uses a visual language
of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world.
had been, from the Renaissance
up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective
and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality. The arts of cultures other than the European had become accessible and showed alternative ways of describing visual experience to the artist. By the end of the 19th century
many artists felt a need to create a new kind of art which would encompass the fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy. The sources from which individual artists drew their theoretical arguments were diverse, and reflected the social and intellectual preoccupations in all areas of Western culture at that time.
Abstract art, non-figurative art, non-objective art, and nonrepresentational art are loosely related terms. They are similar, but perhaps not of identical meaning.
Abstraction indicates a departure from reality in depiction of
in art. This departure from accurate representation can be slight, partial, or complete. Abstraction exists along a continuum. Even art that aims for verisimilitude of the highest degree can be said to be abstract, at least theoretically, since perfect representation is likely to be exceedingly elusive. Artwork which takes liberties, altering for instance color and form in ways that are conspicuous, can be said to be partially abstract. Total abstraction bears no trace of any reference to anything recognizable. In geometric abstraction
, for instance, one is unlikely to find references to naturalistic entities.
and total abstraction are almost mutually exclusive
. But figurative and
) art often contains partial abstraction.
Both geometric abstraction and
are often totally abstract. Among the very numerous art movements
that embody partial abstraction would be for instance fauvism
in which color is conspicuously and deliberately altered vis-a-vis reality, and cubism
, which blatantly alters the forms of the real life entities depicted.
Much of the art of earlier cultures – signs and marks on pottery, textiles, and inscriptions and paintings on rock – used simple, geometric and linear forms which might have had a symbolic or decorative purpose.
It is at this level of visual meaning that abstract art communicates.
One can enjoy the beauty of Chinese calligraphy
or Islamic calligraphy
without being able to read it.
In Chinese painting, abstraction can be traced to the
painter Wang Mo (王墨), who is credited to have invented the splashed-ink painting style.
While none of his paintings remain, this style is clearly seen in some Song Dynasty
Paintings. The Chan buddhist
painter Liang Kai (梁楷, c.1140–1210) applied the style to figure painting in his "Immortal in splashed ink" in which accurate representation is sacrificed to enhance spontaneity linked to the non-rational mind of the enlightened. A late Song painter named Yu Jian, adept to Tiantai buddhism
, created a series of splashed ink landscapes that eventually inspired many Japanese zen painters. His paintings show heavily misty mountains in which the shapes of the objects are barely visible and extremely simplified. This type of painting was continued by
in his later years.
Another instance of abstraction in Chinese painting is seen in Zhu Derun's
. On the left side of this painting is a pine tree in rocky soil, its branches laced with vines that extend in a disorderly manner to the right side of the painting in which a perfect circle (probably made with help of a compass
) floats in the void. The painting is a reflection of the
metaphysics in which chaos and reality are complementary stages of the regular course of nature. In Tokugawa Japan some zen monk-painters created Enso
, a circle who represents the absolute enlightenment. Usually made in one spontaneous brush stroke, it became the paradigm of the minimalist aesthetic that guided part of the zen painting.
Patronage from the church diminished and private patronage from the public became more capable of providing a livelihood for artists.
painters explored the bold use of paint surface, drawing distortions and exaggerations, and intense color. Expressionists produced emotionally charged paintings that were reactions to and perceptions of contemporary experience; and reactions to Impressionism
and other more conservative directions of late 19th-century painting. The Expressionists drastically changed the emphasis on subject matter in favor of the portrayal of psychological states of being. Although artists like Edvard Munch
and James Ensor
drew influences principally from the work of the Post-Impressionists
they were instrumental to the advent of abstraction in the 20th century. Paul Cézanne
had begun as an Impressionist but his aim – to make a logical construction of reality based on a view from a single point,
with modulated color in flat areas – became the basis of a new visual art, later to be developed into Cubism
by Georges Braque
and Pablo Picasso
as practiced by Paul Gauguin
Vincent van Gogh
and Paul Cézanne
had an enormous impact on 20th-century art
and led to the advent of 20th-century abstraction. The heritage of painters like Van Gogh
was essential for the development of modern art
. At the beginning of the 20th century
and several other young artists including the pre-cubist Georges Braque
and Maurice de Vlaminck
revolutionized the Paris art world with "wild", multi-colored, expressive landscapes and figure paintings that the critics called Fauvism
. With his expressive use of color and his free and imaginative drawing Henri Matisse comes very close to pure abstraction in
French Window at Collioure
(1914), View of Notre-Dame
(1914), and The Yellow Curtain
from 1915. The raw language of color as developed by the Fauves
directly influenced another pioneer of abstraction, Wassily Kandinsky
ultimately depends upon subject matter, it became, along with Fauvism
, the art movement that directly opened the door to abstraction in the 20th century.
made his first cubist
paintings based on Cézanne's idea that all depiction of nature can be reduced to three solids: cube
. With the painting
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
(1907), Picasso dramatically created a new and radical picture depicting a raw and primitive brothel scene with five prostitutes, violently painted women, reminiscent of African tribal masks
and his own new Cubist
inventions. Analytic cubism
was jointly developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque
, from about 1908 through 1912. Analytic cubism, the first clear manifestation of cubism, was followed by
, practiced by Braque, Picasso,
and others into the 1920s. Synthetic cubism
is characterized by the introduction of different textures, surfaces, collage
elements, papier collé
and a large variety of merged subject matter. The collage artists like Kurt Schwitters
and Man Ray
and others taking the clue from Cubism
were instrumental to the development of the movement called Dada
During the 1912 Salon de la
the poet Guillaume Apollinaire
named the work of several artists including Robert
He defined it as, the art of painting new structures out of elements that have not been borrowed from the visual sphere, but had been created entirely by the artist...it is a pure art.
Since the turn of the century, cultural connections between artists of the major European cities had become extremely active as they strove to create an art form equal to the high aspirations of
. Ideas were able to cross-fertilize by means of artist's books, exhibitions and
so that many sources were open to experimentation and discussion, and formed a basis for a diversity of modes of abstraction. The following extract from 'The World Backwards' gives some impression of the inter-connectedness of culture at the time: "David Burliuk
's knowledge of modern art movements must have been extremely up-to-date, for the second
Knave of Diamonds exhibition
, held in January 1912 (in Moscow) included not only paintings sent from Munich, but some members of the German
group, while from Paris came work by Robert Delaunay
and Fernand Léger
, as well as Picasso. During the Spring David Burliuk gave two lectures on cubism and planned a polemical publication, which the Knave of Diamonds was to finance. He went abroad in May and came back determined to rival the almanac
Der Blaue Reiter
which had emerged from the printers while he was in Germany".
From 1909 to 1913 many experimental works in the search for this 'pure art' had been created: by
Hilma af Klint
Dances at the Spring
and The Procession, Seville
painted Untitled (First Abstract Watercolor)
series, and Picture with a Circle
had painted the Orphist works, Discs of Newton
(Study for Fugue in Two Colors
and Amorpha, Fugue en deux couleurs
(Fugue in Two Colors
painted a series entitled Simultaneous Windows
and Formes Circulaires, Soleil n°2
created Colored Rhythm
(Study for the film), 1913;
Tableau No. 1
and Composition No. 11
And the search continued: The
(Luchizm) drawings of Natalia Goncharova
and Mikhail Larionov
, used lines like rays of light to make a construction.
completed his first entirely abstract work, the Suprematist
, 'Black Square', in 1915. Another of the Suprematist group'
, created the Architectonic Constructions and Spatial Force Constructions between 1916 and 1921.
was evolving his abstract language, of horizontal and vertical lines with rectangles of color, between 1915 and 1919, Neo-Plasticism
was the aesthetic which Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg and other in the group De Stijl
intended to reshape the environment of the future.
As visual art becomes more abstract, it develops some characteristics of music: an art form which uses the abstract elements of sound and divisions of time.
, himself an amateur musician,
was inspired by the possibility of marks and associative color resounding in the soul.
The idea had been put forward by Charles Baudelaire
, that all our senses respond to various stimuli but the senses are connected at a deeper aesthetic level.
Closely related to this, is the idea that art has
The spiritual dimension
and can transcend 'every-day' experience, reaching a spiritual plane. The Theosophical Society
popularized the ancient wisdom of the sacred books of India and China in the early years of the century. It was in this context that Piet Mondrian
, Wassily Kandinsky,
Hilma af Klint
and other artists working towards an 'objectless state' became interested in the occult as a way of creating an 'inner' object. The universal and timeless shapes found in geometry
: the circle, square and triangle become the spatial elements in abstract art; they are, like color, fundamental systems underlying visible reality.
Many of the abstract artists in Russia became
believing that art was no longer something remote, but life itself. The artist must become a technician, learning to use the tools and materials of modern production. Art into life!
was Vladimir Tatlin
's slogan, and that of all the future Constructivists.
and Alexandre Exter and others abandoned easel painting and diverted their energies to theatre design and graphic works. On the other side stood Kazimir Malevich
and Naum Gabo
. They argued that art was essentially a spiritual activity; to create the individual's place in the world, not to organize life in a practical, materialistic sense. Many of those who were hostile to the materialist production idea of art left Russia. Anton Pevsner went to France, Gabo went first to Berlin, then to England and finally to America. Kandinsky studied in Moscow then left for the
. By the mid-1920s the revolutionary period (1917 to 1921) when artists had been free to experiment was over; and by the 1930s only
The Bauhaus at Weimar, Germany was founded in 1919 by
The philosophy underlying the teaching program was unity of all the visual and plastic arts from architecture and painting to weaving and stained glass. This philosophy had grown from the ideas of the Arts and Crafts movement
in England and the Deutscher Werkbund
. Among the teachers were
. In 1925 the school was moved to Dessau and, as the
gained control in 1932, The Bauhaus was closed. In 1937 an exhibition of degenerate art
, 'Entartete Kunst' contained all types of
art disapproved of by the Nazi party. Then the exodus began: not just from the Bauhaus but from Europe in general; to Paris, London and America. Paul Klee went to Switzerland but many of the artists at the Bauhaus went to America.
During the 1930s Paris became the host to artists from Russia, Germany, the Netherlands and other European countries affected by the rise of
and Jean Arp
collaborated on paintings and sculpture using organic/geometric forms. The Polish Katarzyna Kobro
applied mathematically based ideas to sculpture. The many types of abstraction now in close proximity led to attempts by artists to analyse the various conceptual and aesthetic groupings. An exhibition by forty-six members of the Cercle et Carré
group organized by Joaquin Torres-Garcia
assisted by Michel Seuphor
contained work by the Neo-Plasticists as well as abstractionists as varied as Kandinsky, Anton Pevsner and Kurt Schwitters
. Criticized by
Theo van Doesburg
to be too indefinite a collection he published the journal Art Concret
setting out a manifesto defining an abstract art in which the line, color and surface only, are the concrete reality.
Abstraction-Création founded in 1931 as a more open group, provided a point of reference for abstract artists, as the political situation worsened in 1935, and artists again regrouped, many in London. The first exhibition of British abstract art was held in England in 1935. The following year the more international Abstract and Concrete
exhibition was organized by Nicolete Gray
including work by Piet Mondrian
and Ben Nicholson
. Hepworth, Nicholson and Gabo moved to the
St. Ives group
in Cornwall to continue their 'constructivist' work.
During the Nazi rise to power in the 1930s many artists fled Europe to the United States. By the early 1940s the main movements in modern art, expressionism, cubism, abstraction,
were represented in New York: Marcel Duchamp
, were just a few of the exiled Europeans who arrived in New York.
The rich cultural influences brought by the European artists were distilled and built upon by local New York painters. The climate of freedom in New York allowed all of these influences to flourish. The art galleries that primarily had focused on European art began to notice the local art community and the work of younger American artists who had begun to mature. Certain artists at this time became distinctly abstract in their mature work. During this period Piet Mondrian's painting Composition No. 10
, 1939–1942, characterized by primary colors, white ground and black grid lines clearly defined his radical but classical approach to the rectangle and abstract art in general. Some artists of the period defied categorization, such as
who, while a modernist abstractionist, was a pure maverick in that she painted highly abstract forms while not joining any specific group of the period.
Eventually American artists who were working in a great diversity of styles began to coalesce into cohesive stylistic groups. The best known group of American artists became known as the
and the New York School
. In New York City there was an atmosphere which encouraged discussion and there was new opportunity for learning and growing. Artists and teachers
John D. Graham
and Hans Hofmann
became important bridge figures between the newly arrived European Modernists and the younger American artists coming of age. Mark Rothko
, born in Russia, began with strongly surrealist imagery which later dissolved into his powerful color compositions of the early 1950s. The
and the act of painting itself, became of primary importance to Jackson Pollock
. While during the 1940s
Willem de Kooning
's figurative work evolved into abstraction by the end of the decade. New York City became the center, and artists worldwide gravitated towards it; from other places in America as well.
, op art, abstract expressionism, color field painting,
painting, are a few directions relating to abstraction in the second half of the 20th century.
One socio-historical explanation that has been offered for the growing prevalence of the abstract in modern art – an explanation linked to the name of
Theodor W. Adorno
– is that such abstraction is a response to, and a reflection of, the growing abstraction of social relations in industrial society
similarly sees modernist abstraction as a function of the abstract power of money, equating all things equally as exchange-values.
The social content
of abstract art is then precisely the abstract nature of social existence – legal formalities, bureaucratic impersonalization, information/power – in the world of late modernity
by contrast would see the quantum theories with their disintegration of conventional ideas of form and matter as underlying the divorce of the concrete and the abstract in modern art.
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