ABSTRACT
The Conclusion examines the endgame aesthetic arguments of Yve-Alain Bois and Douglas Crimp, which, to a significant degree, grew out of the Minimalists’ critiques against painting. Both Bois and Crimp uphold Robert Ryman as the paradigmatic Minimalist painter, describing his work as illustrative of the medium’s ever imminent (Bois) or complete (Crimp) exhaustion. Ryman’s more recent commentators (and Ryman himself) have refuted this interpretation of his work, seeing it instead as an ongoing investigation into painting’s ever-expanding possibilities. Similarly, the work of Mangold, Novros, and Baer frustrate these endgame scenarios. These artists thus argue not only for painting’s inclusion in the history of Minimalism but also for its capacity to articulate alternative discourses for painting that operate outside of art history’s cyclical dramas of death and rebirth.
