Breath and existential crisis: Minimalism is phenomenological
Tom Dance writes in response to ‘Experiencing the Aesthetic’, a unit taken by second year Liberal Arts students at the University of Bristol.
‘20 firebricks in Carl Andre’s Equivalent VIII - a reckoning with existence itself’.
Artwork by Rose Jeffs
The term ‘Minimalism’ fills cultural critics and avid gallery-goers with dread. When Carl Andre’s contentious Equivalent VIII was purchased by Tate Gallery in 1962, the gallery was scorned for this acquisition of a ‘pile of bricks’ (as quoted from the Evening Standard) eliciting uproar from press and public alike. The work, made from twenty firebricks, aroused such dissent that it was defaced with blue food colouring in 1976: a protest referencing Ruskin’s infamous attack on Whistler for ‘throwing a pot of paint’ in the public’s face. Viewed as an insult to artistic legitimacy, the sculpture quickly became one of the most controversial artworks to be acquired by a leading UK institution.
Yet, somewhat paradoxically, this scandal made concrete the work’s position within history books and the Tate collection, where it remains today. Was this tabloid farce a total misunderstanding? Can Minimalist works be classified as ‘true art’ or are they disrespectful towards it?
Introducing Phenomenology
A possible answer to this artistic quandary lies with phenomenology. Pioneered by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, this critical approach judges an artwork’s aesthetic value upon the viewer’s immediate response to the work. As Amanda Boetzkes explains, phenomenology considers an artwork ‘against the spatial, temporal and material conditions it shares with the viewer’, pedestaling viewer’s subjective reaction. In other words, phenomenology celebrates the ‘here-and-now’ of the viewing experience. This approach enmeshes the beholder and the artwork in a contingent encounter. It is this encounter and the viewer’s response to this encounter that is seen as aesthetically significant and integral to an artwork’s meaning. In this way, phenomenology favours an embodied and visceral aesthetic experience, as opposed to the historical approaches of traditional academic disciplines.
Through this lens, the disapproval garnered by Equivalent VIII becomes a vehicle of aesthetic meaning, sculpture emotionally affects beholders upon their immediate encounter with it. Upon encountering the firebricks, the viewer responds with visceral shock or offence, thereby validating the bricks’ ascension to artistic status. Thus Equivalent VIII is wholly reliant on audience response to become an ‘artwork’: without the viewer, this translation cannot occur and the bricks remain no more than the sum of their parts. This ‘reliance’ lies at the heart of phenomenology; it declares that art needs a receptive audience to exist as art.
Carl Andre, Equivalent VIII, 1966. Firebricks, 127 × 686 × 2292 mm. © 2020 Carl Andre. Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY and DACS, London. Photo © Tate.
Bewildering Bricks: Minimalism and ‘Objecthood’:
Curiously, what is most striking about Equivalent VIII is what it lacks. As a stack of industrially produced bricks with unadorned, planar surfaces, Andre’s sculpture seemingly has little aesthetic interest. The artwork is often understood as expressionless and cold, as it cannot be read metaphorically. Rosalind Krauss explains how this inscrutable appearance prevents the viewer from becoming ‘absorbed’ by the work. Indeed, by eliminating the mark of the artist and presenting bricks merely as bricks, the work becomes impenetrable to semiotic (symbolic) interpretation*.
Art Historian Michael Fried probed this notion in his essay ‘Art and Objecthood’. Fried suggests the ‘literalist sensibility’ of Minimalism’s austere appearance is comparable to an ‘encounter’ with ‘an object in a situation—one that, virtually by definition, includes the beholder’.vii His claim acknowledges the experience of Minimalism is wholly phenomenological. The experience of the work is thus wholly ‘external’, in the same way in which one experiences a piece of furniture, for example. This is anchored by the sculpture’s lack of visible interior: a site associated with ‘uncovering’ meaning in 20th-century sculpture. It is therefore impossible to project an anthropomorphic reading onto Andre’s work: this unfeasibility reduces the experience of the work to an object within space.
Minimalism, Self-Consciousness and ‘Heightened Perception’
Unable to imbue the bricks with a symbolic reading, the viewer experiences something like an existential crisis. For, as the viewer fails to interpret Equivalent VIII, the artwork inadvertently throws the attention back onto the viewer themselves. Thus the viewer becomes aware of their own body in relation to the sculpture, as the work is understood as a form within a material landscape.
The beholder becomes aware of the size, mass, and weight of their own body in relation to the work, alongside the rise and fall of their breath, their proximity to the work, and their position within the gallery space itself. This gives the sculpture a palpable presence, as the beholder becomes aware of their intrusion into the artwork’s spatial field. Thus the artwork becomes an anchor against which the viewer interrogates their subjectivity. Claire Bishop has described this self-conscious experience as one of ‘heightened perception’, wherein the sculpture emboldens our awareness of both the exhibition space and our process of perceiving it. In this way, the aloofness of Equivalent VIII forces us to reckon with the phenomenology of existence itself, as human beings perceiving an object within a wider physical world.
Minimalism and the Experience of Architecture
The literalist aesthetics of Minimalism also draw the viewer’s attention to the architectural space within which the art is housed. Frances Colpitt has argued that Minimalist sculpture ‘activates’ the space surrounding it—i.e. the space ‘inhabited by the viewer’. Again, this is a by-product of the work’s ‘objecthood’, encouraging the viewer to perceive their body as a form within space. As such, the viewer is not ‘distracted’ by the art and thus can come to terms with the gallery space itself. As the viewer conceives themselves in relation to the work, Equivalent VIII becomes a central anchor against which a viewer understands not only their own form and subjectivity, but also the gallery space.
Equivalent VIII sits in the middle of the room like an obstacle, around which the viewer must negotiate to traverse the exhibition space. In this way, the sculpture interferes with the space and the viewer’s movements through it, a phenomenon termed the ‘Minimalist environment’ by Bishop. Consequently, the sculpture influences the viewer’s understanding of the space, as they circumnavigate the firebrick stack.
Moreover, comprised from industrially produced bricks, the work’s materiality itself harks from the world of architecture. The planar sides and sharp corners of Equivalent VIII’s arrangement proves to emphasise the cuboidal space of the gallery itself, while its unadorned surfaces mirror the sparseness of the ‘white cube’ gallery. As such, the walls, ceiling, and flooring are understood as a macrocosm of the sculpture itself. Lying horizontally across the gallery floor, the sculpture emphasises the expansive horizontality of the ground, counterbalancing the verticality of the human body atop it. As such, the viewer becomes aware of their intrusion into the gallery space and their erect posture which stands perpendicular to the gallery floor. These experiences force the viewer to reckon with their existence as an entity within architectural space, diverting the viewer’s attention to the sublime power of human engineering.
A Phenomenal Movement
In summary, the application of phenomenology to Minimalist sculpture is crucial to understanding the movement. Minimalism lends itself to a phenomenological approach, as both concepts concern themselves with the viewer’s temporality and experiences of embodied perception. Yes, Andre’s work is a mere stack of firebricks, but it is that very fact that makes Equivalent VIII so phenomenologically significant. By ameliorating all traces of the artist’s hand, Andre encourages us to consider the capabilities of our own bodies, which have the power to perceive and construct remarkable architectural spaces. As such, Andre majestically transforms a pile of bricks into an interrogation of existence itself, as a living and computing human being. By encouraging us to see and appreciate the world differently, Minimalism has just as much artistic legitimacy as Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, or Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus.
*OED definition of ‘semiotic’: ‘relating to signs and symbols.’
Tom Dance (Aurora editor 2022-23)