Neo-minimalism is an amorphous art movement of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It has alternatively been called Neo-Geometric or "Neo-Geo" art. Other terms include: Neo-Conceptualism, Neo-Futurism, Neo-Op, Neo-pop, New Abstraction, Poptometry, Post-Abstractionism, and Smart Art.[1]
Origins
As a product of the modernist movement of the 1960s, it was influenced by the Bauhaus style of art which rejected lavish designs for a more down-to-earth approach.[2]
Arts
The aspects of "postmodern art" that have been described as neo-minimalism (and related terms) involve a general "reevaluation of earlier art forms."[3]
Beyond painting, sculpture and other "museum art," the term has been applied to architecture, design, and music.[5] In architecture, indeed, neo-minimalism has been identified as a part of "the new orthodoxy...."[6] As Finnish author Juhani Pallasmaa stated: "After the bacchanal of post-modernism, the time has again come for neo-minimalism, neo-ascetism, neo-denial and sublime poverty."[7]
^Fred S. Kleiner and Christin J. Mamiya, Gardner's Art Through the Ages: The Western Perspective, Twelfth edition, Thomson / Wadsworth, 2005; Vol. 2, p. 844.
^Casey Nelson Blake, "An Atmosphere of Effrontery," in: The Power of Culture: Critical Essays in American History, Richard Wightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears, eds., Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1993; p. 259 n. 17.
^Cadence: The American Review of Jazz and Blues, Vol. 14 (1988), p. 65.
^Brooke Hodge, ed., Not Architecture But Evidence That It Exists, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1999; p. 121.
^Juhani Pallasmaa, Architecture in Miniature, Museum of Finnish Architecture, 1991; p. 1.