'Finish Fetish' and Minimalism
De Wain Valentine's Specific Objects
A seminal Los Angeles "Finish Fetish" artist, De Wain Valentine’ developed his interest in industrial plastics at a young age, when he began experimenting with painting and welding in his parents’ auto-body shop. This exploration continued when the Air Force and Navy declassified acrylic, fiberglass, and polyester resin and donated surplus materials to his junior high school shop class. Exposure to these materials greatly influenced him, and he decided to pursue a career as an artist. When faced with the choice to move East or West, the decision was obvious: New York galleries expressed interest in his work, but chose not to show it upon the realization that plastics, not bronze or steel, were his preferred media. Further, the work of West Coast artists such as Larry Bell, Craig Kauffmann, and Tony Berlant resonated with his interests. Valentine moved to Los Angeles in 1965 and he quickly became a member of the city’s budding artistic community.
The use of industrial materials and processes was not unique to Valentine, however. Dan Flavin appropriated fluorescent lights, Claes Oldenburg created his soft objects with vinyl, and Donald Judd turned to Plexiglas and a range of metals. Donald Judd never ascribed his work to any given term, but there are many parallels between Judd and Valentine’s work of the mid 1960s. Each artist eschewed the static limitations of the rectilinear and two-dimensional picture plane in favor of three-dimensionality. Written the same year as Valentine’s relocation to Los Angeles, Donald Judd’s landmark article "Specific Objects" codifies the aesthetic presence, grand design, and seductive simplicity that influenced this new work of the 1960s. Ultimately, what would become known as "Minimalism" was a reduction of components to constitute a work so that a single and specific object was defined by its color, form, and material.