Minimalist Art

Quick story, then I'll leave you guys for the weekend.

Friend of mine and I are driving through Minneapolis. We come across Ghetto's in the Sky, my former residence and he says,

"You know, you can just tell architecture from the 60's or the 70's because it looks like utter sh!t."

Which then prompted me to share a theory I had about 60's and 70's art and architecture in general. That the reason everything went from ornate Roman architecture, or stylish 1940's downtown New York American architecture to utter crap was that the people designing the stuff in the 60's and 70's were basically lazy bums who had no real talent. That "minimalist" art (otherwise known as "crap") came about as Baby Boomers who had rich parents didn't have to work for a living, but to make themselves feel good became "artists."

Now, normally the free market would punish their wretched abominations of "art," they would starve and hopefully find another profession...or just plain starve. However, this original set of trust fund babies had rich parents, and to make their "children artists" feel good about themselves (or just give them some make work) the parents would buy not only their children's art, but other parents' childrens' art. ie-it became a club of pity where artists who had no real skill, but had connections to the upper classes, could throw "parties" and "openings" to display their "ground breaking art" fully relying on the heart strings of their parents to buy their crap. And arguably, not just the heart strings, but the fabricated pride a parent would have being able to say, "My son is a great artist."

Thus the minimalist art form was born.

Now I know this is a theory. A theory formed from observation that during the 60's and 70's art and architecture went to sh!t. A theory formed by looking at "art" in the Walker "Art" Museum and realizing I could create half the crap on display. A theory also derived by noticing the Walker Art Museum is in the foothills of elite, babyboomertrustfundbaby central; Kenwood, and would basically be the playground all the Mark Daytons of the world would play in with the other talentless children of Kenwood. But I'm wondering if I'm right.

Does anybody OUTSIDE THE ART WORLD (ie-not biased) know the history of minimalist art and how on God's green earth such crap ever got popular in the first place?