ANN GOLDSTEIN Essays by DIEDRICH DIEDERICHSEN, JONATHAN FLATLEY, CARRIE LAMBERT, LUCY R. LIPPARD, JAMES MEYER, and ANNE RORIMER \\A MINIMAL FUTU RE?" ART AS OBJECT 1958-1968 The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England This publication accompanies the Director of Publications: Lisa Mark Library of Congress exhibition "A Minimal Future? Editor: Ja ne Hyun Cataloging-in-Publication Data Art as Object 1958-1968," organized Assistant Editor: Elizabeth Hamilton by Ann Goldstein and presented Designers: Lorraine Wild A minimal future? : art as object at The Museum of Contemporary Art, with Robert Ruehlman and Stuart Smith 1958-1968/ organized by Ann Goldstein; Los Angeles, 14 March-2 August 2004. Printer: Dr. Cantz'sche Druckerei. introduction by Ann Goldstein; essays Ostftldem-Ruit. Germany by Diedrich Dtederichsen . let al.]. "A Minimal Future? Art as Object p. em. 1958-1968" is made possible by the sup- e 2004 The Museum of Contemporary Art, Exhibition organized by Ann Goldstein port of The Sydney Irmas Exhibition Los Angeles and presented at the Museum Endowment; Audrey M. Irmas: the Henry 250 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Luce Foundation; Maria Hummer and California 90012 March 14-August 2, 2004. Bob Tuttle; Genevieve and Ivan Reitman; Includes bibliographical references. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the All rights reserved. No part of this book ISBN 0-262-07251-3 (he: alk. paper)- Visual Arts; the National Endowment may be reproduced in any form ISBN 0-914357-87-5 (softcover) for the Arts; Bank Julius Bar; Kwon by any electronic or mechanical means 1. Minimal art-Exhibitions. 2. Art, Family Foundation; The Jamie and Steve (including photocopying, recording, American-20th Century-Exhibitions. Tisch Foundation; The MOCAProjects and information storage or retrieval) I. Goldstein, Ann. 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Printed and bound in Germany JUL02 '01 Promotional support is provided by KJAZZ88.1 FM. front cover: cover of Arts Magazine, frontispiece: larry Bell, Ghost Box, IftIles Iu-nd March 1967 1962-63 MORE OR LESS MINIMALISM: SIX NOTES ON PERFORMANCE AN D VISUAL ART IN TH E 19605 CARRIE LAMBERT 1 LISTINGMINIMALISM TRISHA BROWN, LUCINOA CHILDS, SIMONE FORTI, DAVID GORDON, DEBORAH HAY, STEVE 1 Yvonne Rainer, interview with the author, New York, 23 February 2003. PAXTON, YVONNE RAINER: Is this a list of Minimalist artists? It would certainly be possible, even practical, to say "no." In the 1960s, while their visual-art counterparts were producing objects, these artists were staging performances. Most presented their work as part of the performance collabora- tive Judson Dance Theater, and their training was predominantly in dance and choreography, not painting or sculpture. They have a secure place as dance history's founding postmodernists, while generally receiving only passing discussion in the texts and exhibitions that have consolidated Minimal art as a movement. And they themselves resist being assimilated into a Minimalist taxon- omy: "I can no longer go along with being the token Minimalist dancing girl," Rainer insists.' Then again, the painters and sculptors whom art historians consider quintessential Minimalists also initially rejected the nomenclature. And the relationship between their visual art of the 1960s and the dancers' contemporaneous and similarly stripped-down works-where running and walking replace spins and leaps, and standing still or eating a pear are valid choreographic choices-has long troubled the history of Minimalism. As new histories are written and new exhibitions mounted, the questions return: should we add these dances to the critical edifice built up around Minimal paint- ing and sculpture of the 1960s? And would the structure hold if we did? Simone Forti Huddle, performance at Loeb Student Center, New York University, New York, 1969 Photo by Peter Moore, 0 Estate of Peter Moore / VAGA,NYC 2 PERFORMANCE:IN, OUTOF, AROUNO,ANO BEFORE There have been, roughly speaking, four approaches to the intersection of performance an, Minimalism. Intuiting that what mattered in Minimal visual art was less the object as such and mor the object as viewed by the beholder, some of its best critics-Michael Fried, Rosalind E. Krauss, an Annette Michelson, most influentially-have seen Minimalism as innately linked with performance The idea that a work's significance emerged from the situation of beholding rather than being imma 2 See Nichael Fried, "Art and Objecthood," in Mimmol Art: A Cnticol Anthology, ed. Gregory nent to the object itself caused Fried in 1967 to label the new art "theatrical." a development h aettccck (1968; reprint, Berkeley: University decried but Krauss and Michelson celebrated as an art-historical turning point. The result of this tur of California Press, 1995), 116-47. First published in Artforum 5, no. 10 (summer has been traced in different ways by writers such as Douglas Crimp and Nick Kaye, who find i 1967): 12-23; Annette Michelson, "Robert Minimalism's theatricality a source for the emphasis on performance and the performative, which the Morris: An Aesthetics of Transqres sion," in Robert Morris, exh. cat. (Washington, DL: see as fundamental to the art of the 1970s and 80s, from feminist body art to photographic apprc Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1969), 7-79; and priation.' This approach makes Minimalist theatricality the wellspring of the art that followed it. Rosalind E, Krauss, Passages in Modern Sculpture (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Aside from the fundamental difference of opinion between Fried on the one hand and Michelso Press, 1977), and Krauss on the other, a crucial distinction between their views on Minimalism is that the latte 3 See Douglas Crimp, "Pictures." October. were interested in not only the phenomenological situation described as theatrical but actual pel no. 8 (spring 1978): 75-88; and Nick Kaye, forma nee-based art as well. Michelson's elaboration of the temporality and embodiment of Minim' Postmodernism and Performance (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994). A different and art in sculpture, especially that of Robert Morris, was the product of her intense involvement dui subtler version of the argument, with Less ing the later 1960s not only with Morris's work but also with that of Rainer and other dancers. An emphasis on the concept of performance, is made by Hal Foster when he describes the Krauss, who acknowledged Michelson's importance for her own thinking on these issues, used Rainer way MinimaLism's"analysis of perception ... work and other performance-based examples in her influential explication of Minimalism in Passaq: prepared a further analysis of the conditions of perception" in feminist art and institutional in Modern Sculpture (1977). In this sense, Krauss and Michelson were also involved in a third ite critique in the later period. See Foster, "The Crux of Minimalism," in The Return of the Real: ation of performance and Minimalism's critical entwinement, the recognition of their shared aesthet The Avont-Gorde at the End of the Century concerns in the Minimalist moment. Early on, Barbara Rose gave special attention to the similar (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1996), 59. ties between recent avant-garde dance and the painting and sculpture she called "ABCArt" in a influential 1965 essay by that title,' but it was Rainer's "A Quasi Survey of Some 'Minimalis 4 Barbara Rose, "ABCArt:' in Minimal Art, 274-97. First published in Art in America 53, Tendencies in the Quantitatively Minimal Dance Activity Midst the Plethora, or an Analysis of Tr no. 5 (October-November 1965): 57-69. A," published in the movement-defining anthology Minimal Art, compiled by Gregory Battcock ! 5 Rainer, "A Quasi Survey of Same 'Minimalist' 1968, that did more than any other text to indicate the convergence of practices at that momen Tendencies in the Iluantitatively Minima! Dance Drawing in part on Rose's analysis of Minimal art, Rainer charted the parallels between recent objec Activity Midst the Plethora, or an Analysis of Trio A,~ written in 1966 and first published and dances-likening Minimalism's literalness, for instance, to the quotidian, task-like quality, in Minimal Art, 263-73. Rainer indicated the movement she sought in her dances, and comparing factory fabrication of objects to "enerr significance of Rose's essay for her formulations. interview with the author, 23 February 2003. equality and 'found' movement" in recent performance.' In large part because of this essay, Rainer is the dancer best known in art circles as part of tt 6 See, among many other significant works, Sally Banes, Democracy's Body: Judson Donce story of Minimalism (hence the "token dancing girl" problem). But, due in large part to the pil Theater, 1962-1964 (Durham, North Carolina: neering scholarship of dance historian Sally Banes, this situation has begun to change.' From Mauril Duke University Press, 1990). Berger's acknowledgment of the seriousness of Morris's involvement in dance; to Thomas Crov 7 Anna C. Chave. "Minimalism and Biography," recognition that key aspects of the emerging aesthetic were first developed by Judson artists; . Art Bulletin 82, no. 1 (March 2000): 142-63. Anna Chave's polemical insistence on re-centering female artists, including Rainer and Forti, in tl B See Forti's collection of dance descriptions story of Minimalism, art historians have begun to develop a fourth approach to the visual-art/pe and writings, Handbook in Motion (Halifax.