- Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972Our PickBy Lucy Lippard
- Postminimalism into Maximalism: American Art 1966-1989By Robert Pincus-Witten
- PostminimalismOur PickBy Robert Pincus-Witten
- Body Art/Performing the SubjectBy Amelia Jones / History and Analysis of Post-Minimalist Performance Art and Body Art
- Land ArtBy Michael Lailach, Uta Grosenick / Overview of Post-Minimalist Land Art
- Blurring the Boundaries: Installation Art 1969-1996By Hugh Davies, Lynda Forsha, Ronald Onorato / Discussion of Post-Minimalist Installation Art
Important Art and Artists of Post-Minimalism
The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths, (Window or Wall Sign) (1967)
This seminal work was created in the studio Nauman established in an abandoned grocery store in San Francisco and modeled after the neon advertisement signs nearby. It acts as an advertisement of a different kind. Its colorful, circular text proclaims the words of the title: "The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths." It is characteristic of Nauman's early neon works, and typical of the tone of dry satire in much of his oeuvre. Commenting on high art in the materials of low culture and advertising, it sets up a clash that questions old assumptions about the purpose of art and artists, like are artists just ordinary salesmen? One might say that the piece is Post-Minimalist simply by virtue of standing at the borders of so many different styles and approaches of the period, borrowing from Pop art's interest in advertising, and Conceptual art's interest in language.
A Line Made by Walking (1967)
A Line Made by Walking is highly characteristic of the conceptual Earth art created by British artist Richard Long. In making a line across the grass by the simple act of walking, Long creates a type of drawing-without-drawing, doing away completely with the conventional tools and using instead his body and nature. Abandoning the traditional art object in this way is typical of Post-Minimalism, as is the way in which Long's line draws attention to the passing of time and the specific, fleeting moment in which the line was made.
Verb List (1967-68)
Although usually regarded as an artist's statement (akin to a private, reflective diary entry), Verb List might also be regarded as the artist's chronological, aesthetic agenda, setting out his subsequent development in sculpture. It also amounts to a catalogue of the creative procedures employed by process artists linked to Post-Minimalism. If the 'to' verbs denote acts already accomplished, and the 'of' verbs are those yet to be done, Verb List may also be viewed as a shorthand, visual retrospective of Serra's entire career, compressing past, present and future into a single material object. Like a map, or a theoretical diagram, Verb List finally 'stands in' as a visual and conceptual proxy for something more physically tangible, or virtually touchable—sculpture itself. Serra's later, monumental walls in steel ultimately come to embody, in more abstract and open-ended terms, what the artist has chosen to conjure here in the 'mind's eye' of the beholder, indeed by way of strictly linguistic medium.