Minimalism (pronounced min-uh-muh-liz-uhm)
(1) In music, a reductive style or school of modern music
utilizing only simple sonorities, rhythms, and patterns, with minimal
embellishment or complexity, and characterized by protracted repetition of
figurations, obsessive structural rigor, and often a pulsing, hypnotic effect.
(2) In art or architecture, a style which features
spare, austere lines and avoids elaboration or embellishment. Traditional
design elements may be retained but in simplified form.
(3) In engineering and design, a non-aesthetic ethos which
tends towards lightness and simplicity.
1965-1967: The construct was minimal + -ism. Minimal is from the Latin minimum, neuter form of minimus (least, smallest), suppletive superlative of parvus, comparative minor from the primitive Indo-European smey (small, little) from which Latin also gained minuō; related to the Gothic minniza (smaller). Related also was īnfimus (lowest), but etymologists are divided on the history. It was related also to the Ancient Greek μῑκρός (mīkrós) (little, small) and, ultimately, the English smicker. The –ism suffix was from either the Ancient Greek -ισμός (-ismós), a suffix that forms abstract nouns of action, state, condition, doctrine; from stem of verbs in -ίζειν (-ízein) (from which English gained-ize), or from the related Ancient Greek suffix -ισμα (-isma) which more specifically expressed a finished act or thing done. Aspects of the style(s) in modern art, literature, design etc long predate the emergence of the word in the 1960s. The noun minimalist dates from 1907 in the sense of “one who advocates moderate reforms or policies" and was originally an adapted borrowing of Menshevik; as understood as "a practitioner of minimal art" it dates from 1967, the term “minimal art” being noted first in 1965. It was an adjective from 1917 in the Russian political sense and since 1969 in reference to art.
Eye of the beholder
Much of what is described as minimalist art is, technically, representational but the concept is best understood as the abstract notion of a thing existing in and defined by its own reality with no dependencies beyond. Literally that’s not possible but minimalist art works best if the viewer behaves as if it is. An artist making no attempt to represent or respond to an external reality depends on the audience responding only to the object; that from which it’s created and the form it assumes.
Although strands of minimalism have been identifiable in music, painting, engineering and architecture for millennia, as a defined commodity in the art market it emerged in New York in the late 1950s and has usually been regarded as a reaction to the gestural art of earlier generations. Minimalism ran in parallel with the forks of the conceptual art movement and produced some original work but was also burdened by some contradictions and the inherent limitation that having pursued a motif to its conclusion, all that could lie beyond were variations on the theme. Indeed, there were critics for whom minimalism was just another phase of the abstract expressionist movement with roots in the nineteenth century.
Installation view of the
exhibition Primary Structures (Younger American & British
Sculptors), 27 April-12 June 1966, The Jewish Museum, New York City.
A landmark moment for the movement was
the group exhibition Primary Structures, at the Jewish Museum in
New York in 1966 which combined, for the first time, big spaces and pure
aestheticism. The curators didn’t use the term “minimalism” in their
catalogues and it was only later the word came to be adopted to refer to an
increasing number of fields, as diverse as software user interfaces and landscape
architecture. Inevitability, associated with the reductive aspects
of modernism and thought something of a reaction to the exuberance of
surrealism and abstract expressionism, minimalism begat the post-minimal which,
being post-modernist, eschews the theories and leaves the audience to make of
it what they will.
In 2014 Shelby announced a run of fifty Cobras to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the release of the 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) version in January 1965. Offered with either fiberglass (US$120,000) or aluminum (US$180,000) bodywork and the choice of a variety of naturally aspirated big block engines with between 400 (US$50,000) and 700 horsepower (US$70,000), the greatest attraction of the Shelby-built cars was perhaps that each, despite not being “original” was eligible to be documented in the official “World Registry”, the stud book of the 365 small block (260 & 289) and 343 big block (427 & 428) Cobras built by Shelby American between 1962-1967. As a concept, it was similar (at the engineering if not the legal level) to Jaguar “resuming production” of the XK-SS and lightweight E-Types which, for various reasons, had never been sold. Both Jaguar and Shelby based the "resumed" production on chassis numbers allocated decades earlier but which had never reached the market (the cars either never built or destroyed prior while still in the factory). In Jaguar's case, that was exactly what happened; Shelby had in the past been rather more inventive.
Minimalism in underwear: Lindsay Lohan in LBD (little black dress) at the General Motors Annual ten Celebrity Fashion Show, 1540 Vine Street, Hollywood, California, February 2006.
The originality issue and the cachet of having a “genuine” Shelby built car instead of a “replica” (however exact or even substantially improved on what was done in the 1960s) was well understood but Shelby himself in 1993 created a bit of a grey area by, in effect, creating “counterfeit” copies of his own cars. What he’d done was use a loophole in the regulations of the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) by sending an undocumented request for 43 “duplicate” titles for vehicles on the basis of a list of chassis numbers dating from 1965. In fact, although the chassis numbers had in 1965 been allocated, they had never been constructed and all the titles Shelby was obtaining were for frames fabricated in 1991-1992 by a contractor. Unfazed, Mr Shelby, despite having apparently extended his philosophy of minimalism to include legal documents, denied any of this was misleading and said he was the victim of a smear campaign by a competitor.
Minimalism in fashion. Rita Ora, MTV Video Music Awards, August 2014 (left) & Bella Hadid, Cannes Film Festival, May 2016 (right). The LRD (little red dress) was a pleasing design, best suited to warmer climates and thus far, the dress of the twenty-first century and therefore the third millennium. Both wore it well and an individual partiality to one look or the other will depend on how one likes fabric to fall.
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