The Art of «trivia»: The Tradition of the Minimal Artistic Gesture in the Art of the 20th –21st Centuries

Abstract

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of artless, «trivial» art; extra-genre and extra-stylistic quality of fine art, manifested in blurring the line between a work of art and reality. The author describes the features and circumstances of the existence of the discovered phenomenon on the examples of creativity of the authors of the 20th and 21st centuries: the ways of the artist’s creative interaction with  the  world  (dissolution,  mediation),  features  of  work  with  the  plot  and material (manifestation of the non-obvious, «quiet» beauty of the surrounding reality; inclusion of former the use of creative materials); the minimal artistic gesture  (the  detection  by  the  author  of  the  minimum  necessary  and  accurate actions  to  fix  the  artistic  discovery,  while  remaining  in  the  shade).  Through the prism of artlessness, various types and genres of visual art are examined: graphics,  painting,  collage,  assemblage,  relief,  sculpture,  «found  object». Despite the declared extralistical look at art, there are areas in which features are more common Dadaism, «poor» art. The origin and nature of the phenomenon described  is  found  first  in  ancient  and  eastern  Zen  Buddhist  cultures,  and then — in a formal search for 20th-century art. As a conclusion, an assumption is made about the relevance of such a path, which returns to direct tactile and visual  sensations  about  reality  under  the  conditions  of  dematerialization  and virtualization of 21st century art.