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Exploring the Topological Implications of Minimalist Tautology: Mel Bochner’s “Less is Less”

Jung Eun Young 1

1한국교원대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the topological meanings of “Less is less”, a representative Minimalist tautology, in the context of modern history and philosophy. “Less is less”is the title of Mel Bochner’s critical essay on Dan Flavin’s Minimalist exhibition in 1966. On the one hand, in the context of the late twentieth century when orthodox formalist modernism was challenged and negated, the tautological statement “Less is less” rendered ironic criticism against both the instrumental rationality of formalist modernism embedded in “Less is more” and the playful regression of ludic postmodernism asserted by “Less is a bore.” On the other, in the context of the socalled ‘linguistic turn’ in modern philosophy and its impact on conceptual art, Bochners essay “Less is less” positioned itself in the critical turning point from Minimalist objects to a Postminimalist field wherein a variety of philosophical investigations were practiced under the influence of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language. Illuminating the topological implications of the Minimalist tautology within the matrix of history and philosophy, I suggest Bochner’s “Less is less” was not a meaningless self-repetition but a strong assertion that we should ‘return to things themselves,’and further argue it was not the self-evident axiom of logic but a skeptical inquiry questioning the law ofidentity.

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* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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