Dan Flavin, Untitled (for you Leo, in long respect and affection) 4, 1978, Pink, green, blue and yellow fluorescent light, 121.92x121.92x5.08 cm., Acquired in 2010 Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, © 2012 Stephen Flavin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
minimalism - 2
in pursuit of an aesthetic that creates spatial dynamism
GÜLAY YAŞAYANLAR & MÜMTAZ SAĞLAM
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THE MINIMALIST DISPOSITION THAT CONSTRUCTS THE SURFACE THROUGH DECENTERED AND SIMULTANEOUS REPETITIONS OF MASS, OBJECT, AND IMAGE, THROUGH SEQUENTIAL ORDER AESTHETICS, THROUGH GRID OR MODULAR FORM, IS VALUED HERE FOR THE PURPOSE OF GENERATING AN INTELLECTUAL AND RATIONAL LOGIC OR RATIONALE. IN CERTAIN ARTISTS, THIS CONDITION, THE EFFORT TO DEVELOP AN IDEA OF ORDER THAT TRANSFORMS THROUGH FORMAL REPETITION INTO A COMPOSITION, APPEARS TO HAVE GRADUALLY BECOME AN INTERNAL NECESSITY, PUSHING AGAINST THE IMPLICATIONS OF MINIMALISM WITHIN A PROCESS OF PERSONAL STYLISTIC FORMATION.
Donald Judd, Judd, Installation view at Moma- Museum of Modern Art, New York. New York, March 1, 2020 - January 9, 2021.© MoMA
The continuing practices of artists who gave momentum to Early Minimalism appear, in subsequent years, to have almost lost their original purity owing to strategic affiliations. This sensibility, shaped by debates framed around the problematic of style formation and proposing a radical formal discipline, seems to have subsequently sought to embrace certain positions it had initially left unresolved or reacted against, abandoning the shared sensibility that had oriented points of consensus, and choosing instead to focus on the possibilities of developing an individual language. (1)
In this process, the work that Minimalist artists organized as a design phenomenon, and which rapidly became conceptual, is simultaneously a result attained through abstract comprehension and spatial sensibility. As is evident in Carl Andre’s floor arrangements, this transformation, occurring at the intersection of material, object, and space, inevitably calls to be characterized as transcendent sculptures in which time and perception are made concrete. These sculptures, which activate holistic perception, swiftly aspire toward a spatial dynamism: a repetition-based, vibrational, and quietly harmonious aesthetic.
Carl Andre: Sculptur as Place, 1958-2010, Exhibition View, May 5 - June 18, 2016, Hamburger Bahnhof - Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany.
Carl Andre, 48 Bar Rectangular Fugune on 4 Ancient Metals, Copper, steel, lead and zinc, in 48 parts, each 1x15x30 cm. installation view, Executed in 1988. (Private Collection, New York)
the interior spatial mediation of the elements constituting the sculpture
In this context, the linguistic development of Donald Judd’s visualization strategy is in fact related to the late modern transformation through which the image attains the dimension of object. This may be explained, in the first half of the 1960s, through a process of reduction in which the flat surface arrived at shaped metal surfaces, opening up the possibilities of movement and image. Formal articulation here, in Judd’s own terms, transforms into the specific object, or sculpture, while simultaneously being defined as critical abstraction, inquiry, and aesthetic play. (2) It is therefore possible to read Judd’s wall-mounted rows of boxes within this framework as a gesture of installation and arrangement based on the repetition of similar forms at regular intervals, a gesture that already holds a privileged status as a straightforward effort to foreclose the possibilities of meaning.
Donald Judd’s wall sculpture composed of stacked boxes is, in essence, an endeavor that completes the sculpture through dimensioning engaged with void, within a minimal configuration that adheres to conditions of order, discipline, and balance. Accordingly, the question of whether the void surrounding the interval-based arrangement of objects produces a cultural spatial effect, or whether it adds a psychological dimension to the sculpture, remains persistently contested. For within the interior spatial mediation of the elements constituting the sculpture, material neutrality appears to have been surpassed, yielding instead, as Robert Morris too perceived, to a visuality grounded in repetition and rhythm. It is as though Minimalism conceals here, within this register, a portion of the representation it has cancelled through abstraction. In this way, through repetition, the semiotic logic of representation is overturned. Similarly, Dan Flavin, placing his fluorescent tubes in a kind of strange solitude against a simple background, adopts an approach that resists meaning through minimal compositional arrangement. Here, while the functional value, use-value, or meaning carried by the luminous form as object is bypassed, one is left alone with the minimal aesthetic derived from the logic of stacking and formal discipline. It is thus evident that the unmediated dimension of the repeatedly presented object, in its abstract, singular, and distanced solitude, lends itself to a tendency toward conceptualization as a structural and discursive choice.
Robert Morris, Untitled (Three L-Beams),1969, Refabrication of 1965 original, Plywood, later versions made in fiberglass and stainless stell, 244.3x244.3x61 cm., © Robert Morris.
the need for a psychic and cultural implication
It is precisely at this juncture that Sol LeWitt distinguishes himself: arriving at imagistic totality through geometric formal repetition and density, yet diversifying this approach through painterly color fields extended onto wall surfaces. LeWitt layers the question of rhythm and repetition, through alternative dimensioning experiments that generate pattern, with a far more psychic and cultural implication, preferring to produce site-specific, varied, and proliferating solutions through the direct relationships he establishes within space. The structural implication’s priority, grounded in the rejection of narrative connections or possibilities, and the object-form’s state of isolation at the threshold of the abstract and the simple, leaves nothing but a reference to its own solitude.
The Minimalist disposition that constructs the surface through decentered and simultaneous repetitions of mass, object, and image, through sequential order aesthetics, through grid or modular form, is valued here for the purpose of generating an intellectual and rational logic or rationale. In certain artists, this condition, the effort to develop an idea of order that transforms through formal repetition into a composition, appears to have gradually become an internal necessity, pushing against the implications of Minimalism within a process of personal stylistic formation. Sol LeWitt’s increasingly color-enriched use of form and motif serves as an effective illustration of this reality. (3) The artist continued in subsequent years on a journey in search of a new aesthetic sensibility, one taking the shape of modular form-pattern configurations, accompanied by the rhythmic and compelling visual effects produced by repetition-based order.
Minimalist artists, in production practices that move between sculpture and installation, doubtless employ the object in accordance with a principle of order, harmony, or tension, much as Donald Judd’s practice exemplifies. (4) That is to say, a great many works are concerned with the meaning, simplicity, and directness of an existing order. The similarity, companionship, and multiplicity of forms is also of primary importance in this context. To return to the beginning: the general harmony achieved through repetition functions as a shared goal. This condition, related to the overall visual order, may be explained in the cases of Judd and Morris through the relationship that similar and sequential forms belonging to an interior experiential register establish with the exterior within this field of experience. Purely in this respect, the sculptural arrangements of Judd and Morris contain the psychological intimacy of a meaning confined within the massive presence of forms. What is remarkable is that within this environment, which appears sufficiently unemotional and sterile, this psychological weight nonetheless confronts us as a possibility or intensity of minimal coherence and meaning. Yet the very idea of psychological intimacy, fragmented by the multiplicity of the object and drained of its force by repetition, would be expected to reject this manner of being understood through experience. In any case, the geometric form and repetition tendency of Judd and Morris, or of Serra and LeWitt, as a practice of creating a static and synthetic internal order, already distances sculpture thoroughly from Minimalism at this point.
notes
1 Hal Foster, Gerçeğin Geri Dönüşü / The Return of the Real, Translation: Esin Hoşsucu, Turkish, Ayrıntı Publishing, May 2009, İstanbul. pg. 91.
2 Hal Foster, Ibid, pg. 74.
3 See. Rosalind Krause, Modern Heykelin Dehlizleri / Passages in Modern Sculpture, Translation: Sibel Erduran, Everest Publishing, October 2021, İstanbul.
4 See. Rosalind Krause, Ibid, pg. 302.
Gülay Yaşayanlar & Mümtaz Sağlam Copyright © March 2026, All rights reserved.
COLLECTION EXHIBITION
Exhibition view from Minimal, Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, 2nd Floor: Materialism, Gallery 5.
BOURSE DE COMMERCE / PARIS
Nobuo Sekine, "Phase of Nothingness - Water," 1969/2012, steel, lacquer, water, 120 × 120 cm. Pinault Collection. © Nobuo Sekine Estate. View of the exhibition “Minimal,” Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris, 2025. Photo: Nicolas Brasseur.
EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
Minimal, Editor: Jessica Morgan, Contributors: Emma Lavigne, Jessica Morgan, Jean-Pierre Criqui, Frances Morris, Alexandra Bordes, Clara Meister, Teresa Kittler, Nicolas-Xavier Ferrand ve Alexis Lowry, Pinault Collection & Éditions Dilecta, Paris, 2025.
4 ESSAYS ON MINIMALISM / BY GÜLAY YAŞAYANLAR & MÜMTAZ SAĞLAM
MINIMALIST ARTISTS
DONALD JUDD
Donald Judd, Untitled, (Detail), 1965, Galvanized steel Dimensions, 297,7 × 101,6 × 76,2 cm NMSK 1927 Collection Materialitet, Art © Donald Judd Foundation/Bildupphovsrätt 2026, Sweden/VAGA, New York
Donald Judd (1928-1994) describes his series of works, which shifted from painting to sculpture and consisted of a few identical elements mounted on the wall through radical experiments, as “specific objects,” in accordance with the term he used in his 1965 manifesto. Judd’s works, created with an extremely simple and radical approach to abstraction, have a distant spatial effect. Conceiving his objects in an equivalent relationship with space, Judd envisions a minimalist and unsettling plane derived from form and structural formation. He thus spreads a spirit of minimal transcendence, legitimized by creating a potential for questioning the causality and uniformity of the perceptible, across the object and space. By withdrawing the sensory perception caused by things and thoughts in an abstract and ambiguous relational environment, he recreates the expanded rigidity emitted by the pure image within an aesthetic mise-en-scène. With his hard lines and angular boundaries, Donald Judd leaves nothing behind from the plane of perceived consistency and immanence in the context of constantly repeating new impossible forms.
ROBERT MORRIS
Robert Morris: The Mind/Body Problem, Exhibition at the Green Gallery, December 1964 to January 1965, New York. Image: Rosalind Krauss and Thomas Krens, (New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1994)
Robert Morris, (1931-2018) He radically simplified and developed the concept of minimalism that emerged in New York in the early 1960s. Having begun his career as a painter, he adopted a new style consisting of sculptural installations and, through a series of published articles, helped to define the minimalist movement… In fact, his approach challenges traditional art-historical classifications and movements. It is evident that he views his artistic practice as a single, coherent work, an ongoing project, and a sustainable, philosophical-artistic experiment. All his works aim to create a complex, sometimes paradoxical space, independent of the medium used; and this space restores to the viewer processes of experience and perception that seem inaccessible today. In fact, these works, which concern the relationship between the visible and the known, are shaped by philosophical scepticism, prioritising a variable principle of representation based on experimental propositions. Despite his methodological rigour, Morris’s practice is therefore highly subjective, imbued with intense introspection and an emphasis on the quest for selfhood.
DAN FLAVIN
Dan Flavin, Alternate Diagonals of March 2, 1964 (to Don Judd), (Detail) 1964, red and yellow fluorescent light, 365.8 cm (diagonal), Pinault Collection. © Dan Flavin / Adagp, Paris, 2025. View of the exhibition “Minimal,” Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris, 2025. Photo: Nicolas Brasseur.
Dan Flavin (1933–1996) is considered one of the pioneers of Minimal Art for his work with fluorescent light beams and his radical and innovative sculptures. In the early 1960s, he experimented with fluorescent light, a mysterious material that suggested simplicity and singularity, emphasized its form and therefore itself, and possessed independent qualities. With this material, he created radically simple and transformative light installations that led to a new breakthrough. His work to Don Judd (1964), found in the Pinault Collection, consists of neon lights arranged in an alternating cross pattern. Here, the cross pattern extending along the wall brings together industrial aesthetics, the sensuality of the material, and the intensity of the light, conveying a palpable sense of energy that alters the viewer’s perception of space and draws their gaze. This work is the first in which Flavin systematically used the wall sconces and standard fluorescent tubes found in stores. It transforms an everyday object into a work of art and reconfigures the spatial experience.
SOL LEWITT
Sol LeWitt, Installation view, Paula Cooper Gallery, September 2016. [https://www.paulacoopergallery.com/exhibitions/sol-lewitt2#tab:slideshow]
Sol LeWitt (1928-2004) One of the leading figures of Minimal Art, LeWitt is known for his wall drawings or geometric sculptures, which he referred to as “structures.” By creating multiple variations of his structures, LeWitt explored a geometric and mathematical system using industrial materials such as aluminum, metal, or concrete. A key figure in the evolution of Conceptual Art, LeWitt insisted that the idea, the diagram, and the planning of these structures were the artwork itself. In doing so, the actual implementation of the sculptures—the objects themselves—was less important than the concept of the structure.
RICHARD SERRA
Richard Serra, Joe, 1999, (Detail) Weathering steel, Outer spiral approximately 163 x 576 x 480 inches © Richard Serra / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Courtyard, Photograph by Robert Pettus
Richard Serra (1938-2024) is one of the first Minimalist artists known for his monumental sculptures. He uses industrial materials such as steel to create simple, continuous surfaces that bend or curve in space. He attempts to influence our perception of space and dimension by compelling the viewer to enter the sculpture. The rusty textures that form on the plate surfaces lend a pictorial quality to the conceptual origins of his artistic practice. To the extent that he avoids ostentation, a monumental effect based on the structural and graphic integrity of the form is always present. That is why Serra’s metal plates have an extremely disturbing, metaphysical, and existential quality. Arrangements consisting of massive panels, especially flat walls or irregular rows or rising, falling, sloping narrow passages, resembling a labyrinth, take on a chaotic quality. They persistently make the viewer feel the threatening space of the sculpture. In this process, the aura of the sculpture enters into a psychological and intellectual concentration within the mediation of heavy mass reality.
MINIMALIZM / 4 BOOKS
Daniel Marzona, Minimal Art, Tashen Deutschland, 25. Edition, German, Hardcover, 200 pages, 2009.
James Meyer, Minimalism / Art and Polemics in the Sixties, Yale University Press, English, Paperback, 340 pages, August 2004.
Minimalism, Edited by James Meyer, Phaidon Press, English, Soft Cover, 200 pages, June 2010.
Minimalism, Edited by James Meyer, Phaidon Press, English, Paperback, 304 pages, March 2005.
MİNİMALİZM / DAVID BATCHELOR
David Batchelor, Minimalizm (Modern Sanat Akımları), Translation: Tüles Üresin, Editor: Talha Lafçı, Powerback, 95 pages, Türkçe, Hayalperest Publishing, First Edition, March 2025, İstanbul.
First published by Tate Publishing in 1977, Minimalism was also published in Turkish by Hayalperest Publishing in 2025. (1) Written by the painter and author David Batchelor, this book is a highly compelling work that distinguishes itself from publications aimed at the general reader by examining the movement within the context of its overall development and its key figures. Minimalism, which has been examined in detail by art writers such as Hal Foster, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Rosalind Krauss and Michael Fried, proceeds through a two-part analytical framework in which David Batchelor adopts a distinct perspective, addressing contexts such as the establishment of visual quality and unity, and the representation and transformation of material or object. It evaluates the differences in approach among the five artists representing the movement—Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin and Sol LeWitt—through a comparative analysis of the terms, concepts and principles of practice they established. Without shying away from tackling problematic areas such as meaning, emotion and psychological impact—which are particularly evident in definitions of minimalist art—it seeks to explain the images of identity and difference experienced during a brief yet enduring process through a discussion of causality. In the final chapter, titled ‘On Texts and Contexts’, the author examines the current state of the post-minimalist era, as exemplified by artists such as Richard Serra and Eva Hesse, and focuses on radical critiques of minimalist art, placing particular emphasis on the critical perspective offered by Anna Chave. (2) This study, which is supplemented by a bibliography surveying key publications on minimalism in art literature as of 1997, stands before us as a fundamental reference work thanks to its comprehensive content, fluid language, insightful observations and numerous high-quality visual aids.
1 David Batchelor, Minimalism (Movements in Modern Art), Powerback, 96 pages, English, Tate Publishing, First Edition, 1997, London.
2 See. Ann C. Chave, “Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power”, Arts Magazine, Issue: 64, September 1990, pg. 44-63.
MINIMALISM / MINIMALIST SCULPTURE
İZMİR - LONDON
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