What does strike me – and has for a good while – is the obvious continuity with a lot of Minimalism – particularly Stella from his Persian motifs and titles onward. The break with Minimalism is by no means clear cut once Stella gets involved with overlapping stripes or interlocking circles – the door is open there to more elaborate explorations of depth. Stella doesn’t take them of course, but rather proceeds to sculpture (and a fairly lame view of sculpture at that). Valerie Jaudon’s recollections definitely pinpoint this crossover from the systems and process people to more elaborate motifs than stripes and grids. What P&D does – for me – is to take that option for more elaborate depth to motifs and proceed to maximize Minimalism. In some ways it reverses the focus on stripes, grids or monochromes, but in other ways it demonstrates that some symmetries only allow others, that sooner or later stripes invite depth and with depth yet other, more concrete or figurative motifs become available.

P&D is definitely a movement that deserves more recognition and formal analysis (as well as contextual or historical) but I disagree with Cotter that it was the last movement of the 20th century. Neo-Expressionism, “Bad” Painting, New Image and successive variants all stir the pot here; make for a richer, more satisfying and accurate mix. Much as I admire P&D and find it crucial to understanding the development of abstraction after Minimalism, I think it’s unhelpful to shun parallel developments in projecting an art history.