Abstract art

Abstract art is now generally understood to mean art that does not depict objects in the natural world, but instead uses shapes and colours in a non-representational or subjective way. In the very early 20th century, the term was more often used to describe art, such as Cubist and Futurist art, that does represent the natural world, but does so by capturing something of its immutable intrinsic qualities rather than by imitating its external appearance. See Abstraction.

History

Abstract pattern making has an ancient history dating back to the earliest decorations on textiles, pottery and so on. However, the idea that the arrangement of shapes and colours is not simply to be understood as design, but as fine art dates from the nineteenth century when photography began to make the illustrative function of visual art obsolete. Even before the widespread use of photography some artists, such as James McNeill Whistler were placing greater emphasis on visual sensation than the depiction of objects. Whistler argued that art should concern itself with the harmonious arrangement of colours, just as music deals with the harmonious arrangement of sounds. Whistler's painting Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1874) is often seen as a major move towards abstraction. Later artists such as Wassily Kandinsky argued that modern science dealt with dynamic forces, revealing that matter was ultimately spiritual in character: art should display the spiritual forces behind the visual world. The work of Wassily Kandinsky and Kasimir Malevich as well as Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov (see Rayonism), are generally seen as the first fully abstract paintings in 1911{{ref|Compton}}. Movements in modern art are to be considered in terms of the concepts which they exemplify, accompanied as they were by manifestos and declarations.

Related Topics:
Design - Fine art - Visual art - James McNeill Whistler - Wassily Kandinsky - Kasimir Malevich - Natalia Goncharova - Mikhail Larionov - Rayonism

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Constructivism (1915) and De Stijl (1917) were parallel movements which took abstraction into the three dimensions of sculpture and architecture. The Constructivists believed that the artist's work was a revolutionary activity, to express the aspirations of the people, using machine production and graphic and photographic means of communication. Some of the American Abstract Expressionists are purely abstract and include : Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell. Op Art (1962) and Minimalism (1965){{ref|StangosThamesHudson}} are the most recent idioms. It is, at present, more likely that an artist's work is seen as an individual entity rather than part of a movement. Sean Scully, John McLaughlin, Callum Innes, Robert Stark and Yuko Shiraishi are some abstract painters of today.

Related Topics:
Constructivism - De Stijl

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