Abstract art uses a visual language A visual language is a set of practices by which images can be used to communicate concepts of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world.^[1] Western art Written histories of Western art often begin with the art of the Ancient Middle East, Ancient Egypt and the Ancient Aegean civilisations, dating from the 3rd millennium BC. Parallel with these significant cultures, art of one form or another existed all over Europe, wherever there were people, leaving signs such as carvings, decorated artifacts had been, from the Renaissance The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Florence in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historic era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not uniform across Europe, this is a general use of the up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective Perspective, in context of vision and visual perception, is the way in which objects appear to the eye based on their spatial attributes; or their dimensions and the position of the eye relative to the objects. There are two main meanings of the term: linear perspective and aerial 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.^[2]

Abstract art, nonfigurative art, nonobjective art, and nonrepresentational art are loosely related terms. They are similar, although perhaps not of identical meaning.

Abstraction indicates a departure from reality in depiction of imagery in art. This departure from accurate representation can be only slight, or it can be partial, or it can be 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 Geometric abstraction is a form of abstract art based on the use of geometric forms sometimes, though not always, placed in non-illusionistic space and combined into non-objective compositions. Throughout 20th century art historical discourse, critics and artists working within the reductive or pure strains of abstraction have often suggested that, for instance, one is unlikely to find references to naturalistic entities. Figurative art Figurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes artwork - particularly paintings and sculptures - which are clearly derived from real object sources, and are therefore by definition representational. The term "figurative art" is often taken to mean art which represents the human figure, or even an animal figure, and, though and total abstraction are almost mutually exclusive In logic, two mutually exclusive propositions are propositions that logically cannot both be true. Another term for mutually exclusive is "disjunct." To say that more than two propositions are mutually exclusive may, depending on context mean that no two of them can both be true, or only that they cannot all be true. The term pairwise. But figurative Figurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes artwork - particularly paintings and sculptures - which are clearly derived from real object sources, and are therefore by definition representational. The term "figurative art" is often taken to mean art which represents the human figure, or even an animal figure, and, though and representational Representation describes the signs that stand in for and take the place of something else. It is through representation people know and understand the world and reality through the act of naming it. Signs are manipulated in order to make sense of the world (or realistic Realism in the visual arts is a style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. The term is used in different senses in art history; it may mean the same as illusionism, the representation of subjects with visual mimesis or verisimilitude, or may mean an emphasis on the actuality of subjects, depicting them without idealization, and not) art often contains partial abstraction.

Both Geometric abstraction Geometric abstraction is a form of abstract art based on the use of geometric forms sometimes, though not always, placed in non-illusionistic space and combined into non-objective compositions. Throughout 20th century art historical discourse, critics and artists working within the reductive or pure strains of abstraction have often suggested that and Lyrical Abstraction Lyrical Abstraction refers to two related but distinctly separate trends in Post-war Modernist painting, and a third definition is the usage as a descriptive term. It is a descriptive term characterizing a type of abstract painting related to Abstract Expressionism; in use since the 1940s. Many well known abstract expressionist painters like are often totally abstract. Among the very numerous art movements According to theories associated with the concept of postmodernism, art movements were especially important during the period of time corresponding to modern art. The period of time called "modern art" is posited to have ended approximately three-quarters of the way through the twentieth century. During the period of time corresponding that embody partial abstraction would be for instance fauvism Les Fauves were a short-lived and loose grouping of early 20th century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only three years, 1905–1907, in which color is conspicuously and deliberately altered vis-a-vis reality, and cubism Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music and literature. The first branch of cubism, known as Analytic Cubism, was both radical and influential as a short but highly significant art movement between, which blatantly alters the forms of the real life entities depicted.^[3][4]

Contents 1 History 1.1 Abstraction in early art and many cultures 1.2 19th century 1.3 20th century 1.4 Music 1.5 Russian avant-garde 1.6 The Bauhaus 1.7 Abstraction in Paris and London 1.8 America: Mid-Century 2 Abstraction in the 21st century 3 Gallery 4 References 5 Sources 6 See also 7 External links

History

Main articles: History of painting The history of painting reaches back in time to artifacts from pre-historic humans, and spans all cultures, that represents a continuous, though disrupted, tradition from Antiquity. Across cultures, and spanning continents and millennia, the history of painting is an ongoing river of creativity, that continues into the 21st century. Until the and Western painting The history of Western painting represents a continuous, though disrupted, tradition from antiquity. Until the mid 19th century it was primarily concerned with representational and Classical modes of production, after which time more modern, abstract and conceptual forms gained favor

Abstraction in early art and many cultures

Main articles: Prehistoric art In the history of art, prehistoric art is all art produced in preliterate, prehistorical cultures beginning somewhere in very late geological history, and generally continuing until that culture either develops writing or other methods of record-keeping, or it makes significant contact with another culture that has and Eastern art history Eastern art history is devoted to the arts of the Far East and includes a vast range of influences from various cultures and religions. The emphasis is on art history amongst many diverse cultures in Asia. Developments in Eastern art historically parallel those in Western art, in general a few centuries earlier. African art, Islamic art, Indian

Much of the art of earliest peoples – signs and marks on pottery, textiles, and inscriptions and paintings on rock – were simple, geometric and linear forms which might reveal a symbolic or decorative purpose.^[5] It is at this level of visual meaning that abstract art communicates. One can enjoy the beauty of Chinese calligraphy East Asian calligraphy is a form of calligraphy widely practiced and revered in the Sinosphere. This most often includes China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. The East Asian calligraphic tradition originated and developed from China. There is a general standardization of the various styles of calligraphy in this tradition. Calligraphy has influenced or Islamic calligraphy Islamic calligraphy, colloquially known as Arabic calligraphy, is the artistic practice of handwriting, or calligraphy, and by extension, of bookmaking, in the lands sharing a common Islamic cultural heritage. This art form is based on the Arabic script, which for a long time was used by all Muslims in their respective languages. They used it to without being able to read it.

19th century

Main articles: Romanticism Romanticism or Romantic Era is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution. In part, it was a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the, Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence in the 1870s and 1880s. The name of the movement is derived from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, Sunrise , which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satiric, Post-Impressionism Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism. Post-Impressionists extended Impressionism while rejecting its limitations: they continued using vivid colours,, and Expressionism 'Expressionism' was a cultural movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the start of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world under an utterly subjective perspective, violently distorting it to obtain an emotional effect and vividly transmit personal moods and ideas. Expressionist artists sought to

Three art movements According to theories associated with the concept of postmodernism, art movements were especially important during the period of time corresponding to modern art. The period of time called "modern art" is posited to have ended approximately three-quarters of the way through the twentieth century. During the period of time corresponding which contributed to the development of abstract art were Romanticism Romanticism or Romantic Era is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution. In part, it was a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the, Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence in the 1870s and 1880s. The name of the movement is derived from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, Sunrise , which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satiric and Expressionism 'Expressionism' was a cultural movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the start of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world under an utterly subjective perspective, violently distorting it to obtain an emotional effect and vividly transmit personal moods and ideas. Expressionist artists sought to. Artistic independence for artists was advanced during the 19th century. Patronage from the church diminished and private patronage from the public became more capable of providing a livelihood for artists.

James McNeill Whistler James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born, British-based artist. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger for a tail. The symbol was apt, for it, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1874), Detroit Institute of Arts The Detroit Institute of Arts , originally named the Detroit Museum of Art, has one of the largest, most significant art collections in the United States. In 2003, the DIA ranked as the second largest municipally-owned museum in the United States with an art collection valued at more than one billion dollars. With over 100 galleries, it now covers. A near abstraction, in 1877 Whistler sued the art critic An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites. Art collectors and patrons often utilize the advice of art critics as a way to enhance their appreciation of the art they are viewing John Ruskin John Ruskin was an English art critic and social thinker, also remembered as a poet and artist. His essays on art and architecture were extremely influential in the Victorian and Edwardian eras for libel after the critic condemned his painting Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket. Ruskin accused Whistler of "ask[ing] two hundred guineas for throwing a pot of paint in the public's face." ^{[6] [7]}

Early intimations of a new art had been made by James McNeill Whistler James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born, British-based artist. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger for a tail. The symbol was apt, for it who, in his painting Nocturne in Black and Gold: The falling Rocket, (1872), placed greater emphasis on visual sensation than the depiction of objects. An objective interest in what is seen, can be discerned from the paintings of John Constable John Constable was an English Romantic painter. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home—now known as "Constable Country"—which he invested with an intensity of affection. "I should paint my own places best", he wrote to his friend John Fisher in 1821,, J M W Turner, Camille Corot Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was a French landscape painter and printmaker in etching. Corot was the leading painter of the Barbizon school of France in the mid-nineteenth century. He is a pivotal figure in landscape painting and his vast output simultaneously references the Neo-Classical tradition and anticipates the plein-air innovations of and from them to the Impressionists who continued the plein air En plein air is a French expression which means "in the open air", and is particularly used to describe the act of painting outdoors painting of the Barbizon school The Barbizon school of painters is named after the village of Barbizon near Fontainebleau Forest, France, where the artists gathered. Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new had begun as an Impressionist but his aim - to make a logical construction of reality based on a view from a single point ^[8], with modulated colour in flat areas - became the basis of a new visual art, later to be developed into Cubism Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music and literature. The first branch of cubism, known as Analytic Cubism, was both radical and influential as a short but highly significant art movement between by George Braque, Pablo Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. He is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les.

Expressionist 'Expressionism' was a cultural movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the start of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world under an utterly subjective perspective, violently distorting it to obtain an emotional effect and vividly transmit personal moods and ideas. Expressionist artists sought to 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 Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence in the 1870s and 1880s. The name of the movement is derived from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, Sunrise , which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satiric and other more conservative directions of late 19th century painting. The Expressionists also drastically changed the emphasis on subject matter in favor of the portrayal of psychological states of being. Although artists like Edvard Munch Edvard Munch was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionistic art. His best-known composition, The Scream, is part of a series The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of life, love, fear, death, melancholia, and anxiety and James Ensor James Sidney Edouard, Baron Ensor was a Belgian painter and printmaker, an important influence on expressionism and surrealism who lived in Ostend for almost his entire life. He was associated with the artistic group Les XX drew influences principally from the work of the Post-Impressionists they were instrumental to the advent of abstraction in the 20th century.

Henri Matisse Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is regarded, along with Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three seminal artists of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments, The Yellow Curtain, 1915. With his Fauvist Les Fauves were a short-lived and loose grouping of early 20th century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only three years, 1905–1907, color and drawing Matisse comes very close to pure abstraction.

Additionally in the late 19th century in Eastern Europe mysticism Mysticism is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight. Mysticism usually centers on a practice or practices intended to nurture those experiences or awareness. Mysticism may be dualistic, maintaining a and early modernist Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The term religious philosophy as expressed by theosophist Theosophy is a doctrine of religious philosophy and mysticism. Theosophy holds that all religions are attempts by the "Spiritual Hierarchy" to help humanity in evolving to greater perfection, and that each religion therefore has a portion of the truth. The founding members, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky , Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907), Mme. Blavatsky had a profound impact on pioneer geometric artists like Wassily Kandinsky, and Hilma af Klint. The mystical teaching of Georges Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky also had an important influence on the early formations of the geometric abstract styles of Piet Mondrian and his colleagues in the early 20th century.^[9]

20th century

Main articles: Western painting, Fauvism, and Cubism

Post Impressionism as practiced by Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, 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, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Seurat was essential for the development of modern art. At the beginning of the 20th century Henri Matisse and several other young artists including the pre-cubist Georges Braque, André Derain, Raoul Dufy 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 (see illustration).

Although Cubism ultimately depends upon subject matter, it became, along with Fauvism, the art movement that directly opened the door to abstraction in the 20th century. Pablo Picasso made his first cubist paintings based on Cézanne's idea that all depiction of nature can be reduced to three solids: cube, sphere and cone. 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 Synthetic cubism, practised by Braque, Picasso, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Albert Gleizes, Marcel Duchamp and countless other artists 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.

In 1913 the poet Guillaume Appollinaire named the work of Robert and Sonia 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.^[10] Some artists of the period defied categorization, such as Georgia O'Keeffe 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.

Since the turn of the century cultural connections between artists of the major European and American cities had become extremely active as they strove to create an art form equal to the high aspirations of Modernism. Ideas were able to cross-fertilize by means of artists books, exhibitions and manifestos 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 Die Brücke group, while from Paris came work by Robert Delaunay, Henri Matisse 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'.

By 1911 many experimental works in the search for this 'pure art' had been created. František Kupka had painted the Orphist work,'Discs of Newton'.The Rayist (Luchizm) drawings of Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, used lines like rays of light to make a construction. Kasimir Malevich completed his first entirely abstract work, the Suprematist, 'Black Square', in 1915. Another of the Suprematist group' Liubov Popova, created the Architectonic Constructions and Spatial Force Constructions between 1916 and 1921. Piet Mondrian was evolving his abstract language, of horizontal and vertical lines with rectangles of colour, 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. In Italy the futurism, mixed with Bauhaus influence, led the way to an abstract art with a distinct warm colour palette such as in the works of Manlio Rho and Mario Radice.^[11]

Music

Wassily Kandinsky, On White 2, 1923

Some approaches towards abstract art drew connections to music. Music provides an example of an art form which uses the abstract elements of sound and divisions of time. Wassily Kandinsky, himself a 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 popularised the ancient wisdom of the sacred books of India, 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 spacial elements in abstract art; they are, like color, fundamental systems underlying visible reality.

Russian avant-garde

Main articles: Russian avant-garde and Futurism (art)

Many of the abstract artists in Russia became Constructivists 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. Varvara Stepanova 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, Anton Pevsner and Naum Gabo. They argued that art was essentially a spiritual activity; to create the individual's place in the world, not to organise 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 Bauhaus. By the mid-1920s the revolutionary period (1917 to 1921) when artists had been free to experiment was over; and by the 1930s only social realist art was allowed. ^[12]

The Bauhaus

The Bauhaus at Weimar, Germany was founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius.^[13] 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 Deutsche Werkbund. Among the teachers were Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, Anni Albers, Theo van Doesburg and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. In 1925 the school was moved to Dessau and, as the Nazi party gained control in 1932, The Bauhaus was closed. In 1937 an exhibition of degenerate art, 'Entartete Kunst' contained all types of avant-garde 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.

Abstraction in Paris and London

Kurt Schwitters, Das Undbild, 1919, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

During the 1930s Paris became the host to artists from Russia, Germany, Holland and other European countries affected by the rise of totalitarianism. Sophie Tauber 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 organised by Michel Seuphor ^[14] contained work by the Neo-Plasticists as well as abstractionists as varied as Kandinsky, Anton Pevsner and Kurt Schwitters. Criticised by Theo van Doesburg to be too indefinite a collection he publish the journal Art Concret setting out a manifesto defining an abstract art in which the line, color and surface only, are the concrete reality.^{[citation needed]} 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 organised by Nicolete Gray including work by Piet Mondrian, Joan Miró, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. Hepworth, Nicholson and Gabo moved to the St. Ives group in Cornwall to continue their 'constructivist' work. ^[15]

America: Mid-Century

Main articles: Modernism, Late Modernism, American Modernism, and Surrealism

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, surrealism, and dada were represented in New York: Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, Piet Mondrian, Jacques Lipchitz, Max Ernst, André Breton, were just a few of the exiled Europeans who arrived in New York.^[16]. 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 of these artists became distinctly abstract in their mature work.

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 Abstract expressionists 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 expressionistic gesture and the act of painting itself, became of primary importance to Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline. While during the 1940s Arshile Gorky's and 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^[17].

Abstraction in the 21st century

Main articles: Abstract expressionism, Color Field, Lyrical Abstraction, Post-Painterly Abstraction, Sculpture, and Minimal Art

At the beginning of the 21st century abstraction, abstract art, contemporary painting and contemporary art in general continues in several contiguous modes, characterized by the idea of pluralism. The "crisis" in painting and current art and current art criticism today is brought about by pluralism. There is no consensus, nor need there be, as to a representative style of the age. There is an anything goes attitude that prevails; an "everything going on", and consequently "nothing going on" syndrome; this creates an aesthetic traffic jam with no firm and clear direction and with every lane on the artistic superhighway filled to capacity. Consequently magnificent and important works of art continue to be made albeit in a wide variety of styles and aesthetic temperaments, the marketplace being left to judge merit.

Digital art, Computer art, Internet art, Hard-edge painting, Geometric abstraction, Appropriation, Hyperrealism, Photorealism, Expressionism, Minimalism, Lyrical Abstraction, Pop art, Op art, Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting, Monochrome painting, Neo-expressionism, Collage, Intermedia painting, Assemblage painting, Digital painting, Postmodern painting, Neo-Dada painting, Shaped canvas painting, environmental mural painting, Graffiti, traditional figure painting, Landscape painting, Portrait painting, are a few continuing and current directions at the beginning of the 21st century.

Into the 21st century abstraction remains very much in view, its main themes: the transcendental, the contemplative and the timeless are exempified by Barnett Newman, John McLaughlin, and Agnes Martin as well as younger living artists. Art as Object as seen in the Minimalist sculpture of Donald Judd and the paintings of Frank Stella are still seen today in newer permutations. The poetic, Lyrical Abstraction and the sensuous use of color seen in the work of painters as diverse as Robert Motherwell, Patrick Heron, Kenneth Noland, Sam Francis, Cy Twombly, Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, among others.

There was a resurgence after the war and into the 1950s of the figurative, as Neo-Dada, Fluxus, Conceptual Art, Neo-expressionism, Installation art, Performance Art, Video Art and Pop art have come to signify the age of consumerism. The distinction between abstract and figurative art has, over the last twenty years, become less defined leaving a wider range of ideas for all artists .

Gallery

Barnett Newman, Onement1

Fernand Leger 1919, Railway Crossing

Piet Mondrian, Composition No. 10

Theo van Doesburg Counter-Composition V

References

1. ^ Rudolph Arnheim, Visual Thinking
2. ^ Mel Gooding, Abstract Art, Tate Publishing, London, 2000
3. ^ Abstract Art -- What Is Abstract Art or Abstract Painting, retrieved January 7, 2009
4. ^ Themes in American Art -- Abstraction, retrieved January 7, 2009
5. ^ Gyorgy Kepes, Sign, Symbol and Image,
6. ^ Whistler versus Ruskin, Princeton edu. Retrieved June 13, 2010
7. ^ [1], from the Tate, retrieved April 12, 2009
8. ^ Herbert Read, A Concise History of Modern Art, Thames and Hudson
9. ^ Hilton Kramer, Mondrian & mysticism: “My long search is over, New Criterion, September, 1995
10. ^ Harrison and Wood, Art in theory, 1900-2000, Wiley-Blackwell, 2003, p. 189. ISBN 978-0-631-22708-3.books.google.com"
11. ^ Serdar Hizli, From Futurism Towards Abstract Painting
12. ^ Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art, 1863-1922, Thames and Hudson, 1962
13. ^ Walter Gropius et al.,Bauhaus 1919-1928, Museum of Modern Art, 1938
14. ^ Michel Seuphor, Abstract Painting
15. ^ Anna Moszynska, Abstract Art, Thames and Hudson, 1990
16. ^ Gillian Naylor, The Bauhaus, Studio Vista, 1968
17. ^ Henry Geldzahler, New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940–1970, Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, 1969

Sources

1. ^ Compton, Susan (1978). The World Backwards: Russian Futurist Books 1912-16. The British Library. ISBN 0714103969.
2. ^ Stangos, Nikos (editor) (revised 1981). Concepts of Modern Art. Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0500201962.
3. ^ Gooding, Mel (2001). Abstract Art (Movements in Modern Art series). Tate Publishing. ISBN 1854373021.

See also

• Abstract expressionism
• Action painting
• Art history
• Art periods
• American Abstract Artists
• De Stijl
• Geometric abstraction
• Hard-edge
• History of painting
• Lyrical Abstraction
• Western painting
• Piet (programming language), an esoteric programming language whose programs are bitmaps that look like abstract art, named after the Dutch painter, Piet Mondrian
• Abstraction in art
• Spatialism
• Concrete art
• Representation (arts)

External links

• Scientific inquiry in modern art
• American Abstract Artists

Western art movements by century 5th to 18th century Merovingian · Carolingian · Ottonian · Romanesque · International Gothic · Renaissance (14th-15th) · Mannerism (16th) · Baroque - Classicism (17th) · Rococo - Neoclassicism - Romanticism (18th) 19th century Realism · Historicism · Biedermeier · Gründerzeit · Barbizon school · Pre-Raphaelites · Academic · Impressionism · Post-Impressionism · Neo-impressionism · Divisionism · Pointillism · Cloisonnism · Les Nabis · Synthetism · Symbolism · Hudson River School 20th century Modern art · Avant-garde · Cubism · Expressionism · Abstract expressionism · Abstract · Neue Künstlervereinigung München · Der Blaue Reiter · Die Brücke · Dada · Fauvism · Neo-Fauvism · Art Nouveau · Bauhaus · De Stijl · Art Deco · Pop art · Photorealism · Futurism · Suprematism · Surrealism · Color Field · Minimalism · Nouveau réalisme · Lettrism · Installation art · Lyrical Abstraction · Postmodernism · Conceptual art · Land art · Performance art · Systems art · Video art · Neo-expressionism · Neo-Dada · Outsider art · Lowbrow · New media art · Young British Artists · Relational Art · Video game art 21st century Remodernism · Stuckism

Categories: Art movements | Modern art | Abstract art | Painting

 

 

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