I have spent years feeling outraged at Michael Freids nasty swipe at minimalism as to 'theatrical'. As if a piece of art had to keep all its artness sealed up inside it and remain calmly aloof and distant from the viewer who couldn't, by his presence, have any part in the creation of its genius. I have always felt that minimalism was saying "hey guys, roll on up! jump on! anyone can have a go, its fun!" and it was as if, in reply, Fried with a high disdain for a good time was saying, "NO!" and then trying to take the art and lift it up above our heads and take it away from the new deliciously phenomenological thing it had become. What a bastard.

I could have been wrong.

You see I never actually read the article. I have managed to traverse my four years of tertiary education making work heavily influenced by minimalism with an interpretation of what that kind of work is, based entirely on an excerpt taken from Art in Theory; 1900 - 2000, an abbreviated, easy to read snapshot of all the salient points in Frieds article prefaced by an explanatory paragraph written by the editors which informed me exactly of what Fried was on about.

...or maybe not exactly..

You see I have since read the article and I discovered that by not reading it I had missed quite a bit, including the one where Fried wasn't trying to take the art away from everyone, as it turns out he just didn't really like what he refers to as art that is '...perverted by theater'. (Fried 845). Fair enough, there are lots of different types of art I don't like either.

So I don't hate Fried quite so much anymore. The problem I have now is not that Fried is a big meanie, its that making the effort to travel to the purest source of knowledge didn't change anything for me. My pilgrimage resulted in no transcendent evolution in regards to my thoughts on minimalist art, what it did do however was force a new consideration of information, the way it travels, the places it can be found and the validity and usefulness of ideas taken from a secondary source

Delueze and Guattari's rhizomatic approach to research seems to take into account this refusal by information to stick to one place and instead supports the validity of information that is found in third or forth hand forms. A rhizomatic approach to research that allows for the constant shifting of information seems more appropriate for art making where it is often not the precision of the information but the influence or inspiration it provides that is important. It seems much more sensible to knowingly engage in this kind of rhizomatic research and avoid the anxiety created by rigorously trying to reconstruct the path of every piece of inspiration narratively from end to beginning, the time would be better spent just making something. According to D&G its like making 'a map and not a tracing'(Rhizome), according to me its more like reading the conclusion. Its faster and you'll get more stuff done!