Because I am female and have a Pinterest account, I've spent the last ten years of my life in recovery or on the brink of minimalism. Between reading about women like Matilda Kahl and seeing pictures of people floating through life in classic jeans or black cigarette pants and black, white, or grey t-shirts, it's safe to say that this is a fashion concept that most of us are pretty familiar with by now.
Living in greyscale ensembles not only appeals to one aspect of my personal style. It also promises the possibility of me looking polished 92% of the time with 50% less effort. While, at moments of thriving energy, I like to choose colorful statement pieces, my underslept and fragmented persona of reality tends to believe that adopting a streamlined approach to dressing myself from day to day and leaving flamboyant forms of expression and risky choices for a special occasion is an answer to my problem, vis a vis, my penchant for dressing with panache until Monday morning when I run somewhere in leggings with no makeup on and dripping hair.
But add a fuzzy understanding of not having too much crud and that's pretty much where the general concept of Minimalism in my head ends. And let's be honest, this is the undiluted case for 99% of us. If you are the exception, I want to hear from you and perhaps send you a congratulations card, in greyscale, with a picture of an empty vase on the front.
It's easy to forget that we are not the first generation that took the dictionary definition of the word and applied it to an emerging movement in the culture.
People have been using the word for more than one hundred years now and each reincarnation is stunningly different.
While I would like to say that my interest in being aware of the origins of these terms is partially due to some sort of vaguely ethical sense that I should understand the entire meaning of the word I use, there's a second and much less admirable motive. The smart ass in me cringes at the thought of using the term in the sartorial sense and being schooled by someone equally smart-assish and less lazy person. Whether or not your motives are pure, unlike mine, peruse the artistic and political roots of the continues to spark joy in our world:
minimalist [min-uh-muh-list]
Noun:
1. a person who favors a moderate approach to the achievement of a set of goals or who holds minimal expectations for the success of a program. (Makes sense.)
2. a practitioner of minimalism in music or art. (What?)
Adjective:
3. of, relating to, or characteristic of minimalism.
4. being or offering no more than what is required or essential: a minimalist program for tax reform.
Origin of minimalist:
1905-1910
1905-10; in political use < French minimaliste (see minimal, -ist ), translation of the Russian men'shevík Menshevik*; subsequent uses perhaps recoinage with -ist
*Orthodox Marxists in the Bolshevik/Menshevik dispute at the second congress of the Russian Socialist movement. For the laypeople, Martov and Lenin and their posses had a fight about whether or not Russia could become socialist without undergoing a period of bourgeois capitalism. Martov lost and consoled himself by creating art and insisted on only wearing narrow pants and white tees during the process. JK, but that would make sense, right?)
The Arts
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica
“In both music and the visual arts, Minimalism was an attempt to explore the essential elements of an art form. In Minimalist visual arts, the personal, gestural elements were stripped away in order to reveal the objective, purely visual elements of painting and sculpture. In Minimalist music, the traditional treatment of form and development was rejected in favor of explorations of timbre and rhythm—musical elements largely unfamiliar to Western listeners.”
Visual
Above, Frank Stella's Harran II, 1967
The piece above really rocked me. That's not MY minimalism!
We really owe our popular concept of minimalism to architecture, specifically Japanese, and the collaboration between architects and fashion designers, In New York and London, in the 1980s in boutiques.
Musical
Take a listen to The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer. What do you think? Seems both boring and threatening at the same time. Ali over at Aligator Blueprints would probably point out that boring fits perfectly into the current permutation of the trend. She is one of the few people I know who has not felt the siren call of greyscale. Honestly, I'm having a hard time hearing the similarities between the thing above and the music of Erik Satie, who *supposedly* influenced the movement. Oh Erik, the butterfly effect is cruel here.
Literary
Minimalist Literature spurns adverbs and "prefer[s] allowing context to dictate meaning."
We thank Minimalism for this flummoxing poem:
“This Is Just To Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold”
— WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
And finally, to relieve the pressure of learning new things that are frankly a bit confusing, let's go back to familiar turf. Enjoy a list from BuzzFeed of "Minimalist" hacks to simplify your life. I promise clicking the link will take you back to the "fun" kind of minimalism.
P.S. Supposedly Minimalist Art is also known as Literalist Art. The fact that the word "literally" is also super popular right now inspires all sorts of vaguely logical conspiracy theories. Maybe all the minimalist stuff on Pinterest is some sort of code for a group like the Illuminati... but super chic. Stay safe guys.
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