In order to explore the best way to present abstraction in works, I will review almost a hundred year history and theories, which developed during those periods, then I will analyze the detail of a couple of abstract artists who have had significant influence on me. Through this review and analysis of abstract art, I believe I can find a factor for successful abstract art works, and a fundamental element on which abstract will be kept alive and achieve further development in the future. These fundamental elements and criteria of abstraction are also the issues I am trying to explore and present in my own works. Get Help With Your EssayIf you need assistance with writing your essay, our professional essay writing service is here to help!
essay about abstract art
A German painter, passionate about the art of primitive people, children and the mentally ill, Marc chose animal studies as his favorite themes, met Kandinsky, under the influence of him, convinced himself that the essence of beings is revealed in abstraction.
He went in search of new art forms and found what he called raw art: made by people who are not part of the artistic environment, who do not have cultural and historical references about art and seek ideas and themes within themselves, such as children, crazy and lonely people.
It is the geometric abstract art that had a lot of influence from the cubist and futurist movements. This is due to the use of geometric shapes and with a more rational and hard feature in the representations. Therefore, the lines and colors are organized in a way that results in a mostly geometric composition.
Dutch pioneer of abstract art, who developed from the beginning of the landscape to abstract geometric works of the most rigorous type. His canvases were painted from pure, vivid colors and straight lines.
Thus, the artist is not committed to transmitting reality. In this sense, another striking feature of abstract art is freedom, one that serves both the artist and the lover. In other words, he has the freedom to interpret the work as he likes, without any real commitment.
Therefore, for not having a commitment to the representation of reality, the main characteristic of abstractionism is to be a counterpoint to the concept of realistic art. Thus, abstract works are more conceptual, and depart completely from what was considered classic art.
Abstract art is an independent composition, free from representations and illustrations. In abstract art it is not simply a process of creating landscapes or objects, it is a process of exploring. It does NOT need to have a singular meaning, narrative or explanation.
The approaches found in abstract painting span many movements, including German expressionism, fauvism, cubism and abstract expressionism. Emphasizing the formal qualities of a work of art on the representational subject, abstract artists experimented with new techniques, such as the use of vivid and arbitrary colors, the reconstruction of shapes and the rejection of the realistic three-dimensional perspective.
Afflicted by totalitarian politics and art movements that renewed emphasis on images, such as surrealism and socially critical realism, she received little attention. But, after World War II, an energetic American school of abstract painting, called Abstract Expressionism, emerged and had wide influence. Since the 1950s, abstract art has been an accepted and widely practiced approach in European and American painting and sculpture.
Abstract art can also be made with many materials and on many surfaces. Can be used in conjunction with representational or complete art. Abstract art has intrigued and indeed confused many people, but for those who have accepted its non-referential language there is no doubt about its value and its achievements. They are not significant because of the aesthetic standard of beauty or not, they are significant because in a moment in time they have introduced something new to the world.
That said, any exhibition about abstract art and technology piques aesthetic anxiety in thoughtful abstract artists who are stubbornly sticking to paintbrushes or carving or welding tools. Static, stand-still abstract paintings and sculptures are one thing, but art emanating from electronics, computers, the internet, and all the rest are quite another. Does this split threaten more traditional abstract artists? Does it open the sluice to a day when the cart of digital technology will roll in front of the horse of art? One need only think of famously bleak visions of technology destroying humanity to be reminded that one of arts most enduring purposeswhether its abstract or figurativeis to express feeling and the more humane side of human existence. Art is much about getting away from measurement, quantity and bytes of information and instead giving us ways to grasp the otherwise ineffable whole of things.
Keep in mind that abstract modern artdefined for our purposes as art without recognizable subject matterhas been around for well over a century. (In terms of post-Medieval art movements or eras, this is a long time). For most of this stretch, individual touch (evidence in the work of art that its been made by a particular artists hand) was supremely important. Individual touch was the source of the awe we feel in the presence of great art that Walter Benjamin so brilliantly elucidated in his seminal 1935 essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Right up until Minimalism in the early 1960swhen touch was expressly repudiated, and such artists as Tony Smith and Donald Judd proudly had their art made in factories according to blueprints theyd draftedindividual touch was valued by artists and audience alike for revealing artists personal visions and, perhaps, even their souls.
One reason abstract art, for all its declining status in todays increasingly flash-and- filigree art world, has had such a long and vigorous run, and why its still going fairly strong, is that from the start it was never invested in any single technique, style, or manner of making art. It began on multiple fronts and in multiple places when a number of artists, all working around 1910, began making paintings (abstract sculpture appeared somewhat later) without any reference to the visible, physical world. To this day, the big names of these early years of abstraction remain the Russian artists Vasily Kandinsky and Kasimir Malevich, but there were others as well: the Chicago painter Maniere Dawson (also painting in the 1910s, but barely referenced by anyone in todays art world), or the spiritualist Swede Hilma Af Klint, and even the 19th century (!) French writer Victor Hugo, whose visual art has been almost entirely ignored by historians of modern art.
These pioneering abstract artists led to successive generations of the same. Roughly speaking, the many styles of abstraction we have today fall into categories laid out at the start geometric, grid-like, expressionist, etc. These arent impermeable silos, but as labels they help us make sense of all the abstract art thats still being made.
Another reason abstract art keeps on going is that its turned out to be at least somewhat evergreen. After Marcel Duchamps first readymadehis famous 1914 Bottle Rackabstract artists might have understandably thought that if an ordinary factory-produced object for drying wine bottles could be displayed as a bona fide work of art, hand-made abstract arts sincerity, invention, and imagination went right down the drain. Circa 1960, of course, there was Andy Warhol, whose insouciance made a further mockery of aesthetic sincerity, even Duchamps intellectually satirical version of it. Abstract artists reacted, however, to Duchamps and Warhols de facto threats without blinking, saying in effect through their art, We dont really give a damn about your head games, we still love following the many roads and paths of abstraction where beauty and wonder are to be found.
When modern abstract art first appeared, it shocked and repelled most people, including most artists. After all, the early 20th century was a time when the public was still getting used to the idea that Impressionismlet alone Cubismwasnt the product of outright madness. Today, abstract art ruffles few feathers. For most, its evanescent in the extremecertainly not harmful in the way violent images or disgusting words can be. Many people who dont pay much attention to art think of abstraction as good-looking or suitably decorative for, as they say home or office, and regard it as a safe signal that they are thoroughly modern. To quote The Bard, Ay, theres the rub. While todays abstract artists might have complete freedom, they risk losing the thrill, the exhilaration and the urgency that drove earlier abstractionists to produce new forms that expressed the anxieties and joys they felt about their age.
As we speculate and fret about the future of abstract art, one thing is certain: To fear incorporating new digital technologies is to miss out on the ways in which abstraction has always been about intensifying our happiness and frissons concerning existence itself. In this sense, abstract artists who embrace the digital age resemble abstractions earliest forbearers: forward looking, optimistic, and even (however unfashionably) universalist regarding beauty and expressing something trenchant about the times in which we live. Malcolm Gladwell has argued that the odds are that whatever moment in history were living in, were likely neither at the beginning nor the end of something, but rather somewhere in the middle. While we may have little idea where we are in the timeline of abstract art, the fact that that many abstract artists are embracing the digital age suggests that perhaps weve barely begun.
Note: The title to this essay is a play on the famous line of Petrarch, the great Renaissance scholar and poet who was one of the earliest humanists: Life flees and does not stop an hourCanzone 272, line 1 (La vita fugge, et non sarresta una hora). 2ff7e9595c
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