Minimalist Sculpture: The Consequences of Artifice. John Edward Penny Submitted in accordance with the requirements of PhD. The University of Leeds Department of Fine Art August 2002 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own work and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. IMAGING SERVICES NORTH Boston Spa, Wetherby West Yorkshire, LS23 7BQ www.bl,uk TEXT CUT OFF IN THE ORIGINAL Abstract. This study, "Minimalist Sculpture: The Consequences of Artifice", was initially prompted by the wish to examine the case for a materialist approach to modern sculpture. Such an inquiry needed to address not only the substantiality of material and its process, but also the formative role of ideology on those choices of governing materials and procedures. The crux of this study began as, and remains, an inquiry into physical presence, and, by extension, the idea that Minimalist sculpture somehow returns the viewer to the viewer. At the core of any materialist position is the certainty that experience contains an element of passivity. If nothing exists but matter and its movements and modifications, then consciousness and volition depend entirely on material agency. The hierarchy of such a scheme underpins the socio-economic and cultural level with that of the biological, and, in turn, the biological with the physical. However, perception is not a matter of automatically recording external stimuli, but requires active elaboration. A hermeneutic process, therefore, is not one of unbridled pure thought; rather, it requires the recognition of an external and constant measure that gives form to thought. Recourse to the 'given' fact of an external reference, therefore, depends upon a relationship between materiality and signification-the resultant heuristic method of perceptual hypothesis that is established remains perpetually open to questioning. C.S. Peirce is invaluable to this study in providing a theoretical framework for these considerations. The manner in which modern sculpture was realized experienced a decisive change with the emergence of Minimalism. The dominant aesthetic of Vitalism was brought into question as never before by the materialist programme set in motion by Minimalism. The key issue of adherence to a Vitalist or Minimalist aesthetic is invaluable when clarifying the position of artists such as Tony Smith and Robert Smithson. Earlier sculptural forms generated by Constructivism utilized aspects of industrial mimesis but did not engage with sheer physicality to the extent that Minimalism did. One reason for this major difference was the consideration accorded to scale rather than size by the Minimalists. Such a consideration of scale and the experience of spatio-temporality, understood as inextricably part of the sculptural situation, gave rise to site-specificity and its ramifications as Minimalist concerns. Approximately the first third of this study examines Vitalism as the dominant and enduring theme and background for modern sculpture. Vitalism formed an inherited intellectual situation that was directly challenged by the materialism of the Minimalists. In the second part of the study, Barnett Newman and Constantin Brancusi provide the two central historical precedents for the re-introduction of the precinctual into contemporary sculpture. Newman's interest in place as a spatio-temporal experience, and his extension of the artwork to include the interstice between the viewer and the artwork was an extremely important step for Minimalism. Brancusi is of interest mainly for his addressing of temporality as a sculptural concern, and the relationship of material to place. 11 His early use of assemblage, as a method of drawing with materials in space, facilitated not only the Minimalists but also modern sculpture at large. A section of the study is devoted to the sculpture of Richard Serra and the idea of critical distance, something that he shares with Newman. This intellectual attitude aids Serra in his declaration of the space of sculpture as parallel to, and critical of, its context. The work of Robert Smithson is examined in the light of site-specificity and ubiety, and, in particular, his use of symbols as structural prompts. Smithson's dystopian Futurism is examined as a significant way of helping to draw the distinction between his intellectual position and that of a Vitalist. The study concludes with a consideration of contextualization in general, and of Maya Lin's site-specific memorial to the causalities of the Vietnam War. What has emerged from this study is that precinctual space was firmly re-established in contemporary sculptural practice by the Minimalist sculptors. I have used the term ubiety to describe the re-emphasis, and re-emergent awareness, of place as an interstitial space that was associated with the Minimalists. Ubiety is understood to be the condition of being in a particular place, and comes from the Latin 'where'. In contrast, ubiquity is the condition of being everywhere. In the light of ubiety, sculpture, particularly site-specific sculpture, is discussed and understood as a spatio-temporal event. 111 Acknowledgements. I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to Dr. A.J. Spencer of the British Museum's Department of Egyptian Antiquities for his assistance on the matter of sacred trees. I also wish to thank Richard Shiff of the University of Texas at Austin, for making available to me his lecture notes on "Newman's Time". Mordecai Schreiber, of Schreiber Translations and Publishing, Washington DC, provided the explanation of Tsim Tsum, for which I was very grateful. David Gissen supplied some valuable information on the history of the Vietnam War Memorial. James and Shirley Marten's Scholarship, from the University of Leeds, that allowed me to do some invaluable work on Vitalism in the Archives of American Art, Washington DC, and to the librarians at the AAA who were most generous in making suggestions about additional material, and extremely patient. Stanley Mitchell who provided support and advice at key moments. Meaghan Morris, and the old General Philosophy Department at the University of Sydney, Henry Moore, Robert Smithson and Richard Serra, who planted many seeds for this study. Fred Orton who provided constant guidance and was extremely generous with his time and comments. Finally to Lynn Silverman who suggested the idea in the first place. IV Table of contents: Abstract. i-ii Acknowledgements. iii Table of contents. iv 1. Introduction. 1-8 2. Artifice and Vitalism. a. Artifice. Of the factitious and the fetish. 9-30 b. Vitalist Abstraction. 31-44 c. Theatricality. 45-58 d. Chance is a fine thing. 59-64 3. Precursors to Minimalism. a. The sensation of time 65-83 b. Reference 84-96 c. Alterity 97-117 4. Critical Distance. 118-134 5. Resolute abstraction. 135-165 6. Conclusion: Minimalist sculpture as a consequence 166-177 of artifice, and some paragraphs on Maya Lin's Vietnam Memorial. 7. List of illustrations. 178 8. Illustrations. 179-188 9. Bibliography. 189-204 1 1. Introduction. 1. My second memorable encounter with Minimalist sculpture took place in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, in 1972. This account of Minimalist sculpture and the role of artifice is an attempt to clarify why that second encounter was so disquieting, and to square that experience with my earlier introduction to Minimalist sculpture. That earlier introduction had been so positive that I was prompted to leave Britain in order to study sculpture in the United States. The Don Judd exhibition, at the VVhitechapel Art Gallery in 1970, had introduced me to Minimal art and left me with an overwhelming sense of space as the continuum for both the sculpture and the viewer. As far as I was concerned, despite contemporary comments to the contrary, Judd's "empty boxes" were not empty but significantly full. The intervallic space that was bracketed by the sculpture belonged to a larger volume of space, which continued beyond the sculpture, and bracketed it in turn. Untitled, 1969, from the Sonnabend collection in Paris consisted of identical modular units that spanned the height of the wall in the VVhitechapel Gallery. The architecture of the gallery, and therefore the architecture of any gallery in which it was exhibited, was implicated in and as part of this work, an implication that expanded the artwork by means of the viewer's own motility. If peripheral vision invited a turn of the head, then a turn of the head led to a shift of position. The floor and the wall became planes that functioned as coordinates for the mobile human agent. The spatio-temporality of that agent located itself, in turn, as a consequence of the artwork being recognized as situational. A physical relationship was established between the inert materiality of the situated objects and the physicality of the viewer. Such a self-reflexive awareness on the part of the viewer of his active presence materialized the space between object and viewer. This relationship acknowledged the active viewer as both perceptual agent and as a compositional element in the situation. The viewer became an integrated and integral part of the material situation, and because of this was required to fill not only the physical spaces provided by the artwork but to account for those spaces intellectually. In marked contrast, the experience of one of John McCracken's sculptures, Red Plank, 1966, in Ohio was flawed. The reason for the discrepancy was immediately apparent but difficult to explain. McCracken's Red Plank leaned against the wall as it was always intended to, but it did not stand on the floor. It was exhibited on a base or low plinth (see illustration 1 on page 179). That institutional device common to conventional sculptural presentation adversely affected my perception of the sculpture. It disrupted the continuum of space between the surface of the sculpture and me.