A B C Art),
Harold Rosenberg (Defining Art),
Irving Sandler (Gesture and Non-Gesture in Recent Sculpture),
Willoughby Sharp (Luminism and Kineticism),
Elayne Varian (Schemata 7),
Samuel Wagstaff Jr. (Talking with Tony Smith),
Richard Wollheim (Minimal Art),

and writings by artists Martial Raysse, Dan Flavin, Robert Smithson.

In the late 1950's, Gregory Battcock (1937-1980) was an abstract painter in New York City's downtown art scene. He acted in several Andy Warhol experimental films ("Horse" and "Drunk"). Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology is his first book. He published several other titles on Contemporary Arts, Cinema and Music through the 1970's. He was publisher of a short-lived, but daring, magazine called Trylon & Perisphere, which explored the New York art under-world of that time. He was also the Editor of Arts Magazine until his untimely passing when he was murdered on the balcony of his vacation condominium during the night of December 25, 1980, in San Juan, Puerto Rico...

I got a good deal on the book, because it was used. The book had a bit of damage to the cover, but otherwise in great condition. I was overall happy with the purchase.