Minimalist crowds
They get Time every week at the Ontarion, and I just got ahold of the May 24 issue (Canadian edition). It's got a plethora of good stuff, but I'll only link to two stories: a book review on the surprising intelligence of crowds and a pretty kick-ass piece on the two major exhibitions of Minimalist art in the US right now; as mentioned previously, I've been to the one at the Guggenheim in NYC and loved it. The piece is noteworthy, if for nothing else, for giving the only good explanation of the difference between Minimalist and post-Minimalist art I've ever read:
"But to make Minimalism something more than a philosophical pleasure, most artists had to go outside its orthodoxies. For Rainbow Pickett, Judy Chicago made a variation on Morris' plain beams but painted each one a different pastel color, which immediately sets off associations with femininity that the pure Minimalist object is expected to forego. It was that kind of thing that a later generation of Postminimalists would do — keep the language of simplified impersonal forms but restore associations to the outside world."
Pity the online version doesn't have photos, though.
"But to make Minimalism something more than a philosophical pleasure, most artists had to go outside its orthodoxies. For Rainbow Pickett, Judy Chicago made a variation on Morris' plain beams but painted each one a different pastel color, which immediately sets off associations with femininity that the pure Minimalist object is expected to forego. It was that kind of thing that a later generation of Postminimalists would do — keep the language of simplified impersonal forms but restore associations to the outside world."
Pity the online version doesn't have photos, though.
