A Minimal Future? : Art as Object 1958-1968

As a new movement that arose in the 1950s and 1960s, Minimalism challenged traditional ideas about art-making and the art object.

A Minimal Future? Art As Object 1958-1968, which accompanies a major exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, offers a redefinition of Minimalism by situating it in the context of the concurrent aesthetics of modernist abstraction, pop art and nascent ideas of conceptual art.Minimalism is presented as a range of strategies that propelled new definitions of the structure, form, material, image and production of the art object and renegotiated its relationship to space and to the spectator.

Focusing on the years 1958-1968, A Minimal Future? presents key works within the framework of a scholarly re-examination of minimal art's emergence and historical context.

It reflects the early transitional period that begins in the late 1950s, through the so-called "canonisation" of Minimalism by 1968, with an emphasis on work produced in the mid-to-late 1960s.

The book includes works from the late 1950s through the late 1960s by 40 artists.