John's Learning Journal

The hard part for me criticising Minimalism as part of this course is that I am already a fan. Have been since I first saw a photograph of a Carl Andre sculpture back in 2011. I now own Alistair Rider’s massive book about Andre. I also own James Meyer’s book on Minimalism and have read it cover to cover. I almost cried with Joy the first time I saw a Donald Judd Sculpture in person. I went to London just to see an exhibition of the paintings of Agnes Martin. Dan Flavin has actually influenced art that I have made and put on display.

I don’t think I can be objective in analysing the art here.

 

So what can I say? I could talk about the ideas behind the movement and the drama it inspired. I probably will. But I honestly find it far less interesting than the art itself. I could also talk the influence Minimalism has had. But again, I would probably end up just fanboying about it.

 

It seems strange to me that Greenberg and the Minimalists hated each other. To the casual observer modernist and minimalist art would probably look very similar. More to the point both seemed very interested in reducing things to their simplest and purest forms they had very different ideas about the use of paint or what the shape of a painting should be but honestly to me these feel like trivial details, not worth getting furious over.

 

It honestly seems to me that the history of 20^th-century art is a lot of overeducated people writing absurd and near impenetrable manifestoes of art theory at a public never reads and is happier for not having read.

Said writers then see their parameters for art as gospel and spend the rest of their lives feuding with each other over whose idea is better. And I am sad to say that reading up on these things it seems that the arguments between these artists and art critics had all the dignity and nuance as two people having a Twitter feud today. Apparently people have always been this stupid. It’s just easier to see now.

 

Many of these theorists thought that they would reinvent art forever. That history would end with them. That there would be no innovation or experimentation after them because they had figured out the perfect formula for art to follow. None of them ever have and I suspect no one ever will. Art is too big a subject to be contained by one theory of how it should be done.

So when the dust settles the only question really worth asking is if these art theories ended up producing good work. Work that has enriched the art world and added to the cultural lexicon.

In the case of minimalism, I’m going to say, yes. Again, this might be my bias showing. The work still seems to cause puzzlement and anger in people who see it. But I at least know that I like it. And I think it has really added to our culture.

 

I don’t know what it says about me that I liked Minimalist art as soon as I saw it. But I do like things that are simple and still. Like water in the pond, the moon at night, or stones worn smooth by the sea. I also like quiet (at least when I’m not listening to rock music). I like video games with no dialogue, white noise music, or just experiencing things through touch. I once spent a few days at a monastery with no computer and just a few books. While I found it hard going this quiet space was in many ways one of the happiest experiences of my life.

It may not be a very analytical argument, but I get something very similar out of minimalist art. It’s peaceful, and its playful. When you are small there is a large amount of joy to be gotten out of just playing with stones. Putting them in orders of size or colour or just trying to stack them up. There’s no intellectual aspect to this play it’s just fun to experience things being themselves. And that’s what minimalist art is to me. The quiet joy of well-defined shapes just being themselves. I get this particularly out of Carl Andre, Frank Stella, and Robert Morris as art. I get a more sombre but still pleasant calm out of Agnes Martin’s paintings. Ellsworth Kelly’s 3D paintings seem rather joyful and silly, probably due to the bright colours. But it’s a playfulness and humour that I can get behind. Minimalism doesn’t need to be Zen.

I do enjoy Donald Judd’s work. But I’m not totally sure why. For the one who was most insistent on purity his works seem to be the most aggressive and experimental. They also somehow feel more serious. For lack of a better term I will call his work mystical. It seems to suggest to me strange and fantastic new worlds. The fact that I enjoy video games with minimalist ascetics probably comes into this. I hope that if Judd could have lived to see videogames like Minecraft, Race the Sun, and Kairo he would have been pleased with the legacy of his movement.

 

The one minimalist that I can’t stand is Robert Ryman. I draw the line at a painting that might as well be blank. This suggests no mood nor gives any emotion, it feels like a waste of canvas. And when he does make his brushstrokes visible or tries to experiment with white on white it just looks ugly. If there is any emotion to it at all it feels harsh and salty. Robert Ryman is probably my least favourite fine artist. Pretty ironic considering how much I love the rest of the minimalists.

If nothing else I guess it shows how banal we think of white as the colour. He Yves Klein did similar things with the colour blue and I like his stuff.

 

The one I respect the most is Dan Flavin. I grew up with coloured lights displays for people with autism, and I still enjoy them now. Flavin’s work with multicoloured lights feels remarkably similar. It certainly triggers the same emotions in me. One is of joy and wonder at seeing colour in its strongest and most beautiful form. Both even feel magical to me. Like I’m in my childhood dreams again. So with Flavin there is a lot of nostalgia involved. But I feel certain even if I’d never had sensory toys as a child I’d still love his work, this is nature not nurture at work. It fills me with pure unobstructed emotion, which I think is what Donald Judd and his friends were trying to inspire.

And while I have no evidence to support this I have to wonder if Flavin’s work may have inspired the sensory art style that I love. It certainly didn’t pre-exist him. So I might owe him a great debt of gratitude for enriching my life long before I even knew of him.

“It’s hard to say I’d rather be awake when I’m asleep, because my dreams are bursting at the seams”

Fireflies – Owl City

 

While I said I didn’t want this to turn into fanboying. I’d like to point out that minimalism has entered the popular lexicon as a concept. We think of it in music, in design, and even in food. Minimalist interior design is often used to make a dignified environment. Minimalist style is often used in animation and illustration. Videogames have based their whole look on minimalism. I believe it was a big influence on the look of one of the most celebrated videogames of all time, Halo: Combat Evolved.

Donald Judd understood that minimalism was not the final word in the story of art. (Which is refreshing compared to his contemporaries) he knew his movement would come and go and didn’t try to claim it has been totally separate and superior to everything else that had come before it. He seemed like a fairly spiritual down-to-earth guy who just wanted to find simplicity inside himself. And I admire that humility within him. Minimalist art as he defined it is dead. But the ideas of it has bled out into the wider world. And hopefully all across the world many people have a greater appreciation for things that are simple, pure, and quiet. Thanks to the work of him and his fellow minimalists. If even one person has a better appreciation for simple still things that’s a good thing.

But to have given so many people so many chances to see what he saw and hopefully enrich many lives, even ones who have never heard of the minimalist art movement.

If that is not a resounding victory for an art movement, I don’t know what is.

 

My Thoughts on Fluxus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYo3wF_g-84

Okay. That’s a little harsh. I can’t say I feel negatively towards Fluxism. But I imagine most people would have the above reaction if you showed them a fluxus artwork with no context.

And I do feel that Fluxus was something of a mistake. But a good one. The kind you are wiser and no worse off for having made. Like having ordered the wrong meal but getting to try a new weird meal. If nothing else you’ve broadened your horizons and now have a better idea of what food is and isn’t good.

I really don’t know what I can say about Fluxus art as most of it seemed to take place “In the moment. I can talk about the theory of it though.

In “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”. Edward Cullen Kylo Ren says to Rey that they should “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to”. He suggests that rather than joining the Jedi/rebellion or Sith/Empire they should form a new faction that isn’t good or evil. He doesn’t seem to have any plan or solid idea of what this third faction would do, how it would gain members, or what it would champion. Just that it would be different from all the stuff that came before it. Much the same I feel can be said for the Fluxists.

In the Fluxus manifestos the fathers name a long list of enemies including traditional 2D art, traditional sculpture, abstract art, minimal art, Classical music, traditionally beautiful art, pop art, representative art, classical poetry and theatre, Cinema and pop music, and Narrative art.

This really does beg the question. When you’ve thrown all of that into the shredder what else is left?

Well the Fluxists do admit very reluctantly to having some forbears.  Dick Higgins talks about the connections Fluxus has with Futurism, Dada, Marcel Duchamp, Surrealism, and John Cage, with the same reluctance that a proud ten-year-old might admit that the rest of the team helped him win the football match.

I can understand why. The Futurists and the Dadaists also wanted to burn everything that was old down and throw it all away. Without even comparing their art, this fact makes the Fluxists seem derivative and horribly late to the party. Almost comical.

Fluxus theory has fallen at the first hurdle in that it is trying to be new and original in a very old and unoriginal way. So how does the art stand up?

It’s weird. Maybe not as weird as it would like to be. But even as an experienced fan of fine art I have no idea what I am supposed to get out of, or take away from this. And I imagine to the layman and laywoman it would probably just feel like a mistake.

When I watched the Black & White Fluxus short film ‘The Sun in Your Head’ It just felt like a series of unrelated images only head together by the style in which they were shown. It had no real themes or motifs. And it didn’t make me think about or feel anything. Not even boredom. It did make me reflect on the narratively abstract films of people like Jorden Belson, Jan Svankmajer, and Lawrence Jordan. Lawrence Jordan’s collage films have no story. And are also just images. But He uses certain types of images, music and slow animation to make a mood of sadness, wonder, and nostalgia. ‘The Sun in your Head’ has no style and thus no mood.

I had a similar reaction to ‘In Memoriam to Adriano Olivetti’, The musical act made using things like typewriters and cash registers as instruments. It’s novel to be sure. It totally breaks the rules of how music works and is supposed to be. And it does still sound like music. But once the novelty wears off it’s not that interesting. I doubt anyone has it on their music playlist.

What it did make me think about was how Paul McCartney and John Lennon would break the rules of how pop and rock music were meant to work and sound all the time, and every time they did they not only made their music better, but often helped form new genres and subgenres. They weren’t as rebellious as the Fluxists. But they changed music completely in the ten years they worked together. A much greater feat.

As for the rest of the Fluxus art works I’ve seen? Most of it seems to be live events or “happenings”, which are extremely hard to judge without video footage. But from what I’ve seen they feel more like live Monty Python Sketches played dead straight than real art works.

The made objects like a piano full of nails, or a chair covered in a huge chunk of fat just feel like Dada. But without any of Jean Arp’s strange beauty or Duchamp’s self-mocking humour. It isn’t much weirder than Dada, or notably different. But it doesn’t feel as fun.

Though it does perhaps feel purified.

Dada would sometimes take ideas and techniques from the old art world. Fluxus never does. Dada art can be beautiful. Fluxus art is mostly ugly. It’s quite ridged in that sense. But you do have to admire how dedicated they were in that regard.

In closing. The Fluxists set some very tight limits on what they were aloud to make. The idea that the stuff they were making would replace classical art is absurd. It just doesn’t have the appeal to even compete, let alone replace. But working with limits isn’t always a bad thing. A child playing with sand and a few stones at the beach has very severe limits on what he can make.  But that doesn’t stop him from making whole words of adventure and fantasy with his stones and sand.

I get the same feeling from the Fluxus artists. One of playfulness. Doing whatever strange things you can with what little you have. And it’s that same spirit of creativity and experimentation that gave us things like the surrealist paintings of Dali or the music of the Beatles. So maybe you can look at fluxus art is almost a tribute to that spirit of creativity that pushes art forwards. The art might feel like a mistake. But the heart behind it is not. And that is beautiful.