Editing Modernism (section)

=== Minimalism ===
[[File:IKB 191.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Yves Klein]], ''IKB 191'', 1962]]
{{Main|Minimalism|Minimal music||Postminimalism|20th-century Western painting}}

[[Minimalism]] describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and [[Minimal music|music]], wherein artists intend to expose the essence or identity of a subject through eliminating all nonessential forms, features, or concepts.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Tate |title=Minimalism |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/m/minimalism |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=Tate |language=en-GB}}</ref> Minimalism is any design or style wherein the simplest and fewest elements are used to create the maximum effect.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Frank |first=Stevie |date=May 4, 2021 |title=Minimalism in Architecture |url=https://stevie-frank.medium.com/minimalism-in-architecture-7cb9e1282010 |access-date=January 6, 2025 |website=Medium}}</ref>

As a specific movement in the arts, it is identified with developments in post–World War II Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with this movement include [[Donald Judd]], [[John McCracken (artist)|John McCracken]], [[Agnes Martin]], [[Dan Flavin]], [[Robert Morris (artist)|Robert Morris]], [[Ronald Bladen]], [[Anne Truitt]], and [[Frank Stella]].<ref>Christopher Want, "Minimalism" in ''Grove Art Online''. Oxford University Press, 2009.</ref> It derives from the reductive aspects of modernism and is often interpreted as a reaction against Abstract Expressionism and a bridge to [[Postminimalism|Post minimal]] art practices. By the early 1960s, minimalism emerged as an abstract movement in art (with roots in the [[geometric abstraction]] of [[Kazimir Malevich]],<ref>{{cite encyclopedia| url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/384056/minimalism| title=Minimalism| encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica| date=2 June 2023| access-date=23 June 2022| archive-date=4 May 2015| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150504190043/http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/384056/Minimalism| url-status=live}}</ref> the [[Bauhaus]] and [[Piet Mondrian]]) that rejected the idea of relational and subjective painting, the complexity of Abstract Expressionist surfaces, and the emotional zeitgeist and polemics present in the arena of [[action painting]]. Minimalism argued that extreme simplicity could capture all of the sublime representation needed in art. Minimalism is variously construed either as a precursor to postmodernism, or as a postmodern movement itself. In the latter perspective, early Minimalism yielded advanced modernist works, but the movement partially abandoned this direction when some artists like [[Robert Morris (artist)|Robert Morris]] changed direction in favor of the [[anti-form movement]].

[[Hal Foster (art critic)|Hal Foster]], in his essay ''The Crux of Minimalism'',<ref name="Hal Foster 1996, pp44-53">Hal Foster, ''The Return of the Real: The Avant-garde at the End of the Century'', MIT Press, 1996, pp. 44–53. {{ISBN|0-262-56107-7}}</ref> examines the extent to which Donald Judd and Robert Morris both acknowledge and exceed Greenbergian modernism in their published definitions of minimalism.<ref name="Hal Foster 1996, pp44-53"/> He argues that minimalism is not a "dead end" of modernism, but a "paradigm shift toward postmodern practices that continue to be elaborated today."<ref name="Hal Foster 1996, pp44-53"/>

====Minimal music====
The terms have expanded to encompass a movement in music that features such repetition and iteration as those of the compositions of [[La Monte Young]], [[Terry Riley]], [[Steve Reich]], [[Philip Glass]], and [[John Adams (composer)|John Adams]]. Minimalist compositions are sometimes known as [[systems music]]. The term 'minimal music' is generally used to describe a style of music that developed in America in the late 1960s and 1970s; and that was initially connected with the composers.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.melafoundation.org/theatre.pdf |title=Notes on The Theatre of Eternal Music and ''The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys'' |last=Young |first=La Monte |author-link=La Monte Young |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140331015833/http://www.melafoundation.org/theatre.pdf |archive-date=31 March 2014 |date=2000 |publisher=Mela Foundation}}</ref> The minimalism movement originally involved some composers, and other lesser known pioneers included [[Pauline Oliveros]], [[Phill Niblock]], and [[Richard Maxfield]]. In Europe, the music of [[Louis Andriessen]], [[Karel Goeyvaerts]], [[Michael Nyman]], [[Howard Skempton]], [[Eliane Radigue]], [[Gavin Bryars]], [[Steve Martland]], [[Henryk Górecki]], [[Arvo Pärt]] and [[John Tavener]].

==== Postminimalism ====
[[File:Spiral-jetty-from-rozel-point.png|thumb|left|Smithson's ''[[Spiral Jetty]]'' from atop Rozel Point, Utah, US, in mid-April 2005. Created in 1970, it still exists although it has often been submerged by the fluctuating lake level. It consists of some 65,00 [[ton]]s of [[basalt]], earth and salt.]]
In the late 1960s, [[Robert Pincus-Witten]]<ref name="Shakers, New York 2007"/> coined the term "[[postminimalism]]" to describe minimalist-derived art which had content and contextual overtones that minimalism rejected. The term was applied by Pincus-Witten to the work of [[Eva Hesse]], [[Keith Sonnier]], [[Richard Serra]] and new work by former minimalists [[Robert Smithson]], [[Robert Morris (artist)|Robert Morris]], [[Sol LeWitt]], [[Barry Le Va]], and others. Other minimalists, including [[Donald Judd]], [[Dan Flavin]], [[Carl Andre]], [[Agnes Martin]], [[John McCracken (artist)|John McCracken]] and others, continued to produce late modernist paintings and sculpture for the remainder of their careers.

Since then, many artists have embraced minimal or post-minimal styles, and the label "postmodern" has been attached to them.

====Collage, assemblage, installations====
{{Main|Collage|Assemblage (art)|Installation art}}
Related to Abstract Expressionism was the emergence of combining manufactured items with artist materials, moving away from previous conventions of painting and sculpture. The work of [[Robert Rauschenberg]] exemplifies this trend. His "combines" of the 1950s were forerunners of [[pop art]] and [[installation art]], and used assemblages of large physical objects, including stuffed animals, birds and commercial photographs. Rauschenberg, [[Jasper Johns]], [[Larry Rivers]], [[John Chamberlain (sculptor)|John Chamberlain]], [[Claes Oldenburg]], [[George Segal (artist)|George Segal]], [[Jim Dine]], and [[Edward Kienholz]] were among important pioneers of both abstraction and pop art. Creating new conventions of art-making, they made acceptable in serious contemporary art circles the radical inclusion in their works of unlikely materials. Another pioneer of collage was [[Joseph Cornell]], whose more intimately scaled works were seen as radical because of both his personal iconography and his use of [[found object]]s.

==== Neo-Dada ====
{{Main|Neo-Dada}}

In 1917, [[Marcel Duchamp]] submitted a [[urinal]] as a sculpture for the inaugural exhibition of the [[Society of Independent Artists]], which was to be staged at the [[Grand Central Palace]] in New York.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573/text-summary| title='Fountain', Marcel Duchamp: Summary – – Tate| work=Tate| access-date=4 June 2015| archive-date=28 August 2015| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150828144308/http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573/text-summary| url-status=live}}</ref> He professed his intent that people look at the urinal as if it were a work of art because he said it was a work of art. This urinal, named ''[[Fountain (Duchamp)|Fountain]]'' was signed with the pseudonym "R. Mutt". It is also an example of what Duchamp would later call "[[Readymades of Marcel Duchamp|readymades]]". This and Duchamp's other works are generally labelled as Dada. Duchamp can be seen as a precursor to conceptual art, other famous examples being [[John Cage]]'s ''[[4′33″]]'', which is four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence, and Rauschenberg's ''[[Erased de Kooning Drawing]]''. Many conceptual works take the position that art is the result of the viewer viewing an object or act as art, not of the intrinsic qualities of the work itself. In choosing "an ordinary article of life" and creating "a new thought for that object", Duchamp invited onlookers to view ''Fountain'' as a sculpture.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/blindman/2/05.htm| title=Blindman No. 2| access-date=4 June 2015| archive-date=1 June 2015| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150601102245/http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/blindman/2/05.htm| url-status=live}}</ref>

Marcel Duchamp famously gave up "art" in favor of [[chess]]. Avant-garde composer [[David Tudor]] created a piece, ''Reunion'' (1968), written jointly with Lowell Cross, that features a chess game in which each move triggers a lighting effect or projection. Duchamp and Cage played the game at the work's premier.<ref>{{Cite book |first1=Craig |last1=Owens |title=Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture |location=London and Berkeley [[University of California Press]] |date=1992 |pages=74–75}}</ref>

[[Steven Best]] and [[Douglas Kellner]] identify Rauschenberg and [[Jasper Johns]] as part of the transitional phase, influenced by Duchamp, between modernism and postmodernism. Both used images of ordinary objects, or the objects themselves, in their work, while retaining the abstraction and painterly gestures of high modernism.<ref>{{Cite book |first1=Steven |last1=Best |first2=Douglas |last2=Kellner |title=The Postmodern Turn |publisher=[[Guilford Press]] |date=1997 |page=174 |isbn=1-57230-221-6}}</ref>

==== Performance and happenings ====
{{Main|Performance art|Happening|Fluxus}}
During the late 1950s and 1960s artists with a wide range of interests began to push the boundaries of contemporary art. [[Yves Klein]] in France, [[Carolee Schneemann]], [[Yayoi Kusama]], [[Charlotte Moorman]] and [[Yoko Ono]] in New York City, and [[Joseph Beuys]], [[Wolf Vostell]] and [[Nam June Paik]] in Germany were pioneers of performance-based works of art. Groups like [[The Living Theatre]] with [[Julian Beck]] and [[Judith Malina]] collaborated with sculptors and painters to create environments, radically changing the relationship between audience and performer, especially in their piece ''Paradise Now''. The [[Judson Dance Theater]], located at the [[Judson Memorial Church]], New York; and the Judson dancers, notably [[Yvonne Rainer]], [[Trisha Brown]], [[Elaine Summers]], Sally Gross, Simonne Forti, [[Deborah Hay]], [[Lucinda Childs]], [[Steve Paxton]] and others; collaborated with artists [[Robert Morris (artist)|Robert Morris]], [[Robert Whitman]], [[John Cage]], [[Robert Rauschenberg]], and engineers like [[Billy Klüver]]. [[Park Place Gallery]] was a center for musical performances by electronic composers [[Steve Reich]], [[Philip Glass]], and other notable performance artists, including [[Joan Jonas]].

These performances were intended as works of a new art form combining sculpture, dance, and music or sound, often with audience participation. They were characterized by the reductive philosophies of Minimalism and the spontaneous improvisation and expressivity of Abstract Expressionism. Images of Schneemann's performances of pieces meant to create shock within the audience are occasionally used to illustrate these kinds of art, and she is often photographed while performing her piece ''Interior Scroll''. However, according to modernist philosophy surrounding performance art, it is cross-purposes to publish images of her performing this piece, for performance artists reject publication entirely: the performance itself is the medium. Thus, other media cannot illustrate performance art; performance is momentary, evanescent, and personal, not for capturing; representations of performance art in other media, whether by image, video, narrative or, otherwise, select certain points of view in space or time or otherwise involve the inherent limitations of each medium. The artists deny that recordings illustrate the medium of performance as art.

During the same period, various avant-garde artists created [[Happening]]s, mysterious and often spontaneous and unscripted gatherings of artists and their friends and relatives in various specified locations, often incorporating exercises in absurdity, physicality, costuming, spontaneous nudity, and various random or seemingly disconnected acts. Notable creators of happenings included [[Allan Kaprow]]—who first used the term in 1958,<ref name="Allan Kaprow|Chronology">{{cite web |url=http://members.chello.nl/j.seegers1/flux_files/kaprow_chronology.html |title=Fluxus & Happening&nbsp;– Allan Kaprow&nbsp;– Chronology |access-date=4 May 2010 |archive-date=8 June 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100608100416/http://members.chello.nl/j.seegers1/flux_files/kaprow_chronology.html |url-status=dead}}</ref> [[Claes Oldenburg]], [[Jim Dine]], [[Red Grooms]], and [[Robert Whitman]].<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/arts/design/13fink.html |work=[[The New York Times]] |title=Happenings Are Happening Again |first=Jori |last=Finkel |date=13 April 2008 |access-date=23 April 2010 |archive-date=9 May 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130509112603/http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/arts/design/13fink.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

==== Intermedia, multi-media ====
{{main|Intermedia}}

Another trend in art which has been associated with the term postmodern is the use of a number of different media together. [[Intermedia]] is a term coined by [[Dick Higgins]] and meant to convey new art forms along the lines of [[Fluxus]], [[concrete poetry]], [[found objects]], performance art, and [[computer art]]. Higgins was the publisher of the [[Something Else Press]], a concrete poet married to artist [[Alison Knowles]] and an admirer of [[Marcel Duchamp]]. [[Ihab Hassan]] includes "Intermedia, the fusion of forms, the confusion of realms," in his list of the characteristics of [[postmodern art]].<ref>{{cite book |first=Ihab |last=Hassan |editor-first=Lawrence E. |editor-last=Cahoone |title=From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology |publisher=[[Blackwell Publishing]] |date=2003 |page=13 |isbn=0-631-23213-3}}</ref> One of the most common forms of "multi-media art" is the use of video-tape and CRT monitors, termed [[video art]]. While the theory of combining multiple arts into one art is quite old, and has been revived periodically, the postmodern manifestation is often in combination with performance art, where the dramatic subtext is removed, and what is left is the specific statements of the artist in question or the conceptual statement of their action.

==== Fluxus ====
{{Main|Fluxus}}

Fluxus was named and loosely organized in 1962 by [[George Maciunas]] (1931–1978), a Lithuanian-born American artist. Fluxus traces its beginnings to [[John Cage]]'s 1957 to 1959 Experimental Composition classes at [[The New School for Social Research]] in New York City. Many of his students were artists working in other media with little or no background in music. Cage's students included Fluxus founding members [[Jackson Mac Low]], [[Al Hansen]], [[George Brecht]] and [[Dick Higgins]].

Fluxus encouraged a do-it-yourself aesthetic and valued simplicity over complexity. Like [[Dada]] before it, Fluxus included a strong current of anti-commercialism and an [[anti-art]] sensibility, disparaging the conventional market-driven art world in favor of an artist-centered creative practice. Fluxus artists preferred to work with whatever materials were at hand, and either created their own work or collaborated in the creation process with their colleagues.

[[Andreas Huyssen]] criticizes attempts to claim Fluxus for postmodernism as "either the master-code of postmodernism or the ultimately unrepresentable art movement—as it were, postmodernism's sublime."<ref name="Huyssen">Andreas Huyssen, ''Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia'', Routledge, 1995. p. 192. {{ISBN|0-415-90934-1}}</ref> Instead he sees Fluxus as a major [[Neo-Dada]]ist phenomenon within the avant-garde tradition. It did not represent a major advance in the development of artistic strategies, though it did express a rebellion against "the administered culture of the 1950s, in which a moderate, domesticated modernism served as ideological prop to the [[Cold War]]."<ref name="Huyssen" />