This is an extraordinary painting, everything stopped for a big moment when I saw it. I recently discovered the painter Martha Alf (1930-2019) through an announcement for her inaugural posthumous exhibition at the Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles. She found a viable exit ramp from Minimalism with this beautiful painting of black toilet paper, something she preferred to call a cylinder.
I should begin this discussion with a definition of Minimalism, to whatever extent a definition of something like this is possible. I turn to Kenneth Baker’s book Minimalism for some help:
The word “minimal” is used loosely these days, in reference to any stylistic austerity in the arts. The term “Minimalist” is only slightly more precise when applying to works of visual art. It carries two distinct implications, each with its own historical resonances. The term may refer to art, primarily sculpture or three-dimensional work made after 1960, that is abstract - or even more inert visually than “abstract” suggests - and barren of merely decorative detail, in which geometry is emphasized and expressive technique avoided. … these artists recognized that industry controlled the aesthetic physics of objects to a degree that no individual artist could, and they resorted to industrial fabrication in order to avail themselves of that control. … The other sense of “Minimalist” refers to the tendency … to present as art things that are - or were when they first exhibited - indistinguishable (or all but) from raw materials or found objects, that is, minimally differentiated from mere non-art stuff1
I think Baker’s definition is as concise and precise as a definition of something as fuzzy as a cultural category can be. Allow me to provide a single artist-example of each of Baker’s two kinds: A Donald Judd “Stack” is an example of the former and a Carl Andre floor piece as an example of the latter. But I still need to fuss a bit with the Andre example: It seems to me that his floor pieces are made of fabricated components as opposed to natural components like rocks and bones, thus the only difference is an arrangement of fabricated components versus a fully fabricated object. Such a fine distinction may not be necessary for this essay but my analytical instincts tend to pounce on definitions.
Donald Judd, untitled, copper and plexiglass, 1987 (artbasel.com)
Carl Andre, Steel-Copper Plain, steel and copper, 1969, although I have some doubt about whether the title should be Plane instead of Plain, but that’s none of my business really. (https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/L2011.56/#about)
If one were to think of art history as analogous to the history of science, then it would follow that the history of art has an inevitable endpoint. That point would have clarity, concision, and simplicity, the ultimate goal of a scientific theory of everything that can be expressed with algebra or perhaps even geometry. Theories of Modernism have no trouble finding practitioners who apparently have that understanding of the art ‘project’ from Russian Constructivism in the early Soviet period, through de Stijl, and into the New York school, in this case I’m thinking more of Ad Reinhardt (1913-1967) rather than the Abstract Expressionists.
Ad Reinhardt Installation view. (Courtesy David Zwirner)
It seems to me that the end point was reached right at the beginning with Kasimir Malevich’s (1879-1935) Black Square from 1915 and White on White in 1918 when the October Revolution was only one year old.
Kasimir Malevich, White on White, 1918
Kasimir Malevich, Black Square, 1913
Kasimir Malevich insallation, 1915 with Black Square high in the corner By Unknown[1] - Original publication: 1915Immediate source: feed://lfeffortposts.wordpress.com/tag/art/feed/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21727094
The elements in Malevich’s “Supremetist” paintings do not suggest, allude to, or resemble anything outside of the painting itself. They only speak about their own composition or arrangement, along with their historical place in the evolution of art. And as we move along to the New York School, the push-pull colour dynamics described by Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) add subtle perseptual considerations not terribly distant from the concerns of the Pointillists (Seurat, etc.). For example, blue is a receding colour and yellow tends to come forward so if you were to put a blue square on yellow, it looks like a hole in something yellow, and if you put yellow on blue it looks like a figure ground relationship, a yellow object floating on top of a blue ground. This is a more subtle understanding of the perceptual process involved, but it doesn't provide a way to move forward from the end-state of painting.
Hans Hofmann, Song of the Nightingale, oil on canvas, 84”x72”, 1964. hanshofmann.org
Martha Alf has given us black toilet paper, an exit into the possibility of still life painting and a world of poetic allusion, as well as a cautious return to illusory space. It feels like a Chardin still life of a single roll of black toilet paper winking at Josef Albers, Richard Serra, and Ad Reinhart. It’s funny actually.
Martha Alf installation, Michael Kohn Gallery, Opposites and Contradictions
I can speak from personal experience that a thorough education in the Modernist project makes stepping out from the art-as-science paradigm very difficult. You have to find a way to wiggle out. Alf seems to have found a way and her paintings are certainly beautiful on my computer screen, but painters can either be amazing or disappointing when you see the work in the flesh. I hope the best for them because they open her door to postminimalism and widen mine as well.
Kenneth Baker, Minimalism, (New York: Abbeville Press, 1988), p. 9.