📹 Why these all-white paintings are in museums and mine aren’t
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What are the disadvantages of Minimalism?
Minimalism is a lifestyle approach that focuses on simplifying life by focusing on experiences and fewer things. However, it can lead to long decision-making and a tendency to convince others too much. In Poland, consumer-friendly rules allow customers to try products before making a purchase, allowing them to test them in limited ways and decide if they meet their needs. For example, a person in Poland tried a few options before choosing Garmin, a company they were not fond of due to complaints.
To deal with long decision-making, individuals should conduct a deep investigation and question their true need for the item. By being flexible and using minimalism according to one’s needs, individuals can find a balance between focusing on quality and avoiding unnecessary distractions.
What is the theme of minimalism?
Minimalist design is a style that emphasizes the essential, using limited materials, neutral colors, and simple forms to achieve elegance. Despite its popularity, some critics view it as boring or lacking imagination. Despite being cost-effective and eco-friendly, minimalist architecture and product design often involve the quest for the perfect object, a luxury only afforded to the privileged few. The term emerged in the 20th century as a reaction to highly decorative styles like Victorian architecture and Abstract Expressionist art.
What are the negative effects of minimalism?
The impact of a minimalist lifestyle on mental health is a topic of considerable debate. Some proponents argue that it can alleviate stress, enhance focus, and foster a sense of purpose. Conversely, others express concern that it may lead to feelings of guilt and shame.
What was the primary concern of minimalist artists?
Minimalism art, a 1960s US abstract movement, emphasized the influence of light and geometric shapes on the environment and viewer perception. Artists like Mary Corse, John McCracken, Larry Bell, and Robert Irwin challenged traditional art notions and disproved the belief that it was exclusive to elite classes. The movement’s simplistic shapes and hard edges exposed the essence of forms and materials, with the rediscovery of Corse’s light art highlighting its impact on art history.
What is the main idea of minimalism art?
Minimalism is an art movement that focuses on the reality of art rather than imitation. It emerged in the late 1950s with artists like Frank Stella shifting away from gestural art. The movement flourished in the 1960s and 1970s, with influential innovators like Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, and Robert Morris. It is linked to conceptual art, which also flourished in the same timeframe.
Both movements challenged traditional art structures, arguing that the art object’s importance is misplaced and leads to an elitist art world. The medium, material, and form of the work are the reality, prompting the viewer to respond.
Why is minimalism controversial?
Minimalist art, characterized by calm colors, clean lines, and shapes, has been a contentious topic due to its emotional and dramatic nature. Kazimir Malevich, a pioneer in 1915, created a painting with a black square on a white background, causing confusion among art lovers and critics. Other artists like Robert Ryman, Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, and Tony Smith followed suit, focusing on the work itself, the viewer’s relationship with it, and how it can change the perception of the room. This approach to minimalism has been a subject of debate, with some arguing it is worthless and others questioning its true meaning.
What is the ideology of minimalism?
Minimalism is a philosophy that promotes a simple life with fewer but carefully selected items, commitments, and noise. It encourages focusing on the things that truly matter, more time, and calmness. Marie Kondo’s “KonMari Method” is a step-by-step process of keeping only those belongings that “spark joy” and reducing clutter. This approach can be applied at work by organizing your workspace, muting applications, and listening to soothing music on headphones.
Focusing on tasks that are truly important and avoiding time-wasting meetings or frustrating discussions is also essential. Eliminating energy-draining items like snack drawers and mobile phones can lead to a calm, tidy workplace, allowing for more efficient work completion in less time.
What is the main goal of minimalism?
Minimalism is a lifestyle that prioritizes conscious decision-making about possessions, time, energy, and relationships, rejecting superficial mass consumerism. Denmark, a modest nation with around 5. 7 million residents, has a unique minimalist design philosophy influenced by post-war economic hardships. Danish designers like Arne Jakobsen, Kaare Klint, and Poul Henningsen, along with the government’s innovative initiatives, laid the foundation for Danish minimalist living.
The Danish climate influences the creation of comfortable interiors, exemplifying the “hygge” phenomenon. Oprah Winfrey encapsulated Denmark’s environmental consciousness and efficient living as “less space, less things, more life”.
What is the main concept of minimalism?
Minimalism is a philosophy that promotes a simple life with fewer but carefully selected items, commitments, and noise. It encourages focusing on the things that truly matter, more time, and calmness. Marie Kondo’s “KonMari Method” is a step-by-step process of keeping only those belongings that “spark joy” and reducing clutter. This approach can be applied at work by organizing your workspace, muting applications, and listening to soothing music on headphones.
Focusing on tasks that are truly important and avoiding time-wasting meetings or frustrating discussions is also essential. Eliminating energy-draining items like snack drawers and mobile phones can lead to a calm, tidy workplace, allowing for more efficient work completion in less time.
What is the central concept of minimalism?
Minimalism is a lifestyle that prioritizes intentionality, mindfulness, and meaningful choices over material possessions. It values experiences over material possessions and seeks personal harmony before external approval. Adopting this approach can lead to greater self-appreciation, focus, and stress reduction. Minimalists are authentic, valuing simplicity and rejecting superficial mass consumerism. They aim to highlight the beauty, essence, and true purpose of things in their lives, aligning with the Scandinavian way of living, which is often ranked among the happiest nationalities.
📹 Five Ways to Elicit Emotion through Environmental Design
Read the full article: http://ow.ly/KC4z50DZj0h If you can influence how a player feels in a scene, you can control what they’ll do …
The white painting doesn’t make me angry. The monetary value placed on the painting makes me angry. If my neighbor made a white painting and hung it up in their home, it would actually be a really interesting conversation piece. The complete emptiness of this hobby that is exclusively for rich people is what upsets me. The massive amount of resources that they throw around for something indistinguishable from a wall is frustrating. And if the final argument is I need to bring my own something to make up for what the white painting lacks, which is basically everything, then how is it different from staring at my white apartment wall?
my favorite piece of art like this is “Take the Money and Run” by Jens Haaning. A museum gave this guy $84k for art and in return he gave them two huge blank canvases. my favorite quote on this is “The work is that I have taken their money.” i love it because it doesn’t even pretend to mean something deep. the meaning is right there. it’s lazy art on purpose. the dude is underpaid, he saw his opportunity, he took the money and ran. i am obsessed.
The thing about modern art is that it highlights how the art industry rigs value and displays of art by their author alone. The concept of “I could do that” goes a bit further than they make it sound. It isn’t just the fact that the skill required is pretty simple (all things considered), but that the artist, museums, and contacts create absurd prices and fame to artwork regardless of skill. If I sent in my paintings, either my more complicated pieces or simply pieces, no museum or exhibition would display it, because I’m not famous and I don’t know any of the others in the know. The problem isn’t the art, it’s classism.
People don’t necessarily get angry about a white painting, they get angry about it being sold for so, so, so much money while millions of people are struggling to survive. To simply consider the reaction of people to art without seeing how our capitalist systems drive those emotions is what’s so pretentious to me.
When she said “The skill isn’t important or the fact that anybody can do it, it’s the idea behind it”. Anybody can pretend there is a great idea behind their scribble. I can scribble some lines and say “This painting represents existential crisis. Why are we here? Does everyone have destiny or are we just floating around in space?”.
All-white paintings just seem like the emperor’s new clothes to me. I have a textured and varied wall that’s painted white. It’s not worth millions. It’s a white surface. “You may look at it and feel anger, happiness, calmness” – I look at an all-white painting and feel nothing. I look at the price tag and feel anger.
I can even go to the point of seeing something interesting in the “white over white” paiting, but beyond that point it is just impossible to defend. They mention texture and shaping as if those two elements were not present in pretty much EVERY painting out there. A white canvas goes beyond minimalism and at least for me it cannot be taken as seriously as any other work of art
The real piece of art here is the whole narrative around these white canvases. As a graphic designer, I get that there are different kinds of white, different textures, but those are unique because of entropy, not because of the artist’s intuition. Actually, anyone could do it and come up with a unique result with its unique feeling. All the micro shades that come out of the depth of the paint are comparable to noise, and this is something that could easily be done by a machine too.
The art lady sounds like chat GPT, she can string lots of words together but in the end you’re left with no actual information. Probably trying to justify her 200k student debt to be an art major lol. Just ignore this stuff, it’s meant to create headlines and is a flex for rich people who have more money than they can spend. Honestly i can’t blame them. After you’ve already bought all the cool cars and yachts what else are you gonna buy? The alternative is charity or the casino and even that eventually gets boring.
If the whole point of minimalist art is: “You see what you see.” Then isn’t a plain white canvas nothing more than a plain white canvas? You can’t say the whole appeal of minimalist art lies in the fact that “you get what you see” while simultaneously attacking people for not “seeing the meaning behind the art”? That’s going against your own point and only proves that you’re just throwing around pretentious ideas in a vain attempt to come across better than others…
The mad thing about the art world is that it isabout connections and rarely about the skill itself. If you know someone who works in a gallery or museum, you get praised for that amazing idea and sell it for a fortune, no matter how simple it was, if you don´t know anyone you would probably never get positive feedback, if you try to sell it you either get noone to buy it or they´ll give you less than the materials cost.
I think people take art too seriously. Art is sometimes an expression of emotion, sometimes it’s a little joke put into four panels, and sometimes it’s a colorful mess left for you to pick apart. Art is extremely subjective and it’s pointless to try and say one way of art is the best way because art is an opinion, not a fact. Though one opinion in this case does happen to be right.
We need to stop bringing up “how much a painting sold for” when trying to imply value in one piece of art over another. The whole “high art market” is just a massive money laundering operation, and the prices are never an indication of actual artistic value a work might have in the art world. They can literally plug anyone out of obscurity, and push their art into hundreds of millions if they just have some rich person trying to avoid some taxes or launder some money.
1st Guy : ” Here’s my painting” 2nd Guy : ” Where l don’t see anything in front of me?… Where’s the canvas, where’s the stand… here’s nothing…? ” 1st Guy : ” You must embrace and visualize in your mind, l went to the store, bought the paint, canvas,stand and created my masterpiece that’s here in front of you”
*me at the beginning of this article: these paintings look stupid *this article: it’s all about your own ideas, those paintings are what you believe they are. *me after the article: thanks, they still look stupid. Also, yeah, I can’t recreate that exact canvas-with-shades-of-white, but mine version is also unique, then why isn’t it also $20M?
It reminds me of this advertisement I once saw: you see a couple standing in a museum in front of an exhibit which consists of a black bucket on the background of a white wall. They talk to each other about how impressive and beautiful this exhibit is and about what the artist wanted to convey. Then, the cleaning lady comes back, takes the bucket and continues mopping the floor.
Oh gosh, you people … Bragging about these stuff, I mean … IT’S NOT A WHITE PAINTING .How would you not understand it ? It is a large city with half a MILLION PEOPLE painted INDIVIDUALLY with a breathtaking view of an ocean behind the city and a farm next to it . There’s an island right in the middle of the ocean !!! It’s just … COVERED IN FOG !!! How do you not get this ? …
When I look at a white painting, I don’t feel anything, it’s only the price tag that makes me feel angry. That doesn’t make it art. The US military budget also makes me angry, and nobody is saying that’s art. For something to be considered art, it has to evoke an emotional response separate from the perceived cost or artist recognition.
As my fine art professors put it, minimalism is not art, it’s math. Sometimes it’s not even math, but a white canvas. It’s “art” because the person that made it and is selling it is famous enough to be able to sell it. The “I could make that” statement, followed by the “but you didn’t” is not valid from either side, because the only people that can make a painting like that and sell it are the people that are established.
Well that was a bit eye opening. I was for sure thinking white paintings were boring until this. I think I’ll see them in a new light with this in mind. Maybe I won’t see them as boring anymore and instead see them for the works of art that human beings have put effort into making with their own two hands. 🙂
People have to know art history and philosophy of art to understand contemporary art’s stand points. Its emancipation from art Salons, World Wars happening, commercialization, globalization, Internet, its fight against the art market, its search for innovations, trying to transform non artistic things into art with never seen ideas This is where art is unaccessible for most people, from popular culture and basic education I don’t understand people criticizing it and saying it can’t be considered art, then what is it ? Try to understand your way, be open minded or artists will never want to explain it to you if you keep being mad at them (the wrong person to be mad at) We usually hate the art market, the rich people and we don’t acknowledge business “artists” who profit out of it. We’re here for meanings, the plastic matter in pieces, for sentimental or philosophical aspects and innovations, new ideas, new things Art always has been political, even in Renaissance fyi 😉 These white paintings, they are working on plastic matter, with innovation and meanings, the ideas behind it. How white is not just white, it’s not perfectly “pure” : it questions purity, perfection, our vision and perception. And it has never been done before. Why choosing white? Because colors have meanings for everyone. It represents calmness, serenity etc. but it could be violent, rude, ruthless. You lose yourself in this white, it makes your imagination work. I could go on… Check Mark Rothko for that kinda things.
The thing is everything that was explained in this article NEVER justified the paintings. It was just an explanation of how they are made. You can say that you have to “work to find meaning”, that does NOT make it meaningful. It means they want you to pull a message out of your ass. Pure BS. How was you tell me your interpretation of the white painting and we’ll see if you can justify it.
The article says: “they offer a canvas to project their own interpretations, emotions, beliefs and stories…” however if you remove the painting and just leave the wall, a person could also project their own interpretations, emotions, beliefs and stories to that wall…. and if you remove the wall and the gallery altogether and place the viewer in a toilet, they can still project their interpretations, emotions and beliefs…. which means, the white canvas was not doing anything really. At the end of the article it says: “looking at a white painting could make u feel, angry, excited or soothed” But in reality these white paintings make you feel…nothing…. I think these white paintings were interesting and disrupting when they came out….but all the other copycats that came after are boring and recycle the same: “it invites the viwer to interpret art however they like and create conversation” old speeach whcih is not true anymore….
I have just made a new artwork, a sculpture. I believe I am the first to create such an art work, it is an invisible sculpture of Napoleon. I am willing to take bids starting at $5 million, the winner will get free delivery and shipping since it will materealize in their living room 5 seconds after the purchase. Amaze your family friends and co-workers with your artistic taste! Impress local art experts, perhaps donate to your local museum or art gallery in your will.
Ok if the idea behind this article is that the art is valuable for its “idea” and not the actual skill, then I could see how the VERY FIRST person to EVER DO THIS could get SOME credit or applause for doing it, but as soon as someone takes that “unique” idea and copies it their version no longer has that “idea” behind it and should be worth just the cost of the canvas and paint. Whereas if I made my own replica of the Mona Lisa I could still get credit for putting a lot of time and effort into it even though it was not my idea, putting white paint on a canvas takes no effort.
“Yes, you could have made this, but you didn’t.” This implies that either everybody’s copy is just as valid, or that being first with an idea confers its specialness. Like freakish combinations such as mounting a doorknob on a solid wall, or putting a brick on a white satin bed. Yeah, you could have thought of this, but you didn’t!
What a load of hooey. Maybe a load of Horse Manure would be better. The “Modern Artist” doesn’t have to be good, he HAS TO TALK A GOOD GAME. And a white canvas done by twenty different “artists” isn’t original because each one has to come up with an original idea. Or it’s just a copy of the other 19 attempts.;
4:58 More about the idea than the skill? Wrong. By that logic, every person who ever wrote an essay should be a world renowned artist. 5:03 “Yes you could do it but you didn’t” excuse? WRONG AGAIN. Every kindergartener has created art Kandinsky-style art, just like how you and I both can and HAVE created the same type and up to the same standard of minimalistic “art”… just no one has offered to display it in a museum or to hype it up. My friends and I studied architecture thinking it was about the different types of architecture around the world, boy were we wrong. It was mostly this non-sense, if you can come up with any BS story to go with your real-world impossible design, it’s HD for you. Too realistic and practical? Literal fail or just pass. A few weeks ago I was duped into going to these ‘art shows’. 12x12cm ugly impressionist style non-detailed no skill painting going for hundreds of dollars, and ugly kid’s style paintings of cats going for thousands … while real skilled artists who spent time and money on developing their skill and creating the art, are struggling to get recognised. Please for goodness’ sake, STOP supporting these skilless attention seekers who are just marketers. Pretentious modern skill-ess hypers are just good at bragging, BSing, hyping/marketing and it’s not your fault for not ‘understanding’ art.
The problem is not the painting, it’s that it’s all a way for rich people to evade taxes. The reason why this art is so expensive is BECAUSE they payed a huge amount of money for it, constructing an artificial demand that is so overblown that it’s just beyond bizarre. You can then store it in a free port or donate it to an art gallery, tax free. You can also get the art appraised by your golfing buddy in some influencial gallery and raise the value tenfold. It’s a foolproof investment, and it shows what a joke our financial system is. This is why people get angry. It makes a mockery of everybody who is actually working and struggling in this world.
“You could but you didn’t”? Forget the art, her trying to justify a blank canvas is making me more upset than the painting . As a mediocre artist as I am, it would be a personal embarrassment for me to put out a painting that literally even a blind person can do. Creating an artwork like that would be an insult to my skills, my hard work, my studies of great artists, my years spent practicing, and my drive to be greater. Stop trying to justify paintings rich people use for tax evasions. If you have to bring along your own story to understand the painting, why not just stare at the white wall? Try to understand how the underpaid working was feeling when they were painting that white wall. Those unique brush strokes guided by their frustration as they marked the walls white…
Reminds me of when I worked as a guard at an art museum. When photos in the photography gallery were being changed there would be a few days of stark white walls. People would ask us what that gallery was while it was empty and we called it the imagination gallery. people would spend hours in their staring at the walls.
“The art object… should be as far removed from the author as possible.” “what you see is what you see.” But these pieces (especially on the extreme like white paintings) derive their notoriety, monetary value and ultimately meaning, completely from the reputation of the artist. No one is buying an expensive white painting just because of what it looks like or how it makes them feel. So Ironically the minimalists in removing artifice and authorial expression or explanation depend on them more than ever. Without that, as an objects unto themselves, these are at best great decor, and none of these artists want to be simply decor.
i just feel like you have to force yourself to accept and ‘like’ this, ESPECIALLY after seeing it a million times. you don’t get something out of it genuinely. you get something out of it because you tell yourself you HAVE to accept it and believe in it. and i’m over that. i just don’t believe in it. and i’m not saying i hate any of the other art that people say ‘i could do that’ about… i’m just over these, that happen over and over and over again, in the wealthy art world.
“I could do that” is a perfectly valid argument. People are moved or impressed when they see beautiful paintings because it took talent to create that piece. If a piece takes zero talent to produce people are not going to be moved or impressed but it. Isn’t it funny you could tell Elizabeth was pretentious.
I think it’s a bit disingenuous to use Mondriaan as an example of minimalism since he was very much not that (highly spiritual, abstract, grasping for an understanding of fundamental truths, heavy on essentials, etc.). He’s considered an abstract painter but more specifically part of a neoplasticism movement known as De Stijl, which was all about abstractionist essentials. Otherwise a good article.
All the points made in this article completely circled around the fact that the Modern Artist paint for MONEY. Some may put care and time into their art to get fame, and reputation, but it’s ultimately for money. YOU CANT CONVINCE ME TO PAY MORE THAN $10 FOR WHITE PAINT ON A CANVAS. I don’t care who painted it.
This doesn’t explain the economics of white canvases, which is what people in the comments are arguing about. If the “value” of blankness comes from the ability to make the audience think, then forgeries would be just as expensive as the real thing. But that’s not clearly the case in the world that we live in.
Me: Okay, so look at this! * Plays a single note on a guitar * I worked so hard for this! You: That is not music, or art, you just played a single note… Me: Ah yes, but there is meaning behind that! You: Oh, I get it now, it does have a story! You might say “well I could also play just one note”, but you didn’t so that ultimately means you couldn’t do that and you don’t understand the art behind that note! Does it provoke any feeling inside you? Anger because of the simplicity? That’s because it’s art, art provokes feelings. And, no, when kid who has just begun playing the guitar provoke a feeling of joy and happiness in you, that is not an art. Only I get to choose what the thing that provokes feelings is art and you have to agree with me or else you are just blind and simpleminded, you don’t see the real art.
She brings up a point when she says “you can do it, but you didn’t.” The issue I take with that is that even then it’s been done by somebody else too. The white on white had been showing up for decades prior even according to this documentary, so to hear that it’s about being the first to have the idea doesn’t fly.
It doesn’t matter how wealthy you are, considering how incredibly poor and destitute many people are around the world, like I cannot think of anything that justifies spending $20 million on a white board. Like, you must be incredibly out of touch with the state of the world. I understand spending money on luxury items if you can afford it, but there’s usually a REASON or many as to why certain items are considered luxury: craftsmanship, quality, details, durability, taste, rareness etc.
i can’t believe i’ve listened to people yapping about how painting a white canvas isn’t just painting a white canvas. even though it is. you can make anything have meaning. you can create something and just make something up. idc what you make. make art you love!! but i’m so sick of people who have dedicated years on learning skills. making something for galleries just for a white canvas to take its spot. and to be sold for millions?? people are harassed for their commission prices when it’s completely reasonable. stop acting like modern artists have some higher thought process that make it that expensive. it’s not about skill anymore… it’s about marketing. art is supposed to be for expression and skill. now it’s how intricate you can make it look. edit: further explanation
cool article, it honestly was, but it didn’t change my mind. even if art is/was at some point solely about getting a reaction out of the viewer, people are now taking advantage of that fact (i.e. money laundering, making millions of dollars off a canvas that a two year old could’ve painted on) to the point where all other views of modern art are and/or should be irrelevant. it’s a scam in nice clothes, most of the time.
My problem with art like this is that it’s all about the interpretation, and yes you can argue that there is meaning in everything. I’m not saying that a white canvas can’t give a profound message to someone. Yet in the same way, you can argue everything has meaning. For example, one could say breathing has great meaning because it’s like the essence of life and it allows people to take in the world around them, but in the end, breathing is something extremely common that everyone does. So yes, a white canvas can have some meaning, but it doesn’t show anything new or original, nor is it particularly unique. The great thing about a lot of art is how unique it is, and how it lets you see what the painter sees. If I were to see a Picasso painting, I would know that it’s a Picasso. But if I see a blank canvas, it could be made by anyone. Nobody looks at a blank canvas and goes “that’s definitely a Robert Ryman painting.” All I see when I look at a blank canvas is an artist (if they can even be called that) that doesn’t stand out, one that is just like the billions of other people in the world. I don’t see a person, I see that lack of one.
There are good reasons people get mad about modern art. Sure, part of it is due to jealousy – if someone else can make big money selling white canvasses, why can’t I? Even after perusal this article, I still see no reason why these art peices deserve to be acclaimed or why people deserved to make millions off of them. Just the fact that they’re part of art history as a reaction to expressionism isn’t enough for them to be worth this much to me. There are better reasons than jealousy for people getting mad about it, though. One of the reasons is because people are trying to tell them what to like. If you really like these white canvasses and think they’re worth what they’re being sold for, then that’s fine, and good for you. However, if you say to me that this is “good art”, implying that it is somehow objectively better than art I like, I’ll get mad. Art quality is inherently subjective, so saying that one piece of artwork is “objectively better” makes no sense unless the standard you are judging by is, “It’s better if, on average, people consider it to be better.” Telling someone that your taste is better than theirs and that they just aren’t smart enough to get the art is insulting, and it’s especially insulting with modern art when there is really nothing to interpret about the art. Saying someone is wrong because they have different tastes than you is both stupid and egotistical, so of course people get mad when other people do it. The other reason people get mad is because, even if you understand the context and meaning of the art, and you legitimately like the art, a lot of people don’t.
I am impressed by the comments; but I will give the people commenting one thing, even tho the production on this vid is nice and the people seem great, they did an awful, awful job explaining minimalism. I feel like they could’ve done a better job just saying “Art, just like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder”. You may disagree but that is what they’re trying to say (just that). The point of these minimalists things are to pull the art out of you. Even if you don’t like them they fully do their job, whether you get angry or love the painting, there’s no point besides that, there’s literally nothing else to understand. It’s no different than when people listen to a metal band and see no talent in the screaming. There’s no hidden meaning and no one is saying there is.
“NO THIS IS NOT A RAGE ESSAY” (wrote in caps to get your attention) So if I’m getting this correctly, the thing that to a lot of people makes minimalism so amazing and meaningful is the freedom that the viewer gets and the amount of thought and creativity that has to go into the craft so you can carve out your own meaning. OK that’s pretty nice and all but in that case, the true artist is the viewer and not the creator. We’re the ones who give meaning to a white canvas not the person who drew it. I didn’t have any problems with the concept and the type of art. It’s certainly a creative and new way to look at things but my main problem is the fact that people get credited too much for this. To pay 20 million dollars to buy a white canvas no matter how meaningful is an insult to people who present their art in other ways and show the human dedication, sensitivity and precision.
So I don’t know about the white canvas, but when I was learning how to paint, one of the first work was to do a Mondriaan. While it looked easy since it’s just blocks of colors separated by thick black lines, I learned that my painting was no where as pleasing as a Mondriaan. Even with the same colors (blue, red, white), the arrangements of them–the placements of these colors, the sizes of them, the shapes of them, they all make a difference to just how aesthetically unsightful mine was compared to a Mondriaan. So there is something to say about minimalist art–the choices an artist makes does make a difference. So at least now when I look at a Mondriaan, I come to appreciate his work. I don’t proclaim I understand what it symbolizes, but I just know my color palette or aesthetics is not as good as his and therefore will never be able to produce the works as good as his.
This article defends this type of art, but doesn’t explain why these artists are successful and you’re not. Other than “you could do it, but you didn’t”. What’s the difference between college kids or other aspiring artists who create “easy” minimalist works, and people who become successful and have theirs in a gallery? That’s a more interesting question