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Art Prints: Perfect Complement to a Minimalist Decor
In a word: no, pictures are not too flashy to use with a minimalist décor. In a fewmore words: art prints are not too flashy for a minimalist décor, as long as youselect your prints carefully. In fact, in rooms with minimalist decor, art printsadd character and highlight the fact that the decor really is minimalist and notjust neglected.
The trick with choosing art prints carefully is just to pick one print, or pick afew prints on a highly related subject or in a similar style, preferably all by thesame artist. In a room with minimalist décor, the prints will easily get moreattention than anything else in the room, so you want to be careful that the printsdo not conflict with each other. An obvious example: if you really like Monet'spaintings of water lilies, you could get several prints each of a different Monetpainting of water lilies.
There is a special concern if your décor is not just minimalist but strikinglymodernist (for instance, lots of simple furniture with clear angles or curves ratherthan carved woodwork). In a room with a particularly modernist décor, prints thatare from an earlier era might seem out of place. Go with prints that were createdmore or less in the era in which your furniture was designed, or in which yourfurniture's design was most popular.
Obviously, there is a lot of room for personal judgment as to what goes with what,since modernist anything always was designed not to look as though it belonged to aparticular period of time. It can be even more confusing if your modernist-lookingfurniture was really just designed to look spare in a general way rather than tohark to a particular school of design. In those cases, just try to go for somethingthat looks like it matches, sticking to prints of artworks that are modern but thatare not immediately recognizable as belonging to a specific decade.
If your furniture leans toward the 1950s and 60s style of modernism (the kind ofplayful curves that would be at home in a room with a sunburst clock on the wall),try prints of the work of a period artist such as Jackson Pollack. If your décor'smodernism leans toward the seventies or eighties (e.g., glass-topped coffee tablesand very spare design, you might be better off with Jasper Johns than JacksonPollack.
Choosing Art Prints for Rooms with Multiple Colors
* Minimal does not necessarily mean subdued. Just look at the vibrant paintings ofmodern artist Mondrian, such as "Broadway Boogie Woogie", composed entirely ofinterlocking rectangles, square, triangles, and circles. If you'd like to keep yourdécor simple even with a striking color scheme, art prints can actually help. Here'swhy:
* Art prints pull together disparate colors in a room. A print gallery or websitewill be able to recommend the best art print based on the colors in your room. Somesites even have search engines that match a room's color scheme with appropriate artprints.
* When the furnishings in a room attract attention art prints make sure the wallsprovide visual interest, too, so the eye is not pulled relentlessly downward towardthe furniture or rugs. Of course, you have to be careful not to give people aheadache. As a rule of thumb, the more riotous the play of colors on the ground, themore orderly the play of colors on the walls should be. If the vibrant colors ofyour furnishings tend to swirl together, lend the room calm with artwork that takesthose colors and presents them in neat lines and blocks.
* Art prints make it clear that your colorful décor is a well-rhymed composition,not just a loud burst of color. Visitors to your pad who see a blue couch, red endtables, and yellow lamps might well wonder what you were thinking--until they see aprint of "Broadway Boogie Woogie," or other artwork that shows how these disparatecolors really do belong together.
* In the end, there is beauty in the simplicity of a room with a minimalist interiordesign, and there is beauty in the art that takes the same simple approach. If youkeep that fact in mind when choosing artwork for your minimalist room, you can makesure your décor is more than minimally beautiful.
