How famous people live as minimalists. Minimalism is my opinion

Throw away all unnecessary things, and life will be happier - so claims minimalism, the popular movement of our time. But our greed for possessions is actually due to the fact that we do not respect material things enough.

“We filled all the rooms to capacity, but the wind still walks there,” Tomas Andersson Wij sings in the song “Blues from Sweden”. It is easy for a privileged member of the Western world to recognize himself here, in this sucking sense of emptiness.

Material excess, all these gadgets and trinkets that we buy, do not make us any happier.

Of course, it is unlikely that happiness cannot be bought - this is some kind of particularly deep or intellectual awareness. By and large, all religions and philosophies agree on this. We will soon achieve harmony and lasting satisfaction, freed from the need for material things. Desire, as the clever Buddha said, is the source of suffering.

The minimalist movement that has grown in recent years can be seen as a continuation of this ancient tradition of wisdom. This is a natural reaction to the sometimes absurd consumer culture, which, as we all know in the depths of our souls, is harmful both to our souls and to the planet put at our disposal.

Therefore, it is not too surprising that there are more and more blogs and books dedicated to the topic of minimalism: this fall, for example, “Things: Time to Drop” (Prylbanta) by Elisabeth Byström and Johan Ernfors (Johan Ernfors).

This movement, in short, is about getting rid of all the excess things you have, becoming aware of and taking control of your consumption patterns, and thus begin to live a simpler and, hopefully, happier life.

American minimalists Ryan Nicodemus and Joshua Fields Millburn, whose journey can be traced in the documentary Minimalism, sum it up in one of their oft-repeated mottos: “Love people, use things. The other way around never works."

You can also ask yourself if it's not the things we love and the people we use when we turn a blind eye to the fact that the clothes that we may be wearing right now were made by children's hands in Bangladesh. To what does the society and culture that allows such an order direct its love - to a thing or to a person?

Pure materialism, whether motivated by right or left ideology, capitalism or socialism, always ends in the reification and use of man. At the same time, one might wonder if this materialism, this obsessed consumer culture that the minimalists are trying to cure us of, is not just the result of not overestimating the material, but, on the contrary, underestimating it?

Context

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In the Netflix documentary Minimalism, Joshua Fields Millburn says that he only keeps things in his house that have a function or bring him joy in some way. .

Or, as cleaning guru Marie Kondo, whose best-selling books have taught readers to get rid of all unnecessary things, puts it: “Does it sparkle with joy?”

Of course, there is nothing wrong with this attitude. Indeed, why do we need more things than we really need? At the same time, Millburn's statement reveals the key problem of the modern attitude to the material: the material has only the value that we attribute to it, it is not valuable in itself.

If a thing has no function, or if it has no emotional value to me, it can be thrown away. It is the abstract, economic or emotional values ​​invented by man that determine how we relate to a thing.

But when it comes to reality, we don't invent true value. We open it. The physical, the material has value and is independent of us. And the value lies not only in abstractions.

Take, for example, man, a highly material being (if not a thing). Although we often say that the main thing is inside, we would never, if we think carefully, dare to assert that the value of a person has absolutely nothing to do with his body, that it lies only in his soul or in the meaning that we ascribe to it. to a person.

The unique character of man, and in this respect, of the whole world, is based on the fact that they are spirit and matter in an inseparable combination.

Here, perhaps, lies the greatest danger of movements such as minimalism, which seek to purge the bodily and material attachments of man: they easily lean towards dualism. And Puritanism.

Ideological and religious history has shown several examples of movements that wanted to rigidly separate body and soul, spirit and matter. When such a separation is made, body and matter become something burdensome, something dirty, something to be got rid of so that the soul can be freed.

Freedom, however, is not achieved through such dualistic thinking. We are absolutely right in trying, like the minimalists, to free ourselves from excessive attachment to material things. The Buddha said that desire is the root of suffering. Church Father Augustine would say that this idolatry, this our veneration of the created thing above the Creator, is the source of our problems.

This, however, does not mean that the created thing is evil. On the contrary, matter is something very good. We must respect her, but not worship her.

We achieve the correct attitude towards matter when we realize that reality is not dualistic. I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man ("I hung in the uncertainty of this human reality"), Bob Dylan sings in one of his most beautiful songs (Every grain of sand). Man lives on the division between the spiritual and the material. His life task can be formulated as follows: keep the balance. The key to harmony is not to favor one over the other. Truth almost always includes both.

Of course, sometimes it is useful to shed excess things in order to better maintain a balance between the holiday and fasting. The unceasingly fasting Puritan, however, runs the risk of falling into dualism, turning the good into the bad. But fasting does not mean saying “no” to the bad, it means learning not to abuse the good.

The materials of InoSMI contain only assessments of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the editors of InoSMI.

"Less - more". Throughout his career, the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe repeated this phrase, which was actually first adopted by his mentor Peter Berrens in the early 20th century. Minimalism is one approach to creative endeavors that has its roots in 20th-century architecture and art. He has had a lasting impact on virtually every artistic discipline, from music to products, from design to fashion. Ironically, while all the things we tend to think of as minimalist are easily identifiable by their blissful simplicity and clarity of purpose, the minimalist movement itself defies categorization.

Minimalist architecture is all about straight lines, open-plan spaces and concrete and glass surfaces. Derived from (and often interchangeable with) the international style of modernism. The minimalist music created by Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass seems to have a lot of flying notes on first listening. In fashion, the word "minimalist" could easily be applied to the almost invisible branding and predilection of Mason Martin Margiela.

In addition, when “less is more” becomes “how much is enough?” the minimalist approach has generated lively, even aggressive responses. When composer John Cage premiered his most famous composition, 4'33"(consisting of four minutes, 33 seconds of silence) in 1952, people just left. "They weren't laughing, they were just annoyed ... and they were still angry," he mused in a 1982 interview. When Carl André's "Equivalent VIII" (rectangular pile of bricks) was exhibited at the Tate Gallery in 1976, it was vandalized with blue vegetable dye. The rigidity of minimalism's reductionism has been parodied in mainstream entertainment.

"They weren't laughing, they were just annoyed...and they were still angry" - John Cage

However, while all this cannot be ignored, it is also true that minimalism is now somewhat orthodox in both high and popular culture. The once enigmatic totemic sculptural haystacks of the late artist Donald Judd have become sacred. The repetitive loops and impulses created by composers like Cage and Reich have found their way into everything from the ambient electronics of The Orb to the folk music of Sufjan Stevens. On-demand architects such as David Chipperfield (the man behind New York's Valentino temple store) and the Japanese duo who created SANAA have been described as neo-minimalists. Jonathan Eve, Apple's head of design, is clearly a minimalist. The company's most popular invention, the iPhone, is a prime example of a less than acceptable approach.

Indeed, the term "minimal" is now so casually thrown around that you have to remind yourself that he meant something very specific in different media and at different times. And keeping track of the history and development of minimalism is not easy, because many of those who were declared minimalists were far from self-identifying with this label. Having said that, there are a number of exceptional personalities who will always be associated with minimalism, thanks to the exceptional economy of gestures and the purpose of their work. If you are thinking about bringing order to your life, then you will surely be glad to get to know the minimalists better, who will definitely give you a lot of inspiration.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Mies van der Rohe is a towering figure in 20th century architecture. He was born in Germany in 1886 and went to study with the German painter and architect Peter Behrens, working alongside Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius before starting his own practice. He was head of the Bauhaus school between 1930 and 1933 before leaving Germany for Chicago.

Combining elements of Russian Constructivism (especially emphasizing industrial materials and design efficiency), the clean lines and vibrant colors of the Dutch group De Stijl and the free-flowing spaces of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie style, he designed an architecture that was both functionally honest and free from superfluous decoration. His works are filled with light and lightness, openness and transparency, made of glass and steel. He designed a series of what are now iconic buildings, refining and defining modernism. The Barcelona Pavilion of 1929, a revolutionary one-story structure built with thin materials such as marble and onyx that blurred ideas of interior and exterior space. Farnsworth House, the ultimate modernist glass box. Lake Shore Drive Residential Buildings in Chicago, model for all glass and steel skyscrapers, completed in 1951. Also his work is the Seagram Building in New York in 1958, a masterpiece of corporate modernism.

Frank Stella

In art, the term "minimalist" is usually applied to a specific set of artists, mostly based in New York, who arrived after the powerful Abstract Expressionists - Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko and others.

For the Abstract Expressionists, art was still the subject of a splash of something soulful on canvas, or a gigantic struggle for exaltation. It was heroic and personal. On the other hand, minimalism returned to Malevich, Mondrian, the Bauhaus and De Stijl. It was more about form, geometry and material - optics rather than emotion, metaphor or symbol.

Stella graduated from Princeton in 1958 and immediately moved to New York. Fiercely intelligent and already immersed in the city's art scene, he had a big idea early on. He produced paintings that were about... paint. His all-black stripes from the late 1950s are considered the starting line of minimalism. “Art eliminates the unnecessary. Frank Stella saw fit to draw stripes. There is nothing else in his picture,” commented Andre. Stella simply said, "What you see is what you see."

Donald Judd

Although the artist Stella was the instigator of this, artistic minimalism was most powerful in three dimensions. There were Dan Flavin's carefully controlled compositions of colored fluorescents. There were Larry Bell's hypnotic glass cubes. There was the conceptual geometry of Saul LeWitt. But most strikingly simple were Donald Judd's "concrete subjects." Especially its vertically aligned, precisely engineered stainless steel, anodized aluminum or plexiglass boxes.

Donald Judd, almost ten years older than Stella, studied philosophy and art history. In the early 1960s he worked as an art critic and theorist. His work became extremely influential, and as an artist his work progressed through painting and woodcuts to his pristine haystacks.

Donald Judd was determined to cut ties with the great European tradition. His "concrete objects" were not sculptures in the traditional sense. His work represented nothing. They were just objects in space. And the space they created, negative space, was as much a part of the pattern as the object itself. “Actual space is inherently more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface,” he said.

Judd also insisted that his art could be made by skilled makers who could do it even better. He later developed a model of designer furniture - and his influence on modern design went even deeper - but he always tried to insist that his table be a table and not a "concrete object".

John Pawson

Although the term has been applied to the Mexican architect Luis Barragan and the Japanese Tadao Ando, ​​what most people now consider minimalist architecture is exemplified by the work of John Pawson, whose reputation and influence far outweigh his actual output.

When he appeared on the architectural scene in the early 1980s, Pawson seemed to be sent to heaven, promoting calm and order after the clutter and dissonance of postmodernism (an architectural movement that made some sense on paper, but not so much in bricks and mortar). ). His minimalism was about architecture that rediscovered its soul and sense of sublimity - an idea that, oddly enough, was in direct conflict with the mission of minimalism in art.

John Pawson did not start training in formal architecture until he was 30 and never completed it (a cause of residual weakness among some of his fully qualified peers). But by the time he started, he already had a clear idea of ​​what he wanted to do. As for Lloyd Wright back in the 1920s, Japanese architecture was a key influence on Pawson. He traveled and taught in Japan, aspiring to become a Buddhist monk, but instead went into the circle of designer and architect Shiro Kuramata.

When he finally got around to creating spaces, whether it be a monastery in Bohemia, a Calvin Klein store on Madison Avenue or a house in Tokyo, they were temples of perfectly executed emptiness: elegant balance, the best materials, perfect proportion, pure white or gray projections and slow motion of light and shadow. It was material meditation, but, in clear connection with Judd's work, they demanded the sharpest angles, the strictest tolerances. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe had an aphorism: "God is hidden in small details."

Naoto Fukasawa

Japan has had a big influence on minimalist design. Japanese designer Naoto Fukasawa, along with his friend and Brit, Jasper Morrison, came to define minimalist design. Fukasawa designed furniture and electronics, taking Dieter Rams' strong functionalism and bringing a more organic sense of pure form to it. He also worked for a long time as a consultant and designer for MUJI (he designed the famous wall-mounted CD player). You can rate the Japanese stationery chain as the champion of casual, accessible minimalism. His rice cooker for MUJI and humidifier for his own ±0 (plus or minus zero) brand—the elegant curves and barely-there buttons and displays exemplify what Fukasawa called "super normal" design. These are objects that turn the visual and functional economy into a kind of art.

Minimalism is a lifestyle that means getting rid of everything superfluous. The transition to a simple life, the ability to get by with little is the path to freedom from the shackles of consumerism and materialism. When you adopt these principles, you will gradually begin to get rid of everything unnecessary. By and large, you can reduce the amount of furniture, move to a smaller home, or abandon the vehicle. The minimalist lifestyle does not follow certain rules. It is flexible enough to adapt to your needs, no matter what the circumstances.

Steps

The right attitude

Imagine the benefits of minimalism. Minimalism largely comes down to the practice of mindfulness. Giving up things is a retreat from materialism, the values ​​of the consumer society, and the distractions of the modern world. Consider the following benefits of a minimalist life:

• less focus on material goods as a source of satisfaction;
• reducing stress levels due to the amount of money earned;
• less clutter from unnecessary things, more free space.

1. Limit your communication. An exhausting social life goes against the fundamental goals of minimalism - getting rid of the unnecessary, reducing stress and reorienting life's focus. Take the initiative, get rid of relationships that poison your life, and focus on people who make you happier. Don't feel obligated to stay in relationships that aren't conducive to your well-being, such as:

   • friendship with people who do not consider your interests;
   • relationships in which you alternately converge, then disperse, which drives you into despondency.

2. Reduce your social media activity. Select a few social media apps and deactivate the rest of the accounts. This will reduce the number of alerts and notifications you receive throughout the day. If you're not ready to uninstall apps, then at least turn off notifications and check for updates when you're not doing anything.

   Join the minimalist society. In many countries, there are diverse communities dedicated to the minimalist lifestyle. They organize local group meetings - a unique opportunity to meet other people who share your life principles and exchange experiences. Find out about such meetings in your city or look for online communities of minimalists.

   Throw out expired items. Among household utensils, there will definitely be something that is long overdue to be thrown away in order to make room and prevent further use of these products. Expired food, seasonings, spices, and old cosmetics should go straight to the trash so you don't accidentally use them in the future and hurt yourself. Check your inventory regularly and throw away what you don't need so you don't accumulate junk.

Think Big Changes

Get rid of excess furniture. Embracing minimalism as a philosophy of life also includes reducing the amount of furniture you can safely do without. Coffee tables, for example, are often misused and become just the focus of the mess. Decorative sideboards (and all the knick-knacks in them) also don't really fit into a minimalist space, as they serve no practical function. Sell ​​or donate oversized pieces of furniture and enjoy the extra space.

Minuses.
- for any good idea there are always stupid people who understand everything too literally with their black and white thinking. From the series "Make a fool pray to God, he will hurt his forehead." Such perceive minimalism simply as a call to throw everything stupidly and indiscriminately out of the house, turning the home into a kind of featureless prison cell. And the distortion and distortion of the idea, unhealthy fanaticism begins. Example: I recently read an article here about minimalism, in which, in an aggressively instructive manner, they called for throwing out books and downloading electronic ones. Throwing books away is, dare I say it, bullshit. Simple wooden shelves with books (again, not random, but lovingly selected, those that you want to return to, reread, touch, that you want to pass on to children) - the best decoration for a minimalist home, very individual. And, besides, there are many rare books that are not on the Internet and never will be, and in terms of literary value they are head and shoulders above modern pop music. But limited fanatics do not see the difference between material and spiritual values, alas. I also don’t like the Flylady system in many ways, there are controversial points - it would seem, liberation, but in fact - self-enslavement, such a paradox.

EXPENSIVE! for some reason, the most minimalistic and simple-looking is the most expensive! For example, furniture, clothes. I had an epic search for a sofa - I wanted an absolutely simple one, without “whistles and fakes”, but these were fabulously expensive, three times more expensive than pompous and pretentious ones. For two years I was looking for a budget and simple option.

An example of a minimalist guru for me is my ... grandmother! It sounds strange, since usually the elderly hold on to junk and rubbish. But she always got rid of the excess without pity, the house shone with cleanliness and spaciousness, she was very distinguished by this among her neighbors. Now, when parents want to save something “just in case”, they say, “we are not millionaires to throw everything away,” I tell them, “and my grandmother survived the war and raised 6 children, but was not afraid to get rid of the excess.”

Many great people were minimalists. Here is an excerpt from the biography of A. Akhmatova, author K. Chukovsky:

"From the memories of Anna Akhmatova" Korney Chukovsky.
“She was completely devoid of a sense of ownership. She did not love and did not keep things, she parted with them surprisingly easily. Like Gogol, Apollon Grigoriev, Coleridge and her friend Mandelstam, she was a homeless nomad and did not value property to such an extent that she willingly freed herself from it as from a burden. Her close friends knew that it was worth giving her some, say, a rare engraving or a brooch, and in a day or two she would distribute these gifts to others. Even in her youth, in the years of her brief "prosperity", she lived without bulky wardrobes and chests of drawers, often even without a desk.
There was no comfort around her, and I do not remember a period in her life when the atmosphere around her could be called cozy.
The very words "furnishings", "coziness", "comfort" were organically alien to her - both in life and in the poetry she created. Both in life and in poetry, Akhmatova was most often homeless.
Of course, she really appreciated beautiful things and knew a lot about them. Antique candlesticks, oriental fabrics, engravings, caskets, icons of ancient writing, etc. now and then appeared in her modest housing, but after a few days they disappeared. She did not part only with such things in which the memory of her heart was imprinted for her. These were her "eternal companions": a shawl given to her by Marina Tsvetaeva, a drawing by her friend Modigliani, a ring she received from her late husband - all these "luxury items" only emphasized the squalor of her everyday life, furnishings: a shabby blanket, a leaky sofa , a worn, patterned robe that for a long time was her only attire at home"
“Already then, in her first youth, Anna guessed, not with her mind, but with a powerful, almost animal instinct: in order to survive in the era of wars and revolutionary terror, both red and white, one must learn to live without having anything - in blessed poverty, freed from feelings of ownership and carrying everything with you and in yourself. Isn't that why she handed out and gave away everything with such ease: things, money, books, manuscripts, as if it were not only superfluous, but also dangerous cargo? All her belongings were placed in a small stowage box, and there was: a Novgorod icon, the only gift from Gumilyov that survived after homelessness, the legendary rosary, a few more small icons, an old handbag, the famous Spanish comb ... ”©

Mindless consumption is on the rise in our society. We acquire mountains of things and cannot explain why we need them, why we need so many things. And then we drown in a pile of rubbish, afraid to part with the results of indefatigable consumption.

By adopting the principles of minimalism, you not only free your home from unnecessary things, but also make your life more conscious.

1. You won't even remember what you got rid of.

When you first start to get rid of unnecessary things, you have many questions: “I really don’t use this thing?”, “What if I need it?”, “One day I want to use it, but it’s not!”.

It seems to you that these questions and concerns are quite rational, but in fact, as soon as you get rid of the subject, you immediately forget about it. The things that clutter up your life and make you wonder if you need them or not are mostly so useless that your “one day” will never come.

2. Memories live in the mind, not on the shelves

It's so hard to empty cabinets and shelves from dusty figurines, framed photographs and other things that are associated with pleasant memories.

Here you need to understand that memories live in your memory and do not depend on useless gizmos that only litter your apartment. After all, if you suddenly lose these things, memories of pleasant times, loved ones and travels will not disappear anywhere.

Therefore, feel free to get rid of useless memorable souvenirs. What will you get as a result? Clean shelves, more free space, where you can breathe easier and think freer.

3. Tidying up is not always the best solution.

When you have a lot of things, you spend a fair amount of time trying to keep things in order. You put things in their places, organize the space and repeat it over and over again.

This marketing gimmick - big discounts - works great, and thoughtless consumers buy a bunch of unnecessary things. But, if you are imbued with the spirit of minimalism, this trick will be powerless, you will no longer fall for it.

7. You spend your time online more efficiently

Minimalism is manifested not only in things, but also in all other areas of life, including working at a computer. Being a minimalist means stripping away everything you don't really need.

You don't bother with beautiful wallpapers for your desktop, you don't look for beautiful themes and icons, you don't download unnecessary programs.

You use simple free utilities that are no less functional than beautiful paid options. Dozens of icons of third-party programs that you don’t even remember when you installed them do not loom on your desktop, and several tabs in the browser do not distract.

Working with a single tab in your browser is a great way to increase your productivity. So you will win multitasking and will not be distracted by extraneous matters.

8. Less is more really works

As you make room in your life and clear your mind, you begin to understand why this is necessary. Useless things leave you. The fewer things that grab your attention, the more control you have in your life.

You spend less time, your life is less cluttered and hassle associated with consumption. Less unnecessary things, costs, responsibilities.

In the end, the sum of all these “less” gives you much more: more time, freedom and money. And you realize that "less" actually means "more."