That kind of unadorned box thought to be a precursor of late modern minimalism in the architecture of Loos is displayed precisely where someone attempted, in an old photograph, to position a plant so as to conceal the detail most frequently reproduced — the corner of the living room of the Müller House in Prague. But, without that plant: what a powerful and astonishing Loosian sense we encounter of transparent right-angled forms, openly and boldly assembled, and only in this respect "boxy" — they are manifestly volumetric. The formal character of that intersection has not been, and is not, an agreeable beauty suggestive of taste. In the view of whoever placed that plant, the purely volumetric components were not intelligent enough for this display. The question of minimalism was raised because late twentieth-century minimalist art did not care if it appeared that dull in order to convey its anti-formalist viewpoint, just as Loos did not care if he was admired by anti-aesthetic functionalists. The avoidance of beautiful forms and compositions was not necessarily considered anti-art: as what could have been said of Loos, it was art, "in spite of" — that is, despite
being denied as art. Today the adjective "minimal" is used so indiscriminately that for the sake of Loos it is best avoided; although what is at stake in reassessing definitive minimalism can, more than anything else, yield a clearer sense of how his work belongs to the prehistory of today's major art movement. If this is the case, it serves as a further reminder about Loos as an artist-architect; just as minimalism was never "non-art," though it initially appeared aesthetically empty, perhaps the matter can be resolved in the same way regarding Loos.
Adolf Loos, Müller House
There is widespread attention to Adolf Loos's role in the question of minimalism, inasmuch as his work is increasingly regarded as an inseparable part of modern art as a whole — given the particular importance of minimalism as the last major modern movement not imperiled by postmodernism, it becomes ever clearer that Loos is, above all, an anti-artist or anti-architect. It is not entirely wrong to say he is an "anti-artist-architect," though if we call him one we have not spoken amiss. In relation to Loos we can cite several examples from minimal art and focus on the works of definitive minimalism, then acknowledge that Jud has also written about architecture. And in his classic minimal works, Robert Morris — who is American these days — appears more Loosian, and is compared with Wittgenstein for the elemental aspect that has emerged, including in the case of Morris's "Slab" or "Column," which appeared playfully in Philosophical Investigations in 1953. In 1961, Morris produced a set of transparent boxes titled Untitled, subtitled or nicknamed "Column," despite not being round, having considerable precedent in Loos's quadrangular pedestals, clearly clad in his signature thin marble, as well as in the plywood box forms of other minimalists — and most of all where Loos's pedestals, in mirror reflection, are multiplied and doubled, as in the marble-clad lobby of the end of the Brummel dining room, in Pilsen, 1928–1929. A radiator with a wooden cover in the adjacent salon, which I shall address immediately, with its brazen boxiness is very striking to me, and despite the refined materials
and craftsmanship employed in it, it manifests an aspect of the minimal in late Loos — in the first instance, a "formal being-non-formal." Furthermore, minimalism was not born of Loos's simple and direct approach or of structuralism, although Loos was, at the very least, an inspiration for the notable counterpart of structuralism — namely, functionalism — in architecture, particularly the Czech examples that took shape in the 1920s as a counterpart to sculptural structuralism. Later, structuralism — historical functionalism, which was indebted to Loos — was no longer prepared to support minimalism. In the manner of ordinary people who place material units side by side — including firebricks — Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII pursued something equally democratic and devoid of European refinement: the deliberately not-so-hidden, even unflattering, unadorned manner of placing in common rows or layers unbent elements of materials that are clearly unhidden, and are mostly wood or metal. Andre's position, which is drawn from an Emersonian self-invention, has not set aside its
Tony Smith, Free Ride, 1962, painted steel
fraternal tribute to Russian structuralism, particularly to Rodchenko, with his method of building by the unconcealed juxtaposition of primary materials. If Adolf Loos is not the artist who comes to mind before the works of Andre, there is nonetheless a resemblance between his stacked layers — including in the Cedar Piece of 1959 and his early works of 1964 — with Mexico City's town hall, which Loos depicted in 1923 and which was destroyed and rebuilt, with its identical zigzag steps, including a smaller pyramid at the corners of a larger one that has a somewhat Aztec appearance. Although Andre's works, as a rule, are not similar to those of Loos, their spirit is close to Loos's work, who was a bricklayer before anything else and in 1919 formally proposed that architecture students must first undergo bricklaying or other building experiences. What must be one of the finest Loosian details has long possessed minimalist allure, thanks to a photograph by Roberto Schezen of the staircase of the Moller House, 1927–1928, in Vienna. When I published an essay titled "Tony Smith and Minimalism in the Art of Building: Modern Architecture in the Mastery of Cultural Construction" (1993), that photograph had by then circulated so freely that Schezen was delighted that someone was asking his permission to publish it. For those aware of minimalism, its form — a square axis of two right angles — was reminiscent of Tony Smith's Free Ride, 1962; but likewise, after 1974,
Sol LeWitt's series "Incomplete Open Cubes." Tony Smith, along with Wright, had studied architecture. His project of 1950–51, the Catholic church on Long Island, was in one respect Wrightian and non-minimal, and appears to have been inspired by a kind of organic "human" order, and was extensively influenced by D'Arcy Thompson's book On Growth and Form (1917, second edition 1942). In the 1960s, his sculpture, more than that of any other minimalist, played the role of an uninvited host for architects. Viewing the superb work of 1967 is ironic: Wandering Rocks (a name taken from one of the early episodes of Joyce's Ulysses), which stands outside the East Building of the National Gallery in Washington, by I. M. Pei — a building itself clearly indebted to Smith's form ten years earlier, 1968, as Equinox — that is, six years after Free Ride, a piece that appears very Loosian. A very fine minimalist work is Morris's Untitled (Quarter-Round Mesh) at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Its 31-inch height, made from a large quantity of steel mesh and occupying a 9-by-9-foot space on the floor, has an affinity with architecture. Its very large curved quarter-circles in the perimeter
Tony Smith, Equinox (Point), 1968; Sol LeWitt, Incomplete Open Cubes, 1974