Textual Analysis
In 1967, Michael Fried published an essay "Art and Objecthood" in which he gave a comparison of modernist art and minimal art, and criticizes minimal art – or as he preferred to call it as “literalist” art. According to Fried, literalist art has largely ideological nature and does not belong to the modernist concept of painting and sculpture. Literalist art and theory works on shape as a given property of objects rather than as a kind of object in itself, i.e. objecthood is not present, and the conditions of art are in direct conflict. He described that “minimalism” or “literalism” gives an experience of "theatricality" or it can hide behind the "presence" as size, which can be a stage presence, but not "presentness", which requires continued renewal. Theater is considered as hostile to art, and Fried poses that art is successful if it defeats theater. It gives the feelings of an object in a situation including the beholder. Literalist art depends on the public and viewer, and includes the beholder as a public due to its large, confronting, and spatial nature. It engages the viewer not as an autonomous art object, but a form of theatrical form of object. Regarding its size, literalist art has hidden property of naturalism and can be compared to that of the human body. Moreover, literalist work resembles more to sculpture than to paintings, though it is close to painting. Literalist art and theory has the property of endless, or indefinite, duration. Literalist art has the quality of having an inside characteristic, i.e. “hollowness” that is obvious in having an anthropomorphic nature representing “a surrogate person-that is, a kind of statue” as Fried implied.
