A clarifying moment for Minimalism

Why now?

Among the myriad pleasurable questions that arise when visiting an art museum exhibition, that one is perhaps the most conspicuous to ponder. Why does curator X believe that now is the perfect moment for us to set aside the endless array of possible considerations the world of art always offers and focus for a moment on this or that specific group of objects?

Curators spend their professional lives sifting and sorting, and strategizing about the history of art, which they attempt to write (and rewrite) by assembling exhibitions. What is it about this particular show that might speak eloquently to our time?

The answers aren’t always obvious. “Why now?” I wondered as the March opening approached for the Museum of Contemporary Art’s big, unprecedented survey of American Minimalist painting and sculpture (it continues until Aug. 2). Perusing a list of exhibitions on other museum dockets, the scope of the question continued to grow. Big historical shows of abstract painting and sculpture defined by simplicity of form, an interest in geometry and stark visual clarity were turning up at four major art museums around the country, almost simultaneously.

In addition to MOCA’s “A Minimal Future?” the perfect storm included “Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated): Art From 1951 to the Present,” which mostly drew on painting and sculpture from the permanent collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, where it had a brief run in the spring. At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, meanwhile, the recently opened “Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form, 1940s-70s” includes a sizable selection of geometric abstractions from Europe, the United States and South America that characterize a major chapter in the history of avant-garde art following World War II. (After the show closes Oct. 3, it will travel to Miami.) Finally, in Houston, the Museum of Fine Arts has just opened “Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America” (through Sept. 12). The Houston show surveys the artistically dynamic period between 1920 and 1970 in Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America; I haven’t seen it yet, but simplified geometric abstraction was a central development for the Latin American avant-garde -- as LACMA’s overlapping show makes plain.

These four exhibitions shine a strong light on a reductive impulse that was tenacious in 20th century art. Obviously great diversity marks the hundreds of artists working in very different milieus during such a long period, which began with the end of World War I and finally unraveled at the close of the 1970s. Nevertheless, all are loosely characterized by extreme simplification of form, basic shapes and monochromatic palettes (often primary colors or black and white), objectivity rather than subjective passions, industrial manufacture, an emphasis on pattern and repetition and a general anonymity of style.

MOCA’s show is the only one to focus exclusively on Minimalism-with-a-capital-M, and it’s a milestone because no American art museum has ever attempted a historical survey of this difficult, hugely influential period in the early 1960s. But all four of them examine aspects of what could be called the last century’s sweeping flirtations with, and commitments to, assorted types of small-m minimalism.

Why are we seeing them now?

One answer is simple novelty. The time certainly seems ripe. The fact that MOCA’s show is unprecedented draws inevitable attention. Curators benefit professionally from forging ahead into uncharted territory, and art museums build their reputations on such distinctiveness.

The culture industry that began to bud in the 1980s has blossomed into a robust international enterprise. But since then Minimalism has been generally absent from the exhibition rosters of major museums. It had become the elephant in the room -- too big to ignore, however unwieldy to arrange.

There is some irony in this. In the modern history of American art, Minimalism is the first movement to be embraced almost immediately by the institutional apparatus of museums, art dealers, critics and the rest. Between production and consumption, it barely skipped a beat. In 1962, New York’s Museum of Modern Art began work on a show that in three years’ time became “The Responsive Eye.” In 1966 the Jewish Museum launched “Primary Structures,” widely regarded as the first Minimalist survey. The stuff was virtually brand new.

Before the 1960s, the institutional establishment had largely ignored the daubing and chipping and welding that went on in the studios of avant-garde artists. Now they swarmed all over it. Professionals employed in ‘60s cultural institutions, like the new artists themselves, represented the first American generation of academically trained cognoscenti. For the first time artists and the art establishment spoke each other’s language.

American corporations, flush with postwar prosperity, did not speak the same language. However, they did have keen aspirations to social luster, which art patronage always supplies. Minimalism’s anonymity of style was just the ticket to set off the rubber plants down in the lobby at corporate headquarters, or to dot the wind-swept plaza of the latest downtown urban renewal project.

Only the public remained out of the Minimalist loop. Today, as art museums have become thoroughly integrated into the popular culture, functioning as tourist destinations and leisure spots, the public is more amenable. So-called mid-century modern architecture and design, characterized by many similarities to Minimalist painting and sculpture, has been popular for a decade. Forty years after the fact, Minimalism is a difficult, but hardly impossible, sell to general museum audiences.

Another, slightly different demographic development also answers the “Why now?” inquiry. Notably, the shows in Houston and Los Angeles look closely at developments in Latin American art. As the U.S. Latino population expands, the historical compass of curiosity swings from East-West to North-South. Texas and California are the nation’s biggest border states.

Small-m minimalism was a critically important development in South America in the 1940s and 1950s, especially for Brazil and Argentina. In the LACMA catalog, an excellent essay by historian Valerie L. Hillings shows how the social, political and cultural conditions of Latin America contributed to the flourishing of geometric abstraction. Under names like Concrete and Neo-Concrete art, the aesthetic was aligned with utopian ideals -- objectively planned societies, concepts of universal truth and liberation through technology.

Think Brasilia, carved from wilderness between 1956 and 1960.

A disastrous 1978 fire at Rio de Janeiro’s Museum of Modern Art wiped out a big chunk of that history. Most of the collection was destroyed, including major examples of South American minimalist painting, sculpture and design. A chief pleasure of LACMA’s “Beyond Geometry” is simply the opportunity to see unfamiliar examples of a powerful modern tradition that we have long since lost sight of.

Evoking a simpler time

Minimalist art is also attractive today as a kind of refuge. Its common descriptors -- simple, clear, objective, primary, monochrome, stark, plain-spoken, utopian, universal -- might not be nuanced interpretations of specific works of art representing widely varied points of view. But they are virtual antonyms for the chaos, confusion and turmoil that describe our social, political and cultural life.

Shows like MOCA’s, LACMA’s and Houston’s take years to plan and organize. (The Guggenheim’s haphazard exhibition, although filled with exceptional objects, was assembled quickly.) All had their seeds planted in the late 1990s, even before the millennial panic around Y2K had been whipped up.

Certainly they took curatorial shape as the new century turned and wholly unpredicted nightmares took up residence in our waking lives. You know the litany. The Supreme Court intervened to decide a darkly contested presidential election. The most stunning terrorist assault in the nation’s history exploded. Corporate malfeasance ran amok. A preemptive war was launched in one of the most volatile regions of the globe. Issues of deception were followed by acts of torture. No wonder we crave legibility and simplicity.

The pressures of specific current events might pique our curiosity about these unprecedented shows. Still, their proliferation in major American art museums now strikes me as something more profound.

For half a century, the Cold War defined America’s conception of itself, as individuals and a nation, and it did so according to who and what we were not: They were yin, we were yang. The sudden, spectacular flameout didn’t merely dissolve the Soviet Union, it also liquefied the solid sense of who Americans are. They were gone, we were ... what, besides victorious?

The event proved more internally destabilizing than most of us were sensitive enough to realize or willing to admit. In the chaotic post-Cold War environment, the identity of the most powerful nation the world has ever known has been up for grabs.

Why now? Simple: Because clarity is crucial.

Christopher Knight is The Times’ art critic. He can be reached at christopher.knight@latimes.com.