Minimalism as a meridian between modern and contemporary art

• Grant number: 18/06469-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate (Direct)
• Effective date (Start): October 01, 2018
• Effective date (End): September 30, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Art Fundamentals and Criticism
• Principal Investigator: Rodrigo Cristiano Queiroz
• Grantee: Fábio Brombal Visnadi
• Host Institution: Museu de Arte Contemporânea (MAC). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The project "Minimalism as a meridian between the modern and contemporary art" starts with the assumption - by the light of the interpretation of modern and post-modern critics and theorists, such as Arthur Danto, Clement Greenberg, Rosalind Krauss, Hal Foster, among others - that minimal art is a final chapter of a modern teleology of art that searches for its own self-awareness reducing itself to its own axiomatic and structural values, and also an initial chapter for the subsequent movements of contemporarity, wich aim to establish a more vocal critique of the object - the conceptualism of Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth and others -, of the subject - the performances of Bruce Nauman or Vito Acconci; and of the space - the Land Art of Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer or the invertetions of Richard Serra. It is intendend, therefore, to investigate, on the one hand, the modern paternity of minimalism - which would refer to Brancusi's sculpture, to constructivism, to concretism, among others - both with regard to their affinities and their disagreements or indifference with such hypothesis of work, seeing it as a final step in this specific history of art - not forgetting, however, that there are several parallel stories to modernism such as dada, surrealism and pop; and on the other hand to examine the criticism of epistemological and no more ontological nature of minimalism, which no longer seeks to define what painting and sculpture is, and which is no longer concerned with quality and with a notion of abstract aesthetic intuition derived from modernism. More than that, these works would have a direct relation with the text and with the need of an internalization of the artistic theory for the understanding of its signs, that would take the maximum of "less is more" to the limits, representing through primary structures a whole complex hypothesis of artistic thought; and also a relationship produced collaterally with the spectator, inviting him indirectly to a participation in the artistic experience through a wandering through the public space in which the work is inserted, which is paradoxical, precisely because the movement seeks to eliminate any anthropomorphic vestige through of a serial, austere and imposing art. What this work tries to understand, then, is how Judd, Morris, Andre, Flavin, Smith, LeWitt and others, taking an interpretation of Greenberg's theories literally - seeking to pursue some of their postulates to logical unfoldings that the New Yorker critic had not even considered - eventually led to a reversal of modernist logic; in short, trying to investigate how in the search for being as modern and radical as possible within a tradition, and not running away from it, such an artistic tendency has turned out to be, in a collateral way, precisely the cradle for new premises of work, opposed to formalism, to modernist idealization and sublimation.In more rude terms, to investigate how, by working only with basic geometric forms, with no vestige of humanity, reinforced by industrialized and serial objects, all this production ended precisely by reinforcing a phenomenological posture of the spectator and demanding their participation; to understand how, by reducing his work to the most literal meaning possible, the sculptures of such artists have rightly reinforced the importance of context and theory as a key to artistic understanding; and to understand how, when referring to an a priori imaginary of the human, minimalism demanded precisely an a posteriori experience based on the situation. (AU)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

VISNADI, Fábio Brombal. Form of Conceptual and Minimalist Art. 2021. Doctoral Thesis - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA/SBD) São Paulo.