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Issue 6 :The Post-Minimal/ Conceptual Art
1/ Art & Architecture,
by M.R. Jodat
This article analyses and compares various views on the connection between arts and architecture, specially since the establishment of Bauhaus School, as well as discussions held in the 1949 CIAM congress. It further elaborates on new viewpoints on the same subject and the
collaboration between art and architecture during the recent decades. The article also surveys certain opinions which cast a doubtful look at the art/architecture connection.
2/ The Post Minimal/ Conceptual Art
This article, as a translation of parts of chapter 22 of the book 'Modern  Art' written by Sam Hunter and John Jacobos, elaborating the trend leading to the formation of these two artistic concepts. The authors generally have a critical opinion on minimalism in art in this chapter, but further explaining the other two concepts (Conceptual Art and Performance Art) not much criticism is seen. Three opening paragraphs explaining these three artistic concepts are printed below in order to provide general understanding with the views of the authors:
By 1970, or even 1968, modernism had triumphed in art'in Minimalism, that is'
to the point where its obsessive as well as rationalistic search for ' breakthroughs' to ever-greater formal refinement carried self-purification to the brink of self-eradication. Once the modernist process had eliminated from art all but its most irreducible physical properties, what remained'a mere box or cube'seemed to have become little more that an object among other objects in the world, interesting less for what met the eye than for the appeal the logic of its creation made to the mind. And as the quick-minded soon grasped, a form so simplified or unitary as to be devoid of internal relations could not but establish relations with the ambient world. In other words, by shutting out everyday reality, Minimalism seemed to have engaged in the ironic act of expanding our consciousness of it. Alas, the reality the disenchanted saw mirrored upon the pristine, machine-finished surfaces of Primary Structures could scarcely have been more remote from the monolithic purity and oneness so prized by advanced formalist or modernist aesthetics. ...
Writing in 1967, Sol LeWitt coined the term Conceptual Art to characterize works, like his own, 'made to engage the mind of the  viewer rather than his eye or his emotions.' Since 'the idea becomes the machine that makes the art,' planning and decisions should come before all else, which then relegates execution to the condition of 'a perfunctory affair.' Moreover, LeWitt continued, 'ideas may [even] be stated with numbers, photographs, or words or any way the artist chooses, the form being unimportant.' In 1969, however, he denounced painting and sculpture that 'connote a whole tradition, and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations.' In his own work, as we have seen, LeWitt reduced the Minimalist cube to a schematic outline and its mass to a virtual rather than an actual volume, while simultaneously recomplicating it through mathematical permutations that often carried
the most rigorous logic to mad, even if predictable, conclusions. Thus  treated as 'pure information,' LeWitt`s open modular cube prompted Mel Bochner, a fellow Conceptualist, to remark: 'Old art attempted to make the non-visible (energy, feeling) visual (marks). The new art is attempting to make the non-visual (mathematics) visible (concrete).''
For certain rebels against formalist tyranny, even works on paper proved too material, a confinement they sought to escape by literalizing the theatrical element in Action Painting. Eventually, these dissenters recast Story Art into Performance Art, which drew so many adherents that critics have sometimes thought it the genre most characteristic of the period. Very much as Michael Fried had predicted, sculpture
reduced to its physical minimum yielded not autonomy but, rather, contingency and a kind of theater, since, for effect, the relationless work seemed inevitably to establish relations with its 'situation'' setting, lighting, atmosphere. Most of all, it depended upon the performance of viewers, who by moving about and approaching the piece from various angles transformed themselves into 'actors.' Now, Performance artists would on their own become actors and, while eliminating the object entirely, take the whole world for their stage, a radical departure that found key inspiration in Happenings, of course, but more especially, perhaps, in photographic images of Jackson Pollock 'rope dancing' with pigments, or Yves Klein making Anthropometries before a live audience, or yet Robert Rauschenberg on roller skates in his 1963 piece entitled Pelican. Too, if Performance triumphed in the late sixties and early seventies, it was owing in part to a sense of logical imperative within the development, given that modernism, for a century or more, had progressively divested itself of all extraneous matter until the artist emerged as his own best subject''in many cases,' to quote Jack Burnham, 'his only legitimate subject.' With themselves'their bodies, voices, movements, and ideas'as the essential medium, Performance artists could 'exhibit'any time or anywhere and in direct contact with viewers, thereby controlling the presentation and consumption of their work without the intervention of dealers, critics, and curators. Altogether, Performance appeared to offer the best of all possible means for converting art from a precious collectible into an effective agency of communication. '
3/ Sentences on Conceptual Art,
Sol LeWitt
1- Conceptual Artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.
2- Rational judgements repeat rational judgements.
3- Illogical judgements lead to new experience.
4- Formal Art is essentially rational.
5- Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.
6- If the artist changes his mind midway through the execution of the piece he compromises the result and repeats past results.
7- The artist's will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea to completion. His willfulness may only be ego.
8- When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations.
9- The concept and idea are different. The former implies a general direction while the latter is the components. Ideas implement the concept.
4/ Introducing some prototypes of Conceptual Art
4-1- Plight/Joseph Beuys
4-2- The High Priestess/ Anselm kiefer
Taken from the book : NEWART, edited by Andreas Papadakis,  Clare Farrow & Nicola Hodges; ACADEMY EDITIONS; LONDON; 1991. ISBN: 1-85490-046-3(PB).
4-3-PARA-SITE, 1989/ DILLER+SCOFIDIO
4-4- TOURISMS, SUITCASE STUDIES, 1991/ DILLER+SCOFIDIO
Taken from the journal of philosophy and the visual arts:
ARCHITECTURE. SPACE. PAINTING, co-ordinating editor: Andrew Benjamin; ACADEMY EDITIONS; LONDON; 1992.
5/ A methodological glance at the renovation of historical urban areas,
by Fariborz Raees-Dana
Worn out historical areas and textures with their problematic access networks act as a kind of urban sub-system in fast growing big cities. But their role and function in the total urban system differs in each given case. The importance of such sub-systems in big cities and specially metropolises which carry a systematic regional and national role, is relatively decreasing.
6/ Preview of a brief portfolio
This issue of Iranian Architecture Quarterly takes a look at the works of Iranian architect Amir Saeed Vafaee Rahbar. He is a U.S.A. graduate and has been living and working in Dubai since 1981.
Here, he and his major works are i ntroduced while some information is given by him
about Dubai`s architecture on the request of the quarterly.
7/ Roots of Modern Architecture(5), Christian Norberg-Schulz: This section is a translation of the fifth chapter of the above mentioned book.
8/ Encyclopedia of 20th Century Architecture,
General editor : Vittorio Magnago Lampugniani (English-persian); Part 5-F
9/ Internet Box
- Museum a copy, claims architect www.ajplus.co.uk
- Bank of China Headquarters by Pei partnership www.designarchitecture.com
- Grimshaw and Arup design stunning new links into Battersea - image www.ajplus.co.uk
-3 architects submit revised designs for addition to Carnegie Science Center www.post-gazette.com
- Buildings that tell stories www.latimes.com
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