Minimalism and Abstraction

Akron Art Museum

A grouping of three works by some of the most renowned artists of the second half of the 20th century, all of whom participated on the debates around the reduction of art to its essential forms that much of American discourse in the 1960s became consumed with. Jules Olitsky’s 1969 Pash exemplifies the pure opticality of the so-called “Color Field” school. The deep hues, seemingly floating above the background without any noticeable surface accident, were the result of the painter’s adoption of a compressor and spray gun to layer colors onto the canvas. Robert Morris’s 1964 Untitled dates to a pivotal moment in the artist's work and in the development of minimalism. The work, made roughly at the same time as those that were displayed at the groundbreaking 1966 exhibition Primary Structures, demonstrates his focus on simple, assertive, and unadorned forms capable of articulating a spatial gestalt in the mind of the viewer. Donald Judd's Untitled, the result of five years of experimenting with industrially fabricated works, was made after the artist's 1968 survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art. As he explained to art critic Lucy Lippard, commercial success of the first galvanized works allowed him to produce anodized sculptures, such as this one.