Minimalism at the Guggenheim

Modern Art Notes does it again with a great capsule of the minimalism show at the Guggenheim. While I tend to disagree with the common wisdom that places Robert Ryman in the camp of the minimalists, he is found in the show, and that is always a good thing. Personally I would not quibble with Ryman's inclusion in a show of Fra Angelico.

Anyway, Tyler Green offers some great insight into the Ryman Surface Veil pieces.

Ryman is a difficult artist. You simply cannot get what he is doing with a fast pass in front of the canvas. I have mentioned before in this space that when the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art opened its new museum, they had a whole room dedicated solely to Ryman. I loved to walk in there and just move at my own pace, which in galleries tends to be slow; snails find me a bit too pokey.

After a few years, SFMOMA recycled the space and it is now full of po-mo garbage like Gerhardt Richter and little art school homages to grafitti and the like. I want my Ryman room back!

An interesting and sad thing about the room was the number of people who would walk in, take an incredibly superficial look and move on. These are the catalog and textbook people. They are ticking off from a mental checklist: oh, the Duchamp urinal, check. Matisse portrait with green stripe, check. An Albers square, check.

Since most textbooks have a terribly wrong view of modern art, these folks inevitably pay attention to the wrong things, which they barely see anyway. I would chalk it up to their own loss except that this mindset all too often governs the curatorial decisions. Certainly the blockbuster show is a symptom of this banal approach to art (although I will maintain to the bitter end that a banal approach to art is better than ignoring it altogether - I would rather have the Average Joe come to the museum to rush through a Chagall show than have him never come to a mueum at all).

Anyway, now that the buzz is gone from minimalism, it is a great time to take it in without the inflated hype. Some of the greats of minimalism continue to stand as strong artists, and they are worth a second (third, fourth, fifth...)long look.