Maximalism: An Art of the Minor
Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
English Language and Literature
First Advisor
Robinson, Marc
Abstract
This dissertation draws on the scholarship of Saidiya Hartman and José Esteban Muñoz to theorize maximalism as an “aesthetic of the minor.” Moving across performance, art, literature, and film, I explore how artists who inhabit minoritarian subject positions—that is, artists who are queer, women, or of color—have used accumulation and ornamentation as strategies to push back against the forces of social minimization. I begin by reviewing existing criticism about the history, aesthetics, and politics of minimalism (which has been well-theorized) and maximalism (which has been under-theorized). I then offer a definition of what I am calling “minor maximalism” or “maximalism in a minor key.” Artists who practice under this rubric, I argue, seek to center what is otherwise peripheral or liable to be lost to history. They employ minor materials or forms of mark-making, valuing the ephemeral, obsolescent, and imperfect. They eschew the impersonality of minimalism in favor of autobiography and often engage in acts of appropriation or remixing, turning to composite forms such as collage in order to trouble the capitalist distinction between produce and detritus. They resist serialization and standardization and instead value mutability, virality, and variation. Most importantly, they privilege movement over ossification, creating highly theatrical works that seek to imagine dazzling, more equitable futures. All of the artists discussed in this dissertation respond to culture wars of various kinds, including the lavender scare of the 1950s, the Reagan-Bush culture wars of the 1980s, the “girl crisis” of the early 1990s, and the war on graffiti in New York in the 1970s and ’80s. Upholding the importance of interdisciplinarity, each chapter brings artists working in different media into conversation, with the first and third chapters taking the form of comparative case studies, and the second chapter taking the form of a critical collage. Seeking to highlight the polyvocal nature of maximalism, I end with an afterword that brings together anecdotes from various conversations I have had over the years about what maximalism is or could be.
Recommended Citation
Wiet, Elizabeth, "Maximalism: An Art of the Minor" (2024). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1264.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1264
