MINIMALISM, PERFORMANCE, AND CONCEPTUAL ART

In the 1980s and 90s, a new type of art called "Performance art" was the rage. Performance art often was about breaking taboos. There was sometimes a sexual element to the performance, such as when Karen Finley smeared chocolate on her naked body on stage and was condemned as indecent by the Supreme Court. In an interview with Time magazine writer Joel Stein, Finley said that what she does is, "Basically just run around the stage making political-emotional commentary."

You'll learn more about Performance art in this lesson.

OBJECTIVES

• Define and discuss Postmodernism.

• Characterize minimalism.

• Discuss the origins of Performance art.

• Explain conceptual and Superrealist art.

VOCABULARY

WHAT IS POSTMODERNISM?

In Latin, "post" means "after." That means that after Modernism came Postmodernism. Postmodern artists created art out of a style of pastiche and appropriation. They borrowed from other art forms used throughout history, mixing ideas and forms in a variety of media and refusing to be categorized. The tone is often ironic or humorous.

Postmodern art continues the process begun by Pop Artists to blur the boundaries between fine art and popular culture. We'll look at three Postmodern art movements in this lesson:

• Performance art

• Minimalism

• Conceptual art

Performance Art

"To make people free is the aim of art, therefore art for me is the science of freedom." -Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys was a German sculptor, painter, and ultimately one of the first performance artists.

He believed that everyone was an artist, and that sculpture should not be a fixed form. Developing a theory of social sculpture, Beuys said that he was interested in how we shape the world we live in. His lifelong mission was to heal society.

He believed that material could be a metaphor; he often used felt as a metaphor for healing, for example. He even wrapped a grand piano in felt, titling it Homogeneous Infiltration for Piano. Metaphorically, the piano represented the human being. Wrapping it didn't kill it, but only muffled it, causing it to turn inward and focus on internal energies and bring about healing.

Beuys created artwork but he also created what he called "Actions," which were a completely new way of making a statement. In one Action, titled I Like America and America Likes Me in 1974, he flew into New York, was wrapped in felt and loaded into an ambulance. The ambulance took him to a gallery in New York where he spent three days with a coyote. Beuys said: "I wanted to isolate myself, insulate myself, see nothing of America other than the coyote." Beuys was against the American War in Vietnam and his work was an ironic statement about America's role as a superpower both politically and artistically.

You can see a picture of Joseph Beuys wrapped in felt and the coyote at the Tate Modern website. That website for Beuys' work includes this narration:

"His performances, or 'Actions' were ritualistic, incorporating powerful symbols of birth, death and transformation. The objects that he used were often exhibited later as works in their own right."

MINIMALISM

Sculpture 

Minimalism was a movement that emerged in the 1960s and was dominated by sculpture. Donald Judd, Carl Andre, and Sol LeWitt are among the most well-known Minimalist sculptors. They created sculptures out of cubes, oblong boxes, and gridded floor pieces. LeWitt, in particular, was known for his structures of white cubes and pyramids. Their sculptures do not have identifiable subjects or narrative elements. They can be characterized by the following:

• austerity

• geometric configurations

• industrial materials (such as plastic, concrete)

Although the term Minimalism was popularized in the 1960s, an art critic named David Burlyuk first introduced it in a catalog introduction in 1929. He wrote: "Minimalist painting is purely realistic — the subject being the painting itself."

Donald Judd believed that art should be in permanent installations in carefully selected locations. He created that environment in his studio in New York. His favorite form was the box. The box was not meant to be a symbol for anything.

Check out the sculpture of Judd's that is located in the Israel Museum Art Garden. Notice how there are no adornments and nothing to create a story from, and yet the work is still interesting because of the choices the artist makes. The work is a specific size and shape (rectangular) and made from a specific material (concrete).

Judd began to develop his box motif in various materials and in various styles. His boxes were closed, open, hollow or solid, and sometimes transparent. You can see that he attached several boxes to a wall in the form of a stack.

Painting

Yves Klein (1928-1962) was an early Postmodernist. At first he painted monochrome paintings in different colors, but people didn't understand what he was trying to do, so he switched to only painting in blue in his desire to symbolize a purified reality. Klein invented the color, later called International Klein Blue, to represent and to symbolize the spirituality and the material sensibility that permeates any substance. At one point, he invited visitors to an exhibition. The exhibition was of an empty gallery. Talk about minimal!

A Minimalist Memorial 

CONCEPTUAL ART

Concept art replaces the art object with an analysis of the object. Conceptual artists said that artistic production should serve artistic knowledge. They believed that the art object is not an end in itself.

Jenny Holzer is a conceptual artist who has been working on a project she calls Truisms.

Now take a virtual trip to the Guggenheim Museum and be sure to read the text about Holzer's art. What does her appropriation of electronic signage allow her to do?

Superrealism

Superrealism is a style of painting and sculpture that emerged in the 1970s. In this style artists use photographs and body casts to create a high level of realism.

Characteristics include:

• cool, detached appearance

• preoccupation with common subject matter

• unreal quality in spite of the accurate rendering

The Superrealist works address reality and artificiality, creating an image of an image.

Duane Hanson (1925-1996) is famous for his strange, unsettling figures placed in public places, such as airports. His sculpture Drug Addict from 1974 (above, with an unidentified museum guest), was on display at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark.

Notes

Read about Duane Hanson's Self-Portrait with Model.

LET'S REVIEW!

In this lesson you have covered the following topics:

• Postmodern artists rejected Modernism, breaking the boundaries between fine art and popular culture.

• Postmodern artists defied earlier definitions of art and created Performance art, Minimalist art, Conceptual art and Superrealism.

• Postmodern art featured a frequent (and often ironic) use of appropriation, such as in Jenny Holzer's signs.

• Minimalist artists created plain, austere shapes without narrative content.

• Conceptual artists took the rejection of establishment art even further by removing the art object. Their installations were often about art rather than the object itself.

Take the following quiz before moving on.