Minimalism "not really minimal"

Rob Beschizza 12:30 pm Tue Jul 26, 2016

Kyle Chayka hates minimalism, a consumer product like any other, a class signifier, a "slightly intriguing perversion, like drinking at breakfast" for the insincere global elite.

…an outgrowth of a peculiarly American (that is to say, paradoxical and self-defeating) brand of Puritanical asceticism, this new minimalist lifestyle always seems to end in enabling new modes of consumption, a veritable excess of less. It’s not really minimal at all. …

…it comes with an inherent pressure to conform to its precepts. Whiteness, in a literal sense, is good. Mess, heterogeneity, is bad — the opposite impulse of artistic minimalism. It is anxiety-inducing in a manner indistinguishable from other forms of consumerism, not revolutionary at all. Do I own the right things? Have I jettisoned enough of the wrong ones? In a recent interview with Apartamento magazine set against interior shots of his all-white home in Rockaway, Queens, the tastemaker and director of MoMA PS1 Klaus Biesenbach explained, “I don’t aim to own things.”

… it takes a lot to be minimalist: social capital, a safety net and access to the internet.

It seems a bit confused on the relationships between different things and people calling themselves "minimalist," and the snark verges on how dare you – but yeah, fuck Soylent.

These are great tweets, also:

There are so many bad minimalist things, like these memes pic.twitter.com/BPgK0Ej8Wh

— Kyle Chayka (@chaykak) July 26, 2016

In meme terms, art —> lifestyle: pic.twitter.com/BSmeUk4DLK

— Kyle Chayka (@chaykak) July 26, 2016

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