Minimalism and Contemporary Minimalist

About

The Minimalists of the 1960s, among them Donald Judd, Carl Andre and Dan Flavin, stripped art to simple forms and repeated units. Almost at once others adapted the vocabulary. Eva Hesse made rows of latex and fibreglass forms that sag and wrinkle, and Richard Serra propped heavy lead plates against one another so that weight and balance are felt. Lynda Benglis poured liquid latex across the floor, and Richard Tuttle made small, fragile works from cloth, wire and paper.

Later artists turned the language towards emotion and politics. Felix Gonzalez-Torres made stacks of paper and piles of wrapped sweets that visitors are invited to take, so the work slowly diminishes and is renewed, as in Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) (1991), a pile matched to his partner's ideal body weight. Artists working today still use repetition, fabrication and plain geometry to address light, memory and labour.