On Minimalism

Hello There

Despite appearances, I am a keen advocate of the ‘less is more’ principle, as expounded by Mies van der Rohe, the well-known minimalist architect. Minimalism ranges across all the arts but who, I wonder, is the most minimal minimalist?

I was pleasantly surprised recently to come across a pamphlet devoted to the works of Paulus Niets, the Dutch minimalist artist. Those who understood Niets knew that his devotion to exploring the limits of minimalism was intense, and although he lived amidst its more recognised exponents (such as Gerrit Rietveld, the architect and furniture designer) Niets was not a member of the de Stijl movement. Indeed, he eschewed membership of any organisation that might be perceived as of use in his efforts to gain recognition. He considered that it would only be by achieving a total lack of recognition that he could attain the ultimate success as a minimalist he always craved.

For example, the Rietveld Schröder house at 50 Prins Hendriklaan in Utrecht retains its iconic status to this day. Niets, literally in Rietveld’s shadow, designed and erected a telegraph pole on the pavement opposite. Yet Nietsian philosophy determines that limited transience of a work is pivotal to successful minimalism - it argues that time is as valid a dimension as any of the others in which a work exists. So, like most of Niets’ work, the telegraph pole, which he sculpted from meringue, is now gone. It achieved his minimalist aims.

The later work of Paulus Niets examines this subtraction of dimension, and following his two dimensional ‘line’ series came the ‘dot’ series in which Niets struggled with working in one dimension only. As he remarked in 1978, “We can only appreciate one dimension by using another to view it. A three-dimensional sculpture can only be appreciated by using a fourth dimension - time - to travel around it. A two-dimensional image can only be appreciated by using a third - distance - to view it. The quintessential goal for a minimalist such as I, therefore, is to create successful art in no dimension whatsoever”.

Around this time Paulus Niets paid a visit to his surrealist friend Felix von Hodermayer in the mist-wraithed flatlands of the eastern Netherlands. Von Hodermayer had also been struggling with his work and several weeks before Niets’ arrival had completed his final piece ‘Onnodiggrootlederbank’, an ironic sculpture appraising the principles of Scandinavian furniture design of the 1970s. On entering the studio, Niets discovered the dead body of his friend recumbent on the sculpture, holding a final note stating that ‘Onnodiggrootlederbank’ had “drained [him] of the very force that drove [him]”. Von Hodermayer himself had drained a large bottle of Boosma gin during the course of his demise*.

The loss of his friend had a profound effect on Paulus Niets. He immediately reviewed his rationale and decided to take the subtraction of dimension even further, by working in the first negative dimension. This, he surmised, could only ever be perceived in no dimension and therefore needed not to be done. The very thought of a work would be creation enough, and subsequent reference of it to any potential audience would suffice. No reference would be even better.

For this reason, Paulus Niets continued his very successful career producing no work whatsoever until his death in 2002 at the age of 103. By definition, none of his work survives.

Paulus Niets is the ultimate minimalist.


With warmest regards

Vernon Thornycroft

*An exhibition of the subversive sculptures of Felix von Hodermayer, sponsored by the anarchic Ostnedelandse Kunstradd, is currently touring art galleries in the north of England.