THE INDEPENDENCE AND SIMPLICITY OF A MINIMALIST ARTWORK ACTUALLY CREATE AN AMBIGUITY THAT REINFORCES ITS PERCEPTION AS AN OBJECT. THE QUESTION OF HOW ABSTRACT AND STATIC FORMS CREATE A DEPTH OF MEANING IN THE BACKGROUND IS, IN THIS RESPECT, A MATTER OF DEBATE. THE EXPERIMENTAL SHIFT CHARACTERISING THE PRODUCTION PROCESS CAN BE EXPLAINED AS A MATTER OF TRANSCENDENCE OR ICONISATION, AND AS A CONCEPTUALISED STATE. THE SENSE OF DISTANCE CREATED HERE, DUE TO THE NEGATION OF ALL OTHER THINGS, SEEMS TO HARBOUR AN IRONIC LONELINESS PERCEIVED THROUGH THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN OBJECT, FORM AND SPACE.

the process of experimental transformation: transcendence, iconization, and conceptualization

The autonomy and simplicity of the Minimalist artwork in fact generates an ambiguity that reinforces its perception as object. The question of what depth of meaning abstract and static forms produce in the background is, from this perspective, open to debate. The experimental transformation that characterizes the process of production may be understood as a matter of transcendence or iconization – and as an unfolding conceptualization. The sense of distance produced here -by virtue of all that is negated- seems also to harbor an ironic solitude felt through the relationships among object, form, and space. It is for this reason that definitions positing minimalism as constructed solely upon pure forms, rational arrangements, and abstract and conceptual thought appear incomplete.

It is evident that the emotional and spiritual dimension this productive dynamic captures between subject, space, and time layers this ostensibly austere formalist output. Richard Serra’s One Ton Prop / House of Cards (1969), for instance -a configuration assembled from geometric forms using metal plates-  clearly anticipates its own aura through the dramatic perception achieved via its metallic texture and temporal materiality, within a discontinuity that marks a late modern transitional period. One should also recall that in Serra’s installations, the metal plate gradually constitutes a more distinctly expressive formal plane over time.

From this vantage point, it may be argued that Minimalist works through their relationships with material reality and the rationality of formal articulation as reflected in the production process are forms that sustain the possibility of meaning, and that are grounded not only in pure intellectuality but also in the intersection of the vital and the subjective. This, however, does not prevent the formalist-material presentation of minimalism from establishing its own aesthetic discipline as a categorical distinction. This emphasis is necessary only to remove the constraints that operate in our viewing of the work and to liberate production and this knowledge is required in order to properly evaluate the change and development that occurred during the process (the years 1960–1980). Otherwise, as Hal Foster contends, it is difficult to encounter a Minimalist work that, grasped in a single glance, expresses a moment of transcendent virtue. (3)

Indeed, no Minimalist work escapes association with a rationalism regarded with suspicion. The question of spatial and temporal production, entangled with the connotations shaped by design, constitutes simultaneously a synchronous, immanent, sequential, tension-laden, and subjective field of experience. Accordingly, it would be problematic to evaluate the perception demanded by this absolute formal multiplicity phenomenologically – abstracted from referential fields such as history, language, sexuality, religion, and power. (4) An experimental reading of this field requires, beyond the transparent and legible sign, a resolution of the historically and ideologically contradictory appearance of conditions that seem disconnected.

It is evident that, partly due to this perceptual lacuna, Minimalist Art has not appeared sufficiently forceful in relation to the Abstract Expressionist movement. Alternatively, this may be the reason why the formalist modernism of the Minimalists struggled to consolidate its position in the face of an expanding postmodern diffusion. Its redirection or transfer of energy toward Conceptual Art, and its continuation of debates around structure, form, object, surface, language, and reality in a renewed context, already appears as a necessary means of remedying this deficiency.