Skylab Now

Kazimir Malevich. (Russian, born Ukraine. 1878-1935). Painterly Realism. Boy with Knapsack - Color Masses in the Fourth Dimension. 1915. Oil on canvas, 28 x 17 1/2" (71.1 x 44.5 cm). 1935

... minimalism often took to an extreme credos pioneered by previous waves of abstract art. Those artists were tired of art as an illusion, a trick by which one object represents something else. They wanted the work to be stripped of such artifice, pared down to the bare essentials so that the viewer looks only at the thing itself (rather than a picture or sculpture of something).

Minimal art took that notion and ran with it, serving up objects that could not be taken for anything other than what they were. Frank Stella, whose pin-striped paintings feature nothing but straight lines running parallel to the edges of the canvas, delivered a soundbite of minimalist philosophy when he declared there was nothing "besides the paint on the canvas" and "what you see is what you see".

- The Guardian

- Agnes Martin : Untitled, 1998 , Set of four lithographs

see also : Guggenheim

- Mark Rothko, Untitled [No.4] , 1964, National Gallery of Art.


"his surfaces were velvety as poems of the night."
- Dore Ashton

- Harry Callahan, New York, 1970

"... but Haynes and Dyer seemed to take for granted the fact that Hopper's paintings have influenced many filmmakers. Among the more intriguing comments: Haynes noted that he finds the connection between Hopper and noir superficial and based primarily in the popularity of one of Hopper's most famous paintings, Nighthawks. His argument was that noir tends to be male-driven, with female characters serving merely as the subject of erotic intrigue, while in Hopper, he argues that women are not viewed voyeuristically or erotically. He essentially reworked Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure" thesis to suggest the ways in which Hopper disrupts visual pleasure.

He later added that many of Hopper's paintings do resemble film stills, a condition that one (unidentifed) woman in the audience described as "scenes on the verge of a story." I'm struggling through this idea/concept right now, but it strikes me as just about right (and reminded me fleetingly of Cindy Sherman's amazing series, "Untitled Film Stills," at least in terms of the engagement with narrative and banality).

He then connected this concept to the minimalist filmmaking style of Chantal Akerman, specifically her 3.5 hour film, Jeanne Dielman, which Haynes described as "a film about what every other film cuts out." In the film (which I have seen), we see a housewife engaging in all of the daily chores, such as cleaning, cooking, or taking a bath, all in real time, all with an essentially static camera (as I recall). The film is strangely compelling, and when it was released, it was seen as an alternative to the narrative-driven male gaze films criticized by Mulvey. Given their reading of Hopper, the connection makes a lot of sense. Sirk and Dyer also read Malick's Badlands and Sirk's Tarnished Angel through Hopper's lens, but my details are sketchier here. Certainly Badlands (in part through Sissy Spacek's amazing voice-over narration) evokes the loneliness and open space associated with Hopper, and which Dyer identified as a specifically American sensibility."

-Film theory archive, 06/04 2004

It is difficult to incise that line with the white pencil in the paper, and that is in fact what they are – white linear incisions in black paper. There is very little give to the line so it looks almost like ink if you don’t look carefully. But it is not: it is the result of applying stroke over stroke, over stroke, over stroke . . . Moreover, you cannot use a very sharp pencil for this kind of drawing, because it tears the paper; so you start with a rounded off point, a relatively softened tool, which represents another irony: a softened tool for a hard edged job.

- Dan Flanvin, Commenting on his work

- Robert Ryman, Surface Veil I, 1970. Oil and blue chalk on linen, 143 15/16 x 144 inches. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Panza Collection.

- Carl Andre, Fall, New York, 1968. Hot-rolled steel, 21 units, 71 7/8 x 28 x 72 11/16 inches each; 72 x 588 x 72 inches overall. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Panza Collection.

- nick-e melville , eight rain poems (minimalist concrete poetry)

" Tadao Ando’s Church of the Light is located in Ibaraki, a residential neighbourhood 25 kilometers north-northeast of Osaka. The building can be described simply as a bare concrete box with a wall cutting through it at a 15 degree angle. The heavy cast-in-place walls help separate the religious experience inside the small 113 square meter chapel from the outside world. The delineation between sacred and profane is important on this site, which does not permit much distance between two streets and the church itself. "
- Church of Light



- Tadao Ando, Church of Light (Ibaraki, Osaka, 1988)

"Sometimes meditative, other times intensely powerful, Cloud Plate brings together four veteran improvising musicians and accomplished bandleaders, percussionist Alex Cline, vocalist Kaoru, electric koto player Miya Masaoka, and electric guitarist G.E. Stinson. This unique and inviting combination of individuals and instruments succeeds in striking a balance which allows evocative and expansive music to unfold in the moment. The beautiful package features original art throughout by famed Japanese artist Yoshio Ikezaki."


Alex Cline, Kaoru, Miya Masaoka, G.E. Stinson - Mountain
Alex Cline, Kaoru, Miya Masaoka, G.E. Stinson - Cloud
Alex Cline, Kaoru, Miya Masaoka, G.E. Stinson - Face


see also: cryptogramophone.com

Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity

Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem or Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate

- William of Ockham (c. 1285–1347 ?)

Judd broke new ground in his exploration of volume, interval, space and colour . He rejected the tradition of artistic expression and craftsmanship by using industrial materials such as Plexiglas, sheet metal and plywood, and from the mid-1960s his works were fabricated by external manufacturers. By encouraging concentration on the volume and presence of the structure and the space around it, Judd’s work draws particular attention to the relationship between the object, the viewer, and its environment. This relationship became a central focus of Judd’s career, and he devoted much of his later life to the sympathetic installation of his own work.
- Tate galery



- Donald Judd (1928-1994), [no title] 1974, Etching on paper, image: 698 x 550 mm, on paper, print

- Ellsworth Kelly, Dark Blue Curve, 1995. Oil on canvas, 46 x 190 inches. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.