Expanding the Experiences of the 1960s’ Realities-Robert Morris’s Sculpture and Exhibitions at the Whitney(1970) and the Tate(1971)

Abstract

This thesis discusses the ways that minimalism, with its extremely reductive and simplified visual language, represents the realities of the U.S. in the 1960s. This decade in American society, which becomes a background of this research, is notable with regard to several important events in history: the first Walmart—a symbol of capitalist utopia—opened in 1962, and the country’s economic growth peaked soon thereafter; the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, leading to various protests against racism, sexism and labor exploitation; and popular opposition to the U.S. intervention in the Vietnam War(1955-1975) spread internationally. Meanwhile, the minimalists and various other artists’ groups emerged, responding to the modernists’ formalism with their own radical ideas and methods. Since minimalist sculpture is neither figurative nor illusionistic, it is hard to recognize how such works of art might represent reality. However, this thesis aims to clarify that minimalism not only represented the realities of the 1960s but engaged with the era’s social change. As a methodology of this research, some pieces of sculpture by Donald Judd and Robert Morris and Morris’s exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York(1970) and the Tate Gallery in London(1971) are analyzed. This thesis discusses Morris’s see-through sculpture and how it helps viewers to dismantle its inside of the structure, which in this context serves as a parallel to dismantling the power of late capitalism. Then the means whereby Morris communicated his progressive practice and vision for social change with audiences at the Whitney and the Tate are investigated. This thesis claims that Morris identified himself as a blue-collar worker in the Whitney show while expanding his sociopolitical commitment into the viewers’ experiences in the Tate show. As such, this thesis demonstrates how Morris’s artistic practices expanded the experiences of American social realities of the 1960s.