Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A school of abstract painting and sculpture that emphasizes extreme simplification of form, as by the use of basic shapes and monochromatic palettes of primary colors, objectivity, and anonymity of style. Also called ABC art, minimal art, reductivism, rejective art.
- n. Use of the fewest and barest essentials or elements, as in the arts, literature, or design.
- n. Music A school or mode of contemporary music marked by extreme simplification of rhythms, patterns, and harmonies, prolonged chordal or melodic repetitions, and often a trancelike effect.
Wiktionary
- n. art A style of art that emphasises extreme simplicity of form.
- n. music A style of music that emphasises extreme simplicity of rhythms and melodic forms to achieve a trancelike effect.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an art movement in sculpture and painting that began in the 1950s and emphasized extreme simplification of form and color
Examples
“None of them, it is worth pointing out, has ever fully embraced the term "minimalism", and the seeds of how differently the minimalist impulse would be taken up by later composers are already there in the huge aesthetic and temperamental gulfs that separate Riley's music from Reich's, or Glass's from Young's.”
“A Thing Is A Hole In A Thing It Is Not (until 3 May) the work examines the history of minimalist art and includes the re-enactment of a 1964 interview with Donald Judd, Dan Flavin and Frank Stella who came together to explain their ideas before the term minimalism had come to define a movement.”
“I'm sure you've heard the word "minimalism" in terms of music.”
“This week's festival with the piano-playing Labèque sisters at London's Kings Place invites us to listen to music from John Cage to Steve Reich, Glenn Branca to Brian Eno, Michael Nyman who first coined the term "minimalism" in 1968 to the Who, and hear the cross-cultural connections.”
“I've always been interested in minimalism -- visual or sonic.”
The Washington Post: Sound artist Richard Chartier to perform at the Hirshhorn tonight
“Celebrating Trisha Brown, LondonIts 40 years since Brown formed her own company, developing a repertory that elaborated her early experiments in minimalism to dance structures of scrupulous intricacy and beauty.”
“The first record was an exercise in minimalism (it got me out of my evil, trippy electro phase), and the second was total maximalism, like me trying to out-Queen Queen.”
LNN interviews Casey Rae-Hunter on his new album : The Lovecraft News Network
“The minimalism is intense, but the house does avail itself of one of the chief benefits of underground construction — insulation — and the rooms are, visitors say, quite cozy.”
Seoul Gains An Underground House by Byoung Soo Cho | Inhabitat
“Yet what happened in the generation after these composers had started to stretch the definition of minimalism to breaking point?”
“I have yet to partake of that important first cup of coffee of the day, so verbal minimalism is de rigueur.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘minimalism’.
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art & art historical
chiaroscuro, architrave, column, capital, corinthian, dorice, entablature, frieze, ionic, sketch, abecedarian, abstraction and 124 more...
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MUSIC - ALL TERMS
With focus on non-classical styles, but not excluding terms of the latter.
banjo, accompaniment, acoustic bass, bass guitar, bass clef, ground, brass, cornet, Mute, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, arrangement and 866 more...
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-ism's -logies
acosmism, absurdism, absolutism, ableism, aestheticism, alarmism, allotheism, anachronism, animalculism, analogism, animatism, animism and 464 more...
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My Favourite Words
diminutive, booth, minimalism, idiosyncratic, antithesis, aesthetic, hedgehog, liaison, kiosk, plethora, epitome
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Serendipity's Words
defenestration, mercurial, syzygy, wicked, iniquitous, metastable, demimonde, entropic, ephemeral, irreligious, frisbee, manifold and 474 more...
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five syllables
ontogenesis, phylogenesis, concatenation, androgenesis, extra textual, inexorably, spagyrically, apophenia, iatrochemist, monocotyloid, morphological, parthenogenic and 941 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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dyy's Words
ambivalence, irony, double-edged sword, paradox, struggle, plunge, buoy, pigeon-hole, ultimately, status quo, fuel, undermine and 230 more...
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Musical words
nocturne, flat, sharp, waltz, etude, opera, soprano, alto, tenor, bass, cello, flute and 131 more...
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tragedy of the commons
insomnia, arabesque, carousal, lucifer, riot, submerge, initiate, indigo, existence, magenta, opus, sleeplessness and 145 more...
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junestag's Words
postmodernism, cat, fish, rabbit, dell, coffee, elearning, mazda, php, mysql, flash, blogger and 755 more...
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Art Terms
mannerism, nonrepresentational, pointillism, serigraph, alla prima, trompe l'oeil, assemblage, arabesque, polychromatic, naive art, lumina, impasto and 104 more...
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They Roll Off The Tongue
Words that are just fun to say. Entirely subjective, but I like 'em regardless. A complement to the list They Stumble Off The Tongue.
verisimilitude, parsimonious, soliloquy, insipid, ontological, plentifully, je ne sais quoi, misanthropic, bourgeoisie, parallelable, inclemency, frigidity and 159 more...
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Diversified Obsessions
calendars, running, music, men, friends, motherhood, art, food, solitude, connection, drama, humor and 117 more...
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Things I adore
words, linguistics, etymology, philosophy, literature, research, poetry, science, cognition, solitude, nihilism, zen and 139 more...
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miscellany
preposterous, minimalism, outnumbered, subroutine, malinger, oddity, eccentricity, laughable, oxymoronic, interstellar, winter, heedless and 335 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for minimalism.
jmjarmstrong JM just can’t get enough minimalism. Jul 13, 2011