Rene Bui wrote:
> Jim Charter <jrc### [at] msncom> wrote:
> 
>>I don't remember that painters that were
>>doing monochrone paintings or even "shaped canvases" were calling
>>themselves minimalists.
> 
> 
> Hi Jim,
> Minimalism, the term was used for the *first time* by the philosopher
> Richard Wollheim in Arts Magazine (1965) when he talked about some aspect
> of Marcel Duchamp's work. After that, someones (art critics) re-used this
> word to describe the artwork of Ad Reinhardt ('ultimate paintings', some
> almost monochromes ), Frank Stella, Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Dan Flavin,
> Sol Lewitt, Robert Morris, Dan Graham... But I believe the artists
> themselves rejected this term because they thought it was too reducing, in
> a formal aspect I mean.
> 
> 
> Rene
> http://rene.bui.free.fr - online portfolio
> 
> 
Thanks for that. And thankyou for understanding that
while "minimalist" can be recognized in in any number of modernist 
artists throughout the last century and earlier, and may even have been 
used regarding them, I am talking about the huge, famous, international 
art movement by that name that took place in the 60's and 70's.

Yes I admit that I was pretty hazy on F Stella, and whether and how 
early the term was applied to his work.  Mostly what I remember was all 
the hand-wringing around the idea that once you turned a painting into a 
shaped canvas, then all you really had was a type of sculpture.  So, 
"painting" was "dead."  I also remember that painters, even 
Stella/Reinhardt, were still viewed in the context of modernist -> 
abstract expressionist -> formalist ( and even pop ) traditions of 
*painting*  while the sculptures of Judd, Andre, Serra etc. seemed a new 
and exciting movement.

And I agree, I think the scultors themselves saw their work differently 
from how it came to be marketed.  And I do seem to recall that they 
would only acknowledge Agnes.  But that might be only hearsay.

Anyway, most of the fuss was over by the time I got to NY in the late 
seventies.  All I saw was the perpetual darkness of the movement's 
fallout.

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