minimalism, conceptualism & post-minimalism

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Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post- Minimalism “The sensuous object, resplendent with compressed internal relations has had to be rejected.” Robert Morris April 3: No Quiz / Recommended reading: Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood” (excerpt); Sol Lewitt, “Sentences on Conceptual Art”; Martha Rosler, “Statement,” available on “Readings” page of course website

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Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism. “The sensuous object, resplendent with compressed internal relations has had to be rejected.” Robert Morris. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Page 1: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

“The sensuous object, resplendent with compressed internal relations has had to be rejected.”

Robert Morris

April 3: No Quiz / Recommended reading: Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood” (excerpt); Sol Lewitt, “Sentences on Conceptual Art”; Martha Rosler, “Statement,” available on “Readings” page of course website

Page 2: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Robert Morris, and Carolee Schneeman, Site, 1964, performance, New York(compare: below, left) Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863 (avant-garde icon)

Morris’s mask is by Jasper Johns

“art about art” at the beginning of the avant-garde

Page 3: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Robert Morris (US, b. 1931) Installation at the Green Gallery, New York, polyhedrons made from 2x4 wood painted gray, 1963. Morris theorized a “gestalt” all-at-once comprehension of the forms by the audience.

Morris’s installation at the Green Gallery marks the effective advent of Minimal Art

Page 4: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Robert Morris, (right) Untitled (Tangle) cut felt 1967 (left) Untitled, (Pink Felt) 1970, cut felt, dimensions vary with installation. Process Art – “anti-form” or “post-minimal” sculpture dependent upon gravity and chance, simple cutting process, use of “industrial” not-art material

Industrial felt is arranged by chance for each installation. The artist’s supervision is not necessary.

Page 5: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Robert Morris, (left) Poster for his Sonnabend Gallery show, 1974 (right) Robert Morris, I-Box, 1961

Neo-Dada, Duchampian, postmodernist parody of Western modernism’s myths of the artist: masculine, original, individualist genius

Page 6: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

(right) Linda Benglis, Artforum ad, November 1974. This picture (a response to Robert Morris’s self-portrait ad, below), appeared as an ad for Benglis’s show at the Paula Cooper Gallery. First wave Feminism

Page 7: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Linda Benglis, Latex floor painting, 1969

Art in New York, said Benglis, is "all about territory," so there is only one pertinent question: "How big?" How big is the zone you capture and occupy with your painting, your floor sculpture, your video piece, your public persona? How powerful is the image that establishes your presence?

Page 8: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Frank Stella (US, b. 1936) (right) Die Fahne Hoch!, 1959, oil on canvas, 122 X 73 inches. Minimalism / non-relational / elimination of painterly touch/ repetitive/ preconceived

(below) compare Jasper Johns, Flag, 1956 (seen by Stella in a 1958 Castelli show) Proto-Pop

What did Stella say about Johns’ Flag paintings? (see Fineberg, p. 282)

Page 9: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Frank Stella, The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, II. 1959enamel on canvas, 7' 7“ H

“My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. All I want anyone to get out of my paintings and all I ever get out of them is the fact that you can see the whole idea without any confusion.

What you see is what you see.” (Stella)

Page 10: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Frank Stella, Quathlamba, 1964, metallic powder in polymer emulsion, 6’5” x 13’7”

Painting-sculpture (shaped canvas) to comprehend in a glance

Page 11: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Historical sources for Minimalism (left) Barnett Newman with Cathedra, 1958 Abstract Expressionist

“Sublime” (right) Kasimir Malevich, Russian Suprematism, White on White, o/c, 1918

Page 12: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Ad Reinhardt (US, 1907-1967), Painting, 1954-58, 78 x 78 in, Oil on canvas A source for Frank Stella and Minimalism after 1960s

Page 13: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

A square 'neutral, shapeless' canvas, five feet wide, five feet high, as high as a man, as wide as a man's outstretched arms 'not large, not small, sizeless', trisected 'no composition', one horizontal form negating one vertical form 'formless, no top, no bottom, directionless', three 'more or less' dark 'lightless' no- contrasting 'colorless' colors, brushwork brushed out to remove brushwork, a matte, flat, freedhand painted surface 'glossless, textureless, non-linear, no hard edge, no soft edge' which does not reflect its surroundings; a pure, abstract, non-objective, timeless, spaceless, changeless relationless, disinterested painting, an object that is self-conscious 'no unconsciousness' ideal, transcendent, aware of no thing but art - absolutely no ‘anti-art.’

(Ad Reinhardt’s “rules” See Fineberg p. 282)

“The laying bare of oneself . . . is obscene.”

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Agnes Martin (Canadian-born American Minimalist Painter, 1912-2004)(left) Bones #2, 1959, Oil on canvas, 72 x 48

(right) Untitled, oil, ink & wash on canvas, 12” square,1961

Page 15: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Humility, the beautiful daughterShe cannot do either right or wrongShe does not do anythingAll of her ways are emptyInfinitely light and delicateShe treads an even path.Sweet, smiling, uninterrupted, free.

. . . Agnes Martin 1973

Agnes Martin in her studio, 1973

Page 16: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Agnes Martin, The Dark River, (detail right) o/c, 75” square, 1961Platonic idealism, meditative practice of “joy” – the look of Minimalism but

with abstract “sublime” content intended by artist

Detail of The Dark River

Page 17: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Donald Judd (US, Minimalist sculptor, 1928-1994), (left) Untitled, cold rolled steel, 1964(right top) Judd, Untitled, 1978-9 six brushed aluminum hollow rectangles set at 14-inch intervals. (below right) Judd, Untitled, 1964, aluminum boxes

Non-relational, “literal” objectsKnow Fineberg’s interpretation and Michael Fried’s thesis in “Art & Objecthood”

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Studied philosophy at Columbia and earned an MA in art history under Meyer Schapiro, Judd theorized his work in a 1965 essay, “Specific Objects,” as “non-relational” objects that supersede the traditions of painting and sculpture.  

Untitled, 1967 Donald Judd

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The essence of sculpture is its reliance on space: “a work can be as powerful as it can be thought to be. . . . Actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface… A work need only be interesting” (Donald Judd)

Theatricality and the “end” of Greenbergian modernism

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Sotheby installation: (left), Donald Judd, Untitled, 1965, a stack of 10 stainless steel and red fluorescent plexiglass units stacked vertically in 9-inch intervals (right) Frank Stella, Nunca Pasa Nada, 1964, 110 x 220”, metallic powder in polymer emulsion on canvas

Detail of a stacked sculpture

Page 21: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Donald Judd, (left) artillery shed interior with permanent installation of 100 titled works, mill aluminum, (each) 41 x 51 x 72 in.

The Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas

Page 22: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Richard Serra (b. 1939, US), Splashing, 1968, molten lead left to harden, Leo Castelli warehouse. Action / Process Sculpture

Page 23: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

(left) Richard Serra, One-Ton Prop, 1969(right) installation, 1969 of Serra’s “prop” sculptures

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Richard Serra, Tilted Arc, 12ft x 120 ft x 2.5 in, cor-ten steel, Federal Plaza, NYC, 1981-1989, Site-specific commissioned public artwork

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GSA = New York City General Services Administration

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Federal Plaza before (above) and after (below) removal of Tilted Arc with planters and benches

Document from legalbattle to retain sculpture

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Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, polished black granite, 1982, Washington DC. (below left) Frederick Hart, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1984. Fills minimalist form with new democratic memorial content that subverts the idealization of the single heroic leader. Compare Washington obelisk, below right.

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Page 29: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Richard Serra (left) Torqued Ellipses, cor-ten steel, 1997, Dia Foundation poster(right) Bilbao Guggenhein, 2005, A Matter of Time: a huge permanent installation of eight bent steel sculptures, possibly the largest installation to ever be housed in a museum gallery. The work is 1,200 tons and over 430 feet long in a 32,000 square foot gallery.

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Page 31: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

James Turrell (US, b. 1943) Spread, light installation, 2003Los Angeles Light and Space Movement that began in the late 1960s

Not “conceptual” but “perceptual”http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/turrell/clip1.html#

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Robert Irwin (US, b. 1928), Untitled, acrylic disks and light, 1969Los Angeles Light and Space Movement

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Robert Irwin, Disk 2, 1967

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Robert Irwin, 1234 Degree, openings cut out of windows, MCA San Diego, 1997

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Olafur Eliasson, Your Blind Passage, 2010, 90-metre-long tunnel in which viewer’s body is surrounded by dense fog. With visibility at just 1.5 metres, alertness of other senses than sight are needed to orient oneself.

“For me Utopia is tied to our ‘now’, to the moment between one second and the next.” 

Page 36: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Carl Andre (American, b. 1935), 10 x 10 Altstadt Copper Square, Düsseldorf, 1967, copper, 100 units, 3/16 x 197 x 197 inches overall, Minimalism (right) compare influence: Frank Stella, Die Fahne Hoch, 1959, oil on canvas

“non-relational” sculpture-painting: geometic repetition of equal units preconceived

Page 37: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Ann walking on a Carl Andre sculpture at the Beaubourg, Paris, 2005

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Carl Andre, (left) Twelve Copper Corner, 1975; (right) Seven Steel Row, 1975Brancusi, (center) Endless Column, Tirgu Jiu Public Park, Rumania, 1938

“Brancusi is to me the great link into the earth and the Endless Column is, of course, the absolute culmination of that experience” (Carl Andre)

Page 39: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Sol LeWitt (American Minimalist Conceptual Artist, 1928-2007) Floor Structure Black, 1965, painted wood, 18 ½ x 18 x 82 in. Modular “structures” (not

sculptures) originating from the cube.

“Ideas can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.”

“Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” 1969 (Minimal Art > Conceptual Art)

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/12/05/arts/1205-LEWI_index.html Images from ongoing Lewitt show at Mass MoCA, opened in Spring, 2009, will be on view 8 years

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Sol Lewitt, Modular Open Cube Pieces (9 x 9 x 9) Floor/Corner 2 (Corner Piece), 1976

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Lewitt, A Wall Divided Vertically into Fifteen Equal Parts, Each with a Different Line Direction and Color, and All Combinations 1970

"In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work . . . all planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is

a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes the machine that makes the art."

Sol LeWitt: "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art," Artforum, summer issue, 1967

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Lewitt, Wall Drawing #146, September 1972. All two-part combinations of blue arcs from corners and sides and blue straight, not straight, and broken lines;

blue crayon, Dimensions vary with installation.

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Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing No. 681 C / A, 1993Instructions: wall divided vertically into four equal squares separated and

bordered by black bands. Within each square, bands in one of four directions, each with color ink washes superimposed, 120 x 444 in.

Page 44: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Vito Acconci, Following Piece documentation, installed in 1969 at Barbara Gladstone Gallery, NYC, black and white photographs with text and chalk, text on index cards. Concept: Follow a different person every day until person enters private place.“I was a passive receiver of someone’s time and space.” (Acconci)

Conceptual performance art

Page 45: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Francis Alÿs on his walk through Jerusalem in 2005, in which he retraced the Green Line with a leaky paint can. Video still.

“Poetic license functions like a hiatus in the atrophy of a social, political, military or economic crisis. Through the gratuity or the absurdity of the poetic act, art provokes a moment of suspension of meaning, a brief sensation of senselessness that reveals the absurdity of the situation. . . .”

- Alÿs

Page 46: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Francis Alÿs (Belgian, lives in Mexico City, b. 1959), photographs of a 1995 project in which he painted a green line along an armistice boundary originally drawn on a map in green grease pencil by the Israeli leader Moshe Dayan in 1948.

"For the moment, I am exploring the following axiom: Sometimes doing something poetic can become political and sometimes doing something political can become poetic."

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Map showing the real Green Line and the politics of Alÿs’ poetic (aesthetic) artwork, Green Line

The faint green dotted line (the 'Green Line') represents the armistice line established after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Land to the right of the line was taken by Israel in 1967, and is still occupied today. The purple blobs on the map are new Israeli settlements up to 2007- Jews only - built up since 1967 on occupied land - The orange line is the line of wall under construction by Israel.

Page 48: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Francis Alÿs, When Faith Moves Mountains, video performance, 2002, 500 people, dressed in white shirts and jeans took up shovels in Lima to move a sand dune ten centimeters / http://youtu.be/4eNuqLnFaYA more videos: http://www.francisalys.com/

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“Can an artistic intervention truly bring about an unforeseen way of thinking? Can an absurd act provoke a transgression that makes you abandon the standard assumptions on the sources of conflict? Can those kinds of artistic acts bring about the possibility of change?”

- Francis Alÿs, 2005

Page 50: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Joseph Kosuth (US, b. 1945) One and Three Chairs, installation, 1965Conceptualism. Tautology / hermetic art about art

Page 51: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Kosuth, One and Three Tables, 1965, Installation, wooden table, gelatin silver photograph, and photostat mounted on foamcore

Page 52: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Hans Haacke (German, b.1936), Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real-Time System, as of May 1, 1971, 1971: 142 photographs of New York apartment buildings, 2 maps of New York's Lower East Side and Harlem with properties marked, 6 charts documenting business relations within the real estate group.

Page 53: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Bernhard and Hilla Becher (German, born 1931 and 1934 respectively) Conceptual (typological) photography

(left) Gas Tanks, 1963 (right) Water Towers, 1980, 9 b/w photographs mounted on board, 62inH overall

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Cildo Meireles (Brazil, b. 1948) in the early ’70s

Page 55: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Cildo Meireles, Insertions into ideological Circuits: Bank Note Project (Who Killed Herzog?) 1970, rubber stamp and bank note. Shown in the Museum of

Modern Art, NYC exhibition, Information, 1970

Page 56: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Cildo Meireles, Insertions into ideological Circuits:1. Coca-Cola Project, 1970printed stickers on Coca-Cola bottles, dimensions variable, collection the artist

Page 57: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

“The way I conceived it, the Insertions would only exist to the extent

that they ceased to be the work of just one person. The work only

exists to the extent that other people participate in it. What also arises

is the need for anonymity. By extension, the question of anonymity

involves the question of ownership. When the object of art becomes a

practice, it becomes something over which you can have no control or

ownership.” (Cildo Meireles)

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Bruce Nauman (US, b. 1941) (left) Eating My Words, and (right) Self Portrait as a Water Fountain, from Eleven Color Photographs" (1966-1967/70) “If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product.”

MFA from the University of California, Davis in 1966.

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Bruce Nauman (US 1941) (left) Wax Impressions of the Knees of Five Famous Artists, 1966, fiberglass and polyester resin (not wax), 15 5/8 in. x 85 1/4 in. x 2 3/4 in. Collection SFMOMA . Knee impressions are all Nauman’s(right) Hand to Mouth, wax over cloth, 1967 (cast from wife’s body)

"If they're not puzzled, they're not getting it."

- Robert Storr on Bruce Nauman’s viewers, 2009

Page 60: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Bruce Nauman, Art Makeup, White, Black, Pink, Green, 1967-8, performance video stills

http://www.vdb.org/smackn.acgi$artistdetail?NAUMANB

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Nauman, Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk) (1968). Video, 60 min

My name as though it were written on the surface of the moon.

Page 62: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Bruce Nauman, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign), 1967. Neon tubing with clear glass tubing suspension supports; 59 X 55 x 2 inOriginal made for the artist’s San Francisco street-front studio window: the private thought made as public as a commercial beer sign. Conceptual art is a poetic intervention into conventional (unquestioning) modes of “thought.”

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"The most difficult thing about the whole piece for me was the statement. It was a kind of test - like when you say something out loud to see if you believe it. Once written down, I could see that the statement [...] was on the one hand a totally silly idea and yet, on the other hand, I believed it. It's true and not true at the same time. It depends on how you interpret it and how seriously you take yourself. For me it's still a very strong thought."

- Nauman

Page 64: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Nauman, South American Triangle, 1981, welded steel beams (each 165” long) and cast iron chair. Inspired by Jacobo Timerman’s account of his torture by the Argentinean military regime.

Page 65: Minimalism, Conceptualism & Post-Minimalism

Bruce Nauman, Hanging Carousel (George Skins a Fox), 1988, taxidermist forms and suspension of South American Triangle signify victimization and violence.

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http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/nauman/clip2.html#

Bruce Nauman video clips:

Art 21 and Venice Biennale, 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xZskccr_Q0

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Eva Hesse (American b. Germany, 1936-1970, 34 years), Metronomic Irregularity, 1966. Post-Minimalism

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Eva Hesse, notebook page, 1965-66(right), Hesse, Hang Up, acrylic on wood, cloth, steel, 1966

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Hesse in New York apartment holding Ingeminate, 1966; Hesse Ingeminate 1965, surgical hose, papier-mâché, cord and sprayed enamel over balloons (detail)

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Eva Hesse (left) Accession II 1967 galvanized steel, rubber tubing, c. 30”square(botttom) Hesse with Accession II in 1968

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Hesse, Sans II (two views),1968 fiberglass polyester resin 5 units, each 38inH

Compare Minimalist sculpture ofDonald Judd, Untitled, 1964

detail

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Hesse, Repetition Nineteen III, fiberglass and polyester resin, 1968. Hesse began working with fabricators in 1968

Artist was diagnosed with brain tumor in 1969

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Eva Hesse, 1970. Fiberglass over polyethylene over aluminum wire. 7 units each 78 in. x 40 in. Berkeley: University Art Museum

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Eva Hesse, Rope Piece, 1970

“I remember I wanted to get to non art, non connotative, non anthropomorphic, non geometric, non, nothing. . . . question how and why in putting it together?

Can it be different each time? Why not?How to achieve by not Making?It’s all in that.”

Hesse with Rope Piece, studio installation,1970

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Compare Eva Hesse, Rope Piece, 1970, with Marcel Duchamp, Sixteen Miles of String, 1942, part of Duchamp’s installation for the First Papers of Surrealism, Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of this Century gallery, NYC

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Tara Donovan (American, b. 1969) Untitled (Plastic cups), 2006, millions of transparent plastic cups in a tight grid, stacked into curves and waves. (The work is re-made each time it is shown and can be expanded or contracted to fit the space.)This can be called Post-Minimal. Why?

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Tara Donovan, Untitled (Plastic Cups) 2000 installation

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Tara Donovan, Untitled (Glass), 2006. Sheets of stacked tempered glass; one corner of each pane is struck with a hammer and shattered into tiny pieces that stay in place. “If you bump into this and knock a corner off it, it can’t be repaired or remade with the same materials. It has to be made over again.” When the show is over, "it gets taken away with a shovel.”

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Tara Donovan, Untitled (Styrofoam cups), 2006 installation