"Less is more" or Minimalism

This post is a continuation of the previous post "Eleganza (Italian) = beauty for Italian people". "Eleganza" is not equal to "being simple" or "in a simple way" but means a lot more than you expect. Please see the previous Post.

Now let's think about  "Less is more" or Minimalism. This is originated from the architecture, but can be applied to other fields including art. For a painting "Less has More (empty) space." See my painting shown in this post. Empty space or Void (usually used for the Chinese Charater 虚) is a very important element for Oriental (Chinese and Japanese) paintings.

According to wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism#Less_is_more_.28architecture.29)

"
The concept of minimalist architecture is to strip everything down to its essential quality and achieve simplicity. The idea is not completely without ornamentation, but that all parts, details, and joinery are considered as reduced to a stage where no one can remove anything further to improve the design.
"

If "Less is more" or Minimalism is "completely without ornamentation" the art will be stripped out and lose the reason for its existence in our life since the art is inherently ornamentation. Even without art or beautiful things you can lead a everyday life with no serious problem. And almost all of us do in this way again mostly every day. But our lives "completely without ornamentation" will become very bleak and desolated.


Also refer to my old post "Zen Paintings" posted on May 31, 2011



AAG