Chapter 2: Minimalism and Literal Presence In this chapter we explore the concept of Presence within the context of the

work of the minimalist sculptors of the 1960s. (brief into to minimalist artists) Presence was a term very much in vogue in the 1960s (Meyer2001), used by the minimalist sculptors themselves as a positive, the word appears in much of the literature of the time. (examples?) Dropt often and freely, it was generally used with some ambiguity to describe the striking or charismatic quality an artwork possessed. The formalist art critic Clement Greenberg was the first to use the word decisively in the context of minimalism. In his essay The Recentness of Sculpture (1967) Greenberg pessimistically argued that the new work of the Minimalist sculptors should be viewed as a final collapse in the distinction between art and non-art. Minimal works he writes are readable as art as almost anything is today-including a door, a table, or a blank sheet of paper.(Greenberg 1967 p183) The effect of this final collapse he believes is an aesthetic of Presence. Greenbergs treatment of the term does not extend much further then to say, Presence is achieved through the look of non-art (Greenberg 1967 p185) illuminating Greenbergs comments, Colpitt writes presence may arise from the nonillusionistic nonmimetic reality of the object- a thing as real and present as another person and piece of furniture.(Colpitt 1990 p72) Written soon after Greenberg published his comments, the formalist Art critic Michael Fried wrote his now infamous essay Art and Objecthood (1967). A staunch indictment of the minimalists work, the concept of Presence is given thorough treatment in the essay. Fried a self confessed disciple of Greenberg is in agreement that Minimal objects undermine the distinction between art and non-art, and thus evoke presence. But Fried elaborates on Greenbergs definition creating a much more complex notion of its evocation. Presence in Frieds writing (although he does not make such a distinction) may be largely understood as arising from two propertys of the work, firstly what he describes as Minimalisms Theatricality and secondly its anthropomorphic quality. Theatricality It was primarily a situational quality that Fried objected to in Minimal art (or as he calls it, literalist art). Minimalist art he writes is theatrical because it is concerned with the

actual circumstances in which the beholder encounters literalist work.(Fried 1967 P153) For Fried, it is imperative that art defeat its on objecthood (akin to non-art) if it is to avoid falling into the modality of Theatre. Fried Writes, There is a war going on between theatre and modernist painting, between the theatrical and pictorial (Fried p160) Theatre or Theatricality in Frieds writings denotes a negative polemic in opposition to what he regards as the true properties of a work of art1. A work of art he argues must be Absorptive and Absorbing. Theatre on the other hand describes an art thats effect is to distance the beholder, placing artwork and spectator in a situation of confrontation. In opposition to the pictorial absorption (of which he considers painting the par excellence), Literalist Art has an alienating deixis effect, pointing outward to its context and to the viewer. Theatre most notably for our discussion refers to an art form that is durational and unfolds in time, as Kraus remarks It is an extended temporality, a merging of the temporal experience of sculpture with real time that pushs the plastic arts into the modality of theatre. (Kraus 1981 p203) It is the merging of art with time, or in other words, the spectators awareness of his or her own material temporality whilst in view of an artwork that fried finds most abhorrent. The introduction of lived time results in what fried describes as a theatrical presence. By way of contrast, he creates the term presentness to describe the, as he sees it, atemporal experience when encountering a modernist artwork. For fried, paintings meaning has a platonic status, and ideally resides independent from the art-objects material place in the world. The pictorial arts or as he sees it art proper, allows for a metaphysical temporality, to an experience essentially outside of time. presence fried describes as a presentment of endless or indefinite duration

Anthropomorphic Presence The Minimalist artists sort to redefine sculpture by ridding their work of any organic trace and all allusions to life (Cite?). Criticising their work for what he sees as its latent or hidden naturalism (Fried 1967 p157) Fried directly contradicts their intentions describing their work as blatantly anthropomorphic (Fried 1967 p159). Unlike traditional sculpture, the qualities of anthropomorphism he identifies in the

minimalists sculptures evoked personhood not through direct resemblance, or by being biomorphic, but through the formal qualities of size, symmetry, and hollowness. As collateral for his argument, Fried quotes from an interview with the minimalist artist Tony Smith, in which he is asked to comment on the size of his sculpture Die (1962), Q: why didnt you make it larger so that it would loom over the observer? A: I was not making a monument. Q: why didnt you make it smaller so that the observer could see over the top? A: I was not making an object. (Tony Smith quoted in Fried 1967 p156) 6ft Square, his cube is to large to be an object and to small to be a monument. Fried infers from this that what in fact Smith intended to make was a kind of surrogate person-that is a kind of statue (Fried 1969 P156) Frieds second contention was the symmetrical form of their works. Symmetry in the case of minimalism he claims is not to be confused as a quality of systematic abstraction, but as a universal and natural law of all persons and living things. Lastly hollowness, Fried insists the fact that many of the minimalist sculptures particularly those of Morriss have an inside gave the work the appearance of an inner, even secret life (Fried 1969 p156) (I need to include Greenberg in taking stock) To take stock, in the review so far we may understand Frieds charge that Minimalist art evokes presence as twofold. Firstly that they evoke an experience of presence on the spectator-as a result of their non-representational objecthood and distancing quality which he describes as Theatrical, and secondly that the Minimalists works themselves have presence as a result of what he describes as Minimalisms anthropomorphic quality. Here we may distinguish between two types of presence, the first Being Present- the experience of the viewer being aware of his or her self situated in the here and now, and the second, Having Presence- a charismatic quality of the objects as being perceived to be analogous to other persons (similar to that described in the proceeding chapterAuratic Presence and Objects of Worship.) I now wish to address an important question which arises from these two evocations of presence- How can minimalist works both possess the status as objects, whilst as Fried argues, at the same time display anthropomorphic formal qualities? In order to address this question I should like to take issue with Frieds assertion that minimalist works have formal elements are anthropomorphic. In Frieds first point Size; he seems to completely over look the fact that smiths cube whilst 6ft high is also 6ft wide, not a very human dimension. What's more, whilst Smiths work Die and a

handful of Robert Morriss works have a height comparable to that of persons, it could hardly be said to be a common feature of all minimalist works. Regarding the formal quality of Symmetry, this might be the most convincing of his points. Yet as I write this, there are many objects that surround me, a table, books, a biscuit, all symmetrical, up till now though I have not felt the need to reflect on their resemblance to persons. Whilst it is true that people are symmetrical in appearance, people are not in life, in life people are gestural and dynamic. Finally, Hollowness, one need turn no further then ones own body to realise, hollowness is not a quality of the human body, nor any other species for that matter. Instead of Frieds intended formal explanation regarding the experience of the work as having an anthropomorphic presence, it is my contention that he is far more enlightening in the following passages, to enter the room in which a literalist work has been placed is to become that beholder, that audience of one- almost as though the work in question has been waiting for him. And inasmuch as literalist work depends on the beholder, is incomplete without him, it has been waiting for him. (Fried 1967 p164) being distanced by such objects is not, I suggest, entirely unlike being distanced, or crowded, by the silent presence of another person; the experience of coming upon literalist objects unexpectedly- for example, in somewhat darkened rooms-can be strongly, if momentarily, disquieting in just this way.(Fried 1967 p155) A paranoia seems to saturate Frieds perception of presence when he writes about the work lying in wait and the disquieting experience of coming across literalist objects in somewhat darkened rooms (Fried 1967 p155) (Wood 2005) I argue that through a closer reading of Frieds essay, anthropomorphism is not so much as Fried sets out- an illusion brought about by the formal properties of the artworks themselves (which as we have seen are at best suggestive) but a psychological response to an absence of meaning in the work2. Fried seems himself to touch on this when he highlights Hollowness as a cause of the works personification. Paradoxically I contend that it is an absence in the work that brings about Having Presence. Colpitt would seem in agreement when he writes, The total abstractness of minimal art resulted in a personification of objects. The objects are not formally similar to human beings, yet their complete self-sufficiency encouraged the critic and spectator to treat them as other beings.(Colpitt 1990 p72)

I suggest that Minimalist objects are not so much anthropomorphic, as they encourage anthropomorphism by the viewer. That is, as a result of their, dependence on the viewer. By emphasizing the active experience of the viewer over the particular qualities inherent in any particular object, Minimalist art makes the viewer an active participant in the production of their work. (Krauss) It is by what fried then describes as Minimalisms need for completion, because the artwork depends on the beholder is incomplete without him (Fried 1998 p163) that we may better understand anthropomorphism as an attribute projected onto the work by the beholder, rather then as an inherent quality of the work itself, as fried suggests. Returning to the contradiction I identified previously in Frieds argument: that Minimalist works are non-representational objects -whilst at the same time he argues they are anthropomorphic. I suggest that understanding anthropomorphism as a psychological attribute allows us to understand how Minimalist artworks can maintain their status as objects and as anthropomorphic accordingly without falling into contradiction. To conclude, Minimalist works evoke both Being Presence and Having Presence. Being Presence can foremost be understood as brought into being by Minimalist works as a result of their non-representational and situational quality, and should be understood as an experience of the viewer as aware of his own concrete material and temporality. Having Presence here may be understood similarly to the last chapter as an Auratic quality of the object, unlike in Objects of worship however, Having Presence in minimalist objects is not a product of belief or ritual context, but as a result of an absence of meaning in the work that encourages a personal psychological investment.

Notes (1) Fried would later go on the write a historical narrative charting out as he saw it, arts long struggle against theatre. See: Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (2) (Clarify definition I am using for paranoia) the effect of absences, such as isolation, and sensory deprivation in bringing about paranoia, hallucinations and the personification of persons inanimate surroundings has been well documented in psychological and neurological studies. For a more in-depth treatment of the subject see: In psychotherapy The Examined Life: How We Loose and Find Ourselves in psychology

http://whitney.org/Collection/TonySmith