“Primary Structures” is a misnomer for an important exhibition at the Jewish Museum (29 April – 12 June). A qualifying addition to the title is “Sculpture by Younger British and American Sculptors.” This subtitle reveals most strikingly the extent of misunderstanding about the new art. The best work in this exhibition is not sculpture. In this exhibition the best work is by Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt, Don Judd, Robert Morris, Robert Smithson.

[…] The work of the six artists named above demands a new critical vocabulary. The common criticism of their art is in a language without pertinence. Its only accomplishment is to separate the viewer from the object of his sight. Such words as form, content, tradition, classic, romantic, expressive, experiment, psychology, analogy, depth, purity, feeling, space, avant-garde, lyric, individual, composition, life and death, sexuality, biomorphic, biographic—the entire language of botany in art—can now be regarded as suspect. These words are not tools for probing out aspects of a system of moralistic restriction. The anchor of this system is dread. The result of this system is the condemnation of the most intense art of the present as “cool,” “minimal,” “reduced.”

When Robert Smithson writes about his piece The Crysophere for the catalog, he lists the number of elements, their modular sequence, and the chemical composition of his spray-paint can. He strips away the romance about making a work of art. “Art mystics” find this particularly offensive. Carl Andre’s Lever is a 30-foot (915 cm) row of firebricks laid side to side on the floor. He ordered them and placed them. He demythologizes the artist’s function. Don Judd’s two Untitled (1966) 40 x 190 x 40 inch (102 x 483 x 102 cm) galvanized iron and aluminum pieces are exactly alike. One hangs on the wall. The aluminum bar across the top front edge is not sprayed. The second piece sits on the floor directly in front of the first. The aluminum bar across the top front edge is sprayed blue. Their only enigma is their existence.

— Mel Bochner, “Primary Structures,” Arts Magazine, June 1966, reproduced in BIENNIALS AND BEYOND – EXHIBITIONS THAT MADE ART HISTORY, 1962-2002