The problem inheres in the notion of simplicity: if both its preferred subject and its preferred approach are simple, what is it that justifies the minimalist enterprise? In other words, what saves minimalism from banality? For Nicholas Serota and Richard Francis, the answer lies in the fact that minimalism reinvests the ordinary with interest and attempts to persuade us that the apparent banality of our quotidian experience deserves immediate, direct examination: “By shifting emphasis so emphatically to direct experience Minimalist art makes a clear statement about the nature of reality. Its apparent simplicity is the result of rigorous focusing, the elimination of distraction. It is neither simple nor empty, cold nor obscure. Minimalism reorders values. It locates profound experience in ordinary experience” (Saltzman).

~ Warren Motte, Small Worlds: Minimalism in Contemporary French Literature