Timeless in Asia: Wordless and Silent Experiences of Minimalism in Postcolonial American Ar

This thesis borrows its framework from one of the themes presented in The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989 (2009 exhibition Alexandra Munroe curated at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum): Art of Perceptual Experience: Ecstatic Minimalism. The title for the theme, Art of Perceptual Experience, is driven from one of Ad Reinhardt's writings, where he stated the value of art is coming from the perceptual process, which he believed is the ageless "universal formula" of art--- Reinhardt saw this value in Asian philosophies and art forms. The title of this thesis comes from one of the Reinhardt's writings on his thought of Asia, "Timeless in Asia" (1960), where he wrote Asia's art is about "its timelessness, its monotony, its inaction, its detachment, its expressionlessness, its clarity, its quietness, its dignity, and its negativity."1 James Turrell, Agnes Martin, and La Monte Young are Minimalist artists who accepted the new understanding of nature, existence, and consciousness through Asian sources and sought to emulate the universally and timelessly unchangeable values in art like Reinhardt. For Turrell, by operating space where viewer can actively engage, he allows the viewer to experience perceptual phenomena that could change the viewer's consciousness. For Martin, through her two-dimensional art, she set an idea of art as a mode of developing awareness and heightening perception; thus, creating a spiritual paradigm for artist and viewers alike, which she believed it is everywhere and forever. Through the process, art can obtain its eternal value, which comes through the pure and egoless abstraction of emptied mind. For Young, through the repetition and long sustained tones, he created music that has meditative values where the notion of time has stretched to point where the music can be conceived forever. This thesis looks at how Asian art, literature, and philosophy were transmitted and transformed within the language of Minimalism by exploring Turrell, Martin, and Young's new visual and conceptual languages.