Abstract art
The visual language of shape, form, color, and line is used in abstract painting to produce a composition that can exist somewhat independently of external visual cues. The phrases abstract art, non-figurative art, non-objective art, and non-representational art are closely linked. Although their meanings are similar, they might not be the same.
From the Renaissance until the middle of the 19th century, Western art was supported by the principles of perspective and the endeavor to create the appearance of visible reality. Many artists felt compelled at the end of the 19th century to develop a new kind of art that would reflect the profound shifts occurring in philosophy, science, and technology.A wide range of sources were used by individual artists to develop their theoretical ideas, reflecting the intellectual and social concerns prevalent in many spheres of Western culture at the time.
Robert Delaunay, 1912–13, Le Premier Disque, 134 cm (52.7 in.), private collection
A deviation from reality in the representation of imagery in art is indicated by abstraction. This deviation may be minor, partial, or total from truthful portrayal. On a continuum, abstraction can be found. Artwork that makes obvious changes to color or form, for example, can be considered semi abstract. There is no vestige of any reference to anything identifiable in total abstraction. For example, it is rare to discover references to naturalistic phenomena in geometric abstraction. It is nearly impossible to combine complete abstraction with figurative art. However, partial abstraction is frequently evident in realistic, figurative, and representational art. Lyrical abstraction is frequently completely abstract, as is geometric abstraction. Partial abstraction can be seen in many different art traditions, such as cubism, which modifies the forms of the real-life objects portrayed, and fauvism, which intentionally and conspicuously changes color in relation to reality.
History of Abstract art
The public's private sponsorship increased while the church's patronage decreased, allowing artists to make a living. The three art movements of Impressionism, Expressionism, and Romanticism all influenced the creation of abstract art. The nineteenth century saw the advancement of artists' artistic individuality. John Constable, J. M. W. Turner, and Camille Corot's paintings, as well as those of the Impressionists who carried on the Barbizon school's plein air painting tradition, demonstrate an objective interest in what is seen. Early indications of a new art form were given by James McNeill Whistler, who prioritized visual sensation over object representation in his painting Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1872). In a period before abstraction was even a concept, Georgiana Houghton's "spirit" drawings, created in 1871, demonstrate how her use of abstract shapes relates to the unnatural nature of her subject.
James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1874), Detroit Institute of Arts
Expressionist artists experimented with using paint surfaces boldly, creating exaggerations and distortions, and using vibrant colors. Paintings created by Expressionists were emotionally charged responses to Impressionism and other more traditional late 19th-century painting movements, as well as reactions to and impressions of contemporary experience. The Expressionists significantly shifted the focus from subject matter to the representation of psychological states of being.Expressionist artists experimented with using paint surfaces boldly, creating exaggerations and distortions, and using vibrant colors. Paintings created by Expressionists were emotionally charged responses to Impressionism and other more traditional late 19th-century painting movements, as well as reactions to and impressions of contemporary experience. The Expressionists significantly shifted the focus from subject matter to the representation of psychological states of being.The three art movements of Impressionism, Expressionism, and Romanticism all influenced the creation of abstract art. The nineteenth century saw the advancement of artists' artistic individuality.
Early 20th century
Henri Matisse and a number of other up-and-coming artists, such as the pre-cubist Georges Braque, André Derain, Raoul Dufy, and Jean Metzinger, transformed the Paris art scene at the start of the 20th century with their "wild," multicolored, expressive landscape and figure paintings, which critics dubbed Fauvism. Another pioneer of abstraction, Wassily Kandinsky, was deeply impacted by the Fauves' unadulterated language of color.
Francis Picabia, c. 1909, Caoutchouc, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, Paris
Cubism, which was founded on Cézanne's theory that all representations of nature could be boiled down to cubes, spheres, and cones, became the art trend that immediately led to the development of abstraction in the early 20th century, along with Fauvism.
Amorpha, Fugue en deux couleurs (Fugue in Two Colors), an abstract painting by František Kupka, was displayed at the Salon de la Section d'Or in 1912. Guillaume Apollinaire, a poet, termed work by a number of artists, including Robert Delaunay, Orphism. 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, artists from the main European cities had developed very active cultural linkages as they worked to produce an art form that matched the lofty goals of modernism. The World Backwards excerpt that follows provides a sense of the interconnectedness of culture during that era: Given that the second Knave of Diamonds exhibition, which took place in Moscow in January 1912, featured paintings sent from Munich as well as some members of the German Die Brücke group, and pieces from Paris by Robert Delaunay, Henri Matisse, Fernand Léger, and Picasso, David Burliuk's understanding of contemporary art movements must have been extremely current. David Burliuk presented two talks on cubism throughout the spring and organized a controversial book that the Knave of Diamonds was to fund. In May, he traveled overseas and returned with the intention of competing with the almanac Der Blaue Reiter, which had developed from the printers while he was in Germany. The World Backwards excerpt that follows provides a sense of the interconnectedness of culture during that era: Given that the second Knave of Diamonds exhibition, which took place in Moscow in January 1912, featured paintings sent from Munich as well as some members of the German Die Brücke group, and pieces from Paris by Robert Delaunay, Henri Matisse, Fernand Léger, and Picasso, David Burliuk's understanding of contemporary art movements must have been extremely current. David Burliuk presented two talks on cubism throughout the spring and organized a controversial book that the Knave of Diamonds was to fund.
And the hunt went on: Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova's Rayist (Luchizm) drawings created a structure by using lines that resembled light rays. Black Square, the Suprematist, was Kasimir Malevich's first completely abstract piece, finished in 1915. Architectonic Constructions and Spatial Force Constructions were made by Liubov Popova, another member of the Suprematist group, between 1916 and 1921. From 1915 to 1919, Piet Mondrian developed his abstract language of horizontal and vertical lines with colored rectangles. Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, and other members of the De Stijl group saw Neo-Plasticism as the aesthetic that would change the future of the world.
Russian avant-garde
Several Russian abstract painters converted to constructivism, which held that art was now life itself rather than something distant. Learning to use the equipment and supplies of contemporary production requires the artist to become a technician. Bring your creativity to life! was the catchphrase of all upcoming Constructivists, including Vladimir Tatlin. In order to focus on graphic design and theater design, Varvara Stepanova, Alexandre Exter, and others gave up easel painting. Anton Pevsner, Naum Gabo, and Kazimir Malevich were standing on the opposite side. They maintained that the fundamental purpose of art was spiritual; it was to establish a person's position in the world, not to arrange things in a utilitarian, materialistic manner. Władysław Strzemiński, Katarzyna Kobro, and Henryk Stażewski were among the Eastern European Constructivist artists with whom members of the Russian avant-garde worked during that period.
Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, 1923, The Russian Museum
Russia saw a large exodus of those who opposed the materialist production concept of art. While Gabo first traveled to Berlin, then to England, and then to America, Anton Pevsner traveled to France. Following his studies in Moscow, Kandinsky departed for the Bauhaus. Artists were free to experiment throughout the revolutionary era (1917–1921), which ended in the mid-1920s. By the 1930s, only socialist realism was permitted.
Music
Music[citation needed] is an art form that uses the abstract elements of sound and time divisions, and visual art develops some of these qualities as it grows more abstract. As an amateur pianist himself, Wassily Kandinsky was moved by the idea that signs and associative color may resonate in the spirit. Although all of our senses react to different stimuli, Charles Baudelaire proposed that there is a deeper aesthetic connection between them.
This is closely tied to the notion that art has a spiritual component and can transcend "everyday" life to a spiritual level. During the first few years of the century, the Theosophical Society spread the ancient knowledge found in the sacred texts of China and India. Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, Hilma af Klint, and other painters striving for a "objectless state" were influenced by this and developed an interest in the occult as a means of producing a "inner" object. Geometric shapes, such as the triangle, square, and circle, are timeless and universal; they serve as the spatial components of abstract art and are essential systems that underlie observable reality, much like color.
The Bauhaus
Walter Gropius created the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany, in 1919. The teaching program was based on the idea that all visual and plastic arts, including architecture, painting, weaving, and stained glass, should be united. Ideas from the Deutscher Werkbund and the English Arts and Crafts movement served as the foundation for this ideology. László Moholy-Nagy, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, and Anni Albers were among the instructors. Once the Nazi party took power in 1932, the Bauhaus was shut down. The school was relocated to Dessau in 1925. A 1937 exhibition of degenerate art called "Entartete Kunst" featured a variety of avant-garde works that the Nazi party disapproved of. Then the migration started, from the Bauhaus to Paris, London, and America, as well as from Europe in general. Most of the Bauhaus painters emigrated to America, but Paul Klee went to Switzerland.
Ideas from the Deutscher Werkbund and the English Arts and Crafts movement served as the foundation for this ideology. László Moholy-Nagy, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, and Anni Albers were among the instructors. Once the Nazi party took power in 1932, the Bauhaus was shut down. The school was relocated to Dessau in 1925. A 1937 exhibition of degenerate art called "Entartete Kunst" featured a variety of avant-garde works that the Nazi party disapproved of. Then the migration started, from the Bauhaus to Paris, London, and America, as well as from Europe in general.
Abstraction in Paris and London
In the 1930s, artists from Russia, Germany, the Netherlands, and other European nations impacted by the development of totalitarianism visited Paris. Sophie Tauber and Jean Arp worked together to create sculptures and paintings that combined geometric and organic shapes. Mathematically based concepts were brought to sculpture by the Polish artist Katarzyna Kobro. Because there were so many different kinds of abstraction available at the same time, artists tried to analyze the different conceptual and aesthetic categories. Organized by Joaquín Torres-García with assistance from Michel Seuphor, the exhibition featured 46 members of the Cercle et Carré group and included works by Neo-Plasticists and a variety of abstractionists, including Kandinsky, Anton Pevsner, and Kurt Schwitters.
Kurt Schwitters, Das Undbild, 1919, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
In response to criticism that the collection was too ambiguous, Theo van Doesburg founded the journal Art Concret and released a manifesto outlining an abstract art form where the only tangible reality is the surface, color, and line. In 1931, Abstraction-Création was established as a more open organization that served as a point of reference for abstract painters. In 1935, as the political climate deteriorated, artists once more reconvened, many of them in London. England hosted the first British abstract art exhibition in 1935. Piet Mondrian, Joan Miró, Barbara Hepworth, and Ben Nicholson were among the artists featured in Nicolete Gray's larger global Abstract and Concrete exhibition the next year. In 1931, Abstraction-Création was established as a more open organization that served as a point of reference for abstract painters. In 1935, as the political climate deteriorated, artists once more reconvened, many of them in London.
Late 20th century
Many European artists emigrated to the United States during the Nazi takeover in the 1930s. Exiled Europeans such as Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, Piet Mondrian, Jacques Lipchitz, André Masson, Max Ernst, and André Breton were among the prominent figures in modern art, expressionism, cubism, abstraction, surrealism, and dada that had established themselves in New York by the early 1940s. Local New York painters refined and expanded upon the rich cultural influences that the European artists brought with them. The free atmosphere in New York made it possible for all of these influences to thrive. The local art scene and the creations of younger American artists started to catch the attention of the galleries that had previously concentrated mostly on European art.
A 1939–1942 oil on canvas painting by Piet Mondrian titled Composition No. 10. Responding to it, fellow De Stijl artist Theo van Doesburg suggested a link between non-representational works of art and ideals of peace and spirituality.
The mature work of certain artists during this period became clearly abstract. Piet Mondrian's Composition No. 10, 1939–1942, which was marked by primary colors, white ground, and black grid lines, exemplified his radical yet traditional approach to the rectangle and abstract art in general during this time. Some painters from the era were difficult to classify, like Georgia O'Keeffe, who was a modernist abstractionist but a true maverick because she painted extremely abstract shapes without belonging to any particular group of the time. Eventually, American artists who were producing a wide range of genres started to come together to form unified creative groups. The most well-known American art movement was the New York School and the Abstract Expressionists. In New York City, there was a new possibility for learning and development as well as an environment that promoted conversation. John D. Graham and Hans Hofmann, both painters and educators, played a significant role in bridging the gap between the younger American artists coming of age and the just arriving European Modernists. Born in Russia, Mark Rothko's early works included a strong surrealist aesthetic that eventually blended into his vibrant color compositions in the early 1950s. For artists such as Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, and others, the expressionistic gesture and the painting process itself became paramount.
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