Minimal Lobster

Last week I found myself sitting around contemplating Minimalism. I thought about it on the way home from work. I have an hour drive. While this doesn't seem like a very exciting life, read what I was thinking about while mowing the grass next week.

While thinking about minimalism I couldn't bring the name of any artist to mind. Instead I started thinking about the obvious answers to minimalism which include plain white sheets of paper or canvas. Black cat in a coal tunnel, Sleeping Polar bear in a Blizzard, Red dot on a white field and several other amusing examples of what people joke about as art.

But I think the truth is, these pieces of art were necessary in order for no one else to do them. If no one had put forth the plain white canvas as a work of art then someone else down the line would have. It is more than just a blank field though. It is the essence of creation. ("Joe, you have now lost it!" I hear someone proclaim.) The blank canvas is a symbol of creation and beginning for most artists. When starting a new project or even when unsure about what to put down, they start by looking at that blank canvas. That field of white is a representation of possibility. Alternately the solid block of blackness is also a clean slate (or perhaps completely dirty slate) into which life is etched. Solid canvases are the fundamental building block for the painter. I could go on.

The blank presentation of art, or to some the lack of art, is important to the artist and to those who start with a similar field to mark upon, more than the casual observer. But in minimalism there is more than just solid color fields of canvas. Minimalism is the roughly the representation of life around us in the most basic of forms. A beach on canvas is a brown or sandy bottom an a blue top, two colors. A building is a solid rectangle on a solid field. A man with his arms outstreched is a cross and a bird is a stylized 'm'.

Minimalism is also the presentation of thought and exploration in a simple format. Sol LeWitt provides examples of this in his artwork. Bands of color or a bit of texture are not representations of life, but rather something else, something deeper. A desire to feel the texture and seeing the page vicariously supplies that feeling. The texture, real or imagined, touches our mind and from so simple an image that minimalism provides. But minimalism is not limited to 2D artwork. Eva Hesse provides simple minimalism sculptures among her work. And Dorothea Rockburne does installations that stretch around in space.

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic