Minimalism

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Coming out of the Turner thread, sort of - do you like minimalism (in whatever medium)? How strict would your definition be? Do you think its a meaningless term now? Do you think its products are meaningless? And is that a bad thing?

Oh, just DISCUSS! then.

― Tom, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I think that says it all. I wuv Tracer.

― Mark C, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

― Tom, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

In art, I find it bleak and depressing. I like vibrancy, expression etc. A neon light belongs in the kitchen

In music...I don't really know what would be classed as minimal? Is it stripped down? Is it just buried beats that don't change much? like Palace? are So Solid Crew minimal?...I guess I don't like minimalism in electronic music either.

I take clutter and having 'stuff' as opposed to neat and ordered in terms of living space.

Nope, I don't like minimalism. It ain't my thing.

― james, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

this will continue until i am handed an award.

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

But you'll have to wait til next year Tracer!...You want a Tarkus album don't you? :)

― james, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Best double act: Tracer.

― Sterling Clover, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Hey is this thing on, is the sound-man getting stoned?.

― james, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm waiting!

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I have thwarted your devilish plan Tracerhand! :)...But seriously, you will put things back to normal?

― james, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

http://www.kuci.org/~brianm/ile/twunt.jpg

― Brian MacDonald, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

what award do i win? (nervously wedges phone into crook of neck)

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

hey, where did you all go?? (angrily clicks phone cradle several times) but i've got this hostage here! hello?? what about my helicopter?

FINE.

minimalism: last refuge of the desperate.

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

quote from the now mostly 'orribly unfunny Frasier but it stuck in my brane: "if less is more, then imagine how much more more is!"

― Mitch Lastnamewithheld, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

minimalistic rooms are pleasant for egotists like myself. they encourage self-centeredness.

― Maria, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"conspicuous austerity"

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Absolutely fucking adore it in any medium, though I immediately recongnize its capacity for fradulence is arguably greater than in any other genre you can name. Charlemagne Palestine and Ad Reinhardt are heroes o'mine.

Minimalism isn't meaningless, but it's close, and in a good way: that is, like pop, its blankness allows it to be unusually open to a very broad range of very personal interpretations.

― Michael Daddino, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I think the term minimalism will always have meaning. Just not the meaning it had when Judd + Flavin were 'subverting' pop or whatever they were supposed to be doing...the less historically specific term is 'reductionist.'

― turner, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I really liked 'loop finding jazz records.' That's minimalist, I think.

― turner, Tuesday, 11 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

minimalism is an art rarely perfected, rarely even approached, especially in capitalist society (yeah, one I'm obviously no practioner of).

minimalism in terms of certain narrow segregations is possible -- your musical preference, home decor, culinary taste. but could a lean, destitute teen in Kabul be said to be practicing the same? is it a concept only observable by those who have the option to do otherwise?

I think so, and so I think those who have the most firsthand experience in its art would rarely post to public webboards like those, for obvious reasons.

― Chris, Tuesday, 11 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Actually, by saying minimalism was close to being meaningless, I wasn't referring to the nebulousness of the term "minimalism," but that all individual examples of minimalism I can think of such as Abstract Painting or Four Manifestations On Six Elements skirt meaninglessness.

― Michael Daddino, Tuesday, 11 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

three years pass...

1960s minimalism: carl andre vs donald judd vs robert morris vs frank stella vs dan flavin vs sol lewitt vs bruce nauman vs.... who do you choose??
right now for me it's flavin because his work is very beautiful and it still does what he wanted it to do
http://www.tate.org.uk/archivejourneys/reisehtml/images/flavininstallation2.jpg
ihttp://thinkingaboutart.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/218028.jpg
http://www.tate.org.uk/archivejourneys/reisehtml/images/flavininstallation.jpg
http://www3.varesenews.it/immagini_articoli/200409/flavin_matisse.JPG
i also like robert morris

― minna (minna), Monday, 24 October 2005 06:50 (nineteen years ago)

because it was ugly and grey etc

― minna (minna), Monday, 24 October 2005 06:54 (nineteen years ago)

well it wasnt really that ugly!

and then he went on to do stuff like this
http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/images/lists/work/115_2_md.jpg

― minna (minna), Monday, 24 October 2005 06:55 (nineteen years ago)

I like minimalism like this:

http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/cmartin/Ulmer/project1/calligraphy2.jpg

I also like Spacemen 3, and fresh bread with nothing on it.

― A Nairn (moretap), Monday, 24 October 2005 09:58 (nineteen years ago)

I also likr minimalism in photograpy:

http://www.macyphotography.com/gallery4/Still%20Life/clogs.jpg

I don't like minimalism in museums unless it is really really big.

― A Nairn (moretap), Monday, 24 October 2005 10:06 (nineteen years ago)

wow those flavin light things are amazing.

― haitch? (haitch), Monday, 24 October 2005 10:19 (nineteen years ago)

visual arts.
ones i love
anne truitt (the size, mostly), agnes martin (all that bullshit about god and language), donald judd (how slick and smooth they are), fred sandblack (tangible, but so slight), ellsworth kelly (the colours), fontanna (the slick, surgical, slice), wolfgang laib (MILK)
ones i loathe
frank stella (gimmicky), robert mangold (ugly), richard serra (his work is so antogistic, violently, butchly atagonistic towards the human expereince, that the work also strikes me as fascist), james turrell,
ones i have mixed feelings about
robert ryman (i like him more and more, as days go on, but still it feels masturbatory, and not strong enough), brice marden (ruined a perfectly good career with silly scribbles), robert morris (just havent seen enough), richard tuttle (it edges into too little), dan flavin ( i love the early 60s icons, but the big light installations almost strike me as too obvious), carl andre, (like the democratic undertones of some of the stone peices, and his poetry is good, so i should like him more)

― anthony, Monday, 24 October 2005 10:35 (nineteen years ago)

for martin, read landscape

― anthony, Monday, 24 October 2005 10:36 (nineteen years ago)

martian landscape?

I listened to palestine's schlingen blangen, yikes, it's long as fuck, but really really cool. The Clientele did a shortened version (8ish minutes) that's a lot more listenable if only for its shorter length, and quite nice.

― AaronK (AaronK), Monday, 24 October 2005 11:37 (nineteen years ago)

There was a big Flavin exhibit at the National Gallery when I was there last year — it was wonderful.

― I do feel guilty for getting any perverse amusement out of it (Rock Hardy), Monday, 24 October 2005 12:26 (nineteen years ago)

three months pass...

stella in the late 60s = extravagant minimalism, which is probably a contradiction, but which is probably even more approaching "graphic design" - and very pretty! (see also Bridget Riley)

http://art-meets-art.net/art/frank-stella/GCL-164.jpg http://www.pinkart.com.hk/frank%20Stella.jpg

I happen to agree with Michael Daddino (from 4 years ago): minimalism leaves a hell of a lot of room for interpretation, and for that reason, works in a hell of a lot of situations.

― Dominique (dleone), Wednesday, 15 February 2006 21:28 (nineteen years ago)

just voicing disagreement w/ anthony from five months ago re: serra. i think countering the antagonism in the surface and size of his sculptures is the bending of space you can feel when you run around them in circles (watching the planes as they shift makes me incredibly dizzy) or try and put the whole thing together w/ one simple function of the brain and realize that you can't do it because every continuous inch flows into another inch that feels weirdly different from the one before it. yes, they're very mathematical and precise. but the formulations (elipse on top, same elipse but rotated 90 degrees on bottom) create this sort of breathtaking open-endedness in between the shapes that burst open the butch posturing imo.

he reminds me a bit of tony conrad actually -- massive, off-putting presence at first, and then you hear the dance of the overtones or the dynamic of the space and suddenly it becomes liberating / really fucking gorgeous. or something.

― fauxhemian (fauxhemian), Thursday, 16 February 2006 02:15 (nineteen years ago)

Duh, I likes Tuttle.

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Thursday, 16 February 2006 02:38 (nineteen years ago)

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Thursday, 16 February 2006 02:39 (nineteen years ago)

― chap who would dare to be slightly tipsy on the internet (chap), Thursday, 16 February 2006 02:39 (nineteen years ago)

Also, why wouldn't color field painters be considered minimalist (I mean, except for the fact that they came before.)

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Thursday, 16 February 2006 02:47 (nineteen years ago)

I hate Flavin most of all.

But Le Witt, Martin, and everyone who does white-on-white, they are grrrrrreat.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 16 February 2006 07:45 (nineteen years ago)

Very fond of the classic minimalism in music, like Steve Reich and Phillip Glass - that clean, classical arpeggio-looping kind of thing. I like to think of it as a precursor to trance (not that this is a good thing, heh). I suppose "O Superman" is an obvious example too.

― Trayce (trayce), Thursday, 16 February 2006 09:43 (nineteen years ago)

three years pass...

Please search out the freshly unveiled recording of Yoshi Wada's "Earth Horns With Electronic Drone." Recorded in '74 and released for the first time now, players include Garret List!

― ian, Wednesday, 1 April 2009 18:23 (sixteen years ago)

Do I like minimalism? A little.

― Aimless, Wednesday, 1 April 2009 18:25 (sixteen years ago)

one year passes...

I enjoyed this Stuart Jeffries feature about the new digital minimalists. A nice mix of truth and humour about getting rid of books, CDs and photos.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/feb/11/less-is-more-age-of-minimalism

― Alba, Friday, 11 February 2011 09:05 (fourteen years ago)

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