Minimalism

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Minimalism was an art movement that strongly opposed the Abstract Expressionism art movement. It moves away from art being overly expressive or aesthetic towards art in it’s physical form. In other words, it forces the viewer to confront the materiality of the art. It becomes then art that isn’t traditionally hung on a wall but placed strategically allowing viewers to observe minimalistic art from all sides and different angles.

 

Lever (1996) By: Carle Ande

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This work is really interesting because it was described by some people as “Anyone can do this. Is this even art?” It was a row of 137 bricks aligned on the ground and meant to portray a fallen column. Plus, even though this work is supposed to be very straightforward, the title suggests manual labour (but you don’t read too much into the art-work in terms of abstract expression as minimalism tries to be void of that). But Carle Ande argues of seeing art differently from traditional aesthetics but a movement towards simplicity using materials instead of in paintings.

 

Two Open Modular Cubes/Half-Off (1972)
Artist: Sol LeWitt

pnt_minimalism_7 This is a good example of minimalistic art because it highlights some of the common characteristics of the movement: including a lack of meaning, absence of colour, geometric starkness, and repetitive modularity. Furthermore, it uses objects for what they are, not representations or symbols for something else, which is confirmed by the title of this artwork.

Lesson Idea:

Tie it into a Math Unit where students need to think about geometric shapes and polygons. We would have already gone over the definitions of what makes up a polygon and different types of polygons. Students will then need to design a minimalistic instalment of their choice, using what they have learned about polygons. Students will first need to draft their ideas on paper and plan out how to make their artwork a possibility, using any materials that they would like. They will be allowed to have many drafts of different ideas and it will be okay if the final product is not what they imagined as long as they reflect on why it did not work and suggest steps on how to fix it in the future. We will then have an exhibition of students’ displays where students explain their work, the math that they used to calculate the feasibleness of it and how they went about building their art piece.