Postminimalism is an art term coined (as post-minimalism) by Robert Pincus-Witten in 1971 [1] and used in various artistic fields for work which is influenced by, or attempts to develop and go beyond, the aesthetic of minimalism. [2] The expression is used specifically in relation to music and the visual arts, but can refer to any field using minimalism as a critical reference point. In music, postminimalism refers to music following minimal music.
Postminimalist visual art uses minimalism either as a conceptual art aesthetic or a generative art practice. Like Fluxus, Postminimalism is more of an artistic tendency than a particular style, but in general, postminimalist artworks often use everyday objects, simple materials, and sometimes take on a pure formalist aesthetics or post-conceptual approaches. However, since postminimalism includes such a diverse and disparate group of artists, it is impossible to enumerate all the continuities and similarities between them. But as two opposing examples, take the work of Eva Hesse and her use of modern art grids and minimalist seriality that were usually hand-made, introducing a human element into minimalism in contrast to the machine fabrication more typical of the minimalism of someone like Carl Andre. Richard Serra was another prominent postminimalist though his large metal sculptures are completely machine made. [3]
In its general musical usage, "postminimalism" refers to works influenced by minimal music, and it is generally categorized within the meta-genre art music. Writer Kyle Gann [4] has employed the term more strictly to denote the style that flourished in the 1980s and 1990s and characterized by:
Minimalist procedures such as additive and subtractive process are common in postminimalism, though usually in disguised form, and the style has also shown a capacity for absorbing influences from world and popular music (Balinese gamelan, bluegrass, Jewish cantillation, and so on).
In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism was an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, and it is most strongly associated with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as intermedia, installation art, conceptual art and multimedia, particularly involving video are described as postmodern.
Kyle Eugene Gann is an American composer, professor of music, critic, analyst, and musicologist who has worked primarily in the New York City area. As a music critic for The Village Voice and other publications, he has supported progressive music, including such "downtown" movements as postminimalism and totalism.
Downtown music is a subdivision of American music, closely related to experimental music, which developed in downtown Manhattan in the 1960s.
Minimal music is a form of art music or other compositional practice that employs limited or minimal musical materials. Prominent features of minimalist music include repetitive patterns or pulses, steady drones, consonant harmony, and reiteration of musical phrases or smaller units. It may include features such as phase shifting, resulting in what is termed phase music, or process techniques that follow strict rules, usually described as process music. The approach is marked by a non-narrative, non-teleological, and non-representational approach, and calls attention to the activity of listening by focusing on the internal processes of the music.
In the arts, maximalism, a reaction against minimalism, is an aesthetic of excess. The philosophy can be summarized as "more is more", contrasting with the minimalist motto "less is more".
Totalism is a style of art music that arose in the 1980s and 1990s as a response to minimalism. It paralleled postminimalism but involved a younger generation of creators, born in the 1950s. This term, invented by writer and composer Kyle Gann, has not been adopted by contemporary musicology and generally still refers only to Gann's use of it in his writings. It is also used to refer to a radically economically left and authoritarian political ideology in the fictional Hearts of Iron IV mod "Kaiserreich", although the two are unrelated.
Eva Hesse was a German-born American sculptor known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. She is one of the artists who ushered in the postminimal art movement in the 1960s.
Lyrical abstraction is either of two related but distinct trends in Post-war Modernist painting:
In the visual arts, late modernism encompasses the overall production of most recent art made between the aftermath of World War II and the early years of the 21st century. The terminology often points to similarities between late modernism and postmodernism, although there are differences. The predominant term for art produced since the 1950s is contemporary art. Not all art labelled as contemporary art is modernist or post-modern, and the broader term encompasses both artists who continue to work in modern and late modernist traditions, as well as artists who reject modernism for post-modernism or other reasons. Arthur Danto argues explicitly in After the End of Art that contemporaneity was the broader term, and that postmodern objects represent a subsector of the contemporary movement which replaced modernity and modernism, while other notable critics: Hilton Kramer, Robert C. Morgan, Kirk Varnedoe, Jean-François Lyotard and others have argued that postmodern objects are at best relative to modernist works.
Systems art is art influenced by cybernetics and systems theory, reflecting on natural systems, social systems, and the social signs of the art world itself.
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially Visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts. As a specific movement in the arts it is identified with developments in post–World War II Western Art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Minimalism is often interpreted as a reaction to abstract expressionism and a bridge to postminimal art practices. Prominent artists associated with this movement include Ad Reinhardt, Nassos Daphnis, Tony Smith, Donald Judd, John McCracken, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, Larry Bell, Anne Truitt, Yves Klein and Frank Stella. Artists themselves have sometimes reacted against the label due to the negative implication of the work being simplistic.
Phase music is a form of music that uses phasing as a primary compositional process. It is an approach to musical composition that is often associated with minimal music, as it shares similar characteristics, but some commentators prefer to treat phase music as a separate category. Phasing is a compositional technique in which the same part is played on two musical instruments, in steady but not identical tempi. Thus, the two instruments gradually shift out of unison, creating first a slight echo as one instrument plays a little behind the other, then a doubling effect with each note heard twice, then a complex ringing effect, and eventually coming back through doubling and echo into unison.
Modern sculpture is generally considered to have begun with the work of Auguste Rodin, who is seen as the progenitor of modern sculpture. While Rodin did not set out to rebel against the past, he created a new way of building his works. He "dissolved the hard outline of contemporary Neo-Greek academicism, and thereby created a vital synthesis of opacity and transparency, volume and void". Along with a few other artists in the late 19th century who experimented with new artistic visions in sculpture like Edgar Degas and Paul Gauguin, Rodin invented a radical new approach in the creation of sculpture. Modern sculpture, along with all modern art, "arose as part of Western society's attempt to come to terms with the urban, industrial and secular society that emerged during the nineteenth century".
Post-conceptual, postconceptual, post-conceptualism or postconceptualism is an art theory that builds upon the legacy of conceptual art in contemporary art, where the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work takes some precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. The term first came into art school parlance through the influence of John Baldessari at the California Institute of the Arts in the early 1970s. The writer Eldritch Priest, specifically ties John Baldessari's piece Throwing four balls in the air to get a square from 1973 as an early example of post-conceptual art. It is now often connected to generative art and digital art production.
Robert Pincus-Witten was an American art critic, curator and art historian.
The Time Curve Preludes is a minimalist composition for piano solo by William Duckworth written between 1977 and 1978. This piece is credited as the first postminimal piece of music, and is his most frequently heard work. The Time Curve Preludes were composed between 1977 and 1978 on a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. They were premiered at Wesleyan University in 1979 by pianist Neely Bruce. Duckworth used elements of Minimalism, including repetition and accessible harmonies, yet also embraced more quickly changing structures; wide-ranging, complex melodies; and colorful dissonances.
The indie classical genre is generally used to describe the music that follows certain classical music practices but is produced and distributed through independent record labels. The term was brought into widespread circulation by New Amsterdam Records’ publicity apparatus, intended to represent composers whose "music slips through the cracks between genres." The term "indie classical" became controversial and by 2013, it had been strongly resisted by participants in the very community that the record label initially sought to describe. The term remains unsettled and its use has declined, although currently it is sometimes used interchangeably with “alt-classical” or “neo-classical”, generally as a marketing label for music that crosses over between classical and other popular genres, associating artists who have little in common with the original movement.