Art & Architecture
Minimalists Painters & Artists

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DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS

TI: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF REDUCTIONIST TENDENCIES IN THE ARTS
AU: CASSIDY-NEIL-PATRICK
DN: DMA DD: 1994 SN: THE-OHIO-STATE-UNIVERSITY (0168)
AD: WELLS-THOMAS-H
PG: 33 LA: ENGLISH
AB: Not long ago I started researching Minimalism with the hope that it might support the idea of postmodernism as an outgrowth of, rather than a rebellion against, modernism. As today's 'popular' Minimalism can be seen as a generally postmodern notion, the overtly reductionist tendencies that I saw as at the roots of these practices seemed to me to be a peculiarly modernist project. In exploring the connection between today's mainstream Minimalism and the earlier, highly reductionist work, the postmodern may then be seen as a continuation, in this sense, of modernism, rather than as a separate, breakaway period coming after modernism.
What interested me in Minimalism was the reductionist attitude toward materials and its clarity of form. I am more interested here in these two features as general stylistic traits rather than in any sort of chronological framework for an historic movement. With this in mind the works considered come from a much broader span of time than is generally associated with Minimalism in the arts.
As a point of departure individual artists and selected works within a particular discipline are looked at through the writing of Clement Greenberg. Greenberg, dealing with the essence of 'pure' painting, becomes a guide for exploring the extreme reductionist attitude that according to Greenberg, characterizes the art of the late modern era.
SU: Education-Art (0273); Education-Music (0522); Fine-Arts (0357)
SO: VOLUME 56-01A OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 65
NO: AAI9516947
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TI: A FEW WORDS ABOUT LITERARY MINIMALISM (MODERNISM, POSTMODERNISM, AESTHETICS)
AU: WILLIAMS-PETER-ANDREW
DN: PHD DD: 1994 SN: UNIVERSITY-OF-WASHINGTON (0250)
AD: ALTIERI-CHARLES PG: 235 LA: ENGLISH
AB: "Minimalism" is a term currently employed by critics in the description of a number of American (postmodern) writers including Raymond Carver, Ann Beattie, Tobias Wolff, Donald Barthelme and Mary Robison. These writers all exemplify qualities of formal spareness; an obliqueness about personal, social, political, or cultural history; an affectless or recalcitrant tone, and a relatively diminished or absent plot. Combined, these characteristics converge to produce what critics consider a "deathlessness" or orientation towards surfaces.
The critical moves that such a description allow then become both familiar and limited. They can either proceed in the direction of nihilism and despair--the psychology of impoverishment and the poetics of indeterminacy--or into the area of modes of representation (often characterized in this case as "formal naivete") in an attempt to handle these writers' conventionally mimetic form as they naturalize the arbitrary.
There are other authors, however, also sometimes called "Minimalists," who demonstrate a more complex project as they undertake an interrogation of representation itself through a recalcitrant subtraction of representational components themselves. This international group of authors comprising Samuel Beckett, Marguerite Duras, William Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein, Robert Creeley and Jane Bowles share with an identifiable group of Minimalist visual artists working in New York primarily in the 1960's an attention to literalness which mirrors our own acts of seeing and their relation to the spatio-temporal world.
These Minimalists' works create neither the depthlessness nor the indeterminacy of the previous group. Instead, their complex rituals of language present distinct limits to our interpretive strategies, and throw us into a reflexive self-awareness through which we are made at least tacitly aware of our own embodiment and physical presence.
SU: Literature-Modern (0298); Literature-American (0591); Literature-Comparative (0295)
SO: VOLUME 55-08A OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 2386
NO: AAI9434359
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TI: THE DEVELOPMENT OF STYLE IN THE MUSIC OF JOHN ADAMS FROM 1978 TO 1989 (ADAMS JOHN, MINIMALISM)
AU: BURKHARDT-REBECCA-LOUISE
DN: PHD DD: 1993 SN: THE-UNIVERSITY-OF-TEXAS-AT-AUSTIN (0227)
AD: KOSTKA-STEFAN PG: 251 LA: ENGLISH
AB: The music of John Adams from 1978 to 1989 was born from the early techniques of minimalism developed in the works of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass. However, Adams's later style elaborates on strict minimalism, combining it with traditional Western classical compositional elements as well as popular American idioms, to create a style which is unique to Adams. This paper analyzes the various compositional elements found in Shaker Loops (1978), Harmonium (1980-81), Nixon in China (1987) and The Wound-Dresser (1989) to discover the evolution of Adams's distinct style beyond minimalism.
SU: Music (0413)
SO: VOLUME 55-02A OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 174
NO: AAI9413449
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TI: A BRIEF HISTORY OF MINIMALISM: ITS AESTHETIC CONCEPTS AND ORIGINS AND A DETAILED ANALYSIS OF STEVE REICH'S "THE DESERT MUSIC" (1984) (REICH STEVE, AESTHETICS, EXPERIMENTALISM)
AU: BENNETT-MARK-STEPHEN
DN: DMA DD: 1993 SN: UNIVERSITY-OF-ILLINOIS-AT-URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
AD: FREDRICKSON-THOMAS PG: 157 LA: ENGLISH
AB: The dissertation investigates the origins of minimalism to discover what aesthetic concepts, which stylistic dicta shaped this distinctive style. The investigation begins with John Cage whose own preoccupation with sounds and desire to redefine the parameters of music greatly influenced musicians of the post-World War II era. The musical aesthetic espoused by Cage came to be known as "experimental" for its radical approach to composition. Through Cage's own writings the philosophies of the experimentalist are elaborately articulated.
In the late 1950s, La Monte Young's exposure to the work of Cage initially led to collaboration and ultimately, an entirely new style of music known as minimalism. Young's particular predilections profoundly influenced both the music and the composers of this style. Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass all had contact with either Young or his ideas and each began work along similar paths. Steve Reich's stylistic development was gradual unfolding in logical, methodical fashion. Thus, Reich's compositional style affords a clear picture of the minimalist style's evolvement.
Against the historical background presented in the first three chapters, the analysis of Steve Reich's The Desert Music (1985)--a work written twenty years after the style's inception-- provides substantive evidence of the continuing viability of minimalist composition. A work of classical proportions, the arch form is an omnifarious presence in The Desert Music. Large scale architectonics, sectional divisions, textual phrases and repetition formulas, even the procedural bases--additive/subtractive processes and mathematical progressions--in short, nearly every possible micro- or macropermutation is shaped by the arch form.
A mathematical formula based on the arithmetic/geometric progression likewise influences structure of the work. The latter formula corresponds to the numbers 4-6-12 which are the generic macrointegers of the entire work. The dissertation demonstrates the ways in which these numbers and others factors of the number twelve, arranged in combinations of additive, subtractive, and multiplicative mathematical sets, constitute a rational, pristine perfection at the foundation of The Desert Music. The dissertation likewise provides a substantive basis on which to evaluate the minimalist style and one of its primary proponents, Steve Reich.
SO: VOLUME 54-06A OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 1989
NO: AAI9328970
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TI: TONY SMITH: ARCHITECT, PAINTER, SCULPTOR (SMITH TONY, MINIMALISM)
AU: PACHNER-JOAN-HELEN
DN: PHD DD: 1993 SN: NEW-YORK-UNIVERSITY (0146)
AD: VARNEDOE-KIRK PG: 1248 LA: ENGLISH
AB: Tony Smith (1912-1980) is best known for the sculptures he created in the last twenty years of his life. Previous examinations of this work have been limited by an incomplete understanding of Smith's career as a whole, including his work as an architect and a painter. His two-dimensional and three-dimensional works are inexorably intertwined.
Smith's aesthetic was formed in the 1930s and 1940s. His career began at the Art Student's League, studying with European modernists George Grosz and Vaclav Vytlacil. After deciding to become an architect, he attended Moholy-Nagy's New Bauhaus in Chicago (1937-38). Following the demise of the school, Smith worked on various projects for Frank Lloyd Wright until 1940. From 1940 through the middle 1960s, Smith was an architectural designer, completing at least twenty building projects and envisioning countless others. At the same time, he continued to draw and paint; two-dimensional work gave him creative freedom impossible to attain in architectural projects.
Smith's writings from the 1940s and 50s express his ambition to create symbolic forms that would encapsulate the diverse American culture. These themes continued to drive the late work. His first mature works are paintings and visionary architectural drawings made between 1953 and 1955 when he lived in Germany. They were the first instance in which he successfully merged organic form with a rational framework. Smith's "presences" depend on his ability to combine geometric modules in an irrational manner.
Smith's sculptural oeuvre is discussed into two sections: (1) the sculptural objects and (2) the environmental and site-specific proposals. The work is considered both in relation to his career as a whole and in the context of the time in which it was made. Smith's sculptures have been indelibly linked with Minimalism. But Smith was, in many ways, closer to the Abstract Expressionist artists (his friends and contemporaries) than he was to the Minimalists. Ultimately Smith's work appears to resonate most strongly with site-specific sculptors and Earthwork artists, such as Robert Smithson. Tony Smith's career defies simple categorization; he was unique in his ability to absorb the past and create work that has retained its feeling for the present.
SU: Art-History (0377); Architecture (0729); Biography (0304)
SO: VOLUME 54-02A OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 348
NO: AAI9317595
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Record 6 of 7 - Dissertation Abstracts 1992-10/95
TI: THE MUSIC OF PHILIP GLASS, 1965-1975: AN ANALYSIS OF TWO SELECTED EARLY WORKS AND "EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH"
AU: HASKINS-ROBERT
DN: MM DD: 1992
SN: PEABODY-INSTITUTE-OF-THE-JOHNS-HOPKINS-UNIVERSITY (0453)
AD: AMATO-BRUNO PG: 176 LA: ENGLISH
AB: Minimalism is one of the most remarkable stylistic developments in music since 1945. At the same time, minimalism has had no shortage of detractors. To date, however, a substantive, critical dialogue about minimalism has yet to appear in scholarly books or journals. Indeed, few detailed analytical and critical examinations of this music are available. Nevertheless, sustained scholarly research is imperative to provide the proper context in which to understand minimalist music.
This study considers Glass's music from 1965-1975, including detailed analyses of three important works: Strung Out (1967); Two Pages (1968); and Einstein on the Beach (1975), Glass's masterpiece from this period. Finally, through commentary and comparison of these works with some of Glass's music since 1975 (as well as comparison with other concurrent trends in twentieth-century music), the study provides a critical assessment of this early period, perhaps the most significant in Glass's compositional career thus far.
SO: VOLUME 30-03 OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 417
NO: AAI1346936
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Record 7 of 7 - Dissertation Abstracts 1992-10/95
TI: IRRESISTIBLE MYTH: ORIGINALITY IN THE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN ARTS
AU: LATER-GENEVIEVE-MARY
DN: PHD DD: 1992 SN: UNIVERSITY-OF-WASHINGTON (0250)
AD: GRIFFITH-MALCOLM-A PG: 237 LA: ENGLISH
AB: This study examines the contemporary meaning of the term "originality" in the American arts. Originality is described as an interlocking series of three relationships or "levels." In the first level the artist is engaged in a struggle to create; her productions are original in the most limited sense. On the second level the artist is engaged in a competitive struggle with other artists and with precursors. On the third level the artist is attempting to establish originality by making appeals to her audience, who makes the broadest judgements about originality (and canonicity). Theorists engaged in this setting-out of terms are Edward Said, Harold Bloom, and Kant.
Subsequent case-studies use Truman Capote (New Journalism), Raymond Carver (Literary Minimalism), and William Bailey, Idelle Weber, Chuck Close, Eric Fischl and Jennifer Bartlett (Neo-realism) to exemplify various conflicts found between these levels and make more precise a contemporary notion of originality.
The study closes with an examination of the role originality plays in the determination of competing paradigms as delineated by Thomas Kuhn. Originality as a modernist term of value follows the recognition of anomaly within a paradigm only when conceptual persistence exists through a change of paradigm. When parallel paradigms exist, as in the contemporary period of pluralism, originality serves, not to identify a notion of difference, but to reveal the terms by which an anomaly reaches defining prominence within a newly-created paradigm. Originality is thus not a transparadigmatic term; its determination is made by specific reference to a clearly-defined paradigm within the arts.
SU: Literature-Modern (0298); Literature-American (0591); Art-History (0377)
SO: VOLUME 53-06A OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 1907
NO: AAI9230392

TI: IMPULSE AND STRATEGY IN THE "VESTIGES" SERIES: A PAINTING PROJECT EXAMINED
AU: PAVAO-ISABEL-MARIA
DN: DA DD: 1994 SN: NEW-YORK-UNIVERSITY (0146)
AD: CHURCHILL-ANGIOLA PG: 191 LA: ENGLISH
AB: This study was an investigation of the conceptual and the poetic dimensions in the artist's series of paintings entitled "Vestiges." It was begun in 1989 and continued through 1993. The series has had its initial impetus and inspiration from a conceptual, as well as a poetic dimension.
The artist systematically examined, by sustained critical discourse, the extensive series of her works continually produced for a period of five years.
The phenomenological analysis of the paintings was derived from Edmund Husserl's model and was the starting point for other methodological approaches included in the conceptual dimension and the poetical dimension. The phenomenological method was designed to indicate the process and the presence of a work as an imaginative experience.
The conceptual dimension was comprised of the analysis of selected references to art schools/styles such as Impressionism, Minimal and Conceptual art, and personal styles such as Pollock's all-over paintings and Ralph Humphrey's frame paintings. Alluding to these references, the artist combined various concepts, methods and techniques borrowed or appropriated and synthesized them into a postmodernist mode.
In the poetical dimension a reality was sought that could be independent from the painting arising from the initial formal construction. The poetical dimension was the imaginative experience which was a liberating agent from the conceptual structure of the paintings. The poetical dimension dealt with presence and absence, provoking open ended associations involving different theoretical discourses such as those of George Steiner, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Anne Cauquelin, Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Walter Benjamin, and Julia Kristeva.
Throughout this research the "Vestiges" series was interpreted in the light of a dialogue between impulse and strategy in a postmodern context, which was the tenet with which the artist was dealing in her research.
SU: Fine-Arts (0357); Philosophy (0422)
SO: VOLUME 55-09A OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 2614
NO: AAI9502437
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TI: MULTI-MEDIA INSTALLATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA DURING THE 1980'S: A SELECTED GROUP (MULTIMEDIA INSTALLATIONS, INTERMEDIA, NEW GENRE)
AU: GALLAGHER-JEAN-KAREN
DN: DA DD: 1993 SN: NEW-YORK-UNIVERSITY (0146)
AD: CHURCHILL-ANGIOLA PG: 180 LA: ENGLISH
AB: The purpose of this inquiry is to explore multi-media installations: to review the historical groundwork of its development beginning in the late nineteenth century, identify its artistic intent and critical reception, offer a selected cross-section of eight installations exhibited in the U.S.A. during the 1980's, present the evolution and work of the researcher as part of this cross-section, and finally, to identify some of the salient characteristics of this genre.
Chapter One identifies the need for the study as the exploration of a new genre which has had no monograph solely devoted to its development and analysis of content and form. It points out that numerous alternative spaces have exhibited multi-media installations in recent years, and discusses their philosophies for doing so. In addition, this chapter explains how the research was conducted for this study as well as the dissertation's organization.
Chapter Two includes a historical overview of multi-media installation's development in the 20th since Art Nouveau, and offers examples of work from Futurism, Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, Happenings, Action Art, Assemblage, Collage, Environments, Conceptual Art, Performance-related installations, and indoor site-specific installations which begin to shape its form and conceptual basis as it exists in the 1980's. This chapter also contains selected statements made by the artists interviewed for this study and general comments made by critics who have written about multi-media installations as a genre.
Chapter Three contains descriptions and a structured analysis of the form and content of the eight multi-media installations chosen by the researcher. Chapter Four continues with (1) a description of the researcher's development from painting to multi-media installation using technology and (2) a description and analysis of two recent multi-media installations created by the researcher as a part of the cross-section of installations selected for this study.
Chapter Five, through a summary of the analysis of all the installations, arrives at its major characteristics including its hybrid form, its purposeful use of media and reliance on technology, its belief in viewer participation, and its emphasis on sociopolitical issues as its content.
SU: Fine-Arts (0357); Education-Art (0273); Art-History (0377)
SO: VOLUME 54-07A OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 2364
NO: AAI9333951
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TI: THE ARTIST AS SOCIAL COMMENTATOR: A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE SPECTACOLOR LIGHTBOARD SERIES "MESSAGES TO THE PUBLIC" (PUBLIC ART)
AU: NOVAKOV-ANNA
DN: PHD DD: 1993 SN: NEW-YORK-UNIVERSITY (0146)
AD: CHURCHILL-ANGIOLA-R PG: 248 LA: ENGLISH
AB: This dissertation investigates the interrelationship between the method of presentation, the venue, and the visual text in the Public Art Fund's installation series Messages to the Public to describe the role of these contemporary artists as social commentators. A chronological, historical overview of the nature and development of socially motivated conceptual art set in a public, urban environment is examined from its inception in the late 1960s to the present time to track the emergence of the visual text. The displays are also analyzed as art works utilizing the non-traditional medium of an electronic, computer-generated lightboard, presented in a public place, which embeds noncommercial messages within the context of commercial advertising. Participating artists are interviewed and provided with a forum within which to discuss their views of the series, public art, and the social or political role of the artist in contemporary society. Alternate views of the exhibited texts are presented from the point of view of a number of semiotic and deconstructivist writers to establish the levels of discourse at which these visual texts address both an art and non-artworld audience. The dissertation concludes by reflecting on the legacy of the Messages to the Public series as a work of public art set within an urban environment.
SU: Education-Art (0273); Art-History (0377); Political-Science-Public-Administration (0617)
SO: VOLUME 54-02A OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 407
NO: AAI9317677
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TI: A DESCRIPTIVE SELF-STUDY OF THE WORKING PROCESSES OF A CONCEPTUAL ARTIST (ART PROCESSES)
AU: BUKOWSKI-MICHAEL-ALAN
DN: PHD DD: 1992 SN: UNIVERSITY-OF-OREGON (0171)
AD: JONES-BEVERLY PG: 293 LA: ENGLISH
AB: Artistic processes have been proposed as potential models for the development of methods in art education. Prior to this study, there have been few serious studies of conceptual art, and none that had investigated conceptual art processes as a source for potential contributions to art education research and teaching methods. While art processes are often regarded as self-reflective in nature, self-reflection is essential to conceptual art--art that is concerned with the ways in which art is conceptualized, with what the word art means and might be made to mean. Conceptual art is also a self-reflective experiential process for the artist.
This study's purpose was to explore and provide a descriptive account of conceptual art processes as such processes were experienced in-progress. The researcher in this study had worked and exhibited as a conceptual artist for ten years prior to the study. That provided an opportunity to pursue a self-study approach that would allow description of the processes form within their performance.
The artist as self-researcher can present problems. Ihde's experimental phenomenological method provided the methodological orientation for this study as a means for addressing potential problems. From such an approach, the researcher, the self, the "I" is not regarded as being an objective observer of experience. The method provides specific rules for conducting an investigation of self-experience. In a very real sense, an experimental phenomenological approach is intended to change the researcher, to change seeing, interpreting, and the manner of experiencing the world.
Conceptual art is a process of attempting to change the meaning of concepts. This study generated an initial description of some invariant features and structures, in experience, that were involved in such an attempt. It was found that a complex interweaving of verbal and non-verbal aspects of experience were involved, and that structures in the margins of experience may have been crucial. It was indicated that understanding the margins may provide ways to understand significant aspects of how meanings changed.
Results of this study are not generalizable. As an exploratory study, the results indicate directions for further inquiry.
SU: Education-Art (0273); Fine-Arts (0357)
SO: VOLUME 53-10A OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 3428
NO: AAI9305179


TI: AN ANALYSIS OF THE CRITICAL DISCOURSE ON THE WORK OF EVA HESSE
AU: MILLARD-MICHELE
DN: MA DD: 1991 SN: MCGILL-UNIVERSITY-CANADA (0781)
IB: 0315747595 PG: 61 LA: ENGLISH
AB: This thesis is an analytical study of the various critical approaches taken to the work of Eva Hesse and their underlying methodologies and theoretical assumptions. Its purpose is to determine in a general way how and why the nature of criticism has changed from positions strongly influenced by Modernism as defined by Clement Greenberg to those that involved a separation of criticism from consideration of artworks as individual phenomena.
For the most part, Chapter One concerns critics' Modernist analyses of Hesse's relationship to Minimalism and their progression towards a criticism based on non-formalist, non-hierarchical theories of style. There is also a short discussion on the linkage created between Hesse's art and specific psychological traumas in her life. Included as well is an explanation of the changing conception of originality and the critic's dilemma in confronting private content through the strictures of public dialogue.
Chapter Two investigates critical discussions of experience, how art was apprehended and how meaning was transmitted.
Chapter III involves a feminist debate on the issues of gender. The content of Hesse's work was analyzed in psycho-biographical terms and within the framework of her identity as a female artist in western culture.
And finally, the thesis concludes by pointing out the evolution of criticism into a distinct, independent discipline whereby the critic articulates the theoretical contexts in which the artwork exists, but then extends in into a broader cultural setting where the critic analyzes the significance of such positions taken, its relationship to the past and future implications.
SU: Art-History (0377)
SO: VOLUME 31-03 OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 956
NO: AAIMM74759
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TI: MINIMALISM IN THE MUSIC OF STEVEN REICH
AU: OLLHOFF-SCOTT-ALAN
DN: MA DD: 1991 SN: NORTHEAST-MISSOURI-STATE-UNIVERSITY (6180)
PG: 85 LA: ENGLISH
AB: Between 1958 and 1964, a revolutionary movement in the arts captured the attention of many. Within this period, a group of artists re-evaluated and challenged the ideologies associated with art of the past. This new aesthetic was identified as minimalism. Four American composers--Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Steven Reich and La Monte Young--lead this movement in music by incorporating concepts of minimalism in their compositions.
The music of Steven Reich occupies a central position in this expression. Reich's minimalistic works, and the compositional technique he pioneered known as phase-shifting, are the focus of this study. His music is characterized by gradual, slow changes and is heavily influenced by non-Western styles.
Phase-shifting served as a compositional tool for Reich for seven years, after which he abandoned it. This era, however, saw his emergence as an important composer of national repute, a position which he still occupies in American music.
SU: Music (0413)
SO: VOLUME 30-01 OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 8
NO: AAI1345682
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TI: MINIMAL MUSIC: ITS EVOLUTION AS SEEN IN THE WORKS OF PHILIP GLASS, STEVE REICH, TERRY RILEY, AND LA MONTE YOUNG (GLASS PHILIP, REICH STEVE, RILEY TERRY, YOUNG LA MONTE)
AU: SUZUKI-DEAN-PAUL
DN: PHD DD: 1991 SN: UNIVERSITY-OF-SOUTHERN-CALIFORNIA (0208)
AD: SIMMS-BRYAN-R PG: 1 LA: ENGLISH
AB: Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and La Monte Young comprise a group of American composers who, in the 1960s, helped develop and advance a style of music known as Minimal music or Minimalism. Minimal music represents one of the most radical, distinctive, and significant stylistic developments of the twentieth century. Minimalism is a reductive approach to composition most often characterized by simple repetitive structures, restricted diatonic pitch materials, and a steady, unflagging pulse. It is also a style of music which was and remains controversial, though it has been embraced by many other composers.
This dissertation traces the evolution of Minimal music and the aesthetics associated with it through the works of these four composers, as well as their involvement with the thriving arts community of the 1960s and early 1970s, primarily adherents of Fluxus, Minimal Art, and Conceptual Art. The development of the Minimalist style is also viewed through the advent of post-modern aesthetics which follow the works and ideas of John Cage, and the cultural milieu of the 1960s manifested through the influence of jazz, rock, and non-Western music.
Each composer's compositional output is surveyed and analyzed, tracing the formation, establishment, and expansion of idiosyncratic compositional techniques and devices. The final chapter offers a survey of other Minimalist composers. (Copies available exclusively from Micrographics Department, Doheny Library, USC, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0182.)
SU: Music (0413)
SO: VOLUME 53-04A OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 985
NO: AAI0571958
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TI: HARMONY IN THE MUSIC OF JOHN ADAMS: FROM "PHRYGIAN GATES" TO "NIXON IN CHINA" (ADAMS JOHN)
AU: JOHNSON-TIMOTHY-ALAN
DN: PHD DD: 1991 SN: STATE-UNIVERSITY-OF-NEW-YORK-AT-BUFFALO (0656)
AD: CLOUGH-JOHN PG: 345 LA: ENGLISH
AB: The dissertation deals with harmony in the music of John Adams from 1977 to 1987. It develops a new analytical technique, based in part on traditional harmonic analysis and in part on theories of twentieth-century music, in order to address the special features of Adams's music. Each main chapter concludes with an analysis of a particular piece or movement, thoroughly demonstrating the effectiveness of the technique.
The introduction sketches Adams's development as a composer and shows that minimalism is an important component of his harmonic style. A survey of the literature suggests the need for the present study. Finally, the introduction addresses several related aesthetic issues, including the importance of the audience, the simplicity of minimalism, and the influence of other music on Adams's style.
The dissertation conceives of harmonic vocabulary as sets of pitch classes (pcs) in a diatonically-based hierarchical structure called a complex. The complex consists of three levels--chord, sonority, and field--with constraints on the set type of each component and on inclusion relations between them. A symbology, developed for the chord and field, employs traditional concepts of chord root and quality coupled with a modal designation for the diatonic set included by the field. Preference rules identify the components of complexes and the temporal boundaries between them.
The Common Tone Index (CTI) distinguishes among the many possible common-tone relationships between complexes. Analytical observations using CTIs identify the similar relationships between complexes and associate their corresponding passages. Two operations circumscribe the typical chord successions found in passages featuring alternation between two complexes. The final section presents prolongation based on stasis--by means of common tones and half-step neighbors--within complexes, between adjacent complexes, and across sections of pieces or entire movements. The section groups CTIs into three prolongational classes based on their potential for each prolongational means. Graphs display the prolongational paths at longer range, and well-formedness and preference rules determine which pcs are prolonged and by what means.
SO: VOLUME 52-07A OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 2314
NO: AAI9135106
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TI: TRADITIONAL IDEAS PUSHED TO THEIR EXTREMES: A STUDY OF MODERN MINIMALISM
AU: PEPLINSKI-JILL
DN: MA DD: 1989 SN: EASTERN-MICHIGAN-UNIVERSITY (6456)
AD: GEHERIN-DAVID PG: 50 LA: ENGLISH
AB: Minimalism is considered by many critics to be a major contributing factor to the current short story renaissance. Yet the critics who make this claim nearly always condemn writers labeled minimalists. The works of such writers are said to lack action, depth, philosophical ideas, a sense of history, a sense of morality and variation. Further, they are said to completely lack a sense of tradition.
But while the criticism of minimalism is harsh, the term itself has never been defined. In attempting to formulate a definition, I have have studied the works of three major writers labeled minimalists--Raymond Carver, Mary Robison and Frederick Barthelme--and reached the following conclusions: (1) Minimalist works, intellectual word games that take the form of short, simple narratives, push the traditional elements described by Poe--brevity and singleness of effect--to extremes. (2) In order for minimalist works to be successful, both extreme brevity and extreme singleness of effect must be present. Works that push only one of these elements to an extreme can be said to use minimalist technique; instead, they are often erroneously referred to as minimalist narratives.
SU: Literature-Modern (0298); Literature-American (0591)
SO: VOLUME 28-03 OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 347
NO: AAI1339565
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TI: THE POLITICS OF EXPERIENCE: ROBERT MORRIS, MINIMALISM, AND THE 1960S
AU: BERGER-MAURICE
DN: PHD DD: 1988 SN: CITY-UNIVERSITY-OF-NEW-YORK (0046)
AD: NOCHLIN-LINDA; BOIS-YVE-ALAIN
PG: 320 LA: ENGLISH
AB: Robert Morris's oeuvre, unlike the work of most other so-called minimalist artists, is both stylistically and intellectually diverse. His range was broad: expressionist paintings, Duchamp-inspired objects, dances and performances, minimalist sculptures, large scale installations and sound environments, earth and land reclamation works, films and videos, and political acts against the museum, the labor economy, and the Vietnam war. The philosophical sources for Morris's art (he was a philosophy major at Reed College in the late-1950s) are equally rich: Herbert Marcuse, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Jean Piaget, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Charles Sanders Peirce. As choreographer, writer of influential theoretical texts, and fine artist, Morris sharply questioned the pretensions of modernist art and culture.
Extending the discourse of art history, this dissertation exposes the complex relationship between Morris's work and the social and intellectual setting of the 1960s--a radical moment that witnessed a range of protest and dissent, from sexual liberation to the Vietnam war. Morris's archive and writings, most of which have never before been examined, reveal his close relationship to many of these causes, political ambitions ignored by a formalist art history and criticism committed to aesthetic purity and the social removal of "high art." Established readings of the minimalist movement center on more classical modernist sources such as the readymades of Duchamp, the phenomenological theories of Merleau-Ponty, and the formalist art of the Russian constructivists.
At least for Morris, however, Marcuse's call for the artist to reject modernism's repressive demands for stylistic unity served as an important means for liberating the artist from the limited institutional boundaries of the gallery and the museum. Functioning within the contexts of performance halls, advertising campaigns, land reclamation sites, and even the streets of New York City, Morris appealed to artists and their patrons to broaden the audience for advanced art. Extending from his earliest works of the late 1950s to his mature art of the mid-1970s, the dissertation represents a "test case" for understanding the avant-garde's intense questioning of the role of the artist and of art during a period of unprecedented social and cultural change.
SU: Fine-Arts (0357); Art-History (0377); Biography (0304)
SO: VOLUME 51-10A OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 3261
NO: AAI9105771
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TI: STRATEGIC AMBIVALENCE (MINIMALISM)
AU: SEARS-DOUGLAS-ALDEN
DN: PHD DD: 1987 SN: THE-PENNSYLVANIA-STATE-UNIVERSITY (0176)
PG: 335 LA: ENGLISH
AB: Strategic minimalists argue that the objectives of security and stability are best served by strategic postures of mutual vulnerability which generate neither incentives to build weapons nor to strike first. Relative numbers of weapons held by adversaries are unimportant so long as either side possesses sufficient destructive power to wreak an "unacceptable" level of destruction upon the other. The corollary to this view is the contention that the power of nuclear weapons is so great that a "minimal" number is sufficient to accomplish retaliation and thus deter prior attack.
In justifying this prescription, minimalists differentiate deterrence from the prospective use of nuclear weapons. This differentiation cannot be justified on logical grounds. Minimalists, in effect, define a threat as something other than a promise to use violence under specific conditions. Minimalists also rely upon deterministic explanations for strategic competition. These are vulnerable to alternative explanations which recognize the decisive role of conscious intent, i.e., free will. If the free will position is accepted, the minimalist argument is untenable.
SU: Political-Science-General (0615)
SO: VOLUME 48-04A OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 1009
NO: AAI8714876

Record 1 of 3 - Dissertation Abstracts 1987-1991
TI: THE LIMITS OF CRITICAL CULTURE AND THE POSSIBILITY OF LOCAL AESTHETICS: A STUDY OF POSTMODERN RHETORIC, CONTEMPORARY THEORY, AND CONCEPTUAL ART (AESTHETICS)
AU: TREMBATH-PAUL DN: PHD DD: 1990
SN: UNIVERSITY-OF-VIRGINIA (0246) PG: 365 LA: ENGLISH
AB: In this dissertation I introduce a theory of local aesthetics intended as a challenge to all forms of professionally acclaimed critical culture. I argue that recent developments in criticism, literature, and artwork do more to secure the cultural authority of professional theorists, writers, and artists than to rethink the constitutive powers of daily life in aesthetic terms.
I argue that the daily practices of unknown social selves affect the world in ways that either reproduce the social status quo or gradually reinvent it, and that they thus merit consideration as aesthetic, if not artistic, activities. Since traditional aesthetic theories have been appropriated by artists to enhance their exclusive cultural recognition, and since the avantgarde aura of art has been recently reconstituted in the projects of critical theorists, I depart from both art and theory with a rhetoric intended to aestheticize the transformative powers of daily life. My aim is not to give daily life an artistic meaning, but to encourage culture critics to consider the inventive import of daily life in addition to the inventive import of innovative critical theory, literature, and artwork.
Contemporary rhetorics about postmodernism, power, simulation, critical "writing," and so forth all reproduce an exclusively cultural view of human invention, since they direct our attention toward their own cultural originality, not to the constitutive importance of the everyday practices they sometimes imply. My study is designed to demonstrate how this is so. Beginning with Habermas, Lyotard, and Rorty on postmodernity, and then moving on to Baudrillard's critique of Foucault, I demonstrate how theory, even where it celebrates daily life, can become a hegemonic form of contemporary culture. My examinations of Calvino, Butor, Derrida, and Rorty show how combinations of literary and philosophical writing reproduce this same dilemma, and my analysis of Kosuth's Conceptualism, criticized through Geertz and de Certeau, demonstrates this as well. I conclude with discussions of Sartre, Foucault, Haacke, Beuys, and Gramsci and show how these cultural figures can enable productively a rhetoric of local aesthetics.
SU: Literature-Comparative (0295); Fine-Arts (0357); Philosophy (0422); Speech-Communication (0459)
SO: VOLUME 51-11A OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 3735
NO: AAI9112030
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TI: OBJECTIFIED AND DEMATERIALIZED: ARTISTIC SIGNIFYING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD (CONCEPTUAL ART, POSTMODERNISM)
AU: ERICKSON-JON-ELMER
DN: PHD DD: 1990 SN: THE-UNIVERSITY-OF-WISCONSIN --MILWAUKEE (0263)
AD: BLAU-HERBERT PG: 445 LA: ENGLISH
AB: Max Weber's idea of the rationalization of the modern world involves the breakup of society into "autonomous spheres of value" whose legitimating grounds are to be found within their own formal operations. Within the artistic sphere modern poetry, art, and theater search for their own essences through the objectification of materials and forms peculiar to each. Two kinds of artistic objectification alternate in prominence. Referential objectification tries to establish the art, literary, or theatrical work as a medium for the objective perception of "things as they are." Material objectification locates its justification in its own form, as a "thing-in-itself" unconcerned with reference.
In each of the arts the drive toward material purity has resulted in the dematerialization of the object into a field of signs. The modern artist sought refuge for his or her subjectivity in the creation of pure objects resistant to the desubstantializing force of commodification. Yet the object's eventual logical reduction to the status of sign made that commodification even more inevitable. The attempted preservation of the subject in the object, and the object's subsequent reduction to a sign bears a close relationship to the tendency in poststructuralist discourse for the subject to disappear into self-reflexive language systems. Furthermore, as an allegory of the shift in the nature of political economy, we can see how the materially-oriented expressive labor ethic in art (naturalism in theater, expressionism/constructivism in visual art, or the well-wrought objectivist poem), has been displaced by a more immaterial style of conceptual investment (post-Brechtian performance, conceptual art, or Language Poetry): in like manner a materially productive society seems to have been displaced by an information-based, service-oriented economy. This shift in consciousness away from the material world and into signifying systems has consequences for our attitude toward the conditions of our existence. To regain an ecological consciousness that situates us within the material processes of the world, we must recognize how this transformation from object to sign has taken place, and to reassert a relation to the material world not wholly masked by our desires for theoretical comprehensiveness, pure self-affirmation, or the mastery of the external world by rhetoric.
SU: Literature-Modern (0298); Theater (0465); Fine-Arts (0357)
SO: VOLUME 51-11A OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 3737
NO: AAI9111348
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TI: AN ANALYSIS OF THE PRACTICES OF CONCEPTUAL ART WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR MUSIC EDUCATION
AU: SALADINO-ANTHONY-TERRENCE
DN: EDD DD: 1989 SN: UNIVERSITY-OF-THE-PACIFIC (0173)
AD: HARRISON-LOIS PG: 240 LA: ENGLISH
AB: Purpose. The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the hypothesis that the practices of conceptual art have implications for music education.
Procedure for the study. After an introduction in which conceptual art is described and defined as a modern experiential art form, the study includes: (1) presentation of historical antecedents for conceptual art; (2) description of the development of conceptual art and its various practices, chronologically; (3) comparison and contrast of five extant theories of art with conceptual art in order to demonstrate conceptual art's apparent inexplicability; (4) distillation and summary of fifteen characteristics of conceptual art; (5) application of the implications drawn from these characteristics to general principles of music education.
Findings. Historical antecedents began with Post-Impressionist thought in the arts in general. The "avant garde" aesthetic perspective included: (1) a trend toward greater freedom and individuality; (2) a search for commonality among the arts; (3) the desire to shed traditional, Romantic practices and methodologies.
The development of conceptual art began with the work of Marcel Duchamp; new practices flowed from his experiments with non-objective art that blurred the line between art and non-art. The experiential quality of doing art became paramount especially in Futurist, Dadaist, and Surrealist movements. Musicians such as John Cage began working with new techniques and technologies. Assemblages, environments, and happenings dominated the radical, sometimes protestant, conceptual pieces of the 50's and 60's. The "idea" began to replace the "object" as the primary motivation for doing art in the 70's and 80's.
Conceptual art was found to be quite incompatible with five extant theories of art: Imitationism, Emotionalism, Expressionism, Communicationism, and Formalism. Fifteen characteristics were derived from the analysis and were explored for implications in music education.
Conclusions. Most of the characteristics of conceptual art have relevance to the current practice of music education. Benefits such as engendering individual creativity and expanding creative thinking are compatible and supported by music educators. Conceptual art may promote a sense of an interdisciplinary participation for the student of music, where ideas and processes can be exchanged across the curriculum. The practice of conceptual art is still experimental and defies categorization.
SU: Education-Music (0522); Fine-Arts (0357)
SO: VOLUME 51-04A OF DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL. PAGE 1152
NO: AAI9025983



PUBLISHED BOOKS

Minimalism, Scope, & VP Structure. 06/1996 Sage Publications, . Thomas Stroik. Trade Cloth ISBN 0-8039-5960-5 LCCN: 96-004512 192p. $ 39.95 (B) Trade Paper ISBN 0-8039-5961-3 LCCN: 96-004512 192p. $ 17.95 (B)

Minimalists. 07/1996 Chronicle Books. K. Robert Schwartz. illus. Paper Text ISBN 0-7148-3381-9 (Phaidon Press (UK)) 240p. $ 19.95 (B I)

Modern American Music: From Charles Ives to the Minimalists. 10/1996 Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Otto Karolyi. Trade Cloth ISBN 0-8386-3725-6 150p. $ 29.50 (B)

History of American Classical Music: MacDowell Through Minimalism. Facts on File, . John Struble. illus. Trade Cloth ISBN 0-8160-2927-X LCCN: 94-029092 holesalers: ING. 12/1994 464p. $ 29.95 (B I) Trade Paper ISBN 0-8160-3493-1 LCCN: 94-029092 05/1996 464p. $ 10.95 (B) $ 18.95 (I)

Sense & Sensibility: Women Artists & Minimalism in the Nineties. Lynn Zelevansky. Trade Paper ISBN 0-87070-120-7 Museum of Modern Art. 06/1994 illus. 64p. $ 16.95 (B) Trade Paper ISBN 0-8109-6131-8 Harry N. Abrams . Wholesalers: ING. 07/1994 $ 16.95 (B I)

Minimalism: Origins. 12/1993 Indiana University Press. Edward Strickland. Coll. Trade Cloth SBN 0-253-35499-4 LCCN: 93-018396 Wholesalers: BHB. 324p. $ 31.95 (B)

Beyond Minimalism. 12/1990 Oxford University Press, . Brater. Trade Cloth ISBN 0-19-506655-3 Wholesalers: BHB, ING, PUB. Clearance: C 13359. 224p. $ 19.95 (B) $ 16.75 (I)

Minimalism. 01/1990 University of Washington Press. Michael Craig-Martin. Orig PB illus. Trade Paper ISBN 0-295-96943-1 Clearance: C 11731. 28p. $ 12.50 (B)

Minimalism: Art of Contingency. 03/1989 Abbeville Press, . Kenneth Baker. illus. Trade Cloth ISBN 0-89659-887-X Clearance: C 16841. 144p. $ 49.95 (B)

Beyond Minimalism, George Waterman Collection. 1969 Rhode Island School of Design, Museum of Art. Daniel Robbins. illus. Trade Cloth ISBN 0-911517-21-9 LCCN: 78-105670 $ 2.00 (B)

Art into Ideas: Essays on Conceptual Art. 06/1996 Cambridge University Press. Robert C. Morgan. (Contemporary Artists & Their Critics Ser.) illus. Coll. Trade Cloth ISBN 0-521-47367-5 208p. $ 49.95 (B) Trade Paper ISBN 0-521-47922-3 208p. $ 17.95 (B) $ 16.95

Mel Bochner: Thought Made Visible 1966-1973. 06/1996 Yale University Art Gallery. Contribution by Bruce Boice, Yve-Alain Bois, Rosalind E. Krauss, Frederik Leen, James Meyer, Sasha M. Newman, Robert Pincus-Witten, Jessica Prinz, Ulrich Wilmes and William S. Wilson. illus. Trade Paper ISBN 0-89467-073-5 LCCN: 95-040669 318p. $ 50.00 (B I)

Sacred Art of the Earth: Ancient & Contemporary Earthworks. 08/1996 Continuum Publishing Company. Maureen A. Korp. illus. Paper Text ISBN 0-8264-0883-4 280p. $ 19.95 (B I)

Lynn Hershman: Paranoid Mirror. 08/1995 Seattle Art Museum. Abigail S. Godeau, Lynn H. Leeson, Florian Rotzer. Edited by Helen Abbott, Mary Ribesky. Translated by Don Reneau. Foreword by Rod Slemmons. Orig PB illus. Trade Paper ISBN 0-932216-46-3 48p. $ 9.95

Eternal Network: A Mail Art Anthology. 1994 Paul & Company Publishers Consortium, . Edited by Chuck Welch. Orig PB illus. Cloth Text ISBN 1-895176-27-1 250p. $ 39.95 (B)

From Minimal to Conceptual Art: Works from the Dorothy & Herbert Vogel Collection. 05/1994 National Gallery of Art. John T. Paoletti. Contribution by Ruth E. Fine. Trade Paper ISBN 0-89468-206-7 LCCN: 94-011322 141p. $ 25.00 (B)

Artists' Books: A Critical Anthology & Sourcebook. 1993 3rd ed. Visual Studies Workshop. Introduction by Joan Lyons. Preface by Dick Higgins. (Research, Fine Arts Ser.) Orig. Publ: Pardo Press illus. Coll. Paper Text ISBN 0-89822-041-6 LCCN: 85-003180 Reprint 274p. $ 19.95 (B)

Gilbert & George: The Singing Sculpture. 04/1993 Anthony McCall - New York. Carter Ratcliff, Robert Rosenblum. Edited by Bruce Wolmer. illus. Trade Cloth ISBN 0-9635649-0-0 LCCN: 92-082072 Wholesalers: ING. 64p. $ 35.00 (B I)

Kawamata: Project on Roosevelt Island. 08/1993 On The Table, . Claudia Gould, Tadashi Kawamata. Edited by Mika Koike. illus. Trade Cloth ISBN 0-9636372-0-7 176p. English, Japanese $ 39.95 (B)

Kim Abeles: Encyclopedia Persona: A Fifteen-Year Survey of Work. 09/1993 Fellows of Contemporary Art. Illustrated by Kim Abeles. Contribution by Karen Moss and Lucinda Barnes. illus. Trade Cloth ISBN 0-911291-22-9 LCCN: 93-020828 110p. Size: 10 x 7.500 in. $ 30.00 (B)

Commentaries on the New Media Arts: Fluxus & Conceptual, Artists' Books, MailArt, Correspondence Art, Audio & Video Art. 11/1992 Umbrella Associates. Robert C. Morgan. Orig PB Trade Paper ISBN 0-9635042-0-7 64p. $ 9.95 (B)

Knowledge: Aspects of Conceptual Art. 06/1992 University of California, Santa Barbara, Art Museum. Frances Colpitt and Phyllis Plous. illus. Trade Paper ISBN 0-942006-22-4 LCCN: 92-000740 88p. $ 23.00 (B)

Parables & Other Allegories: The Work of Melvin Charney 1975-1990. 01/1992 M I T Press. Edited by Melvin Charney. (CCA Ser.) illus. Trade Paper ISBN 0-262-53110-0 Wholesalers: ING, PUB. 216p. $ 34.95 (B I)

Between Spring & Summer: Soviet Conceptual Art in the Era of Late Communism. 01/1991 M I T Press. David A. Ross. (Chicago Institute for Architecture & Urbanism Ser.) illus. Trade Paper ISBN 0-262-68065-3 Wholesalers: ING, PUB. 110p. (OP) $ 19.95 (B I)

Krzysztof Wodiczko - New York City Tableaux: Tompkins Square: The Homeless Vehicle Project. 1991 Exit Art. Rosalyn Deutsche, Papo Colo, Neil Smith, Julie Courtney. Edited by Jeanette Ingberman. Orig PB illus. Trade Paper ISBN 0-913263-29-X 48p. $ 20.00 (B)

Hans Haacke: Four Recent Works of Art. 09/1977 Mary P. Sesnon Art Gallery. Introduction by Nan Rosenthal. Orig PB illus. Trade Paper ISBN 0-939982-01-3 30p. $ 10.00 (B)

Event Arts & Art Events. (Date Not Supplied) Books on Demand. Edited by Stephen C. Foster. (Studies in the Fine Arts) No. 57Trade Paper ISBN 0-8357-1814-X LCCN: 87-019049 Reprint 320p. $ 91.20 (B)

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