As Steve Reich (1936–) admits, his essay "Music as a Gradual Process"(1968), in which he describes the basic idea of minimal music, has some analogies with the claims of sculptor/painter Sol LeWitt(1928–2007) in "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art"(1967) and "Sentences on Conceptual Art" (1969). Associating these connections with early 1960s' pre-minimalist works by La Monte Young(1935–) which became the model of "concept art" coined by Henry Flynt (1940–), musical minimalism and conceptualism developed alongside one another in the 1960s. This paper aims to delineate the development of minimal music (from Young to Reich) in connection with the transfiguration of concept [/ual] art(from Flynt to LeWitt).
Young, Reich, and LeWitt shared an aesthetic of concentration on the singular activity of generating work. Attracted to the basis in Young's works consisting of word instructions, Flynt regarded the instruction as a "concept"; Young, however, focused on the results of the activities following the instructions. As a reaction to Flynt, LeWitt emphasized physical form derived from concepts, making the work-generating process more rigorous; at the same time, Reich established his idea of "musical process" by interpreting Young's results of activities as results of processes.

特集 : 論集 美学・芸術学 : 美・芸術・感性をめぐる知のスパイラル(旋回)