Minimalism at its Roots

You may not see it now, but E.E. Cummings could quite possibly be thought of as the father of Minimalism. No matter what form of art it may be, the minimalist style, which flourished in American art in the late 1960's and early 1970's, was E.E. Cummings' brainchild, and his greatest achievement.

Minimalism describes movements where various forms of art are stripped down to their fundamental elements. Whether it be in the form of visual, painted art, music, or literature, minimalism has always attracted me in a way.

I strongly believe that E.E. Cummings was responsible for breaching the barrier to modern and contemporary poetry. With his high-brow subject matter and other extremely interesting ventures, he might have been the one to actually usher in the age of experimentation in the American arts. He even reduced his own name to lowercase, and often signed "e.e. cummings".

Let's take the above painting for example... E.E. Cumming's "Mt. Chocorua"

What do you see? Although extremely abstract, Cummings is still able to isolate the few fundamental aspects of what he sees, shape, color, and texture, and make a beautiful minimalist painting.

Using this style, Cummings and scores of other artists throughout the 20th century have been redefining the arts completely. One interesting artist directly influenced by Cumming's work was the Canadian poet bpNichol (Barrie Phillip Nichol), who, similarly, was a jack of all trades and dabbled in a variety of different mediums.

Moving along with our minimalism theme, bpNichol was fascinated by the name of a Japanese film director, Kon Ichikawa, and decided to make a musical poem of it, simply by breaking the name apart and using its naturally occurring rhythm. He does this again for Gertrude Stein, although I don't see how it relates to Gertrude Stein at all.

For me, Minimalism always seems make the most sense. It just seems right to think about small things before thinking about big ones. People who think of E.E. Cummings as one of their main influences are most definitely looking towards a minimalist background, because it is a tried and true mindset. Stripping any art form down to its component parts yields endless possibilities, and that's what poetry is all about...isn't it?

Endless possibilities...