by John F. Moffitt

"What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the Sun." Ecclesiastes 1:9

By now it would appear that so-called "Minimalist" art has run its course and expired, the victim of its own self-imposed limitations. Nevertheless, during its heyday (late 60s and early 70s), the advent of Minimalism was hailed with almost messianic fervor as, for instance, "an obvious step on the path toward a more rigid spatial structualization within art as well as by art," representing "a sculptural pattern that expands the abstract, non-emotional and non-expressionistic discoveries of the ancient Greeks" (sic!).[1] Minimalism is (was) an esoteric movement which addressed such theoretical issues as the "essence" of the art-object. Particularly eulogized was the reductionist principle of "thingness": man-made objects were above all praised for their total avoidance of "external referentiality." As Carla Gottlieb formulated it: "The Minimalists, who base themselves on the Gestalt theory, accept form as a given premise for the simple geometric shapes they use. ... In recent object-type art, the invention of new forms is not an issue. A morphology of geometric, predominantly rectangular forms has been accepted as a given premise. ... Based upon the continuing weight placed on the formal element in art [by Modernism], abstraction could do away with subject-matter altogether - that is, subject-matter as it is defined in traditional terms."[2]

Nevertheless, pace the claims of certain art critics who dislike the idea of modern art being "traditional," in some cases it may be possible to demonstrate that even the most "modern" looking art works are precisely those which can, upon reflection, be shown to have easily decipherable and very traditional kinds of subject matter. By taking this position, the art historian, acting as advocatus diaboli, would hold that many contemporary artists have not, after all, relinquished the prerequisites of their traditional role: that is, to provoke the mind of the viewer by inciting him to reflect upon the existential issues of life, struggle and death.[3] A single case in point, serving hopefully to spur further research along these interpretive lines,[4] is the work of a Belgian artist, Pol Bury's Sphere Upon a Cube (1971) (fig. 1).

This is a small sculpture (measuring only 40 by 20 by 20 cm) made of pristine stainless steel in two parts. A highly polished sphere with a weight hidden within its body rests upon a gleaming black cube, inside which there are electromagnets. Concealed within the sphere is a metallic weight which is attracted by the forces of the electromagnets. Because the force-field of the magnet works on this weight differently from its action upon the sphere, the invisible weight shifts about in the body of the ball placed on top of the cube, instigating and affecting its erratic motions. The nature of the hidden force that holds the wobbling sphere a prisoner upon the restricted upper plane of the cube is unfathomable, and thus exerts a mysterious effect upon the bemused viewer who is intrigued by the apparent conflict between the active precariousness of the ball which is strikingly contrasted with the passive stability of its immobile, cubic base. The outsize ball revolves in a random, accident-prone orbit on the top of the cube, while its gliding, polished surfaces reflect the shifting images of the environment surrounding the viewer.

1. Pol Bury, Sphere Upon a Cube, 1971. Stainless steel (with hidden electromagnets), height 40 cm. New York, private collection


2. J.W. von Goethe, Altar to the Goddess Fortuna (Agathe Tyche), 1777. Granite. Weimar, Goethe Park

Bury was fascinated by those opposing "pseudo-Minimalist" shapes - "la boule et le cube" - and, in a statement published in 1967, revealed that he saw these primary forms as essentially having a symbolic value for him. Given the tenor of his commentary, one could go so far as to define their metaphorical roles in terms of the conventionalized representations of the "psychomachia" so beloved of the pious medieval sculptors who repeatedly placed them on the façades of the great cathedrals.[5] As Bury stated: "It would appear that one [the sphere] is equivalent to our soul - its aspirations, its eddies, its rolling around in the depth of the torrents. The other [the cube], with its ridges and its angles, could be the image of our knowledge, at least that degree of knowledge which, grosso modo, we have established for ourselves. But it is also less and more than that: a posterior on a chair, an apple on a table."[6]