Minimalism

Samuel Barclay Beckett (/ˈbɛkɪt/ ; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish playwright, poet, novelist, and literary critic. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical works feature bleak, impersonal, and tragicomic episodes of life, coupled with black comedy and literary nonsense. Beckett is widely regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century, credited with transforming modern theatre. As a major figure of Irish literature, he is best known for his tragicomedy play Waiting for Godot (1953). For his foundational contribution to both literature and theatre, Beckett received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation."

During his early career, Beckett worked as a literary critic and commentator, and in 1930 he took up a role as a lecturer in Dublin. He wrote his first novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women in 1932, which influenced many of his later works, but it was not published until after his death. Around this time, Beckett also began studying artistic expressions and art history, particularly of paintings displayed at the National Gallery of Ireland. He maintained a close friendship with Irish writer James Joyce throughout his life, and cited him as a major inspiration for his works. As a resident of Paris for most of his adult life, Beckett wrote in both French and English, sometimes under the pseudonym Andrew Belis. His later literary works, especially his plays, became increasingly austere and minimalistic as his career progressed, involving more aesthetic and linguistic experimentation, with techniques of stream of consciousness repetition and self-reference. During the Second World War, Beckett became a member of the French Resistance group Gloria SMH (Réseau Gloria) and was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1949.

Modern architecture, also called modernist architecture, or the modern movement, is an architectural movement and style that was prominent in the 20th century, between the earlier Art Deco and later postmodern movements. Modern architecture was based upon new and innovative technologies of construction (particularly the use of glass, steel, and concrete); the principle of functionalism (i.e. that form should follow function); an embrace of minimalism; and a rejection of ornament.

According to Le Corbusier, the roots of the movement were to be found in the works of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, while Mies van der Rohe was heavily inspired by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. The movement emerged in the first half of the 20th century and became dominant after World War II until the 1980s, when it was gradually replaced as the principal style for institutional and corporate buildings by postmodern architecture.

Solomon "Sol" LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism.

LeWitt came to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" (a term he preferred to "sculptures") but was prolific in a wide range of media including drawing, printmaking, photography, painting, installation, and artist's books. He has been the subject of hundreds of solo exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world since 1965. The first biography of the artist, Sol LeWitt: A Life of Ideas, by Lary Bloom, was published by Wesleyan University Press in the spring of 2019.

In Western architecture, a living room, also called a lounge room (Australian English), lounge (British English), sitting room (British English), or drawing room, is a room for relaxing and socializing in a residential house or apartment. Such a room is sometimes called a front room when it is near the main entrance at the front of the house. In large, formal homes, a sitting room is often a small private living area adjacent to a bedroom, such as the Queens' Sitting Room and the Lincoln Sitting Room of the White House.

In the late 19th or early 20th century, Edward Bok advocated using the term living room for the room then commonly called a parlo[u]r or drawing room, and is sometimes erroneously credited with inventing the term. It is now a term used more frequently when referring to a space to relax and unwind within a household. Within different parts of the world, living rooms are designed differently and evolving, but all share the same purpose, to gather users in a comfortable space.

The International Style is a major architectural style and movement that began in western Europe in the 1920s and dominated modern architecture until the 1970s. It is defined by strict adherence to functional and utilitarian designs and construction methods, typically expressed through minimalism. The style is characterized by modular and rectilinear forms, flat surfaces devoid of ornamentation and decoration, open and airy interiors that blend with the exterior, and the use of glass, steel, and concrete.

The International Style is sometimes called rationalist architecture and the modern movement, although the former is mostly used in English to refer specifically to either Italian rationalism or the style that developed in 1920s Europe more broadly. In continental Europe, this and related styles are variably called Functionalism, Neue Sachlichkeit ("New Objectivity"), De Stijl ("The Style"), and Rationalism, all of which are contemporaneous movements and styles that share similar principles, origins, and proponents.

Scandinavian design is a design movement characterized by simplicity, minimalism and functionality that emerged in the early 20th century, and subsequently flourished in the 1950s throughout the five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland.

Scandinavian designers are known especially for household goods including furniture, textiles, ceramics, lamps, and glass, but Scandinavian design has been extended to industrial design such as of consumer electronics, mobile phones, and cars.

Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the United Kingdom and the United States during the mid- to late 1950s. The movement presented a challenge to traditions of fine art by including imagery from popular and mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane mass-produced objects. One of its aims is to use images of popular culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any culture, most often through the use of irony. It is also associated with the artists' use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques. In pop art, material is sometimes visually removed from its known context, isolated, or combined with unrelated material.

Amongst the first artists that shaped the pop art movement were Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton in Britain, and Larry Rivers, Ray Johnson, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns among others in the United States. Pop art is widely interpreted as a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism, as well as an expansion of those ideas. Due to its utilization of found objects and images, it is similar to Dada. Pop art and minimalism are considered to be art movements that precede postmodern art, or are some of the earliest examples of postmodern art themselves.

Yves Klein (French: [iv klɛ̃]; 28 April 1928 – 6 June 1962) was a French artist and an important figure in post-war European art. He was a leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme, founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany. Klein was a pioneer in the development of performance art, and is seen as an inspiration to and as a forerunner of minimal art, as well as pop art. He developed and used International Klein Blue.

Donald Clarence Judd (June 3, 1928 – February 12, 1994) was an American artist associated with minimalism. In his work, Judd sought autonomy and clarity for the constructed object and the space created by it, ultimately achieving a rigorously democratic presentation without compositional hierarchy. He is generally considered the leading international exponent of "minimalism", and its most important theoretician through such writings as "Specific Objects" (1964). Judd voiced his unorthodox perception of minimalism in Arts Yearbook 8, where he says, "The new three dimensional work doesn't constitute a movement, school, or style. The common aspects are too general and too little common to define a movement. The differences are greater than the similarities."

Dan Flavin (April 1, 1933 – November 29, 1996) was an American minimalist artist famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from commercially available fluorescent light fixtures.

Robert Morris (February 9, 1931 – November 28, 2018) was an American sculptor, conceptual artist and writer. He was regarded as having been one of the most prominent theorists of Minimalism along with Donald Judd, but also made important contributions to the development of performance art, land art, the Process Art movement, and installation art. Morris lived and worked in New York. In 2013 as part of the October Files, MIT Press published a volume on Morris, examining his work and influence, edited by Julia Bryan-Wilson.

Frank Philip Stella (May 12, 1936 – May 4, 2024) was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker, noted for his work in the areas of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. He lived and worked in New York City for much of his career before moving his studio to Rock Tavern, New York. Stella's work catalyzed the minimalist movement in the late 1950s. He moved to New York City in the late 1950s, where he created works which emphasized the picture-as-object. These were influenced by the abstract expressionist work of artists like Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock. He developed a reductionist approach to his art, saying he wanted to demonstrate that for him, every painting is "a flat surface with paint on it—nothing more", and disavowed conceptions of art as a means of expressing emotion. He won notice in the New York art world in 1959 when his four black pinstripe paintings were shown at the Museum of Modern Art. Stella was a recipient of the National Medal of Arts in 2009 and the Lifetime Achievement Award in Contemporary Sculpture by the International Sculpture Center in 2011.

In the arts, maximalism is an aesthetic characterized by excess and abundance, serving as a reaction against minimalism. The philosophy can be summarized as "more is more", contrasting with the minimalist principle of "less is more".

In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif (/ˈsæn(z) ˈsɛrɪf/), gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than serif typefaces. They are often used to convey simplicity and modernity or minimalism. For the purposes of type classification, sans-serif designs are usually divided into these major groups: § Grotesque, § Neo-grotesque, § Geometric, § Humanist, and § Other or mixed.

Sans-serif typefaces have become the most prevalent for display of text on computer screens. On lower-resolution digital displays, fine details like serifs may disappear or appear too large. The term comes from the French word sans, meaning "without" and "serif" of uncertain origin, possibly from the Dutch word schreef meaning "line" or pen-stroke. In printed media, they are more commonly used for display use and less for body text.

40°43′31″N 73°59′49″W / 40.725387°N 73.997053°W / 40.725387; -73.997053

The Wall, also known as The Gateway to Soho, is a piece of minimalist art that was constructed in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was part of the building that stands at 599 Broadway until 2002 when the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) gave the owners permission to take it down so the interior wall could be repaired. The artwork has since been re-installed.

Tavar Zawacki (born 1981, California) is an American abstract artist based in Berlin, Germany. From 1996 to 2016, he produced work under the pseudonym ABOVE, noted for the "ABOVE arrow" symbol. He first introduced the symbol in Paris in 2001. Over the following years, he created murals and public works in more than 45 countries.

Since 2010, Zawacki has held solo exhibitions in cities such as New York City, London, San Francisco, Berlin, Milan, Zürich, Melbourne, Paris, Miami, and Sydney. His practice focuses on two-dimensional abstraction, incorporating geometric forms, color relationships, and transparency through overlapping hues. His work has been associated with Minimalism, Color Field painting, and Hard-Edge painting.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, commonly called the Vietnam Memorial, is a U.S. national memorial in Washington, D.C., honoring service members of the U.S. armed forces who served in the Vietnam War. The two-acre (8,100 m) site is dominated by two black granite walls engraved with the names of those service members who died or remain missing as a result of their service in Vietnam and South East Asia during the war. The Memorial Wall was designed by American architect Maya Lin and is an example of minimalist architecture. The Wall, completed in 1982, has since been supplemented with the statue Three Soldiers in 1984 and the Vietnam Women's Memorial in 1993.

The memorial is in Constitution Gardens, adjacent to the National Mall and just northeast of the Lincoln Memorial. It is maintained by the National Park Service and receives around three million visitors each year. It was initially controversial for its lack of heroic ornamentation and iconography, but its reputation improved over time. In 2007, it was ranked tenth on the "List of America's Favorite Architecture" by the American Institute of Architects. As a national memorial, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.