Minimalism (Themes & Movements) [Hardcover]

James Meyer (Author)

Book Description

Series: Themes & Movements | Publication Date: January 5, 2000

Minimalism was a movement pioneered in America in the late 1960s that aimed at reducing sculpture and painting to its most essential forms. Through the work of its five key practitioners, Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt and Robert Morris, this book examines in words and pictures the defining characteristics - and the debates - of the art belonging to movement. Although all these clean-edged works can be identified by certain recurring elements - symmetry, repetition, seriality and factory production - this book documents the surprising variety of work produced within these rigid confines. Alongside images of the key works and the historical exhibitions of Minimalism, author James Meyer presents the sides in the debate around Minimalism from the late 1950s to the present day along with artists' statements, reviews and commentary.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For more than 20 years, Gregory Battcock's Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology has been the book on this deceptively simple approach to art-making, which sought to remove any trace of the artist's hand or emotion from the work. (Detractors naturally found it ludicrous that such reductive sculpture, often consisting of no more than a few basic modular units attached to the wall or placed on the floor, generated such a voluminous and dense stream of critical analysis, beginning in the mid-1960s.)

Part of Phaidon's Themes and Movements series, Minimalism offers the first straightforward and useful summary of the output and outlook of the artists associated with minimalism in its heyday, as well as its subsequent development into more nuanced visual forms and its relationship to postmodernism. Editor James Meyer is a specialist who has written extensively on Carl Andre, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and Sol LeWitt, four of the seminal minimalists (the fifth is Robert Morris). Despite the intellectual thorniness of this art, Meyer avoids the turgidity that marks much of the writing associated with it.

Tracing the origins of minimalism primarily to Frank Stella's "Black Paintings" of 1959, Meyer outlines the shifting, often warring definitions of this new kind of art. Once sculptors Andre and Judd had made their mark, there was doubt that painters could be minimalists. Brice Marden and Robert Ryman made the cut because their work was believed to be purely about the process of painting. Interestingly, although this was overwhelmingly a male club, curators also initially embraced the work of several women artists (including Agnes Martin and Anne Truitt) who retained such minimalist no-noes as irregular, handmade marks, color that could be perceived independently of form, and a belief in transcendent meaning.

The 141 pages of color and black-and-white photographs (including rare glimpses of early work by some artists) and a generous assembly of texts by such key commentators as Michael Fried, Barbara Rose, Rosalind Krauss, and the artists themselves (including previously unpublished or hard-to-find material) make this volume indispensable for anyone seriously interested in contemporary art. --Cathy Curtis

From Library Journal

Works and words by the once-maligned Minimalists Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, and Robert Morris are memorialized in this overdue survey, which updates and surpasses Gregory Battcock's popular Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology (1968; Univ. of California, 1995. reprint). First, Meyer (art and critical theory, Emory Univ.) surveys Minimalist sculpture, neon tubes, and geometric patterns created from 1959 onward. Works by two dozen Minimalists are then presented in 300 color and black-and-white reproductions on high-quality paper; the captions are informative, and the book's design and typography are attractive. The last third of the book, called "Documents," offers excerpts of texts and interviews by critics, theorists, historians, and artists themselves, followed by biographies of various participants. Like other volumes in Phaidon's substantial "Themes and Movements" series, this is recommended for the range of the art presented and its well-rounded compilation of complementary texts. Russell T. Clement, Northwestern Univ. Lib., Evanston, IL
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 306 pages
• Publisher: Phaidon Press (January 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714834602
• ISBN-13: 978-0714834603
• Product Dimensions: 11.7 x 10.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,568,180 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

61 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars review of Minimalism (Themes and Movements), August 19, 2000

By 

Lane Banks (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Minimalism (Themes & Movements) (Hardcover)

A glorious book combining a multitude of exquisite images of important Minimalist works with an unusual book design that includes overlapping fonts, and font sizes that progressively downsize as the reader moves through the text. (The book designers must have had a ball with this job.)

The first section is loosely defined as a history of the development and basic tenets of Minimalism. An idea that weaves throughout much of the work termed Minimal is the use of serial geometry, industrial materials, and factory production methods that deny the centuries-old tradition of art as a unique, hand-crafted object that cannot be replicated. Although Minimalism is no longer avant-garde, its influences are felt today in Conceptual and process art, as well as Neo-Geo. This section goes beyond the traditional survey that simply is a factual list of themes or ideas utilized by each particular artist to also include critical response to the work. Minimalism is broadly characterized as a response to and reaction against the subjectivity, gestural mark-making, and private vision of Abstract Expressionism.

The bulk of the book, the second section, is given to reproductions of the works by the Minimalist artists and those often associated with Minimalism. Large photos are accompanied by captions that describe that particular piece.

The third and final section is a collection of writings, interviews, and other publications by critics and the artists themselves, chronologically arranged to illustrate the chain of discourse eminating from important exhibitions of Minimalist work.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome Book, April 5, 2008

By 

CL (AZ, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Minimalism (Themes & Movements) (Paperback)

This is my favorite book in my art book collection. If you like minimalism this is a great read with tons of colorplates, a historical survey of the movement, and relevant writings from top art historians and artists.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Book, August 28, 2008

By 

K. Carter (California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Minimalism (Themes & Movements) (Paperback)

Altogether a worthwhile book. Good photos, good writing. I have dipped into into it repeatedly.