Postminimalism

also: Post-minimalism

movement late 1960s-1970s United States North America

Postminimalism is the name critic Robert Pincus-Witten gave in 1971 to art that took Minimalism's lessons and then softened, loosened, and dirtied them. Where Minimalist sculpture was hard-edged, industrially fabricated, and mute, postminimalist makers of the late 1960s and 1970s turned to pliable, unstable, often humble materials - latex, rubber, rope, wire, felt, fibreglass - and let gravity, process, and the hand decide the final shape. Eva Hesse's hollow fibreglass cylinders, Lynda Benglis's poured latex skins, Richard Serra's lead pieces, and Richard Tuttle's fragile wire and paper constructions treat making as something the work records rather than conceals. The results are bodily, irregular, and entropic: repetition with variation, seriality made human. The approach opened the way for process art, fiber art, and much installation work of the 1970s.

The Tribuna of the Uffizi (Zoffany)
The Tribuna of the Uffizi (Zoffany)Public domain (credit: Johann Zoffany) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Soft, pliable, or unstable materials - latex, rubber, rope, felt, wire, fibreglass - replacing rigid metal and paint
  • Process visible in the finished form: poured, dropped, hung, draped, or sagging
  • Irregular, entropic shapes that refuse the crisp geometry of Minimalism
  • Loose seriality: repeated units with human variation instead of identical modules
  • Hand-worked, eccentric surfaces that keep the mark of making
  • Scale from intimate, fragile objects to room-encompassing installations

Key figures

  • Eva Hesse (1936-1970) — Sculptor in latex and fibreglass whose bodily irregularity seeded the style
  • Lynda Benglis (1941-) — Sculptor whose poured latex floor works treat material flow as form
  • Richard Tuttle (1941-) — Maker of small, casual works in wire, paper, and cloth at intimate scale
  • Richard Serra (1938-2024) — Early lead and rubber pieces whose form records the process of making
  • Robert Pincus-Witten (1935-2018) — Critic who coined "post-minimalism" in 1971 to name the turn beyond Minimalism

Example works

  • Repetition Nineteen — Eva Hesse (1968)
  • Contraband — Lynda Benglis (1969)
  • Thirty-Five Feet of Lead Rolled Up — Richard Serra (1968)

Sources

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