- Kate Whitaker
- December 13, 2022
Walk the halls of any contemporary art gallery, and you’re poised to see at least a few large, monochromatic canvasses towering over you. I don’t get it, seems to be the collective cultural response. And this is when the academics and critics come barreling in. They tell us art begins as narration, a way of spreading religion and depicting status, and it remains this way until around 1910, when Vassily Kandinsky rejects paintings that imitate life in favor of the first abstract forms. Kandinsky’s bold lines and colorful circles challenge the realist tradition with compositions reminiscent of a music sheet ripped to shreds. Abstract art is born, but forms continue to maintain an expressionist element until Piet Mondrian. Mondrian favors color and line that is nothing but itself, painting red, yellow, and blue squares that impress a sense of muted order. And 20 years or so later, after Mondrian, Klein takes ‘muted’ even further, infamously producing paintings of a specific shade of blue and nothing else. There are the Impressionists and Dadaists and others sprinkled in, but this is the essential story, art’s gradual retreat from reality.
The story at first appears to be yet another way the art world engages in secluded conversation with itself, but take a walk and you’ll notice reductionist design is being implemented everywhere. In downtown Chicago, you’ll notice the French renaissance detailing of the Wrigley building has been replaced with an endless supply of glass walls next door. You’ll see light posts with wrought iron motifs perched on top next to boxes of light attached to boxes of stainless steel.
These may have begun as economical decisions (beams of steel certainly offer cheaper labor costs than craftsmanship), but even in spaces unconcerned with cost, one notices minimalism has taken root. In Restoration Hardware, tables and chairs have lost virtually all the detailing we see in traditional wood furniture of the 19th century. Cylinders and rectangles have replaced curvature and craft. Even in grocery stores, I notice how minimalism has found its influence. Packaging is dominated not by image but by shape. Logos transition from characters and scenes to geometric abstractions and neat lettering. Designers everywhere have come to accept their role as planners rather than decorators. They say form follows function and avoid all pretense of style.
This is not a fad or the whims of reactionary trend cycles either. Aesthetic changes this encompassing represent a shift in consciousness worth questioning. Why are we suddenly drawn to the minimal? Where does this rift originate? Of course, several social and political factors bear investigating, but one cause seems to dominate: intellectualization. In Psychology, intellectualization refers to a defense mechanization in which one thinks to avoid feeling, but more broadly it means objectively reasoning about abstract matters.
Objective reasoning feels given today, but it has not always been so. Its origin is often cited in western Europe around the eighteenth century during a period referred to as the age of reason, but its seeds were likely sewn elsewhere independently as well. The age of reason brought Newton’s theories into popular view, challenged traditional religious structures, and replaced superstition with science. It blends into the earlier Renaissance but remains distinct. While the sciences and mathematics thrived during the Renaissance, free thought continued to be restricted by the religious institutions of the day. Copernicus and Galileo provide the most popular examples of this restriction, whose revolutionary ideas challenged the status quo yet eventually subjected them to charges of blasphemy.
The age of reason saw the beginnings of urbanization and introduced the splinter that remains today between the mechanics of nature and mystery of the soul. This rift allowed a more reasoned approach to issues of social reform then, more stringently applied, served to create the scientific method. Quantification has continued its dominance since and proven invaluable in raising the living standards of millions and solving complex issues. But while the link between the objective and subjective was first blurred due to a blindness toward objectivity, it now threatens to be blurred due to a blindness toward subjectivity.
Good art and design should elevate our understanding of the world instead of reinforcing past givens. Today’s minimalism does a great job of aesthetically advancing the early aims of the age of reason through increased objectivity, but it is beginning to lack delivery in emotion. If minimalism tells us to focus on the essential, reduce the superfluous, eliminate the subjective, it can also tell us to neglect an all too real and inevitable emotional reality. Minimalism teaches us to look at complex patterns and discover the elementary within. It does not hint at the natural or confusing or messy. It provides a haven of clean lines and sterile safety to retreat to when reality overwhelms us.
And done right, it is quite useful. No one should have to decipher complex images or text on road signs in a matter of seconds while driving. We need a red octagon with STOP written neatly in the center and nothing more. And we know academic modelling with predictive power typically requires an array of inaccurate, simplifying assumptions. Physics problems become much easier when we ignore air resistance, friction, etc. In this way, minimalism helps us find truth. It reduces things just to the point of full knowability.
Design has both functional and aesthetic components, though, and this is where our struggle arises. Abrasive minimalism might be useful functionally, but it is less obvious it remains beneficial aesthetically. We want things that are useful and pretty. In a society that increasingly worships the intellect, these are doomed to become the same thing. Our aesthetic becomes functionality. Any hint of style or whim of artistry becomes a distraction from the truth of an object and thus deserves removal. The mystical realm of aesthetics becomes obsolete.
Buildings become glass boxes and benches become agglomerations of cylinders and rectangles. The ideal light pole is not pretty; it is purposeful. We look on dumbfounded at large blank canvasses not because they are difficult to understand but because they are too easy. Their message lies in their absence of message. We’re told that in this we find peace but quickly discover here also lies emptiness. One easily understands the benefit of road signs with a minimalist sensibility. It is less clear the same logic should be applied to personal furniture or the architecture of public spaces.
The problem here is not necessarily minimalism either. It is that sort of thoughtless, dogmatic minimalism that seeps into our public spaces and robs them of emotion. It is a neglecting of subjectivity and assertion of human’s limitless dominance over nature. Modern designers’ allegiance to function has created a class of architecture and products defined by replicability and emptiness. One enters and immediately feels the need to be quiet and walk a particular way. Plastic cylinders in muted colors replace thoughtfully designed glasses and bowls. A jarring contrast between how life is experienced emotionally and aesthetically emerges. We feel complexity and confusion constantly, but in our designs we remove it entirely. People resentfully shut down in the wake of their idealized imagery.
If the goal is going to be minimalism (that much seems inevitable and probably desirable), we need a new, conceptually sound minimalism that focuses on the feeling of the simple as well as the look. Design must reunite with its roots in beauty. The clean shouldn’t shy away from the organic. We need stop signs abrasively minimalistic, but we also need cathedrals abrasively romantic. Minimalism must humbly admit complexity and accept consciousness as a feeling-centered experience rather than a thought-centered one. We must be careful to remember the limitations of intellectualization before we risk continued disappointment in cold spaces robbed of reality. A civilization’s art and design reflect not only its past ideals but also its future aspirations. The question has become does this world tolerate an inevitable mysticism or blindly worship the concrete?