Minimalism, subjectivity, and aesthetics: rethinking the anti-aesthetic tradition in late-modern art

Abstract

Minimalism, Subjectivity and Aesthetics: Rethinking the Anti-Aesthetic Tradition in Late-modern Art.Minimalism is routinely interpreted as anti-subjective, anti-expressive and anti-aesthetic. This paper challenges this interpretation by closely examining two accounts of minimalism: Rosalind Krauss's article of 1973, “Sense and Sensibility,” and Thierry de Duve's amplification and refutation of aspects of Krauss' argument in his 1983 article, “Performance Here and Now.” Each believes that minimalism presents a model of subjectivity, and each produces an account of subjectivity that is both embedded in the work and yet produced by the viewer's interaction with it. Krauss and de Duve do not agree on the theory of the subject that Minimalism enacts, despite agreeing that a model of subjectivity is what is at stake in minimalist art.One can clearly see here the revival of Hegel's claim that the task of art is to “present man with himself” as well as a renewed focus on the nature of aesthetic reception. It is my contention that aesthetics allows us to see more clearly what is at stake in the refiguring of art that these two groundbreaking accounts of minimalism trace. Thus, although minimalism is often argued to mark the beginning of an anti-aesthetic tradition in art practice and art criticism, its radical achievements are best understood through aesthetics.This crucial link between subjectivity and late-modern art has been all but lost in the subsequent literature. A phenomenological approach to minimalism, such as Krauss's, is now simply shorthand for attending to the motile and perceptual experience of art and its context. This approach is then neatly historicised and believed to be dispatched by subsequent art with a more politically attuned concern for context. To resuscitate her theoretical concern with models of subjectivity, as De Duve does, upsets this foreclosure, while also creating an opening for other ways to trace the progress of late-modern art—the overall aim of my paper.