Description
The chart is an interactive lineage map. Maximalism sits at the center, on a timeline that runs from older movements at the top to newer ones at the bottom. The movements that influenced it appear above it, any parallel movements it developed alongside sit on its own row, and the movements it later influenced appear below. Every line is a real, cited connection between two movements: a solid line is an influence historians broadly agree on, and a dashed line is an indirect, parallel, or contested link.
For Maximalism (1970s – Present), no earlier influence is recorded for it; it runs alongside two parallel movements, all indirect or contested links: Excessivism and Neo-expressionism.
In the arts, maximalism is an aesthetic characterized by excess and abundance, serving as a reaction against minimalism. The philosophy can be summarized as "more is more", contrasting with the minimalist principle of "less is more".
The term maximalism is sometimes associated with postmodern novels, such as those by David Foster Wallace and Thomas Pynchon, where digression, reference, and elaboration of detail occupy a great fraction of the text. It can refer to anything seen as excessive, overtly complex and "showy", providing redundant overkill in features and attachments, grossness in quantity and quality, or the tendency to add and accumulate to excess. Read more ↗