Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially
visual artThe visual arts are art forms that focus on the creation of works which are primarily visual in nature, such as traditional plastic arts , modern visual arts , and design and crafts...
and
musicMinimalist music is an originally American genre of experimental or Downtown music named in the 1960s based mostly in consonant harmony, steady pulse , stasis and slow transformation, and often reiteration of musical phrases or smaller units such as figures, motifs, and cells...
, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features. As a specific movement in the arts it is identified with developments in post-World War II Western Art, most strongly with American visual arts in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with this movement include
Donald JuddDonald Clarence Judd was a minimalist artist . In his work, Judd sought autonomy and clarity for the constructed object and the space created by it, ultimately achieving a rigorously democratic presentation without compositional hierarchy...
,
Agnes MartinAgnes Martin was a Canadian-American painter, often referred to as a minimalist; Martin considered herself an abstract expressionist.-Childhood and background:...
,
Robert MorrisRobert Morris is an American sculptor, conceptual artist and writer. He is regarded as one of the most prominent theorists of Minimalism along with Donald Judd but he has also made important contributions to the development of performance art, land art, the Process Art movement and installation...
, and
Frank StellaFrank Stella is an American painter and printmaker. He is a significant figure in minimalism and post-painterly abstraction.He was born in Malden, Massachusetts...
. It is rooted in the reductive aspects of
ModernismModernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late...
, and is often interpreted as a reaction against
Abstract expressionismAbstract expressionism was an American post-World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris....
and a bridge to
PostmodernPostmodernism literally means 'after the modernist movement'. While "modern" itself refers to something "related to the present", the movement of modernism and the following reaction of postmodernism are defined by a set of perspectives...
art practices.
The terms have expanded to encompass a movement in music which features repetition and iteration, as in the compositions of
Steve ReichStephen Michael Reich is an American composer who pioneered the style of minimalist music. His innovations include using tape loops to create phasing patterns , and the use of simple, audible processes to explore musical concepts...
,
La Monte YoungLa Monte Thornton Young is an American composer and musician.Young is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer, and one of the four most celebrated leaders of the minimalist school, along with Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass, despite having little in common formally with...
,
Philip GlassPhilip Morris Glass is an American music composer. He is considered one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .Although his music is often, though controversially, described as...
, John Adams, and
Terry RileyTerrence Mitchell Riley, better known as Terry Riley , is an American composer associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music.-Life:...
. (See also
PostminimalismPostminimalism is a term used in various artistic fields for work which is influenced by, or attempts to develop and go beyond, the aesthetic of minimalism...
).
The term "minimalist" is often applied colloquially to designate anything which is spare or stripped to its essentials. It has also been used to describe the plays and
novelA novel is a long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s of
Samuel BeckettSamuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish writer, dramatist and poet. Beckett's work offers a bleak outlook on human culture and both formally and philosophically became increasingly minimalist....
, the films of
Robert BressonRobert Bresson was a French film director known for his spiritual, ascetic style.-Life:...
, the stories of
Raymond CarverRaymond Clevie Carver, Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s....
, and even the automobile designs of
Colin ChapmanAnthony Colin Bruce Chapman CBE was an influential British designer, inventor, and builder in the automotive industry. In 1952 he founded the sports car company Lotus Cars. He studied structural engineering at University College London, joined the University Air Squadron and learned to fly...
.
Minimalist design
The term
minimalism is also used to describe a trend in
designDesign is the planning that lays the basis for the making of every object or system. It can be used both as a noun and as a verb and, in a broader way, it means applied arts and engineering . As a verb, "to design" refers to the process of originating and developing a plan for a product,...
and
architectureFor a topical guide to this subject, see Outline of architecture. Architecture is the art and science of designing and constructing buildings and other physical structures for human shelter or use....
where in the subject is reduced to its necessary elements. Minimalist design has been highly influenced by Japanese traditional design and architecture. In addition, the work of
De StijlDe Stijl , Dutch for "The Style", also known as neoplasticism, was a Dutch artistic movement founded in 1917. In a narrower sense, the term De Stijl is used to refer to a body of work from 1917 to 1931 founded in the Netherlands....
artists is a major source of reference for this kind of work. De Stijl expanded the ideas that could be expressed by using basic elements such as lines and planes organized in very particular manners.
Architect
Ludwig Mies van der RoheLudwig Mies van der Rohe, born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to and addressed by his surname, Mies, by his colleagues, students, writers, and others....
adopted the motto "
Less is more" to describe his aesthetic tactic of arranging the numerous necessary components of a building to create an impression of extreme simplicity, by enlisting every element and detail to serve multiple visual and functional purposes (such as designing a floor to also serve as the radiator, or a massive fireplace to also house the bathroom). Designer
Buckminster FullerRichard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American architect, author, designer, inventor, and futurist.Fuller published more than thirty books, inventing and popularizing terms such as "Spaceship Earth", ephemeralization, and synergetics...
adopted the engineer's goal of "Doing more with less", but his concerns were oriented towards technology and engineering rather than aesthetics. A similar sentiment was industrial designer
Dieter RamsDieter Rams is a German industrial designer closely associated with the consumer products company Braun and the Functionalist school of industrial design....
' motto, "Less but better", adapted from van der Rohe. The structure uses relatively simple elegant designs. The structure's beauty is also determined by playing with lighting, using the basic geometric shapes as outlines, using only a single shape or a small number of like shapes for components for design unity, using tasteful non-fussy bright color combinations, usually natural textures and colors, and clean and fine finishes. Using sometimes the beauty of natural patterns on stone and wood encapsulated within ordered simplified structures. May use color brightness balance and contrast between surface colors to improve visual aesthetics. The structure would usually have industrial and space age style utilities (lamps, stoves, stairs, etcetera), neat and straight components (like walls or stairs) that appear to be machined with machines, flat or nearly flat roofs, pleasing negative spaces, and large windows. This and science fiction may have contributed to the late twentieth century futuristic architecture design, and modern home decor. Modern minimalist home architecture with its unnecessary internal walls removed may have led to the popularity of the open plan kitchen and living room style. Highly copied due to its quality finishes, simple beauty, bright interior lighting and spacious living room.
Another modern master who exemplifies reductivist ideas is
Luis BarragánLuis Barragán Morfin is considered the most important Mexican architect of the 20th century....
. In minimalism, the architectural designers pay special attention to the connection between perfect planes, elegant lighting, and careful consideration of the void spaces left by the removal of three-dimensional shapes from an architectural design. The more attractive looking minimalist home designs are not truly minimalist, because these use more expensive building materials and finishes, and are relatively larger.
Contemporary architects working in this tradition include
John PawsonJohn Pawson is a British designer associated with minimalism.Notable projects by Pawson include London's Cannelle Cake Shop, several Calvin Klein stores,work for Jigsaw the Nový Dvůr Monastery, Abbaye Notre-Dame de Sept-Fons, Czech Republic , Hotel Puerta America, Madrid , Medina House in Tunis,...
,
Eduardo Souto de MouraEduardo Elísio Machado Souto de Moura is a Portuguese architect. Son of medical doctor José Alberto Souto de Moura and wife Maria Teresa Ramos Machado, he is the brother of José Souto de Moura, former 9th Attorney-General of Portugal.Moura currently lives and works in Porto where he has built...
,
Álvaro Siza VieiraÁlvaro Joaquim de Melo Siza Vieira, GOSE, GCIH, , who signs as Álvaro Siza Vieira and is sometimes known as Álvaro Siza, is a contemporary Portuguese architect....
,
Tadao Andois a Japanese architect whose approach to architecture was once categorized as critical regionalism. Ando has led a storied life, working as a truck driver and boxer prior to settling on the profession of architecture, despite never having taken formal training in the field.He works primarily in...
,
Alberto Campo BaezaAlberto Campo Baeza is a Spanish architect. He took classes at the E.T.S. Arquitectura de Madrid, and graduated in 1971. His projects and productions have been published widely in international magazines. They are shown at numerous major exhibitions and are given several awards and prizes...
,
Yoshio Taniguchithumb|300px|[[MoMA]], [[New York]].Yoshio Taniguchi is a Japanese architect best known for his redesign of the Museum of Modern Art in New York which was reopened November 20, 2004....
,
Peter ZumthorPeter Zumthor is a Swiss architect and winner of the 2009 Pritzker Prize.-Early life:Zumthor was born in Basel, the son of a cabinet-maker. He apprenticed to a carpenter in 1958 and studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in his native city starting in 1963.He studied at Pratt Institute in New York in...
,
Hugh Newell Jacobsen-Education and early career:Hugh Newell Jacobsen was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1929. Educated at the University of Maryland, he received a BA in 1951. He also attended the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. Jacobsen then received his B. Arch. and M. Arch...
, Vincent Van Duysen, Claudio Silvestrin, Michael Gabellini, and Richard Gluckman.
Minimalism in visual art
Minimalism in visual art, sometimes referred to as
literalist art and
ABC Art emerged in New York in the 1960s. It is regarded as a reaction against the painterly forms of
Abstract ExpressionismAbstract expressionism was an American post-World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris....
as well as the discourse, institutions and ideologies that supported it. As artist and critic Thomas Lawson noted in his 1977 catalog essay
Last Exit: Painting, minimalism did not reject
Clement GreenbergClement Greenberg was an influential American art critic closely associated with Modern art in the United States...
's claims about
ModernistModernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late...
PaintingPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
's reduction to surface and materials so much as take his claims literally. Minimalism was the result, even though the term "minimalism" was not generally embraced by the artists associated with it, and many practitioners of art designated minimalist by critics did not identify it as a movement as such.
In contrast to the
Abstract ExpressionistAbstract expressionism was an American post-World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris....
s, Minimalists were influenced by composers
John CageJohn Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, philosopher, poet, music theorist, artist, printmaker, and amateur mycologist and mushroom collector. A pioneer of chance music, electronic music and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war...
and
LaMonte YoungLa Monte Thornton Young is an American composer and musician.Young is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer, and one of the four most celebrated leaders of the minimalist school, along with Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass, despite having little in common formally with...
, poet
William Carlos WilliamsWilliam Carlos Williams , also known as WCW, was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine...
, and the landscape architect
Frederick Law OlmstedFrederick Law Olmsted was an American journalist, landscape designer and father of American landscape architecture, famous for designing many well-known urban parks, including Central Park and Prospect Park in New York City...
. They very explicitly stated that their art was not self-expression, in opposition to the previous decade's Abstract Expressionists. In general, Minimalism's features included:
geometricGeometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers....
, often
cubic-General:*cubicle, a small area set off by walls for special use, such as a place to work, to shower, or with a toilet.-Science and mathematics:*cube, a three-dimensional solid object bounded by six square faces, facets or sides, with three meeting at each vertex...
forms purged of much
metaphorA metaphor is a figure of speech concisely comparing two things, saying that one is the other. The English metaphor derives from the 16th c...
, equality of parts, repetition, neutral surfaces, and industrial materials.
Robert MorrisRobert Morris is an American sculptor, conceptual artist and writer. He is regarded as one of the most prominent theorists of Minimalism along with Donald Judd but he has also made important contributions to the development of performance art, land art, the Process Art movement and installation...
, an influential theorist and artist, wrote a three part essay, "Notes on Sculpture 1-3", originally published across three issues of
Artforum in 1966. In these essays, Morris attempted to define a conceptual framework and formal elements for himself and one that would embrace the practices of his contemporaries. These essays paid great attention to the idea of the gestalt - "parts... bound together in such a way that they create a maximum resistance to perceptual separation." Morris later described an art represented by a "marked lateral spread and no regularized units or symmetrical intervals..." in "Notes on Sculpture 4: Beyond Objects", originally published in
Artforum-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue. Characterized by its 10½ inch square format, with each cover devoted to the work of a single artist, the magazine is widely known as a decisive voice in its field.As well as in-depth...
, 1969, continuing to say that "indeterminacy of arrangement of parts is a literal aspect of the physical existence of the thing." The general shift in theory of which this essay is an expression suggests the transitions into what would later be referred to as
PostminimalismPostminimalism is a term used in various artistic fields for work which is influenced by, or attempts to develop and go beyond, the aesthetic of minimalism...
.
One of the first artists specifically associated with Minimalism was the painter,
Frank StellaFrank Stella is an American painter and printmaker. He is a significant figure in minimalism and post-painterly abstraction.He was born in Malden, Massachusetts...
, whose early "stripe" paintings were highlighted in the 1959 show, "16 Americans", organized by Dorothy Miller at the
Museum of Modern ArtThe Museum of Modern Art is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, USA, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been singularly important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the...
in New York. The width of the stripes in Frank Stellas's stripe paintings were determined by the dimensions of the lumber, visible as the depth of the painting when viewed from the side, used to construct the supportive chassis upon which the canvas was stretched. The decisions about structures on the front surface of the canvas were therefore not entirely subjective, but pre-conditioned by a "given" feature of the physical construction of the support. In the show catalog,
Carl AndreCarl Andre is an American minimalist artist recognized both for his ordered linear format and grid format sculptures and for being tried and acquitted for murdering his wife, artist Ana Mendieta...
noted, "Art excludes the unnecessary. Frank Stella has found it necessary to paint
stripesOriginating from the Latin word "stripus"; a stripe is a long, straight region of a single color; it may refer to:* Candystripe, a pattern of diagonal stripes twisted around a cylinder stereotypically embodied by the candy cane...
. There is nothing else in his painting." These reductive works were in sharp contrast to the energy-filled and apparently highly subjective and emotionally-charged paintings of
Willem de KooningWillem de Kooning was an abstract expressionist artist, born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.In the post-World War II era, de Kooning painted in a style that came to be referred to variously as Abstract expressionism, Action painting, and the New York School...
or
Franz KlineFranz Kline was an American painter mainly associated with the Abstract Expressionist painters who were centered, geographically, around New York, and temporally, in the 1940s and 1950s; but not limited to that setting...
and, in terms of precedent among the previous generation of abstract expressionists, leaned more toward less gestural, often somber coloristic field paintings of
Barnett NewmanBarnett Newman was an American artist. He is seen as one of the major figures in abstract expressionism and one of the foremost of the color field painters.-Youth:...
and
Mark RothkoMark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz , was a Latvian-born American painter and printmaker. He is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label, and even resisted the classification as an "abstract painter".- Childhood :Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, Vitebsk...
. Although Stella received immediate attention from the MOMA show, artists like
Kenneth NolandKenneth Noland is an American abstract painter. He is identified today as one of the best-known contemporary American Color field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s he was thought of as a minimalist painter.- Biography:Noland was...
, Ralph Humphrey,
Robert MotherwellRobert Motherwell was an American abstract expressionist painter and printmaker. He was one of the youngest of the New York School , which also included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Philip Guston.Motherwell was born in Aberdeen, Washington...
and
Robert RymanRobert Ryman is an American painter identified with the movements of monochrome painting, minimalism, and conceptual art. The majority of his works feature abstract expressionist-influenced brushwork in white or off-white paint on square canvas or metal surfaces...
had begun to explore stripes,
monochromaticMonochrome is a term generally used to describe painting, drawing, design, or photograph in one color or shades of one color. Monochromatic light is light of a single wavelength, though in practice it can refer to light of a narrow wavelength range...
and
Hard-edgeHard-edge painting is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas. Color areas are often of one unvarying color. Color transitions often take place along straight lines, though curvilinear edges of color areas are also common...
formats from the late 50s through the 1960s.
Because of a tendency in Minimalism to exclude the pictorial, illusionistic and fictive in favor of the literal, there was a movement away from painterly and toward sculptural concerns.
Donald JuddDonald Clarence Judd was a minimalist artist . In his work, Judd sought autonomy and clarity for the constructed object and the space created by it, ultimately achieving a rigorously democratic presentation without compositional hierarchy...
had started as a painter, and ended as a creator of objects. His seminal essay, "Specific Objects" (published in Arts Yearbook 8, 1965), was a touchstone of theory for the formation of Minimalist aesthetics. In this essay, Judd found a starting point for a new territory for American art, and a simultaneous rejection of residual inherited European artistic values. He pointed to evidence of this development in the works of an array of artists active in New York at the time, including Jasper Johns, Dan Flavin and Lee Bontecou. Of "preliminary" importance for Judd was the work of George Ortman
http://brooklynrail.org/2006/12/artseen/ortman, who had concretized and distilled painting's forms into blunt, tough, philosophically charged geometries. These Specific Objects inhabited a space not then comfortably classifiable as either painting or sculpture. That the categorical identity of such objects was itself in question, and that they avoided easy association with well-worn and over-familiar conventions, was a part of their value for Judd.
In a much more broad and general sense, one might, in fact, find European roots of Minimalism in the geometric abstractions painters in the
Bauhaus' is the common term for the ', a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933....
, in the works of
Piet MondrianPieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan, after 1912 Mondrian , was a Dutch painter.He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism...
and other artists associated with the movement DeStijl, in
Russian ConstructivistsConstructivism was an artistic and architectural movement that originated in Russia from 1919 onward which rejected the idea of "art for art's sake" in favour of art as a practice directed towards social purposes...
and in the work of the Romanian sculptor
Constantin BrâncuşiConstantin Brâncuşi was an internationally renowned Romanian sculptor whose works, which blend simplicity and sophistication, led the way for numerous modernist sculptors.-Early years:...
.
This movement was heavily criticised by high modernist formalist art critics and historians. Some anxious critics thought Minimalist art represented a misunderstanding of the modern dialectic of painting and sculpture as defined by critic
Clement GreenbergClement Greenberg was an influential American art critic closely associated with Modern art in the United States...
, arguably the dominant American critic of painting in the period leading up to the 1960s. The most notable critique of Minimalism was produced by Michael Fried, a Greenbergian critic, who objected to the work on the basis of its "theatricality". In
Art and Objecthood (published in Artforum in June 1967) he declared that the Minimalist work of art, particularly Minimalist sculpture, was based on an engagement with the physicality of the spectator. He argued that work like Robert Morris's transformed the act of viewing into a type of
spectacleIn general spectacle refers to an event that is memorable for the appearance it creates. Derived in Old English from c.1340 as "specially prepared or arranged display" it was borrowed from Old French spectacle, itself a reflection of the Latin spectaculum "a show" from spectare "to view, watch"...
, in which the artifice of the act
observationObservation is either an activity of a living being , consisting of receiving knowledge of the outside world through the senses, or the recording of data using scientific instruments. The term may also refer to any datum collected during this activity.-Observation in science:A scientific method...
and the viewer's participation in the work were unveiled. Fried saw this displacement of the viewer's experience from an aesthetic engagement within, to an event outside of the artwork as a failure of Minimal art. Fried's opinionated essay was immediately challenged by artist
Robert SmithsonRobert Smithson was an American artist famous for his land art.-Background and education:Smithson was born in Passaic, New Jersey and studied painting and drawing in New York City at the Art Students League of New York....
in a letter to the editor in the October issue of Artforum. Smithson stated the following: "What Fried fears most is the
consciousnessConsciousness is subjective experience or awareness or wakefulness or the executive control system of the mind. It is an umbrella term that may refer to a variety of mental phenomena...
of what he is doing--namely being himself theatrical."
Other Minimalist artists include:
Richard AllenRichard Allen was an American Minimalist, Abstract, Systems, Fundamental and Geometric painter. Allen worked prolifically from 1960 to 1999.-1960s Pop art, Op art and Kinetic art:...
,
Walter Darby BannardWalter Darby Bannard , also known as Darby Bannard, is an American abstract painter.Bannard attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Princeton University, where he struck up a friendship and working relationship with Frank Stella, which continued after graduation and eventuated in the extreme...
,
Larry BellLarry Bell is a contemporary American artist and sculptor. He lives and works in Taos, New Mexico, and maintains a studio in Venice, California. He is a grant recipient from, among others, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and his artworks are found in the...
, Ronald Bladen,
Mel BochnerMel Bochner is an American conceptual artist. Mr. Bochner received his BFA in 1962 and honorary Doctor of Fine Arts in 2005 from the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University...
,
Norman CarlbergNorman Carlberg is an American sculptor and printmaker. He is noted as an exemplar of the modular constructivist style....
,
Erwin HauerErwin Hauer is an Austrian-born American sculptor who studied first at Vienna's Academy of Applied Arts and later under Josef Albers at Yale. Hauer was an early proponent of Modular Constructivism and an associate of Norman Carlberg...
,
Dan FlavinDan Flavin was an American minimalist artist famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from commercially available fluorescent light fixtures.-Education:...
,
Sol LeWittSol LeWitt was an American artist linked to various movements, including Conceptual art and Minimalism. LeWitt rose to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" but was prolific in a wide range of media including drawing, printmaking, and painting.He has been the subject of...
,
Brice MardenBrice Marden , is an American artist, generally described as Minimalist, although his work defies specific categorization. He is represented by the Matthew Marks Gallery.-Life:...
,
Agnes MartinAgnes Martin was a Canadian-American painter, often referred to as a minimalist; Martin considered herself an abstract expressionist.-Childhood and background:...
,
Jo BaerJo Baer, born 1929, is an American modern artist, whose works are associated with minimalist art. She began exhibiting her work at the Fischbach Gallery, New York, and other venues for contemporary art in the mid-1960s.- Life and work :...
,
John McCrackenJohn McCracken is an American artist. He started his career creating bold, tight geometric compositions on Masonite or treated canvas. While still in school, his first exhibition at Nicholas Wilder's gallery in Los Angeles, California in 1965 was a critical success...
, Paul Mogensen, David Novros,
Ad ReinhardtAdolph Frederick Reinhardt was an Abstract painter active in New York beginning in the 1930s and continuing through the 1960s. He was a member of the American Abstract Artists and was a part of the movement centered around the Betty Parsons Gallery that became known as Abstract Expressionism...
,
Fred SandbackFred Sandback was a minimalist conceptual-based sculptor known for his string sculptures and prints.-Life and Work:...
,
Richard SerraRichard Serra is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal...
,
Tony SmithTony Smith was an American sculptor, visual artist, and a noted theorist on art.Tony Smith was born in South Orange, New Jersey. He first trained as an architect and in 1939 began working for Frank Lloyd Wright and was introduced to Wright's module concrete blocks...
,
Robert SmithsonRobert Smithson was an American artist famous for his land art.-Background and education:Smithson was born in Passaic, New Jersey and studied painting and drawing in New York City at the Art Students League of New York....
, and
Anne TruittAnne Truitt was a major American artist of the mid-20th century; she is associated with both minimalism and Color Field artists like Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland....
.
Ad ReinhardtAdolph Frederick Reinhardt was an Abstract painter active in New York beginning in the 1930s and continuing through the 1960s. He was a member of the American Abstract Artists and was a part of the movement centered around the Betty Parsons Gallery that became known as Abstract Expressionism...
, actually an artist of the
Abstract ExpressionistAbstract expressionism was an American post-World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris....
generation, but one whose reductive nearly all-black paintings seemed to anticipate minimalism, had this to say about the value of a reductive approach to art:
"The more stuff in it, the busier the work of art, the worse it is. More is less. Less is more. The eye is a menace to clear sight. The laying bare of oneself is obscene. Art begins with the getting rid of nature."
Literary minimalism
Literary minimalism is characterized by an economy with words and a focus on surface description. Minimalist authors eschew adverbs and prefer allowing context to dictate meaning. Readers are expected to take an active role in the creation of a story, to "choose sides" based on oblique hints and innuendo, rather than reacting to directions from the author. The characters in minimalist stories and novels tend to be unexceptional.
Some 1940s-era crime fiction of writers such as
James M. CainJames Mallahan Cain was an American author and journalist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labelling, he is usually associated with the hardboiled school of American crime fiction and seen as one of the creators of the roman noir...
and
Jim ThompsonJames Myers Thompson was a United States writer of novels, short stories and screenplays, largely in the hardboiled style of crime fiction....
adopted a stripped-down, matter-of-fact prose style to considerable effect; some classifiy this prose style as minimalism.
Another strand of literary minimalism arose in response to the
MetafictionMetafiction is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion. It is the literary term describing fictional writing that self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in posing questions about the...
trend of the 1960s and early 1970s (
John BarthJohn Simmons Barth is an American novelist and short-story writer, known for the postmodernist and metafictive quality of his work....
,
Robert CooverRobert Lowell Coover is an American author and professor in the Literary Arts program at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation and metafiction.-Life and works:...
, and
William H. GassWilliam Howard Gass is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and former philosophy professor. He has written two novels, three collections of short stories, a collection of novellas, and seven volumes of essays, three of which have won National Book Critics Circle Award...
). These writers were also spare with prose and kept a psychological distance from their subject matter.
Minimalist authors, or those who are identified with minimalism during certain periods of their writing careers, include the following:
Raymond CarverRaymond Clevie Carver, Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s....
,
Chuck PalahniukCharles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk is an American transgressional fiction novelist and freelance journalist. He is best known for the award-winning novel Fight Club, which was later made into a film directed by David Fincher. He lives near Vancouver, Washington.-Early life:Palahniuk was born in...
,
Bret Easton EllisBret Easton Ellis is an American novelist and short story writer. He was regarded as one of the so-called literary Brat Pack, which also included Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney...
,
Ernest HemingwayErnest Miller Hemingway was an American writer and journalist. He was part of the 1920s expatriate community in Paris, and one of the veterans of World War I later known as "the Lost Generation." He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea, and the Nobel Prize in Literature...
,
K. J. StevensK.J. Stevens is an American novelist and short story writer. His writing has appeared in The Adirondack Review, Fluid Magazine, Me Three, Circle Magazine, Cellar Door, Prose Ax, Temenos, and BloodLotus...
,
Amy HempelAmy Hempel is an American short story writer, journalist, and university professor at Brooklyn College.-Life:Hempel was born in Chicago, Illinois...
,
Bobbie Ann MasonBobbie Ann Mason is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and literary critic.Mason grew up on her father's dairy farm outside of Mayfield, Kentucky. As a child she loved to read, so her parents always made sure she had books. These books were mostly popular fiction about the...
,
Tobias WolffTobias Jonathan von Ansell-Wolff, III is an American author.He is best known for his short stories and his memoirs, although he has written two novels .-Teaching:...
,
Grace PaleyGrace Paley was an American short story writer, poet, and political activist.-Life:Grace Paley was born as Grace Goodside in the Bronx; her Jewish parents, Isaac and Manya Ridnyik Goodside, had anglicized the family name from Gutseit on immigrating from Ukraine. The family spoke Russian and...
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Sandra CisnerosSandra Cisneros is an American writer best known for her acclaimed first novel The House on Mango Street and her subsequent short story collection Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories...
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Mary RobisonMary Robison is an American short-story writer and novelist. She has published four collections of stories, and four novels, including her 2001 novel Why Did I Ever, winner of the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction. Her most recent novel, released in 2009, is 1 D.O.A., 1 on the Way...
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Frederick BarthelmeFredrick Barthelme is an American author of short fiction and novels and a professor at The University of Southern Mississippi. He is also the editor of the literary journal Mississippi Review.-Early life:...
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Richard FordRichard Ford is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works are the novel The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land, and the short story collection Rock Springs, which contains several widely anthologized stories.-Early...
, and
Alicia Erian-Biography:Alicia Erian was born 1967 in Syracuse, New York to an Egyptian father and American mother. She received a B.A. in English from SUNY Binghamton and a M.F.A. in writing from Vermont College. A writer of short stories, some of her work has appeared in Zoetrope and the Iowa Review. She has...
.
American poets such as
William Carlos WilliamsWilliam Carlos Williams , also known as WCW, was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine...
, early
Ezra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in the first half of the 20th century. He is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry...
,
Robert CreeleyRobert Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...
,
Robert GrenierRobert Grenier is a contemporary American poet who is often associated with the Language School. A graduate of Harvard College and the University of Iowa Program in Creative Writing, he has taught literature and creative writing at UC Berkeley, Tufts, Franconia College, New College of California...
, and
Aram SaroyanAram Saroyan is an American poet, novelist, biographer, memoirist and playwright. There has been a resurgence of interest in his work in the 21st century, evidenced by the publication in 2007 of several previous collections reissued together as Complete Minimal Poems.- Biography :Saroyan was born...
are sometimes identified with their
minimalist style. The term "minimalism" is also sometimes associated with the briefest of poetic genres,
haiku' , plural haiku, is a form of Japanese poetry, consisting of 17 moras , in three metrical phrases of 5, 7, and 5 moras respectively. Haiku typically contain a kigo, or seasonal reference, and a kireji or verbal caesura...
, which originated in Japan but has been domesticated in English literature by poets such as
Nick VirgilioNicholas Anthony Virgilio was an internationally recognized haiku poet who is credited with helping to popularize the Japanese style of poetry in the United States....
,
Raymond RoseliepRaymond Roseliep was a poet and contemporary master of the English haiku and Catholic priest. He has been described as "the John Donne of Western haiku". - Early life :...
, and
George SwedeGeorge Swede , is a Canadian psychologist, poet and children's writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario...
.
The Irish author
Samuel BeckettSamuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish writer, dramatist and poet. Beckett's work offers a bleak outlook on human culture and both formally and philosophically became increasingly minimalist....
is also known for his minimalist plays and prose.
Minimalism in technical communication
Minimalism in
structured writingStructured writing is a form of technical writing that leverages decades of research into documentation best practices.The term was coined by Robert E...
or
topic-based authoringTopic-based authoring is a modular content creation approach that supports XML content reuse, content management, and makes the dynamic assembly of personalized information possible....
is based on the ideas of
John CarrollJohn M. Carroll is currently Edward M. Frymoyer Professor of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State. Carroll is perhaps best known for his theory of Minimalism in computer instruction, training, and technical communication...
. Like
Robert E. HornRobert E. Horn is an American political scientist, who taught at Harvard, Columbia, and Sheffield universities. Currently he is a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Center for the Study of Language and Information...
's work on
Information MappingInformation mapping is a technique of dividing and labeling information for easy comprehension, use, and recall. It was originally developed by Robert E. Horn.- Overview :...
, John Carroll's principles of Minimalism were based in part on cognitive studies and learning research at Harvard and Columbia University, by
Jerome BrunerJerome Seymour Bruner is an American psychologist who has contributed to cognitive psychology and cognitive learning theory in educational psychology, as well as to history and to the general philosophy of education. Bruner is currently a senior research fellow at the New York University School...
,
Jerome KaganJerome Kagan is one of the key pioneers of developmental psychology. He is Daniel and Amy Starch Research Professor of Psychology, Emeritus at Harvard University, and co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute...
, B.F. Skinner, George A. Miller, and others.
Carroll argued that training materials should be constructed as short task-oriented chunks, not lengthy monolithic user manuals that explain everything in a long narrative fashion. He observed that modern users are often already familiar with much of what is described in the typical long manual. What they need is the information to solve the particular task at hand. They should be encouraged to do them with a minimum of systematic instruction.
The historian of technical communication R. John Brockmann points out that task orientation had been enunciated as a principle a decade earlier at IBM by Fred Bethke and others in a report on IBM Publishing Guidelines.
Darwin Information Typing ArchitectureThe Darwin Information Typing Architecture is an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering information. Although its main applications have so far been in technical publications, DITA is also used for other types of documents such as policies and procedures.-Origin and...
(DITA) is built on Carroll's theories of Minimalism and Horn's theories of Information Mapping.
Minimalism is a large part of
JoAnn HackosJoAnn T. Hackos, Ph.D., is a noted lecturer, consultant and author of a number of books about technical communication. She is also a fellow and past president of the Society for Technical Communication...
' recent workshops and books on information development using structured writing and the DITA
XMLXML is a set of rules for encoding documents electronically. It is defined in the produced by the W3C and several other related specifications; all are fee-free open standards....
standard.
See also
- Formalism (art)
In art theory, formalism is the concept that a work's artistic value is entirely determined by its form--the way it is made, its purely visual aspects, and its medium. Formalism emphasizes compositional elements such as color, line, shape and texture rather than realism, context, and content...
- Geometric abstraction
- Kmart realism
Kmart realism, also termed Dirty realism is a form of social minimalist literature found in American short fiction. , It is defined as "A literary genre characterized by a spare, terse style that features struggling, working-class characters in sterile, bleak environments."...
- Linguistic minimalism
Much current research in transformational grammar is inspired by Noam Chomsky's Minimalist Program. The "Minimalist Program" aims at the further development of ideas involving economy of derivation and economy of representation, which had started to become significant in the early 1990s, but were...
- List of minimalist artists
- Lyrical Abstraction
Lyrical Abstraction refers to two related but distinctly separate trends in Post-war Modernist painting;European Lyrical Abstraction born in Paris in 1945, and the French critic Charles Estienne created its name in 1946...
- Minimal techno
Minimal is a form of electronic dance music that is considered a minimalist derivate of techno. It is characterized by a stripped-down aesthetic that exploits the use of repetition, and understated development...
- Minimalism (computing)
- Minimalist music
Minimalist music is an originally American genre of experimental or Downtown music named in the 1960s based mostly in consonant harmony, steady pulse , stasis and slow transformation, and often reiteration of musical phrases or smaller units such as figures, motifs, and cells...
- Modular constructivism
Modular constructivism is a style of sculpture that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s and was associated especially with Erwin Hauer and Norman Carlberg...
- Monochrome painting
Monochrome painting is sometimes seen as meditative art. Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century painters have created monochromatic painting. The exploration of one color, the examination of values changing across a surface, the expressivity of texture and nuance, expressing a wide...
- Neo-minimalism
Neo-minimalism is an amorphous art movement of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It has alternatively been called "neo-geometric" or "neo-geo" art, "Also Fakism, Neo-Conceptualism, Neo-Futurism,...Neo-Op, Neo-Pop, New Abstraction, Poptometry, Post-Abstractionism, Simulationism,"...
- Postminimalism
Postminimalism is a term used in various artistic fields for work which is influenced by, or attempts to develop and go beyond, the aesthetic of minimalism...
- Shaped canvas
Shaped canvases are paintings that depart from the normal flat, rectangular configuration. Canvases may be shaped by altering their contours, while retaining their flatness. An ancient, traditional example is the tondo, a painting on a round canvas: Raphael, as well as some other Renaissance...
- Stuckism
Stuckism is an international art movement that was founded in 1999 in Britain by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art. The Stuckists stated their opposition to the Charles Saatchi-patronised Young British Artists...
- Worse is better
Worse is better, also called the New Jersey style, was conceived by Richard P. Gabriel to describe the dynamics of software acceptance, but it has broader application. The idea is that quality does not necessarily increase with functionality. There is a point where less functionality is a...