This project investigates the apparent contradiction of a female artist who prioritises embodied presence in her art works, but produces Minimalist installations. It does this by describing in detail and analysing, and thus re-evaluating the significance of, the full range of actions and processes that are performed to produce the work. It further proposes that, in the actions of crafting the individual elements and in designing, planning and installing the work in Modernist gallery spaces, conditions are set up for viewers of the finished work to experience a physical awareness that echoes that of the artist in those actions and processes.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2007. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

Pavla Šedinová: Minimal art and minimal music Abstract: This thesis focuses on the theoretical description of minimalism in the fine arts and music. It follows the progression of minimisation in art in the first half of the twentieth century, which culminates in minimal art and minimal music, and compares its principles with multiplication in the work of Andy Warhol and Velvet Underground. At the same time the paper discusses the difference between American minimalism and its European and Czech parallels. The aim of this thesis is describing main concepts of minimalism that could be relevant for teaching purposes. The pedagogical part of the thesis focuses on the manner in which the obtained information about the fine arts and music could be utilised in teaching, particularly in Elementary Art Schools. The practical part demonstrates my own approach to minimalist principles.

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When the artist Mel Bochner described the reductive geometric forms on view in the "Primary Structures" exhibition in 1966, a show that announced the arrival of minimalism on the New York art scene, he claimed: "there is nothing behind these surfaces, no inside, no secret, no hidden motive."1 Yet after a careful examination of minimal art, and the ways in which it challenged a modernist trajectory set into place in the postwar period, I am arguing Bochner couldn't have been more wrong. With minimalism as its primary focus, my thesis considers how the political turmoil of the late 1960s- manifest in widespread social upheaval, the polemics of a contested war, and questions regarding the nature of the modern subject- disrupted the perceived self-referentiality of abstract art, particularly that adhering to a tradition of Greenbergian modernism. That is, when complicated by contemporaneous social relations and artistic debates, the formal language of minimalism, with its simple forms, precise lines, and industrial manufacture, becomes full of potential meaning, leaving the minimal box less hollow than Bochner would have us believe. To get at some of the complexities of the minimal project, both mainstream artists, such as Donald Judd and Robert Morris, and those more marginally related to the movement, like Barnett Newman, Jo Baer, and Eva Hesse, are considered. Setting the work of these artists into tension with one another and with the critical writings of Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried, the unique strategies used to mediate between individual artistic interests and larger social tensions are brought into focus. One primary area in which this was accomplished was in relation to the issue of viewership. Whether rethinking Morris' notion of "experience," Newman's conceptualization of "participation," or Baer's prioritization of "perception," these distinct modes of engagement signal what was at the time a shifting understanding of how politics is formulated in relation to the body of the viewer and how the art object is implicated in this process. Considering how this broke with previous formalist models, what these chapters show in different ways and from varying perspectives is that the authority of modernism was fracturing in the late 1960s, and that minimal art was central to this process.

Thesis (M.A.)(Hons)--University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2008. / Principal faculty advisor: Ann E. Gibson, Dept. of Art History. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2004. / Document formatted into pages; contains 218 p. Includes bibliographical references. Abstract available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 209 March 29.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisor: Richard Shiff. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Also available from UMI.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Johns Hopkins University, 1995. / Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 421-441).