Definition of "minimalism" []

• A school of abstract painting and sculpture that emphasizes extreme simplification of form, as by the use of basic shapes and monochromatic palettes of primary colors, objectivity, and anonymity of style. Also called ABC art, minimal art, reductivism, rejective art. (noun)
• Use of the fewest and barest essentials or elements, as in the arts, literature, or design. (noun)
• Music A school or mode of contemporary music marked by extreme simplification of rhythms, patterns, and harmonies, prolonged chordal or melodic repetitions, and often a trancelike effect. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "None of them, it is worth pointing out, has ever fully embraced the term "minimalism", and the seeds of how differently the minimalist impulse would be taken up by later composers are already there in the huge aesthetic and temperamental gulfs that separate Riley's music from Reich's, or Glass's from Young's."
• "A Thing Is A Hole In A Thing It Is Not (until 3 May) the work examines the history of minimalist art and includes the re-enactment of a 1964 interview with Donald Judd, Dan Flavin and Frank Stella who came together to explain their ideas before the term minimalism had come to define a movement."
• "I'm sure you've heard the word "minimalism" in terms of music."