Minimalism

Strip away the artist's feelings, strip away the story, and leave only a box or a line repeated. Push the reduction far enough — or rather, because of how far it's pushed — the sheer presence of the object and the space around it comes forward. This is subtraction taken to its endpoint. The word “minimal” first appeared in 1965, when the critic Richard Wollheim used it to mean that a work carried only the barest minimum of the content Western art was supposed to have. At the time it also went by “ABC art.” Once again, it wasn't a compliment.