IN MINIMALIST SCULPTURE, ROBERT MORRIS, CARL ANDRE AND DONALD JUDD EMPLOY THE OBJECT IN ACCORDANCE WITH AN IDEALISED PRINCIPLE OF ORDER, HARMONY AND TENSION. THIS RELATES TO THE MEANING, SIMPLICITY AND DIRECTNESS OF THE ARRANGEMENT. WHAT TAKES PRECEDENCE HERE IS THE SIMILARITY AND MULTIPLICITY OF FORMS. THIS SITUATION, ACHIEVED THROUGH REPETITION AND DIRECTLY DETERMINING VISUALITY, IS SOMETHING THAT CAN ONLY BE EXPLAINED BY THE RELATIONSHIP ESTABLISHED WITHIN THIS EXPERIENTIAL FIELD BY THE FORMS -WHICH REMAIN WITHIN AND ARE EXPERIENCED IN THE EXPERIENCE, AND WHICH ARE CONTENT WITH THEIR INNER ESSENCE- IN THE WORKS OF DONALD JUDD AND ROBERT MORRIS...

Minimalist works, conceptualized as a design phenomenon, consider the object and form in their most abstract and reduced state within a spatial sensibility. In Carl Andre, for instance, one can observe how material or object is materialized through a mediation of space, time, and perception, thereby transforming into sculpture. Such minimalist sculptures, which activate holistic perception, aim through Sol LeWitt and Dan Flavin toward an aesthetic condition that transcends mass, becoming a form of painting or sculpture that generates spatial dynamism. Richard Serra, in this context, approaches sculpture and space even more closely by rendering formal simplicity visible and effective. It is therefore possible to regard the approaches described as weaving space or carving space as an effort toward purification and withdrawal from external influences, efforts that constitute the very essence of a formalist artistic practice. (2)

space and meaning: minimalist sculpture

Early examples of Minimalist work seem to have swiftly lost their initial purity due to their strategic affiliations. As is frequently noted, this sensibility, having established formal discipline within the framework of style and manner, appears to have abandoned the shared sensitivity evident in artistic representations and turned instead toward the development of individual language, as though seeking to embrace the very aspects it had left incomplete or reacted against. According to Hal Foster, Minimalism stands in opposition both to the privileged high art of Late Modernism and to the spectacle culture of capitalism, and was subsequently suppressed by these very processes.

On closer examination, it becomes apparent that Robert Morris, Carl Andre, and Donald Judd employ the object in Minimalist sculpture according to a principle of idealized order, harmony, and tension. This concerns the meaning, simplicity, and directness of arrangement. What is of primary importance here is the resemblance and multiplicity of forms. This condition, achieved through repetition and directly determining visuality, can only be explained, in the work of Donald Judd and Robert Morris, through the relationship that forms establish within this experiential field, forms which remain within and are lived through experience and content themselves with inner existence. Solely in this respect, the sculptural arrangements of Judd and Morris contain a psychological intimacy of meaning imprisoned within the massive presence of forms, a minimal wholeness and a possibility or density of meaning, and all this within a thoroughly emotionless and sterile environment. (2)