Typology of Minimalism in the 1950–1960s. The Conceptual, Technological, and Material

Abstract

In this article the possible principle of typologization of one of the main trends of modern art of the 1950s–1960s, minimalism, is considered for the first time. The basis of this principle is the relationship between structure and material. In accordance with this approach, minimalism can be divided into the conceptual (the material principle tends to disappear), the technical (the material is subordinated to the structure) and the material, the physical, the corporeal (the material dominates the structure). This approach is considered throughout the history of minimalism from Ellsworth Kelly to Eva Hesse. The novelty of the approach lies in the choice of the very principle of typologization: in the opposition of structure as a speculative concept to a material with oppositely directed — anti-structural — properties (a kind of ability to resist); in a broader context — the mind and the natural principle as philosophical categories. Their interrelationships, which change in the course of evolution, can be viewed as the driving force behind the development of minimalism (an art that possesses utmost abstractness and therefore is difficult to explain by traditional description and systematization). In addition, the history of minimalism, usually considered in the scientific literature within the 1960s, in this case begins in 1951 (from early Kelly, Morellet, Molnár), which reveals the earliest — conceptual — type of minimalism as a separate phenomenon that introduces the problem of the confrontation of two multidirectional principles.