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Home , Conceptual art, Concrete Art, Kazimir Malevich, Morris Louis

CSJM UNIVERSITY,KANPUR 2019-20

e-content( Glossology)

(HISTORY OF MODERN WESTERN ART) For M.F.A. (GROUP A,B,C&D)

-by Raj Kumar Singh(Faculty)

Non-objective art

Non-objective art defines a type of that is usually, but not always, geometric and aims to convey a sense of simplicity and purity

The Russian constructivist painters and Kasimir Malevich and the sculptor Naum Gabo were pioneers of non-objective art. It and was inspired by the Greek philosopher Plato who believed that geometry was the highest form of beauty.

Wassily Kandinsky swinging 1925 , Naum Gabo construction in space: diagonal 1921-5,kazimir malevich dynamic supermatism 1915-16

Non-objective art may attempt to visualise the spiritual and can be seen as carrying a moral dimension, standing for virtues like purity and simplicity. In the 1960s a group of American , including Sol LeWitt and , embraced the philosophy of non-objective art. By creating highly simplified geometric art out of industrial materials they elevated these to an aesthetic level. Their work became known as minimal art.

Minimalism

Minimalism is an extreme form of abstract art developed in the USA in the 1960s and typified by artworks composed of simple geometric shapes based on the square and the rectangle

Robert Morris Untitled 1965, reconstructed 1971 Tate © ARS, NY and DACS, 2020

Minimalism or minimalist art can be seen as extending the abstract idea that art should have its own reality and not be an imitation of some other thing. We usually think of art as representing an aspect of the real world (a landscape, a person, or even a tin of soup!); or reflecting an experience such as an emotion or feeling. With minimalism, no attempt is made to represent an outside reality, the wants the viewer to respond only to what is in front of them. The medium , (or material) from which it is made, and the form of the work is the reality. Minimalist painter famously said about his ‘What you see is what you see’.

The development of minimalism

Minimalism emerged in the late 1950s when artists such as Frank Stella, whose Black Paintings were exhibited at the Museum of in New York in 1959, began to turn away from the gestural art of the previous generation. It flourished in the 1960s and 1970s with Carl Andre, , Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, and Robert Morris becoming the movement’s most important innovators.

The development of minimalism is linked to that of conceptual art (which also flourished in the 1960s and 1970s). Both movements challenged the existing structures for making, disseminating and viewing art and argued that the importance given to the art object is misplaced and leads to a rigid and elitist which only the privileged few can afford to enjoy

Qualities of minimalist art

Aesthetically, minimalist art offers a highly purified form of beauty. It can also be seen as representing such qualities as truth (because it does not pretend to be anything other than what it is), order, simplicity and harmony.

Read the image captions of the artworks below to find out about some of the key qualities of minimalist art:

Sol LeWitt Two Open Modular Cubes/Half-Off 1972 Tate © The estate of Sol LeWitt Geometric single or repeated forms: Minimalism is characterised by single or repeated geometric forms (see Tate Glossary definition for 'modular'). It is usually three-dimensional, taking the form of or installation, though there are a number of minimalist painters as well such as Agnes Martin and Frank Stella

Donald Judd Untitled 1972 Tate © Donald Judd Foundation/VAGA, New York and DACS, London 2020

Deliberate lack of expression: With no trace of emotion or intuitive decision making, little about the artist is revealed in the work. Minimalist artists rejected the notion of the artwork as a unique creation reflecting the personal expression of a gifted individual, seeing this as a distraction from the art object itself. Instead they created objects that were as impersonal and neutral as possible.

Frank Stella Hyena Stomp 1962 Tate © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2020

Self-referential: Minimalist art does not refer to anything beyond its literal presence. The materials used are not worked to suggest something else; colour (if used) is also non-referential, i.e if a dark colour is used, this does not mean the artist is trying to suggest a sombre mood.

Carl Andre 144 Magnesium Square 1969 Tate © Carl Andre/VAGA, New York and DACS, London 2020

Factory-manufactured or shop-bought materials: Carl Andre frequently used bricks or tiles as the medium for his sculpture; Dan Flavin created his works from fluorescent bulbs purchased from a hardware store; Judd's are built by skilled workers following the artist's instructions

Carl Andre Last Ladder 1959 Tate © Carl Andre/VAGA, New York and DACS, London 2020

Space-aware: Carl Andre said 'I'm not a studio artist, I'm a location artist'. Minimalist art directly engages with the space it occupies. The sculpture is carefully arranged to emphasise and reveal the architecture of the gallery, often being presented on walls, in corners, or directly onto the floor, encouraging the viewer to be conscious of the space

Minimalism and early abstraction

Although radical, and rejecting many of the concerns of the immediately preceding abstract expressionist movement, earlier abstract movements were an important influence on the ideas and techniques of minimalism. In 1962 the first English-language book about the Russian avant-garde, ’s The Great Experiment in Art: 1863-1922, was published. With this publication, the concerns of the Russian constuctivist and suprematist movements of the and 1920s, such as the reduction of artworks to their essential structure and use of factory production techniques, became more widely understood – and clearly inspired minimalist sculptors. Dan Flavin produced a series of works entitled Homages to (begun in 1964); Robert Morris alluded to Tatlin and Rodchenko in his Notes on Sculpture; and Donald Judd’s essays on Malevich and his contemporaries, revealed his fascination with this avant-garde legacy.

Neo-plasticism

Neo-plasticism is a term adopted by the Dutch pioneer of abstract art, , for his own type of abstract which used only horizontal and vertical lines and primary colours

Bart van der Leck Composition 1918 Tate © DACS, 2020

Theo van Doesburg Counter-Composition VI 1925 Tate

Piet Mondrian The Tree A c.1913 From the Dutch ‘de nieuwe beelding’, neo-plasticism basically means new art (painting and sculpture are plastic ). It is also applied to the work of the circle of artists, at least up to Mondrian’s from the group in 1923.

In the first eleven issues of the journal De Stijl, Piet Mondrian published his long essay Neo-Plasticism in Pictorial Art in which among much else he wrote:

As a pure of the human mind, art will express itself in an aesthetically purified, that is to say, abstract form. The new plastic idea cannot therefore, take the form of a natural or concrete representation – this new plastic idea will ignore the particulars of appearance, that is to say, natural form and colour. On the contrary it should find its expression in the abstraction of form and colour, that is to say, in the straight line and the clearly defined primary colour.

Neo-plasticism was in fact an ideal art in which the basic elements of painting – colour, line form – were used only in their purest, most fundamental state: only primary colours and non-colours, only squares and rectangles, only straight and horizontal or vertical lines. Mondrian had a profound influence on subsequent art and is now seen as one of the greatest of all modern artists.

Abstract

Abstract expressionism is the term applied to new forms of abstract art developed by American painters such as , and in the 1940s and 1950s. It is often characterised by gestural brush-strokes or mark-making, and the impression of spontaneity

Jackson Pollock Yellow Islands 1952 Tate © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2020

Introduction

The abstract expressionists were mostly based in , and also became known as the New York school. The name evokes their aim to make art that while abstract was also expressive or emotional in its effect. They were inspired by the surrealist idea that art should come from the unconscious mind, and by the automatism of artist Joan Miró.

Willem de Kooning The Visit 1966–7 Tate © Willem de Kooning Revocable Trust/ARS, NY and DACS, London 2020

Mark Rothko Black on Maroon 1958 Tate © Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko/DACS 2020

TYPES OF

Within abstract expressionism were two broad groupings: the so-called action painters, who attacked their with expressive brush strokes; and the colour field painters who filled their canvases with large areas of a single colour.

 The action painters were led by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, who worked in a spontaneous improvisatory manner often using large brushes to make sweeping gestural marks. Pollock famously placed his on the ground and danced around it pouring paint from the can or trailing it from the brush or a stick. In this way the action painters directly placed their inner impulses onto the canvas.  The second grouping included Mark Rothko, and . They were deeply interested in religion and myth and created simple compositions with large areas of colour intended to produce a contemplative or meditational response in the viewer. In an essay written in 1948 Barnett Newmann said: 'Instead of making cathedrals out of Christ, man, or ‘'life'’, we are making it out of ourselves, out of our own feelings'. This approach to painting developed from around 1960 into what became known as colour field painting, characterised by artists using large areas of more or less a single flat colour. Abstract art

Abstract art is art that does not attempt to represent an accurate depiction of a visual reality but instead use shapes, colours, forms and gestural marks to achieve its effect

Wassily Kandinsky Cossacks 1910–1 Tate Strictly speaking, the word abstract means to separate or withdraw something from something else.

The term can be applied to art that is based an object, figure or landscape, where forms have been simplified or schematised.

It is also applied to art that uses forms, such as geometric shapes or gestural marks, which have no source at all in an external visual reality. Some artists of this ‘pure’ abstraction have preferred terms such as concrete art or non-objective art, but in practice the word abstract is used across the board and the distinction between the two is not always obvious.

Abstract art is often seen as carrying a moral dimension, in that it can be seen to stand for virtues such as order, purity, simplicity and spirituality.

Since the early , abstract art has formed a central stream of modern art.

Abstraction across a century

Wassily Kandinsky Cossacks 1910–1 Tate Expressionism (early twentieth century): Expressionist artworks involved highly intense colour and non- naturalistic brushwork, often based on the artist’s inner feelings. Kandinsky saw his abstract paintings as an alternative pathway to spiritual reality.

Juan Gris Bottle of Rum and Newspaper 1913–14 Tate

Cubism (from 1907/8): Cubist artworks always began with a subject from reality (often objects and figures), with its elements then broken down into distinct areas or planes, showing different viewpoints at the same time. directly influenced other forms of abstraction including , neo- plasticism and .

Sonia Delaunay Electric Prisms 1913

Orphism (1912–13): Coined by the French poet and Guillaume Apollinaire. The name comes from the musician Orpheus in ancient Greek myths, as Apollinaire thought that painting should be like music. Main artists and also used the term simultanism to describe their work of this period.

Kazimir Malevich Dynamic 1915 or 1916 Tate

Suprematism (1913): Malevich created a new form of abstraction in order to free art from the real world. As well as the ‘suprematist square,' Malevich developed a whole range of forms often produced in intense colours floating against a usually white ground.

Naum Gabo for ‘Construction in Space ‘Two Cones’’ 1927 Tate The Work of Naum Gabo © Nina & Graham Williams / Tate, 2020 Constructivism (c.1917): Developed by the Russian avant-garde, the constructivists were influenced by the cubist three-dimensional abstract still lifes made from scrap materials. The constructivists made their own constructions made from industrial materials to reflect the dynamism of the modern world.

Theo van Doesburg Counter-Composition VI 1925 Tate

De Stijl / Neo-plasticism (c.1919): The movement, which aimed to create paintings in their ‘purest state’, was a direct response to the chaos of World War I. Only primary colours and non-colours were used in the form of squares, rectangles, straight, horizontal or vertical lines in order to stick to the core elements of painting: colour, line and form.

Joan Miró Painting 1927 Tate © Succession Miro/ADAGP, and DACS, London 2020

Automatism (c.1920): Inspired by Freud’s idea of free association (the desire to reveal the unconscious mind), artists such as Joan Miro and created automatic paintings. This free way of creating art led to simplified organic shapes, which Miro developed into his own personal sign language.

Jackson Pollock Yellow Islands 1952 Tate © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2020

Action painting (1940–1950s): The action painter abstract expressionists were directly influenced by automatism. Pollock channelled this into producing gestural, improvised ‘drip paintings’ by placing his canvas on the ground and pouring paint onto it from the can or trailing it from the brush or a stick.

Mark Rothko Red on Maroon 1959 Tate © Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko/DACS 2020

Colour field painting (1940–1950s): Another form of abstract expressionism, the colour field painters produced simple compositions made out of large soft-edged areas of colour with no obvious focus of attention, with the aim of producing a meditational response in the viewer.

Morris Louis Alpha-Phi 1961 Tate © The estate of Morris Louis

Post-painterly abstraction (1950s): This form of abstraction focused more than ever before on the basic elements of painting: form, colour, texture, scale, composition and were ruthless in their rejection of mysticism and of any reference to the external world.

Frank Stella Hyena Stomp 1962 Tate © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2020 Hard edge painting (1960s): Seen as a subdivision of post-painterly abstraction this style of hard-edged reacted to the more gestural forms of abstract expressionism by only using monochromatic fields of clean-edged colour which reinforced the of the picture surface.

Victor Vasarely Banya 1964 Tate © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2020

Op art (1960s): Seen as a subdivision of post-painterly abstraction this style of hard-edged geometric abstraction reacted to the more gestural forms of abstract expressionism by only using monochromatic fields of clean-edged colour which reinforced the flatness of the picture surface.

Cubist and fauvist artists depended on the visual world for their subject matter but opened the door for more extreme approaches to abstraction. Pioneers of ‘pure’ abstract painting were Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian from about 1910–20. A pioneer of abstract sculpture, which took reference from the modern world was the Russian constructivist Naum Gabo. De Stijl

De Stijl was a circle of Dutch abstract artists who promoted a style of art based on a strict geometry of horizontals and verticals

Piet Mondrian Composition B (No.II) with Red 1935 Tate

Originally a publication, De Stijl was founded in 1917 by two pioneers of abstract art, Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg. De Stijl means style in Dutch. The magazine De Stijl became a vehicle for Mondrian’s ideas on art, and in a series of articles in the first year’s issues he defined his aims and used, perhaps for the first time, the term neo-plasticism. This became the name for the type of abstract art he and the De Stijl circle practised.

Other members of the group included Bart van der Leck, Vantongerloo and Vordemberge-Gildewart, as well as the architects Gerrit Rietveld and JJP Oud. Mondrian withdrew from De Stijl in 1923 following Van Doesburg’s adoption of diagonal elements in his work. Van Doesburg continued the publication until 1931.

De Stijl had a profound influence on the development both of abstract art and and design. Gestural

Gestural is a term used to describe the application of paint in free sweeping gestures with a brush

Hans Hofmann Nulli Secundus 1964 Tate © The estate of Hans Hofmann

The term originally came into use to describe the painting of the abstract expressionist artists Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, , Hans Hofmann and others (also referred to as action painters). In Pollock’s case the brush might be a dried one, or a stick, dipped in the paint and trailed over the canvas. He also poured direct from the can. The idea was that the artist would physically act out his inner impulses, and that something of his emotion or state of mind would be read by the viewer in the resulting paint marks. De Kooning wrote: ‘I paint this way because I can keep putting more and more things into it – drama, anger, pain, love – through your eyes it again becomes an emotion or an idea.’

This approach to painting has its origins in expressionism and automatism (especially the painting of Joan Miró). In his 1970 history, Abstract Expressionism, Irvine Sandler distinguished two branches of the movement, the ‘gesture painters’ and the ‘colour field’ painters.

The term gestural has come to be applied to any painting done in this way. Automatism

In art, automatism refers to creating art without conscious thought, accessing material from the unconscious mind as part of the creative process

Max Ernst Forest and Dove 1927 Tate © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2020

Automatism as a term is borrowed from physiology, where it describes bodily movements that are not consciously controlled like breathing or sleepwalking. Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud used free association and automatic or writing to explore the unconscious mind of his patients.

Freud’s ideas strongly influenced French poet André Breton who launched the surrealist movement in 1924 with the publication of the Manifesto of . In the manifesto, Breton defined surrealism as ‘Pure psychic automatism ... the dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason and outside all moral or aesthetic concerns’.

Breton and others produced the earliest examples of automatism in their automatic writings, aiming to write as rapidly as possible without intervening consciously to guide the hand.

Surrealist , putting together images clipped from magazines, product catalogues, book illustrations and other sources, was invented by Max Ernst, and was the first form of automatism in visual art. Ernst also used frottage (rubbing) and grattage (scraping) to create chance textures within his work. Various forms of automatic drawing and painting were developed by artists such as Joan Miro, Andre Masson as well as Ernst.

Later automatism played some part in the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and others and was an important element in the European movements of art informel and arte nucleare.

While the term automatism is specifically associated with twentieth-century artists, and particularly Surrealism, earlier artists such as Alexander Cozens used some elements of chance to create works, while others reportedly tapped into visionary or trance states. Colour field painting

The term colour field painting is applied to the work of abstract painters working in the 1950s and 1960s characterised by large areas of a more or less flat single colour

Morris Louis Alpha-Phi 1961 Tate © The estate of Morris Louis

The term was originally applied to the work from about 1950 of three American abstract expressionist painters Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still. ‘The colour field painters’ was the title of the chapter dealing with these artists in the American scholar Irvine Sandler’s ground-breaking history, Abstract Expressionism, published in 1970.

From around 1960 a more purely abstract form of colour field painting emerged in the work of , Morris Louis, , , and others. It differed from abstract expressionism in that these artists eliminated both the emotional, mythic or religious content of the earlier movement, and the highly personal and painterly or gestural application associated with it. In 1964 an exhibition of thirty-one artists associated with this development was organised by the critic at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He titled it Post-Painterly Abstraction, a term often also used to describe the work of the 1960 generation and their successors.

In Britain there was a major development of colour field painting in the 1960s in the work of Robyn Denny, John Hoyland, Richard Smith and others.

Surrealism

A twentieth-century literary, philosophical and artistic movement that explored the workings of the mind, championing the irrational, the poetic and the revolutionary

Salvador Dalí Metamorphosis of Narcissus 1937 Tate © Salvador Dali, Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation/DACS, London 2020

Surrealism aimed to revolutionise human experience, rejecting a rational vision of life in favour of one that asserted the value of the unconscious and dreams. The movement’s poets and artists found magic and strange beauty in the unexpected and the uncanny, the disregarded and the unconventional.

The word ‘surrealist’ (suggesting ‘beyond reality’) was coined by the French avant-garde poet Guillaume Apollinaire in a play written in 1903 and performed in 1917. But it was André Breton, leader of a new grouping of poets and artists in Paris, who, in his Surrealist Manifesto (1924), defined surrealism as: pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.

Many surrealist artists used automatic drawing or writing to unlock ideas and images from their unconscious minds, and others sought to depict dream worlds or hidden psychological tensions.

Attractive to writers, artists, photographers and filmmakers from around the world who shared this aggressive rejection of conventional artistic and moral values, surrealism quickly became an international movement. It exerted enormous impact on the cultural life of many countries in the interwar years and later.

Many argue that surrealism, as an identifiable , ended with the death of Breton in 1966. Others believe that it remains a vital and relevant force today.

While ‘surreal’ is often used loosely to mean simply ‘strange’ or ‘dreamlike’, it is not to be confused with ‘surrealist’ which describes a substantial connection with the philosophy and manifestations of the surrealist movement.

Art deco is a design style from the 1920s and 1930s in furniture, decorative arts and architecture characterised by its geometric character

Eric Gill The East Wind 1929 Tate

Named after the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts held in Paris in 1925, art deco can be seen as successor to and a reaction against . Seen in furniture, pottery, textiles, jewellery, glass etc. it was also a notable style of cinema and hotel architecture.

Its chief difference from art nouveau is the influence of cubism which gives art deco design generally a more fragmented, geometric character. However, imagery based on plant forms, and sinuous curves remained in some art deco design, for example that of Clarice Cliff in Britain. Art deco washighly varied in its influences, taking inspiration from ancient Egyptian art, Aztec and other ancient Central American art, as well as from the design of modern ships, trains and motor cars. It also drew on the modern architecture and design of the , and of architects such as Le Corbusier and Mies van de Rohe.

Art nouveau

Art nouveau is an international style in architecture and design that emerged in the 1890s and is characterised by sinuous lines and flowing organic shapes based on plant forms

Aubrey Beardsley Design for the Frontispiece to John Davidson’s Plays 1894 Tate

This complex international style in architecture and design was parallel to in . Developed through the 1890s it was brought to a wider audience by the 1900 Exposition Universelle.

In Britain, Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s designs exemplify the style, but in his work its characteristic flowing lines and organic shapes are seen within severe but eccentric geometry. Key examples of Art Nouveau are Paris Metro station entrances by Guimard; Tiffany glass; chair designs by Charles Rennie Mackinstish and his Glasgow School of Art; and the book designs of Aubrey Beardsley, Charles Ricketts and followers such as Arthur Rackham.

Art nouveau flourished in the first decades of the twentieth century but was killed off by the First World War The uncanny

A in art associated with psychologist Sigmund Freud which describes a strange and anxious feeling sometimes created by familiar objects in unfamilar contexts

Man Ray Cadeau 1921, editioned replica 1972 Tate © Trust/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2020

The term was first used by German psychiatrist Ernst Jentsch in his essay On the Psychology of the Uncanny, 1906. Jentsch describes the uncanny – in German ‘unheimlich’ (unhomely) – as something new and unknown that can often be seen as negative at first.

Sigmund Freud's essay The Uncanny (1919) however repositioned the idea as the instance when something can be familiar and yet alien at the same time. He suggested that ‘unheimlich’ was specifically in opposition to ‘heimlich’, which can mean homely and familiar but also secret and concealed or private. ‘Unheimlich’ therefore was not just unknown, but also, he argued, bringing out something that was hidden or repressed. He called it 'that class of frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar.'

Artists, including some associated with the surrealist movement drew on this description and made artworks that combined familiar things in unexpected ways to create uncanny feelings.

Now, the term 'uncanny valley' is also applied to artworks and animation or video games that that reproduce places and people so closely that they create a similar eerie feeling. Concrete art

Concrete art is abstract art that is entirely free of any basis in observed reality and that has no symbolic meaning

Theo van Doesburg Counter-Composition VI 1925 Tate

The term was introduced by artist Theo van Doesburg in his 1930 Manifesto of Concrete Art. The manifesto was published in the first and only issue of the magazine . He stated that there was nothing more concrete or more real than a line, a colour, or a plane (a flat area of colour).

The Swiss artist later became the flag bearer for concrete art organising the first international exhibition in Basle in 1944. He stated that the aim of concrete art is to create ‘in a visible and tangible form things which did not previously exist – to represent abstract thoughts in a sensuous and tangible form’.

There is a museum of constructive and concrete art in Zurich, Switzerland.

Futurism

12 June – 20 September 2009

Futurism was an launched by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909. On 20 February he published his on the front page of the Paris newspaper Le Figaro. That moment saw the birth of the Futurists, a small group of radical Italian artists working just before the outbreak of the First World War. Among modernist movements, the Futurists rejected anything old and looked towards a new Italy. This was partly because the weight of past culture in Italy was felt as particularly oppressive. In his Manifesto, Marinetti asserted 'we will free Italy from her innumerable museums which cover her like countless cemeteries.'

Luigi Russolo The Revolt 1911 abstracted figures pulling chevron shapes with grid-like patterns behind

What the Futurists proposed instead was an art that celebrated the modern world of industry and technology: 'We declare … a new beauty, the beauty of speed. A racing motor car … is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace' (the celebrated ancient Greek sculpture in the Louvre museum in Paris). From an original blend of elements of Neo- and Cubism, the Futurists created a new style that expressed the idea of the dynamism, energy and movement of modern life. The chief artists were , , , and .

Tate Modern celebrates the centenary of this dramatic art movement with a ground-breaking exhibition. Here you'll see the work of the Futurists accompanied by rooms looking at art movements reacting to Futurism, including Cubism, the British art movement , and Russian Cubo-Futurism.

Highlights include Boccioni's dynamic bronze sculpture of a man which seems to leap through thin air, Picasso's of a Woman, Nevinson's Vorticist masterpiece Bursting Shell, and works by major artists such as Braque, Leger, Malevich, and Duchamp.

The term process art refers to where the process of its making art is not hidden but remains a prominent aspect of the completed work, so that a part or even the whole of its subject is the making of the work

Process became a widespread preoccupation of artists in the late 1960s and the 1970s, but like so much else can be tracked back to the abstract expressionist paintings of Jackson Pollock. In these the successive layers of dripped and poured paint can be identified and the actions of the artist in making the work can be to some extent reconstructed. The later colour field paintings of Morris Louis clearly reveal his process of pouring the paint onto the canvas.

In process art too there is an emphasis on the results on particular materials of carrying out the process determined by the artist. In Louis again, the forms are the result of the interaction of artist’s action, the type and viscosity of the paint, and the type and absorbency of the canvas. made work by throwing molten lead into the corners of a room. Robert Morris made long cuts into lengths of felt and then hung them on a nail or placed them on the floor, allowing them to take on whatever configurations were dictated by the interaction of the innate properties of the felt, the artist’s action and gravity.

The British painter Bernard Cohen made paintings by establishing a set process for the work and then carrying it through until the canvas was full. John Hilliard’s photographic work Camera Recording its Own Condition of 1971 is a particularly pure example of process art, as is Michael Craig-Martin’s 4 Complete Clipboard Sets.