M I N I M AL I S M
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1. IDENTIFY THE ESSENTIAL
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2. ELIMINATE THE REST
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ABOUT
In visual arts, music, and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. The mosty common artists associated with minimalism include Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, Anne Truitt, and Frank Stella. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction against abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary postminimal art practices, which extend or reflect on minimalism’s original objectives.
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DE STIJL MOVEMENT
De Stijl (Dutch for “The Style“), also known as neoplasticism, was an artistic movement in the Netherlands. It began in 1917 and faded around 1931. Its leading figure was Theo van Doesburg who died in 1931, and this basically marked the end for the De Stijl movement. This movement existed only for a short time but layed the foundations of minimalism. The major principles advocated by De Stijl movement are simplified visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions, and use of only primary colors in order to bring togehter black and white.
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LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE
Another hero of minimalism is the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (18861969). It is no exaggeration to say that in addition to being a key figure in minimalism, he is also one of the fathers of modern architecture with its clean forms.
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“LESS IS MORE”
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ROBERT MORRIS UNTITLED 1965, RECONSTRUCTED 1971
ART MOVEMENT 1960 1970’s
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Minimalism is a popular art movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 60s. During this period, the art world saw a major transition particularly amongst younger artists whose works began to actively reject and move away from abstract expressionism. The art movement was trulyvery impacteful for its time, as it saw artists focusing on the rawessence of the medium and material to form the art itself. Minimalism removes all essential forms in order to expose the purity and beauty of the art object. It is a genre that has been widely associated with conceptual art, which during the 1960s, was extremely radical in that it challenged pre-existing structures of making, viewing, and understanding art. With minimalist artists focusing primarily on the surface of the canvas and the aesthetic quality of materials, relating to verArtist’s did not pretend to represent anything other than what it was.
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MINIMALISM IS AN EXTREME FORM OF ABSTRACT ART DEVELO
COMPOSED OF SIMPLE GEOMETRIC SHAPES B
TA
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OPED IN THE USA IN THE 1960S AND TYPIFIED BY ARTWORKS
BASED ON THE SQUARE AND THE RECTANGLE
ATE
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MAJOR ARTIST IN THE MINIMALIST MOVEMENT
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FRANK STELLA
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FRANK STELLA [TITLE NOT KNOWN] 1967 TATE 30
Frank Stella was born in Massachusetts in America in 1936 and is best known as a minimalist artist. Minimalist art began in the 1950s with a group of artists who did not make paintings and sculptures about the things they saw in the world, like a house, or a bottle, or a snowy landscape. They made paintings and sculptures about the materials they used, like paint, and wood and metal. Their artworks look like they might have been made in a factory. When Stella was in his early 20s he began a series of paintings called The Black Paintings. Here is what one of them looked like. The Museum of Modern Art, in New York was so impressed with these paintings that they bought some of them.
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DAN FLAVIN
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‘MONUMENT’ FOR V. TATLIN 1966–9 © ARS, NY AND DACS, LONDON 2021 34
Dan Flavin was an American artist and pioneer of Minimalism, best known for his seminal installations of light fixtures. His illuminated sculptures offer a rigorous formal and conceptual investigation of space and light, wherein the artist arranged commercial fluorescent bulbs into differing geometric compositions. “I like art as thought better than art as work,” he once said. “I’ve always maintained this. It’s important to me that I don’t get my hands dirty. It’s not because I’m instinctively lazy. It’s a declaration: art is thought.”
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“ALL I WANT ANYO OUT OF MY WORK I EVER GET OUT O THE FACT THAT YO THE WHOLE IDEA ANY CONFUSION. SEE IS WHAT YOU SE STELLA, 19 36
ONE TO GET KS AND ALL OF THEM IS OU CAN SEE WITHOUT WHAT YOU EE.” –FRANK 964
Clear
Repetition of simple Geometric forms, lines or sqaures
Precise Transitions
Monochromatic Tones
Hard - edged
Limited Palette of one few closely related colours
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ARCHITECTURE
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TONY SMITH
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ARCTICTURE AND ITS SIMPLIST FORM
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In minimalist architecture, design elements strive to convey the message of simplicity. The basic geometric forms, elements without decoration, simple materials and the repetitions of structures represent a sense of order and essential quality. The movement of natural light in buildings reveals simple and clean spaces.
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ÁLVARO SIZA BUILDS CAPELA DO MONTE CHAPEL FOR OFF-GRID RETREAT IN THE ALGARVE
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Geom
etric l
ines m
eet a
tange
nt of u
tmost
simpl
icity, a
nd for
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ms de
libera
tely la
ck exp
ressiv e cont
ent.
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Architect Álvaro Siza Viera has completed a simple countryside chapel in the south of Portugal, designed to function without electricity, heat or running water. The Capela do Monte, which translates simply
as
hillside
development
chapel.
will
be
The
entire
self-sufficient,
therefore made sense for the chapel to be built without the need for external services. The building is designed to naturally heat and cool itself passively due to the use of carefully selected materials. Its thick walls are made from perforated bricks, which are coated both internally and externally in a limestone render. Accessed only by a single footpath, the chapel’s most distinctive feature is its simple U-shaped facade, which fronts a terrace that is raised up from the hillside. Set behind this facade is an opening that allows sunlight to filter down into the building’s open-air entrance lobby.
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SIZA DESCRIBES THE CHAPEL AS ...
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“A PURE ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT”.
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JAPANESE HOUSE HAS HIDDEN COURTYARDS FOR GROWING FRUIT AND DRYING LAUNDRY
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Three internal courtyards in a timberclad bungalow designed by Osaka-based practice Arbol in Akashi, Japan, provide space for growing food and drying clothes. Located in a quiet neighbourhood, the rooms of minimalist House in Akashi turn inwards to these courtyards, with only a few small openings made in the woodclad elevations looking out to the street.
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THE AIM OF THE MINIMALIST ARTISTS
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Across the realm of artists, architects and designers who partook in the minimalist art movement, the one key aspect they were targeting were for viewers to have an immediate, absolute, and purely visual response to their work. They believed that with this visual response came a personal connection and experience with their works, allowing them to engage with its qualities of colour, form, space and medium. Mininmalism is truely fasinating concept when it comes to design , with its ability to execute such a simplistic yet powerful image with such little resources is extradoriary.
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