Die

An epiphany for this project, which helped me envision its shape, occurred when I was leaving the David Smith retrospective at Tate Modern a number of years ago. One of the final rooms was the media room, and the 1964 televised interview between Smith and Frank O’Hara I discuss in Chapter 1 was being projected on a large wall. I had not intended to watch this...

In the 1950s and 1960s, the norms previously governing mainstream sculptural practice were being thrown into question by a number of different initiatives, whether Pop, Conceptualist, Minimalist, Arte Povera, Neo-Dada, or performance orientated. I shall be focusing here on Minimalist work, and the critical context framing it, because it was out of this that by far the most intensive and sustained engagement with earlier understandings of sculpture emerged. Minimalist objects may not necessarily …