Less Is More?

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

jeremias writes:
" A often cited literary maxim; "Less is more" and I think it was       
Hemingway who said that some of the best stuff he ever wrote never made it
into his books due to his particular desire to pare away unnecessary prose,
with TRP however the opposite appears to be true in that more is better. Or
does it? (Appear). I don't know, but I'm interested in the concept."

Actually, the line first came (as far as I know) from the Bauhaus architects,
probably Mies van der Rohe--which resulted in all those shoebox-on-stilts
skyscrapers in NYC and elsewhere.  But, as the Hemingway dictum implies, this
was an aesthetic shared by many artists in many media in the early heady
days of High Modernism--just look at Mondrian and De Stijl group or the
Russian Constructivists paring painting down to simple geometric forms and
primary colors, or the spareness of William Carlos Williams' poetry--and
so on.  (In literature, Faulkner's logorhea is an important exception.)

But, as *post*-modern architect Robert Venturi said, "Less is *boring*!*
And many post-modern artists have revisted wit, play, and excess of verbiage
--our boy Tom among them (in GR anyway).


Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)