Post-Minimalism
Started: 1966
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KEY ARTISTS
 | Vito Acconci Quick View Further External Info  |
| Vito Acconci |  |
| Vito Acconci is an American performance/installation artist who began performing in the late 1960s. More recently, he has shifted his focus to architecture and landscape design, particularly works that merge indoor and outdoor space. Further External Info | ||
 | Joseph Beuys Quick View Artist Page |
| Joseph Beuys | |
| Joseph Beuys was a German multi- and mixed-media artist best known for incorporating ideas of humanism, social philosophy and politics into his art. Beuys practiced everything from installation and performance art to traditional painting and "social sculpture." He was continually motivated by the belief of universal human creativity. Art Story: Joseph Beuys Artist Page | ||
 | Chris Burden Quick View Artist Page |
| Chris Burden | |
| American performance artist Chris Burden is most known for his 1970s works that placed him in extreme danger, such as being shot in the arm by an assistant or being crucified on the back of a car. Art Story: Chris Burden Artist Page | ||
 | Eva Hesse Quick View Artist Page |
| Eva Hesse | |
| Eva Hesse was a major New York artist whose sculpture, assemblage, and installation brought issues of feminism and the body into Minimalism's formal vocabulary. She is heralded as one of the quintessential Post-Minimalist artists. Art Story: Eva Hesse Artist Page | ||
 | Sol LeWitt Quick View Artist Page |
| Sol LeWitt | |
| Sol LeWitt was an American artist commonly associated with the Minimalist and Conceptual movements. He rose to prominence in the 1960s with the likes of Rauschenberg, Johns and Stella, and his work was included in the famous 1966 exhibit Primary Structures at the Jewish Museum. LeWitt's art often employed simple geometric forms and archetypal symbols, and he worked in a variety of media but was most interested in the idea behind the artwork. Art Story: Sol LeWitt Artist Page | ||
 | Richard Long Quick View Artist Page |
| Richard Long | |
| Much of Richard Long's work is considered a response to the natural environments he enters, incorporating mixed-media and various non-art elements such as landscape, rock, maps, and text. Art Story: Richard Long Artist Page | ||
"The steel and the space, or the object and the void, become one and the same."
Summary of Post-Minimalism
The term "Post-Minimalism" was first used in reference to a range of art practices that emerged in the wake of Minimalism in the late 1960s. In a similar manner to the term "Post-Impressionism" it serves to gather together a range of styles that are related, yet which often have very different, even opposing interests. Post-Minimalism refers to tendencies such as Body art, Performance, Process art, Site-Specific art, and aspects of Conceptual art. Some artists associated with this tendency sought to extend the Minimalists' interest in creating art objects that do not have the representational function of traditional sculpture, objects that are abstract, anonymous in appearance, and have a strong material presence. But other Post-Minimalists pursued very different goals: many reacted against the earlier movement's impersonality, trying to invest sculpture once again with emotionally expressive qualities. While the formal and theoretical interests of this period are no longer so influential, many of the themes and strategies of Post-Minimal artists remain very current, making it one of the most enduring styles of the last half-century.
Key Ideas
Beginnings:
New developments in art came fast in the 1960s. No sooner had Minimalism emerged onto the public stage than Post-Minimalism surfaced. In a 1966 New York exhibition entitled Eccentric Abstraction, critic Lucy Lippard curated work by a group of artists, including Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgeois and Bruce Nauman. Containing work with highly personal and sensuous qualities, it drew on traditions of Surrealism, Dada and Expressionism. The pieces often combined unusual, soft and pliable materials. Some borrowed the modular, repetitive compositions typical of Minimalism, but many also exploited more relaxed and open structures.
Important Art and Artists of Post-Minimalism | |
 Artwork Images | The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths, (Window or Wall Sign) (1967)Artist: Bruce Nauman Artwork description & Analysis: 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. Neon tubing and clear glass tubing - Collection of the artist |
 Artwork Images | A Line Made by Walking (1967)Artist: Richard Long Artwork description & Analysis: 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. Photograph and pencil on board - Tate Modern, London |
 Artwork Images | Verb List (1967-68)Artist: Richard Serra Artwork description & Analysis: 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. Graphite on paper - The Museum of Modern Art, New York |
More Post-Minimalism Artwork and Analysis:
Content compiled and written by Julianne Cordray
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
" Movement Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Julianne Cordray
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
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First published on 21 Jan 2012. Updated and modified regularly. 
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