Ann Goldstein

How Minimalism redefined the art object, featuring work by key artists and a reexamination of Minimalism by prominent art historians, critics, and scholars

As a new movement that arose in the 1950s and 1960s, Minimalism challenged traditional ideas about art-making and the art object. A Minimal Future? Art As Object 1958-1968, which accompanies a major exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, offers a redefinition of Minimalism by situating it in the context of the concurrent aesthetics of modernist abstraction, pop art, and nascent ideas of conceptual art. Minimalism is presented as a range of strategies that propelled new definitions of the structure, form, material, image, and production of the art object and renegotiated its relationship to space and to the spectator. Focusing on the years 1958-1968, A Minimal Future? presents key works within the framework of a scholarly re-examination of minimal art's emergence and historical context. It reflects the early transitional period that begins in the late 1950s, through the so-called "canonization" of Minimalism by 1968, with an emphasis on work produced in the mid-to-late 1960s. The book includes works from the late 1950s through the late 1960s by 40 artists, including Carl Andre, Richard Artschwager, Jo Baer, Larry Bell, Mel Bochner, Judy Chicago, Dan Flavin, Robert Grosvenor, Eva Hesse, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, John McCracken, Robert Ryman, Frank Stella, Anne Truitt, and Lawrence Weiner that reflect the shifting object status of painting and sculpture. The text features original essays by prominent art historians and scholars. Diedrich Diedrichsen addresses the relationship between minimal art and music; Jonathan Flatley focuses on Donald Judd and Andy Warhol; Timothy Martin considers perfomance in relation to minimal art; James Meyer examines East and West Coast practices of Minimalism; and Anne Rorimer discusses the relationship of minimal to conceptual art. Exhibition curator Ann Goldstein contributes an introduction. Also included are individual entries on each of the artists, an extensive bibliography, and an exhibition chronology. The 400-page book includes 300 images, most in color.