From Art to Design

While I was writing a literature review for my thesis I found out some interesting facts about Minimalism as an art movement transforming into a design trend. Historically Minimalism started an art movement that was influence by

•         The De Stijl art movement
•     Architects like Van Der Rohe
•     Traditional Japanese design

De Stijl was a one of the modern art movements that dominate in the twentieth century. The Importance factors of this movement are the fact that art was being used to design architecture and furniture. After World War I artists, architectures, designers and writers desired alteration from old forms and philosophy.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect who is considered a pioneer of modern architecture, and his architectural style during post-World War I set a foundation for minimalist design. He has designed many landmark buildings, including Chicago’s Crown Hall and New York’s Seagram Building.

The traditional Japanes Design focused on adding only what is significant and removing the other things, the space are always maximized and with wooden structures.

The official introduction of Minimalism was during an exhibition in St Patersburg through the work of Kazimir Malevich, a Russian painter and art theoretician born 23 February 1879. He was a pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the Avant-garde, Suprematist movement,  he placed a Black Square on a white background claiming that art no longer served the state or religion. He laid the foundations for a secular art that was detached from utilitarian purposes and removed from the ideological function of representation. (Concept of Modern Art : Suzi Gablik p. 245)

This work was the one he was well known for also one of the most famous paintings in Russian art, this art piece is regarded a minimalist work simply because of the use of subjects and within it, it consists of one shape; square, two colors; black and white and one dominant point of emphasis, where the painting is presenting only one subject matter.

KAZIMIR MALEVICH.Black Square.Oil on linen.1915

Black Square marked the turning point of the Russian avant-garde movement. Before creating this painting, Malevich spent eighteen months in his studio, labouring over thirty non-objective paintings. In the end, he had created a series of non-objective paintings, of which Black Square is one. His invention of the word “suprematism” was meant to refer to the supremacy of the new geometric forms. Although the other works in this period were created with visual brushstrokes and asymmetrical forms, Black Square was the prominent piece, with no visual textures and a perfectly symmetrical shape, as it was the paramount of Malevich’s change to pure geometric abstraction: suprematism.

Also as an influence of Minimalism the international style is an architectural style that developed in Europe in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, it dominated western architecture in the twentieth century. This term was first used by an American architecture born in 1903 Henry-Russell Hitchcock in his essay “The International Style: Architecture Since 1922.” The Bauhaus Institution was the first to utilize the style as their way of moving from art to design they familiarized the incorporation of engineering and art as engineering student were suppose to study art course. The main principles of the Bauhaus School were unity, combining colours, form and space, these members of the Bauhaus rejected the arts and crafts moment emphasizing on luxurious objects created by individuals.

The Bauhaus is often associated with a severe but elegant geometric style carried out with great economy of means, though in fact the works produced by its members were richly diverse. (Britannica Concise- Encyclopedia.Bauhaus.2013)

HERBERT BEYER.Universal Typeface 1952                                

This typeface consists of reduction of letterforms to their bare essential.  Hes removed uppercase letters and serifs, as his main focus he attempted to modernize typography in the simplest manner.

BAUHAUS ADVERTISING.1920

And this is how Minimalism went from being an art movement to s design trend.