Dan Flavin, "monument" for V. Tatlin, 1966, cool white fluorescent light, Gift of Virginia Dwan, 2015.179.1

Minimalism

“Minimal art” was initially an insult implying that an artwork offered little to look at. Minimalist artists were also criticized for barely “making” their works: Donald Judd, for example, had his sculptures built in workshops. Nonetheless, many admire Robert Morris’s polyhedrons, Dan Flavin’s fluorescent light sculptures, and Anne Truitt’s austere sculptures of painted wood.

  • A tall, rectangular, highly polished black panel leans against a white wall. The shiny surface reflects the room, including the gray carpet.
  • A rust-brown, steel cube sits directly on a pale pink stone floor in a gallery. This photograph shows the cube from near one of the corners so two sides are visible. The surface of the steel is mottled with bronze and and dark brown, and is faintly streaked. The bottom edge of the cube seems to float slightly, creating the impression that hovers just above the floor. The room around the cube has flat marble panels to the left and a white wall to the right.
  • A long, rectangular strip of yellowed painted fabric is draped over a horizontal wooden rod that hangs from the ceiling in this sculptural piece. The dowel is perpendicular to the wall so juts into the gallery space. In this photograph, we are almost in front of the piece, near the wall to look onto one of the long sides. The cheesecloth hangs straight down either side of the dowel so it is longer in the back, and the ends do not touch. An uneven application of latex paint on most of the fabric gives the work a rubbery appearance, and causes some variation in the surface to create shiny areas. The loose weave of the cheesecloth is visible at the ends where the fabric was not painted. The cloth and dowel seem to float in midair because the filament from which the rod hangs is invisible in this photograph.
  • This abstract, free-standing sculpture is made up of a square, scarlet-red box like a platform topped with a triangle, half the size of the square. In this photograph, we look onto one side of the square base, and the triangle lines up with the half farther from us. The front face of the triangle is a reflective, amethyst-purple surface that reflects the square box beneath, and the top surface is coral orange. The backdrop behind the sculpture fades from light gray along the top of the photograph to white along the bottom.
  • Narrow, horizontal bands of oyster white, pale blue, and faint peach, separated by denim-blue lines like a ruled sheet of paper, fill this square painting. The white, peach, and blue bands do not make a pattern, and there are a few areas where several white rows are clustered, including along the bottom edge.

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A woman is shown from behind in a white dress with a black sweater hanging over her shoulders. She stands looking towards two abstract paintings hanging on a white wall. A two piece vibrant yellow painting hangs to the left. On the right is a painting with two triangles of kelly green one of which is inverted so they meet in the middle of the canvas. The remaining left and right of the canvas is a solid white.

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Sculpture

Sculptures come in many forms—from figures chiseled out of stone to interlocking pieces of metal suspended from a ceiling. They can be made of almost any material: marble, clay, silver, wood, bronze, steel, wax, pâpier-maché, and more.

Blue

Artists turn to the color blue to conjure depth, mood, and atmosphere. It recalls both the sky and the sea. But blue pigment was sometimes costly. Ultramarine blue was made from lapis lazuli, a semiprecious stone mined in what is now Afghanistan. For centuries of Western art, it was reserved solely for painting the Virgin Mary’s cloak.