Maximalism

In the arts, maximalism is an aesthetic of excess and abundance, a reaction against minimalism whose philosophy can be summarized as 'more is more' against minimalism's 'less is more'. In the visual arts the term was applied by the critic and art historian Robert Pincus-Witten to the painters around the turbulent beginnings of neo-expressionism in the late 1970s - among them Julian Schnabel and David Salle - driven in part by despair at the long diet of reductivist minimalism; certain paintings by Gary Stephan in the mid-1960s prefigured the turn. Where minimalism strips away, maximalism piles on: dense surfaces, clashing registers, ornament and reference crowded together until the work feels overloaded by design. The label has since spread to fashion, interiors and music, and the art historian Gao Minglu has applied it to a strand of Chinese painting.

Defining characteristics

• Deliberate excess: crowded compositions that leave little negative space
• Layered ornament, pattern and texture stacked without restraint
• Clashing color and clashing references held together by accumulation
• Explicit opposition to minimalism's austerity - 'more is more'
• Eclectic mixing of high and low sources, decoration and debris
• Horror vacui: every zone of the work activated

Key figures

• Julian Schnabel (b. 1951) — American painter whose huge broken-plate canvases defined the late-1970s maximalist surge
• David Salle (b. 1952) — American painter of densely layered, colliding images grouped with the maximalist turn

Example works

• Ethnic Type #14 — Julian Schnabel (1984)
• Tree of Life (series) — David Salle (2020-2021)

Sources

• Maximalism - WikiArt institution
• Maximalism - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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