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== Visual arts and literalist art == {{Main|Minimalism (visual arts)}} [[File:Tonysmith freeride sculpture.jpg|left|thumb|[[Tony Smith (sculptor)|Tony Smith]], ''Free Ride'', 1962, 6'8 x 6'8 x 6'8]] Minimalism in visual art, sometimes called "minimal art", "literalist art",<ref>{{cite magazine|author-link=Michael Fried|last=Fried |first=Michael |title=Art and Objecthood |magazine=Artforum |volume=5 |date=June 1967 |pages=12–23}} Reprinted: {{cite book |last1=Fried |author-mask=0 |first1=Michael |title=Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews |date=1998 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=0-226-26318-5 |pages=148–172 |chapter=Art and Objecthood}}</ref> and "ABC Art",<ref>[[Rose, Barbara]]. "ABC Art", ''[[Art in America]]'' 53, no. 5 (October–November 1965): 57–69.</ref> refers to a specific movement of artists that emerged in New York in the early 1960s in response to [[abstract expressionism]].<ref name="britannica.com">{{Cite web |date=Jul 20, 1998 |title=Minimalism |url=https://www.britannica.com/art/Minimalism |website=Britannica |access-date=21 December 2021 |archive-date=16 December 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211216231216/https://www.britannica.com/art/Minimalism |url-status=live }}</ref> Examples of artists working in [[painting]] that are associated with Minimalism include [[Nassos Daphnis]], [[Frank Stella]], [[Kenneth Noland]], [[Al Held]], [[Ellsworth Kelly]], [[Robert Ryman]], and others; those working in [[sculpture]] include [[Donald Judd]], [[Dan Flavin]], [[David Smith (artist)|David Smith]], [[Anthony Caro]], and others. Minimalism in painting can be characterized by the use of the [[Hard-edge painting|hard edge]], linear lines, simple forms, and an emphasis on two dimensions.<ref name="britannica.com"/> American minimalist artists were heavily influenced by earlier European abstract movements. During that time, New York was hosting exhibitions of the German [[Bauhaus]] artists, Russian [[Constructivism (art)|Constructivists]], and Dutch [[De Stijl]] artists. Radical abstraction was invented by each of these groups, and they encouraged artists such as [[Robert Morris (artist)|Robert Morris]], [[Dan Flavin]], and [[Donald Judd]] to pursue new artistic trajectories. In order to provide the audience with an instantaneous, purely visual reaction, these artists sought to produce art that had no references to anything other than itself. In order to expose the objective, visual components of art, the subjective, gestural components were removed.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://magazine.artland.com/minimalism/|title=Art movement:Minimalism|date=13 February 2025|access-date=13 February 2025}}</ref> Minimalism in sculpture can be characterized by very simple geometric shapes often made of industrial materials like plastic, metal, aluminum, concrete, and fiberglass;<ref name="britannica.com"/> these materials are usually left raw or painted a solid colour. Minimalism was in part a reaction against the painterly subjectivity of [[Abstract Expressionism]] that had been dominant in the [[New York School (art)|New York School]] during the 1940s and 1950s.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Battcock |first1=Gregory |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lhMS8Ii73ZkC&q=abstract+expressionism+and+minimal+art&pg=PA161 |title=Gregory Battcock, ''Minimal Art: a critical anthology'', pp 161–172 |date=3 August 1995 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=9780520201477 |access-date=2014-06-27 |archive-date=8 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231108020413/https://books.google.com/books?id=lhMS8Ii73ZkC&q=abstract+expressionism+and+minimal+art&pg=PA161#v=snippet&q=abstract%20expressionism%20and%20minimal%20art&f=false |url-status=live }}</ref> Dissatisfied with the intuitive and spontaneous qualities of [[Action Painting]], and Abstract Expressionism more broadly, Minimalism as an art movement asserted that a work of art should not refer to anything other than itself and should omit any extra-visual association.<ref>{{Cite web |date=Jul 20, 1998 |title=Minimalism |url=https://www.britannica.com/art/Minimalism |website=Britannica. |access-date=21 December 2021 |archive-date=16 December 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211216231216/https://www.britannica.com/art/Minimalism |url-status=live }}</ref> Donald Judd's work was showcased in 1964 at [[Green Gallery]] in Manhattan, as were Flavin's first fluorescent light works, while other leading Manhattan galleries like [[Leo Castelli|Leo Castelli Gallery]] and [[Pace Gallery]] also began to showcase artists focused on minimalist ideas. === Minimalism in visual art broadly === In a more general sense, minimalism as a visual strategy can be found in the [[geometric abstraction]]s of painters associated with the [[Bauhaus]] movement, in the works of [[Kazimir Malevich]], [[Piet Mondrian]], and other artists associated with the [[De Stijl]] movement, the [[Constructivism (art)|Russian Constructivist]] movement, and in the work of the Romanian sculptor [[Constantin Brâncuși]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://artcritical.com/2004/10/01/albert-york-and-giorgio-morandi/ |title=Maureen Mullarkey, Art Critical, ''Giorgio Morandi'' |date=October 2004 |publisher=Artcritical.com |access-date=2014-06-27 |archive-date=9 March 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140309022743/http://www.artcritical.com/2004/10/01/albert-york-and-giorgio-morandi/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hr-5GcN0F6kC&q=Constantin+Br%C3%A2ncu%C5%9Fi.+and+minimal+art&pg=PA12 |title=Daniel Marzona, Uta Grosenick; ''Minimal art'', p.12 |isbn=9783822830604 |access-date=2014-06-27 |last1=Marzona |first1=Daniel |year=2004 |publisher=Taschen |archive-date=8 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231108020416/https://books.google.com/books?id=hr-5GcN0F6kC&q=Constantin+Br%C3%A2ncu%C5%9Fi.+and+minimal+art&pg=PA12#v=snippet&q=Constantin%20Br%C3%A2ncu%C5%9Fi.%20and%20minimal%20art&f=false |url-status=live }}</ref> Minimalism as a [[Elements of art|formal]] strategy has been deployed in the paintings of [[Barnett Newman]], [[Ad Reinhardt]], [[Josef Albers]], and the works of artists as diverse as [[Pablo Picasso]], [[Yayoi Kusama]], [[Giorgio Morandi]], and others. [[Yves Klein]] had painted [[Monochrome painting|monochromes]] as early as 1949, and held the first private exhibition of this work in 1950—but his first public showing was the publication of the [[Artist's book]] ''[[Yves: Peintures]]'' in November 1954.<ref>Hannah Weitemeier, ''Yves Klein, 1928–1962: International Klein Blue'', Original-Ausgabe (Cologne: Taschen, 1994), 15. {{ISBN|3-8228-8950-4}}.</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Modern Paint Uncovered|chapter=Restoring the Immaterial: Study and Treatment of Yves Klein's ''Blue Monochrome (IKB42)''}}</ref> === Literalism === [[File:Donald Judd Concrete Blocks.jpg|thumb|Donald Judd's ''Untitled'']] [[Michael Fried]] called the minimalist artists ''literalists'', and used '''literalism''' as a [[pejorative]] due to his position that the art should deliver [[Transcendence (philosophy)|transcendental]] experience{{sfn | Glaves-Smith | Chilvers | 2015 | loc=literalists}} with [[metaphor]]s, [[Symbolism (arts)|symbolism]], and [[stylization]]. Per Fried's (controversial) view, the literalist art needs a spectator to validate it as art: an "object in a situation" only becomes art in the eyes of an observer. For example, for a regular sculpture its physical location is irrelevant, and its status as a work of art remains even when unseen. The [[Donald Judd]]'s pieces (see photo), on the other hand, are just objects sitting in the desert sun waiting for a visitor to discover them and accept them as art.{{sfn | Hogan | 2008 | p=22}}
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