Minimalism is a relatively new style of art and design where a work is stripped down to its fundamentals.  There are those who scoff at Minimalism yet just as many who praise its simplicity of form, adhering to the “less is more” mantra.  Those who create Minimalist works, however, often feel the term is belittling.  The style can be found often in visual art and music and sometimes literature.

Minimalism in literature grew out of the use of the metafiction style that appeared mostly during the 1960s and 70s.  Metafiction uses a number of writing gimmicks and devices to manipulate the reader into knowing a story is fictional, and thus the imaginative writing process can show through.  Some of these devices could be having the author in the story, having the author writing a story in the story, using a non-linear story, using characters that are aware that they are fictional, or predicting the reader’s reactions to the story.

It was through these same non-traditional means that literary Minimalism evolved.  Most accept that it was also rooted in some early works by Hemingway like "Hills Like White Elephants" in which the tones and significances are never explicitly stated.  This is the case in most Minimalist literature; any hint of emotions, mood, or tone is all contained in dialog.  Though Minimalism does not strip out description, the stories may seem anti-climactic since they are based on everyday people doing nothing out of the ordinary.  Like metafiction, readers are involved in a manipulation process by the story; they must pick up on the author’s implications to get the full meaning.  Some minimalist writers are Frederick Barthelme, early Raymond Carver, Sandra Cisneros, Amy Hempel, Chuck Palahniuk, and Tobias Wolff.

Minimalism in art follows the same stripped-down approach as literature, however it can often times be even more obvious.  In both sculpture and painting, artists use few colors, simple geometric shapes, and redundancy.  Expressiveness in the traditional methods is reduced to bare minimum, yet there is room for creativity in the materials used.

In music, Minimalism evolved as a deviation from traditional Classical form.  It is most easily identified by its repetition or lack of variation, consonant harmony, and droning or long notes.  Recent electronic music shares the properties of Minimalist Classical music; however, it has moved away being labeled as Minimalism.

Although Minimalism is inherently different in each of the arts, its function remains the same:  to rebel from traditional form to create something new and simple (or deceptively simple).  It grew out of a period in this century where rebellion was the trend, and to sell, people had to generate a whole new movement despite what critics would call it.  Minimalism in the arts reached its peak more than twenty years ago, but it hasn’t washed away yet.