MATHS CLASS' GUIDE TO MINIMALIST ART

The abstract expressionism of the 50s and early 60s was a very guttural experience - fierce colour, emotive art and very much an expression of what was going on. Minimalism formed as a rebellion against that - as a critique about specifics.

The reason I enjoy this art movement is because it’s about thought processes and expressions. Sol Lewitt did a specific piece (now in the Tate Modern), which was a series of parallel lines drawn in a room, on the floors and walls. It was incredible to walk into this empty space. Minimalism always redefines itself, but as this piece shows, it was based on the geometric form.

Many people describe the movement as creating ‘something out of nothing’, or ‘revealing something that isn’t there.’ A good illustration of this is the artist James Turrell, because his work is about projecting light.

There’s a fantastic retrospective of him at the Louis T. Blouin Institute; the first room you walk into contains this square of purple-blue light. As you walk towards it, you begin to realise that it’s a projection and that it has no end. Through meticulous lighting he’s taken away the corners – the square is cut into the wall – and it looks like it goes on forever.

There’s another artist, a painter called Frank Stella, who makes his canvasses based on the size of the wood that’s made to use in them. So if the wood is two by two inches, the length of everything has to relate to that – whether it’s divisible by two or a multiple of two, for example. So even though it’s a painting, the shape of the object is the art. He blurs the gap between painting and sculpture, and that’s an important aspect of Minimalism.