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Minimalism paintings

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Minimalism: The Art of Objective Beauty

Minimalism in European fine art appeared as a result of the desire of artists to eliminate all subjectivity. Realizing this intention, the new direction came into conflict with the widespread belief that the individuality of the master and personal worldview give the creation a special value. Minimalist artists deliberately abandoned most of the techniques of traditional schools, trying to eliminate everything that separates the viewer from true reality.

The tradition of minimalism

The ideas underlying the new trend in European art were put forward as early as the 18th century. For example, Johann Goethe in his garden erected the sculpture "Altar of Fortune", which consisted of a sphere and a cube that supported it. The art object was created contrary to the tradition of depicting fortune as a girl riding a ball. Contemplating the sculpture of I. Goethe, the viewer had the opportunity to perceive conceptually the idea of ​​the connection between virtue (cube) and good luck (sphere) without any reference to such insignificant details as the girl’s face, her clothes, hairstyle or the surface texture of the ball. It was a pure concept with minimal art to represent it.

In the 19th century, representatives of fumism tried to realize the idea of ​​liberation from everything superficial and insignificant in their work. True, they concentrated their attention not on pure concepts, but on irony, as a method of eliminating deceptive appearance. From the Fumists at the beginning of the 20th century, the initiative passed to the Dadaists, who sought to destroy traditional aesthetics and free the viewer's attention from being tied to the external form of objects. But both for some and for others, the agenda was negative: they tried to create an artistic direction around the denial of forms of expression.

The minimalists were able to fully realize the potential of the idea outlined by I. Goethe. In the early 60s of the twentieth century, Frank Stella, Carl Andre, Donald Judd, Sola Levitt, Richard Serra and others began to paint pictures according to the canons of the new direction. They shifted the focus of attention to the world of true reality and set themselves the task of finding adequate ways to artistic representations. On their canvases, the essence of objects is conveyed with the help of complex geometric shapes without the expressiveness characteristic of classical fine art. The artist does not impose his view of the world on the viewer, but only helps to find its essential features. At the end of the 20th century, post-minimalism developed on the basis of minimalism, the representatives of which focused on how artists convey ideas through artistic means.

Artistic features of minimalism

Minimalist artists prefer complex forms, with which they reveal the depth of color. The desire to free the viewer's perception from external dictates prompted the masters to use metaphors, allusions, associations and symbols. They embody the most general outlines of objects on the canvas, allowing the observer to interpret what he sees according to his life experience. Minimalists also abandoned traditional forms of expressiveness, but this does not mean at all that their paintings do not evoke an emotional response from the viewer. Just for these purposes, they use different ways of depicting the details of the composition (lines, contours of planes and general outlines of objects). The desire to demystify art also influenced the color palette of works of art. Most often, masters use colors such as black, gray, green, blue and yellow. At the same time, in most works, no more than 3 shades are used. The color is used to zone the space on the canvas.