Great Works: Electra And The Chorus (1795), by John Flaxman, engraved by Thomas Pilori

Less is more – and more, and more. In the last century, minimalism in art has thrived. But the first great outbreak of less occurred around 200 years ago. There was the cult of pure outline. And there were few purer linesmen than John Flaxman.

Flaxman's graphics took their visual inspiration from ancient-Greek pots, and his subjects were often drawn from ancient-Greek poets. He used a very reduced vocabulary of lines and wide white spaces. The prints made after his classical compositions, engraved by Thomas Pilori, are a demonstration of what linear economy can do. But like any minimalist art, his work has aroused doubts, too. Perhaps less really is less.

This is one of his most severe compositions. You hardly need to know the plot. It illustrates a scene from a Greek tragedy, Aeschylus's The Choephori. It shows a procession to a grave. "Electra and the Chorus bearing Vessels for Libation on the Tomb of Agamemnon" is the title, but this file of mourning women could be an all-purpose war- memorial image. It's clear, at any rate, what sorts of feelings are involved.

But sometimes it's maintained that Flaxman's minimal art can't do feeling. It may be technically brilliant, translating everything into its limited code of lines. It may create an ideal world, where everything is perfectly clean and simple. But it's simply too economical and too rigid to move us.

Here are some modern critics. Erwin Panofsky says: "Reduced to pure contours, the visible world in general, and the relics of antiquity in particular, seemed to assume an unearthly, ethereal character, detached from the material qualities of colour, weight and surface texture."

Robert Rosenblum says: "Flaxman's style ... flattens and schematises all forms, whether clouds or children, in the interest of geometric and linear purism." James Hall says: "A puritanical impulse underpinned these editorial purgations ... His engravings have cheese-wire outlines, and no shading or cross-hatching ...[and a] limpid but rather prim simplicity..."

These remarks have a clear thrust. Pure, flat, schematic, geometric, unearthly, ethereal, prim, puritanical: Flaxman's art denies us the solid, pulsing flesh. It's bodyless, heartless, sexless, weak, empty, inert.

Wrong. These critics don't see where the power of this art lies – its physical power. Their basic mistake is to assume that Flaxman has a style, which he applies uniformly. They suggest that he reduces everything to pure contour. But if contour means the kind of line you would trace round the very outside edge of a body or object, then evidently that's not true.

In Electra and the Chorus, you can see Flaxman using diverse types of lines. Some of them are total contours, which mark the surrounding edge of an entire figure. Some are subsidiary contours, which go round an arm or jar, within that. Some delineate the hem of a robe, or the tucked pleats of a robe, or the stripes on a robe. Many lines stand for crinkles of hair. At one point, there are wiggly lines that mean single strings twisting from a knot.

What's more, the economy of these lines varies. In some places, empty contour is doing a lot of the work in establishing the figure. Elsewhere, many other lines fill in, adding internal detail. Some figures, in other words, are much more minimal than others. And these fluctuations are not random.

Follow the procession along, left to right, figure by figure. With each one, the linear treatment changes a step. The leading figure, Electra, with her densely pleated diaphanous veil is the most detailed. The second figure is made of purer contours, and the third even more pure. Then, in the fourth, a level of detail returns. In terms of economy, there is a rising crescendo, with a final lowering.

This sequence coincides with the emotions of the figures. Their grief-stricken body language follow the same crescendo. The first woman holds her head visible, the second partly covers hers, the third has hers fully buried, and the fourth is back up in sight. Likewise their stances: the first is relatively relaxed, the second more pressed together, the third rigidly clenched together, the fourth again more relaxed.

That third figure is the emotional and pictorial climax: the point of maximum grief, and the point where the drawing opens out to become most economical and geometrical. The focus of the whole image is the large empty area in this figure's robe, partly bounded by the continuous and regular curving contour of her bottom, thigh and calf.

Its emptiness fills with pressure. It's under contained tension. Literally, we can suppose that the robe of this clenched figure is stretched tight against her skin. Metaphorically, it's as if her straining grief had squeezed the detail out of her, reducing her almost to her edges only. Electra and the Chorus enacts a powerful movement of intensification, tautening – and where its lines are least, its power is most.

About the artist

John Flaxman (1755-1826) was the most influential English artist of his age. Primarily a neoclassical sculptor, he made monuments and memorials, designs for Wedgwood, and vivid observational drawings. But his most distinctive works were a series of "outlines" – extremely economical compositions illustrating ancient authors and Dante, using a style that looked back to the greater purity of classical and early Renaissance art. Through printed versions engraved by others, the impact of these images was felt even on the Continent.