Quetstion 6 - Practice 1

Question 6

Practice 1

Lecture

Listen to a lecture. Fill in the missing information in the notes.

M: Today I want to talk about minimalism, a prominent movement in American and European art−which emerged around the 1960s.

The idea of minimalism was to reduce a work of art to its minimum number of colors, shapes, lines, and textures.

Minimalist artist resisted the traditional idea that art had to represent an object or an experience.

Instead, they created paintings and sculptures that were unique objects unto themselves−objects that didn’t stand for something else.

To achieve this effect, minimalist artist used two design techniques in their art.

First, they tended to use materials that were uniform in shape. Take, for instance, Carl Andre’s 1969 sculpture “Steel Zinc Plain.” This is a perfect example of how minimalist artist chose the simplest, most uniform shapes to piece together a work of art.

Andre uses one of the very simplest of geometric structures: the square. He took square plates of zinc and square plates of steel and arrange them in a checkerboard pattern on the floor.

So basically, he created what looked a giant checkerboard that could be walked over and stood upon.

Second, minimalist artist often used one kind of material in a repeating pattern. The 1966 piece by Dan Flavin called “Monument for V. Tatlin” clearly demonstrates the use of repetition. In this piece, Flavin uses only one type of material: a pre-made fluorescent tube-you know, those long, glowing tubes used for industrial lighting.

He took several of these and arranged them into a miniature monument. The idea was inspired by the Russian artist Vladimir Tatlin’s proposed design for a new revolving spiral monument that would be taller than the Eiffel Tower.

But in the end, Flavin created a simple sculpture that was nothing like the traditional grandeur of a real monument.