a b Kahn, Brian (17 June 2019). "This Striking Climate Change Visualization Is Now Customizable for Any Place on Earth". Gizmodo. Archived from the original on 26 June 2019 . Retrieved 10 July 2019. Yes. Another reason why minimalism is appealing to people is that it does have this moral quality: it not only promises that you can be in control of what’s around you, but it also promises that you are doing the right thing. You are living the right way. The morally pure way of living. If I am a minimalist, then, it is by default. In the New York apartment where I lived while writing this, I could look around and count the objects that belonged to me. Not the couch, bed, TV, console or dining table, which came from my one roommate. Just a desk and a bookshelf that held most of the things I cared about: books, papers and a few pieces of art. Unless you are wealthy or creative enough to afford a lot of space, there are two responses to living in New York: one is overstuffing a tiny space that eventually becomes unbearable, the other is living like a minimalist. Without basements, spare closets or extra rooms to stash stuff in, you are always Kondoing. Franklin, Ruth (19 March 2019). "Amy Hempel Is the Master of the Minimalist Short Story". The Atlantic . Retrieved 25 March 2023.

But first, let's find out what a minimalist is and what the best minimalist books are. What is a minimalist? With the unwanted stuff removed from their lives, many minimalists are free from caring for, thinking about, or getting frustrated with their stuff. We live in an age of mass consumerism. The jobs we work endless hours at help us earn more so we can spend more. But there comes a time when we wonder what lies beyond this seemingly senseless cycle of earning and spending.

Yet my gut reaction to Kondo and the Minimalists was that it all seemed a little too convenient: just sort through your house or listen to a podcast, and happiness, satisfaction and peace of mind could all be yours. It was a blanket solution so vague that it could be applied to anyone and anything. You could use the Kondo method for your closet, your Facebook account or your boyfriend. Minimalism also seemed sometimes to be a form of individualism, an excuse to put yourself first by thinking, I shouldn’t have to deal with this person, place or thing because it doesn’t fit within my worldview. On an economic level, it was a commandment to live safely within your means versus pursuing dreamy aspirations or taking a leap of faith – not a particularly inspiring doctrine. Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount. Agnes Martin, another early Minimalist, had been creating art for decades before she stumbled onto her mature style, which is what gets labelled as Minimalist: these six-foot square canvases covered in pencil line grids, or single stripes of paint. Marie Kondo was not the pioneer of minimalism in the United States, though this lifestyle movement is almost solely associated with her. Before her, there was a group of bloggers in the 2000s, following the financial crisis, who were presenting these ways to live with less stuff, or get out of debt, or just embrace simplicity. These were not necessarily design-minded people, or artists or creatives in New York. Some of them were, like, religious people in the Midwest who claimed that Jesus was a minimalist.

While this one was unexpected, I do see there being a place for it if you love history and deep-dives.Especially if you’re looking for something that’s a little more objective and less emotionally driven. Apple devices have gradually simplified in appearance over time under designer Jony Ive, who joined the company in 1992, which is why they are so synonymous with minimalism. By 2002, the Apple desktop computer had evolved into a thin, flat screen mounted on an arm connected to a rounded base. Then, into the 2010s, the screen flattened even more and the base vanished until all that was left were two intersecting lines, one with a right angle for the base and another, straight, for the screen. It sometimes seems, as our machines become infinitely thinner and wider, that we will eventually control them by thought alone, because touch would be too dirty, too analogue. She has this really great connection between minimalism and spirituality, because she was always searching for the ineffable. She connected her paintings to the Zen idea of a universal spirit, and she titled quite a few of the early works after plants or natural phenomena like the ocean. So you see her seeking out the sense of peace that she knows exists, but that she can never quite reach. And in Martin’s Writings you can you can see as she grasps for this thing that does not exist. The words really strain toward this spiritual plane of existence, and that is a rare quality in any artist’s writing. I find that really compelling. Over time, the mode that Judd pioneered has become more mainstream, and made Marfa a product, instead of what it was for Judd: a very personal choice”I’ve read every book the Minimalists have put out and I’ve listened to a good chunk of their podcasts too,which I think is why I didn’t enjoy this book. Cage was also interesting as a kind of showman, or a theorist-slash-performance artist. He would take these ideas that he had about music or noise or sounds and insert them into very mainstream contexts. He once went on a late night TV show to perform this piece called ‘Water Walk’ that basically consisted of him futzing around with a bunch of mundane objects, boiling water, throwing a flowerpot in a bathtub and hitting things. So he had this absurdist mode of making art. Some 1940s-era crime fiction of writers such as James M. Cain and Jim Thompson adopted a stripped-down, matter-of-fact prose style to considerable effect; some [ who?] classify this prose style as minimalism.