Minimalism and Maximalism
Minimalism, also known as reductive abstraction was a reaction to maximalism, which would be helpful to look at first for contrast.
Maximalism
The Sistine chapel interior certainly qualifies, being large with frescos on walls and ceiling and it is emotional and complex. Picasso’s painting Guernica, depicting the horror of the bombing of that city is large, complex, and emotional. The Eiffel tower is large, graceful, symbolic, and an icon of national pride. Going back further, the pyramids are large, of high status, and exhibiting hubris, although of a simple geometric shape.
Modern times also had grandiose and flamboyant maximal works that minimalists reacted to. The most well known examples are the large paintings done in the 1950’s by Jackson Pollock. His paintings from that time are complex, emotional, expressive, and idiosyncratic. Pollock painted them by laying the large canvas flat on the floor. He then moved around the canvas holding a can of paint, dipping in with a brush and then throwing paint with the brush or even laying a trail of drips directly from the can onto the canvas.
Minimalism
Minimalism was a reaction to the perceived excesses of Jackson Pollock’s work, his persona, and his lifestyle ‒ chain smoking, hard drinking, fast driving ‒ that had captivated the art world.
In the 1960’s minimalism caught hold and prospered. Here are hallmarks of minimalism.
Minimalism de-emphasizes:
exuberance and emotion; hence is cool and detached,
the personal; hence has an air of anonymity,
ornamentation; hence is plain,
complexity; hence is simple in design even if not simple in execution, colorfulness; hence is monotone or muted,
excitement; hence is stable and serene
concealed plan; hence has a visible plan
attracting attention to itself; hence is modest and unassuming.
With that grounding, we are ready to look at minimalists and their work.
Early Minimalism
Before proceeding to the 1960s, consider the artist Kazimir Malevich, a Russian of Polish descent, born in Czarist Russia. In the early 1900s, he founded an art movement called Suprematism based on basic geometric forms, painted in mostly primary colors, plus gray, black, and white. Please look at a photo of a room, in Saint Petersburg Russia, used for an early suprematist exhibition.
Malevich’s famous black square hangs in the privileged high corner position usually reserved in a Russian domestic room for a religious icon. He meant the black square to mark a turning point from representational art to geometric abstract art. Notice works lower on the wall have a characteristic Suprematist look showing a collection of small objects arranged as if flying in formation.
Malevich prospered for a while, even visiting Europe, but upon returning to Stalinist Russia in 1927, his works were confiscated, he was arrested, and then banned from making art. Both Stalin and Hitler considered modern art decadent. The art they preferred was essentially propaganda glorifying the state.