Jeff Houck wrote:
> St. wrote:
> 
>> Or rather, as I haven't done anything like minimalism, (at least I 
>> don't think so with my images), would this be a minimalist image?
>>
>>   ~Steve~
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
> 
> Minimal Art emerged as a movement in the 1950s and continued through the 
> Sixties and Seventies. It is a term used to describe paintings and 
> sculpture that thrive on simplicity in both content and form, and seek 
> to remove any sign of personal expressivity. The aim of Minimalism is to 
> allow the viewer to experience the work more intensely without the 
> distractions of composition, theme and so on.
> 
> There are examples of the Minimalist theory being exercised as early as 
> the 18th century when Goethe constructed an Altar of Good Fortune made 
> simply of a stone sphere and cube. But the 20th century sees the 
> movement come into its own. From the 1920s artists such as Malevich and 
> Duchamp produced works in the Minimalist vein but the movement is known 
> chiefly by its American exponents such as Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, 
> Ellsworth Kelly and Donald Judd who reacted against Abstract 
> Expressionism in their stark canvases, sculptures and installations.
> 
> Minimal Art is related to a number of other movements such as Conceptual 
> Art in the way the finished work exists merely to convey a theory, Pop 
> Art in their shared fascination with the impersonal and Land Art in the 
> construction of simple shapes. Minimal Art proved highly successful and 
> has been enormously influential on the development of art in the 20th 
> century.
> 
> http://www.artmovements.co.uk/minimalism.htm
In my recollection, the minimalist was pretty much the label for a small 
group of sculptors.  At the time, everyone thought that painting, which 
in a reductionist era was pretty much forced to accept "color" as its 
domain, had played itself out.  I don't remember that painters that were 
doing monochrone paintings or even "shaped canvases" were calling 
themselves minimalists. They only did that in the seventies, when that 
label became the only way to sell a work of art.  As I remember they 
were using terms like post-expressive abstraction, geometric 
abstraction, field painting, and so on.  As I recall, while many 
painters of the day might be clustered under the term in retrospect, 
Agnes Martin was really the only painter acknowledged as such at the time.

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